Marketing Program Design and Execution
I started working with a fast-growing, Los-Angeles-based financial consulting firm as an external marketing consultant in 2017. The stated goals of the marketing program were to
Engineer organizational stress away from the leaders of the company, who were too active in sales qualification, and
Create a predictable return on marketing spend.
We inherited the marketing function from an outside inbound marketing agency, which had focused its energy mainly on generic blogs and downloadable resources. Due to a lack of measurable returns, the firm’s partners decided to look for another marketing firm.
Impacts, Return, and Reporting
As External Account Director: 2017 - 2020
After onboarding, it was clear the firm lacked a coherent strategic focus in their content. The content they’d been making was either too ground-level (e.g., Excel function tutorials) or too distant from their core service offerings (e.g., covering operational traction instead of accounting department effectiveness). This led to three clear, content strategy issues:
Audience: Content needed to be written for their target buyers—C-suite finance and accounting leaders.
Sales Enablement: They needed content to support all stages of the buyer’s journey, including when leads were ready for a sales touch.
SEO: Content needed to be optimized to allow their target buyers to find it via search engines. SEO was also impacted by the use of multiple subdomains.
We overhauled blog and downloadable content over the next year, created more focused website CTAs and forms, tightened up their HubSpot instance for stronger tracking and segmentation, and conducted new outreach tactics (e.g., PPC). As the account champion, I worked a hybrid, hands-on role as a strategist, tactician, and coordinator. In year one, we were able to track marketing revenue at 400% marketing spend.
We launched the client’s new website in the second year. The launch team consisted of an outsourced designer, single developer, and me running point as project manager, copywriter, technical support, and creative director.
The new site lowered bounce rate, increased engagement, and offered more accurate site data. Additionally, the results of constant focus on SEO and optimization of their digital marketing were apparent. In the first image below, you can see the immediate gains in website performance in Q1 2019, compared to the prior year. In the second and third images, you can see YOY growth in website traffic.
The website launch marked a major milestone, as we had functionally built the client a best-practice marketing infrastructure. It also opened the doors to tracking leads from marketing source through consultant deployment. In Q3 of Year Two, the client renewed with us for three times the previous retainer, as they wanted to hit the pedal on outreach, track the full marketing pipeline, and continue to shed light on the ROI of the marketing function.
Here are top-level metrics that we were able to deliver in early 2020, after aggregating all of their marketing analytics into Tableau:
As Full-Time Marketing Director: 2020 - 2024
I became a full-time employee of the client during the pandemic. I continued the rollout and marched into more forms of outreach, including video, events, and media relations. The impacts of the pandemic forced a shift to an agile approach to creating service sheets, writing new marketing content, and expanding the contact database and target geography to stir up new business. I also shifted to Looker Studio to display performance. Here’s a scrubbed version of the reporting:
This approach to reporting has continued, though we’ve moved into Tableau, and then HubSpot reporting. We’ve also worked hard to integrate the meeting-setting and sales teams with the marketing function and its approach to processes and reporting.
How It Works
The general philosophy of the marketing program at this company centers on inbound content marketing for specific personas. These generally are C-suiters in the finance and accounting functions, segmented by role and industry.
Because these audiences are specialized and difficult to engage through outbound channels, we focus on working with our team of consultants to create quality content. We meet with our consultants and then define a suitable topic for them to start. I use this Venn diagram to explain the ideal confluence of topics:
The consultants have a wide range of writing ability, so we coach, ghostwrite, edit, and design around their output. This approach leads to a variety of content types including:
Articles
Case Studies
Ebooks
Guides
Infographics
Service Sheets
Post-draft, we keyword optimize, design as needed, connect it to the marketing content library, and then publish.
We’ve built a multichannel marketing approach including email, social, paid search, and display. We back the outbound effort up with lead capture and marketing automation—through a combination of HubSpot and WordPress. This allows us to market to our audiences and then make direct contact when the moment is right for them or they express interest.
If you have any questions or want to talk specifics, reach out!