Etched Marketing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the chief technology officer [CTO] at my company. We create secure communication platforms for military and commercial purposes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Etched Marketing?

Well, we were a very small startup when we first approached Etched Marketing. We did not have the budget for proper marketing support. I asked Rachel, my wife, if she could help us out. We were basically a bunch of engineers who didn't know what we were doing. We set up a website, but it was not getting the traction that we wanted and needed. We were looking for people who were interested in being early adopter pilots of our technology. We had some established government customers, but what we were really trying to do with our website was reach out to more of the commercial space.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rachel did quite a bit. She did a keyword search to understand what we should be optimizing for, given the domain we were in. She explained how to deploy that on our website, such as putting them in titles, meta tags - putting them in places where Google would find it. She also explained the value of blogs and creating domain content that would be interesting to readers. We created that, and then she also explained that our engineers did an interesting job where our site was completely JavaScript. So even though we had lots of content, it was invisible to Google and we needed to recreate and render it in a way that Google would actually see it. Her first assessment of our site found three words on each individual web page. It was enlightening to understand how we did that wrong.

How much have you invested with Etched Marketing?

Honestly, I don't remember.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started about three years ago, in 2014. There was a lot of communication for the first two or three months, and then it kind of tapered off to periodic checkups until about after a year, and then we were done.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Within a few months, we saw a strong uptick in our page rank and the amount of traffic we were getting. After 9 to 12 months, we had a pretty decent domain authority. We started to capture more traffic. I was really impressed. Our web page was useful for educating people before they engaged with us, and it sped up the entire sales process to get those early adopters.

How did Etched Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

She was very effective and did a good job of explaining these concepts to a bunch of people that aren't in the space at all. And we were able to follow her advice. She didn't actually implement any of this, she just gave us more of the strategy and direction. We implemented it ourselves, and it was fantastic. She did some periodic follow-up to show what we were doing well and what we may have forgotten or weren't doing right. It was great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

She has a strong background with really large brands that are in a much more competitive, difficult space than we were in. Getting that powerful advice made such a difference for a small company. We wouldn't have had access to that otherwise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were a startup and some of the advice made sense, but we couldn't afford to do it. She was still just trying to give us a complete picture. Although, I don't know if she could have told us anything different given the limitations we had. I'm really happy with what she did for us. I don’t really have any feedback here.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of Agency Insights Consulting.  I launched the consultancy to help small- to mid-size agencies. I spent a lot of years in the agency world and really got to know how agencies work from business development all the way through contract fulfillment from a workflow standpoint and different functions within the agency. So I started a consultancy to help various agencies wherever they have their pain points; whether it’s structuring their sales department or the handoff points between sales and the fulfillment teams that actually service the contracts. I launched that to help guide any agency owner that needs help in streamlining and being more efficient in their agency operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Etched Marketing?

When you launch a business, the first thing you do from an awareness standpoint is to build a website. I approached Etched to help me with messaging, structuring the content, and organizing the information I wanted on the website. That was the nature of the outreach. It wasn’t for design, but specifically for content. I knew what I wanted to put on the website, but I needed some good copywriters to review the copies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I went to Etched with the fixes I wanted to make on the site and showed them the pages I already had. I provided rough drafts on what I wanted to communicate. Etched took what I gave them as a starting point and went on to structure, edit, and polish it. If required, they also provided copywriting services like improving or rewriting certain sections. I would say it falls in the area of copywriting.

Once the site was up, I used their advice to improve its visibility. They provided great suggestions on how to increase awareness from an SEO standpoint to better optimize the site. I didn’t want to be ignorant to SEO. I wanted to be made aware of the best practices and what I should put on the site since I was in a development stage. They provided me with a comprehensive set of best practices and information on title tags, names of pages, and meta descriptions. I put all that there. I haven’t engaged them yet for social media because this is a small consultancy.

I am thinking of using them to add a blog to my website, which would require frequent blog posts. I envision that when I’m ready for that, I’ll go back to them to develop an original copy. If I can outsource the whole thing, that’d be great. I’d just give them a topic and let them write it or similar to what I did. I’d come up with a rough draft of a blog and have them copy write it and copyedit it. It would be more than just copywriting. It would be content produced on a frequent basis. I’ll see if they want to do it all or just copywriting on what I do.

How did you come to work with Etched Marketing?

Rachel [Founder, Etched Marketing] was a former colleague of mine. When you go out on your own as Rachel did and as I did, you think about people in the industry that you know. To me, the first choice was clearly Rachel. Having had the benefit of working with her in the past, I knew of her expertise. I knew of her work ethic and the top-notch service that she provides. For me, that was a no-brainer.

How much have you invested with them?

That’s confidential, but to get top-notch service at that level of experience, they were competitively priced.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2017 until February 2017. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I haven’t gone back and looked at analytics, but I know the importance of SEO. To me, it was very important in their listing of services because if I’m going to produce a website, and I want people to visit it, we had to make sure that what we’re articulating about our services is well done. and it is. It’s neatly written. It’s concise. It’s coherent and written in a nice, smooth language that doesn’t confuse the reader. They provided expert copywriting services for the site so we don’t lose potential visitors simply because the content isn’t written correctly. 

How did Etched Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated through email. They were very prompt. I would provide an article and the turnaround time would be fairly quick. Within 24-48 hours, they’d already have a new and improved version of the page. We were doing this iteratively as I was developing the site because I wanted to have the site go up as soon as possible. I started with a basic site. As I added pages, I would send them over to Rachel’s team and I’d get them back really quickly. 

The service was exceptional with a prompt turnaround time. When they had questions, they didn’t hesitate to reach out, which was different to some companies who will guess at what you need, and then wastes a lot of time because they never asked. When there were uncertainties, they were very quick in coming back to me with emails for clarification. I appreciated that because it saved a lot of time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I had a very good experience with them. I’d be hard-pressed to try to find something they could do better. It was a simple engagement and they did it perfectly. I have nothing to add.