Our Onboarding Process: What To Expect After You Contact Us

A discovery call

After submitting an inquiry to connect and booking a call with us at Rinehart Marketing, we will likely explore the following broad topics together to discover more about your needs and if there’s a fit.

• Your motivation behind our connection

• The help you’re looking for

• Business overview, its stage of development and your particular role

• If this is a new venture, the business funding status

• Sales strategy and pricing info for your products/services

• Target audience understanding

• Primary competitors

• Distinct advantage or why-to-buy factor

• Scope of the marketing project

• Timeline for marketing needs

• Marketing budget

• Your marketing decision-makers

• Other marketing agencies you are considering and your selection criteria

After the discovery call

If you are interested in moving forward, we’ll have you complete a couple of web-based questionnaires that help us get an understanding of how robust your brand strategy and brand identity are and capture some basics about your business prior to creating a proposal.

Once we receive those questionnaire responses, we'll be back in touch about timing for delivering a proposal.

Our services proposal

Our proposals will include a summary of our understanding of your business and marketing project needs. Then we will provide a custom recommendation of services that fall into our three primary service categories, along with a quote for each one. Note that the first two service areas are project-based, so there is a concrete beginning and end to them. If you are interested in our ongoing marketing services, we like to precede that set of services with a marketing strategy consult to review what current marketing efforts are working and not, and then based on your budget, develop a set of recommendations unique to your business.

Branding Essentials

In order to maximize the results from any marketing strategies & tactics you have in mind, you need to ensure your brand strategy is clear and cohesive. Fundamental to this process is crystalizing your brand’s purpose, mission, vision, values, target audience, competition, personality, and unique contribution to the world.

If clients are just starting their business, I recommend a thorough due diligence around their business name, confirming there are no potential conflicts regarding trademarks, digital presence in a similar market space. This due diligence may involve getting legal counsel to determine the level of risk if you encounter others with a similar business name.

Building on your brand strategy, your brand identity is what brings your brand to life and encompasses all of the ways your brand shows up in the world: from your logo to print to signage to photography & video. Your brand identity needs to reflect who you are in a consistent way. And your brand identity assets need to be versatile - work in lots of contexts. Any content created going forward will depend on having this branding foundation solid.

For further info on our take on branding essentials, read part 1 about blazing your marketing trail.

Digital presence - SEO, CRO, CRM

Fundamental to getting found online is 1) optimizing your website for relevance around your target keywords (called onsite Search Engine Optimization or SEO) and 2) establishing your website as a trustworthy resource for those keyword searches (called offsite SEO). Also, once visitors land on your site, you want your site to do an excellent job of leading them to take the next step of engagement, like viewing deeper content or completing a contact form, which is called Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO. You also need a clear strategy for managing information about your prospects and customers for ongoing marketing purposes (called Customer Relationship Management or CRM).

Ongoing marketing services to get, keep & grow clients

Our recommended marketing strategies & tactics that work to establish, sustain & deepen customer connections are based on a review of the customer relationship funnel (for more on this topic, read part 2 of blazing your marketing trail). Your level of investment informs what is included in our recommendation, but typically includes a baseline of social, content & email marketing, local SEO & reputation management. We deploy strategies to maximize your content’s impact without relying heavily on social post frequency. Our approach is to start modestly with the tactics that have the highest potential ROI, monitor, and then experiment with other tactics to assess effectiveness and determine whether greater investment is warranted.

We can connect over the proposal and review any questions. Once you’ve reviewed the proposal and approved the quote, I’ll send a Letter of Agreement for signature and then we’ll schedule a kickoff call.

Kickoff Call

The kick off call is our chance to discuss all of the project components and milestones, and we’ll schedule all future appointments. We will also spend time doing a tech orientation! The clients who’ve had the most success working with us are able to effectively use the following from either a Mac or PC:

• Google Meet (particularly screen sharing)

• Google Drive (getting around in folders, searching)

• All Google Apps: Docs, Sheets, and Slides (editing each type of document)

We also use a cloud-based project management system called Avaza, and it works best if clients are able to get around in email and a web browser to comment on tasks and view project details.

Assuming we are working together on a brand strategy project, we will also review your first homework assignments in the kickoff call.

Subsequent work follows our project timeline, with periodic check-ins, reviews and approvals as needed.

Reach out if you’d like to connect about your marketing needs!