Smart Yeti Creative Agency

On Growing Revenue To $8K/Month By Pivoting Our Offering [Update]

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Jeremy Kanne

Founder, Smart Yeti Creative Agency

$8K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Smart Yeti Creati...

www.smartyeti.co

from Chicago, Illinois, USA

started February 2015

$8,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Discover what books Jeremy recommends to grow your business!

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Want more updates on Smart Yeti Creative Agency? Check out these stories:

1. Switching Careers And Starting My Own Digital Marketing Agency (2019) ➜

This is a follow up story for Smart Yeti Creative Agency. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 5 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

My name is Jeremy Kanne, and I am the owner/founder of Smart Yeti. Smart Yeti provides Fractional Chief Marketing Officer services to B2B Tech/SaaS companies. The journey here has been a long but good one.

I started Smart Yeti with the approach of finding the best-fit video production services in a market that didn’t want to provide middle-cost options because it’s hard. Within a few years, I expanded Smart Yeti’s scope to include most brand deliverables - websites, design, brand, etc. with the same philosophy of finding the best fit service according to need and budget.

We target businesses making $1-15 million annually and are B2B businesses - particularly technology and software / SaaS companies. Typically, the pain points seen in our target customer base are that they’ve “tried marketing” but haven’t seen the results they desired or are struggling to find the most cost-efficient solution.

We come in with a practiced hand across multiple marketing strategies and help hire & fire agencies, revise strategy to fit business goals, and assist in managing execution to eliminate roadblocks.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

Smart Yeti’s journey in marketing has taken another turn. We started as a video production agency and then expanded into a creative agency. Now we are in what I expect to be the final pivot - providing Fractional Chief Marketing Officer services. I’m proud of this change in direction because it meets all the goals I want to see in being an exceptional partner in marketing.

I saw an opportunity to leverage the problem-solving skills forged in my engineering background to provide valuable ongoing marketing support.

Through all the iterations I’ve taken Smart Yeti through, I’ve always been focused on providing the best fit solution to their marketing needs - first in the video, then across all creative, and now in marketing strategy and systems. This move felt right because in previously providing video or design or website needs, this was only a part of the larger problem.

I often felt like I was making a great asset that the client was pleased with, but we wouldn’t know what results it helped achieve in the larger marketing strategy. This is often because the client did not have a larger marketing strategy or didn’t know how to best utilize the work in their strategy.

This realization led me to work with clients on strategy. But I wasn’t satisfied with just creating another marketing agency that focuses on a handful of strategies/tactics. Companies have ongoing marketing needs that change as the marketing landscape changes or tactics prove less than effective.

I saw an opportunity to leverage the problem-solving skills forged in my engineering background to provide valuable ongoing marketing support. Fractional Chief Marketing Officer services proved to be the best way to be the trusted marketing strategist for clients that I wanted to be and it has proven to be a great decision.

With our largest client, we were happy to report a 56% increase in lead activity compared to previous years before our Smart Yeti engagement and the client has shared that they feel like using a fractional Chief Marketing Officer was “the best marketing decision they’ve ever made.”

Hearing that, I couldn’t be happier.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

I’ve learned that there is a serious issue with conflict-free advice when it comes to marketing strategy. Marketing agencies, typically working on a specific set of tactics/methods often sell themselves as doing “marketing strategy” while simultaneously recommending their services within their recommended strategy.

I don’t see a fault in them doing this, but it leaves the responsibility up to the client to judge their strategic recommendations accordingly, and all too often, small-to-medium business CEOs don’t have the marketing expertise to make a truly informed choice.

What results is companies trying out various agencies and tactics without a long-term plan in place, directly leading to feelings of ‘throwing spaghetti against the wall’ or ‘marketing just doesn’t work for us.’

Be open, honest, and vulnerable. Treat every piece of feedback with respect and try to learn at least a little from it. And then the more feedback you get, the easier you’ll be able to find insightful patterns.

In my marketing career, I’ve long been searching for an honest way to bring value to companies without championing a certain strategy or tactic. This was for two big reasons:

Any given strategy may need to be revised in the future as the market and needs shift.
Any given strategy may or may not be the right fit for a company and I despise trying to sell something that isn’t valuable to a person.

Shifting into being a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer has been a great fit for my skills because I get to give strategic, uncompromised advice that puts the client’s business goals at the highest priority.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year and the next 5 years?

Short-term plans (the next 1-2 years) are to gather data on this new Fractional MCO model and make a decision on whether to expand internal capabilities.

If I decide to expand, that will mean slowly bringing on new Fractional CMOS. Any good onboarding/training needs careful consideration, implementation, and feedback.

Have you read any good books in the last year?

Highly highly recommend Ministry For The Future.

It’s a near-future sci-fi novel that is both entertaining and terrifying, looking at what might happen given our world’s current course about climate change.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Get. Feedback. You’ll be in the best place to expand when you know exactly what problem you’re trying to solve and who the solution works best for. The best way I know to know this is to ask questions during and after the sales process.

Be open, honest, and vulnerable. Treat every piece of feedback with respect and try to learn at least a little from it. And then the more feedback you get, the easier you’ll be able to find insightful patterns.