How can I compete with the big dogs?

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I'd ask for a 90-day report that connects spend to actual bookings, not just visibility. Split it into individual registrations and group bookings, and for each source show: spend, qualified inquiries, completed bookings, revenue collected, gross margin after instructor, travel, and material costs, cost per booked customer or group, and the percentage of inquiries that became paid bookings. Impressions, clicks, and ad position can explain what happened, but they don't tell you whether the spend worked. For Google Ads, also ask which search terms produced the paid bookings and how much was spent on searches that produced none. For SEO, ask what work was completed each month and how many unpaid Google searches or Google Business actions became calls, forms, or bookings. If they can't trace most bookings back to a source yet, fix the tracking before deciding whether to keep or replace them. I wouldn't take the agencies' own summary as the only evidence. Pull the booking and revenue numbers from your own system for the same 90 days, then compare. At $2,050 a month, the question is not whether registrations went from zero to a few; it is whether the gross profit from those customers covers the marketing cost and leaves enough to justify your time. You may be able to learn enough to manage parts yourself later, but I'd make the keep-or-cut decision from the numbers first.

I wouldn't look for one revolutionary addition yet. You're spending $2,050 a month across three marketing providers, but individual seats and group bookings are two different sales motions. I'd want one simple weekly scoreboard for each: source, inquiries, booked seats or groups, acquisition cost, revenue, and margin. If your vendors can't show that separately, that's the first thing I'd change. For business bookings, competing with a 20-year brand may be less about louder ads and more about removing admin for the buyer: scheduling around shifts, keeping the roster straight, reminders, on-site delivery, and certificates or renewals afterward. Ask five daycares, colleges, or employers what they hate coordinating about required training, then build the offer around reducing that burden. A smaller company can win by being easier to work with, not by matching a larger ad budget.

I'd go shaking hands and kissing babies. Any kind of construction, work at heights, ect. Go talk to them, offer a good rate. You need to sell them that it's better than an online cert. I also reccomend getting multiple certs, osha, comtrain, ect so you can do a full suite of certs and be the one and done. Be an in-house safety man for multiple companies for less than a full time employee. Ect.

When Red Bull came to market, they deliberately avoided competing with Coca-Cola and Pepsi because those companies were huge and controlled the market. They created their own category, not soda but energy drinks. The rest is history. Since then, both Coke and Pepsi have made every effort and acquisition to enter the energy drink segment and topple Red Bull as the #1, without success. What you can learn from that is that if you’re newly entering a market, you should differentiate and more or less create your own segment and become a leader there. Instead of competing for First Aid, develop an offering specially for manufacturing companies, for consultants, for distributors (whatever you sell to) - addressing the general needs but also the specific requirements / challenges / language for those segments. Find alignment with others (outside your industry) who sell into those exact segments. Become a member of associations that cover that market and advertise in their periodicals. Become “the First aid training guy” for that market. Rinse and repeat. Your positioning is - they are larger, sure - but I understand and serve you better because I focus on companies like you every day. That requires some work to make sure you actually deliver on that, it’s not *just* marketing.

The thing I'd change first is the vendor stack. $800/mo for "ads and SEO" plus another $250/mo to "improve my Google rankings" is usually the same work billed twice, and the cheap one is nearly always directory and citation blasting. Ask that one for a list of exactly what they built last month, with URLs. If they can't produce it, that's $3k a year back to put into the group-booking outreach, which is your actual growth channel.

Scheduling could actually be easier for you with the ability to maybe cram more in instead of 24hr training cert in 2hr for 12 classes, you do 3hr for only 8 classes. Think along those lines could work but you’ll need to experiment

What’s your ROI on your ad spend? Is your ranking improving for your keywords? How is the other company improving your rankings?

What's the split between group and individual bookings? Can you handle 10x the bookings right now? If you're not posting at least 30x per week, you're gonna keep struggling. Make a decent social media account, the posts that perform you change into paid ads. How many ads are they marketing company putting out?

u/arno14's Red Bull point is the strongest thing here. You're currently marketing "First Aid certification" as a generic commodity against 20-year incumbents. Pick one segment (daycares, or construction, or colleges) and become the specialist for that specific buyer's compliance needs, not a smaller version of the general provider.

Construction does business in person, the good news is that they are big on their associations. You need to go and meet people. MayneStreet.com

My wife started a business that directly competed with national providers. One of them was a division of Staples office supplies. When she created, the Staples division was the dominant supplier locally, owning 90% of the contracts. There were 4 other competitors. That first year, we had 7 contracts. We completely underestimated the scope of work and lost many clients. We refined our processes and in year 3 had 10 solid contracts. We are now in year 10. We have 52 contracts providing over 10,000 units and even though there are more national competitors, we have 80% of the contracts. The other 10 companies are sharing the remaining 20%. The staples division now has less than 1%. We grew by looking at the shortcomings of all of our competitors and we made sure our service resolved every one of those shortcomings. We focus on local and can easily customize our offerings to meet our customer's needs.

I agree if are paying about $1,050 a month in fees on top of $1,000 in ad spend, and you do not know which of the three vendors is producing the registrations that’s a challenge to conquer. Ask each one for call tracking and a report of booked registrations by service and by city. If the $250 ranking vendor cannot show you registrations rather than positions, that money belongs in ad budget you control. Confirm the Google Ads account and the Google Business Profile are under your login and not theirs. Twenty years of history does help competitors on broad searches, but much less on specific ones. Build a separate page for each certification you sell, naming the accrediting body, the schedule, the price, and the location, then point tight campaigns at those exact terms instead of general first aid keywords. For group bookings, compliance renewal dates drive the decision, so ask employers and daycares when their certifications expire instead of pitching a class.

“-Group bookings from businesses”. Maybe you could narrow that down a bit to develop more of a niche or a good reputation in a particular sector. For example, Engineering & Construction firms need this type of training. You could concentrate on them and then grow from there. If your ads are more targeted you might get more ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment). Good luck to you!