Bear North Digital Steers Customers on the Information Superhighway
In a world where digital marketing strategies are an absolute must-have for businesses of any size, it helps to be able to choose a partner that has a lot of experience, is quick to respond and isn’t so large that they alienate their customers.
The Superior-based Bear North Digital is a marketing agency that is fleet-footed and compact in size but is teeming with abilities and assists many different kinds of businesses across the country while also functioning as a friendly local shingle for people in the Twin Ports.
Bear North Digital was founded by native Superiorite CEO Josh Kimmes, who started his online career as a teenager running eBay auctions. He turned that early computer savviness into his life’s work, and he’s been steering Bear North to success since 2018.
“I grew up in a family that was really [about] the trades – construction-type stuff,” Kimmes said. “As I grew up, I was always the tech guy in the family. And I went to the University of Minnesota and had a variety of internships. For the most part, they were all related to digital marketing. I really got a feel for the power of digital marketing and kind of identified that as the track that I had an interest [in]. I love the idea of optimizing things and creating an online destination. It’s really cool to be able to create something and have someone use it.”
For Kimmes, his mind for organizing is perfectly suited for his work in the digital realm, and the experience he gained in his internships (the Minnesota Timberwolves being one notable name) and early work experiences led him to start his own company and bring it back to his hometown to foster its growth. But it took some time for the idea to percolate.
“In college,” he said, “I actually had a thing called Kimmes Consulting. I had an interest in being a freelance business consultant. But I didn’t really have a vision for it. I wanted real-life experience. I picked up some side jobs – stuff that I was actually interested in. And that scaled really quickly and led me in this direction.”
While Kimmes came back to Superior to live and work, he didn’t start building Bear North upon his arrival. “I actually grew the business naturally before coming and working with any local businesses,” he said. “Once I felt like we had a good operation, that’s when I was like, okay, I can start being a little bit more outward facing, because I felt a lot more confident. Even today, I’d say maybe 30% of our clients are local.”
It’s an interesting, very modern way of doing business, and that extends to his staffing, too. Bear North doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar storefront, and the employees are spread far and wide. It’s a remote job for every one of them.
“We have six full-time employees, currently, and then a number of different contractors that we use for other stuff,” Kimmes said.
One of those full-time employees is Senior Account Strategist Colleen Castellani, who works largely with Bear North’s growth-plan clients. She’s based in Houston and has been with the company a little more than a year.
“I was looking for a job – preferably remote – because I was thinking I might want to move around a bit,” Castellani said of her beginnings with Bear North. “I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going to end up. I just kind of stumbled upon Josh’s job posting and I checked out the company and I was interested in everything that they were doing. I got the job, and I’ve been loving it ever since.”
“We’re all very self-motivated and we have the ability to be very flexible with things that we do and we’re in charge of our own path, in a way,” Castellani said of the jobs she and her coworkers do. “I was really interested in that and, especially, being able to gain all this specific marketing experience right out of college. Every part of this job, I can never rave about it enough. I love every minute of it. I was really hoping to get into a kind of front-facing client position, and that’s exactly what I have.”
Interestingly, though Castellani works as Kimmes’ employee, the two have never met in person. “We do meet quite often via Zoom or on the phone,” she said, “but, no, not in person.” Regardless, she has a strong sense of his leadership skills.
“I truly think he is a fantastic boss,” she said. “He puts his trust in you as an employee and lets you kind of run with things. He’s always so helpful with me and other employees and with our clients. He’s always ready to help, to work and to do his best.”
As for the specifics of their day-to-day work, Kimmes said Bear North is a “full-service” digital-marketing agency.
“We help service-based e-commerce and home-service businesses primarily with websites, Google ads, SEO and marketing automation. And then we also do growth plans, which kind of replace the need for a marketing coordinator or something like that. Oftentimes, there’s a cost benefit to having us manage your marketing versus having a full-time employee do it.”
“We’re really skilled in a lot of areas,” Kimmes said of Bear North’s particular toolkit, “especially on the Google side of things. We do WordPress and Shopify, which is a little bit unique. Pretty much every agency does WordPress, but we’re a little bit different, and we’re really well-versed in the e-commerce space.”
When it comes to their local clients, Kimmes said it “really depends” on a business’ needs, but Bear North is able to help them with whatever their needs might be – SEO, Google ads, websites – and do so with alacrity.
“Advantage Air Plumbing, Heating & Cooling, Inc. is one of our clients. Superior Glass Inc. and SGI Auto Glass. JW Consulting Engineers. The Bong Center. Superior Public Museums.” The list goes on. Kimmes said that most of his company’s business comes via word-of-mouth, but that they also benefit from a relationship with the Superior Chamber.
John Gidley, Executive Director of the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center, uses the services of Bear North to help his museum run on a daily basis, and he said that Kimmes is a pleasure to work with.
“He’s just really flexible with us,” he enthused. “He’s a great source that tells us if I need this or if I don’t. If I really don’t need it, he’ll tell me, even if it’s something he’s selling. He’s bailed us out – he’s been right there to help us out all the time. I highly recommend him. He knows his stuff.”
As for the future of Bear North Digital, Kimmes said he does have plans to grow the company in size, but that he also wants to keep it somewhat trim and manageable. “We’ve been bigger than we are, and I reeled things back a little bit a couple years ago, and now we’ve been growing again,” he explained. “I’m really happy with [things]. I’m a lot more confident where we are. We’ve got our processes down. We’ve got production in a really good spot and everything is going really smoothly.”
“Where the future is really going to go for us – it’s just honing in more on the product/market fit and figuring out where we’re going to take our growth plans and how we can better serve the right people at the right time,” Kimmes said.
Tony Bennet is a freelance writer based in Duluth.
