Start Marketing Your Small Businesses Strategically
Marketing Foundations Sprint | Starting at $4,600
You know you need to market your business. You’re just not sure where to start or what to prioritize, or if you’re even ready to commit to ongoing support. This 6-week foundational sprint gives you a marketing strategy, one fully built channel, and a clear plan for what to do after we hand you back the reins.
Marketing Foundations for Growing Businesses
A lot of businesses get further than they expect without ever really ‘marketing’. Referrals come in, reputation builds, and for a while that’s enough. Until it isn’t, and suddenly you need to find customers who don’t already know you exist, or don’t know someone who has bought from you before.
The problem? You have no clue where to start. Enter a marketing agency, right? Wrong. Most marketing agencies are going to do too much, too soon, and overpromise you results that don’t come all the while blaming your budget & overwhelming you.
Our Marketing Foundations Sprint meets you where you are. Maybe you have something set up, maybe nothing, and both are ok. In 6 weeks we build you a strategy, nail down your key messaging, and set up your analytics as well as one primary channel, such as email marketing, properly so that when your business is ready for scale, you are too.
Our Strategic Marketing Approach
Our approach doesn’t change based on your level of investment. Good marketing is good marketing, and that’s true whether you’re spending $1,000 a month or $10,000. When you partner with us, here’s what you get:
You get a senior marketing partner who learns your business, not an account manager who’s learning marketing.
Agencies love to skip the hard part. They rush into execution because activity feels like progress, they have the templates ready to go, and it’s easier to bill for deliverables than discovery. The problem is that building anything on a cracked foundation is how marketing budgets get wasted. Before anything gets built or recommended, we do the work to actually understand where your brand is at right now. It may take a bit longer to get into execution, but what gets built will actually work.
You get marketing direction that tells you what you need, not just does what you ask.
When a client asks most marketing agencies to jump, the response is “how high?” That sounds great until you realize they’ve spent months executing requests that felt urgent in the moment but weren’t actually moving anything forward. Part of having a senior partner is having someone who will tell you when your time & money are better spent elsewhere, and redirect you accordingly.
You get a realistic marketing strategy built for your brand, not a generic playbook.
A lot of agencies have a signature move: a templated PDF lead magnet funnel, a content calendar, a paid ads structure they run for every client, and the classic “Have you tried social media marketing?” It’s efficient for them, but it isn’t always right for your brand. Your marketing strategy gets built around your business specifically, not borrowed from the last client who seemed similar enough, or generated by whatever AI tool is trending this week.
What’s Included in Marketing Foundations
Discovery Session
A structured deep-dive into your business model, your ideal customer, your current marketing (no matter how minimal), your capacity, and your goals. This is where we find out what's actually going on & determine what to prioritize before we build anything.
Key Messaging
A reference document that captures how to talk about your brand, your offers, and your value in a way that your audience understands and resonates with. Using this document helps your content & campaigns sound consistent across every marketing channel.
Google Analytics Setup
Believe it or not, you don't just install the tracking code & hope for the best. We configure your Google Analytics properly, for your business, from the start so that you always know what's working, what isn't, as well as where your traffic is coming from & when.
90-Day Strategy
A clear, prioritized plan for what to execute in the 90 days following this sprint. We're not talking about a vague content framework filled with jargon, this is actual direction on what you need to do, in what order, and why. Plus, what to look for to know its working.
Single Channel Build
During discovery we learn about your business and your goals, at which time we'll recommend which marketing channel we think makes the most sense for your business at this stage, and we'll build that foundation properly - email marketing, paid ads, or SEO.
Marketing Handoff
After 6 weeks you leave the sprint knowing where your marketing stands, what's been built, and what the next steps should be for your team. Clear documentation & instruction so that you can move forward with confidence.
The Cost of Getting it Wrong From the Start
Bad foundations are expensive, and not always in ways that are obvious immediately. You try to learn & tackle every channel from the jump, so no channel ends up optimized, and your marketing falls flat & feels inconsistent. You build an email list with no strategy for what to do with the contacts that join it. You publish content that feels right to you but doesn’t connect with anyone. You’re putting in effort but you have no idea if any of it is even working.
Getting your strategy & foundations right from the beginning isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It’s the difference between marketing that builds on itself while also feeling manageable & marketing that you have to keep restarting.
The Marketing Foundations Sprint starts at $4,600, and it takes us 6 weeks. After that, you know where you stand and where you’re going.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you want to know about the Marketing Foundations Sprint before you reach out.
The sprint itself is focused on deliverables: your strategy, your messaging, your analytics, and a properly built channel to move forward with. What you do with that after is where the results come from, and how quickly they come depends on how consistently you execute your strategy. Marketing takes time to compound, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What we can tell you is that by the end of six weeks, your marketing will feel a lot more intentional and a lot less overwhelming.
We figure that out during the discovery session. We look at where your business is at, what your goals are, and where the biggest opportunity is before we recommend anything. You don’t need to have that answer before you reach out, but that said we’re happy to hear your thoughts! If you’re in the e-commerce space it’s very likely that we will settle on email marketing as that is so rarely set up properly and has such a high ROI. If your email marketing is doing its job, paid ads are a likely next step, but if your website lacks any kind of SEO, we may choose to start there. It’s entirely dependent on where you’re at and what your capacity is going forward.
You get a full handoff including your key messaging documents, your 90-day marketing strategy, and a properly built, operating marketing channel. Everything is documented clearly so you can run it yourself. If you decide that you want ongoing support after the sprint, that’s a conversation we’re open to, but there’s no obligation.
No, not at all. We audit what exists during discovery and build up from wherever you’re actually at. If there’s something already there, we assess it and build from it or around it, even if that means fixing someone else’s mistakes or doubling back on steps that were missed. If there’s nothing in place, we start from scratch, and that’s ok too!
The most involved part is the discovery session at the start, and likely a few emails back and forth to clarify details. After that, we’ll need feedback and approvals at a few key points, but we’re not going to be in your inbox every day. We’ll make sure to get a sense of your unique capacity as well, so that we’re not handing off a marketing strategy you can’t execute at the end. The sprint is designed to minimize the burden on you while still building something that accurately reflects your brand and gets you to where you realistically should be in another 3 months time.
We’ll tell you upfront if that’s the case and we can talk through what that looks like before you make any commitments, we’re not into surprise overage fees any more than you are. But honestly, most brands at this level fit within the standard scope. Starting with one primary marketing channel might feel like you’re not doing enough, but trust us, starting small & scaling when you’re ready is the only way to grow your marketing consistently & strategically while avoiding burnout.
It can, but only if that’s what makes sense for where you’re at after the 6 weeks both financially and in the sense of your capacity for tactical execution. We designed the Marketing Foundations Sprint for businesses who need help but likely aren’t in a financial place yet to outsource their marketing on an ongoing basis. Our goal is to get you on your feet with marketing so that you can continue to run your business into the future, it isn’t to rope you into becoming dependent on us. That said if you get to the end and you’re thinking that executing the strategy is going to be too much for you, we’re happy to chat about what support could look like. Bottom line though, we don’t use this sprint as a sales tool for a retainer, and there’s no awkward sales pitch waiting for you.
It can be, it’s not a requirement that you’re brand new to this. If what you have running isn’t working or feels scattered, the sprint is a good way to step back, get the strategy right, check in on your key messaging, analytics & primary channel foundations. If we think this approach is the right fit for where you’re at, or the wrong one, we’ll always tell you during our first conversation.
Testimonials
Contact Us
Email: info@violetandvine.ca
Locations: Calgary, AB | Kelowna, BC
Business Hours: M- F 9 am – 4 pm
We’re based in Calgary and Kelowna and work with founder-led businesses across Canada, mostly remotely but we’ll show up in person when it matters. Every client works directly with us, not through an account manager or a junior team learning on your dime.