DEW 3 Marketing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president of Gold Leaf US Distributors. We distribute a product called Gold Leaf, which is a single step liquid fertilizer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DEW 3 Marketing?

Our biggest challenge was creating brand awareness around our fertilizer product and growing it. No one in the US had ever heard of this kind of product before, and we needed to get people to believe it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DEW 3 Marketing is helping us get our fertilizer product out there and hit our market — people who are growing plants. Instead of hiring salespeople, we decided to focus solely on printed ads, mailing, and social media. I have a couple of people on staff who are very good at social media, and I also brought in Donnie (Founder & CEO) to address our challenges.

Donnie builds our brand and our online presence. He creates five custom ads a week on Facebook and has started building our network on LinkedIn. He joins product teams/groups to keep up to date with the hydroponics and fertilizer industry.

I’ve had him do some research projects for me as well. We needed to find the right hydroponics and retail stores around the country to sell to. It took him a few weeks, but he came back with a really comprehensive list of contact names, email addresses, and information. We give out free samples to stores and put samples into the hands of growers and influencers.

Something else we’ve had to do as the marketing arm of the manufacturer of Gold Leaf, was to get a license and have the product and label registered in every state. As a distributor operating as a separate company, we had to do the same thing. Therefore, I assigned Donnie to get online and find out what we needed to do to get licensed and registered for all 50 states.

What is the team composition?

Donnie is the only one we work with directly, but as you can see, I’ve given him a lot of projects to do besides building awareness for our brand. I really appreciate his flexibility and how he gets things done pretty quickly with his team.

For example, we needed to put dosing instructions with each package we ship out. He had a graphic designer who came up with some really nice looking designs to have that insert put in. We also had someone who worked on our second website where we put photos of our customers with our product and some generic stuff filled in.

How did you come to work with DEW 3 Marketing?

I have known Donnie for about 10 years now, and he’s done some good work for us in the past. He told me about this business he was starting, and it was aligned with what our company was doing.

What is the status of this engagement?

They worked on some projects with us in early 2020. We started working in September 2020, and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After onboarding Donnie, we’ve jumped from 250 followers to around 8,500 now. He's really contributed a lot to our growth and is a reliable person. I rely on him to become more knowledgeable so he can be part of our team even more. 

So far, our engagement with the team has been doing well as orders are starting to come in from the general public. It’s steady, but we still have a long way to go. Our product is one of those things that sounds too good to be true so there’s still a lot of skepticism. However, once people try the product, they call us back to tell us that it works.

How did DEW 3 Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Since the pandemic started, we stopped having personal meetings. We primarily communicate through phone calls, emails, and Skype. We also text depending on where I am. However, I like to keep records of things, so emailing will always be the best choice for me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing about Donnie is his creativity. I’m amazed at the stuff he comes back with. It’s tough to create five ads a week while keeping a consistent theme, and he’s done a lot since September. He told us that repetition is the key to advertising, but he’s been able to keep the content fresh and creative every time.

I like how he thinks. He’s sharp and he’s in tune with a lot of age groups and our customers. He relates to them and he communicates well. He stays engaged and tries to learn as much about what people are thinking like their wants and needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, for everything I’ve given him to do, he’s done everything well in a very timely manner. On the top of my head, I can’t think of any issues regarding his work. He’s done a great job all the way through, and I plan to keep him on. Hopefully, as our business grows, we’ll do more things with him.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would just be to tell him what needs to be done and give him a good explanation. They’ll be coming in to help you with a product or service that they’ve probably never heard of before. Educate them as much as possible on what you want to accomplish.

Give him guidelines but let them be free to use their creativity. They might not hit the mark every time, but letting people like Donnie be creative assures me that they will hit the mark most of the time. Let them be creative and they’ll do a good job for you.