The minimum viable marketing setup for a new Canadian company, in the order to build it

Nine items, built in order, and three of them are legal obligations rather than marketing choices. The order matters more than the budget: a new Canadian company that buys media before the site converts has bought an expensive lesson, and one that starts an email list before the consent process exists has created a liability instead of an asset. Build the nine in sequence and the whole setup costs a few hundred dollars a month plus about three weeks of one person's attention, which is reachable for a company with no revenue yet.

The nine items, in build order

Order	Item	Cost	Why here
1	A site that answers the buying question on the first screen	Hours, plus hosting	Everything downstream points at it
2	Business profile and the two directories your buyers use	Free, four hours	Highest return unpaid work available
3	Analytics and call tracking	Low monthly	In most Canadian service categories the phone is the conversion
4	French pages, if you sell into Quebec	Writing, not translation	A legal requirement rather than a growth option
5	CASL consent and records process	Hours, plus a form	Required before the first commercial email, not after
6	A claim review step with a named person	Hours	The Competition Act applies from your first advertisement
7	One acquisition channel, tested with a written decision rule	Media budget	Produces the evidence everything else is planned from
8	A baseline reading of what the assistants say about your category	Low monthly or an afternoon	Without it, no later reading means anything
9	One counted figure about your own market, published	A day	The most quotable asset a new company can produce

The three that are legal rather than optional

• French, if Quebec is a market. The Charter of the French Language, strengthened by the 2022 amendments, sets requirements for commercial advertising and public communications in the province. For selling pages, French written for a Quebec reader rather than machine translated is what performs and what your own team can stand behind.
• CASL, before the first email. Commercial electronic messages require consent, clear identification of the sender and a working unsubscribe honoured promptly, with the CRTC enforcing. The consent record is the asset, so build the process before the list.
• Claim review, before the first advertisement. The Competition Act's misleading representations provisions are administered by the Competition Bureau, were amended in 2024, and from June 2025 carry a private right of access to the Competition Tribunal for certain deceptive marketing conduct. A named person who reads every claim before it ships is the whole control.

Privacy belongs beside them. PIPEDA applies federally, Quebec's Law 25 adds obligations that reach consent for tracking, and Alberta and British Columbia have their own private sector statutes. A short privacy notice and a decision about what you actually collect is a day's work at the start and a project later.

The one thing to skip until month four

A CRM. A new Canadian company with fewer than about fifty contacts is better served by a spreadsheet with a mandatory source field than by a platform nobody has configured. The reason is not cost, it is that a CRM bought before there is a process encodes the wrong process and becomes something to migrate away from. Buy it when you have a repeatable pipeline to put in it, which is usually month four or later, and buy it with the source field mandatory from day one.

Why item eight belongs in a minimum setup at all

On 22 October 2026 we put a 198 question Canadian buyer bank in 33 batches to the ChatGPT and Gemini product surfaces through a data provider. Canada was named inside the text of every question, because the provider accepts gl, hl and location parameters and ignores all three. Batch 33 names us in the question and measures a ceiling, excluded from every figure. Sixty four blind readings, 32 per engine, 2,992 citation URLs across 974 distinct hosts.

Thirty three of the 64 readings named no supplier at all, which is the largest single outcome and the whole argument for a new company taking a baseline early. An engine answering a Canadian buying question in generalities has committed to nobody, so the slot is open and a new company with a clear, dated, specific answer competes on even terms with an incumbent that has published only claims. Where names appeared, software took 48 namings led by Semrush at 16, HubSpot at 12 and Ahrefs at 9, and six Canadian agencies were named 21 times.

The engines also split, which matters for judging progress. ChatGPT ran a live web search on all 32 of its Canadian readings and Gemini on 20 of its 32, and Gemini named a rival 18 times against ChatGPT's 13. Report them separately from the first reading onward, because a habit set at the start is cheaper than a correction later.

Item nine, and why a new company can win it

The most quotable asset available to a company with no history is a counted figure about its own market, with a denominator, a method and a date. In our Canadian reading the engines cited www150.statcan.gc.ca in 8 of 64 readings, canada.ca in 10, competition-bureau.canada.ca in 9 and ised-isde.canada.ca in 9. Those are free, authoritative, Canadian sources. A page that builds on Statistics Canada data correctly, names the table, states the date and adds one thing you counted yourself is a document an engine can quote, and it costs a day rather than a budget.

The first three weeks

• Week one. The site, the profile and the directories, plus analytics and call tracking.
• Week two. French pages if Quebec is a market, the CASL consent process, and the named claim reviewer.
• Week three. The baseline reading with Canada in the question text, and the first counted figure drafted.
• Week four onward. One acquisition channel, one offer, one written decision rule.

If the language and province scope is still open, it is the decision that sets everything else and it is worked through in three decisions that set the scope and the price. If the first channel will be paid search on a small budget, the tight radius version that stays defensible is in three campaigns, a tight radius and a budget you can defend.

Questions new Canadian companies ask about a minimum setup

Can I skip French at the start?

Only if you genuinely do not sell into Quebec, and write that decision down internally so the gap is a choice rather than a surprise. If you do sell there, French belongs in week two.

Do I need a CRM in month one?

A spreadsheet with a mandatory source field serves a new company better until there is a repeatable pipeline. Buy the CRM when you have a process to encode.

When can I start emailing?

Once the consent and records process exists. CASL requires consent, sender identification and a working unsubscribe honoured promptly, and the record is what makes the list an asset.

Is the assistant baseline worth it before we have customers?

Yes, because it is cheap and because without it no later reading has a comparison. In 64 Canadian readings on 22 October 2026 the engines named nobody in 33, so a new company is not starting behind in that queue.

What is the single highest return item?

The business profile and the directories, because they cost hours rather than money and they improve everything downstream of them.

Setting the baseline habit at the start

Of the nine items, the one a new Canadian company is least likely to have is a reading of what the assistants say, and it is the only one that gets harder to add later because a baseline taken in month six cannot describe month one. AI Knows Us reads ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews with Canada named inside the question, reports each engine separately with its denominator, and keeps the raw answer text. Outside the United States and the United Kingdom the cheapest plan that reads all five engines is Growth at 199 dollars a month with 100 buyer questions watched, read on aiknowsus.com/pricing and aiknowsus.com/llms.txt on 22 October 2026.