Get To Know Britt Holmes, Founder of Merit Media | Canadian Business Owner Spotlights by Kelsey Reidl, Marketing Consultant.
Meet Britt Holmes!
Founder of Merit Media Inc.
A flat-fee paid ads agency running Google, Meta and LinkedIn campaigns for service-based businesses and ecommerce brands.
Welcome to our Canadian Business Owner Spotlight Series hosted by me… Kelsey Reidl (Business & Marketing Consultant).
In this series, I'll be catching up with the most talented, generous & inspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners in Canada & beyond.
Enjoy learning more about these wonderful humans, and give them a ‘follow’ or get in touch in order to collaborate with them + work with them.
-Kelsey
The TL;DR for Britt Holmes of Merit Media.
Britt Holmes is the founder of Merit Media, a flat-fee paid ads agency running Google, Meta and LinkedIn campaigns for service-based businesses and ecommerce brands. Over fourteen years and more than $50 million in managed ad spend, she has built campaigns for TD Bank, Coty, Fairmont Hotels, Langham Hotels and Canadian tourism boards, and launched Bath & Body Works into Canadian ecommerce.
She founded Merit Media on a simple premise: small businesses deserve the same calibre of thinking that big brands pay a fortune for, without the jargon, the junior staff, or the percentage of ad spend that quietly rewards agencies for telling clients to spend more. Every person on her team is senior or expert level and trained directly by the platforms.
Britt co-hosts the podcast We'll Circle Back and speaks regularly to founders about what actually works in paid advertising, including when the honest answer is "not yet."
Okay, let’s get to know Britt!
Name
Britt Holmes
Profession / Title
Paid Ads Expert - Meta, Google & LinkedIn
Business Name
Merit Media Inc
Industry / Niche
Flat-fee paid advertising for service-based businesses and ecommerce brands
My Business Was Founded In
2022
Current Location
Newmarket, ON
3 words you would use to describe yourself…
Relentless.
Loyal.
Honest.
Tell us more about your business
I run paid ads for businesses that want to make money, not collect impressions. Half my clients are service businesses — clinics, therapists, brand strategists, care providers, etc — where the goal is a full calendar of the right kind of client. The other half are ecommerce and DTC brands where the goal is profit, not vanity traffic.
My day is mostly strategy and people. I'm in client conversations, building the plan for an account before anyone touches it, and making the calls that decide where money goes and why. The hands-on execution belongs to my team, and that's deliberate — everyone I hire is senior or expert level and trained directly by Google, Meta and LinkedIn. No juniors learning on a client's budget. My job is knowing what should happen; theirs is making it happen properly.
Most of my work comes through referral, which tells me something about whether the model works.
The thing that makes us different is boring and it's the whole business: flat monthly fee, no percentage of ad spend. The moment an agency takes a cut of what you spend, they're incentivised to tell you to spend more. I took that incentive off the table on day one.
In one or two sentences, what specific problem does your business solve for your clients?
I help business owners stop wasting money on ads that don't work, and start spending on ads that do with tracking that actually tells them where every dollar went. Most ad accounts fail for three boring reasons: sloppy tracking, lazy targeting, and creative that says nothing. I fix the machine first, then scale it.
Recent milestone you’ve celebrated in your business?
The milestones I'm proudest of aren't mine.
This year a client quit her full-time job because her business finally made enough to walk away from it. Another opened a second location, then a third, because demand outgrew the space they had. And one of our ecommerce brands hit 30x return on ad spend in what's supposed to be their slowest season of the year.
None of that shows up as a number on my side. It shows up as someone handing in their notice, or signing a lease, or realizing the quiet months don't have to be quiet. That's the actual work — not the campaigns, the lives those campaigns change.
What is a recent investment you’ve made in your business
Events and communities — but for friendship, not for pipeline.
I've always made friends first and business second. It's just how I'm built; I can't do the transactional networking thing and I don't want to. What changed this year is that I decided to do more of it on purpose. Founder dinners, events, communities where I could turn up as myself rather than as a marketing person with a pitch.
The prompt was simple. Running a business is isolating, and I wanted more people in my life who understand it.
What changed after that investment? Why do you see it as an investment, not an expense?
I made real friends. That's the honest answer, and it would be enough on its own.
The business part happened as a side effect. People who genuinely know you send you the right clients, because they understand who you're good for and who you're not. It's not something I engineered, it's just what happens when the relationship is real.
I call it an investment because it compounds and it never expires. A friendship keeps giving for years, and it makes the work itself far less lonely.
What would you tell a new entrepreneur who's considering investing in the same thing, but is hesitant?
The hesitation isn't about money. It's about walking into a room where you don't know anyone.
Everyone in there feels exactly the same. So walk in and let it be awkward. Ask what they do, what brought them there, how their week's been. Those three questions carry an entire event.
Don't worry about what people think of you. Being the wallflower in the corner is far more awkward than just saying hello.
And go for the people, not the leads. Rooms can tell the difference, and the business only follows when you're not chasing it.
Now for some fun stuff!
Always…
Always Surround yourself with likeminded people who have goals and visions.
Never…
Never Let someone’s negative energy keep your flame dim.
Advice for other entrepreneurs, who are slightly less far along…
Figure out what your dream work day would look like and build your business to match that dream. Don’t wait until you are drowning and planning to run away to open a cafe on the beach to escape. BE. HER. NOW.
What is a tool, resource, podcast, book or person you’ve invested in that’s added value to your entrepreneurial journey
Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell — it taught me to stop hiring to grow and start hiring to get my own hours back, and these days I do the same with AI, handing it the admin that used to eat my week so my team and I stay on the work that actually needs us.
Favourite way to wind down after a long workweek
Laying in my fully heated bed, my kids fast asleep, the dog curled up to me, in the dark, indulging in TikTok videos about luxury purses (my latest hyperfixation), Tarots or other mindless pursuits.
Before starting my workday, I make sure to…
Work out, then get dressed like I'm going somewhere. I'm usually not. That's not the point, t's the moment I stop being on call for everyone else and start being the person running this thing.
Best part of my work is…
Watching the impact ads have on my client’s lives. A client quits the job she's been holding onto. Someone signs a lease on a second location. That's the part that never gets old — not the campaign, what it let someone do.
Last vacation you took (and where did you go)
Parc Omega with my two daughters and my mom. I went for the animals and the escape. What I actually got was my girls losing their minds over 30 deer surrounding them for carrots, my mom laughing at them, and the reminder that this is the point of all of it.
Thanks, Britt!
We loved getting to know you…
You can follow Britt Holmes from Merit Media at …
@meritmediainc
@brittholmeslive
Check out her website at www.meritmedia.com