Sculpt

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing manager at Schneider Electric, a global energy management and industrial automation SaaS company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sculpt?

We were looking to elevate our social media presence as a B2B company and needed their team to leverage our efforts and strategies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sculpt handles our social media campaigns by raising awareness to promote our new offerings. Their team conducts research, evaluates influencer profiles, and launches a vetting process to determine ideal options for our campaign briefs. They’ve particularly reached out to paid influencers, partner companies, and digital platforms to generate more engagement towards our products.

What is the team composition?

I have two main points of contact.

How did you come to work with Sculpt?

We found their team via Clutch, along with other candidates. Sculpt had the skill set, price point, and team size we needed, so we chose them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Sculpt started in March 2021.

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

Sculpt has activated marketable opportunities for us, suggesting and implementing the best practices to elevate our community management and social media engagement. They’ve also amplified our PR coverage and connections.

How did Sculpt perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via email and ad hoc meetings. Sculpt is an agile team that pivots according to our needs and shares insightful ideas to expedite and improve our project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re most impressed with their in-depth knowledge of social media trends and customer needs. On top of that, Sculpt consistently brings refreshing solutions to the table.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything negative about their work. Sculpt has been an effective partner to us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set clear objectives and metrics and allocate enough time to monitor the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company is a nonprofit cinema in Iowa City, and I am the executive director.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sculpt?

We were embarking on a capital fundraising campaign for our cinema in collaboration with another local arts nonprofit, and we wanted some help getting the word out on social media to both our existing patron base and the broader community at large.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sculpt worked with us to help brainstorm ideas, as well as to guide us through the process of engaging with the community on social media. That started with us doing Facebook live event for our campaign launch, and since then has consisted of regular updates on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to communicate what was happening with the campaign and try to engage people with the philosophy behind it.

The various have included everything from just discussing the arts and why they matter, to spotlighting some of the people who were supporting us, and even social media quizzes and other things that provided a little more interactivity, all with the goal to drive people to the campaign website and hopefully pledge support.

What is the team composition?

I’ve been in contact with a few different people on their team. I think they have 4–5 individuals on the project in total.

How did you come to work with Sculpt?

We had actually worked with them a number of years ago when we started out as a cinema, so we were familiar with their work and what they were capable of. Since they are a part of the community and have a good understanding of our organization as well, we decided to work with them again.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $5,000 on the project in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from February–October 2019.

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

In terms of numbers, we had 570,000 overall impressions from the campaign, as well as 11,000 comments and reactions and 800 shares, which was way more than what we were initially expecting.

People seemed really engaged with the project, especially around some of our supporter spotlight posts. A lot of people were happy to see familiar faces from the community, which definitely helped in terms of getting a response. The Q&A went over very well too, so we were quite pleased with the overall level of engagement.

How did Sculpt perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team was very organized and scheduled regular meetings with us to make sure that we were up to date about what had happened since we last met and any changes they wanted to propose. For the most part, we communicated over Slack and Airtable, which made things pretty simple to keep track of.

Our team was pretty focused on other aspects of the fundraising activities, so having a team devoted to just the social media aspect was incredibly helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They did a particularly good job of taking some of our existing campaign materials that we had in place for our brand and translating those into the digital and social media realm. Their team was able to use that imagery and copy in bite-sized social media assets, which we really appreciated because it was important to maintain that consistency through the other changes that were taking place for the campaign.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I was very satisfied overall. The biggest challenge was having our team keep up with their pace, so I don’t think there’s anything they should have done differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come into the project with ideas to help you get started but be open to their contributions as well. They brought a lot of great suggestions to the table that helped us refine our goals to the context of social media. Embracing the collaboration between your teams is definitely the key to producing and executing the best results.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am in charge of all things marketing for a fleet and asset management company located in Cedar Rapids, IA. We work primarily with government entities to track their assets and inventory.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sculpt?

We hired Sculpt to do the vast majority of our digital marketing, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, retargeting, CRM and a little bit of website stuff.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal of this project was to have a better digital footprint in government industries, such as law enforcement, fire and federal. Some more goals were to increase organic and well as paid ads, to ultimately get more website traffic and qualified leads for our sales team.

How did you select this vendor?

In the past, we had been using multiple people and internal people for digital marketing type activities and they were not effective. We wanted to stay local as we enjoy having partners we can meet face to face. We had a few different firms that we looked at but in the end, Sculpt stood out as the clear team we needed. Josh is on the cutting edge of digital marketing tech and has great communication skills. It was also very appealing with their approach and methods to get us where we needed to me.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

1. Google/SEO: This was a big piece in the space that we compete in. This was around paid search and how we wanted to reach our potential targets. With their ability to understand our business, it allowed the keywords and negative words to be much more effective.

2. Facebook and LinkedIn: This was similar to the first but reaching the people we wanted based on titles and locations, all while creating the ads and copy to be effective and continue to monitor.

3. Drift: This was the implementation of a chatbot on our website which has proved to be impactful in its short 6-month life.

4. HubSpot: Another software purchase that would allow our Sales and Marketing team to communicate more effectively and report better on our results that will drive our marketing and sales strategies into the future.

What was the team composition?

I have worked closely with Josh, the CEO, as well as Arlene our specific Account Manager. Josh has been extremely communicative both during and after business hours, basically, when I need help I can count on Josh to get me that answer. Arlene has also been extremely helpful, on-time and communicative with any and all of our needs. I think that they have both went above and beyond what we asked.

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

There have been multiple leads from web searches, new web pages, new content, better rankings, and a new CRM. This has been effective.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

As I said before, Arlene has been nothing short of fantastic with all of our requests. No matter how outlandish they may be, Arlene is there to talk us through it and help us accomplish the task at hand.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What is most impressive is their willingness to help, and they truly look at our partnership as a PARTNERSHIP. They are not just providing a service, but they are succeeding with us, and we are one team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At this point, I don't think so. They have been great.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the editor-in-chief of a website that markets cities, states and regions as great places to live, work and visit. We receive more than 11 million visitors annually.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sculpt?

We were looking to audit and update our social presence. We needed to figure out how to better serve our clients through Facebook marketing, how to grow our audiences and follower counts, and how to define and amplify the digital voice of our brand.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to grow our social media audiences, and more specifically, we wanted to make sure those audiences align with our target audience (millennials who are interested in relocation and travel).

We wanted to streamline the way we use Facebook ads in order to increase engagement and get more bang for our buck, and also take some of the pressure off our in-house team to come up with an overarching strategy. In the process of overhauling our social presence, we wanted to clarify our digital brand voice and identify some ways we can better connect with readers and potential clients online.

How did you select this vendor?

I saw a video that Sculpt had produced for one of our clients and wanted to see if they could work the same magic for us. Turns out: yes, they could.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We had a 2-hour kickoff meeting where we went in-depth about the current brand voice and social presence, envisioning where we wanted to go from here, what our big goals were and what our challenges are.

This was incredibly helpful for my team and me as we had not really had a chance to do this kind of in-depth branding work before Sculpt came on board, and the way they facilitated the discussion was incredibly inspiring and clarifying (again, this was just the kickoff meeting!).

From there, Sculpt did an in-depth audit of our current social media presence and strategy, identifying what was working, what wasn't working, challenges and opportunities. In our next meeting, we reviewed the audit (which was again incredibly helpful).

Next, Sculpt created a new strategy for us based on the audit and our goals. We had a meeting in which they went over not just the "what" but the "why" — pinpointing the reasons and strategy behind each recommendation and helping us understand the strategy holistically.

I also really appreciated that they gave us recommendations at the crawl, walk and run levels, allowing us to choose how to implement the strategy based on our current team and resources, while letting us envision exactly how we can build toward a bigger goal. We implemented the strategies using our in-house team with help from Sculpt to cover the gaps where we either didn't have the time or expertise to do it ourselves.

What was the team composition?

We had two main team members at Sculpt that we worked with, but our conversations included frequent input from the CEO and other specialists that they brought in to help when needed.

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

Our project is still ongoing, but I will say right off the bat that working with them has saved us a huge amount of time and money.

One example: we had been posting on Facebook 5-7 times a day, believing this was the best strategy to increase traffic and engagement. Based on their audit of our social channels, Sculpt advised posting just once a day, and changing the way we formatted posts to increase engagement and emotional connection.

We saw traffic and engagement increase with fewer postings while our team instantly saved multiple hours a week that we could then dedicate to other tasks.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Sculpt has been very clear and communicative throughout the whole process, and extremely responsive whenever questions arose. The structure of the meetings and check-ins worked great for us, but it was so nice to also have them available to hop on a phone or zoom call when we got stuck or needed clarification on something urgently.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

So many things. I'm going to just list them out:

Very clear communication. From the way they lay out the information in their decks to the way they format solutions in crawl/walk/run stages, everything was communicated clearly.

The way they focus on the task at hand while also thinking and dreaming bigger. We signed up for a social media strategy project with them. What have I gotten out of it? Not just a social media strategy, but some really exciting, big ideas about our brand in general and where we want to be in 6 months, a year, five years, etc. The conversations we had with Sculpt during the course of this project will inform the direction and branding of our company for years to come.

Their genuine curiosity to solve problems and find creative solutions. Yes, we hired Sculpt for a specific project, but I never felt like they were going through the motions of working on a finite project for us; I felt like they truly valued our company and were eager and interested in our unique challenges and goals. Every question we asked was met with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm that was contagious.

Their humble professionalism. Sculpt is really, really good at what they do, but they never treated us like they were on a different level or tried to lord their knowledge/expertise over us. It felt like a collaboration with a brilliant friend who was eager to share and help.

Also, there was a lot of talk in our office after our strategy meeting with Sculpt about how they actually delivered exactly what they said they would, and didn't hide any crucial info or services behind a paywall. Our entire team was extremely impressed by this.

Sculpt made it clear that they could help with certain next steps if we were interested in pursuing them, but they didn't do what so many agencies do, which is giving you 75% of the solution and saying, "you have to pay more to get the last 25%." Sculpt delivered 110%, and then said, "let us know how we can help if you want to do more."

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I can think of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

ICR IOWA is a regional economic development organization that works on business attraction, talent attraction and development, and regional marketing for our seven-county region in east central Iowa. As the Director of Talent Attraction, my job is to find interested candidates and connect them with growing companies and careers here in the region. We're specifically targeting major metros, mostly in the Midwest, and appealing to people on social media with quality of life imagery and video.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sculpt?

We hired Sculpt to handle our digital marketing strategy. The projects include video (writing, filming, directing, promoting), social media advertising and content, CRM (Hubspot) consultation, and LinkedIn management (strategy, advertising).

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals are, most simply, to promote the region through social media. More specifically, we wanted to drive 500 candidates into our talent funnel and to convert as many as possible into hires for our growing companies. We need people outside of ICR to connect (or re-connect) with what makes this region a special place to live. Sculpt is delivering on every bit of this, and more.

How did you select this vendor?

In late 2018, we sent out an RFP to pre-selected local marketing agencies. We told them our budget and a few ideas that we had in mind. We also told them our very specific goals. We received four responses to our RFP and had follow-up meetings with each of the agencies.

We selected Sculpt because of their creativity, willingness to try new things, track record for success, and deep understanding of our brand and its tone. When we stacked up the four agencies, the answer became very clear that Sculpt was the right choice for this job.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Upon selecting Sculpt as our agency, we had a series of pre-launch meetings to discuss their ideas and ours, make sure they had an intimate understanding of our target markets and prospects, select platforms, and whiteboard our goals.

We launched with a few test ad campaigns on Facebook to gauge the markets that we thought would be best. We learned, in a relatively short time, how to best allocate our budget. Sculpt has been very strategic in this case. We don't have a huge budget, so we need to be sure that we're spending money on the right platforms and in the right markets. Thanks to them, we are.

Then, we shot a video that we have been using on Facebook and LinkedIn. Sculpt wrote, directed, and filmed the video, and it has been a tremendous success.

Now, as we look into what's ahead, we're able to capitalize on the success of the video and put more together. The way the contracts are structured with Sculpt (based on a detailed points system), we have the ability to shift our strategy based on success we're seeing. They haven't locked us into anything but rather helped us build on current and past efforts that have been working well. I've never worked with an agency that structures their contracts this way.

What was the team composition?

We work closely with many people on Sculpt's team, including their CEO, designers, creative team, writers, and video producers, but our main point of contact is our project manager, Arlene. Arlene is keeping everyone on the same page as we move and make decisions quickly. She deeply understands our needs, goals, and work styles, and has become an invaluable member of our team. The response time from Sculpt has been shockingly fast. They're able to meet when we need them. They answer emails promptly. They keep us aware of success and let us know when something needs to be tweaked. The process has been flawless.

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

The results of our campaigns have been very impressive. Since we launched our first video, we've seen an over 200% increase in lead capture. We've passed our six-month goal in three months and show no signs of slowing down. Additionally, the leads that we're getting are more qualified than ever before.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Arlene, our project manager, is amazingly reachable. She's able to answer, or find an answer, to our questions really quickly. She manages workflows in our CRM (HubSpot) and communicates clearly, which is important since we're not professional marketers. We chose to communicate through email, which is easiest for us, but on the backend of the program, the team at Sculpt uses Slack to keep everything in line.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Results aside, Sculpt really, really understands our brand. It's extremely important that we have an agency that knows how to talk to our targets and prospects because we have a very specific tone in how we communicate. They've been able to capture our humor and laid-back approach to communication, and they're really funny.

The humor is super important to us and the way we communicate. Also, people are shocked at the quality of the video production and have a hard time believing that a local company had that type of writing and producing talent and equipment.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There are always ways to improve, of course, but I can't think of anything that I would change or do differently. Sculpt has been out in front of every question or issue that we thought may arise. In fact, the structure of our organization causes more issues than anything, and Sculpt has found a way to work with it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior vice president of marketing at MidWestOne Bank.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sculpt?

We needed a social media strategy to support content development and engagement. Our advertisements didn’t feel organic/authentic and weren’t working. We wanted to increase engagement with prospective and existing customers and existing through our social media.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sculpt first conducted a social media audit to understand our company, our goals, and locations (as we are in five different states). They primarily focused on our community involvement in Iowa City where our headquarters is located. Their team discussed and planned with us a strategy to help us grow on all channels, increase engagement with our audience, and develop engaging content for all demographics and regions.

Then, they developed our marketing strategy using 3 different key areas: financial literacy, community involvement, and integrating a human element. Sculpt made sure our audience was engaged with our advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

What is the team composition?

We work with their CEO and an account manager.

How did you come to work with Sculpt?

When I was working for a different company, a college recommended them to me. They were a startup working with schools and local businesses. They were the right fit for us, as we wanted to get away from our failing large-scale, corporate media. We contacted Sculpt and they gave insightful critiques of our marketing.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend $10,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in October 2017, and the work is ongoing.

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

It has only been a few months, but they’ve significantly increased our audience and engagement thus far; All our channels have grown by double digits.

How did Sculpt perform from a project management standpoint?

Even with all my experience with various agencies, I’ve never known an agency that can manage a project better than Sculpt. We conduct bi-weekly meetings, and they are always 30 –60 days ahead of schedule on content development review and approval.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They take care of absolutely everything and provide all the resources they can.  Their team creates the strategy, comes up with the concept, and executive it wonderfully. They understand our audience and our company extremely well. They convey the "human" element incredibly well and deliver content that people really care about.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t overthink your social media and let the agency take control of it. It's not the place to push your products. All the channels are very unique and different. Let the experts do their job.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the communications director for a locally owned real estate company that works with both residential and commercial clients. In my role, I manage the company’s social media and marketing. I also assist our agents with graphic design work, social media maintenance, website auditing and marketing consulting.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sculpt?

We enlisted Sculpt to help guide conversations between ownership, agents and myself which would expedite the process of establishing a marketing strategy framework.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to establish a formal marketing plan for the company to move forward with. Our greatest challenge was launching a new brand that uplifted both the company and our realtors and—at the same time—still portrayed our firm as an educational and informational resource for our community.

How did you select this vendor?

Sculpt management had previously encountered poor experiences with other vendors in the area and were hesitant about considering another one. However, my having personally known the Sculpt team for many years prompted some initial conversations about goals, challenges and needs. These conversations ultimately led to a working relationship.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Josh (CEO, Sculpt) and Emily (Operations Leader, Sculpt) met with me for initial conversations that preceded meetings with the ownership team. There, they discussed themes, goals and challenges to help envision our future partnership. From there, I met with our agents to discuss how the new brand strategy would influence their work. After these initial conversations, Sculpt synthesized our feedback and worked with us to build out brand standards and guidelines, create themes for ongoing social media campaigns, build an editorial calendar and expand on our new logo with mood boards, new fonts and added color.

What was the team composition?

After initial conversations, I worked closely with the managing director and communication designer.

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

Our social media impressions, engagement and clicks have all increased dramatically since we began implementing Sculpt’s editorial calendar. In just under two months, our impressions have increased 84%, our engagement has almost tripled and clicks have more than quadrupled. We now use clean templates and brand guidelines to consistently post with purpose and meaning. The new direction allows me the time work on agent projects, research blog post topics and invent new, fun ideas for our social media.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Working with Sculpt was super easy. They clearly identified a project timeline, set up meetings in a timely manner and—during each meeting—allocated plenty of time for creative brainstorming and collaboration. When building out our new templates, they worked with my own skills and design tools to make future execution seamless.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They asked challenging questions and took a deep dive into what our brand means for our owners and agents. They challenged our mindsets in a collaborative, effective manner. They were able to meet us where we were and expand from there. Overall, Sculpt met my already high expectations.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the Marketing Manager of Village Capital, we're a nonprofit and venture capital firm. We find, train, and invest in early-stage entrepreneurs across the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sculpt?

We wanted to improve our social media presence. We have a decent following and we put out a lot of content, but all our efforts had been in-house. We did not have any overarching strategy, and Sculpt could provide that. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They've been training us on social media strategy, teaching us how to use Facebook and Facebook ad manager. They have also been teaching us to set goals for social media which is really important, like how to turn a stranger into a customer, and then an advocate for your business. Also, how to measure your success at doing that.

We're still very much in the process of learning and the ramp-up phase, but before we started, we were only really measuring how many Twitter followers we had. We had a gut feeling on whether a Tweet or Facebook post worked or not. Now we're getting to a point where we have a much more rigorous schedule for social media. We are running multi-part campaigns where we target certain users based on their engagement with certain posts. We're getting a lot more focused on converting social media impressions to website views, essentially inbound leads. They have created some content, but mostly they create templates for us.

We've got a book coming up, The Innovation Blind Spot. Sculpt is creating social media content for the book, with posts, images. They are going to create and basically run that campaign, and we’re hoping the book will make a big splash. We want to be able to share it in an engaging way, and we think Sculpt is a good firm to do that.

They have made some changes and recommendations for our website in order to maximize inbound leads. They did things like install Facebook Pixel. They're also helping us make a decision on whether to buy HubSpot, and analyzing which features of HubSpot would be most useful. They generally have been very good at giving us strategic advice.

What is the team dynamic?

Every time we have a call, I deal with two people, Kaitlyn and Laura, they keep bringing in other people who help though. Josh just seems like a genius when it comes to strategy. We’ve got another guy that does the digital and then they have a visual team.

How did you come to work with Sculpt?

I was not involved in the selection process.

How much have you invested with them?

Somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

May 2017 - Ongoing

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

We had a campaign, we put out a report, and they basically ran the whole social media campaign. They created content, scheduled its release and we targeted ads. They are marketing and branding our business in a unified way.

How did Sculpt perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, it's been a smooth process. We usually do Google Hangouts, they're always happy to get on a call on short notice.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Referring back to the team composition, they have a very deep bench from what I gather. They have a lot of talented people that they can tap into, beyond just the two account representatives.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I understand that they're adapting their on-boarding according to needs, but there could be better tracking of where we are in the process. For instance, we've had weekly meetings and we've done a strategy session and then an ad manager session. It'd be helpful to see the progress we’ve made on reaching a marker. Then, once we meet that marker, help us to understand what is going to happen, perhaps directing us on how to do ads ourselves, or transition to a more advisory relationship. Regular check-ups would be helpful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Wilson’s Orchard Hard Cider, a craft cider company in Iowa City, Iowa. We grow over 120 different varieties in our u-pick orchard, all chosen based on one simple criterion: great taste. The varieties we grow ripen from the beginning of August through October. In September 2015, Wilson’s Orchard began crafting our own hard cider with the same passion used to grow some of the best fruit in the Midwest.

As the marketing manager for the company, my role is to share our story with our Iowa customers and support our wholesalers in their efforts to promote and sell our products in retail and on-premise locations throughout the state. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Sculpt?

The main challenge we faced when entering our partnership with Sculpt was boosting awareness of our hard cider brand and building an engaged network of brand ambassadors in a community that wasn't knowledgeable about craft cider. While many in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area were familiar with our u-pick orchard, recognition of our hard cider products was relatively low.

With the release of our new packaging and our facility's growing capacity, building a social media presence for our hard cider flavors was a key aspect to encouraging sales and gaining new customers. We saw this as an opportunity to re-introduce ourselves to the market and to share our brand values and origin with our Wilson Orchard fans and craft beverage enthusiasts throughout the state. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Overall, the scope of their services for this project covered many aspects of digital marketing implementation, including content development and scheduling, theme design, photography, audience targeting and testing, advertisement placement and budgeting, and training and support for me, the in-house marketing manager.

Having Sculpt as a resource really helped us launch our hard cider social media pages on Facebook and Instagram and start to engage the community around our brand. They were very flexible with us and used an all-in-one approach. I was a little familiar with social media but not at all familiar with paid targeted advertising. They helped us fill the content calendar, build some themes, and make some very interesting content that shared our story. Beyond that, they helped us market that story to people who would be interested in learning more about our brand.

Sculpt was in charge of a lot of our advertising campaigns, as well as the graphic design templates. They did an amazing job of coaching me on how to continue their strategy after our agreement ended. They showed me what type of content works, walked me through what I had posted, and explained how I could make it better. If it worked well, they showed me why. They also provided me with easy paid targeting for audience groups. I could then curate the information they had developed and tested in order to implement it on my own.

How did you come to work with Sculpt?

We chose Sculpt as our digital strategy firm because of the versatility of their services provided and proven track record helping small businesses in similar markets. Their team was really easy to work with, and it was clear they were passionate about creating smart and valuable solutions. They were willing to be flexible with us and very hands-on with the coaching.

How much have you invested with Sculpt?

The entire four-month project was under $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our project with them in August of 2016 and wrapped it up at the end of November of that year. We’ve continued our partnership with them on a new project, which started in January of this year and will probably run through July. 

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

Sculpt took us from zero to over 3,000 engaged followers. The reach for that was even farther—at times up to 12,000 people in our area. The growth on that was exponential for those four months. It’s tapered off since then, so it’s clear that their services were really targeted and effective. We’ve had people tell us how awesome our social media is and how they really enjoy our post updates. People really respond to some of the content we’ve been posting, both in person and in online engagement metrics. Their coaching continues to be a valuable tool for me.

Their direction has helped us speak to our customers directly, which has been especially helpful in sharing our story with the broader community and handling customer feedback and suggestions. For example, when we released our new packaging, we encountered numerous breakage issues. The original four-pack handle was not sturdy enough to hold four 12 oz. bottles. In addition to working with our distribution team and finding a new carrier manufacturer, we were able to address the issue and share our resolution with customers via social media.

How did Sculpt perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a relatively large team on both sides. There were three of us from Wilson’s Orchard Hard Cider; at any given point, we felt we had access to any of their team members. They had Alec doing online analytics. Emily was managing the project and keeping track of everything, and she can run a meeting like nobody I’ve ever seen before. In a room of eight people, she’s pretty commanding and awesome. We also had access to the graphic designer, their photographer, and several other key players on their team. From a project management standpoint, they’re really all hands on deck. They’ve very organized, effective, and easy to work with.

What did you find most impressive about Sculpt?

They did a great job of explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing. They work with small businesses to promote them on a level that I’ve never seen before. You can tell when Sculpt has their hands on a project. It’s very well done and looks professional, but it’s campy enough that you feel connected to a brand. We have a few people who don’t understand social media at all. Sculpt did an amazing job explaining how social media can help a small business, how it can share our story, and how we can define our target audience to get the results we need and promote sales.

Are there any areas Sculpt could improve?

We really enjoyed working with them, and I’ve learned a lot. I suppose one point of advice would be that if you’re going to engage in a coaching arrangement, really drill down and give a good understanding of what the advertising budget looks like, how the testing and targeting can be adjusted, and how to read those results. They’ve got a great staff that can do that for you, but when you’re moving into the independent work without them, it can be a bit of a head-spin. They did what they could to wean me onto that, but I guess I could have worked harder to use them as a resource while they were in a contract agreement. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop workflow and collaborative productivity solutions that help marketing, creative design, packaging and prepress workgroups around the world be more productive. We have over 1000 business customers. I am the CMO/COO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sculpt?

As the Platinum sponsor of Adobe's 2015 #AdobeMax conference, we needed to make a powerful statement with our prospects. We hired the Sculpt team to develop and execute a social campaign that got the attention of in-house marketing leaders before, during, and after the event.

We even asked a Sculpt team member to be onsite at the event to capture and promote content in real-time while a team back at Sculpt's HQ made sure we stayed at the top of the social media conversation.

The team did such a fantastic job that we hired them to provide ongoing management of our social media presence and to help launch a new product, Proofme.

How did you select this vendor?

Sculpt had been on our radar as a fast-growing, creative and results-oriented social media and marketing firm. When the opportunity arose to work with them, we jumped at the chance.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

The provided end-to-end strategy, creative content, audience building, social media management and analytics for our accounts. We worked with them for about 9 months building, across multiple nationwide events and in support of two products. 

We followed up the AdobeMAX engagement with a similar endeavor in support of our sponsorship at HOW Design Live. HOW Design Live is one of the most celebrated gatherings of creative professionals from agencies and in-house teams across the world.

Our goal was to break through the noise. To make a lasting impression with B2B and B2C audiences, we tapped Sculpt to lead HOW’s social campaign for Workgroups and ProofMe.

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

Over the months Sculpt worked with us, we significantly grew our social media engagement metrics and improved the quality of our audience. Their strategy and execution in support of our presence at AdobeMAX and HOW Design Live resulted in our accounts reaching a huge global audience of attendees and event followers. They helped improve our brand perception and strengthened our credibility with existing and prospective customers.