Growth Strategies Developed By Jodi Schiller
Content Strategist, Writer, Marketer, Business Woman Extraordinaire: I'll make you money, and I'll make it fun and interesting along the way
The Drama Mamas—Theater/Interactive, Immersive Experiences—Executive Producer
Way back in 2003, when my kids were tiny, I founded a theater, experiential event company called the Drama Mamas devoted to expressing both in traditional, linear story and in modern interactive experiences, women’s lives from a women’s perspective. While on the one hand, there were very few of these kinds of initiatives at the time, and women were hungry to see their own lives reflected back to them in story, on the other, theater is a hard business even in the best of circumstances. Getting people to leave their homes at night, especially moms, and come to a small, hot theater to see a relatively low production value show on a shoestring budget is no easy feat. It’s also not, generally speaking, a money maker (especially with our focus), rather a social good. That said, applying intelligent growth tactics, we kept it alive and growing for nine years.
Growth Strategy: Our strategy included excellent product, strong Influencer marketing, good copywriting and design strategy. We identified our target audience and kept giving them what they needed and wanted, and weren’t getting anywhere else. Our customer reviews were gathered and exhibited. Our fan base was rabid.
Outcome: Growing rabid fan base over 9 years, growing donations. Due to changing life circumstances, I needed to move on to a salaried position.
9 years of high-level experiential creation, producing and marketing
Playwriting, Directing, Content Strategy, Persuasive Writing, UX
Web design and build
Competitive Landscape Analysis
Public Relations
B2C standard funnels
Audience and membership development
Grant writing
Media planning and budget
Forecasting/projections for revenue or demand planning
Seasonal and evergreen campaign
MapAlumnai—SAAS—Head of Marketing and Sales
Brought in as the head of sales and marketing, this SAAS start-up in Silicon Valley was using geolocation and monthly email introductions to nearby alumna members to advance and better leverage Alumna Associations for career advancement and support. Our first customers were educational institutions, later we branched into associations for established law firms and large corporations, businesses that both understood the value of these networks, and also knew that they were being largely under-leveraged.
Growth Strategy: The biggest challenge for growth was selling the value of an innovation before we had the hard data to prove its value, as well as selling our reliability for sustainable investment, especially as a service, as a new start up. We countered these challenges with comparative data from other comparative SAAS, as well as content detailing and extolling the extenuating value of building and connecting networks in real life, not just online.
Outcome: As it turned out, the actual biggest challenge was the business relationship between the founder and the tech co-founder. They fell out and the business went under.
SAAS, product development and marketing
Competitive Landscape Analysis
Target Audience Identification/Persona Building
B2B standard funnels
Media planning and budget recommendations
Forecasting/projections for revenue or demand planning
Seasonal and evergreen campaign
KPI establishment and tracking
Loyalty and retention planning
ARVR Women and Allies—Growth/Communications/Education/Engagement—Founder
In 2014, I began working in spatial technology, augmented and virtual reality. At all related meetups for this tech in San Francisco, 98% of the crowds present were men. This didn’t make sense to me. First, I enjoy working with diverse teams, and also, from a business perspective, I profoundly understand the way to create a “sticky” product means to build with the actual users of the product. As a forward thinking solution to this problem, I created ARVR Women and Allies to bring in a more diverse set of creators early in the lifecycle of the industry, involve them with established leaders in the field, and train them to build.
Growth Strategy: I started a meetup, and using cross-marketing and influencer, it began with a bang. We held monthly educational/networking meetings. We used Meetup to highlight the many thrilled members. I used all my speaking engagements to talk about what we were doing. We founded a Facebook page where we encouraged free talk and amplification. We had funders meet with our entrepreneurs and product creators. We founded a free school for women. We held the first spatial computing job fair in the city. We started a lunch series. We had celeb speakers. We partnered with businesses throughout the area.
Our motto was “50/50 in 5” or gender parity in the industry in five years.
We had experienced founders, including myself, mentor many of the female entrepreneurs in our groups. We started a scholarship for underrepresented minority creators.
Outcome: Eventually, misogyny in tech, and some horrific sociopathic elements, retaliated against me and other leaders of our group. We all left in terror. The result for the spatial computing industry, skipping forward to now, is this.
Highly skilled in rapid membership growth and engagement
Partnerships
Public Relations
Social Media
Experiential and educational development
Proven diversity qualifications
Competitive Landscape Analysis
Target Audience Identification/Persona Building
Media planning and budget
ARVR Academy
As an offshoot to the membership of ARVR Women and Allies, I started a school teaching the basics of AR/VR product design and creation to women for free. I gathered the staff, the location (Unity offices in SF), and the first graduating class of 15. I found a non-profit sponsor and created a job fair for our graduates to partake. We partnered with Unity, IEEE, and various other organizations, with me as the driver, to make this a reality.
Outcome: The school lasted many years after this beginning, and after I stepped down, but eventually folded due to unfair downward market pressure and practices for female creators.
New Reality Arts—Founder/Growth/Marketing Consultant/Product/Software Development
Founder of a software development firm and marketing consultant business for spatial computing.
Growth Strategy:
Began as a software development firm
First we created several “wow” virtual and augmented reality demos. The best way to explain our tech is to show it (unfortunately, I no longer have access to these demos). We created a website with small versions of them to showcase what we and what the tech can do. These apps ran the gamut from b2b, b2c, a virtual reality/blockchain product placement platform, a brain interface VR game.
However, after presenting these to many potential customers and brands, we found that, in general, they weren’t ready to start developing and creating this futuristic tech, but they were interested in learning about it and planning for “down the road”.
Morphed into a spatial computing marketing consulting firm, responding to market needs
So rather than show up with a free consulting conversation for brands and businesses, we morphed into a branding, marketing, consulting business, charging for our time. Primarily we devoted our services to how to use this next level tech to add a “wow” experiential component to your marketing strategy and offerings. We developed content to promote marketing opportunities, promote our brand, promote the industry, and I spoke in conferences around the world highlighting our work.
Outcome: Once more, rather than my effective work advocating for women in tech through ARVR Women and through our school, being a plus to my entrepreneurial efforts, I found out later through many people in the industry that this role as female leader “black balled” me and many were told not to use New Reality Arts as a provider because of this. We still found clients, but this hatred, these lies, this abuse of power, made doing business so much harder. Eventually, some really awful, criminal things happened to me, and I was forced to close New Reality Arts. Right before these horrific crimes happened to me, I had just invested a significant amount to make New Reality a Delaware C corp, the next step was to seek investment and investors.
Software development—from individual apps to large-scale VR platforms
Distributed team leadership—designers/engineers
UX design/implementation
Public Relations
Target Audience Identification/Persona Building
B2B standard funnels
Media planning and budget
Forecasting/projections for revenue or demand planning
Seasonal and evergreen campaign planning
KPI establishment and tracking
Loyalty and retention planning
Freelance Work:
Growth/Content/Engagement Leadership
Stealth partner to female entrepreneur—VR meditation app
A female entrepreneur created VR app that enhances meditation through visual and aural experiences. Asked to be her content strategist I went to work developing a growth plan.
Growth Strategy:
Identify and target market. Create Demo. Looked for large healthcare organizations to buy the app and subsequent builds as a partner.
Outcome:
Adoption by the Veterans Administration as tool to work with Vets.
Justice-Dewberry.com
Justice—Dewberry, builds correctional facilities around the country. Building a safe correctional facility often requires pinpoint accuracy for sight-lines, prison walls, etc. Helped them develop a prototype demo, however, they weren’t ready to invest in an actual build. Over and over, the spatial industry encountered the hurdle of the expense, psychological challenge of change management. No matter how much better this app we were planning would be, in every single way, it required risk and re- training and significant investment in the future.
Cybersecurity Training Initiative
Initiative to develop a curriculum to teach small businesses the basics of cybersecurity. Developed a market to sell upgraded software/hardware for better protection.
Growth strategy: Developed protocols and training manuals. Planned and produced educational Town Halls. High-level partnerships with cyber security software and hardware firms to bring their tech to our customers at a lower price. Consulted with firms on best high-level data protection protocols for their business. Developed market of cyber-security tech for businesses in Mexico with Mexican partners.
Outcome: I needed to go back to the States for some time, so my Mexican partners took over the business. I try not to look at what they’re doing now.
Technical writing, manuals, training for cybersecurity
Competitive Landscape Analysis
Target Audience Identification/Persona Building
B2B or B2C standard funnels
Media planning and budget
Forecasting/projections for revenue or demand planning
Seasonal and evergreen campaign planning
KPI establishment and tracking
Charles Schwab Bank, Contract Content Strategist
Hired as a contract content strategist, I created a strategy to position Schwab as the bank for victims of intimate violence. Almost every victim of intimate violence is also a victim of financial abuse.
I am a victim of financial abuse. I had had a very positive experience with Schwab around this. In 2021, I accessed my retirement savings from Schwab. I was terrified when I did this because my ex-husband is also an abuser. I wanted to make sure that he didn't find out about my account. Somehow, despite my repeated calls for extreme caution, a letter was sent to our house, where he lives, about my new account.
I spoke with Schwab security team about this, and they were fantastic: caring, concerned and took me very seriously. One of the representatives I spoke with was a woman. When I told her my story, she told me of hers about surviving abuse. I cried on the phone with her. She comforted me and told me things would get better. It meant so much to me; talk about customer service building loyal fans.
I suggested to Schwab they highlight this resource that they already possess in a big way, and make it a selling point.
There are so many victims of intimate violence, mostly women, but some men, around the world and in the US, and most are also victims of financial abuse. More than 10 million people are victims of intimate violence every year in the United States. 1 in 4 women are victims of intimate abuse, probably many more are also victims of financial abuse, abuse that goes unacknowledged and undocumented.
As a bank that prides itself on integrity and financial safety, Schwab was already positioned to start communicating to this large number of extremely under-served and under-resourced people.
No bank has yet made any attempt to align themselves with such a huge potential source of fanatical support and passionately loyal customers.
The goodwill that would extend from this messaging would almost certainly thrill every female customer, or potential customer, even if they themselves are not victims. For sure, you win 50% of the United States simply by adding this messaging, by showing you care about women, about their lives, their safety.
Additionally, implementing better plans, systems, and processes to help these people within the bank, increases this loyalty, and at the same time, furthers Schwab’s mission of financial safety and integrity.
From a PR standpoint, its always good to be the first to implement such a positive and powerful initiative. This program would make leading headlines around the world without any ad spend at all.
Outcome:
I’m not sure the right stakeholders at Schwab ever got my plans. Nothing came of it. So, this is still a great option for any bank out there that wants to leverage this massive financial win. It’s my strategy, anyone?
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash