Marketing Efforts

Challenge 

Despite Concept 21’s legacy and success, they had a limited online and digital presence. Recognizing the potential to grow, Concept 21 wanted to re-establish itself as an industry leader and grow its client base by attracting the interest of new brands and grow existing relationships with legacy brands.

Solution

Content Marketing To Build Industry Recognition 

I created a digital ecosystem for Concept 21 that provided highly valuable content for industry professionals. This drove engagement with the consultancy through blogs, video content, and downloadable PDF’s. Content was focused around trends, product development insights, and speciality footwear knowledge. 

Concept 21’s Digital Platform: Industry Leader 

I helped overhaul Concept 21’s website, bringing them an updated and refreshed visual aesthetic. 

Digital Tools

I also produced various digital tools and analytics tracking.

SEO

The website and all digital assets were optimized for search. This included building backlinks, improving metadata, and appling keyword planning for published content. 
 

Results

The combination of these digital marketing assets and robust marketing strategy has re-established Concept 21 as a leader in the footwear industry, generated new business opportunities, and has prepared them to continue to be an authority in the footwear industry. 

• Ranking top 5 in search for top keywords 
• 1,000+ views per blog post 
• 1-2 leads generated from the site per week

Strategy

Challenge 

Concept 21 had been an industry recognizable name in the States during the 90s and early 2000s but establishing their Asian operations and client base had put a hold on further growth of United States clients.

While their business was strong, the owners recognized the importance of refocusing growth domestically. However, during this time the industry demand for consulting and manufacturing had shifted, requiring a new approach to business in the States. 

 Solution 

Prior to deciding on a strategy, we first had to learn the new client landscape and ensure that we had a product market fit. Through our inbound leads and industry relationships we discovered what the essential aspects of our value proposition were. 

After several months of feedback we learned how to best serve prospective clients and discovered several unmet needs we could fulfill for the industry. I then lead the team through a business model canvas workshop to focus our efforts in these key areas.  

It was through this discovery phase we learned that we could leverage key resources within the business to drive significant growth. 

Results 

After implementing our new strategy we attracted renewed interest from the top US footwear brands for our new offering and gained the interest of startups by offering a competitive entry point into the footwear industry. In a four month time span we were able to close two new US clients and had built up dozens of qualified leads each month accumulating to around $2 million of additional revenue. 
 

Design Director

Challenge 

One of Concept 21’s primary services is design, hence they have a high demand for visual communication in the way of print materials, presentations, reports, and design briefs. 

Prior to my involvement, the execution of these documents were dispersed among several different freelance designers creating a variety of visual styles. This created a lack of cohesion among the visual products presented to clients and was highly inefficient for the organization to have to come up with an original design for each project. 

Solution

My initial goal was to develop a consistent look and feel for all of Concept 21’s visual assets. 

I worked on creating design templates for various applications based on the corporate branding guide I had created. From there I worked with outside freelance designers and employees to ensure that a cohesive design language was established. I eventually went on to oversee and manage all graphic, web, and presentation design projects. This included the following: 

Results 

The result was an increased consistency and efficiency in the design department. The visual aesthetic also carried over to all market materials for Concept 21.