Clarity Quest Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a principal at ICQ Consultants. We do commissioning qualification validation for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. As principal, I’m part owner of the company as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clarity Quest Marketing?

We were addressing quite a few things with Clarity Quest Marketing. Our first objective was brand awareness. We also wanted to work on general marketing and getting our sales systems together — we use Salesforce.

What was the scope of their involvement?

On the brand awareness side, first, we walked through our site and looked at our  SEO terminology in efforts to drive more traffic. We had a tagline that was similar to our competitors so Clarity Quest Marketing helped us come up with something different.

They’ve been handling our LinkedIn by creating ads and posts. We’ve published a lot of white papers and monthly blog posts. This content flow is contributing to both our brand awareness and marketing.

For Salesforce, we were already established on it. Clarity Quest Marketing mainly focused on mass mailers and getting our contacts and everything else in order. Recently, they helped us integrate Salesforce with Act-On, which tracks everything including our website traffic.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with two people but there have been one-off interactions with others behind the scenes. Our two main contacts focus respectively on the social media side and the blog content side.

How did you come to work with Clarity Quest Marketing?

We researched and interviewed a few different companies. Clarity Quest Marketing was the most aligned with our business goals and directives. What’s more, we really aligned with their personality and company culture.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started in September 2019.

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

We meet monthly to look at analytics, and they provide quarterly reports about metrics. We’re satisfied with the results and have seen positive trends in our metrics. Their team comes up with great suggestions about different types of blogs. The white papers effort was their idea and that has driven a lot of traffic to our website. The metrics and suggestions they provide have been a good complementary effort with our team to keep things moving in the right direction.

How did Clarity Quest Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They keep us on track and help us post more consistently. Their team keeps everything running, all in a very personable manner. We communicate mainly through Zoom, emails, and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with the level of knowledge they bring to the platforms we use —LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Act-On. It’s clear they have wide experience and they constantly bring in new ideas. It’s nice that they have a team full of members with different expertise, as I mentioned with the one-off interactions. Clarity Quest Marketing is responsive and creative; they really know their stuff.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront and straightforward. Don’t be timid and just let them run the show. It’s really a team effort. Not everything will go smoothly or perfectly, but they will hit it out of the park for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of business development for a biotech company. We’re the premier provider of immune cells for research. We source it ethically, and we provide these immune cells well characterized. We ship them all over the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clarity Quest Marketing?

We were a startup that needed help with digital marketing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team at Clarity Quest Marketing is our sole digital marketing agency. They came in and evaluated our existing website, company name, and logo. They started with the branding of our company, working closely with our founder.

For development, they revamped our current site and coordinated the built-up of an e-commerce platform. Our current platform is very user friendly. Researchers can go online and buy it online and then add it to their cart. Clarity Quest helped us identify IT software vendor for us and provided client project management support. 

Their team also did the initial branding, re-branding, and digital marketing campaign work for us. In 2018, they worked with us to rebrand with our new name after an equity firm acquired our company and another company. This new brand was launched in May.

What is the team composition?

We were assigned one contact person. Three other people worked with us.

How did you come to work with Clarity Quest Marketing?

My founder met the principal at a conference in Boston.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent less than $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Clarity Quest Marketing started in December 2014.

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

They were able to grow our revenue five times during this period. It wasn’t just revenue. We were able to draw the attention of the equity firm. The rebranding and relaunch of our brand were so successful that we wanted to sell more products. We ended up selling our company.

The brand launch was so successful it got the attention of the industry and Wall Street. By the end of June, we had an offer from our new company that they wanted to acquire us, and we got acquired.

As far as the statistics, they were excellent. Every month, they’d give us a report where they tracked the website traffic, SEO, and how many of those clicks, in those digital product campaigns, we did turn into sales. They follow all the statistics for us. They are always working to increase those click rates and turnover rates.

How did Clarity Quest Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We had one point of contact. We used Basecamp for document and communication management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What set them apart was they understood our business. They understood our product. They helped us set targets, and sometimes they even helped us think about our strategy. It was almost like they provided us a whole consulting service for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In 2018 or 2019, we used to send out blogs. These were ideas that came from them. They also suggested doing a video blog. That didn’t materialize because we were always being merged, acquired, or rebranding. If it were implemented, that would have been a very novel thing attracting our clients to stay on the site a little longer.

They provided a lot of educational tools that nobody else in the industry does. They’re not cheap, but they’re really good at what they do. I don’t think we would be in this position without their assistance.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend the customers to be open to bringing ideas to the CQ team as they will quickly vet the idea and give you feedback on its ROI.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and president of KleenEdge. Our company focuses on bringing hospital curtain and protocol compliance software to market. Our solution helps medical facilities manage their curtain exchanges and aims to mitigate hospital-acquired infections due to infected curtains.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clarity Quest Marketing?

We hired Clarity Quest Marketing to help define our messaging, especially so surrounding our protocol compliance software.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It entailed them working very closely with us: Trying to define our exact messaging and zoom in exactly on "why" we were doing what we were doing. Their process was incredibly refreshing to our team, especially after us working on our solution for such a long time and subsequently realizing that our messaging was quite unclear.

they first helped us to get clear about why we were doing what we’re doing, why we’re so passionate about it, thus focusing on our value proposition. 

Secondly, they looked at our website and started analyzing it in terms of SEO and content. They subsequently started providing input on bringing the site to its next iteration. Lastly, they outlined a clear marketing strategy with us.

The team researched Google Ads and SEO looking at our specific industry. They wanted to ascertain where our marketing budget could be spent most mindfully.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Christine (President) and Melanie (Senior Marketing Consultant) directly. I anticipate that we’ll be working with additional team members in the future.

How did you come to work with Clarity Quest Marketing?

A dear friend of mine works in high tech in Seattle. They’ve known Christine for over 20 years, and have worked together on numerous marketing projects. About 12 years ago, he mentioned her to me, but it was too early in our development to retain them. It was always crystal clear to me that we would be going with her and her company when the time came.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $19,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on the first half from April to June 2020.

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

We’re on the cusp of implementing all of their recommendations, updating our website in terms of content and SEO. We also have our graphics team working on additional artwork for those pages. We expect to complete our work by the end of September and subsequently move into implementing our marketing campaign with Clarity Quest.

We set out with various milestones, which they either met or exceeded. Their deliverables were excellent!

How did Clarity Quest Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

I was super impressed with their process. It was organized, and their team quickly got us to the table to have mindful conversations about the messaging. They’re incredibly detailed and responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was really impressed with their organizational skills: From the first conversation to them submitting their proposal to them getting us set up within their Basecamp to their documentation, everything was just incredibly well organized and thought out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I really can’t think of a single thing, to be honest.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would encourage them to fully embrace Clarity Quest's process. The input they require from you, giving thought to the mindful questions that they’re asking you about your business. They come to the table with a high level of introspect, encouraging clients to participate in the process.

To any company looking to work with Clarity Quest, I would say listen to their recommendations and do your homework. The resulting input into your company will be well worth it!