Cortland Consulting

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Poppilu, a beverage company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cortland Consulting?

I needed help with my digital media marketing. We wanted to use Facebook to help us drive our e-commerce sales in a way that was measurable and optimizable.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cortland Consulting gave us marketing consulting and helped us set up on Facebook. The scope of their work was focused on Facebook ads, which encompass Instagram as well. First, they strategically helped us identify who our right audience was and what would be our messaging.

They did some tests to help us optimize and learn what was working and what was not. Then, the optimization process focused on what was working well and how to maximize our e-commerce opportunities.

They also helped us create our first-ever digital marketing campaigns on Facebook and gave us the tools that we needed to continue that work on our own. We basically worked with them at that point for guidance to make sure that we were on the right path.

What is the team composition?

We only worked with Allison (Founder), and she worked with people from her team.

How did you come to work with Cortland Consulting?

Allison reached out to us by cold calling. She had worked with other small food and beverage companies that I knew, and I had seen how well the digital marketing was going for those brands.

Knowing that she had something to do with the success of those other companies made me feel confident that she’d be a good fit for my business — she understood the industry and provided good results.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $7,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May–September 2020, and we’ve been on and off since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our engagement was successful. Cortland Consulting did the right things and taught us how to do them ourselves. If Allison could run that part of our business full time instead of us being the ones that do it, we would have much better results.

She knows what she’s doing better than us despite the fact that she trained us to do it. However, it was a good way to get ourselves familiarized with the platform and learn how to do our digital marketing.

They had a good experience and a wide range of clients in the food and beverage startup space. Their understanding of the industry was important to us because they knew the industry’s nuances. I enjoyed working with them, and anybody else would be lucky to do that as well.

How did Cortland Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Cortland Consulting was extremely detail-oriented, organized, punctual, and efficient to a very high degree. Project management was never an issue because Allison was a perfectionist when it came to organizing. We communicated mostly via email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had a solid mastery of visual marketing and understood our industry and budget constraints. Their timeliness, punctuality, and professionalism were fantastic — they had tremendous organizational skills.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing they could improve on — they were great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Allison and her team are great for smaller companies that need someone dedicated to digital marketing. If a company needs one person managing that area of their business, Allison can step in and easily take care of it.