We recently connected with Kelly Stark and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kelly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we talk about all of your success, let’s start with a story of failure. Can you open up about a time when you’ve failed?

Recently a client asked me for a “post-mortem” to understand why our Start Right-Finish Well marketing strategy workshop and marketing tactics didn’t achieve the desired goals. I look forward to learning from my failures to turn the next launch into success.

One of the lessons learned from the project is that we didn’t question the client’s goals and sales cycle even though we thought they were too aggressive. Forward Vision’s Start Right – Finish Well™ strategy workshop is a philosophy built on the right idea that virtually all-important venture capitalists and company leaders would agree that you must define the goals to start right. However, a marketing strategy done in a vacuum is ineffective and may be counterproductive. The marketing strategy didn’t include feedback from the targeted market, so the goals and messaging weren’t verified.

Finally, we didn’t establish a strong selling point for the client’s offering. It was frustrating that we couldn’t clearly express the value proposition and how it solved a customer problem. Although the product had great features, they were mostly “table steaks” in the market. Therefore, it didn’t excite the target audience enough to make the challenging transition to leave their current supplier and trust his unknown, new entry into the market.
In the future, I learned that I have to insist that the client get marketing feedback to set their expectations correctly. I certainly don’t like to tell clients that their product isn’t likely to reach their goals, but if they don’t succeed, I don’t feel like I did either.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I didn’t set out to form my own business. I started as a chemical engineer at Texas Instruments in 1995. I pursued an MBA at SMU Cox School of Business just to get into management but fell in love with marketing. I enjoy marketing technology products and services because I could utilize both sides of my brain to understand the science behind the technology and how it solves the customers’ problems as well as creatively on how to market the product.

After having twins, I left Texas Instruments and stayed home until the kids hit kindergarten. Then in 2012, I founded Forward Vision Marketing, LLC that over the last 10 years has grown to a team of twenty graphic web designers, writers, SEO, advertising, and media relations experts. Much of the growth is due to my business partner, Dyanne Williamson, and our board of advisors.

My passion is to help technology companies communicate their innovations and help shape tomorrow’s world.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

You can either ignore your company and personal brand and let it develop organically, possibly chaotically, or you can help message your brand to depict who you want to be and how you help the world. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, states “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.

Social media has changed the rules of branding because now the company branding is heavily influenced by the personal brand of the people that make up the company. When I coach a client about their company’s social media strategies, I first look at their personal social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and how they want to convey their own personal brand. Instead of just having their job title on their LinkedIn profile description they need to provide the true value they bring. Mine is “Love technology and helping companies communicate their innovations”

Also, it’s important to just start engaging on the platforms. Most people complain they don’t have time but if you can take the 3-a-day LinkedIn challenge just do the following:
1. Like 3 posts
2. Comment on 3 posts
3. Add 3 people to follow you or your company profile
There are a lot of tips and tricks that I offer on my free social media webinar “Build your Business and Manage Your Own Brand” https://www.forwardvision.net/building-your-personal-brand/.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

At Forward Vision, we generate the most leads for ourselves and our clients by adding a more focused account-based marketing (ABM) approach. The idea is to create your ideal client profile and then built a list of targeted companies and job titles that you want to go after.

The ideal client profile has to go deeper than demographic data but also needs to share the similar pain points that you are solving. In order to capture those prospects, you have to create the material expressing the pain points, case studies, testimonials, and solutions.

However, creating the material is much simpler when you have selected the type of customer you are trying to reach, identifying the pain points, and your value proposition. Next, we create a sequence of marketing activities such as email, social media, events, calls, etc. to reach out to prospects in different ways and help them get to understand your offerings. It will take effort with multiple contacts but then you have control over the type of customer that you get versus just waiting for the leads to come through your website.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ForwardVision.net
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Forward-Vision-Agency-Marketing-164756203663331/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellystark/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForwardV
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ForwardvisionNetMarketing
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/forward-vision-marketing-dallas

Image Credits
Mark Farinholt