Marketing that Matters

Strategy combined with Creative that changes businesses and lives.

Exceptional marketing for real life

An award-winning journalist turned marketing strategist, I’ve spent the past two decades helping organizations tell their stories, connect with audiences, and grow their brands across digital and traditional channels.

Taking your business to the people who need you.

Persona Development

Understanding who your existing clients are is one thing. Really knowing who you want your future customers to be is another. Mapping out a persona - not just the demographics - but drilling down into the psychographic — you know, what makes your potential customers toss and turn all night or reach for that second glass of wine - is key to creating content and campaigns that will truly speak to them, and get them to take the desired action you so need. We need to solve their problem, ease their pain.

Key Client Personas

Strategic Planning

I love wine, pasta, decadent desserts, and a really solid strategy. Strategy begins with interviewing the client, understanding what has worked and (more importantly) what hasn’t. Digging into the brand (or lack of one), understanding the personas, and flushing out the desired outcome. From there, I build the roads, bridges, and motes to take you where you need to be.

Marketing Plan Example

Collaboration + Execution

If there isn’t buy-in from the key people, the plan will never work. Collaboration, leadership, and the willingness to try and fail, and try and succeed, have to be present.

Careful planning = careful execution. Paying attention to the fine details means fewer issues during launches.

Analysis

Understanding the ‘why’ in everything is crucial. Spending an equal amount of time going through all the analytics to understand how your campaigns are performing can offer excellent insight into what your customers are responding to (and not to). Like a great lesson in history, this empowers me to pivot and change immediately as well as plan accordingly for the next strategy. I have used SEMrush, GA, GTM, Sprout Social, HubSpot, GMB, and SharpSpring.

Portfolio Examples

Collaborating with the client, the Creative Director and Dev Team, I was able to develop personas that resulted in writing content paired with images and design that not only wins awards, but more importantly, delivers customers and traffic to the business.

Missouri Ridge Distillery Website

The task: was to create compelling content that told the story of a man who left the corporate world behind and began to brew whiskey like his father, and his father before him. The site needed to portray the deep connection to family, the Ozark mountains, and the craft while creating excitement for new and returning visitors.

JD’s Hideaway Website

The task: To begin the branding look and voice of a new business that is going to add several new locations to its flagship. The primary goal was to appeal to military personnel at the local bases while creating a ‘hometown’ feel and bond in the communities in which they operate.

Ready Now Recovery Video

The task: To start the branding process through the use of a compelling video — telling a story about redemption and healing that will wholly resonate with those seeking the same.

The Northridge Group Website

The task: The existing website was extremely large and slow. The navigation was overwhelming, creating poor UX. I paired down the pages, created a smaller navigation and updated the look to be more modern and clean. This has resulted in an increase of known users by 168% and an incease in new users by over 400% (Google Analytics).

Spartan Ale House

The task: To create one website for two locations for easier UX and navigation. This was particularly difficult because each location has a different look, different footprint and often offers different specials and events.

What Others Say About My Work

Mary is an outstanding writer, editor and content manager. Her marketing knowledge, SEO skills and leadership made her an important mentor for me during my time at BigPxl. Mary was an ideal supervisor, providing great support while trusting me to work independently. Mary is funny, kind and hardworking, and a great team-player. I greatly enjoyed working with her and would gladly recommend her for any opportunity!

Ivy Shelden, Content Marketing Course Instructor & Coach at SmartBlogger
Of all the Account and Marketing Strategists I’ve worked with in my 23 years at Rule29, Mary is among the best. She is exceptionally talented, organized, manages her time well, hits deadlines and brings a level of professionalism to the team that is second to none.

Justin Ahrens, Chief Brand Officer, Rule29 and The Marrow Companies
Mary is one of those individuals that is such a pleasure to work with. She always had enthusiasm and energy for every project and worked diligently to think through each design and marketing strategy to create the most optimal outcome. She not only listened to the client and team members to incorporate their ideas, but always would come up with very creative ideas and solutions that would bring all the stake holders to the table as an excited whole.

John Torgerson, AIA, Torgerson Design Partners