Gen1 Media, a search and web company based in Paarl in the Western Cape, has moved beyond the South African market and is now delivering work for clients in Canada and the United States.
The agency, founded by Armin Jonker, builds websites and runs local SEO campaigns for service-based businesses. Its client list has until recently been almost entirely South African, spanning law, accounting, healthcare, wholesale distribution, tourism and e-commerce. That list now includes North American work on both sides of the border.
Canada: a South African brand selling to expats
Gen1 Media's Canadian client is a South African butcher based in Barrie, Ontario, that ships biltong, boerewors and South African groceries to homesick expats across Canada. Gen1 Media rebuilt the company's online store and has been running its monthly search campaign since.
Over the last three months, the store's search performance moved as follows:
- 3,080 clicks through to the store from Google, up 64%
- 180,000 appearances in search results over the same period, up 73%
- The company's single biggest product search term moved from position 12, on page two of Google, to position 2
- A competitive national search term the business did not rank for at all a year ago now sits at position 2
Measured over March to August 2026 against the same calendar window a year earlier, the store's conversion rate is up 39%, the share of visitors who reach the store and go on to buy.
"This is what a campaign that is working looks like," says Armin. "Both lines climb, and neither one flattens off. One line is people clicking through to the store. The other is how often Google put them in front of a searcher in the first place. You want to see both moving together, because that is the difference between a business that got lucky with one keyword and a business that is genuinely getting found."
United States: a creator retreat
In the United States, Gen1 Media built the website for an American content creator who runs retreats for other creators. The brief was to carry the calm, high-end feel of the gatherings online and turn interest into applications from the right kind of attendee.
Why a Paarl agency can compete abroad
"Google does not run a different algorithm for South Africa," says Armin Jonker, founder of Gen1 Media. "The fundamentals that get a butcher in Barrie to the top of the results are the same fundamentals that get an attorney in Paarl there. Once you understand that, geography stops being a limit and becomes an advantage. We bill in rands, we work while North America sleeps, and the client wakes up to work already done."
Armin says the international work has not shifted the company's focus away from home. "We are a Paarl business, and most of our clients are South African. But there is no reason a South African agency should think of itself as a South African-only agency. The skill exports fine. More of us should be doing it."
Gen1 Media works to a fixed set of operating principles, including exclusivity: the agency will not take on two businesses in the same industry in the same area.
