By Aubrey Dunbar | Founder, SCPM Media | July 2026

If you told me back in 2014 that a Nike shoe ad on Facebook would change the direction of my entire career, I would have laughed. But here we are.

This is the first official blog post for SCPM Media, and I wanted to use it to share the real story. Not the polished highlight reel, but the full journey. The wins, the lessons, and everything in between that led to building a digital marketing agency in South Carolina that helps small businesses grow through paid social media advertising, lead generation, and AI marketing automation.

It Started With a Scroll

Like most people, my first experience with digital marketing wasn't intentional. I was scrolling through Facebook back in the early days of Facebook ads and I saw an ad. I think it was Nike. Clean, professional, compelling. And my immediate thought was:

I was wrong on every count.

A $15 Bet on Myself

In 2013, I launched my first e-commerce store on Shopify selling Bluetooth speakers. I built the website, listed the products, and then hit the wall that every new business owner hits. I had no idea how to run Facebook ads for my small business. Zero experience. Zero knowledge. But I remembered that Nike ad. And I thought, What if I could do that too?

So I did my research. I found out that you didn't need a Fortune 500 budget to run Facebook ads for e-commerce. You didn't need an agency. You just needed to learn. I signed up for a Udemy course for $15 and learned how to create Facebook ads for my own brand.

The creative side was a different challenge. I found a designer on Fiverr to help with the images at first, and eventually got my hands on a bootleg version of Photoshop to start creating them myself. It wasn't glamorous, but it was a start.

The Bluetooth Speaker Lessons

Did the Bluetooth speaker store take off? Not exactly. We were sourcing directly from Alibaba, and e-commerce in 2014 and 2015 wasn't the beast it is today. The products weren't name brands. They looked cheap. And in my opinion, that really hurt us. People didn't trust what they didn't recognize.

But there were bright spots. We did well with earbud headphones. And we got our hands on a Sony Bluetooth speaker that sold great. I still have that speaker, by the way. Over 11 years later, I still travel with it. It's still going strong.

The bigger lesson came when I moved from Shopify to eBay. eBay was a trusted platform, and pushing paid advertising traffic there made a real difference. And then I found a product the market was hungry for: jailbroken Fire Sticks. That first year, I did $69,000 in sales. The year after that, $89,000 — all driven by Facebook ads.

That experience taught me something I carry with me to this day: if you have a proven product that the market demands and you put it in front of the right audience, you have a winning combination. That principle still drives every campaign I build for my clients.

When regulations caught up to jailbroken devices in 2016 and 2017, that business evaporated. But the knowledge didn't.

The Detours That Built the Foundation

After the Fire Stick business, I kept moving. I continued with e-commerce. I started a YouTube channel around Call of Duty and launched a podcast called The COD Show where I interviewed streamers and gamers, conducting over 400 interviews in total. That experience taught me video editing and sharpened my ability to produce content consistently. I even sold my own gaming-inspired merch on Shopify.

Then 2020 hit. I lost my supply chain supervisor position due to COVID. And instead of seeing that as a setback, I saw it as the push I needed to go all in on what I'd been building skills in for years: digital marketing.

I joined a mentorship program that taught agency operations, from picking up clients to structuring a business. I landed my first paid digital marketing client: an automotive body shop. I handled their SEO, their Google reviews, and their overall digital presence.

I also started working with my father at Dunbar's Tax Service, running video ads that drove traffic to his website and got people calling to book appointments. It was seasonal work, but it performed. That was my first real taste of running paid social media advertising for a local business, and seeing the direct impact it had on appointments and revenue.

From the Plant Floor to the Agency Floor

In 2021, I went back into manufacturing as a production planner. Steady paycheck. Good work. But I didn't enjoy it. Something about being inside a plant every day made me feel like there was more out there. I felt like digital marketing was the way of the future, and I wanted to be part of building it.

In 2022, I started applying for digital marketing positions. I got a callback from an agency in Columbia, South Carolina, and I took a paid internship role at $40,000 a year with full benefits. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

That agency was a proving ground. They made us jack-of-all-trades marketers. Our clients spanned every industry you can imagine: colleges, hospitals, e-commerce brands, municipal organizations, banks, and industrial companies. We managed paid advertising campaigns across Google Ads, YouTube, Microsoft Ads, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We handled Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and SEO through Moz.

One of my favorite memories from that role? We ran Google Ads for a parking lot. An actual parking lot near Williams-Brice Stadium and Colonial Life Arena. When people searched for places to park before concerts, football games, and basketball games, our ads were there. It sounds funny, but it worked. And it taught me that great marketing is about understanding demand, no matter how niche the business.

The Big League

In 2023, I took a full-time role at a higher education marketing agency based in Boston, working remotely from South Carolina. This is where the scale changed completely. The Columbia agency was generating around $10 million in revenue. The Boston agency was generating $120 million a year.

I went from managing 14 clients to managing somewhere between 40 and 64 clients at any given time, running lead generation campaigns across Meta Ads, Snapchat, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit — all focused on undergraduate, graduate, parent, and doctoral recruitment.

The biggest difference was the ad spend. I went from managing modest budgets to managing millions of dollars in paid media. That kind of responsibility demands precision, and it sharpened my skills faster than anything I'd done before. Every dollar had to perform. Every campaign had to be accountable. This is where I truly learned what higher education lead generation ads look like at scale.

Everything I learned there — the optimization strategies, the creative testing frameworks, the audience segmentation techniques — I bring directly to my clients at SCPM Media.

The Interview That Changed Everything

In 2024, I started a YouTube channel called South Carolina Power Moves, where I interviewed local business owners in the New Ellenton and Aiken, South Carolina area. I'd go on-site, sit down with owners, and let them tell their stories. I wanted to highlight the businesses that had been operating for 30, 40, 50, 60 years right under our noses.

One of those interviews was with a furniture store owner — a store I actually used to work at back in high school. They've been in business for nearly 60 years. During the interview, the owner was so impressed with what I was doing that he asked me, right there on camera, if I'd be interested in handling their digital marketing.

They had a marketing agency at the time, but they were unhappy. They were paying too much, not getting enough transparency, and not seeing the results they expected. It struck me hard because a large agency should really be taking care of its clients, especially at that price point. That conversation confirmed something I already believed: local business owners deserve affordable digital marketing that actually delivers results.

I went home that night and drew up a full digital marketing plan tailored to their business, covering Meta Ads and Google Search to drive foot traffic into the store. I went back, presented it on-site, and they agreed on the spot. I sent over the payment link and it was done.

That was June 2024. I created SCPM Media LLC that same day. That furniture store was my first client. They're still with me in 2026, and we're still rolling. Still innovating, still driving great foot traffic, still producing strong ROI.

And that's how South Carolina Power Moves became SCPM Media.

From One Client to a Real Agency

After that first yes, the momentum started building. I picked up three more clients in 2024, including a restaurant where I now manage event marketing through paid social, driving ticket sales and attendance through Meta Ads campaigns.

I joined an AI lead generation mentorship program that taught me how to implement marketing automation into my workflows. And I kept layering what I was learning on top of what I was building at SCPM Media.

By the end of 2024, I had a real client base, real results, and a real business. From 2024 to 2025, I doubled my revenue.

Where We're Going in 2026

Today, SCPM Media is continuing to grow as a small business marketing agency in South Carolina, and the services we offer are expanding faster than ever.

AI marketing automation has been a game changer for my agency. Just last year, I was outsourcing creative work like ad images, video editing, and design assets. With the development of AI tools, I've been able to bring that work in-house, keep costs low, and deliver faster.

Web development is the same story. If a client needs a website audit, a redesign, or a brand-new site — whether their current website hasn't been updated since the early 2000s or they don't have one at all — I can produce high-quality work at a pace that wasn't possible even two years ago.

One of my newest offerings is search engine optimization and answer engine optimization services for clients who want to rank higher in both traditional search results and AI-powered search platforms. That's been a huge addition to the business.

My vision for 2026 is straightforward: continue growing the client base, continue growing revenue, and continue keeping my services at a price point where small business owners won't have to break the bank but will still get the ROI they're looking for.

The focus in 2026 and beyond is the same as it's always been: helping small businesses grow through digital marketing. I'm not trying to be the biggest agency. I'm trying to be the agency that treats every client's budget like it's my own money — because for a long time, it was.

Whether you need Facebook ads management, Google Ads, event marketing, lead generation, or a complete digital marketing strategy for your South Carolina business, that's what SCPM Media was built for.

From a $15 Udemy course to managing millions in ad spend. This is just the beginning.

SCPM Media is a South Carolina-based digital marketing agency specializing in paid advertising, AI automation, and performance reporting for local businesses. To learn more or schedule a consultation, visit scpmmedia.com.