Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cari Kaufman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Cari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Honestly, digital marketing agencies are a dime a dozen. Pair that with the rise of generative AI, and most of us find ourselves in a flooded marketplace. So as a business owner, I have few options to set myself apart. The two that come immediately to mind are 1) lower prices or 2) find a way to be different. We chose the latter.

Most digital marketing agencies have chosen to scale by offering templated products that streamline the rollout process, which can make their products less expensive and more accessible to the general public. While those templated products have their place, Storyteller Wordsmith strongly believes that templated products make it difficult to have an individual brand voice and stand out.

So, we focus on affordable, custom strategies that marry the creative and artistic side of branding with the science of marketing analytics. We work closely with our clients to develop a unique brand voice, position their clients as the heroes of the brand story, and roll out their marketing in a way that fits into their operational ecosystem.

We believe that brand stories should be told in a unique voice that resonates with a specific audience and that, ultimately, your business marketing should feel like an extension of that voice (your voice). It’s deeper, more collaborative work, and it requires a client who is as invested in the process as we are. Truthfully, it limits the number of clients we can work with, because custom work isn’t exactly rapidly scalable, but it’s fulfilling and aligned with who we are as an agency. And that makes it all worth it.

Cari, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Cari Kaufman and Alex Andrews are the brains behind Storyteller Wordsmith. We’ve brought together a band of freelance marketing experts who provide full-service marketing agency services at an affordable price to our clients. We specialize in copywriting, content strategy and creation, and Squarespace custom design and development, but we also provide the full suite of digital marketing services with everything from social media and paid ads to SEO and WordPress development. We primarily serve as a white-label marketing agency to boutique marketing agencies but take on a small number of retail clients per year.

In 2022, after serving as the covert content strategy and execution team for a StoryBrand-certified agency, we decided it was time to blow our cover. We saw something the marketing world desperately needed—a high level of customer care and concierge service for boutique marketing agencies struggling to scale. But marketing execution agencies can cost a pretty penny and deliver cookie-cutter results.

As StoryBrand-trained marketers, we understand the power of a good story. As artists, we understand the power of beautiful imagery and visual branding. And as a retired military officer, Cari works hard to make sure it all fits and is sustainable operationally. It really is the perfect storm of awesomeness.

We believe that every brand is unique and they deserve custom marketing. In short, we think cookie-cutter solutions suck.

Cause ultimately, “…that whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.” (Stewart Copeland, Drummer for The Police)

Yeah…what he said.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I’ve (Cari) been a writer for as long as I can remember. My most memorable gift as a child was when my great Aunt Betty gave me a typewriter. I was 11, and had dreams of writing a book (I did by the way).

I’ve written blogs and articles as a side hustle for nearly 18 years. But in 2020, after suffering from a CSF leak that ended in brain surgery, I decided to leave my corporate job as a VP of Operations for a retailtainment firm, and branch out on my own as a content writer.

I got the opportunity to train in the StoryBrand method and work with some fabulous clients as a content strategist, before branching into copywriting. When my client’s needs began to drift into social media content and graphic design (I make pretty words, not pretty pictures), I knew I needed help. I reached out to my now business partner, Alex, and the rest is history.

Ultimately, starting out on my own was a massive leap of faith, but I had a network of support and sought out and took opportunities to learn from some of the best in the industry.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We were uniquely positioned from the beginning because of our connection to a StoryBrand certified agency. We had access to a community of marketing agencies that needed our services, and we stay plugged into to that community.

As we branch out to the rest of the marketing world, we’ve leaned on our content marketing expertise to help us find and land new clients organically. We use solid SEO tactics alongside compelling content to capture the minds of our audience and it has paid off.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storytellerwordsmith.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stwsmarketing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storytellerwordsmith
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carikaufman/

Image Credits
Lisa Haukom