Expanding A Marketing Team

"I wanted an agency that felt like an extension of my team."

“I spent 20 years at a very large organization. I was basically a mini CMO. I had a group that did digital; I had a group that did events; I had a group that did corporate comms. I had all of these resources at my disposal all the time that aligned to my marketing strategies.” LIZ THRAILKILL,
GDS LINK

“I decided to leave because I felt like I was a little stale."

“I thought, if I’m going to do something different, I’m going to do it totally different, and I’m going to learn new things and be a different person. So, I entered my job at KwikBoost, and that job was a two-man marketing organization. I went back to being an individual contributor along with being a strategic leader. The marketing function only works when you choose the right partners when you’re that small. I can’t do it all just because we’re smaller, and I can’t be a subject matter expert in every single thing.

“So, I started interviewing agencies, and they all felt very execution-oriented and not like a partnership. When I chose Idea Grove, I chose them because I wanted an agency that felt like an extension of my team, which was really important in my evolution of going from very big to very small, very highly funded to not funded near as well.

“I was expecting, number one, someone who would immerse themselves in my business, help me see things that I might not see, or didn’t see."

“One thing that scared me when I went to KwikBoost was suddenly I’m the only one thinking about marketing. Every idea, it’s all on my shoulders. I wanted someone in the boat with me, a partner agency who thought about my business too, who would immerse themselves in it and not just execute a specific time-and-materials contract but be an idea generator with me. I needed someone to fill in the skill gaps that I could not hire because there are so many different disciplines in marketing now.

“And at KwikBoost, because I had such a strong partnership with Idea Grove, it allowed me to take my 20 years of experience in a larger company and grow outside of the marketing organization to really help drive alignment inside the sales function too.

“I attribute my ability to do that to the fact that I had Idea Grove who was supporting me on the marketing side.

“We did a refresh on the brand. We did a refresh on our look and feel. We created new conversion paths. In one year, our inbound sales went up 40 percent. We launched eCommerce for the first time. So, there were a lot of big things accomplished there that I couldn’t have done without the right agency partner.

“That growth helped KwikBoost get acquired. So, I left there and landed at GDS Link."

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“As much as possible, I try not to over direct agency resources. They are idea generators, and if you over direct them you kill that. I don’t want someone who’s just going to go execute on my ideas — I want them to pile onto my ideas and bring their own. That’s vitally important when it comes to any project, and that’s what you get from Idea Grove.”
LIZ THRAILKILL

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