He Fired His Marketing Agency and Got 600% More Impressions Doing It Himself
Mark Philpott runs a 40-person occupational health business in Newcastle, UK. Marketing was never supposed to be his job — but for years, it felt like his hardest one.
He'd tried the agency route. Professional firms, decent credentials, serious invoices. But the results never justified the cost. So Mark made a decision most small business owners are too nervous to make: he fired the agencies and brought everything in-house himself.
What he needed next was a way to make that actually work.
The agency trap
Taking marketing in-house sounds empowering until you're the one doing it. Mark was logging into every platform separately, posting inconsistently, and watching his online presence stagnate — all while running an actual business.
- Expensive agencies ate into the budget without delivering the leads or growth Mark needed.
- Managing multiple social channels manually meant constantly playing catch-up with no real consistency.
- Without a system, marketing felt reactive and scattered — "piecemeal" as Mark puts it — rather than strategic.
"It's been great to have a system that allows a lot of the heavy lifting to be done for you. Marketing just felt like a second job that I didn't have time to do. Whereas now, I feel like I've had the benefits of employing someone — but I actually don't have a headcount in the business."
What changed when Mark found Blaze
With Blaze, Mark finally had the system he'd been looking for. Blogs, social posts, emails, and campaigns all run from one place — coordinated, consistent, and largely automated. Every morning Mark reviews and approves the day's posts, makes small tweaks to copy and design, and gets on with running his business. What used to feel like a second job now takes a fraction of the time — and for the first time, it actually works.
The results were hard to argue with. Instagram impressions jumped 600%. Organic leads grew 70% month on month — with zero paid ads. Mark is now consistently hitting his internal lead generation targets for the first time.
But the shift that mattered most wasn't the numbers. It was getting his time back.
"I'm not wasting time doing things that I'm probably not best qualified to do."