Digital Marketing Manager
Hometown Hero CBD | June 2020Hometown Hero is an industry-leading, trailblazer in the e-commerce cannabis CPG industry. Selling in both a D2C/B2C and B2B capacity. I was brought on directly by the VP and CMO to work with them to build out a new marketing and branding growth strategy to take Hometown Hero to the next level. 8 months later, sales growth was unreal, as the 3 of us had changed the face of Hometown Hero with our work and plan, giving us the opporunity to bring on over 15 experts in their respective fields and faciliate even more sustainable growth over the next year. Resume:
Report directly to, liaison for, and directly assist both the VP and CMO. Manage and monitor KPI’s for the art department, customer service team, multiple copywriters, SEO specialists, social media, and email manager.
Develop company brand, strategy, plan, content calendar, and assist in any crisis management to then be presented and approved by c-suite.
Internal and external expert on all products, educating the team and any outside influencers/stakeholders on all new and existing products
Collaborate and direct cross-functional teams to execute campaigns, launch 40+ products, create both physical/digital assets and any other marketing projects with up to 5 figure budgets.
Research and monitor market landscape including consumer needs, competition, and brand position to develop recommendations and action plans for continuous improvements company-wide..
Forward-facing point of contact for any relationship/partnership building with local businesses, agencies, talent, or fellow e-commerce stores
Head of Influencer / Affiliate Relations. Direct point of contact and lead for all affiliates and influencers related projects. After launching in June 2021, my affiliate program has made over $50k to date.
Facilitate high-profile interviews between our c-suite and top journalists. Resulting in high-performing features in the New York Times, Forbes, Vice, Newsweek, and more!
Assist in discovering, executing, and providing coverage for our philanthropic efforts. With over $150k donated to local, state, and national veteran organizations
Plan, execute, and manage staff for local partnered events, with the number of attendees ranging from 100 to 2k depending on partnership and event.
Highlights:
Below are some of my favorite moments and campaigns I’ve had while at Hometown Hero. Being that our industry faces many regulations that make both paid and non-paid advertising incredibly difficult (and borderline illegal), my specialty was creating campaigns and promotions that were relatively low cost, relying mainly on making informed decisions on consumer needs based on data and creative content using our talented teams to it’s fullest potential guided by my vision.
Who doesn't love the yearly football championship "big game" we all sit around to watch with our friends and family? To make our customers the real MVP's of their "big game" parties - I designed a promo to let them do that exact thing! Commissioned some incredible photography from our art team that received hundreds of compliments from our audience because of our creativity and presentation of this promotion.
One of the best parts of the job was working with Veterans Charity Organizations and being able to give back to the every day heroes who risk their lives every day for our freedoms.
I had the pleasure of planning and introducing a movie screening for the folks at EVO Entertainment on behalf of Hometown Hero. We partnered with EVO to bring people back into theatres safely with a screening of 'Pineapple Express'. For more fun, we called the event a "hot box" and had fog machines and munchy snacks for the attendees.
During the dead of winter, when sales took a bit of hit because of new regulations getting rid of over 35% off our products, I crafted a "tropical winter" campaign focusing on our tropical flavored, new line of edibles. We had the art team execute this vision by make a catalog of imagery mixing both the tropical and winter aesthetic and saw sales immediately return to the levels we were at before.
A huge part of our job was education. Being that we are trailblazers in this industry, every event I planned we had the opportunity to educate general audiences on exactly who we are and what we can legally sell.
My events team educating attendees of Independence Brewing Co's 4/20 Celebration
One of my personal favorite campaigns from back in 2020. Our recently developed Delta 8 THC products were starting to see a sales spike, but not where we wanted it to be. After my bosses challenged me to get the word out and educate the masses on Delta 8 I decided, let's just make a holiday out of it! We created assets, told other stores and stakeholders in our industry, and did numerous press releases. All of this work ended up with December 8th being our #1 sales day of the year.
We kicked off our Black Friday/Cyber Monday on Wednesday, thanks to a little known cannabis related holiday called Green Wednesday. We used this day, and our position in the industry, to educate our audience what exactly Green Wednesday was and offer them a "full sampler line" of all of our recently added Delta 9 THC products. This gave many people the opportunity to try these products for the first time, and according to the data over 75% off first-time Delta 9 purchasers from this time period came back a second time.
Delta 8 Day in 2020 was such a success, we of course brought it back in 2021. This time we offered our audience the chance to try the complete line of Delta 8 products at a once-in-a-lifetime priced bundle. Not only did the bundle exceed expectations two fold, many other strangers in the industry joined us in the celebration.
Photography shot by Me.
When I first started at Hometown Hero, we were such a lean and mean team that I had to take my own photos for our social media, product catalog, and blog contents. Below are some of my favorites!
