Process

1 | Discover

All engagements start with listening. In this opening stage, I’ll listen to your challenges, hear about your previous and current marketing strategies, ask about your goals and learn about your vision for the future.

I’ll conduct interviews with you, your stakeholders — and if possible — current customers. At the end of this Discover stage, I’ll deliver a Current State Assessment detailing the findings. In it, we’ll assess the brand, share competitor research, document current processes and strategies, identify gaps and describe your desired target customers at a high level.

At the end of the Discovery stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

Where is the company now and why isn’t it where you want it to be?

• Current state assessment

2 | define

Too often projects fail because success is not defined at the onset. Once we understand where you want to take your company, we’ll work together to clearly define success — and determine how we’ll know if we achieved success at the end of the engagement.

In this Define stage, I’ll deliver a comprehensive Marketing Plan. In it, we’ll detail short- and long-term goals, outline a strategy and associated tactics to achieve those goals, define specific customer personas, align budgets and resourcing to the tactics and establish a timeline to deliver the overall plan.

At the end of the Define stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

What does success look like — and how will marketing help you achieve that?

• Marketing plan

3 | design

Once outcomes are determined, it’s time to craft a high-arching strategy, timelines and tactics. Here we’ll define scope and resource requirements while building an actionable roadmap for your company.

In this Design stage, I’ll deliver actionable project and creative briefs, project plans (timelines and resourcing) and define lead routing and allocation best practices.

At the end of the Design stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

Who, what, when, where and how are we going to drive results?

• Project briefs

• Creative briefs

• Project plans

• Funnel definitions

• Lead allocation plan

4 | activate

At this point, an engagement tends to diverge from typical. Here, we’ll work to bring the strategy to life and into the market.

In this Activate stage, the planning and strategy comes to life. We might launch email automations, develop a new website, create a Google Analytics dashboard, hire and manage an outside agency, advertise on Google and Facebook and start qualifying web leads.

At the end of the Activate stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

What does this strategy look like in real life?

• Agency hiring and management

• Email automations

• Website development management

• Content marketing

• Google Analytics set-up

• Lead alerts

5 | evaluate

What’s working and what’s not working? And how do we know?

In this Evaluate stage, we’ll take a step back and assess. We’ll look at hard metrics, ask for anecdotal feedback from Sales and other stakeholders and determine what we were able to accomplish from our roadmap.

At the end of the Evaluate stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

Has the marketing plan driven results?

• Funnel reporting

• Website organic traffic reporting

• PPC reporting

• Keyword reporting

6 | refine

It’s time to take a step back and absorb the results, discuss the challenges and celebrate the successes.

In this Refine stage, we’ll reassess the state of the company: Have the challenges changed? Have the goals shifted? We’ll take those answers and the feedback to define an improved strategy for the future.

At the end of the Refine stage, we’ll be able to answer this question:

What marketing can we improve to drive better results?

• Current state assessment