S&G Content Marketing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the global VP of strategy & marketing for Master Fluid Solutions. It’s a global metalworking fluids company, specializing in high-performance cutting fluids for aerospace, industrial, and automotive industries. We have been in business for 70 years, and have operations in the U.S., Europe, India, China, and Turkey.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

Based on surveys we did within our industries, we discovered that we had relatively low brand recall, and essentially no social engagement. We wanted to improve our position in the industry, and were looking for a partner to help with content marketing and PR. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

There were initial strategy sessions to discuss our visions, and develop a base of content. Since then, they’ve built a content base via case studies, writing blogs, press releases, and more. They handle PR for the company, as well.

What is the team composition?

Brandon (Director, Client Accounts) is the primary contact, interacting with several of our people, and is the project manager. We also interact with Lauren (CEO & Content Marketing Expert). There is also an extended team working with us.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

We found them on Clutch. We found them to be the best cultural fit for us from the three companies we considered.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around late 2018, and it’s ongoing.

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

We chose to take the longer, slower road, building up good brand awareness and have seen improvement in every area we measured. There were several measures we monitored, including website and social media engagement, and customer and associate feedback.

The blogs are the most engaged in on our social media accounts, generating leads. We have some direct links between those leads and customer acquisition, so we are very satisfied. It’s been a very positive engagement so far, and we have plans to expand our collaboration.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Initially, our people weren’t fully ready, so it was tough. They guided us and pushed us for what they need, and we’ve come around to things working more smoothly and collaboratively. We speak with Brandon daily, and with Lauren and the extended team every week or so. They are proactive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Brandon is excellent at pushing us and really guiding the project. They have stuck with us through the rough start, and we’re seeing good results from it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like to see them expand their footprint from the U.S. so we could work with them on a global scale.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Bring your people into the program. That’s the best track for a successful outcome.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a marketing consultant, primarily working with small startups and nonprofits.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

My client launched an early educator training platform. We wanted to build out the company’s owner as a thought leader.

What was the scope of their involvement?

S&G Content Marketing is working to build my client as a thought leader. Their team places media and tries to get my client quoted in articles on a plethora of different platforms at all levels—from academic to general consumer publications.

Lauren (CEO) has strict parameters as a result of our current moment. As well, my client isn’t trained in media interviews. For the moment, they insert my client in different daily queries from journalists. To date, they’ve only been involved in nuts and bolts PR.

What is the team composition?

I work with Lauren directly. There are account coordinators on her team who support the project too.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

I found S&G through Clutch. I’m not usually a person who responds to salespeople, but their salesman did well. We had a couple of conversations and then he put me in contact with Lauren. She and I hit it off. I asked her for a proposal, which I brought to my client. We invited Lauren to visit and meet with senior staff. Everybody liked her. She had good ideas about current topics and proposed a shorter-term engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $8,000 a month on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement kicked into gear in April 2020 and it’s ongoing.

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

Normally in PR, there’s a ramp-up time to see traction but S&G does well. Lauren hit the ground running in terms of her specific focus. She has placed us in good areas of the media, so we’ve had coverage.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We mostly communicate by phone and email. They keep us informed about their efforts as well as the deliverables for both sides. Their project management’s good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We didn’t want a big agency but still wanted an experienced partner with a global footprint. I like S&G because they’re a boutique size agency. Their team handles us properly, which I appreciate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was an assumption that my client had the experience to jump into answering queries. There has been a learning curve in that process. That’s on both sides. We could’ve had an internal flow to support media answering.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Lauren’s a professional who knows her industry. Let her do her job. Listen to her and have lots of conversations with her. It’s also important that the goals are understood on both sides.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a marketing technology platform that helps ambitious D2C brands and marketers grow. 

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We place a lot of focus on surrounding strategy and planning to amplify our brand. Our team was in need of content, resources, and a creative engine to help support that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

To collaborate, we meet bi-weekly to set agendas and go over broader topics like our overall vision as a content team. They return to us with concepts and ideas that help build on our ideas. In their work, they’ve created interactive quizzes and e-book. In addition, they’ve handled copywriting and design work to create the assets that support our blog. Once they produce the content, we place it.

What is the team composition?

We work with about four of their team members. 

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

I inherited them as a partner when I started this position. Because they had already gone through the process of learning about our company and adjusting to our processes, they got us to a steady place.

I was satisfied with how they’re proactive about trying to add value to the partnership. Through our interactions, I could tell they were creative and had a good understanding of my expectations. That intuition comes from experience, and their expertise shows in the work they do.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $100,000–$150,000 on their services. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in June 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.  

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

They’re creative with tons of experience. Their work is making us famous. 

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We used to have weekly meetings, but we rely pretty heavily on Slack at this point. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their work makes them stand out from competitors. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m satisfied with them as an agency. They’re able to get 80%–90% of our work done without any necessary edits. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s helpful to have a clear vision. Make sure you communicate your vision with their team. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of Superfine! Art Fair. We’re a contemporary art fair that holds events in multiple cities.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We needed an experienced firm to lead a PR push.

What was the scope of their involvement?

S&G Content Marketing is helping us design and execute an elaborate PR strategy. Our goal is to develop attainable goals and objectives versus getting random press. They also help amp up the caliber of media coverage we get. Now, notable outlets write high-quality content about us. Most articles are about us as a business instead simply covering us as an event coming to town. They’re also working with our B2B marketing and brand positioning efforts.

What is the team composition?

Lauren (CEO, S&G Content Marketing) is our primary point of contact. We also interact with a PR manager and several content writers.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

We started working with them peripherally when they were representing one of our clients. Once we saw their skills in action, it wasn’t long before we hired them ourselves. Lauren and her team quickly got to the bottom of what our business is about. They tell our story in a way that a lot of other companies wouldn’t be able to do. They’re extremely content-driven.

What is the status of this engagement?

We hired them in February 2018, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

S&G Content Marketing has elevated our brand significantly. With their help, we’ve been able to achieve several long-term objectives. Now that we have a strong position in the marketplace, we’re able to reach our target visitors and clients.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily communicate via email, but they’re also easy to reach over the phone. I’ve worked with people from PR and marketing firms that disappear for months at a time, so it’s nice having people that we can count on.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their business consulting services. Lauren and her team can understand products and companies by breaking them down comprehensively. Through that process, they identified our goals before reaching them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I have no criticism to offer at this time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CMO of a contract research organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We needed content marketing services to help educate our readers on what differentiates our company from others. However, we lacked the capacity to produce content internally and found it difficult to source strong, qualified writers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

S&G initially set up a strategy session with us and took some time to learn about our niche industry, challenges, and goals. They started out providing blog post content and then eventually produced content for white papers, case studies, social media, conference marketing materials, and e-books. They also helped us build out our own internal content team. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people on their team.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

Someone I knew had worked with them in the past and recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–July 2018.

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

S&G's high-quality content helped us significantly improve traffic to our website.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was fantastic all around. We held regular strategy sessions, and they were quick to turn around deliverables. Whenever we requested any revisions, they'd generally complete them with 48 hours.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The extent to which they were able to quickly grasp our niche industry was very impressive. The previous content agency we'd worked with had a lot more difficulty fully grasping the nature of our industry and made a lot of basic errors by comparison. S&M understood our voice, which saved us a lot of time and headaches throughout the relationship.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could do a better job of communicating the range of services they offer. They were capable of doing more than we knew, but we just happened to discover the additional services they offered through casual conversation. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take the time to follow through with S&M's process. The structured calls and meetings in the beginning of the relationship were somewhat tedious, but they ended up being incredibly valuable in the long run.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing director of eperi, a German-based vendor of cloud data protection solutions. We developed our platform and offer it to the market for enterprise clients.

Clients can use our platform to ensure that critical sensitive data is encrypted and tokenized before uploading it to cloud services (e.g., Office 365, Salesforce). This gives enterprise clients peace of mind because they know their most precious assets and sensitive data (e.g., identifiable data) are well protected. Our solution acts as a central point of control where the data gets encrypted or decrypted as soon as it comes back from the cloud service through to the enterprise.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We needed a content marketing agency who could write articles on topics for enterprise clients about how to address their issues. We needed a ton of good content in order to increase market awareness.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our solution is very specific, so many enterprises are unaware that it exists because they only know of those offered through cloud vendors. They benefit greatly from our solution because they can use it alone to protect their data independently of their cloud service and also to fulfill their bigger compliance requirements.

We started with informing S&G about our topics, what we wanted to achieve, who our target groups were, and the purpose of our solutions. They then started creating entire blog posts by themselves, requiring only a few minor edits here and there. They monitor current trends and articles which appear on our topic. They also deliver one or two articles per week for us to publish on our corporate blog. I revise these articles individually. It’s all a very straightforward process.

We also have two other projects going on with them that will last for 2–3 months each. They’ve been writing some e-books on certain topics which range from 20–30 pages. I’m heavily involved with S&G on these projects.

What is the team composition?

There are two team members involved for the ongoing blog creations. I’m unsure how many are involved with the eBooks.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

I heard about them through their own social media work and LinkedIn while I was with another company. I saw several posts and checked out their blog. They had a lot of ideas when it came to content marketing, so I felt they were very experienced in that area. It gave me the confidence to reach out and talk to them.

After a couple conversations, we decided to do an initial tryout phase of six months. I brought them over when I joined eperi and they’re currently working with us. We partnered with S&G because of their market experience. They already worked with other clients in cyber security, so we were confident that they were the right partner to create our content.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them on this project in August 2017 and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We immediately saw significant increases in both our monthly website and blog traffic when we started working with S&G. It’s hard to say how much traffic the blog content influenced, but those posts were the first thing we really changed. The conversion rate also increased as a result of the boost in traffic.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed really well. They’re required to deliver a 600-word minimum blog post each week for which they always do so on time. Their blog posts are always high-quality. I’m very satisfied with their delivery.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They quickly and accurately understood what we wanted to achieve in order to turn it into tangible results.

It should also be taken into account that we’re a German-based company, so our focus lies in this region along with the U.K. Their ability to understand the kind of quality we want for specific situations here in Europe has been brilliant. They’re able to understand what our development here is doing as well as the compliance requirements involved, which really differ from the U.S. market. We didn’t have to teach them any of this because they already possessed an understanding of the European market. They bring an international background with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything they could do better. I’m really satisfied with their work. They’re always within budget and on time. Everything has been perfect. It would be a struggle to find another agency with the same high quality as S&G.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a SaaS company in the marketing services category. We build software that provides automated database marketing. I am the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We were looking for help with a couple of things related to content marketing. We were trying to add content to our website. We have very bright analytical people whose strengths are not in writing content for our average site visitor.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did some strategy and made a bunch of recommendations on website information architecture. There was a significant amount of copy work. They also did technical things and syndication, but I can’t remember the exact tools they used.

What is the team composition?

There were two or three people on the team. Lauren (Partner and CEO, S&G Content Marketing) was the lead and there was at least one more technical expert to do the marketing automation. There may have been a junior member on the account as well.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

I originally met Lauren as an independent contractor. She sent me and email when she was doing content marketing for her agency. When we had the need, I reached out to her and asked for her help.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together for a little over a year, between about August 2011 and December 2012.

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

Our pageview count per visit went up, specifically in content-rich sections. That was one of the goals they helped us reach.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great at managing expectations and communicating, which was mostly through email and in person. Lauren is creative, intelligent, and very helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They take a genuine interest in the subject matter and their principals seem very bright. They were highly engaged and kept their senior folks substantially involved. That was part of what made the relationship work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re not terribly pushy. It’s helpful sometimes when agencies sit down and pitch their other capabilities. They were very focused on the work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the VP of marketing for SchoolApply. We’re an EdTech company, trying to democratize education and simplify the process in terms of choice and options available for everyone. We’re a digital placement agency for anyone that wants to study abroad.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We were looking for help with public relations as we didn’t have our own PR department.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us find opportunities to feature SchoolApply within EdTech newspaper prints, online, and for investment purposes. They also improved the structure and tonality we currently use to address the various users of our website.

They did both content marketing as well as public relations. It involved establishing contacts and actively seeking educational leads. They joined our CEO/Co-Founder at a big startup event in Portugal and acted as our PR person to actively present and sell our services.

They have a very interesting approach in terms of how they go about things regarding specific research. They have a clear understanding of how SEO works in terms of on-site SEO. It’s easy to pick up the direct trends of their content on our blogs.

What is the team composition?

We had one point of contact, Lauren Fairbanks [Partner and CEO, S&G Content Marketing], but I know she had her back office who also did research.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

It was through word of mouth. A very good friend of mine had worked with them and had great success. I looked at a variety of options but narrowed it down and felt they were the absolute best choice for us.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in March 2016 and the work finished in February 2017.

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

The work was well worth the spend for what it did. It was great in terms of the direct contacts we established, but also the PR newsworthiness of how SchoolApply was able to position itself and the trust was immediate. We were cherrypicked about a year ago by Fortune as one of the emerging EdTech companies to really pay close attention to.

A lot of the content that came directly from them had a great impact in terms of month-on-month growth. We have a constant stream of leads, applicants, and soon to be students that find SchoolApply thanks to them. Content marketing and SEO is a marathon race, but even today there are constant increases in terms of our position in the search engine results.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed brilliantly. They were very straight to the point and clear. Based on a target-based approach, they understood exactly what was required and went for it. They were very target oriented and made it simple and non-complicated to work with them. It was particularly great given  that we work in an emergent market like EdTech where aggressive growth is very important.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to understand what we were trying to accomplish and lived and breathed our project. It was unlike a normal agency that bills on a monthly basis only dedicating a certain number of hours to you, and doesn’t really know what it is going on or cares for that matter.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have done better in really getting SchoolApply in front of more people when it comes to more of the PR side as well as the features. They are very good in the U.S. market, but the U.S. is not the entire world. There are many more places where I they could have done better work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president Senior Helpers, a home care agency that covers the New York City Area. We pair home health aides with senior citizens to help them with safety and medical issues, as well as socialization.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

We wanted to develop a resource website that would reach potential clients from our community and position us experts in our field.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had a website for our main service, but S&G built us a separate website that provides resources and blog content specific to the senior community. They came up with the design for the website, and assisted in conducting research and writing blog content. They completed that project in a year.

After that, I hired them to manage our pay-per-click campaigns to generate more leads on our sites.

What is the team composition? 

I worked with Lauren Fairbanks [CEO and Partner, S&G Content Marketing] and Alexandre Mouravskiy [Creative Director and Partner, S&G Content Marketing].

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

I met Lauren through a friend who informed her of our needs. We felt she was knowledgeable, so we hired her company to assist us.

How much have you invested with them?

It was a bit over $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in 2011, and our most recent pay-per-click campaign was completed in 2016.

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

We don’t have hard figures on the impact of their work because it’s difficult to track the different between the pay-per-click campaigns that S&G did for us versus those being purchased on our behalf by our franchise. 

But anecdotally, S&G did a fantastic job learning about our industry. Lauren and Alexandre got creative in trying to find different ways to accomplish our goals. We’ve seen an uptick in our web activity when they’ve manage our pay-per-click campaigns in the past. We’ve also noticed increased traffic on our main website when they completed our resource site. Whenever and however they’re involved, we see greater lead generation on our site.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a good job. They’re very timely; in fact, Lauren would often follow up without me so we could go through our data and review whether we were meeting our goal. From a project management standpoint, that speaks to their willingness to keep me apprised of their progress and stay on top of any changes that need to be made.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very hands-on. They’re a smaller company that appreciates details and understands the need for individualization to ensure success. They took the time to learn our company, and that made a positive impact on their work’s outcome.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. If we do another pay-per-click campaign or decide to build another website, I would absolutely partner with them again.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner at Mox Group Strategists, which is a retail strategy company that specializes in go-to-market tactics for small to medium-size brands. Using a retail perspective, we help our largely international user base with anything from brand and product analysis, to implementation, to sales distribution.

What challenge were you trying to address with S&G Content Marketing?

Retail and fashion companies are constantly inundated by calls and messages from individuals who want to be involved in their business, and I needed a way to stand out amongst the crowd. I wanted to present myself with authority and authenticity, and to clarify what I had to offer to our clients. When I first went to S&G, I needed not only to build up my company, but also to finesse my own image as an industry leader and expert.

What was the scope of their involvement?

S&G took a very similar approach that I would have taken from a product perspective, and then applied it to me and my business. They began by learning as much as they could about my business and our offered services, and then streamlined my message so that it became much clearer and more succinct. This took the form of general research and the creation of a detailed debrief on me. Their primary goals were to aim this message to my target audience and to use the best means possible to do so.

Once we had identified that audience and those channels, they created content to communicate directly with those people. The content took a variety of different forms, including blog posts, white papers, articles, presentations, and SlideShares—anything that we all felt spoke directly to people involved in my industry. Once they had created content and buzz, they did outreach and PR to present me me as an expert in the industry, including getting me placed in some great national press pieces.

What is the team composition?

I believe I worked with three people overall. At the beginning, I worked very closely with Lauren Fairbanks (Partner and CEO, S&G Content Marketing), who is one of the company’s principals. She got to know me best in the beginning and was instrumental in helping me strategize and shape my message. Along with some of the later content creation, I worked with Alex Mouravskiy (Creative Director, S&G Content Marketing) and Tim Torres (Content Editor, S&G Content Marketing) on some general housekeeping and strategy regarding the work itself.

How did you come to work with S&G Content Marketing?

A European partner recommended Lauren to me. When we first met, I knew that she was somebody who possessed skills that I had not even realized I needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $60,000 on the retainer for S&G’s services, and another $10,000 or $15,000 in project work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around March of 2017. I still work with them on a per-project basis, but the actual work regarding my own business concluded around December of that year when we did a little push for PR outreach with retail predictions for 2018.

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

Because our work together was more about building my business up, I do not have the typical metrics one might prefer for this kind of question regarding my industry. However, I was very excited by the number of placements I got through S&G’s efforts to help build up my voice as an authoritative one in my field, which was one of the major objectives of our partnership. These placements were not just in industry-specific publications, which can be easier to achieve, and included various great national publications.

If I take on a client who needs a content strategy or a marketing component of their market strategy to be translated with a U.S. perspective or voice, I will often introduce them to Lauren. Referring them to my clients is probably the biggest vote of confidence I could give another provider. My clients are my livelihood, and I only refer to them people next to whom I feel confident putting my name.

How did S&G Content Marketing perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was very good and is continuing to improve. One of the most difficult things to overcome as a growing company is to maintain the uniqueness of what you are offering without it becoming diluted by additional staff. S&G’s staff numbers grew quite a bit during my time working with them, but they have done a great job of making sure that I always felt like I was an important client. I always had great touch-time with one of their principles and I never felt like I lost my ability to work with them directly.

There was a lot of give and take during our working relationship, and S&G consistently made sure that I held myself accountable. In order for them to write appropriate content, I had to be diligent about helping them understand my business and myself. I appreciated how good they were about checking in with me and reminding me of deadlines, because I’m busy and I wanted to stay on target as much as they did.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to understand my industry really made them stand out from the competition. A client who is in a very different field did our initial introduction, so I was skeptical that there would be any professional synergy between myself and S&G. Once we actually met, however, I was very impressed by how quickly they broke down what I was doing, applied their formula to it, and helped me understand how they could help my business grow. They were on target with their deliverables, which needed very few edits overall, and they kept to their schedule.

A lot of people in my field feel a need for digital marketing and social media strategy, but no one quite knows how to pin down exactly what that entails. The spectrum of what’s available for a product offering is so vast that I did not know where to start. When I met Lauren, she had a great bird’s eye view of how best to crystallize what exactly was the most appropriate for my business. I was very happy to find a company with whom I could develop a great relationship. S&G gave me a little bit of everything for which I was looking. When we met our objectives, they did not try to have me stay on beyond suggesting that I stay in touch for whenever I might be ready to move on to the next new strategy, which I also appreciated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

my industry, I think that there is a lot of confusion about what is content, social media, digital strategy, and related terms. Whenever I talk to my colleagues, everyone still seems baffled about what all of the above is, despite many companies having implemented new roles like “Director of Digital Strategy.” I suggested to S&G that they do a little more self promotion and begin educating people on this topic, what they offer as a company, and why the subject is both different and important.