The Grit Group

Excited to welcome John Sutton, Justin Adams, and Marc McCollum to our Grit Advisory Board! Not only do they each bring incredible prior work experience to the table, but even more importantly - they are seriously Gritty leaders with a drive to win AND win the right way. We are beyond grateful for their investment in our team and company, and look forward to the growth and transformation to come! #growthtakesgrit

Thrilled to welcome three new Grit teammates over the last few weeks! Haley DeLeon, M.A. - Managing Editor Andy Bowen - Director of Brand & Product Hannah Burfield - Email Lifecycle Manager Looking forward to building value and amplifying impact together over the months and years to come! #growthtakesgrit

In 2023 we launched partnerships with two leading businesses in the B2B Education Space, both looking to gain traction on small D2C business units inherited through acquisition. Two very different scopes. One very similar result. Up and to the Right! How we did it: 1️⃣ Intentional Collaboration - both internal teams partnered closely with us from the jump, providing insight into their businesses and constant feedback. That type of synergy is what creates 1+1=3 type results. 2️⃣ Smart Content Topics - for both partnerships, we were able to combine KW research, competitive context, and intent analysis to pick topics that gave us the best chance to win. When the breadth of KW targets available is wide, as it was for these two brands, getting validation on our topic selection from results like these was particularly rewarding. 3️⃣ Elegant but Tenacious Execution - producing high-quality, high-volume editorial content requires a lot of coordination. We have a 12-step process that every SEO piece goes through to ensure we hit the mark, and while it is 12 steps, don't be fooled, turnaround times are < 10 days per article. It has been a very noisy week in the world of Search, SEO, and Content. While the graphs we report on going forward could shift and change, we know with certainty that one thing will remain true no matter what changes in the digital landscape --> #GrowthTakesGrit Anxious about how to navigate the recent changes? Let's chat. #education #seo #intentionalcollaboration #eeat #content

New Opening at Grit! We are hiring a Lifecycle Email Marketing Manager to join our team. As we deepen our focus on helping brands build and cultivate their earned and owned audiences - this teammate will play a critical role in building upon our foundation for email marketing and leading us into the future! https://lnkd.in/emWE7cDA #email #retention #growthtakesgrit #lifecycle

Leadership = the stewardship of your influence Kudos to WinShape Teams for this thoughtful definition of leadership, and thank you for a fantastic experience at our retreat this year. This was Grit's second year at WinShape and it won't be our last! Thank you Bing 🏔 Oliver and the entire WinShape staff for a memorable experience that went above and beyond. Here are a few fun pics from our time in Rome, GA! #cultivateleadership #purpose #servantleadership #winshape #growthtakesgrit

Email marketers should rejoice when people unsubscribe. While of course, this isn’t true all the time, it does carry one truth that we see many brands forget, which is that there is such a thing as #goodattrition. It is all too common to hear clients expressing concern that they don’t want to over-email their subscriber base, and more often than not, this is driven by a #fear of increased #unsubscribe rates. Here are three reasons why we encourage brands to push the envelope on volume of emails and to embrace what you gain from seeing who unsubscribes. 1️⃣ First, more often than not, sending #moreemails = #morerevenue. Simple as that. 2️⃣ Second, when people unsubscribe, it challenges you to ask - why did we fail to connect with them? And how should we adjust our #messaging to connect more effectively? 3️⃣ Third, you get rid of the free-loaders who were never going buy anyways, which #savescosts on email storage. Every penny adds up. If you are interested in an audit and opportunity model to explore how Grit could strengthen your email program - please reach out here https://lnkd.in/eRyrN4_z. #email #unsubscribes #strengtheningbrands #ownedaudiences

Exceptional leaders prioritize hard conversations. We’ve been the SEO partner for one of the most recognizable eCommerce brands in women’s jewelry for over 5 years now. The results have been pretty #remarkable. Over 4x growth in non-brand traffic, nearly 2x revenue, and some head-term keyword rankings that just make you smile 😃 Recently though, organic search’s conversion rate (CVR) had been trending below target, and our client was challenging us to make progress on it. While we agreed we wanted to make progress on CVR, we also felt it wasn’t necessarily a problem, but rather a by-product of winning in other ways. When this happens, it is incredibly important for our team to demonstrate #courage in how we respond to the client's challenge. The toughest question to answer first is, “are we aligned with the client on our collective definition of #success?” When we sense that we might not be 100% on the same page with a client, we believe that we should never compromise and must #fightforthewin, together. While there wasn’t a right or wrong in this scenario, we knew we didn’t have full alignment. Pushing for #alignment can create more work – more relationship work, more thinking work, more analysis work, etc – but it is worth it. 🤜 🤛 If you aren’t having some cadence of hard conversations with your clients, you aren’t challenging yourselves enough to deliver remarkable results. The outcome of our hard conversation with this client? Relationships were deepened, trust was built, and new, valuable, ways to measure success were introduced. Next time you sense a hard conversation in front of you, remember, it is worth it, and if you prepare well, it usually always ends up being far less uncomfortable in the moment than you imagined. #hardconversations #fightforthewin #growthtakesgrit #alignment #leadwithgrit

Businesses exist to grow the people. Not the other way around. Earlier this year, members of the Grit team attended a Boost Leadership event to hear 37-year Chick-Fil-A Marketing Executive David G. Salyers speak and to build community with other dynamic leaders. Salyers walked through principles from his book “Remarkable!”, and one of them resonated. That principle was: Normal Businesses use people to grow the business #Remarkable Businesses use the business to grow the people Of course, this isn’t an either/or, but rather a both/and. However, framing it this way challenges leaders to think deeper. A way that we think about measuring this at Grit is by asking each member of our team two questions: 1️⃣ When they start at Grit we ask --> "What does it look like for you to channel professional growth into personal flourishing?" 2️⃣ Each year during reviews we ask --> How would you score yourself on a scale of 1-5 for how you've done on achieving that personal flourishing? Thanks, David G. Salyers for the inspiration to keep cultivating our culture! Looking forward to more Booster events this year. #cultivate #leadership #growthtakesgrit #virtuousleadership #growthepeople

Who doesn't love a book list? Here are 5 recommendations from our Founder, CEO Alex Johnson! 1️⃣ Start with Why (Simon Sinek) 2️⃣ 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Al Ries & Jack Trout) 3️⃣ Contagious: Why Brands Catch On (Jonah Berger) 4️⃣ Insanely Simple (Ken Segall) 5️⃣ Building a StoryBrand (Donald Miller) For some SparkNotes and an explanation of why to check out each book - you can read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/e2qDx4ew #booklist #marketing #leadwithgrit #growwithconfidence #leadership

Five Characteristics of a Digital Marketing Superstar 😎 🤩 1. Critical Thinkers 2. Creative Problem Solvers 3. Love to Read 4. Good with Numbers 5. Almost Recklessly Fast "We all wish that it was easy to be great, but whether we like to admit it or not, we also know that it isn’t easy. If you want to be a decision-maker and unlock the skill of being almost recklessly fast, you have to put in the work." https://lnkd.in/e-JhrdWG #leadwithgrit #growwithconfidence #digitalmarketing #superstar #movefast