Week one
You talk, we take notes
An hour or two with you and anyone else who has a stake in it. What is coming up, what you have already tried, what you are quietly embarrassed about. You do not prepare anything.
Work with us
Santa Barbara, California
What we do
Two things, really: bring you customers who do not know you yet, and get more out of the ones who already said yes. Everything below is just how.
01
It comes back to two columns
People who don’t know you yet. Somebody hears your name — from a friend, a sign, a search, a room they were in. Then they look you up, and in a few seconds they decide whether you are the real thing or a risk. Most of the money organizations spend goes on the hearing part and almost none on the looking-you-up part, which is why so much of it disappears without a trace. We work on both ends.
The people who already said yes. The family that gave in 2021 and never got asked again. The couple who came once for a birthday and would come every month if they were reminded. The four thousand names in a spreadsheet on somebody’s desktop. They already decided they liked you — the expensive part is done and it is already paid for. It is faster, it costs a fraction, and it shows up in the bank first, so it is usually where we start.
If a piece of work does not trace back to one of those two columns, we do not recommend it — which is why we talk people out of things fairly often.
02
How the work actually gets done
This is not a menu and you do not pick from it. We look at what is slow and reach for whatever unsticks it — one month that is a film, the next it is fixing the page that loses people on the third click. Most projects use four or five of these. None of them use all nine.
01
Website design & development
Where everyone who hears your name ends up. Designed, built, hosted and still ours to fix — in year one and in year three. Changed the same week you ask.
02
Brand & identity
So you look like the serious choice before anybody reads a word. Logo, type, color and a one-page standard your board can follow without calling us. In this town, looking cheap costs more than being expensive.
03
Video & photography
So the place looks online the way it looks when someone walks in. Shot, cut and finished here — campaign film, event coverage, headshots, and the short-form that keeps the channels fed.
04
Podcast production
An hour with the people you most want as customers, on the record, and months of things to publish out of it. You show up and talk; recording, editing, publishing, clips, show notes, artwork and the feed are ours.
05
Social media
Being in front of local people on the day they are deciding where to go. Planned a month ahead, made here, posted here — not scheduled once in January and left to run dry by March.
06
Email & newsletters
The only audience you own outright — nobody can change an algorithm and take it away from you. Written, built and sent, on time, whether or not you remembered.
07
Content & search
Being the answer when somebody in this county types the thing you do. Writing worth publishing, structured so people find it, and tracked so you can see whether it worked.
08
Events & fundraising
The gala, the season opener, the auction. The identity, the page, the promotion, the reminders and the follow-up afterward — so the date on the calendar stops being a thing you dread.
09
Marketing strategy
Mostly deciding what not to do. A quarterly read on where you actually stand and the one line that explains you to everyone else. Written up, not just discussed.
03
What the first month actually looks like
Week two
We go find the logins
Almost everyone we start with has lost access to something — a domain registered to a former employee, an account nobody can get into, photos on somebody’s laptop. We track it down and put it in your name.
Week three
The first thing goes out
Something small and visible, so there is evidence early instead of a strategy document. Usually the fastest fix we found in week one.
Week four
The note
What went out, what happened, what is next — in plain English, written so you can forward it to a board or a partner without editing it. About twenty minutes a month from you after that.
Start here
Tell us what
isn’t working
Write down the part that is bothering you and Ben will write back with what he would do about it — whether or not you end up hiring us. Four sentences is plenty.