I wish I had known very early on the advantages of Google Ads, but since starting the business, I’ve tried to learn and read as much as I can through Google.
Charlotte Groce
President & Operations Manager
After a 23-year-long career in manufacturing logistics, Charlotte Groce was stressed and burnt out. She thought, “If I can put 70 hours a week into someone else’s business, why don’t I put it into my own?” She left her demanding job and was volunteering at a food pantry when a newspaper ad seeking pergola dealers grabbed her attention. She purchased the franchise territory and formed Palmetto Outdoor Spaces in 2012. The company, which offers all manner of porch shades, shutters, screens, and indoor shading, has since grown to nine employees. Charlotte began spreading the word with print ads, but a few classes through her local SCORE Business Mentoring program turned her marketing strategy around. Managing her own Google Ads campaigns since 2014, Charlotte now works on optimizations with help from the Google Ads support team, and attributes about 30 percent of the company’s growth to Google Ads.
A Google Business Profile has also been valuable to the company, accounting for about 80 percent of their leads. With so many people improving their homes during the pandemic, Palmetto Outdoor Spaces’ revenue grew 58 percent from 2019 to 2022. Now Charlotte’s been checking out training resources on Grow with Google’s YouTube channel. She’s learning about Google Analytics to increase quality leads as she expands the indoor shading part of her business, as well as more about managing Palmetto’s own YouTube channel. “You can learn anything you need to about Google,” Charlotte says. “There are so many tutorials and videos, so much information.” Most of all, she’s proud to be creating something greater than profits for her two sons and the community. “It's so rewarding knowing that I'm contributing to the lives of my employees and supporting their families and livelihoods,” Charlotte says. “When your employees are happy, the customer’s happy, and then success follows.”