Explore Sharp Cookie's Services
>> Fractional CMO | get an expert marketer to manage your team and vendors
>> Website Marketing – convert more web visitors into clients/customers
>> Search Engine Optimization – get more organic traffic to your website
>> Digital Marketing Funnels – acquire new leads and customers for your business
>> Membership Websites – serve online courses and training programs to your customers/clients
>> Marketing Automation & Data Tracking – create seamless customer interactions and get data
>> Digital Marketing Consultation – get guidance on your digital marketing and a path forward
Fractional CMO | get an expert marketer to manage your team and vendors
As a fractional CMO, I help small businesses achieve their marketing goals without hiring an expensive full-time employee. I work with clients to develop revenue-winning strategies, manage their teams and vendors, and ensure that they are getting the most out of their marketing budget.
A fractional CMO’s goals are YOUR goals.
A fractional CMO’s goals are to help your business grow and achieve your vision. Whatever you want out of your business, even if your goal is just “growth,” a fractional CMO can be your sidekick in achieving what you want for your life and business.
The top fractional CMOs are highly experienced in all types of marketing and methods. They will be able to move quickly on projects and bring an expert’s eye to all campaigns. A great fractional CMO knows what needs to be done, and knows how to motivate your team to ‘get it done.’
Why Fractional CMOs are Taking Over Marketing
The marketing landscape is ever-changing, which can be difficult for businesses to keep up with. Fractional CMOs can help you navigate these changes and find opportunities for growth, while also staying rooted in what matters – getting results and growing revenue.
Hiring a full-time employee with the depth and breadth of skills you need can be expensive. Most small businesses forgo hiring an experienced marketer and settle for employees with less real-world marketing experience. This often leads to stalled marketing campaigns and flat results.
Many businesses are bringing in fractional CMOs to fill the gaps in their marketing departments. Fractional CMOs work with the in-house team to bring the owner’s vision to life.
What can a Fractional CMO do for your business?
A fractional CMO can be a one-size-fits-all solution for your marketing woes. Most fractional CMOs have experience in all facets of marketing, including website optimization, paid ads, and copywriting.
As a fractional CMO, I regularly help my clients accomplish their large marketing goals.
On a weekly basis, I build and maintain the marketing systems in your business and push for bigger and better results. Here’s a sample of what I might be doing for your business:
- Develop marketing strategies that drive results
- Regularly meet with your team to make sure marketing projects are on track
- Hold vendors accountable for their results
- Track your results using custom KPI sheets
- Cut through the BS of sales presentations and evaluate new vendors
- Interview employee candidates to help you grow your in-house marketing team
- Help you get the most out of your marketing budget
Finding a Fractional CMO
When you are looking for a fractional CMO, you are looking for someone with a huge breadth of experience. Here are a few places you might find a fractional CMO:
- Fractional CMO companies: these are companies that have a team of fractional CMOs that they can place with your business.
- Independent consultants: there are many experienced marketing consultants out there who offer their services on a fractional basis.
- Marketing agencies: some agencies will let you hire one of their
OR… You can schedule a consultation with me here on this website!
Website Marketing | convert more web visitors into clients/customers
Your website should be more than an online business card. People who visit your website need a path to follow so they can become clients/customers, and optimizing your website using sound marketing principles is the best way to ensure you are converting as many web visitors into paying clients/customers as possible.
Your website probably doesn’t need another “redesign.” Most websites are over-designed but under-optimized for sales and conversions. Hiring me to optimize your website for conversions means taking your website and making key changes that appeal to web visitors and putting them on the fast track to purchasing your products or hiring your business.
How do you know you need a website marketing optimization?
If you’ve experienced any of the following, you NEED to optimize your website for conversions.
- Repeated website redesigns over the last 3-5 years with little change in results
- Loads of organic traffic to a few articles/blogs on your website, but few if any conversions attributed to that content
- Complains from clients/customers that they can’t find what they need
- Repeated changes to your home page, product pages, and other high-level pages on your website with no measurable results
- Poor performance of your pay-per-click campaigns (or any digital marketing) when that traffic is sent to your website
75% of consumers admit to making judgments on a company’s credibility based on the company’s website
Website marketing is NOT search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is a massive part of acquiring new customers, but good organic rankings alone is not enough to get the most user conversions.
Website marketing is NOT paid digital marketing. Some businesses don’t need organic traffic. Their business strategy is to pay for website traffic through pay-per-click, social media ads, or something similar.
The truth is it can be difficult to create revenue from a website that’s not getting website traffic. Your website needs traffic to optimize your website for conversions. For websites that don’t get traffic, optimizing your website for sales is putting the cart before the horse!
If the missing ingredient in your digital marketing strategy is more SEO traffic, visit the Search Engine Optimization section of this page.
If your business needs more paid traffic, visit the Digital Marketing Funnels section of this page.
How can I transform your website?
- Evaluate your website to find critical “conversion points” where visitors are most likely to become clients/customers
- Reduce the clutter on your website to streamline the visitor experience
- Reform or restructure your website to make the most valuable content easy to find
- Create marketing funnels that take visitors down a tailored path that moves them closer to the point of sale
- Optimize (or rebuild) your business’ landing pages to get more opt-ins and conversions
- Integrate your business technologies to your website to streamline operations, follow-up, and sales
- Monitor your website’s data and make changes where needed to achieve the highest possible conversion rate
Search Engine Optimization | get more organic traffic to your website
Showing up on “page one” of Google has been the top goal for most businesses for the last two decades. In the beginning, search engine optimization was all about ‘hacks’ that businesses could deploy to game the search algorithm.
Today, search engine optimization is about creating websites that 1) load fast, 2) display on all devices, 3) deliver great user experiences, and 4) provide value. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing websites and creating high-value content. It is the perfect mesh of technology and creativity that can be hard for businesses to achieve.
What are the solutions to improving search engine rankings?
If you want to get to the top of search engine result pages, there are a few traditional routes:
- Hire an agency to rebuild your website and create content – SEO agencies are a fantastic option for improving your organic rankings. They typically provide a full suite of services at a high cost. However, the experts who do the work are assigned to your account, and their individual skills vary. Agencies are focused on growing and acquiring many clients, so your experience will be templated. Some unethical agencies may not disclose if they are also doing SEO work for your competitors.
- Hire an In-House SEO Expert – Having an in-house SEO officer is probably the best way to ensure great organic rankings. An in-house SEO expert will provide your business with undivided attention, and you can measure their effectiveness with a few simple metrics. However, in-house SEO employees can be hard to find and expensive. Seven and eight-figure businesses might employ full-time SEO experts, but it’s usually not assessable for small or medium enterprises.
- Train an Internal Employee on SEO – If you have an ambitious employee who wants to do search engine optimization, you can invest in their training and education and put them in charge of your website. There are many, many SEO training programs, and there are plenty of entry-level marketing employees who are willing to learn. Unfortunately, your competitors are already working with seasoned SEO experts. This is a great option if you are comfortable waiting for your employee to learn before producing SEO results.
- Do It Yourself – Yes, you can learn how to optimize your website for search engine optimization. I highly recommend that all business owners understand the basics of search engine optimization, if only so they know what a good SEO provider should do. Do-it-yourself search engine optimization is an excellent option for a solopreneur or a business owner who is already adept at website development and writing.
- Hire a freelance or solo SEO expert – A freelance SEO expert is an individual who works with select clients and provides custom services. Working with a freelance SEO expert means you will get personalized, one-on-one attention without the baggage of a full-time employee.
Increasing a website’s organic search ranking is a process that can take many months. It is the job of a search engine optimizer to… optimize your website! This is an ongoing process, and many companies have dedicated SEO departments to keep their website ahead of others. You may be working with a search engine optimizer for many months, even years, so choose the type of SEO service that meets your current business needs.
49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel
How can I increase organic traffic to your website?
- Total technical overhaul – Your website will get a total technical SEO overhaul that includes fixing HTML errors, correcting page speed issues, creating compliance with Core Web Vitals, fixing broken web forms, adding/updating schema markup, and more!
- Page experience improvements – Your website is optimized to create an incredible user experience that keeps your web visitors on your website (and also gives search engines the ‘soft’ signals that will gradually improve your rank)
- Keyword tracking and custom reporting – Your website is monitored to ensure your see consistent improvement in your keyword rankings, user metrics, and overall traffic to your website
- Content creation and optimization – Your website is updated weekly with new content to increase your business “topical authority” and your search engine rank with it
Digital Marketing Funnels | acquire new leads and customers for your business
There’s nothing quite as potent as a well-crafted digital marketing funnel. A great funnel can help you create a steady, consistent flow of leads/clients, and the BEST funnels are often custom-made with your business goals in mind.
What makes funnels “fun” is that there are so many levers you can pull to increase (or decrease) their effectiveness. It is easy to set up or install a digital funnel. The challenge comes when you try to make the funnel produce measurable results.
The 5 keys to creating a great digital marketing funnel
- Define your target audience – This is marketing 101. If you want to have a successful marketing campaign, you need to create an outline that describes your ideal client/customer. A digital marketer or agency will use your ideal client profile to determine the best way to deploy your marketing funnel.
- Write a lot of good marketing copy – Your marketing should differentiate your business from your competitors, and the best way to differentiate is by creating a unique marketing message and marketing copy. Don’t fill your Facebook ad campaign with generic copy! Ads with high-quality marketing copy almost always perform better.
- Create eye-catching creatives – People scroll past hundreds of ads a day. Most people will breeze past ads as quickly as possible, and it’s the marketer’s job to catch their attention. Great creatives have a “stop the scroll” effect. Making ad creatives is often the most time-consuming part of building a digital funnel, but well-crafted ad creatives can dramatically increase click rates and conversions.
- Build your ad campaign on the RIGHT platform – Not all ad platforms will work well for your business or marketing campaign. A great digital marketer will work with you to select the platform(s) best positioned to meet your goals.
- Implement tracking and marketing follow-up – Don’t make your client/customer’s first interaction with your business their last. Engage with your leads using smart follow-up (this could be emails, text, customer retargeting, or other forms of follow-up marketing).
63% of consumers need to hear a company’s claims 3–5 times before they actually believe them
Sharp Cookie’s Total Funnel process
This is a brief overview of my Total Funnel process and how I build digital funnels for small businesses.
- Consult & Communication – The first step to great relationships is communication. Before building any marketing campaign, I will have a one-on-one conversation with you about your expectations, problems, and goals.
- Research & Planning – All good works start with a bit of research. In this stage, I’ll review your current marketing and resources to determine the best path forward.
- Copywriting – Great marketing copy is the “secret sauce” for any marketing campaign. Even if I am not writing copy for your marketing, I will spend time optimizing your marketing copy to work best within the funnel
- Creatives – In this stage of funnel-building, I’ll be working with you and your business to create the best possible ad creatives that will give your marketing the “stop the scroll” effect.
- Funnel Building – Finally, now we will build the funnel! Funnel-building includes setting up your ad campaign, creating your landing pages/sales pages, setting up follow-up systems, and creating automated marketing reports.
- Tracking & Optimization – As your campaign starts to generate leads, I monitor and modify (when appropriate) to ensure your business consistently gets top-quality leads.
Membership Websites | serve online courses and training programs to your customers/clients
A membership website is the perfect addition to any coaching or training business. Membership websites are unlike “normal” business websites and require a total integration into your marketing, sales, and billing systems. While your main website is focused on lead generation and sales, your membership website has a different goal; to provide an exceptional user experience that keeps customers coming back and to drive continued sales.
Here are a few things you should consider before building a membership website…
- How long do you plan to operate your membership site? – Will your membership website be a core part of your business, or is a membership website just a temporary solution? If you plan to operate your membership website longer than two years, it pays to have a professionally managed membership site.
- Do you have a customer service team? – Membership websites can generate a ton of customer service tickets, even if there’s nothing broken on the site! Ninety percent of customer service tickets related to a membership website are “user errors,” (forgotten passwords and the like) so you need a team who is prepared to help customers on your membership website.
- Will your membership website be a stand-alone site or connected to your main site? – Many membership websites are their own websites completely. They aren’t connected to the main website (except through a few links). Or a membership website is simply an extension of your main website. Either option is perfectly valid!
- How will your business handle website maintenance? – A membership website is not like a WordPress or Squarespace website. While parts of a membership website can be “user friendly,” you’ll most likely need a membership website expert to do any serious maintenance on your website.
Sharp Cookie’s Membership Site Plan
If you are ready to make a commitment and you want to add a membership website to your coaching/consulting business, here’s a brief overview of the Sharp Cookie process for building a membership website.
- In-Depth Consultation & Planning Session – Before I open a web browser and type one line of code, I want to get YOUR COMPLETE VISION for your membership website. This includes an extensive consultation and planning session that goes well beyond the normal web consultations.
- Technology Review & Recommendations – I will take complete stock of the tools and resources your business already has and uses so I can build a website that works with all the tools you have.
- Site Planning & Development – This is a dual-action step. First, I’ll be creating an outline for your website. This includes the planning for your courses and online projects. Second, once this plan is approved, we begin development!
- Testing, Demo, and Refinements – This is the fun part. In this final stage, I will complete all testing and SHOW YOU YOUR NEW MEMBERSHIP WEBSITE! From here, I will make the refinements that you request and we’ll formally launch your website!
Membership website development is probably the only time I develop a website from the ground up because… building membership websites is so much fun! Other websites are so… basic. Membership websites are complex and serve a clear purpose. Without a doubt, I will love building your membership website and you will love what I build!
In 2021 the global membership site market was valued at $14.43 billion and is expected to grow to $40.95 billion by 2029
Marketing Automation & Data Tracking – create seamless customer interactions and get the data you need to make better decisions
I developed a deep love of marketing data and automation early in my marketing career. I strived to track 100% of client leads, so I created many custom systems for data tracking.
Marketing tracking and automation have changed a lot in the last five years. Today, marketing tracking is tremendously difficult despite the abundance of digital tools that supposedly, “make tracking easier.” With the death of the third-party tracking cookie, businesses must adapt to a new marketing analytics model.
As third-party data becomes less reliable, businesses will put renewed focus on gathering first-party data from their marketing audience.
Sharp Cookie can help you create marketing automation systems that convert your inbound leads into clients/customers and gather the first-party marketing data critical for you to make decisions.
What Sharp Cookie can do to automate your marketing
Here’s a sample of how marketing automation and data tracking can change your marketing and how you do business.
- Create email marketing systems that segment your audience, send them custom marketing emails, split-test marketing messages, and convert them into paying clients/customers
- Integrate your business tools and set up automated reports to get business data on your marketing, sales, and operations processes
- Generate automated marketing reports that are comprehensive and easy to understand so you can make the best decisions and choices
- Work with you and your team to define marketing goals and analyze your marketing performance
- Set up automated sales processes that help you generate more revenue for each client/customer lead
- Perform A/B testing on all your marketing processes to enhance your marketing, conversion, and productivity
- Work with the tools your business already has, including Keap, Hubspot, Active Campaign, Mail Chimp, Google Data Studio, and many others
- MONITOR AND OPTIMIZE ALL THE ABOVE FOR CONTINUAL PERFORMANCE
Digital Marketing Consultation – get guidance on your digital marketing and a path forward
Digital marketing is a minefield. There are constant changes and innovations in the digital marketing world, and your digital marketing must continually innovate to stay relevant.
As a digital marketer, I spend 2-5 hours a week studying digital marketing and SEO. Each week there’s a new revolution or revelation in the field. Without a doubt, the tactics business owners used four years ago aren’t as potent as they are today.
As part of my services, you can book a digital marketing consultation with me to discuss your current marketing and hear about ways you can improve.
How is a consultation with Sharp Cookie different than other marketing consultations?
Many digital marketing companies offer free consultations as part of their client onboarding. These consultations are scarcely more than a sales process where you hear everything that’s wrong with your website and how their services can help.
While these consultations can be productive, they are also focused on selling the company’s services. As a consequence, you might not get the total picture of what’s working, or not working, in your digital marketing.
Unlike these “free” consultations, my consultations are a paid, one or two-hour sessions where we will discuss your marketing. I will provide my best analysis of how your business can make the next leap.
I do these consultations with no expectation of ongoing services, so you will get only marketing strategies and ZERO fluff.
And, of course, I also have the same analytic tools as the big SEO and PPC companies, so you will get the same in-depth analysis!