Rachel Davidson

I’ve never really told you all what I actually do for a living, so here you go Pisgah Peaks Ventures builds & manages fractional marketing team for SMBs that are doing under 10-15 M ARR. The teams could be anywhere from 2 to 20+ individuals. Hiring for PT marketing roles can be a big drain on small businesses. They're unsure of who to hire, how to train, and they def don't want to manage them. This keeps costs in check (no office space here!) + avoids costly benefits / W2 wages. Perfect clients for us? B2B companies with 1-2 internal marketing team members Dispensaries with 2-5 locations. Soloprenuers who are scaling from 6 > 7 figures. A few years ago we started investing into other small businesses & at this point have equity in a handful of other SMBs. The goal? By 45; be able to live off the proceeds of our portfolio and golf 4X a week. To my network.... Tell us What do you do? Why do you do it? Post in the comments!

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Too often, I hear how some business leaders “don’t get” brand. The funny thing is *everyone gets brand.* Because we choose one over another all day long. 👉🏽 Call a Lyft over Uber. 👉🏽 Use Asana over Trello. 👉🏽 Get a salad from Sweetgreen over Mixt. 👉🏽 Buy athleisure from Athleta over Lululemon. 👉🏽 Order a puffy jacket from Patagonia over The North Face. Why? Preference. There’s something about the experience we have with one brand that we like better than others. It’s a feeling. An emotional connection, which is not always easy to explain – or measure. But it sure does drive our buying decisions. 💰 So we keep going back to the same brands over and over. We trust them. We become loyal to them. 🥰 Sometimes, it doesn’t even make sense why we stick with a brand. For example, I’ve seen photos from Android phones that are so much better than the ones my iPhone takes – but I keep getting iPhones. I’ve even questioned this choice. But I trust Apple enough not to want to try another brand – even if I prefer what that other brand offers. It’s not a rational decision – it’s emotional. Not convinced that brand drives business success? Try an experiment that can save you money for the next 6 months, but may cost you long-term customer loyalty: 💀 Think of brand development as an “extra,” not a must-have 💀 Rely on AI to form a connection with your customers 💀 Focus only on immediate, measurable financial results *Please report back. I'm genuinely curious if this can achieve long-term growth.* What do you think Nike has to say about this? 😬 Brand and marketing leaders: How do you respond when business leaders express confusion about the value of brand development?

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Is this it? The company I work for (Peloton Interactive) had another round of layoffs yesterday. I was personally spared, however many members of my team were let go. And many good people I know were impacted as well. We join the ranks of many companies reducing their workforces. In this challenging time I was reflecting on the past two years in the employment marketplace and how this trend has continued, typically followed by stock price bounce backs. It's a tough time for companies all around. It's an even tougher time for the work forces who keep these companies running. Yesterday I sat in a meeting, with a leader I truly respect, who was crushed by the amount of tough conversations she was tasked with having with people being let go. And I couldn't help but ask myself - "Is this it?" Is this the best way? Am I expected to deal with situations like this for the next 30 years of my career until I retire? Are my peers? Are we all expected to continue to prioritize the profitability of companies/shareholders over the individuals who keep those companies running? It just seems odd to me that this is where we've landed as a society. It's totally rational that this is happening because this is the way we've all decided for profit companies should run. But should they? I'm not going to sit here and pretend I have an idea for a better system. I'm not an economist. I'm not going to talk through the financial implications of not doing these layoffs. I understand they're necessary to keep companies running. All I'm saying is, I wish there was a better way. #layoff #mentalhealth

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I’m coming up on the end of my first 90 days at my new job. While it’s not an official “thing” where I work, I feels like a good time to reflect. While I’m technically in the healthcare industry, it feels more like retail marketing, an environment I hadn’t been in for more than a decade. A lot has changed. I’m not saying that is a bad thing. It’s just that I’m now old enough to have a memory of a fundamentally different environment. While it wasn’t the Mad Men days of presenting watercolor sketches to a roomful of middle aged men in suits, there was significantly less digital jobs and tools. I’m happy that the creative team environment feels the same. I am the only copywriter on a team with three designers and an associate creative director. Ever since I worked in the COSI Studio back in the late 90s, I’ve enjoyed collaborating with designers. It’s the one thing I truly missed when I shifted gears into longer-form writing a few years ago. While the work itself can get tedious and repetitive, I am bouyed by the creative change from fast-paced collaboration on bigger projects. Many of my co-workers are also my age, which is a huge change. For many years in retail marketing, I kept aging while everyone remained 35. Not that I inherently mind, but the widening gap in basic references sometimes makes for awkward lunches. For many years, I’ve seen many of my contemporaries rise in the ranks of leadership (a path that has never interested me), with many of them burning out or opting out for generalized “consultant” positions. My cubicle row has four people over 50, and that pleases me very much. My overall department—which includes accounts, strategy, creative, and production—is quite large, perhaps 100 people. Becasue of its size and because I have worked at many places in the industry in the same city for many years, I have run into many former coworkers. That’s one thing that I’m finding some true solace in. Early in my career, I felt rather “other” because I had the tendency to jump from job to job. While that routine suited me well, I often wondered how it looked to others. Now, that is the norm. Here’s to settling in and moving forward.

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LinkedIn follower growth is *not* a vanity metric. The no. of company page followers should be tracked… And, big milestones should be celebrated company-wide. But, many will disagree because: > Growing a company page is hard > It requires daily effort & creativity > Competitors are kicking their @** Hitting big milestones creates a feeling of momentum. Especially when your followers are current & future customers. LinkedIn follower growth is *not* a vanity metric.

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🔥 Hot Take: Marketers shouldn't always work direct with exclusive talent managers. Over the past 3 years, I have worked on campaigns across YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Podcasts and in each of them the majority of talent I ended up working with were non-exclusive to my agency. But everyone seems to only want to work direct. Sure, working directly may be one way to speed up communication and in theory, lower costs. But if your internal marketing team is small or has less experience in influencer marketing, partnering with a talent-agnostic agency to run your campaigns can be a life saver! ✉ True Communication Lift Preferring to work directly with dozens of independent managers that you've never worked with may appear as a clear communication chain. However, partnering with a single agency who can consolidate those managers and has existing relationships, will absolutely ease the communication life on you and may even save you time given those established relationships inter-agency. 🙋‍♂️ Exclusive Bias Talent managers work for their talent. That means they want what's best for them before what works best for you the brand. By working with a talent-agnostic agency, their priority is finding the best talent at the best price for you. 📑 Contracts and Invoicing 1 contract and 1 invoice. What else is there to say? Much easer. #influencermarketing #influencers #growthmarketing

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PSA: WE'RE GIVING OUT *FREE* TIKTOK STRATEGIES 🤯 "Wtf should I post on TikTok???" is a question we answer for brands on a daily basis. It's LITERALLY our job. ANYWAY, we're always chatting about our fav brands in the office and what they COULD do on TikTok... Sooo if you're feeling a bit lost, pop me a DM with your brand name (and TikTok handle if you have one) and we'll create a top line content strategy that you can run with.. ..for FREE. You're welcome. See ya in the DMs! 🚀 Antler Social 🦌 #tiktokagency #tiktok #tiktoktips #tiktokstrategy #tiktokmarketing

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We've helped ecom brands generate 14.02x ROAS because of this one thing: ✨ Effective Storyboarding ✨ Brands may have the perfect faces of their brand but the real question is... Can they create the best ads for your campaigns? Often, the skill of great storyboarding is what's missing. At Gumamela Studios, we specialize in Creative Strategy services to take your e-commerce campaigns to the next level through effective storyboarding. We'll dive deep into: 🌺 Brand research → to deeply understand your brand's essence 🌺 Competitor analysis → To identify unique positioning. 🌺 Market research → To grasp audience personas and preferences. All these equip your creators with briefs that pack a punch. Remember, great ads start with great storyboarding. PS. Whether you need a brand refresh or an entirely new creative direction, our team will set your e-commerce brand up for sustainable success. Message me "Storyboarding" ---- I’m Marie, the ambitious island voyager. Follow me Marie Tuason 🌺and ring that bell 🔔 for more Social Strategy, Wellness and Digital Nomad tips 🌱

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Social media managers can’t be given a username and password and expect to go viral overnight. We need a budget. We need creative resources. We need support from other teams. We need time to brainstorm. We need software to track performance. We need time to build relationships with influencers. We need crisis management plans for unforeseen challenges. We need time to execute. What did I miss? 🔔 Follow Brendan Cox for more marketing content. 🔄 Share this post to spread the word with your network! #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing #socialmediamanager #socialmediamanagers

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In the past week, I've spoken with two beauty brands facing 𝖋𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖘 & 𝖉𝖊𝖈𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘 😑 They're both struggling to identify the root cause and are scrambling to get back on track. One brand hired a CRO agency to assess their UX design against best practices. They then took these suggestions and conducted testing. They implemented 85% of the suggestions, which unfortunately led to an even further decrease in conversion. The other brand hasn't taken any specific action yet to improve the website but has been experimenting with different paid marketing campaigns, trying to pinpoint what's driving the reduction. While both brands share similar challenges, it's easy to generalize solutions based on a surface-level analysis of their websites. However, there's a lot of nuance involved. If we end up working with these brands, our approach will start with a deep understanding of their customers and how the brand fits into their lives. While both brands play in a similar space, their customers are quite different. This involves analyzing competitors and evaluating their historically strong channels to see where they've had the most success with acquiring customers. Although both brands clearly need website improvements, it's never that simple. Understanding the entire customer journey and how folks interact with the brand outside of the website is just as important. These external touchpoints are like the doors customers enter through, so optimizing them and creating synergy is just as important for driving conversions online.

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HOT TAKE: There’s no such thing as a viral strategy 😵 Period. That’s it. No SMM plans to go viral from their brand account. We’re usually just focused on the mission: 🧑‍🏫 Educating consumers 🗣️ Engaging them left, right, and center to create a relationship 🍿 Entertaining prospects by inserting their brand or product into relevant conversations And then boom, it happens. Or maybe it doesn't. This is just another reminder that going viral isn't a strategy, okay? Don’t listen to *anyone* that says or promises otherwise. --- Hi, I'm Robyn Nissim 👋🏽 A Social Media-obsessed millennial who made a career for myself forcing global brands online 💁🏼‍♀️📲 ❤️ Liked this post? 👀 Want to see more? Hit the + or 🔔 on my profile 🤝 Looking for support? I got you! Visit my website or send me a DM

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In a marketing era where: 1. Your biggest competitor isn't another brand, it's short attention spans. 2. Content creators with no formal training can outperform entire marketing teams. 3. Ads that don't feel like ads get more conversions than ones that do. 4. A viral TikTok can outperform a year-long campaign, but there is no formula—just trial and error. 5. Consumers can spot inauthenticity instantly and will call you out publicly. 6. Your customer is now your best marketer—reviews and testimonials drive decisions. 7. People want experiences, not just products; creating a journey is key to success. 8. Memes and humor can drive better results than high-budget productions. 9. The best-performing campaigns are sometimes the ones you never planned. 10. Community-driven content often outperforms brand-driven narratives. 11. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) still works, but only if it feels genuine. 12. A single social media scandal can erase years of brand equity in minutes. What else would you add? . . . #100DayChallenge #Day61 #ConsistentPosting #marketing #psychology #personalgrowthjourney #challengingmyself #AR_PersonalBrand

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As a social media manager, repeat after me: "We will not do anything extra that we are not getting paid for." 🗣️ People often expect us to do the work of an entire team while paying us in peanuts. Are you compensating us like a full team? Spoiler alert: no. If you're willing to pay, we might add a few tasks we're skilled at, but generally, it's a hard pass. We need to master the art of saying no! #socialmediamanager #socialmediamanagement #SMM #socialmediaexecutive

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Alright, I'm at a loss on this one... so social media marketers, I could use your help! We had a period of absolutely crushing it on IG (see screenshot). Then, with no change to video type, time posted, etc, etc, views dropped to under 500 and looking at the analytics, it's obvious IG stopped pushing our videos to non-followers. We've tried changing times, adjusting the content, even sending IG help a message (which seemed to help potentially for a couple of days before it went back to nothing). Any other thoughts? How have you gotten over a shadowban? (and that 500k+ video is still getting views/likes 🤷‍♂️)

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Hello LinkedIn friends! Hoping for your help again. I’m looking for someone to help lead / execute a consumer journey mapping project. A few bullets for consideration re the role: - Help identify moments that matter during the customer journey -View into the holistic consumer experience as they engage with the brand -Help identify opportunities to drive consideration as consumers explore the category If interested, plz email [email protected] OR tag potential leads! Thank you!! #hiring #insights #marketing #consumerinsights

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To all the dispensary retailers out there investing in Google Ads (ppc/paid search on Google) - be careful. You’re (hopefully) aware that it is against Google’s regulations to run ads for “recreational drugs” and while I know there are loopholes (weve used them) there is a growing risk that you will negatively impact your organic web presence and email domain health. The repercussions to date have mainly been account shutdowns, but Google is cracking down on spam in many ways and it’s only a matter of time before they connect the dots. All it takes is tracking the Google ad funnel one or two extra steps to your main dispensary website domain. Considering that email lists and organic traffic from Google search & Maps are THE lifeblood of dispensaries’ acquisition and retention strategies, it’s super important to consider long term vs short term impacts. The second we caught wind of new algorithms being tested to track these paid campaigns deeper down the funnel, and the potential for negative impacts to organic presence/email domain health of the main dispensary website (not the “clean” ad landing page you are using) - we shut our entire Google Ad program down. Not to mention, the retailers we shut down Google Ads for did not see a significant decrease in foot traffic or e-commerce revenue after turning off ads. Yes these were very non-branded heavy campaigns. Stay safe out there homies! 🫡

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Social media is not (and *should not be*) cheap. You need a: - designer - copywriter - video editor - strategist - project manager - social media manager to effectively manage social. That could be many people (like we do at Pomona Creative) or all rolled into one person (who would be called a social media unicorn). That's a lot of skills to add to your marketing team – adding a ton of value for your brand! So yes, it's going to cost more than $500 per month. A good bit more. The lack of transparency in pricing social media services across the industry has brands confused and social media professionals under compensated, which is not a good start to a great marketing relationship. Plus, I can't tell you how many brands have come to Pomona after spending many, many thousands of dollars on lackluster social from a previous agency. It's painful to see clients spend so much on social that isn't strategic. If you want to learn how to price your social media services or are curious about how much brands are spending on social, join me for my pricing workshop at Andréa Jones' Social Media Day Summit on June 30. Link in comments. #socialmedia #pricing

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Dear Social Media Manager, Buckle up because you’re in for the most unpredictable ride of your life. One day, you’re soaring on the meme train, and the next, you’re scrambling for 60-second video talent. Your role is often misunderstood – currently thought of as someone who just “posts” a few pictures and calls it a day. But we, the social team, know the complex nature of your day-to-day. You are a multiple-hat social guru. The person who is expected to be a project manager, videographer, creative director, stay on top of every rising trend, the one person on the team meant to just “get” culture, people, and the psychological response of those on the opposite end of thumb-stopping content. You are a strategic powerhouse driven by many numbers and metrics: ROI, ER, CPC, and whatever other acronym the social world expects from you. But you sometimes love to just flow with the vibe of social – the feeling of reading and understanding community sentiment. You are a respected but often overlooked part of the marketing department. And I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but you just get better. So, no matter the cliche, you truly learn to navigate the social world with grace, empower the dips in data, and truly not take things personally (because sometimes a flop is just a flop). So, as you begin or continue to navigate your career, know that the journey is ever-changing, and it’s up to you to stand out in a sea of sameness. Don’t get discouraged by the 579 rounds of revisions or 968 “no’s.” Because you are the expert. You sit in the trenches. And you are the one who is on the cusp of community response and reaction. It is ok to be discouraged by the pushback. It is ok to feel like the creative might not get approved. But I promise you, through the trials and tribulations, the millions of rejected ideas, and the continual push for on-trend creative, you will find a way to break the mold and break through the noise. You will be on the edge of creating thumb-stopping content. Overall, great content will all come down to listening to the community and creating content that they want rather than the content your leadership (or marketers) wants. So, be patient. Be adaptable. Most importantly, be vigilant in creating content that resonates with your audience and not everyone else's. May the algorithm be ever in our favor, Mariya ⎯ Thank you to Xandrina Allday, the visionary who gathered 46 experts to contribute to this masterpiece. Dear Social Media Manager is a must-read. Get inspired, gather tips, and more from talented industry professionals. And of course, see my above letter physically published! Get yours 🔗 https://a.co/d/028zkovi

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