We are service business owners who run a marketing agency.
Not the other way around. That distinction shapes everything about how we work.
Jared & Angela Barker
A husband-and-wife team based in Dripping Springs, Texas. We do not just market for service businesses. We run them.
BARKmedia started in 2020. Our first clients were two national consumer brands, and we ran everything for them: national broadcast campaigns, paid advertising, content production, local events. That same year, we also launched our own home service company: Live Oak Exterior Cleaning, a soft-washing business serving central Texas.
Live Oak gave us something most agencies will never have. We were not writing strategy decks for contractors. We were waiting for our own phone to ring, fixing our own Google listing, and testing our own ads with our own money. We later launched Get Lit Drip, a seasonal holiday lighting company, and ran the same playbook from scratch.
By January 2024 we had learned something the hard way: what actually works for home service businesses is very different from what agencies usually sell them. So we made the switch. BARKmedia became a focused agency for home service companies, bringing the same execution we had built for national brands to a market that mostly gets second-tier work.
That is the story. We are not here because we read a book about contractor marketing. We are here because we have been the contractor wondering why the last agency did not deliver.
How BARKmedia got here.
The short version is that we figured out what works by running our own businesses. The longer version has dates.
BARKmedia launches
We started BARKmedia working with two national consumer brands. National broadcast, paid advertising, content production, brand events, and everything in between.
Live Oak Exterior Cleaning begins
We launched our own soft-washing business in central Texas. From day one we were operators: booking jobs, answering calls, running our own ads, and learning what marketing actually moves the needle for a home service company.
Get Lit Drip joins the lineup
We launched a seasonal holiday lighting company and ran the playbook again from scratch. Different market, different demand cycle, same lesson reinforced.
The dedicated switch
By 2024 we had seen enough. Most agencies serving home service contractors were running the wrong playbook, chasing broad awareness instead of the customers already searching for the work. We refocused BARKmedia entirely on home service and service-based businesses.
One client per industry, per market
We work with service businesses across the Texas Hill Country, Austin, and San Antonio on a one-client-per-market model. We still run Live Oak and Get Lit Drip, which means every tactic we recommend, we are testing on our own businesses too.
Because most service businesses get bad marketing advice.
We have been in your seat. We have sat across from agencies pitching expensive strategies that would not have worked for our own businesses, and we have watched contractor friends sign twelve-month contracts that delivered nothing.
The frustrating part is not that the advice is bad. It is that the people giving it have never actually run a service business themselves. They learned marketing in a classroom or at an online retailer, then applied the same playbook to home services without realizing that a homeowner with a leak does not shop the way anyone else does.
BARKmedia exists to fix that. We have been the contractor. We are the contractor.
Principles, not slogans.
These are not values posted on a wall. They are decisions baked into how the agency operates, informed by running our own service businesses every day.
One client per market
We do not take on competing businesses. Ever. If you are a plumber in Austin, we will not take on another Austin plumber while you are with us. Your strategy is built for you to win, not to be fair across competing accounts.
No long-term contracts
Thirty days notice. That is it. We have watched too many contractors get trapped in twelve-month agency agreements that did not deliver. If we are not earning our keep, you should be able to leave.
Owner-operated service
You work directly with us, Jared and Angela, not an account manager who hands you off to a junior. When you have a question, you are talking to the founders.
We test on ourselves first
If we recommend something, we have usually tested it on Live Oak or Get Lit Drip first. We do not pitch theories. We share what is working in our own home service businesses right now.
Prices posted publicly
Our pricing is on the website where anyone can read it. No quote games, no getting back to you with a number after we size up your budget. See what we charge.
We will tell you no
If we are not the right fit, we will say so. If your website needs work before advertising makes sense, we will tell you that too. The work we talk you out of is worth more than the work you did not need.
Want to see if we are a fit?
A short call to talk through your business, your market, and where you are losing visibility. No pressure, no canned pitch. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too.
Or email us directly: hello@barkmediasolutions.com