Tracy Kelly (Paperboy Marketing)

Tracy Kelly is the owner of Paperboy Marketing in Brooklyn Center. 

Raised south of the Twin Cities in Rochester, Kelly’s hometown looks different from the version of years ago. 

“Every time I go back, there is a new building or a new business,” he says. 

“There is a lot of change happening, and a lot of that can be attributed to the Mayo Clinic.”

Smart and reserved, Kelly possessed an affinity for business at a young age.

“I grew up working for my parents’ small business, so I was always really interested in marketing,” he recalls. 

“In fact, I was so interested in marketing that I quit sports to participate in marketing competitions in high school.”

After graduating high school, Kelly headed north and enrolled at St. Cloud State University, the premier academic institution in Minnesota (no authorial bias here).

While there, Kelly also spent a semester abroad in Chile, immersing himself in empanadas and the Chilean dialect. 

“There is Chileno, and then there is Spanish,” Kelly points out, noting how distinct the Chilean accent is. 

Back in Minnesota, things for Kelly were more clear.

He was quickly establishing himself as a marketing professional, and at one point worked at Hook Agency alongside Tim Brown, who has built one of the most well-respected marketing agencies in the home services industry. 

But like many entrepreneurs, Kelly no longer wanted to be a W-2 employee. 

As a man who deeply understands consumer behavior and how to deploy effective marketing strategies, he purchased Paperboy Marketing, a company that had already been in business for 22 years at the time of the sale. 

“Prior to buying a business, I had tried being a marketing consultant, but I realized I was just trading my time for money,” he says. 

“With Paperboy Marketing, I knew I could scale it, and it already had been around for a decade. That means there is staying power and upside.”

Adds the SCSU alum:

“So many aspiring entrepreneurs are obsessive about starting a business, but what too many neglect to realize is that you can also purchase a company that is already successful, and then build off that.”

At Paperboy Marketing, Kelly is tasked with capturing eyeballs, only his approach is more traditional than that taken by so many agencies in 2025.  

“Anyone with a laptop can call themselves a digital marketer, but I believe that paper marketing, as in the stuff you hold in your hands, is going through a resurgence,” Kelly proclaims. 

“And I wanted to be at the forefront of that.”

Seeing as how most Minnesotans are more apt to hold an iPhone versus a flyer, Kelly’s approach may seem passé, but the reality is that flyers work, for both his clients, and as a business model.

“With digital marketing, it’s a bit of a black box, meaning you don’t necessarily know what is driving clicks, and the price is not consistent for PPC (pay per click),” the Rochester native explains. 

“But with paper, I have the same price all year round. I know exactly how much each piece of paper is going to cost, and so do my customers.”

Again, the goal of marketing is for companies to stand out, to be that diamond in a mine littered with sand. 

In the same way you can make a compelling argument that prose and the written word is dead, so too can naysayers deride Paperboy Marketing’s existence. 

Yet, in the same way books still get sold every year, there is still a faction of homeowners who are persuaded to open their wallets from the clever flyers hung around their doorknobs. 

To get these flyers actually placed onto doors, Kelly employs people to quite literally walk around and hang them on single-family homes.

“By doing this, the goal is to generate immediate leads for our clients, but the most successful companies that we work with simultaneously understand that what we do is also a branding tool,” Kelly details.

“Delivering flyers to the same neighborhood time and time again is part of an overall healthy branding strategy that has proven to be effective for replenishing a sales pipeline year over year.”

To literally get your business into the hands of homeowners requires creativity, and significant capital investment. 

Whether you are a painting contractor, garage door company, or tree cutting outfit, it’s expensive to get people to notice who you are. 

“With the companies that provide a service to homeowners, that is where we thrive,” Kelly mentions. 

At the same time, just because you have a pest control company, that doesn’t mean that Paperboy Marketing is an ideal partner. 

More specifically, for companies who have a low sale price, Kelly advises allocating their marketing dollars elsewhere. 

“The return on investment simply won’t be there,” he reveals. 

“We also don’t do very well with brand new or very small companies because of the price point and the order minimums that we have.”

Adds Kelly:

“Plus, for the companies who are looking for a one-time marketing campaign, we don’t match up well because, again, we are trying to put local Twin Cities businesses in front of homeowners many times, because the numbers tell us that that is ultimately how revenue is generated.” 

From a price standpoint, the average investment business owners make with Paperboy Marketing is $5,000 per month, with a minimum of around $2,000. 

“We have clients who are spending up to $50,000 a month,” Kelly says. 

“It just depends on how much money the company we’re working with wants to invest and then generate.”

Some direct mail companies leverage the post office to deliver flyers, which saves business owners some money, but Paperboy Marketing has already spent two decades proving that having an actual flyer on doors is critical.  

“They stand out,” Kelly says of his flyers. 

“Having a flyer on your door is a different experience than sifting through the six pieces of mail that come every day. When you pull into your driveway, and there is a flyer on the door, chances are you are going to notice it.”

Looking ahead, Paperboy Marketing is primed to leave an impact on more homeowners, in Minnesota and all throughout the Midwest. 

“Just this month, we are delivering in Des Moines, Iowa; Fargo, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Detroit, Michigan,” Kelly says. 

“I have a partnership that allows me to deliver in every state, except Alaska, California and Hawaii. In that sense, the future is bright, and I’m very excited to see how things continue to evolve.” QS 

**

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