Marketing Strategy Alignment | Raise the Future

When I first started working at Raise the Future, the marketing department was dispersed - as is common in non-profits - and many employees were fulfilling small marketing activities here and there on top of their regular position. And this culminated in inconsistent messaging and unidentified goals with little to no alignment with the organization's strategic plan.

As the Marketing and Communications Manager, my first major goal was to create a consistent brand voice and develop a strategic marketing plan in alignment with the organization's overall 3-year strategic plan.

With the organization's goals in mind, I led the Communications Committee in identifying the tangible results we wanted from our marketing efforts. These were results like:

• Increasing the number of adoptive parents signing up for support services to help the family thrive after adoption

• Increasing donations so that the organization could hire more adoption recruiters and, in turn, serve more children in care

• Encouraging more counties to utilize our intensive recruitment services to significantly reduce the time spent in care for more children

In thinking strategically about our overall desired results, we were able to implement SMART goals and shift the marketing department's efforts from chasing numbers (likes and comments on social media) to driving behavioral changes that mattered, like increasing the number of post-adoption parents attending a family support class, soliciting more donations to a year-end fundraiser, and increasing county workers' understanding in the need for our intensive recruitment services.

By marketing with an identified target for specific desired results, our marketing efforts made a greater impact in achieving the overall organization's strategic goals.

Empowering Stakeholders | Raise the Future

At Raise the Future, the Board of Directors was an incredibly important asset. From being major donors and connecting us with their valuable networks to providing expert advice and making key decisions for the organization, their impact was immeasurable. Which also meant their understanding of the work that Raise the Future did was crucial. But it was unfortunately lacking given their distance from the work on-the-ground, and a quarterly board meeting wasn't a ton of time to educate them on the complexities of our field work. 

So I created the Adoption Recruitment Simulation, an intricate training experience, to fill the gap in the Board's understanding by putting them in the shoes of a recruiter for Raise the Future. 

Board members were given a case file for an (imaginary) child in foster care. Based on the limited information in the case file, participants had to use critical thinking to identify individuals in the child's life that could be a useful resource (i.e. an adoptive parent, legal guardian, or mentor) and nurture a healthy, reliable, and successful relationship with the child and the identified resource. The simulation was based on real events that happen in the search for an adoptive family for children in care every day and it required the participants to be creative, persistent, and optimistic in the face of repeated hardship.

When educating stakeholders and customers alike, it's important to meet them where they're at. Our board members were extremely time-limited, but needed a deep understanding of what Raise the Future does. By enabling the Board of Directors to essentially "live" through the work Raise the Future does, the best practices in the field, and the hurdles recruiters and children in care must constantly overcome, the Board became a better voice for the organization, strengthening our brand and further aligning their thinking and marketing efforts with the organization's strategic goals.

"Kate created and executed every part of this intricate endeavor, and I believe it was one of the most effective illustrations of the work we do that our Board has ever experienced. It was amazing!"
- Rachel Tibbetts, VP of Operations at Raise the Future

Content Marketing & SEO | RSC & PixelPerfect Studios

RSC and PixelPerfect Studios were two separate companies - an office design firm and a digital rendering studio - under one roof. RSC had an established reputation in the office design industry, but PixelPerfect Studios was just one year old and had very little presence in its target industries.

When I started as the Marketing Specialist at RSC and PixelPerfect, both websites' sole purpose was simply having an online presence. They lacked value-adding content, had no path to converting prospects, and had virtually non-existent search engine rankings and traffic.

Upon my hire, I streamlined both websites to create a cleaner, simpler user experience that answered common questions succinctly and engaged visitors. I also created client surveys, sent to existing clients, to discover what content was most useful for them to find on our websites and used that to guide future blog posts, website content, and email and social campaigns. Lastly, I ensured that both websites were regularly maintained and optimized for search engines with the best keywords and metadata for our industries.

In doing these three things, I was able to increase page visits to both websites as follows:

• RSC: 22% increase in unique views in the first 6 months, including a 72% increase of visits to our Contact page

• PixelPerfect Studios: 41% increase in unique views in the first 6 months, including a 145% increase in high-quality conversions made through our Contact page.

Travel Blogging | Off Roaming

After years of saving, my partner and I set off for a year-long trip around the world in January of 2019. We wanted to create a blog to document our experiences as a keepsake for ourselves, a way to stay in touch with friends and family back home, and an encouraging voice for other aspiring and like-minded travelers around the world.

Together, my partner and I created www.offroamingtogether.com to share our journey. We co-created all of our content from scratch including:

• Brand identity creation

• Taking and editing photographs for a consistent feel

• Customizing page layouts and copy

• Creating digital graphics

• Writing blogs spanning various topics and styles, including city guides, personal experiences, playlists, recipes, and how-to guides

• Writing guest blogs for other travel websites