G5 Search Marketing
Bend, Ore.
G5 Search Marketing is an online marketing and advertising company focused on the local search space. Its clients span a variety of industries, like self-storage, assisted living, health care, and real estate -- any industry where people search for something that is geographically specific.
The company was started five years ago and is growing at a torrid pace, doubling its revenue every year since its inception, says CEO Dan Hobin, 41. Sales in 2008 hit $3.4 million, and G5 now has 53 employees.
On average, the company brings on two new staffers every month -- and every time G5 hires, it incurs training costs of around $8,000 per month. Hobin went looking for a way to defray those expenses. He found an employee training grant from the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council (COIC) that would help. It was open to companies that drew most of their revenue from outside the Central Oregon area, but hired locally. In December, the COIC awarded $36,000 to G5. That amounted to $1,500 per person to offset training costs for 24 new hires.
"We're a fast-growing small company in a competitive space, and this grant allows us to hire a bit faster, because we have more cash to work with," Hobin says. "The faster we get good people hired and trained, the better we are able to compete."
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