London, Ontario
Marketplaces + Google Maps + Meta
2023–2025
Smart Fix was selling phones across about 30 marketplace accounts — all managed by hand. We mapped the business into its three real sales funnels, then automated the biggest one. Over two years, sales doubled versus the same month in previous years, the ad budget for selling fell to almost nothing, and a small marketing department was replaced by one tool and one manager.
Sales vs same month, prior years
Ad budget to sell · was a full team
Marketplaces, now auto-posted
Reviews → ~3–4 calls/day
Client
Smart Fix London
Industry
Phone & electronics repair · used device sales
Market
London, Ontario
Period
2023–2025 (two-year partnership)
Focus of this case
Growing phone sales through online marketplaces — with almost no ad budget
The three funnels
Repair (Google Maps) · Buying from the public (Meta) · Selling (marketplaces)
What we did
Mapped the business, gave each funnel its own strategy, automated marketplace posting
By the time Smart Fix came to us, they’d already tried a huge range of platforms to get noticed — they were even posting on Twitter and Snapchat. Basically everything, all at once, with no clear plan and no real read on what was actually making money.
They had a steady-enough flow of customers for repairs and phone purchases, and the business worked. But they wanted more — and they had no way of knowing which of their many efforts was pulling its weight and which was just noise.
The pattern underneath was easy to spot: no strategy, no analytics, effort spread thin across every channel at the same time. So we started where we always do — by studying the market and how the business actually earns. And what we found changed the whole approach.
Smart Fix wasn’t a single business with one path to a sale. It was three, each with a different customer and a different route in. Repair jobs came mostly from Google Maps. Buying from the public — a cheaper, far higher-margin way to top up stock — ran on Meta ads. Sales of those phones came from online marketplaces.
Repair customers find you on Google Maps, so the job there was to become the obvious local choice. Tidying up the profile was part of it — but the real lever was reviews. We set up a simple system: large QR signs in every store so a happy customer could leave a review in seconds, plus a quick briefing for every sales manager to offer a free screen protector (and sometimes a discount on a case) in exchange for an honest review.
Over two years that added up to around 500 genuine Google reviews — and today that profile alone brings in roughly 3–4 ready-to-buy calls every single day.
Most of Smart Fix’s stock comes from suppliers — but the most profitable devices come straight from the public. A small Meta campaign — about $20 a day — kept a steady stream of people offering up their used iPhones and Samsungs, and buying this way was far cheaper, which meant a much bigger margin on resale. The economics vary: sometimes you land a nearly-new device with a minor fault at half its resale value; sometimes the margin is thinner once repairs are done. But it reliably brought in the highest-margin stock, and the owner was more than happy with it.
Worth noting: this is the one place we kept spending — and it buys stock, not customers.
This is the piece we think of as our own know-how. Smart Fix had a genuine edge: their used devices cost barely more than buying privately off a marketplace — except buying privately is risky and easy to get burned on, while Smart Fix backs every device with a oneyear warranty and solid quality. The demand was there. The bottleneck was the listing.
They were selling across roughly 30 marketplace accounts — Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji and Karrot — every one managed by hand. It was chaos. Sold items stayed live for days. New stock never made it onto half the platforms. And the volume is brutal: hundreds of devices, each its own listing — different model, colour, battery health, condition
So we found a developer and built a tool to end the manual work entirely. Here’s how it runs now: a sales manager photographs a device, fills in a simple table, and sends it to a bot — the bot posts it everywhere at once. The moment that device sells, anywhere (in store, on the website, on any marketplace), it’s pulled from every account automatically. New stock goes up instantly; sold stock comes down instantly. We recorded training videos so every manager could run it without us.
That one change was the game-changer. Instead of hand-managing ~30 profiles, the whole selling operation now runs itself.
By the end, the numbers spoke plainly. Sales doubled against the same calendar month in previous years. The ad budget for selling fell to essentially nothing — the only paid spend left is that ~$20/day buying devices from the public. And the staffing told the same story: where Smart Fix once needed a small marketing department to hit these numbers, the same results now run on one tool and one marketplace manager who handles inquiries and brings people into the store.
Selling now runs on near-zero ad spend — the only paid spend is ~$20/day buying from the public. · Period: 2023–2025, London, Ontario.
Studied the market and mapped the business into its three real sales funnels
Built a separate strategy for repair, inventory-buying and selling
Optimised Google Maps for the repair funnel
Set up an in-store review system (QR signage + staff incentives) — ~500 reviews
Ran the ongoing Meta campaign for buying high-margin devices straight from the public (~$20/day)
Scoped and commissioned custom auto-posting software with a developer
Automated listing and delisting across ~30 marketplace accounts
Recorded training materials so managers could run the system independently
If you sell many one-off items across several platforms — electronics, furniture, auto parts, any resale business — hand-posting is almost certainly your bottleneck too. The same flow applies: photograph, fill a simple table, and let the bot post everywhere and delist the moment something sells.
Because that spend buys stock, not customers. Devices bought straight from the public are the highest-margin inventory in the business — cutting that budget would save $600 a month and cost far more in margin. Zero ad spend to sell is the achievement; spending a little to buy well is just good business.
At Smart Fix, the Google profile alone now brings roughly 3–4 ready-to-buy calls every day — off the back of ~500 honest reviews gathered over two years. For a local business, it’s the closest thing to a free lead channel that exists.
We looked. Nothing handled Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji and Karrot across ~30 accounts with instant delisting everywhere the moment an item sells anywhere — in store, online or on a marketplace. Custom software sounds expensive until you price out the marketing department it replaced.
30 minutes.Three concrete fixes.
Whether we work together or not.
