A small agency, back for a second run
Crank 11 was a Houston marketing agency from 2017 to 2019. It closed because our founder took an in-house role that required winding it down and barred him from managing paid campaigns for anyone else. That restriction is gone, so the agency is open again, with the same model and several more years of enterprise work behind it.
Where this came from
Crank 11 opened in Houston in 2017 doing search marketing, mostly for local service businesses and professional firms, much of it won by giving away free audits to people who had not asked for one. In November 2019 it closed. Our founder, Ian Dolan, had taken an in-house role that required dissolving the agency and prohibited him from managing paid campaigns for anyone else.
That is an unusual reason to close a working business, and it is the real one. The restriction ended with the role, and Crank 11 reopened in 2026.
In between, the work continued: fifteen years across search and paid media, years embedded inside a Fortune 100 organisation, and consulting engagements with large brands. That is where the emphasis on measurement comes from. Inside a large company, marketing loses arguments it should win because the numbers do not reconcile with what finance sees, and watching that happen a few times changes how you build reporting.
Where we are useful
The engagements that work best usually look like one of three situations. A business with real demand in its market that is not visible for the searches that matter. A team spending meaningful money on ads with conversion data nobody has verified underneath it. Or a leadership team that wants an independent read on whether the agency, the hire or the plan they already have is any good.
Sector matters less than the shape of the problem, which is why we stayed general market rather than picking a vertical. The one exception is law firms: two of the founder's other companies already sell legal marketing and legal AI, so Crank 11 stays out of that market entirely rather than putting three related properties in the same search results.
Where we are not
We are deliberately small. There is no bench of juniors and no account management layer. If you need a hundred pieces of content produced next month, or someone to own social media day to day, that is a real need and we are the wrong shop for it. We will usually be able to point you at someone better placed.
We also do not do percentage-of-spend pricing, and we will not take an engagement where the budget is too small for the market to produce useful data. Telling someone that up front costs us the sale and saves them a few thousand dollars, which is the right trade.
Four things that do not change
The person who audits your account is the person you talk to
No account manager relaying your question to a specialist you never meet. When you ask why something changed, you are asking whoever changed it.
Measurement before optimisation
Most accounts we inherit are being optimised against numbers nobody has checked. Verifying the tracking first is unglamorous and it is usually where the largest wins are sitting.
Flat fees, and you own everything
A flat monthly fee tied to scope, never a percentage of ad spend. Your ad accounts, analytics and tracking configuration are yours, and they stay yours if the engagement ends.
We will tell you when you do not need us
If the budget is better spent on the site than on ads, or if the real problem is what happens after the enquiry arrives, we would rather say so than sell a retainer that will not work.
Brands our founder has worked with
Across fifteen years, some as direct consulting engagements and some during in-house and agency roles. These are career credentials rather than a Crank 11 client list, and the difference matters.
- Sysco
- Halliburton
- HealthLabs.com
- Semrush
- The Home Depot
- VetLaw
Want a straight answer about your account?
Book a free assessment. You get an honest read on where the opportunity is, whether or not we end up working together.