Tina May started a marketing agency at 20, travelled the world building websites for boutique hotels and now runs the highly regarded coding school Institute of Code. In between running immersive coding bootcamps in Bali and teaching digital marketing, she consults with companies around the world to help them amplify their digital presence and create a marketing strategy that get's results.
Emilio Kuzma-Floyd is a photographer and social media influencer with an eye for capturing the essential spirit and personality of a brand. He’s worked with dozens of national and international brands including Ark Swimwear, Feather & Noise, and Jolyn and his worked has been featured by the New York Times, Discovery Channel, and BBC.
Evolution Salt Company has been growing steadily in retail sales but not achieving the same traction through direct channels (their own website or Amazon). The overarching goals are as follows:
I don't believe in cookie-cutter marketing, I believe in finding the most effective strategies for every individual business.
Many agencies like to rush straight to the tactics - post daily on Instagram, grow an email list, hire a PR firm - without properly first laying down the foundations.
Since Evolution Salt is considering making a number of shifts to their overall digital and marketing strategy, my recommendation is that before we begin work on any of the specific tactics we undertake a process of developing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
First I would look to really understand the context the business operates in (ie market research, competitor research, understanding the target customer) through discussions with you or your team, as well as my own independent research. I would then conduct an audit of all existing platforms and ( including your own website, social media accounts and amazon store), from the content to the analytics, in order to understand the current state and make recommendations for the future.
From this point, I would look at all of the marketing channels and strategies available to you and come up with a comprehensive strategy to move forward with, answering questions like 'Which areas should we invest in first? What should our content marketing strategy be? How will we generate traffic to our website from our Instagram? What do we need to do to optimise our website for conversion?' This will be a roadmap for the next 12 months.
While the scope of this could be adapted to suit your budget, it's not an area I would recommend skimping on, as an investment in this strategic phase will ensure that we lay the proper foundations for a strong ROI. In saying that, if we were able to conclude the strategic process in less than this time, I would reduce the rate accordingly.
Depending on your preferences this could be done in person or remotely. My recommendation would be for 1 week remotely, 2 weeks intensive in Austin, and then another week remotely.
Budget: 20 days at $800 per day = $16,000
If you wanted to do 2 weeks of the intensive in Austin (recommended) then we would need return flights to Austin + accomodation to be provided in addition.
* All day rates are in USD and based on 8-9 hours per day
Based on the conclusions of phase one we would determine whether a rebrand was necessary and beneficial, and the scope of this could be determined from there. While I have taken on branding projects in the past I am not a graphic designer, so for this phase I would be happy to coordinate the process of finding a suitable designer and managing the re-brand to ensure it achieved the outcomes we were hoping.
Budget: I've done some preliminary research, and while the scope of this varies greatly depending on the experience of the designer or agency (I received quotes from $2.5k - $100k) I would estimate that should budget around $10,000 - $20,000 for a complete re-brand including logo and brand identity, website design, packaging, social media templates etc if we decided to go down this path.
Photos for your social media channels (especially Instagram) can come from a variety of sources - your own content, customer created content, and collaborations with food and lifestyle influencers.
Upfront, we recommend that Emilio (aka Eyes of a Nomad) does a lifestyle photoshoot in Austin to capture all of your products and create a library of content for social media & blog posts, then ongoing utilising a mix of all three types of content. This ensures that you have enough consistently high quality content to 'hit the ground running', but is the most cost-effective in the long run.
Scope: Product & Lifestyle Photoshoot & Professional Editing of all 90+ products resulting in 200 + Professionally Edited Photos
Budget: $4500 + Return Flights to Austin + Accomodation for Emilio
Optional: Experiential 3 - 5 minute video of the salt mines in Pakistan + 10x 30 second clips for social media. $5500 + all expenses for Emilio (flights, accomodation, meals, local transportation etc). This can be discussed in more detail if you are interested and a full separate proposal can be made for this aspect.
Reviewing your current website, if we were to really pursue a strong content marketing strategy and a re-brand then the website would likely need an overhaul also -- addition of a blog, revamping the design, making it easier to navigate (for example, I went on the site looking for shipping information and couldn't find it within the first 2 minutes), making it much more mobile friendly and SEO optimised.
This is an estimate based on the current scope below, which could change depending on the needs identified in the strategic phase.
Scope:
Budget: $16,000 - $18,500 upfront, ongoing cost depends on the Shopify plan you choose and the monthly sales ($79 - $299 per month)
Based on the strategy and visual aesthetic established in part 1, we would have a clear social media and content marketing strategy to implement including curating a beautiful, relevant feed and growing an engaged following. Within this monthly retainer I would include an initial set-up at no additional cost, auditing the existing feed, archiving content, setting up relevant instagram story highlights, etc.
Scope:
Budget: $1600 per month + Ad Budget to boost posts
Optional Add-Ons:
I believe that strategic content marketing, is critical to growing your website traffic and as a result your direct website sales. Content Marketing has a cumulative effect, the content you create now can be leveraged for years to come. SEO optimised or pinterest optimised blog posts don't just deliver an instant hit of traffic (like paid advertising does) but rather can continue driving web traffic on-going.
Scope:
Budget: $1800 per month
The scope of digital advertising is to broad (from a few hours per month to a few days per week), and can cover everything from google ad-words, Facebook & Instagram ads, Re-targetting campaigns and more that I think it's worth re-visiting this section once we have a clearer idea of the scope of your needs.
Budget & Scope: To Be Determined
To accept the proposal and commence work please