Strategic eMarketing

Please describe your company and your position there.

I manage office, compliance & marketing operations with a Private Finance Firm of Commercial Real Estate 1st lien Promissory Notes secured by Deeds of Trust. We lend up to 2.5MM in five Western States for terms of 12-36 months, interest only, or up to 15 year fully amortizing.

For what projects/services did your company hire Strategic eMarketing, and what were your goals?

Staying on top of search engine results using targeted key words requires specialized knowledge and time spent keeping current on the shifting e-commerce environment. Strategic eMarketing met our goal of keeping our website on the top five results for our keywords.

How did you select Strategic eMarketing and what were the deciding factors?

Strategic eMarketing founder Emanuel Rose reached out to our firm through a mutual human network and pitched a lead generation structure that was worth the costs. Management evaluated the SeM offer against other advertisers of the same services. There was no contest in the matching of our firm's business model to SeM's understanding of both local, human, and e-Commerce marketing.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We were presented with current website user data patterns, shown keyword analysis, and given a proposed action plan for target search results and conversion.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Initially one. We were satisfied with the trajectory and approved further eCommerce tasks to be handled at SeM. Now there are two primaries and a support team keeping us at the front of lead generation and search engine optomization.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We obtain ~100+ new leads each month. Our marketing reports show us continuing to place at the top of the front page for search engine results of our chosen keywords.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Emails answered promptly and video conferences with objectives that are completed on time.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Pragmatic assess - target - act - review and improve business model, given the dynamic learning environment of eMarketing.

Are there any areas for improvement?

SeM is staying forward thinking and adapting to market shifts.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and CEO of Mass Ingenuity, a company focused on enterprise performance management. We provide SaaS solutions and consulting services.

We're focused on three different markets: the enterprise market, which is all large state agencies across the country; mid-market commercial, which is primarily manufacturing, supply chains, and some insurance companies; and finally, our significant market power, which is the fully automated product.

What challenge were you trying to address with Strategic eMarketing?

We were seeking to install a long-term digital marketing effort for us. We had a very high-end enterprise type of referral marketing, but we really needed to go much larger and fully digital. We brought in Strategic eMarketing, seeking a full package from them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Strategic eMarketing is involved in everything marketing-wise, from the strategy to the ground tactics. Their scope ranges from developing marketing tactics to specific programs that include an ongoing extensive outbound marketing campaign, blog and newsletter development, content creation and curation, and a lot of social media marketing efforts, especially on Linkedin.

At the most basic level, they’re in charge of SEO, managing our site, advertising, and the implementation of details. They manage and develop all of the assets needed, and they teach us how to do it at the same time. They’re also helping us expand and become a true marketing engine.

We work on the vision and the strategy together. They take the lead because they’re the experts, and we do the final approvals. It all runs quite smoothly.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with Emanuel (CEO) and a project manager. There are four more people involved in everything, from creative development to website work. Many of my team members work with them.

How did you come to work with Strategic eMarketing?

Strategic eMarketing was recommended to me by a third party. I did a little research and talked with Emanuel. Since I‘d been comparing and contrasting other agencies and organizations, it was really clear to me that they were going to culturally fit with us quite well.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

In terms of quality, I’m very pleased with Strategic eMarketing’s work. There’s very little rework occurring with their deliverables and assets. The quality of their content creation is very high.

On the qualitative side, even in these early stages, we've already gotten some excellent responses to emails, even cold emails. Our social media work has gone from nowhere to being pretty active now.

The lead generation has been extraordinary. It’s exciting having as much response as we’re getting. There haven’t been only sales leads, but we’ve had over 10 potential value-added reseller leads as well — something impossible to achieve on our own. We’ve also gotten AI machine learning companies to come forward with suggestions on how to integrate with us. All of this has been very important to us because we want to build up relationships as much as we want to have sales.

How did Strategic eMarketing perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management skills that Strategic eMarketing has are extraordinary. They use plenty of tools, but they're wise enough to know that we're a SaaS company with lots of tools, too, so we would be unimpressed by them. They're very good at getting the strategy out in plain English, with good reports and discussions that always keep us aware of where we are.

Strategic eMarketing is also constantly helping us move through our own changes as we learn to do more and more marketing — that's really an interesting and enormous skill set. In other words, instead of having us deal with tools, as several agencies I've worked with have in the past, they bring forward what I care about, which is how we’re doing, where we can improve, what the actual performance is today, and what we can forecast.

What did you find most impressive about them?

At the top of the list, Strategic eMarketing’s focus on results is impressive. A day doesn't go by where they're not thinking about results and discussing them. They make sure that we're aware of the progress we're making toward both quantitative and qualitative results.

In addition, their ability to understand that organizations have to go through changes and transformations in order to be effective is quite deep. They're very effective at this, which has been very positive in our work together.

They (and Emanuel in particular) are quite capable of communicating in such a manner that we can put them in front of customers, partners, and even our board risk committee and our investors. This is a big plus because, while we're marketing outbound, there's a significant amount of marketing that has to occur inbound as well. They are very good at being collaborative and a part of our team.

Most of my experiences with other agencies have been lousy. However, my experience with Strategic eMarketing has been extraordinarily positive. They practically read our minds, which is an extraordinary gift. They also have the ability to understand that we are very process-oriented because what we sell is a product designed to enhance performance for very large customers. These customers have really high expectations of both ROI and time-to-value, and Strategic eMarketing demonstrates the same adherence to that quality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are extremely polite to us. I’ve encouraged them to recognize that they’ve earned the right to be as direct as they want to be with us because they know what they’re talking about. I welcome them to behave like any other member of our team.

We tend to be very straightforward because we are focused on the issues, not the people. Having them fit into that dynamic and be comfortable with being critical is something that we’re encouraging them to do.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am co founder and CEO of a 5 health club organization in Northern California

For what projects/services did your company hire Strategic eMarketing, and what were your goals?

While we were the biggest health club organization, we were having trouble increasing our price point and varying our offers to attract more people.

How did you select Strategic eMarketing and what were the deciding factors?

Strategic E marketing worked our project as if it were THEIR business. They worked with our marketing department to design a strategic plan, a content calendar and effective pricing and new offers to accomplish and exceed our goals and helped engage our staff in the process.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and campaigns.

Survey staff and members Learn about our current situation Get clear about our goals Design a path to get their Build our website with accurate relevant info and good SEO ratings Worked a content calendar with the team and started advertising Helped the team sell the programs

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

3 people primarily Owner/marketing director Graphic artist Writer

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Changed us from an “order taking” culture to a service and sales company.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Combination of “live meetings, emails and phone calls. Showed us drafts and worked with us to get what we wanted. Compared their metrics with our goals and met or exceeded them, or they would redo the offer and do it again

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their ability to treat us as if we were Their only customer

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

In retrospect they could have pushed us harder to be more aggressive with our marketing