For 30 years, ComTech Network Solutions, an MSP based in Graham, North Carolina, sat stagnant. With little to no focus on marketing campaigns, the family-owned business was barely growing. Any growth they had was due to referrals and natural business development. That all changed when Hunter Farlow, the family’s youngest son, graduated from high school and was in search of a job.
Mike Farlow, founder, CEO, and Hunter’s father, gave him a copy of the TMT Toolkit; he had purchased it years before and hardly touched it.
The results were unfathomable. In just a few years, ComTech went from $2 million in revenue to $6.7 million.
Starting Small
Today, Hunter works as ComTech’s marketing manager. ComTech’s new focus on savvy marketing, which keeps all their marketing oars rowing—executing multiple campaigns, fine-tuning their target market, holding unique events—is largely responsible for their success. He says consistency is what made the biggest difference.
“Everyone thinks the answer is going to be complicated, but it’s really simple,” Hunter says. “The number one thing is consistency. Step one, start out with 25 letters a week. Just get your butt to doing 25 letters a week. Start small, then worry about the rest. That is the number one thing that has set us up over the years: starting with 25 letters, doing a campaign every three months, maintaining weekly communications. Our list loves that. They love the little touches and the relationship building.”
Of course, Hunter’s eagerness to learn and willingness to try new things would be stunted without an owner who has confidence in him. “Having a boss—my dad, in this case—who gives me the freedom to experiment and try is the key to our success,” he explains. “Not everything is a winner. We tried our own campaign and thought it was going to be great. It ended up being an epic fail. But we went away a little bit from the proven campaigns and it got us right back on track. And my dad gives me free rein to experiment and see what works. If there’s a process out there that works, we just follow it and get results.”
Revving Up
Taking inspiration from other successful marketing strategies and tweaking it to fit ComTech’s voice and target audience has been a consistent theme for Hunter. After attending TMT’s IT Sales and Marketing Boot Camp and seeing how much of a hook their annual car giveaway was, he was inspired.
“It sounded like a crazy idea that nobody’s ever done before,” Hunter recalls. “But is it really that crazy when you do it by the numbers? And after we looked at it, we realized it wasn’t—we could give away a Tesla. It’s a long-term play, but everyone went nuts over it. We gave them the opportunity to win a car just by telling somebody else about our company. It became a huge magnet and folks we didn’t expect came out of the woodwork.”
After their successful Tesla giveaway in 2020, Hunter Farlow wanted to see if the car giveaway would scale. For the Tesla, they spent $45,000 and ended up with $10,000 in MRR. He wondered if investing $100,000 would produce exponential results. In 2023, they gave away a Corvette convertible to test the theory. While they didn’t get the results they expected due to differences in the buying cycle, the giveaway still did wonders to separate ComTech from their competition. “Whenever we go into new conferences, new lists, or have conversations with people, we lead it with, ‘We give away cars.’ It’s different; it’s memorable,” Hunter says.
Kicking Marketing Campaigns Into Gear
In addition to the car giveaways, ComTech utilizes lumpy letter mailing campaigns and sends weekly emails to their list. When mailing campaigns aren’t paying off, they pivot, sometimes trying two or three versions of marketing campaigns before striking gold. For example, instead of targeting general business owners with their stopwatch campaign—chosen to highlight their one-hour-guaranteed rapid response time—they began targeting those with IT directors and technical staff. This approach was much more successful and has resulted in a deal in the works quoted at $52,000 MRR.
But ComTech isn’t sending letters at random. “Early in 2023, we identified the various target markets we wanted to focus on,” Mike says. “It was our mission to identify how many qualified prospects were in our service area. We enlisted a professional list scrubber to help us scrub over 13,000 contacts. This helped to fuel our marketing efforts and grow our database tremendously.” This strategy means that each little investment they send to potential leads has a much higher chance of resulting in a viable lead—and eventual client.
ComTech’s success can’t be understated. Their goal for 2025 is to hit $10M by the end of the year, and they’re on track to do so. However, it wasn’t just one strategy or idea that’s responsible for their accomplishments. It was everything together—from raising prices to hosting unique events. In fact, that’s what’s so key for Mike.
“All the oars on the boat need to be in the water and rowing,” Mike says. “No matter how good or fast a single oar may be, all of them working together is what moves the boat.”
ComTech was one of five finalists in TMT’s Annual Better Your Best Contest this year.
