Why Zishan Arooj Started mrktbsd
I started mrktbsd because too many businesses were over promising and under-delivering. We live in a world where marketing is jargon, acronyms, and dreams - rather than real business execution. There is a difference.
Marketing activity is a new website that looks nice but does not make the offer clearer. It’s ad spend without a follow-up process. It’s SEO content no one asked for. It’s social posting that makes the business feel busy while the pipeline stays quiet. It’s a monthly report full of numbers that somehow never answers the only question that really matters: did we achieve the outcome we wanted?
mrktbsd was built around a simple idea. Marketing should be based on the market.
That means the customer, the offer, the pain point, the buying trigger, the competitive landscape, the sales process, the economics, and the actual behavior of the people you want to reach. Not “best practices” copied from brands with completely different budgets, leadership, teams, and business models.
The name is in fact the philosophy at the company.
mrktbsd. Market based.
The agency exists for businesses that want sharper positioning, cleaner websites, stronger paid ads, better conversion strategy, and marketing that connects to revenue. Not every business needs a 200-page brand deck. Some businesses need a homepage that explains what they do in five seconds, a service page that ranks locally, a quote form that does not scare people away, and follow-up that happens before the lead goes cold.
That is not less strategic. That is aligned with the business owner. Our clients do not pay their employees, or rent with “Impressions” or “LTV:CAC ratios”.
Market Changes Exposed the Non-Delivering
The market has become more expensive and more complex. The IAB reported that U.S. digital advertising revenue reached $294.6 billion in 2025, up 13.9% year over year. That means businesses are competing in a crowded, expensive, performance-driven environment.
When competition gets that intense, “average” marketing becomes a liability. And guess what? The cost of advertising and marketing is only going in one direction: it will never be as cheap as it is today.
I built mrktbsd for the business owner who is tired of wasting time on unclear marketing or needing to take time out of their day to focus on something that isn’t a core competency. Its for the business owner who knows they have something valuable but cannot explain it cleanly online. The business owner that wants a true partner with aligned goals to lead their marketing.
The work is not just “make things look better.” It is to be a storyteller. The work is to make the business easier to understand, easier to trust, easier to contact, and easier to buy from. That can include website strategy, landing pages, paid ads, local visibility, email follow-up, offer refinement, content, and lead conversion. It can even simply be sitting down with coffee and going over the business and the team.
That is in fact the key because the real work underneath all of it is diagnosis. Where is the growth being blocked? Is it traffic? Is it trust? Is it the offer? Is it speed? Is it the website? Is it follow-up? Is it weak proof? Is it a sales process problem pretending to be a marketing problem?
That is where mrktbsd is different.
It is not trying to be the loudest agency in the room. It is trying to be the agency that sees the leak, names it clearly, and fixes it. It is the agency that partners with the business owner.
Because business owners do not need more marketing theater.
They need marketers that are partners.
The mrktbsd Take Away
Zishan Arooj started mrktbsd to build marketing around reality: the market, the customer, the offer, and the numbers. Pretty is good. Clear is better. Profitable is best.
We do not just take on a contract or a client to pad our stats.
We form partnerships with business owners to help them achieve their goals.
