Outsourced Chief Marketing Executive: Repositions Best-in-Class Distributor, Drives Expansion into New Market
Best Case: Marketing Expertise Yields Greater Results for Growth, Risk Management, Alignment of Brand, and Sales Leadership
Best Case: Marketing Expertise Yields Greater Results for Growth, Risk Management, Alignment of Brand, and Sales Leadership
“Susie Hays breathes life and positivity through her expertise and passion as a market strategy executive leader. I had the privilege of collaborating on a wide range of marketing strategies with Q2Mark and feel I saw the breadth and scope of their prowess from re-branding, reputation management, the launch of digital and social media targeted market campaigns, the launch of a new website, customer-facing letters, surveys, and more. Aside from trusting her recommendations and strategy completely, I thought the deliverables of her campaigns were incredibly powerful and compelling, which has the desired market results she consistently delivered. She is an artist, storyteller, strategist, level-5 executive, and friend.”
Kris High
Chief Commercial Officer
Folium Biosciences
Q2Mark implemented critical crisis management tactics that repaired Folium’s brand and image, allowing our creative marketing and consulting services to reposition the hemp-derived CBD supplier at the head of the pack.
Headquartered in Colorado Springs, CO, and known for their exclusive CO2 extraction technology, Folium Biosciences is the largest vertically integrated B2B producer, manufacturer, and distributor of hemp-derived non-psychoactive cannabinoids in North America. Backed by quality, sciences, innovation, and scale, Folium prides themselves on extensive product development tapping into the unlimited future of hemp and unlocking its full potential to answer the need for safe, high quality, truthful cannabinoid products.
Folium supplies their unique 0.0% THC Phytocannabinoid-Rich (PCR) Broad Spectrum and Full Spectrum hemp oil and advanced ingredients to the top 5% of consumer good products in the CBD marketplace meeting a range of diverse industries, including the supplement, cosmetic, personal care, and animal health industries. Folium Biosciences was the world’s first Hemp company to be issued a Certificate of Free Sale and a Manufactured Food Establishment License by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. When you partner with Folium Biosciences, you discover the ultimate Truth in Hemp.
They have developed a proprietary engineering process that isolates and removes any unwanted compounds while creating the maximum potency level of phytocannabinoids. Folium’s state-of-the-art technology ensures a full-spectrum oil that includes both high levels of phytocannabinoids and terpenes. This guarantees that every customer receives a consistent, pure, and premium product.
When the market first opened in the CBD industry hay-day, Folium Biosciences was in great demand. They saw unbelievable growth sky-rocketing their company to the top of the marketplace, where they invested in becoming the largest vertically integrated producer, manufacturer, and distributor of hemp-derived phytocannabinoids in North America. However, challenge after challenge met Folium on their continued growth path as time went on. Because the industry was so young and they were new to market entrepreneurs, some mistakes were made that harmed their identity and they really needed help to reposition their brand and reputation as a trusted leader. Regulatory restrictions, a rapidly flooding marketplace, and eventually the COVID-19 pandemic also had a hand in diminishing their market share. On top of this, they had come under attack by many of their competitors. And that’s where we stepped in to manage public relations, risk management, repair their brand, and, at large, their marketing.
“I’ve known and worked with Susie for many, many years. She is always quick on her feet to provide ideas and recommendations o take your business to the next level, whether it be expanding ROI, reach, awareness, productization enhancements, or any other number of marketing communications strategies. At Folium, I was truly thrilled for the opportunity to work with Susie again. From the very beginning her rockstar CMO powers shined through. And I have to say, when I received her marketing plan, I was truly blown away. It was the best marketing plan I’ve ever read. And when it came to implementation, Susie was committed to success at every turn.”
Shaun Roberts
Global Business Development
Folium Biosciences
Having a previous working relationship with me, Folium executive member Shaun Roberts recommended the Q2Mark team to the board. He recognized that I had the right expertise needed to help build the necessary marketing plan for Folium. In addition to my knowledge of the industry and its various categories, Shaun knew that I also worked for the Council of Responsible Nutrition and had proven results in public relations and risk management to address their pending legal issues. My team and I were able to step in right away and start delivering tactics a crossed all fronts.
When I came on board, I had no idea how big the legal and financial issues were. But, having known that there was a constant stream of competitor attacks, I immediately wanted to work on implementing tactics to fix Folium’s image by rebuilding their trust and credibility. To start, I recommended launching monthly global press releases along with social media and email campaigns highlighting team growth, business news, and significant changes that were happening within the company. We wanted to bring forward the hard work of the team as well as the extensive labor dedicated to innovation within the industry. I’m proud to say Folium saw great success in this work. Alongside our other marketing tactics and implementation, the business growth began to pick up speed again.
As we continued to repair Folium’s brand, we shifted our focus to the risk management realm helping Folium develop and deliver legal briefings to address what was going and how Folium was taking action all of which were approved and used. My team and I were on call 24/7, even on weekends, helping the executive team respond to a variety of media about Folium to support their case. In addition, we developed and provided tools, resources, and documentation that the Folium sales team could utilize to address concerns and keep all clients updated on the organizations next steps. All of our work culminated into an entire infrastructure that supported and protected Folium’s reputation as a brand and a market leader.
Upon the initial audit, which was the most extensive audit and Roadmapping session I have completed to date, it was clear that Folium was hemorrhaging time and revenue due to its legacy marketing program. In addition, they had an aggressive growth goal wanting to double their business within a year. Given that the rapidly over marketplace had become filled with an abundance of misinformation, I knew that Folium’s best opportunity was to rebuild their brand to help lead the way – delivering the “Truth in Hemp.” Utilizing their tagline to provide content that demystifies the noise of the marketplace and guiding their audience toward hiring Folium Biosciences for their bulk CBD supply or white label needs. So, I proposed four different concepts. These included:
Ultimately, a brand is created as much by customer perception as it is by the company itself. My goal at Q2Mark is always to ensure that a brand vision speaks to its audiences and sparks an emotional connection. For Folium Biosciences, we needed to get back to its roots and clarify the brand. It was clear that Folium’s messaging, positioning, and visual appearance was very disjointed. Folium’s brand presence didn’t mirror product quality or credibility consistently, which led to a disconnect with target audiences. To correct this, I recommended fixing Folium’s brand personality across all platforms, beginning with those where client and prospect engagements happen. I started by reviewing Folium’s brand assets and worked to refine and fix several items including but not limited to:
An important touchpoint for Folium was its website. When I came on board, it was extremely outdated. It was missing important regulatory and quality control content, was not optimized, didn’t showcase Folium’s products or services, struggled with SEO, and was not user friendly. To rebuild the website, we repurposed material that worked, refined new copy, added in missing content, and put a spotlight on their products, services, unique proprietary extraction processes, Folium leadership. I also proposed new imagery to better relate to their audiences and the brand. Ultimately, Q2Mark delivered a strategic, interactive, actionable, and visually appealing that demonstrates Folium’s expertise and leading industry knowledge that has proven to move the industry forward. To address the SEO issues, I worked on auditing and executing optimization strategies across all aspects of the website as well as other digital touchpoints to boost and improve the Folium Biosciences brand ranking.
I think by now, we all know that social media can help drive new business development and brand awareness in a very cost-effective way. In order to do it right, social media tactics need to add value and engagement with the people and companies that a brand wants to target. Folium was sitting on a treasure chest of content that they weren’t leveraging to share their expertise, connect with potential business partners, and help continue building the credibility of the CBD industry. Referring back to our concept strategies above, I worked to implement strategies that packaged Folium’s valuable content up in a way that was designed to engage, educate, and resonate with target audiences. I also worked to craft the organization’s social media policy and implemented rebranding efforts across each platform, again developing actionable new descriptive copy, updated graphics, and imagery.
The role of marketing agencies has significantly changed over the last several years. Today full-service agencies have to implement various strategies throughout the buyer’s journey in order to generate sales and help retain customers. For this to happen effectively, a company and its marketing partner should be in constant contact, working together to ensure that the best leads are always getting the information they are looking for and converting. I was heavily involved with the sales department at Folium Biosciences, having two meetings a week to address and implement new sales enablement processes. And, we immediately hit the ground running as I helped develop tools and tactics to secure large-scale business accounts.
One of the first campaigns that I worked on with Folium was a webinar sponsorship for Nutritional Outlook’s Editors’ Series. The webinar, “CBD in Food: A Challenging Road Ahead,” featuring industry-leading experts who were presenting on the legal obstacles CBD faces as a food and drink ingredient, challenges and tips when formulating with CBD in food and drinks, and insights about the current CBD food and drink market. This was a huge opportunity for Folium to capitalize on their leadership. As such, I recommended a full campaign that included social media leading up to the event as well as emails specialized for Folium’s databased external database and one for their internal team urging employees to help spread the word. After the event, we also sent a follow-up e-blast and shared insights from each of the presenters via social media.
Folium’s mission was to help people and animals live happier and healthier lives, but they weren’t highlighting their vast product solutions. To bring this forward, I highlighted each of the products that Folium produced and the industry categories they supplied. We had specific landing pages for each of these items on the website and immediately rolled that into an accompanying social media and email marketing campaign. A newer focus for Folium was on animal and pet products. Given my vast industry knowledge and previous success for Horn Animal Wellness, I pitched and helped develop launch campaigns for Folium’s Broad Spectrum and Full Spectrum Hemp Oil Pet Sprays, Broad Spectrum Hemp Oil Dog Supplement Calming Tablet, Broad Spectrum Hemp Oil Dog Supplement Hip and Joint Tablet, Broad Spectrum Hemp Oil Dog Chews, and Broad Spectrum Hemp Oil Horse and Animal Pellets. Each campaign included new literature demonstrating how the products were used for each category, for health support and ingredient functionality. We also developed social media and email marketing to support the launch of each product.
Kashif Shan
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder
Folium Biosciences
Today, marketing is often about building relationships and trust. For Folium Biosciences, this idea was more important than ever to demonstrate that their products can truly provide value to both clients and their consumers. With a proven track record and a highly efficient team of experts, Q2Mark brought creative marketing communications and consulting services that drove brand and performance, returning Folium to their position at the head of the pack. Q2Mark efforts had multiple record-breaking achievements and revenue results through marketing funnel implementation, departmental systems and processes, lead generation tactics, and more.
Never underestimate the power of a great content campaign. Our first email marketing campaign yielded over $300,000 of leads for Folium Biosciences saw continued growth with each campaign after.
The Nutritional Outlook Webinar Sponsorship campaign offered fantastic results in lead generation for Folium, and the collective event helping drive a total of nearly 650 registrants and over 50% live viewership.
Through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and more, we transformed Folium Bioscience’s social media platforms into strategic marketing communication vehicles that helped build the Folium brand and provided an entry point into a variety of marketing funnels. Highlights from our results include:
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