Prudent Pedal Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a consulting and integration firm specializing in enterprise and mid-market IT organizations. We focus on CIOs, strategic VPs, and directors. Our company is 25 years old with roughly 250 employees; we cover four core markets in the US. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

Our company wanted to have a consistent and consolidated branding strategy, which would enable us to address our customer base directly with an increased focus on value.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went through an assessment of how we showed up as an organization in today’s world; Prudent evaluated our digital presence, sales materials, previous presentations, and backlogs of materials. From there, we migrated to a strategic brainstorming exercise that helped us move from being highly technical to being business-oriented.

After that, they delivered executive presentations for the next steps we could take to create a better digital presence — this presence was aimed at helping us differentiate ourselves from others in the market. We came up with a directed approach to how we could grow our digital and selling presence. The technologies we used included basic tools such as PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets. 

What is the team composition?

I primarily worked with Jeff (Founder & CEO). He worked with other people behind the scenes, but I mainly dealt with him. 

How did you come to work with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

We had a previous engagement with prudent a few years ago. This recent project was a byproduct of the work we did before; we essentially re-engaged them.  

How much have you invested with them?

Our investment was around $50,000–$100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

This project lasted from March–June 2022. 

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

Prudent had a strict process that included research from various areas around the industry and not just technical areas. Their strategy dug deep into understanding our business value and the transformational process that other businesses underwent. This helped us find areas within which our company was best equipped to fulfill business-level goals. 

Overall, we acquired a complete alignment with our executives and leadership team around our banding strategy and the executable next steps to drive the strategy forward. We accomplished quite a bit within our budgeted timeframe and dollar value. 

How did Prudent Pedal Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Prudent’s project management style was great. We had sessions twice a week that lasted for approximately two hours. We also had sessions that were focused on specific topics. Our team members left every meeting with clear next steps and deliverables. On top of that, we hit every single aggressive timeline we set. To communicate, we used either Google Meet or Teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Jeff and his team truly took the business seriously; they were highly involved in understanding our company and business drivers. Their team did a lot of work, research, and evaluation of forward-thinking indicators. They used a tremendous number of resources to make sure they knew what was happening in the market and what would happen in the future. In other words, they had a personally directed input to the engagement. 

Apart from that, they had a unique approach to the engagement. They were flexible and could adapt to different personalities. They weren’t so stringent with having to fill in their own boxes; they listened to us truly well. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any. Prudent was highly collaborative, so we felt like we were on the same team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get to know Prudent and ensure that your goals are clear. Marketing is a challenging area, and it takes a good couple of weeks to make sure that everybody is on the same page and understands directions. Prudent takes that time; they believe that it’s their responsibility to get to know our needs as much as it is our responsibility to provide them with information.  

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company provides transformation consulting services to lower enterprise–upper mid-market clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

We wanted to lay down a strategic foundation for how we go to market. Our revenue model is a mix of consulting services and brokerage. Given that duality, we lacked a consistent marketing framework to attract clients when we weren’t in front of them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Prudent Pedal Marketing took us through what they called their “issues-to-solutions framework.” They unearthed our core problems and delineated our customer persona.

After they mapped out our ideal clients. they built out a strategy — essentially, a sales or marketing engagement playbook. They created our content calendar, deep white paper, and some parts of our website in adherence to those guidelines.

They also put together a product ladder that makes our services easier to consume for clients. They built it around free workshops and engagements, in an effort to improve customer engagement.

What is the team composition?

Jeff (Founder) was my main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

Jeff happened to do a podcast with another consulting firm, and I knew the owner of this firm. That solidified my interest in Prudent Pedal.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere between $50,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We determined the scope of the project in January 2019 after talking to them for a few months, and the project lasted until September 2019.

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

The quality of their work was always very high. Their strategic approaches stripped away the unnecessary to get to the core of our problems and needs. They maintained effective messaging while being concise in their delivery. In particular, the product ladder they developed was very impactful in enhancing how we engage with our clients.

While I don’t have any quantitative OKRs, they absolutely acquired and reduced friction with many of our accounts.

How did perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed well. The pace of turnaround on production could have been a little faster, but their communication and understanding of priorities were good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have deep subject-matter expertise on how clients acquire professional services, which is a unique area of interest. I appreciated their knowledge regarding a relatively niche playing field.

Are there any areas they could improve?

He could charge more and add a junior project manager, because it’d be valuable to have a team member dedicated solely to prompt and effective communication.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Consider adding additional resources if you need to get things turned around very quickly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and Founder of Waident Technology Solutions. We do technology support and cybersecurity.

What challenge were you trying to address with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

We needed marketing help. We’d been in business for 15 years and never really done any marketing. We’ve grown via referrals and relationships but have always wanted to build a marketing engine. I’ve talked to other marketing people but never really went down the path because they asked for a big bucket of money for the strategy and another bucket for execution. I needed both strategic and tactical help, and Jeff (Founder & CEO, Prudent Pedal Marketing) brings both to the table.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re acting as our CMO. We meet on a regular basis to look at inbound marketing. They started a regular blog process, which they draft in from a marketing approach. Now, they’re incorporating formatting that helps with SEO and is attention-grabbing. We just did a filler page based on a lot of those blog articles that they’re doing SEO on.

They’re strategic in a sense in that he’s acting as a prospective client of ours, asking how they would find us and what they would be searching for.

What is the team composition?

I’m only working with Jeff right now. We talked about getting a designer to help just yesterday. He might be using other people on the backend though.

How did you come to work with Prudent Pedal Marketing?

I heard about them through a mutual acquaintance. After meeting him, I was impressed right away. I wasn’t looking for a marketing person at the time, but I wanted him in my network. In the intervening years, he’d give me his advice on marketing things, and eventually I was ready to bring him in officially.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $25,000–$50,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since November 2019.

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

He spent the first month creating the marketing plan and we’re currently talking through a whole host of items to get us ready and putting things on the calendar.

Things we’ve done include writing 20 blog articles, redoing our FAQ section, integrated social media into some of what we’re doing on the blog. We’re moving from the backend work to getting things out there and seeing what impact it will have.

Their work is eye-opening and impressive. I used to write them myself and have someone edit them internally, but know they rewrite sections and punch up everything. My fear was that they would spend too much time simply rewriting articles, but they’ve been teaching me to do those things. I’ve had people reach out to me saying how much they like these recent pieces.

How did Prudent Pedal Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s been good, but not great. They use Google Sheets, which is fine with me because everything is documented well. The only stumbling things have been if one of us doesn’t get around to something when we said we would, but we always get things done in the end. It’s nothing to complain about.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For me, the key thing is that Jeff just thinks differently. Countless times I’ve been with Jeff in a group conversation and he’ll throw out something from a totally different perspective. They don’t do “fancy” marketing either. As their name suggests, they’re prudent. I’m very pragmatic myself, so it works. We treat our clients the same way.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We may be able to do more and more faster, but I can’t say that that’s Jeff’s fault. It takes both of us time to get stuff done, and we’re running around doing other things. I’ve never sat around wondering why I’m paying him.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My only real advice would be that there needs to be a good culture fit. As long as he gets you and understands what you’re doing, it’ll be great. It’s nothing I’m worried about.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I lead a boutique strategy consulting firm out of Chicago. We work exclusively with professional services firms, helping them grow top line revenue by better leveraging their client facing delivery professionals to expand client relationships and surface incremental deal flow.

For what projects/services did your company hire Prudent Pedal Marketing?

We need to better position our firm online with various social networking platforms to nurture our brand and drive lead generation.

What were your goals for this project?

Enhance market awareness of Gray Matters Group's positioning and solutions, while generating passive lead generations from those in the market for revenue generation consulting/skill building.

How did you select this vendor?

We wanted to align ourselves with a provider who had deep knowledge of the pro services sector. And a firm that thought strategically about our problem...not just throw tired, old school tactics at the problem.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Develop and execute a comprehensive digital strategy program.

What was the team composition?

Jeff McKay

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Yes...very pleased with the outcome. Now have a comprehensive digital marketing presence across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook with consistent messaging and calls to action to drive lead generation.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Strong, proactive communications between GMG and PP.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive aspect was their knowledge of the pro services industry and their strategic thinking throughout the project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really...