Multi-Channel Marketing Academy: a letter from the founder and course leader
Kristen Carpenter, the founder and course leader of the Multi-Channel Marketing Academy, created a letter of commitment to marketing and business leaders considering enrolling in the inaugural Academy. It answers two simple questions:
Why this digital marketing course? Why now?
For more information or to enroll in the Academy, visit the course page.
Why Join the Multi-Channel Marketing Academy and Why Now?
TO: Aspiring Marketing Masters
FROM: Kristin Carpenter/Verde+Channel Mastery Podcast
RE: Overview of Multi-Channel Marketing Academy
To Marketing Masters,
Thank you for your interest in joining the first cohort of the Multi-Channel Marketing Academy.
COVID-19 and the ensuing recession have completely upended how consumer’s search for, engage with and buy from specialty brands. As a result, brands MUST modernize their skills and strategies to stay relevant and ensure continued success through and beyond COVID-19. This is true for legacy, wholesale-first and direct-first brands.
The Multi-Channel Marketing Academy (I’ll refer to it as the “Academy” going forward), will help guide your brand through this evolution. The Academy is an eight week immersive training opportunity that I’ll personally be teaching. I thought a little background on myself and Verde would help you better understand how we are uniquely positioned to create and teach this course.
I founded and serve as CEO of Verde Brand Communications, a 19-year-old award-winning, full service communications agency for specialty brands in the outdoor and active lifestyle markets. In addition, I founded the Channel Mastery podcast three years ago with the intention of helping our specialty brands navigate the challenging retail environment. Today, Channel Mastery has grown into a strong community and an award-winning podcast.
I’m also in the business of serving specialty brands. As such, I’ve done a LOT of strategy-planning meetings with Verde’s clients over the last two months. All of our clients are in different places; some are entirely shut down, some are re-forecasting weekly, some are literally moth-balling Spring 2021 and doing all they can to survive the enormous changes we’re experiencing in our businesses.
All the while, each and every week, the consumer continues to exhibit behavior changes from the pandemic and now, recession. It’s been a moving target and the single biggest challenge that our communities have faced in my 30 years in the industry.
One thing has become painfully clear. …
There is no consumer advocate (owner of the consumer + brand relationship) within the specialty brands on our client roster and in my personal network. The focus is on the distribution channel and shoring up what we think we know how to do, instead of considering where the “puck” is going -the evolving consumer. It’s as though brand leaders are waiting for business to return to normal.
Normal is not going to return anytime soon – if ever.
We’ve noticed another commonality in our brands and in our networks: The leadership teams within these specialty businesses ‘get’ that they need to PIVOT. Yet most, if not all, are grappling with letting go of how they used to do things.
That’s why the Multi-Channel Marketing Academy exists – we wanted to create a solution for specialty brands to become ‘consumer-first’ instead of ‘distribution-first’ moving forward.
This requires a reset, and an up-leveling, which will occur at the same time in the eight weeks the course takes place.
Here is an overview of the training:
We’ll kick off with pre-work that includes a light audit of existing systems, processes and calendars for the brand marketing functions today
We’ll identify functional channels today for both sales and marketing
We’ll identify systems that need to stay (foundational) but are in need of modernization, as well as those that will not fit in a multi-channel strategy going forward
Then, we will work through a deep dive into where your brand is positioned now and design a road map to evolve it forward and to exceed the expectations of the target consumer
We’ll then work to deeply understand how your target consumer is evolving and pair that with data mined from your channels (like social media, newsletter outreach, etc.)
From there, we’ll go into an in-depth exercise on marketing assets and brand storytelling, pairing story threads with the most effective channels for your brand
We’ll also provide a framework for effectively changing channels, as well as a budget template and approach for building a multi-channel brand that’s capable of supporting launches throughout the year, instead of once or twice a year
Building an engaged audience via email will be a focal topic throughout the course, as well as best practices for specialty brands using the top-converting channel that is email marketing
We’ll round out the training with an in-depth module on launching, enabling our students to pivot from going to market, to going to consumer, multiple times a year
We’ll tie in new benchmarks to a high-cadence launch strategy
Specialty brick and mortar and e-comm retailers will be integrated into this strategy overview
Students will also obtain a thorough understanding of the role of video and live video best practices for narrative brand storytelling
A very important part of the Academy is the training we’ll be doing on reporting. We have gathered several digital dashboard examples and will be training our students on how to build reporting (report and process) on consumer response to brand content and products
Creating a reporting process and cadence to the leadership team will ensure that the entire team will see the strong value in aligning audience growth and engagement with company/organizational growth goals
Students will receive weekly content, this includes:
Mix of video and audio webinar training, including LIVE webinars with Kristin
Weekly trainings and office hours with Kristin
Daily support from the Verde Team functioning as community managers in the closed Facebook group
A network of other specialty leaders working to modernize their brands in this time of incredible challenge
Weekly news headlines on the state of retail, branding, and of course, consumer behavior – this will be provided in a digest form with expert takes from Kristin and the Verde team
Guest experts on the state of sales meetings and ‘launches’ for 2021
Guest lecturers speaking to virtual events, video, email marketing, SEO, public relations, influencer/ambassador marketing, joint-venture audience growth, etc.
Access to additional bonus trainings, including marketing and communications evolving best practices in the time of COVID-19
We’re planning for a smaller group of company leaders in our first cohort, which will give me time to work closely with you during this important time. While this may seem esoteric, my approach to teaching and training is built on mindset. Our students (you) are going to be leading a key facet of organizational change, which is tough to do when there isn’t a pandemic. Mindset and supportive coaching, as well as the network of people in the course, will make a strong positive impact on your results. I will also personally hold you accountable!
For a limited time only, the Multi-Channel Marketing Academy will be available for $497. Valued at $1,997, we’re offering the course at a deep discount for our industry and community during the COVID-19 pandemic. If needed, two payment plans are available; two payments of $265, or three payments of $176.
Please feel free to email additional questions to MCMA@Verdepr.com.
Thank you,
Kristin