In business ownership, we all go through periods of time when things feel stuck in disorganization. These are moments when we’re moving too fast for our own feet but we’re not reaching our goals. We need a helping hand, a moment of clarity, an AHA! moment to hit that breakthrough to the next level of business. These are often some of the hardest moments, but they often lead to the most growth.
We met Amy and Sarah, the Founders of both Fearless Farmers and Deeply Rooted Ranch, in a moment like this.
They were feeling the growing pains of operating two interconnected business. Not only were they unhappy with recent website updates, they were trying to do all of their own communications and struggling to separate the voice and marketing efforts of each businesses.
That’s where we come in.
Our plan was to separate these businesses with a combined Holistic Marketing Strategy and Website Audit! We will always feel honored because Sarah and Amy trusted us to take on this project for both Fearless Farmers and Deeply Rooted Ranch.
This was a first for us. We’ve never worked on such interconnected businesses before, and we quickly learned why this has been such a challenge! We did the projects simultaneously because they really wanted one team to understand the full scope of their work.
How We Separated Rooted and Fearless
We didn’t want to jump into the holistic strategy and website audit immediately because their differences weren’t immediately clear. Until now, the two companies had been operating with a similar message, voice, and content. Additionally, both are dedicated to growth through regenerative agriculture. At first glance, it almost felt like they were competing with each other instead of bolstering each other. We couldn’t have that!
So for us, the solution of separating these two businesses came down to their goals and their location.
Deeply Rooted Ranch is a physical location, so a lot of their strategy is focused on being hyper local. We recognized pretty quickly that while they can set themselves up to be a ‘destination’ for guests or an ‘influencer’ in the regenerative farming space, most of their time and revenue will be from events and pickup CSA farm boxes.
Fearless Farmers is predominately an online education platform. They aren’t tied to a physical location or a local audience at all. In fact, their whole goal is to teach people from all over the globe how to farm using regenerative practices.
With the two businesses laid out like this, they’re quite separate, right? So then, we needed to figure out how to maximize the interactions they do have.
Where these businesses truly intersect is when Fearless Farmers offers a physical event. These are things like Fearless Farmer Program Intensive, Free Fearless Farm Tours, and the Fearless Fundraisers. In addition to being its own business, we also started to think of Deeply Rooted Ranch as headquarters and the proof of concept for Fearless Farmers.
Once we had this clear, making a holistic marketing strategy and a website audit became a lot more straightforward.
What is an Audit and Strategy for Dandelion
First some definitions:
A website audit is centered around one question. How likely is your audience to like you, trust you, purchase from you over and over again? We give platform and page feedback about user experience, usability, accessibility, SEO, and current marketing initiatives. And it isn’t just feedback, we create a prioritized list of action items that helps our clients optimize for their target audience.
A holistic marketing strategy takes a brand’s whole digital presence into consideration. We build these strategies around an ideal audience, first and foremost. Then we consider the short term and long term goals and how they relate to each other, the best digital and analog platforms for them to be on, and a manageable schedule for content. What sets our strategies apart is that we also help our clients optimize their workflow so they can get more done with less energy.
Why a Website Audit and Marketing Strategy Made a Good Pair
Website audits and holistic marketing strategies always pair well together. The marketing strategy is focused on driving the best traffic while the website audit is focused on optimizing the customer journey once they’re at on the website. In other words: Traffic and Sales.
This pairing was particularly impactful for Fearless Farmers and Deeply Rooted Ranch.
We started with the individual strategies because we needed to create space between the businesses. This allowed us to look at each business and the marketing around it totally separately. In fact, in the beginning, we would schedule one call to talk about both businesses, but about halfway through the strategies we started splitting up the calls into one call per business! This is because it became clear that we were talking to different audiences with two very distinct brands.
The strategies gave us a clear framework to work with. We understood the goals of each business and how to achieve them. This allowed us to look at the individual websites with fresh eyes and new clarity for the website audit. We could see what was done well and what was missing. We were surprised to find some things on the Fearless website that belonged on the Deeply one (and vice versa!).
In this case, the resulting documents were exponentially more impactful than if we had just completed a strategy, or even the website audit and strategy pairing, for one brand. We believe that separating marketing strategies and reframing ‘ownership’ of specific marketing campaigns will allow both brands to grow together and separately without creating competition between them in the long term.
Interested in an Audit + Strategy Pairing?
Click Here to Schedule a Call with A Dandelion Founder
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