We were lucky to catch up with Kimberly Portuondo recently and have shared our conversation below.
Kimberly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with something countless entrepreneurs have had to figure out on the fly – how have you dealt with the rise of remote work?
Our digital marketing agency has always been a remote company even prior to the pandemic. We have really leaned into the Google Suite (now called Workspace) of tools to help us work in a central “place” although we are all quite far away from one another.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Just out of college, I was doing marketing for an insurance agency and although I loved what I was doing, I wasn’t able to be creative enough with the work since it was a 9-5 job focusing on one specific industry. Through the insurance agency, I was doing speaking engagements for local business owners about the importance of marketing and insuring your business. At the end of each presentation, I would have people approaching me asking me if I could do some marketing for them. That is what sparked the idea that I could potentially go into business for myself, but I still didn’t take any definitive steps to make anything happen.
It wasn’t until I was getting adjusted at Markson Chiropractic and my chiropractor told me to quit my job and start working for him that I realized it was time to make a move. A few months after that in August 2014, I had quit the insurance job and started KP Kreative with just Markson Chiropractic as my client. My chiropractor, Dr. Rick Markson, also manages a company where he does consulting work to help other chiropractors learn how to run successful practices in their area. That business hosts three seminars per year, and I started speaking at those events to teach chiropractors across the United States how to properly market their practices. Naturally, this led to more clients for KP Kreative and my business has been growing ever since.
We help businesses with their digital presence with services such as SEO (search engine optimization), web design, social media management, digital advertising, etc. Our services have been particularly helpful during the pandemic as most consumers have moved online for all of their purchases.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
As a marketing company, we get asked this question often.
For our own clientele, we have found referrals to be the most effective in terms of the quality of client.
When we are marketing for our clients, we have found retargeting campaigns to be the most effective.
Any advice for managing a team?
My team has grown significantly since the pandemic. We went from a team of 4 to a team of 17 in the last 2 years.
As a fully remote team, it can be challenging to establish a culture that boosts morale. We are hyper-focused on creating an inclusive environment for our team. We have created several initiatives to keep the team connected:
1. Monthly team building events ranging from fun ice breakers to educational trainings
2. We share kudos – words of praise or affirmation – with other team members in a Google Sheet to thank each other for doing a great job on something
3. We share a quarterly internal newsletter
4. We host an annual retreat in-person to bring the entire team together where we will work on a core initiative for the company. Last year we drafted our core values together as a team.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kpkreative.com/
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/kp_kreative
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KPKreativeDM/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/12175676
Image Credits
Moments by Mel