Frequently asked questions.

General

TFG stands for The Found Gen. We are a boutique marketing and design studio based in Austin, TX. We work with ambitious businesses that are ready to stop being the best-kept secret in their market — helping them build brand strategy, campaigns, content, and marketing systems that actually compound over time. We are strategy-first, which means we think before we act and build everything around your goals, not our templates.

We are based in Austin, Texas — but we work everywhere. Our clients span the US and beyond. We are fully set up for remote collaboration and have been since day one, so geography has never been a barrier to doing great work together.

Since 2011. That’s 15+ years of strategy, craft, and results — long enough to know what works, sharp enough to keep evolving. We have worked with over 100 brands across more than 40 industries in that time.

We work with businesses at a range of stages — from growth-stage startups to established mid-size companies to large enterprise brands like Carnival Corporation & plc. What matters more than size is mindset. Our best clients are ambitious, decisive, and ready to invest in marketing that actually moves the needle. If that sounds like you, we should talk.

We have worked across more than 40 industries including SaaS, healthcare, e-commerce, professional services, law, architecture, nonprofit, real estate, hospitality, finance, education and more. We don’t believe in being boxed into one vertical — great strategy and strong creative work in any category. What we bring is a fresh perspective, not a recycled playbook.

A few things. We are boutique by design — which means you get senior-level thinking on every project, not a junior team doing the work while a senior person signs off on it. We are strategy-first, which means we don’t start executing until the thinking is done. And we are genuinely invested in your results, not your retainer. We are the ones who lose sleep over your numbers. Most agencies aren’t.

Both. We have built entire marketing engines from the ground up for early-stage companies, and we have worked alongside established brands like Carnival Corporation & plc on large-scale projects. What we look for isn’t a revenue threshold — it’s a readiness to commit to strategy-led marketing and a willingness to do the work properly. If you have that, we can work together regardless of where you are in your growth journey.

Scope & Offering

We offer four core practice areas: Strategy + Consulting, Campaigns + Content, Media + Design, and Fractional CMO services. Within those four areas we cover everything from brand strategy and positioning to web design, email marketing, social media, eCourses, webinars, podcast editing, sustainability reports, corporate reports and more. If it touches marketing or design, chances are we do it — and if we don’t, we’ll tell you honestly and point you in the right direction.

A Fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with your business on a part-time or project basis — giving you the strategic firepower of a Chief Marketing Officer without the full-time salary and overhead. You probably need one if you have a marketing team but no one setting the strategic direction, if you’re growing fast and your marketing hasn’t kept up, or if you’ve been cycling through tactics without a cohesive plan behind them. We step in, get under the hood of your business, and build the strategy and systems that make everything else work.

Both. Some clients come to us for a specific project — a brand identity, a website, a campaign, a sustainability report — and we deliver it and part ways as friends. Others work with us on an ongoing basis because they want a consistent strategic partner in their corner month after month. We don’t force anyone into a model that doesn’t suit them. We’d rather structure the engagement around what actually makes sense for your business.

You can absolutely hire us for a single service. Not every client needs everything we offer — and we’re not going to upsell you on things you don’t need. That said, our best work tends to happen when we have a fuller picture of your business. Strategy informs creative. Creative informs content. Content informs everything else. So even if you’re starting with one service, don’t be surprised if we ask questions that go a little deeper than the brief.

We design and develop websites — primarily on WordPress which gives our clients a platform that’s powerful, flexible and easy to manage once we hand it over. We also have designed sites on SquareSpace, Craft and others. We don’t just make things look good. We build sites that are structured for performance, conversion and search visibility from the ground up.

We don’t develop apps nor build encrypted gateways for sharing sensitive information. 

Yes. We are based in Austin, TX but we work everywhere. We have clients across the US and internationally. Remote collaboration is built into how we work — we’re fully set up for it and have been from the start. Time zones are a conversation, not a barrier.

Absolutely — and we’re good at it. We’ve embedded alongside in-house teams at a number of clients, acting as the strategic lead, a specialist resource, or simply an extra pair of senior hands when the team needs them. We’re not precious about credit and we’re not territorial. We’re there to make the work better, full stop.

Yes. Brand identity is one of our core offerings — logo design, visual identity systems, brand guidelines, color, typography, tone of voice and everything that holds a brand together visually and verbally. We don’t do logos in isolation though. A logo without a brand strategy behind it is just a pretty mark. We build the full system so everything works together.

Yes. SEO is woven into how we approach web design, content strategy and ongoing content production. We don’t treat it as a separate add-on — we build it into the foundation of everything we create. That means technically sound websites, content structured around the right keywords and topics, and a long-term content strategy designed to build authority over time.

Yes — and this is an area we are actively building out as AI-powered search becomes a bigger part of how businesses get found. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of optimising your content so it gets surfaced by AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and others. It requires a slightly different approach to traditional SEO — structured content, clear authority signals, FAQ schema, and content written in natural language that answers real questions directly. We help businesses get ahead of this shift before their competitors do.

Yes — and it’s one of the services we’re proudest of. We have worked on sustainability and corporate reports for major brands including Carnival Corporation, producing a 200-page sustainability report alongside a corresponding website. We handle the full process — strategy, editing, design and launch. We turn what most companies treat as a compliance obligation into a genuine brand asset that markets to their audience whether that’s investors, board members, the media, or customers.

Yes. We have built full eCourse and webinar programs for clients from the ground up — including content strategy, curriculum development, design, production support and the marketing around them. If you have expertise to package and an audience to sell to, we can help you build the infrastructure to do it properly.

Yes — and this is one of the highest-ROI things we do. Email is still the most direct line to your audience and most businesses dramatically underuse it. We help clients build their email strategy, their list, their sequences, their campaigns and their reporting — from zero if necessary. We’ve taken dormant lists of 40,000 subscribers and turned them into six-figure revenue channels with a single reactivation campaign.

It depends. We don’t have a blanket policy against working with companies in the same space, but we do take conflicts of interest seriously. If we’re already working with a direct competitor on overlapping services, we’ll tell you upfront. We’d rather have that conversation honestly than overpromise and underdeliver. In most cases the depth of our industry experience across 40+ sectors is actually a reason to hire us — we bring pattern recognition and cross-industry thinking that a specialist agency can’t.

Content + Creative

By humans. Always. We use AI tools to support research, ideation and workflow efficiency — but every word we put in front of your audience is written, edited and approved by a real person who understands your brand, your voice and your goals. We believe that great writing requires genuine thinking, and genuine thinking is still a human job. That’s not a marketing line. It’s a policy.

The full range. Blog posts, articles, email campaigns, social media content, website copy, eCourses, webinar scripts, whitepapers, eBooks, video scripts, podcast scripts, sustainability reports, corporate reports, presentations and toolkits. If it needs words and a strategy behind those words, we can produce it.

Yes. We offer social media content creation and management — developing your content calendar, writing and designing posts, scheduling, community management and reporting. We approach social media strategically rather than just filling a calendar. Every post has a reason to exist and a role to play in the bigger picture.

Yes — on the editing and post-production side. We edit video content and reels for social media and marketing use, and we handle podcast editing and production. If you’re creating video or audio content and need someone to make it sound and look professional before it goes out, that’s us.

Yes. If you have content that needs a sharper eye, a stronger voice or simply a clean proofread before it goes live, we can help. We edit for clarity, tone, brand consistency and impact — not just grammar. There’s a difference between a proofread and an edit, and we know which one your content actually needs.

Yes. We design custom email templates and write full sequences — welcome sequences, nurture sequences, reactivation campaigns, promotional campaigns and more. Everything is built around your brand, your voice and your audience. We don’t use off-the-shelf templates and we don’t write generic copy. Every email has a job to do.

Brand voice is one of the most undervalued assets a business has — and one of the first things we address in any brand engagement. We develop tone of voice guidelines that define how your brand speaks, what it says and what it never says. Done properly, your tone of voice should be as recognizable as your logo. We make sure it is.

Strategy

It starts with listening. Before we recommend anything, we spend time understanding your business, your market, your audience and your goals. We run discovery workshops, audit your existing brand and marketing, look hard at your competitors and ask the questions most agencies skip. From there we build the strategic framework that everything else hangs off — positioning, messaging, campaign architecture, content strategy. Only once that foundation is solid do we move into execution.

Yes. Some clients come to us purely for the thinking — a positioning strategy, a campaign brief, a content strategy, a brand audit — and then take that work to their internal team or another partner to execute. We’re comfortable with that. Good strategy is valuable on its own and we don’t hold it hostage to an execution retainer.

Brand strategy defines who you are, what you stand for, how you’re positioned in the market and how you communicate. It’s the foundation. Marketing strategy defines how you reach your audience, which channels you use, what campaigns you run and how you measure success. It sits on top of the brand. You can’t build effective marketing strategy without brand strategy underneath it — which is why we always start there.

You can absolutely hire us for a single service. Not every client needs everything we offer — and we’re not going to upsell you on things you don’t need. That said, our best work tends to happen when we have a fuller picture of your business. Strategy informs creative. Creative informs content. Content informs everything else. So even if you’re starting with one service, don’t be surprised if we ask questions that go a little deeper than the brief.

Yes — and this is one of the most valuable things we do. Most businesses think they know their audience but have never actually defined them with enough precision to build effective marketing around them. We go deep on audience research — who they are, what they care about, what keeps them up at night, where they spend their time and what it takes to earn their trust. That intelligence shapes everything downstream.

Performance marketing refers to paid digital marketing where you pay for measurable results — clicks, leads, conversions. It includes paid search, paid social, display advertising and more. No, we do not offer performance marketing strategy and management. It creates the wrong incentive for a marketing agency (maximizing clicks, getting high volume low quality leads etc) and – in our opinion – doesn’t help the client long term. 

Yes. We help businesses identify, approach and structure partnership and sponsorship opportunities that align with their brand and growth goals. This includes outreach strategy, partnership frameworks, sponsorship decks and the ongoing management of partner relationships. Done well, partnerships are one of the highest-leverage growth strategies available and most businesses leave them on the table.

Results + Reporting

No – and we’d be suspicious of any agency that does. Marketing outcomes are influenced by too many variables outside any agency’s control — market conditions, product quality, pricing, sales processes, timing and more. What we do guarantee is the quality of our thinking, the rigor of our process and the intensity of our commitment to your success. We are the ones who lose sleep over your results. That’s not a guarantee, it’s just how we work.

It depends on what we’re building. Some things move fast – for ex: a reactivation email campaign can generate revenue within days of launch. Others take longer — brand strategy, SEO and content authority are built over months, not weeks. We’ll always be honest with you about realistic timelines before we start. What we won’t do is promise overnight miracles to win your business and then disappear when reality sets in.

It depends on the engagement and the goals we set together at the outset. We track different metrics for different types of work: traffic and rankings for SEO and content, open rates and revenue for email, leads and conversion rates for campaigns, brand awareness metrics for identity work. We build reporting around the numbers that actually matter to your business, not vanity metrics designed to make our work look good on paper.

Some results we always want to measure: your cost-per-lead and your cost-per-client. Those two metrics do the hard work in determining if the campaign is working or not. 

 

Yes. Reporting is built into every ongoing engagement. We don’t believe in keeping clients in the dark about what’s happening with their investment. You’ll know what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and what it’s producing — on a regular cadence that we agree on at the start of the engagement.

Yes — always. We are strategy-first which means every recommendation we make is grounded in evidence, not instinct alone. We analyze your existing data, your market, your competitors and your audience before we recommend anything. And we continue to use data to refine and optimize as the work progresses. Good instincts and good data together — that’s where the best work comes from.

It looks different for every client — which is exactly why we define it together at the start of every engagement. For some clients, success is a measurable increase in leads or revenue. For others it’s a brand that finally feels like it represents them properly. For others it’s a marketing system that runs without constant firefighting. We set clear goals, we build toward them, and we measure against them honestly. If something isn’t working, we say so — and we fix it.

Getting Started

Simple. Reach out via our contact page, drop us an email at info@thefoundgen.com, or hit the Start a Project button anywhere on the site. Tell us a little about your business and what you’re looking to achieve — even if you’re not sure yet, that’s fine. We’ll take it from there. We respond to every enquiry within 24 hours. Always.

Yes — and it’s not a formality. We don’t write proposals for businesses we haven’t spoken to because generic proposals get generic results. The discovery call is where we start learning about your business, your goals and your challenges. It’s also where you get a feel for how we think and whether we’re the right fit for each other. It’s a conversation, not a pitch. No pressure, no hard sell. And we guarantee you’ll walk away from that call with something actionable even if we don’t work together.

Typically, one to two weeks from signing to being fully underway. We use that time to get deep into your business — reviewing existing brand assets, marketing data, competitor landscape and anything else that helps us hit the ground running. We don’t believe in slow starts. The sooner we understand your world, the sooner we can start improving it.

We always make sure our new clients get material to review within four weeks of starting a campaign.

 

The Financials

It depends on the scope and nature of the engagement. We don’t publish fixed pricing because we don’t believe in fixed thinking — every client is different and every proposal is built around what your business needs. What we will say is that we are a boutique studio offering senior-level expertise, and our pricing reflects that. We are not the cheapest option in the market, and we don’t try to be. We are the best value option — which is a different thing entirely.

Both. Most clients work with us on an ongoing monthly retainer — a consistent strategic partner embedded in their business. Some hire us for a specific project with a defined scope, timeline and deliverable. We’re flexible about structure because we’d rather build the engagement around what makes sense for your business than force you into a model that doesn’t fit.

We consider it on a case-by-case basis. We have worked with early-stage startups and nonprofit organizations and understand that budget constraints are real. If you’re a startup or nonprofit with a compelling brief and genuine ambition, reach out and have an honest conversation with us. We won’t always be able to flex on price, but we’ll always be straight with you about what’s possible.

Working Relationship

Senior people. Always. We don’t have a model where a senior team wins the business, and a junior team does the work. When you work with TFG you work directly with the people doing the thinking and making the decisions. That’s one of the core reasons clients stay with us — they never feel like they’ve been handed off.

Deliberately few. We keep our client roster small so that every client gets our full attention. We’d rather do exceptional work for a handful of clients than average work for many. If we’re at capacity when you reach out, we’ll tell you — and we’ll let you know when we have availability. Good things are worth waiting for.

Honestly? Access and transparency. Access to the right people in your business — the ones who understand your goals, your customers and your challenges. And transparency about what’s working, what isn’t and what you’re really trying to achieve. We can work with almost any brief, but we do our best work when clients treat us like partners rather than vendors. The more you give us, the more we can give back.

Practicalities

Yes. We’re happy to sign a mutual NDA before any substantive conversations about your business. Confidentiality is important to us — not just as a legal formality but as a genuine professional commitment. What you share with us stays with us.

We typically grant a license in perpetuity for use of all work. We do this for a very specific reason: the main avenue for a marketing agency to get a client is to show their past work. If we sold you the work, we could not claim it as ours and thus couldn’t use it as an example. 

We do have clients that prefer to own all the work in full and we can accommodate, but the fee for the work is increased.

We work until we get it right.

We have a structured revision process built into every engagement — we send our clients all work to review a month before publication so they have time to review, send their notes back and we have time to make all the revisions (and send back to you for a second review). 

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