Process, Process, Process: Steps of the New Client Journey at EMB
Building strong relationships and growing trust with clients is an essential part of our onboarding process as a marketing agency. We want to make sure that every client is a great fit for us, as much as we are a great fit for them. In order to build that trust, we have put together a variety of processes to guide new clients on their marketing journey. Nothing builds trust like knowing there’s a plan.
Discovery Phase
Mindmap Sessions
We always want new clients to know exactly what to expect when working with us, so we start every relationship with a Digital Mindmap call to understand their goals, budget and current campaigns. It’s a one-and-a-half-hour consultation where we get to know your business and give you a sense of what it would be like to work together as a team. Up next is the Creative Mindmap. A complement to the Digital Mindmap, this session explores your brand from a creative perspective. We'll lead you through exercises that discuss brand vernacular, audience personas, content creation, brand identity and/or anything else that is relevant to setting you up for success.
Roadmap
After our Mindmap sessions, move on to the third and final piece of our Discovery phase: the Roadmap. This 30-day process allows us to take an analytical deep-dive into clients’ markets as well as what their direct and indirect competitors are doing in the digital space. The end result is a robust report, usually between 50 and 80 pages, that blends data and expert insights to develop a "roadmap" for future work together. We'll recommend which strategies have the most potential and start to outline goals, budgets and campaigns. The report may seem unsexy to those who hate the numbers, but we keep it engaging and organized!
Scope of Work
Included in the Discovery phase is a detailed and process-oriented scope of work (SOW). We put together our creative learnings from the Mindmap sessions and our technical knowledge from the Roadmap report to define project phases and budgets. The SOW provides transparent pricing based on predetermined budgets and clearly defined key performance indicators (KPIs) so that we can quantifiably measure the success of our work together. Think of it as a menu of services that says, "Here's what you need and what we can do to get you there."
Once the report is presented and the client signs off on the scope, we schedule a kick-off call to set expectations and enter the execution phase of our relationship. This is the really fun stuff!
Elevation Phase
Kick-off Meeting
As a relationship- and process-oriented marketing agency, we want to welcome you to the fam once you've signed a contract or bought a package of hours, so we set up a kick-off call to introduce the whole team and get everyone on the same page. We'll send you a meeting agenda 24 hours in advance—as always—and then walk through the points together, discussing anything from timelines to creative process to hours allocation. We may also ask some more personal questions so we can really get to know you!
Setup & Configuration
With the Discovery phase under our belt and the SOW signed, sealed and delivered, we're ready to start the elevation. First stop? High-velocity A/B testing. Our experts will use the insights we've collected to conduct smart content tests across email, social media, search ads, the website, etc. to test messaging, imagery and audience targeting in short spurts with a small ad spend. We do this so that we can get a good understanding of what resonates and with who, so that when we are ready to spend a bigger budget on advertising, we can be cost-efficient.
Elevation & Optimization
Knowing our best practices based on A/B testing, we can constantly monitor your metrics month over month in our proprietary dashboard, the Task Action Report. Seeing all of the data in one place lets us spot patterns in the metrics. Those patterns inform of us of what strategies to start, to stop and to optimize over time. The EMB team is full of industry experts, but at the end of the day, every brand is different. We like to think that we take the ego out of marketing and let the data drive our decision-making.
At the end of the day, “people buy from people they know, like a trust.” That’s what builds a great brand. At Elevate My Brand, we’re no different. Our clients need to know, like and trust us, too, which is why a clear process is so important.
If you’re looking for a marketing agency that can take you from Discovery to Elevation and beyond, hit us up!
Biana Lerman,
Account Manager