Percentify Notes · October 2025
Learning across client categories
Work across construction, beauty, and online retail has reinforced one rule: understand how the customer buys before choosing the channel.
By Michelle Leir · Published · Updated · 6 min read
Working across very different categories teaches you which marketing ideas are universal and which are local habits. The universal part is smaller than most playbooks suggest. As a digital marketing agency Canada clients from several industries rely on, we see this pattern repeat across almost every account we run.
The buying process sets the channel
A construction enquiry involves site visits, quotes, and weeks of consideration, so proof and follow up matter more than volume. A beauty booking can happen in an afternoon on a phone. An online retailer lives or dies on the product page and the return policy. Same tools, very different weighting, and the same holds true whether the channel in question is Meta Ads management, Google SEO services, or email marketing services.
What transfers
Clarity about the offer, proof placed beside the decision, and fast human follow up improve results in every category we have worked in. Those three are close to universal, and they show up again and again whether the account is focused on online advertising Canada campaigns or a straightforward website design Ottawa rebuild.
What does not
Benchmarks. Cost per lead, acceptable response time, and reasonable ad frequency vary so much between categories that borrowing another industry's numbers is actively misleading. Build the baseline from your own account rather than a generic report.
Why this shapes how we work
Because so little transfers directly, our content marketing strategy for each client starts from their own buying process rather than a template borrowed from a different category. A small business marketing Canada client in home services gets a very different plan from one running an online shop, even when both are using the same core channels. The tools look similar from the outside, but the weighting behind them rarely is.