How We Work
A practical and practiced approach with a holistic business point of view
Take Your Business to the Next Level
We help business owners make the right decisions about marketing in the most effective and efficient ways possible. That means bringing a level of sophistication and structure to how you approach marketing.
It starts with identifying the potential to meet your objectives, which may be to increase revenue, improve productivity, elevate customer satisfaction, decrease marketing costs, etc.
Then, we work with you to develop appropriate strategies — way before we worry about tactics.
Execution
Once we firm up the strategy, we plan the priorities. From there it's all about execution. We can do much of it directly, like building websites, creating content, media allocation, and more. As appropriate, we manage outside vendors or can blend with your team. At times, we can be your virtual CMO.
Fee Structure
We generally work by the package or project, so there are clearly defined deliverables. We can also work by the hour or retainer when projects can't be clearly defined. Our goal is to scope out the work and a pay structure that fits with your business.
Every Engagement Starts with a Conversation
To get started, we have you sign up for a free :30 consult. During the session:
- We'll try to answer any specific questions you may have.
- We'll ask you questions about your most pressing marketing challenges.
- Help you frame your issues in appropriate marketing terms (that's the beginning of finding solutions).
- We're probably going to recommend some low hanging fruit that you can address.
Ultimately, we're going to know if there's a good fit for continuing to work together. If so, we may recommend various projects based on what we learned.
There are often foundational marketing initiatives common to the many niche businesses, so we'll likely start with those, such as the Marketing Framework described below. It's information we need to assess where your business stands before we can recommend or do anything else.
After this initial consult, as appropriate, we'll provide a clear estimate defining the next step projects.
Marketing Framework: Identify Issues & Potential
01
Understanding your business helps us determine where in the process to begin.
We assess your business, business model, marketing activities, and more, to get an impression and insights into your business and what role marketing can play to help you meet your goals, and develop it into a Marketing Framework
We'll help you frame the questions to truly understand where the issues are and to define your goals qualitatively and quantitatively within a target timeframe.
Not Enough Traffic or Low Conversion?
A typical engagement with clients often includes assessing their website analytics, if available, so we can determine if there's a website traffic or a conversion issue. From there, it becomes clearer what needs to happen next.
02
Marketing Objectives
Business goals set direction for marketing objectives.
For most of our clients, the marketing objective is to increase revenue. Yet, you may have other ideas, like retaining customers or increasing their satisfaction. That's what we figure out at this stage.
These may be impacted by any element of marketing from product through promotion, including the quality and visibility of your website.
It may mean changing pricing, introducing new products, finding new sources of distribution, or improving the way you promote to increase leads or unit sales.
Don't Forget About Operations
Marketing and operations usually need to work in tandem. For example, promoting just enough to meet capacity.
We've also helped clients function more efficiently via their websites, whether that's for ecommerce, appointment-setting, workflow, and more.
03
Value Propositions
Why buy from you?
We help you discover strengths and reveal opportunities to help you stand out from the competition from the customer's point of view.
In doing so, we work with you to define your positioning, messaging, and branding. This is turned into what is known as the Value Proposition. We're experts at helping develop them and use them to communicate your story.
Consultants: Find Your Mojo
We work with many subject experts who haven't yet determined what sets them apart. We offer a proprietary service called the TMAP, which helps them determine how to position and message themselves with their target audience. If you're a consultant or in a related business, ask us about it.
04
Product/Market Fit
All the promotion in the world won't increase sales for a product or service which hasn't found its audience.
For any promotional activity to work, it's incredibly important to have a product or service that will sell to a certain target market, and that wants to buy it a price point that makes you a profit.
We often encounter businesses where it's not clear that this is the case. They haven't done the research to package and position their offering correctly.
We work with you to resolve issues around your products and services and identify the right market. We can also help you clearly define your ideal customer profile and purchase path.
05
Strategic Marketing Plan
Connecting the dots between strategy and the marketing mix to reach your goals.
The Strategic Marketing Plan connects the dots between what you want to achieve and how you'll get there applying elements of the Marketing Mix (the 4 P's of marketing): Product, Price, Place (Distribution), and Promotion. Or, the 6 P's, which includes People and Process.
It helps you make good decisions about what, when, and where to allocate resources. Later, it guides decisions as new opportunities arise.
Examples: To increase revenue, we might use promotion to attract new customers. We might introduce existing products to a new audience. We could look for new avenues of distribution. To increase margins, increase prices or modify pricing structure.
06
Website & SEO
A strong and optimized digital presence is foundational.
Your website reflects your entire business and can be used in so many ways to support marketing and operations. Effective websites drive behavior and support efficient operations.
Effectiveness goes far beyond choosing the right tools to build it on. It's about prioritizing alignment with your marketing strategy, user experience, functionality, and how well it converts visitors into buyers.
View website case studies —>
07
Promotional Action Plan
If your audience doesn't know you exist, how will they ever buy from you?
One of the biggest issues for most small businesses is how to build awareness. That is, being found online and driving website traffic. Enter the Promotional Action Plan. It covers the communications end of marketing, but with an actionable and prioritized twist.
Examples:
- Upgrading the content and functionality of your website
- Optimizing your on-site SEO
- Creating sales materials
- Creating ads and placing them
- Writing press releases
- Creating a media room for your website
- Writing content to amplify through social media
- Networking online
- Hosting webinars
The list goes on and on, but is kept in check by the planning that has preceded it.
08
Organize & Execute
Structure keeps you organized, so your marketing is more effective and efficient.
Having run more campaigns and marketing projects than we can count, we can help you stay on top of what needs to get done.
For starters, we help you organize with a marketing calendar, so deadlines are met and we're prepared for opportunities.
We comfortable using the martech tools you use, and we have our own favorite set we can bring into play.
09
Measure & Refine
Data-driven chaos control, so you can manage with confidence.
Being practical is a way to get the most out of your marketing dollars. Combining a clear direction with data and analytics helps us prioritize, organize, stay focused, and keep score so we recognize what’s working and can fine tune.
We perform
Google Analytics Audits and other data analysis to help you keep score and make recommendations about how to go forward.