Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Watters
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I graduated from Bracken Christian School and attended Texas State University, where I began working in web design, hosting, SEO, and project management for a small business in New Braunfels. During college, I balanced school with work, helping small businesses build their digital presence. After six years there, I joined Leadhub in 2012 as the second employee and a business partner, focusing on technical SEO and reputation management.
Leadhub started as a small SEO-focused company born out of Champion AC’s office, but we quickly evolved into a full-service marketing agency specializing in home services. One turning point was developing a custom WordPress theme that allowed us to deliver high-quality websites for clients in as little as two weeks, significantly speeding up our processes. Today, Leadhub has 28 employees and works with over 100 brands nationwide, providing a range of services from website development to Google Ads management. Our success comes from focusing on actionable strategies, not just auditing and planning, but actively making moves to drive results.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Has it been a smooth road?
Not at all. Entrepreneurship is full of challenges. In my first 90 days at Leadhub, we were hit by the 2012 Penguin Penalty, which de-indexed all three of our clients for having spammy backlink profiles. It was a huge obstacle, but within 120 days, we managed to get all of them re-indexed without losing their domain authority, while many others had to start over.
Personnel and hiring have also been significant challenges. We didn’t have a salesperson for the first four years because we weren’t sure we could afford one. When we finally signed a large client, we invested in sales, although our first hire didn’t work out. It still helped lay the foundation for future growth.
I’ve learned that business is full of ups and downs, and how you manage resources during the good times can determine your success.
Recently, we worked with a large private equity group that made up nearly a quarter of our business. We built many of our operations and processes around supporting them at scale, but they eventually decided to cut us out and bring everything in-house. One of our core guarantees is transparency, which has proven to be a double-edged sword. We aim to be fully transparent with our clients about analytics, strategies, and tactics, but that can sometimes lead to clients adopting our processes and intellectual property. It’s easier to manage when it happens with an employee but much more difficult when it’s a client. Despite losing that significant revenue, I’m proud to say we withheld from making layoffs and instead focused on continued growth.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We’re a full-service marketing agency focused specifically on home service businesses, offering website development, branding, SEO, and pay-per-click strategies. What sets us apart is our emphasis on marrying marketing with operations. We’re proud to help clients not only generate leads but also properly attribute them to revenue so they can understand their ROI. Unlike other agencies that focus on visibility or impression share, we focus on leads, appointments, and getting real results.
What also distinguishes us is our commitment to unrivaled responsiveness. As the largest privately held agency for home services, we promise to acknowledge client requests within 24 hours and provide a solution within 48 hours. This responsiveness is something we take pride in, as many of our competitors take much longer to respond or implement changes.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The home services industry is going through significant consolidation, with private equity acquiring many healthy companies. As a result, marketing agencies like ours are competing more with large in-house marketing departments or business owners who believe they can manage their marketing themselves. With advancements in AI and increasingly sophisticated CRMs, it’s becoming easier for companies to handle certain marketing tasks in-house.
To stay competitive, we’re focusing on filling the gaps where clients might need extra expertise—like pay-per-click strategies, advertising buys, and website development—especially if they already have someone in-house handling other aspects like email marketing or content. Over the next 5-10 years, I expect an overload of low-quality content as it becomes easier to produce, which makes creating high-quality, authoritative content even more critical.
Another significant trend is the diminishing reliance on Google, especially as AI becomes integrated into mobile devices. Google is trying to maximize profits from its paid strategies while it can, but we’re helping clients focus on becoming authoritative voices so they can be found across various platforms, regardless of whether it’s Google or a different system, like Apple’s native AI. With the rise of vertical video and AI-generated content in 2024, having a real face to a name and putting effort into storytelling and high-quality production will be even more important. In 2025, we want our clients to prioritize this approach to stand out in a crowded digital space.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leadhub.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadhub/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeadHub/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/leadhub
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadhubSanAntonio
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/leadhub-san-antonio
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@leadhubagency
