Brand Capture LLC, a fast-growing D.C. marketing agency founded by a George Washington University undergrad, is preparing to plant a flag in Philadelphia within the next two weeks as demand for its social media management services climbs.
CEO Maria Sanchez told me her 15-person company is on track to generate about $1 million in revenue this year and it has doubled its client base each year since its 2023 launch. It's working with 100 clients across Greater Washington and Boston, including Daikaya, owner of Ramen Shop and Izakaya in Chinatown, and Fava Pot, a RAMMY-award-winning Egyptian restaurant that has been a client for more than two years.
The company’s playbook calls for hiring one Philadelphia-based employee first, then ramping up client acquisition after that person is in place. By mid-April, Sanchez — who is 21 and simultaneously leading the company and majoring in marketing, entrepreneurship and innovation — expects that first hire to start with a partial roster of clients and, within three months, manage roughly 10 businesses. Longer term, the goal is to reach 30 to 40 clients in the Philadelphia market within a year, supported by a local team of four to five employees and a dedicated office in the city by summer.
While Sanchez described the agency as simply doing social media for local businesses, she said the real value proposition is how hands-off that work becomes for owners.
"They don’t have to do literally anything," she said. "They can delete Instagram off their phone, never have to think about it again."
Clients sign on for monthly packages that start at just under $800 and scale into the mid-$1,000s. Sanchez said Brand Capture’s pricing, which covers photo and video content creation, is about half that of agencies offering similar services.Brand Capture sends its employees for on-site shoots at daily or weekly intervals depending on the service package, something she said is uncommon from larger players in the industry.
She said the company is profitable and is reinvesting earnings to fund new markets such as Philadelphia. About 75% of clients renew after their initial three-month term, and roughly half remain after a year, Sanchez said.
In D.C., Brand Capture operates out of the largest private suite at the Spaces location on 15th St. NW, a roughly 2,500-square-foot office that serves as its headquarters.
The company has expanded its space each year as headcount and client work have grown, and Sanchez expects that to continue. She’s already anticipating another jump in footprint within the next year, this time into a more traditional private office as the firm staffs up in the region while adding new markets. Brand Capture has 12 people from its all-woman team in D.C., which caters to the70 businesses it counts as customers here.
A company that started as a fake
The agency’s origins trace back to Sanchez’s freshman year at George Washington when she learned that students actively developing a business could get access to private office space on campus.
Wanting a better study environment than the library, she invented a business called Brand Capture purely to qualify for the space.
"I had no intentions of creating it," she said.
But the opportunity to build something became real when she landed her first unofficial client after pitching an employer on letting her take over its social media accounts. She said that experience led to more clients, the hiring of classmates to help handle the workload and eventually the firm’s current footprint in D.C. and Boston.
Now, with graduation this spring and Philadelphia next on the roadmap, Sanchez is looking to prove that Brand Capture’s local, in-person model can travel to more cities, though she'll entertain taking on external funding if the need arises. The company so far has been funded by a $5,000 grant.