About – Kevin C. Whelan – Digital Strategy Consultant

Looking for my bio? If so, read my bio here.

Let’s talk about you…

If you’re reading this page, chances are good that you’re the owner of a business with a wide range of digital marketing challenges and opportunities in front of you.

Chances are you’re looking to grow your business quickly and you know that digital is a key to your success.

You might need help with your website, social media, advertising, or any number of other key areas. But you don’t know whether to hire an agency, a series of freelancers, or in-house staff to make it work.

Chances are you’ve worked with web developers, designers, writers, and maybe an SEO provider or two before. Maybe you hired one or two people internally to do your marketing. And chances are, you’ve had mixed results.

There’s also a good chance that you are one responsible for making decisions about whether to go forward with a proposal or whether your marketing providers are as qualified as they claim to be.

It’s not easy being an entrepreneur—even at the best of times. It seems you would almost need a degree in each business discipline just to keep up.

And that’s where I come in…

My job is to be your trusted advisor. To learn everything there is to know about your business, your customers, and the direction you want to go in the next 5, 10 and 15+ years.

My job is to understand the ins and outs of the digital marketing field so you don’t have to.

My job is to understand how business works, how to track and measure a return on investment, and how to work with internal departments to ensure the left hand is in sync with the right.

My job is to help you find the right team and talent to implement the marketing strategies we decide on together.

And my job is to remain neutral at all times to ensure my interests are always aligned with yours.

My unique approach

The majority of marketing agencies and consultants offer both advice and implementation under one roof.

I don’t do that. And there is a distinct reason that I don’t.

Instead, I offer something that I call “conflict-free” digital strategy consulting and advisory services.

If you’ve ever hired a full-service agency to do your marketing for you, there are likely times when you felt like you were being “sold to” instead of being catered to. That’s because most agencies and consultants are financially incentivized to sell work output (they get paid to implement, after all).

There might have been other times where felt uncertain about the quality of their work or the advice you were being given. After all, you’re not a digital marketing expert; you’re an entrepreneur in your own industry!

I’m not incentivized in the same way as my peers, which makes my services somewhat unique.

Unlike my competition, I’m incentivized to win your business each month by getting you results. I charge a fixed monthly fee that’s not contingent on hours or deliverables.

I’m the closest alternative to hiring an internal marketing executive, but for a fraction of the risk and costs.

You can read more about the conflict of incentives inherent in typical agency-style relationships to see why I do things differently. Or, if you’re more curious about the results I can offer, keep reading this page instead.

What are my interests?

I’ve designed my business around ensuring my financial success is aligned with yours.

That means that in order for me to earn the most income from our relationship, I need to help you succeed consistently over time. Otherwise, there’s no reason to keep me on.

My goal is to be a long-term partner to your business, not simply a supplier.

My time is spent on learning, applying, and advising you on the best marketing strategies that are available for your business at any given time.

I practice what I preach and spend thousands of dollars and countless hours each year learning the latest digital marketing trends, strategies, and insights. They’re always changing, just like your competitive landscape.

My job is to give you access to that knowledge rather than spending hours of your own time learning things you have no business learning.

The method to the madness

My method is fairly simple. I start from the ground up, much like you would if you were building a new home.

I break it down into five core phases:

Strategy Phase
Platform Phase
Content Phase
Promotion Phase
Measurement and Refinement Phase

I always start with developing a marketing strategy, which includes a deep dive on your business, customers, competitive landscape, goals, and measurements of success.

I call this the Strategy Phase.

Next, we move onto your platform, also known as your website. Your website is the home base for everything, so it needs to be right if you’re going to succeed with any marketing efforts.

We look at everything from the user experience and design to the technical make-up of the website, both on desktop and mobile devices. No stone gets unturned; we see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then we fix what needs to be fixed.

I call this the Platform Phase.

Following that, we look at the content that lives on your website. The entire internet is made up of content that is linked together in a web. That’s why we commonly call the internet, “the web”.

The internet is simply the infrastructure that connects you and the content together. Your content needs to be good and plentiful if you want to attract new business. We start with the point of sale and reverse-engineer the experience it takes to attract new customers to your business.

I call this the Content Phase.

Once we have a good grasp on how your content will be structured and organized, we move onto the next phase.

The next phase is the Promotion Phase, which is the fun part (this is the sizzle).

The Promotion Phase involves things like social media, online advertising, marketing automation, email marketing, and much more.

This is the fuel for the fire.

But of course, there’s no sense in spending countless thousands of dollars and hours of your time driving people to your website (where sales and conversions happen) if you don’t have the right pieces in place first.

A poor strategy means you don’t have a coherent plan that maps to the needs and desires of your target market, and therefore nothing will work.

A poorly designed website means people won’t find what they need from you, or they won’t trust you enough to take action and buy.

Poor content means the value you offer is low, and therefore you won’t attract as many people to your website (platform). But even the pople you do attract aren’t going to build a relationship with your company as quickly, since there’s not enough value to be had.

That’s why things are done sequentially, but also concurrently. We can improve all things simultaneously where possible, and over a few-month period, you start to gain momentum.

In order to go deep on each area of your digital marketing, the heavy work is done in the order I’ve described above. This takes time, no matter who you are.

The last step, of course, is ensuring we’re tracking and measuring the key performance indicators (KPIs) that tell us whether we’re succeeding or not. Those KPIs may include number of website visitors, conversions, social media followers, email subscribers, revenue, leads, or any number of things depending on your goals.

This is the Measurement and Refinement Phase and can last anywhere between several months to several years, depending on your needs.

Based on the findings of our measurements, we constantly refine our approach and double down on what works. No need to do 100 things moderately well when you can do a few things extremely well.

How my services work…

Working with me involves a commitment of time (usually a minimum 3-6 months) and a willingness to build your marketing systems and strategies sequentially.

When you hire me, I become a member of your team. I help you capitalize on your biggest opportunities while fixing the biggest issues first.

Your time and resources are not unlimited, so while it might be tempting to start advertising right away on social media from day one, you would likely be losing money on conversions due to a weak overall presence.

We’ll start with the Strategy Phase first. You’ll answer a series of questions and I’ll dive deep into your business to get all the facts on paper that we can.

Next, we’ll develop a roadmap and plan of action, including a rough budget and timeline for projects and completion.

We’ll then decide who needs to be involved to implement those strategies, and I will bring in the right freelancers, consultants, and specialists for your business based on the company’s budgets, your goals, and the expertise required. Access to specialists is a real key and part of my secret sauce.

Following that, we’ll refine and measure the results as needed, pulling the marketing “levers” to ensure you get the right mix of short-term and long-term activities in play.

My goal is to remain an advisor to your company for as long as you need me. I have multiple tiers of service that you can move up and down on depending on your exact needs.

You’ll have a direct relationship to the implementation specialists I bring on (writers, designers, developers, SEOs, advertisers, etc.), which means at any time you can continue working on your marketing with your team without me. I don’t play middleman, take a commission, or mark up anyone’s time.

The people you work with become your own outsourced, virtual team. I’ll only stay with you as long as needed to ensure you’re getting the results you want.

The alternatives to hiring me…

There are three main alternatives to hiring me:

You can hire an in-house marketing executive/CMO
You can hire a full-service digital agency
You can do it all yourself

Hiring me will cut down on the time you spend managing your marketing, vetting work quality, making value decisions, and working “in the weeds”; wondering if the decisions you are making are really the best ones for your business.

Hiring me means you don’t need to spend the time and money it takes to be at the bleeding edge of digital marketing strategy. I invest a sizable portion of fees back into my education each year to ensure I’m always on top of my game.

If that sounds like something of interest to you, I encourage you to reach out to me to set up an initial conversation. We’ll talk about your business, your goals, your challenges, and see what needs to happen to take you a step further. No fee, no pressure, just to see if we might be a fit.

Contact me today to begin the conversation.