Ryan Waddell
Overview
Billy and E.W.,
I'm excited about the opportunity to potentially work with both of you on improving Bitter Lacrosse's marketing strategy and backend systems. Our collective goal is to move on from BL's 'plateau' state, ensure registrations for events sooner, and expand the customer pipeline in the Southeast.
I am confident that the offerings below are the most cost-effective and sound path to get this venture going during a five-month 'prove it' period. I'm a devout believer in the power of HubSpot, and it's where my passion and skillset thrive. My efforts will focus on establishing HubSpot as the central nervous system of your business, allowing you to focus solely on the customer side of things. Let's get down to brass tacks.
Needs and Solutions
Effectively, Bitter Lacrosse needs to improve its online presence. This involves updating the site, adding additional content to pages, implementing a targeted Instagram strategy, increasing site traffic, and enhancing the quality of the contact list. These are the items we need to prioritize.
The following strategy is curated for the remaining months of the calendar year. The four items needing improvement are:
- Contact Database
- Email Marketing
- Website Improvement
- Instagram Marketing
Each recommendation below includes notes on determining improvement, as you emphasized during our call.
To get started on this, I recommend that you purchase and subscribe to the HubSpot Starter Customer Platform for $15 per month.
What's Included
- Contact Database: Building this out in HubSpot's CRM will manage your customer database and email communications moving forward. As we add, categorize, and create lists (buckets, segments, etc.) with our contacts, our goal is to grow these lists over time through increased Instagram presence, increased email communication with club directors and coaches, and increased site form submissions from overall increased activity.
- How do we determine improvement? Compare Bitter Lacrosse’s last five months of Google Analytics traffic, the number of site submissions, and the total number of quality contacts to those same metrics from our start date through to the end of December 2024.
- Email Marketing: Design and implement three new templates: one for an event notification email, one for a monthly newsletter email, and one for a site submission auto-reply. We will then use our contact lists created above to lay out a drip strategy for upcoming event and monthly newsletter emails. Despite your mention of events often being one-and-done for players and/or teams, this drives home brand awareness and presence to coaches, parents, directors, etc. Bitter Lacrosse needs to be at the forefront of discussion, not just popping in once a year to score a sign-up. We want it to become household.
- How do we determine improvement? Engagement numbers with emails, increased number of quality contacts on our lists, and event registration spots filled sooner.
- Website Improvement: The most critical item needed here is new site contact forms that will be created on HubSpot and added to CTAs on bitterlacrosse.com. These will automatically funnel to our contact dashboard, with each contact being added to their appropriate list (coach, women’s player, men’s player, etc.). The intent is for every person who interacts with Bitter Lacrosse to be logged into our system for improved marketing month over month into 2025.
- How do we determine improvement? By implementing updated imagery on the site, testimonials, social media integration, an email list sign-up, adding a link to charlestondraw.com, and on-page SEO improvements such as optimizing title tags, internal links, URLs, privacy policy page, and terms and conditions page. These all help improve your website presence on Google, the first step into being found organically in the Charleston/Southeast geographic area when people search for terms related to your business.
- Instagram: There will be two routes offered below, with a Lite growth strategy at 20 hours per month and a Pro growth strategy at 40 hours per month. The difference between both offerings will consist of the number of hours invested in posts/reels per week, outreach/growth hours per week, design hours per week, and posting hours per week.
- How do we determine improvement? We will pivot the account strategy to improve organic growth related to our services in our geographic area. With this, cadence is key. We want to have a steady presence of Bitter Lacrosse across the feed of lacrosse players, coaches, and program directors in not only the Charleston area but also the Southeast US. As much as finding and connecting with program directors is key, so is making a Bitter Lacrosse event desirable to players.
Retainer Options
Option #1: Lite Marketing and Social
- Contact Database, Email Marketing, Website Improvement items listed above, with 20 Hours of Instagram Marketing per month.
- A conservative but sound approach to aligning backend systems, with a moderate social push to prepare for 2025's events.
- 5 Hours, 3 Posts/Reels, 2.5 Hours of Growth and Outreach, 1.5 Hours of Design, 1 Hour of Posting per week
$2,010 per month
(August through December 2024)
Option #2: Pro Marketing and Social
- Contact Database, Email Marketing, Website Improvement items listed above, with 40 Hours of Instagram Marketing per month.
- A deeper and more robust approach to aligning backend systems and automations, with an aggressive social push to prepare for 2025's events.
- 10 Hours, 5 Posts/Reels, 4 Hours of Growth and Outreach, 4 Hours of Design, 2 Hour of Posting per week
$2,760 per month
(August through December 2024)
Your Custom ROI Calculator
After getting loose benchmarks from Billy on registration goals for both the Overnight Camp and Palmetto Festival, I put this view together. Feel free to plug in numbers as you see fit, as it will give a more accurate picture of what your goals are, and how I can adjust my strategy to hit those for you.
The Value
- Scalability: HubSpot is a cost-conscious, long-term solution that can manage your systems without you needing to do any heavy lifting. For $15 per month, we will have our entire contact database, email marketing system, form creation area, and operating system in one place. This grows in tandem with the business, eliminating the need to balance multiple software and subscription fees.
- Efficiency: By not using a bloated marketing agency that only performs surface-level efforts, my entire focus is on improving the efficiency of your marketing efforts and the brand’s overall presence. You'll spend fewer hours handling these tasks and their breakdowns, while I make improvements on my end to hit your desired ROI.
- Continuity: Over five months of daily maintenance, updates, and activity, Bitter Lacrosse will run in tandem across Instagram, the website, email, and Google My Business. This continuity positions us to increase our online visibility, expand our audience through increased activity, and achieve our registration/signup goals sooner. Over time, this well-oiled machine will become more robust as we gain momentum in our strategy.
Next Steps
- Review: Take your time reviewing the proposal and provide any feedback that you may have by Friday, August 9th.
- Follow Up: On Friday, August 9th all revisions and or additions requested will be adjusted on the proposal. Target start date will be Monday, August 12th.
- Agreement: Once the proposal is agreed upon, a quote will be generated and sent to you for an eSignature.
Seeing Results
"Working with Ryan and Wild Rover has been such a great and energizing experience. His professionalism and initiative have helped us to make great progress in a short time in all of our marketing and CRM systems. He has been a difference maker for our business and overall just a pleasure to work with!" - Matt Dunn, First Class Lacrosse
"When determining who to work with, it’s critical to find individuals who have similar values, who I can trust, and who can execute. Ryan is not only a kind, trustworthy person outside of business, he has an insatiable work ethic and produces excellent results. Giving Ryan the opportunity to recreate our company’s website and enhance our marketing efforts is one of the best decisions I’ve made since my business’ inception." - Mark Glicini, Mark Glicini Peak Performance
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