Looking Under the Hood: Why Marketing Transparency is Key to Small Business Growth

Looking Under the Hood: Why Marketing Transparency is Key to Small Business Growth

Looking Under the Hood: Why Marketing Transparency is Key to Small Business Growth

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During this unprecedented time, almost every business is evaluating their recurring expenses and trying to determine what is truly essential and bringing them value, and what is a luxury that can be trimmed down or removed from the equation. For small business owners, just understanding the ins and outs of marketing in order to make some of these decisions can feel like a daunting task. When it comes to small business solutions that can help you market on a budget, &Marketing was built for this. Our goal is to demystify the process and help small businesses understand their marketing efforts and help them spend their budget like it’s our own.

Just last week a small auto shop owner came to us. In light of the current state of world events, his business volume was down and is anticipated to stay that way for some time. He went to his current marketing provider to ask about turning off his Google Ads to save some money but was told to leave the costly ads running as is, because turning them off would be a too drastic and risky measure that would decrease his business even more. We offered to take a complimentary look “under the hood” of the auto shop’s Google Ads and see what was really happening with his spend and conversions.

What We Found Under the Hood of His Google Ad Spend

Our digital advertising specialists examined the setup of the ads, the keywords being targeted, and the current performance to get a complete look at how many customers were being driven to his website by the ads. Using our Business Intelligence & Analytics tools, we could show him with concrete data that those Google Ads were not producing the results he thought they were. Because marketing can feel so inherently mystical to lots of small business owners, he had never been given any actual reporting before on his ad performance. He just assumed (rightfully so) they were working for him the way they were supposed to.

The good news is, we showed the auto shop owner that his current paid ads weren’t actually bringing any customers through the door, so he could save all that money going forward. The bad news is, he had no idea those ads weren’t performing and had been wasting his hard-earned money all this time.

The Benefits of Marketing Transparency Now and Later

If he hadn’t taken the opportunity to check out what was under the hood with his marketing spending, our auto shop owner may have continued spending that money for years instead of getting the information he needed to understand where his marketing dollars are going and learning where to send those dollars when marketing on a budget.

Should he invest in Google Ads in the future? Absolutely, but he should do so by spending much less money, with a different setup, and with more transparency and better monitoring. We gave him some tips that he can implement himself right now that would cost little to no money:

  • Create some content using the keywords he wants to target so he can spend less money on Google Ads and start ranking organically.
  • Post and engage more frequently on social media.
  • Send regular email updates to his current email list of contacts.
  • Run a few geographically focused Facebook ads — always a worthwhile experiment for a local B2C business that costs less than Google Ads.

As an outsourced marketing department, most of us can’t look at a car engine and be able to diagnose a problem, because we don’t have the expertise. Similarly, this growing business owner couldn’t examine his own marketing tactic and diagnose whether or not it was providing ROI. Just like his auto shop would be able to quickly tell us we had a bad radiator, we were able to identify his ineffective Google Ads campaign and recommend some more budget-friendly options.

We were able to stop the ads that weren’t producing any results and advise him to put a fraction of that budget to work on hyper local Facebook Ads, increasing his social media presence through organic posting and set up an email campaign.

Growing businesses deserve the same level of expertise and execution as the big guys, they just need a version that meets their needs (and budget) where they are. If you aren’t sure if your marketing is working FOR you and think you need an expert to look under the hood, let’s talk! &Marketing offers a complimentary Initial Marketing Analysis (IMA) that can give you valuable information about your digital presence.

About the Author:

Client Experience Director Tina DePrisco leads the strategic direction of internal processes and deliverables. By focusing on standards and quality as well as the alignment of cross-functional teams, she ensures the superior delivery of &Marketing’s services. She also serves as a Marketing Manager on client projects to stay abreast of marketing trends and client needs.

About &Marketing:

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 2 (Digital Marketing)

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In Part 1 of this series, we explored content marketing, where we outlined ways to create and distribute content to your audience in an efficient and inexpensive way. Now, in Part 2, we’ll focus on three digital marketing tactics you can accomplish with a small budget that will yield big returns: SEO, paid search, and paid social media advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enables pages on your website to rank higher for certain keywords or online queries related to your product or service. In other words, when a prospective customer types one of your targeted keywords, phrases, or queries into Google, your website will appear within the first few pages of results. This ensures your target audience is always able to find you through an organic search. The higher you rank, the more traffic you’re likely to generate to your website.

In Part 1, we discussed the importance of keyword research in developing your content strategy. The same goes for SEO optimization. Brainstorm keywords that your audience is likely to use when searching online for a product or service like yours. Then use a tool like SEM Rush, Keywords Everywhere, or UberSuggest (they all have free versions) to validate those keywords and find related searches. These tools will allow you to determine the monthly search volume for those keywords and how difficult it will be to rank for them.

Next, implement these three approaches to optimize your site for SEO:

  • On-page SEO: This is the information on a webpage that readers can see, including headers, sentences, images and graphics that create the look and feel of a site. Make sure this content includes the keywords you identified wherever relevant. Keep in mind, it is important to balance on-page SEO with the user experience, so be careful to not compromise the readability of the content by overloading it with keywords (this is called keyword stuffing).

  • Off-page SEO: This involves efforts taken to improve SEO outside of your website. Any time another company/website with high authority links back to your page (known as backlinking), this will increase your own domain’s authority. It demonstrates popularity and legitimacy to search engines, which in turn identifies your website as a subject matter expert on that particular topic. Essentially, these sites are “vouching” for you.

While on-page SEO is completely in your control, off-page SEO is not. You need to find ways to convince other brands to promote your content. There are a few ways to go about this:

  • Create quality content that people will want to cite in their own blog articles 

  • Be active on social media and share your content (some research shows that having a strong social presence, as well as high engagement on your posts can boost your rankings) 

  • Pitch an idea for a guest blog with a reputable online publication 

  • Engage influencers (it’s possible to do this without draining your budget!)

Keep in mind that search engines are very sophisticated and use complex algorithms to determine legitimate backlinks versus poor quality backlinks. Legitimate backlinks will improve your rankings, but poor quality backlinks (i.e. from websites with little authority) may harm your rankings.

  • Technical SEO: Updating and enhancing the behind-the-scenes data on your website can lead to significant improvements in organic search rankings. You can do this by: 

    • Eliminating duplicate content 

    • Using strong keywords

    • Updating meta tags with keywords to better reflect on-page content

    • Increasing the speed of your site

    • Using structured data with consistent formatting

    • Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly

    • Repairing or removing broken links

Ultimately, SEO optimization is neither a one-and-done activity nor a quick fix. In addition to the time it takes to manually update for SEO best practices, it also requires ongoing monitoring. Also keep in mind that improvements take time to register with search engines. We typically instruct clients that it takes 8-12 weeks for SEO changes to come to fruition. 

Paid Search Advertising

Sometimes, no matter what you do, your company will never rank first on Google. This is largely due to high competition for popular keywords, or major players like YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn occupying the top spots. However, putting some money behind your efforts can allow your company to rise to the top of search results. This is called paid search or search advertising.

With search advertising on Google, you develop ads with keywords that link back to a landing page/website, select a customized audience, and set a budget. You only pay for the clicks you actually receive on your ads. This channel gives you the ability to direct people exactly where you want them to land on your website (typically a landing page created specifically for paid search) that encourages them to take action and potentially convert into a customer. Since you set your budget, you can spend as little or as much as you decide. As you monitor your ads and activity through your personal dashboard, you can make adjustments in real-time to maximize results (we talk more on that here: Three Ways to Monitor & Maintain Your Paid Search Account for Maximum Results).

Paid Social Media Advertising

While you can make strides through your organic social media feed, the proof is in the pudding when it comes to the pay-to-play game. It’s important to maintain your presence and post consistently (we talked about this in Part 1), but paid social advertising – especially if you have a limited following – can help increase the visibility of your content more quickly (and in a more targeted way). 

With paid social, you can target your ideal audience demographic using hundreds of data points collected from billions of users, build a customer journey through highly targeted content and offers, and direct people to your product and service to close the deal. This will also drive more qualified leads to your social channels and eventually build your following, which will help your organic feed have a greater impact.

Social media advertising works similarly to paid search advertising in that you set a budget and determine how much you are willing to spend. With anything, you get what you pay for, so take time to plan a strategy that combines organic posts and paid ads. Be sure to research which platform your audience uses the most. 

If you’d like an even more comprehensive look at how to develop your social media strategy, check out our social media playbook for growing businesses.

Final Thoughts

While most digital marketing tactics can be accomplished on a relatively small budget, many of them rely on a consistent, value-added content strategy to be most effective. &Marketing encourages all clients to develop original content to become a thought leader in their industries, drive brand awareness, and promote sales growth. The largest ROI comes from a well-defined strategy that combines paid digital marketing with strong content marketing.

If you are a small or growing business looking to start a marketing program or take your existing program to the next level, we have a suite of services tailored specifically for you! We know that one size does not fit all, so as your outsourced marketing partner, we provide a menu of scalable marketing services to help meet your unique needs and budget.

About the Author

Marketing Director Amanda Cook helps clients develop sophisticated marketing campaigns that drive brand leadership, increase sales and elevate the customer experience. With over 15 years of experience, Amanda has delivered successful campaigns with bootstrapped budgets to leading marketing organizations at $1B companies. Whether local or global, she enjoys the challenge of uncovering a client’s business objectives and helping them build a strategy to succeed.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Webinar Recap: How to Build Relationships on LinkedIn During Quarantine – With Brynne Tillman & Rajat Kapur

Webinar Recap: How to Build Relationships on LinkedIn During Quarantine – With Brynne Tillman & Rajat Kapur

Webinar Recap: How to Build Relationships on LinkedIn During Quarantine – With Brynne Tillman & Rajat Kapur

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LinkedIn has always been a powerful source for networking, and it’s become even more critical today as we navigate social distancing and the impact of the Coronavirus. However, given the sensitivity and uncertainty of the times, many are unsure of how to remain connected with their prospects, clients, COIs, and broader network.

Last week, &Marketing’s Founder and Managing Director, Rajat Kapur and Brynne Tillman, CEO of Social Sales Link and LinkedIn expert, hosted a webinar exploring How to Build Relationships on LinkedIn During Quarantine.  What we are experiencing now is unprecedented and we have no playbook to give us any guidance. During this webinar, Raj and Brynne discussed why now, more than ever, it’s important to remain connected, provide empathy, and be a trusted resource. 

The biggest takeaways were:

  • How to communicate about COVID-19 with empathy, because as you know it’s not business as usual.
  • Immediate actionable tips and tricks from LinkedIn.

  • How to engage with past prospects and partners.

  • How to lead to selling but not lead WITH selling.

  • Why video is a powerful tool and content vehicle, especially during this time.

  • Why there is no excuse to spam contacts or be too salesy.

  • How to generate new and relevant content ideas.

  • Countertrends rising in the midst of COVID-19::

    • Increase in digital products

    • Rise in remote workers

For a more detailed discussion of these topics as well as the Q&A, we encourage you to watch the full webinar here.

About the Author

Marketing Director Amanda Cook helps clients develop sophisticated marketing campaigns that drive brand leadership, increase sales and elevate the customer experience. With over 15 years of experience, Amanda has delivered successful campaigns with bootstrapped budgets to leading marketing organizations at $1B companies. Whether local or global, she enjoys the challenge of uncovering a client’s business objectives and helping them build a strategy to succeed.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 1 (Content Marketing)

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 1 (Content Marketing)

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses: Part 1 (Content Marketing)

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In our experience, many small or growing businesses have neither the time nor the resources to execute highly sophisticated marketing programs in-house. Some don’t even have a marketing team, let alone a marketing budget! We’ve also encountered large companies with limited resources and an inconsistent strategy. We often tell our clients that your marketing budget itself is not necessarily the problem, but rather how you use (or misuse) that budget.

It is possible to do a lot with a little and make a big impact, without breaking the bank. In this two-part blog series, we’ll show you how. In Part 1, we’ll focus on content marketing, and in Part 2, we’ll share inexpensive digital tactics you can implement to drive results..

Part 1: Content Marketing

When you break down content marketing into its various parts – keyword research, content calendars, the content funnel, etc – it can sound intimidating, expensive, and something that only a marketing mastermind understands. Honestly, it doesn’t have to be. Here are some effective content tactics that are free or relatively cheap to execute and will help drive your marketing into high gear.

Blogs

Creating a blog is an excellent way to lay the groundwork for your content marketing efforts. Blog posts offer regular opportunities for you to position your company as a thought leader, as well as “warm up” your leads by creating content that moves them along the buyer journey. Not only that, but your blog has potential to continue enhancing your brand’s presence long after you hit submit on a post. By infusing your copy with the right keywords, it will boost your SEO, which means prospective customers will be more likely to find your website when searching for information online that relates to your product or service.

When writing a blog, it’s important to create valuable content that resonates with your audience, but this doesn’t require you to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author! You and your team know your business and your customers better than anyone else, so set up a quick brainstorm to determine which topics may engage your audience. Additionally, you can supplement this with keyword research to determine what your audience searches for online related to your product or service (you can use a keyword platform like SEM Rush, Keywords Everywhere, or UberSuggest, all of which have free versions). From here, you can determine content ideas around these keywords and start to build a calendar.

 Here are some examples of content you can develop:

  • Write about each of your products and services

  • Present common issues your customers face and how you solve them

  • Answer frequently asked questions you receive during the sales process or customer interactions

  • Highlight or announce new features

  • Explain your start-up story or company’s mission

  • Write about trends in your industry

Every time you think to yourself, “I wish my customers knew….”, add it to the list of something to write about!

Email Newsletter

Digital technology is moving at the speed of light, as new platforms and apps are introduced almost daily. But no one can argue that the invention of email changed the face of everything. While it may feel like an old tactic, it is still one of the best channels for getting in front of your audience. Email works, and if you do it well, it can be one of your biggest drivers of ROI.

The average recipient of an email spends 1.1 seconds scanning an email before deciding if they want to read it. This means that the design of your email should be engaging and attention-grabbing, which isn’t very feasible through Gmail or Outlook. Although these two platforms are free, their capabilities are limited, so we recommend looking at other options. Mailchimp is a great alternative; it’s free for up to two thousand contacts and has a library of customizable email templates, which will allow you to bring more energy and life to your communications and show off your brand’s personality. It’s also an all-in-one marketing platform (website, automations, digital ads, social media, etc), should you be interested in pursuing these tactics.

Another advantage of using an email platform is the ability to track and capture activity, which enables you to better understand how your emails are performing and make adjustments to your approach as needed.

Now the question becomes: Who do you email and what do you send? For starters, you definitely want to send emails to existing customers, because your relationship with them does not end the minute you close the sale. Evidence shows it is far less expensive to retain customers than it is to get new ones, so you need to continue to engage them! You should also send emails to prospective customers, partners, and company contacts, all of which you likely have saved in your database. Your email newsletter should curate all of your activity from the last month (blogs, eBooks, company updates, events, etc) as well as offer promotions, announce events/webinars, run a contest, etc. The goal is to provide value to your audience and keep them aware of your brand, which will help you maintain current customers and eventually generate new ones.

Social Media

Maintaining an active presence on social media may seem like a full time job (and for some, it is!). But even with a low budget, you can still execute the basics of social media and start building your presence.

As with any tactic in marketing, social media starts with knowing your audience. Which social media platforms do they use? There are three simple ways to figure this out:

  • Distribute a survey to your customers and/or prospects to determine where and how they engage on social media.

  • Conduct secondary research online to see what information is available related to your target audience/demographics and social media use.

  • Check out your competitors’ social media pages. Which platforms do they use the most? Where do they see the most engagement?

You’ll find that Facebook and LinkedIn lend themselves better to sharing links (i.e. links to your blog posts), Twitter is often used for customer service, and Instagram is best for engaging visuals or short soundbites of content. But every audience is unique, so you won’t know for sure until you run some tests. As you learn more about your audience by seeing how they react to your content, you’ll be able to thoughtfully refine your strategy and ultimately turn them into customers for your business.

The most important thing to remember about social media is consistency and authenticity. Whether it’s every day or a couple times a week, find a cadence that you can maintain with valuable content. Posting content at random that isn’t relevant to your audience is a major turn-off!

If you’d like an even more comprehensive look at how to develop your social media strategy, check out our social media playbook for growing businesses. 

That’s a wrap for Part 1 of our “How to Market Your Business on a Shoestring Budget” blog series. Eventually, you will want to dive deeper into data and analytics to optimize your content marketing strategy – which takes additional time and resources. However, what we’ve outlined here is a great starting point. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll share some inexpensive digital marketing tactics to help you drive results.

In the meantime, if you are a small or growing business looking to start a marketing program or take your existing program to the next level, we have a suite of services tailored specifically for you! We know that one size does not fit all, so as your outsourced marketing partner, we provide a menu of scalable marketing services to help meet your unique needs and budget.

About the Author

Marketing Director Amanda Cook helps clients develop sophisticated marketing campaigns that drive brand leadership, increase sales and elevate the customer experience. With over 15 years of experience, Amanda has delivered successful campaigns with bootstrapped budgets to leading marketing organizations at $1B companies. Whether local or global, she enjoys the challenge of uncovering a client’s business objectives and helping them build a strategy to succeed.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.

&Marketing’s Official “Work From Home” Survival Guide

&Marketing’s Official “Work From Home” Survival Guide

&Marketing’s Official “Work From Home” Survival Guide

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I was 25 years old on 9/11/2001, living in the Outer Sunset of San Francisco with my then boyfriend (now husband) and our roommates.  I remember going to bed on September 10th and our roommates— another couple, both from NYC— were on the couch watching the news. When I got up the next morning, they were on the couch again, and I was confused. Had they stayed up all night watching TV?  No, they hadn’t, but they had heard about the first attack and were glued to the coverage. I remember how surreal that day was.  

In many ways, what’s going on with the COVID-19 pandemic reminds me of that eerie time. However, 9/11 was so much different, because the one thing we had during that time was each other. We were shaken, saddened and scared, but we still had the ability to be with our friends and loved ones, to mourn and talk through all of our feelings. Not to mention the shortage of essentials like toilet paper and soap. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic finds us all isolated in our homes, with a “survival of the fittest” mentality,

The &Marketing team works remotely almost all the time, so working from home is normal for most of us. I work from home and love the flexibility it allows me. I can take my son to and from school, occasionally volunteer to lend a hand in his classroom, squeeze in a workout mid-day, and take my dog (my actual SHADOW) on walks where he bullies bigger dogs and single men. 

Perfecting the art of working from home has been a journey. So I’ll save you some time and share my best tips for productivity, connection, and sanity.

Use Slack

It’s a great tool to communicate both one on one with folks or in groups and can really help maintain a sense of community and solidarity right now. Create channels to direct specific conversations based on topic, so all of your collaborative work can stay organized. Our team even has a dedicated channel for “water cooler talk” like silly kids pictures, movie trailers, and memes.  GIFs abound on the &Marketing Slack channel.

Don’t Hesitate to Pick up the Phone

I know I just recommended Slack, but beware of using it as a crutch for all conversation when you aren’t just a cubicle away from your coworkers. Things get lost and misinterpreted sometimes via Slack, email, or text. If you’re confused, feeling frustrated, or potentially misunderstanding someone’s tone, just make a call and talk it through.  You’ll most likely come to a solution quicker than you would if you kept going back and forth on Slack. 

Hold Virtual Happy Hours 

When you’re working remotely, you can sometimes miss out on the team building or bonding activities that can happen in the office. Pot luck lunches and after-hours drinks are few and far between with social isolation. Our team always works remotely and is spread out across several states, so we hold a virtual happy hour once a month. 

Bring a beer or cup of tea and hop on a Zoom call to chat and debrief after a long day. Turn those cameras on so everyone can see each other and get some social time in.

Have as Many Meetings as Possible on Video

Speaking of Zoom, video calls are valuable for more than just happy hours. Body language is important, and so is focus. People pay attention to the call they’re on more when they’re on camera, because it limits the amount of multitasking behind the scenes.  Meet people where they are, though. Avoid making them sit still in front of the computer— some of us need to stand or walk around a bit, and maybe even refill our coffee if it’s a long meeting. And of course, no judgment on appearance, unless it’s a client call.

Encourage Introverts to Chime In

Our team meets on video each Monday morning to kick off a new work week together.  We always start with an icebreaker to get the conversation going, and we take turns coming up with it each week. Lots of introverts (or even just shy team members) feel more comfortable giving input when they feel prepared, so sending out agenda and ice breaker questions in advance sometimes helps those folks feel more inclined to participate.

Being Productive With Kids

Many of us are also now finding ourselves both working remotely  and juggling kids who are at home with us. I asked the rest of the seasoned pros on our team to provide their best tips and tricks for surviving working remotely and keeping the kids occupied. Here’s what they said:

  • Our Marketing Director, Amanda Cook, has two kiddos joining her at home right now. She says her best tip for having kids home during this time is to provide them with a schedule. Her kids have eLearning from 9-12, lunch/freetime from 12-1 and quiet time in the afternoon from 1-3. 

  • Our Client Experience DIrector, Tina DePrisco says to get up earlier than others in your house and either do a work out or get work done with no interruptions. Getting some quiet productivity time is a great way to start the day feeling accomplished and ahead of the game.

In some ways, not a lot has changed for me during this pandemic. But in other ways so much has changed. My 11-year old son Ollie is home, so I frequently get text messages or handwritten notes during meetings asking me, “How much homework do I have left to do?” or “Can I play video games with so-and-so?”  My husband is home, too, and two days in, I’m loving having him here. He works in his studio, and I’m in our guestroom/office hybrid, while Ollie wanders between the living room, his room and running laps around the block.

With a moratorium on leaving the house in order to slow the spread of COVID-19, there are tons of pieces coming out about remote working. Recently, I read the article Sorry, But Working from Home is Overrated, in the New York Times. The author, Kevin Roose, writes that he thinks people are able to establish better work life balance and be more creative in an office setting.

I totally disagree.

Whether you’re like Tina on our team and have been working from home for almost 25 years, or more like my husband, who is doing this for the first time in over a decade, there is plenty of joy and fulfillment you can gain from this adjustment. Hopefully these tips will help you and your team find it together!

About the Author

Marketing Director Tracey Colla focuses on ensuring each client’s needs are being met in a timely, productive, and creative way. She is a well-rounded marketer, with a talent for identifying opportunity, product strategy and positioning, go-to-market strategies and launches.

About &Marketing

In today’s fast paced world, many growing businesses are struggling to modernize their marketing approaches because either they don’t have the expertise or the bandwidth to do it themselves.

&Marketing provides seasoned marketing strategy professionals and a nimble execution team to help our clients achieve their goals. Our unique partnership model allows us to augment our client’s existing teams or outsource the entire marketing function in an affordable, flexible, and transparent way.