Kathy Guillory, a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) with Belle Bear Marketing, specializes in multi-location marketing for consumer-facing businesses in sectors such as animal health, retail, banking, and automotive. With 18 years of marketing experience, she has worked extensively in managing marketing strategies for businesses with multiple locations, focusing on both centralized corporate control and localized autonomy. Her career includes roles at Simon Malls and a consumer bank, where she managed the challenges of differentiating brand presence across geographically dispersed locations.
This exciting conversation is hosted by Matt Wilhelmi, owner of Strategic Voyages Business Consultants and author of “Taboo Business Questions: What’s Haunting Every Entrepreneur’s Growth.”
Kathy Guillory and Matt Wilhelmi – Episode 1
Episode 1 begins with Kathy’s Background and then dives into an exciting Case Study!
Case Study Overview
Case Study Overview: The discussion centered around a national med spa chain with 20 locations experiencing a decline in year-over-year revenue growth. Upon investigation, the underlying issue was identified as high client churn, despite positive feedback from customer surveys. The root cause was found to be problems with their membership management platform, which was clunky and created frustration for clients. This led to high attrition rates, which significantly impacted their recurring revenue. After diagnosing the problem, Kathy’s team helped the company implement a new, more efficient system to reduce churn and improve customer retention.
Symptoms of Organizational Issues: Kathy frequently encounters common symptoms in multi-location businesses, including:
- Inconsistent branding due to a lack of clear guidelines or support for local teams, leading to disjointed marketing efforts.
- Lack of local targeting where businesses fail to tailor their strategies to the specific needs of different demographics or regions.
- Inefficient scaling strategies, where businesses don’t build with future growth in mind, leading to operational inefficiencies as they expand.
Approach to Diagnosing Root Causes: Kathy’s diagnostic process begins with a thorough marketing assessment, examining branding consistency, marketing team effectiveness, and local versus corporate alignment. She evaluates customer feedback, local team engagement, and vendor performance, always focusing on whether the marketing efforts align with the company’s revenue goals. Her process involves detailed discussions with both leadership and field teams to uncover any discrepancies in expectations and execution. Once identified, she collaborates with stakeholders to develop a cohesive plan tailored to the organization’s needs.
Kathy Guillory and Matt Wilhelmi – Episode 2
Cautionary Tales and Lessons Learned ????????
In this episode, Kathy Guillory joins Matt Wilhelmi, Sr. Consultant with Strategic Voyages Business Consultants and author of Taboo Business Questions, to discuss three cautionary tales:
Automating Marketing to Scale Efficiently: Kathy shared a story about working with a pet care business that had 12 locations and was considering franchising. The two-person marketing team was overwhelmed by managing requests for business cards, flyers, and promotions via email. The solution was to create a self-service portal with pre-designed templates, allowing local teams to customize and print materials themselves.
Lesson Learned: Automating and standardizing processes, especially as a business scales, saves time, improves efficiency, and ensures brand consistency.
Poor Cost Tracking in Rebranding: In this tale, Kathy described a finance company that was expanding from a regional to a national presence. The company did not delineate rebranding costs, dumping expenses into a generalized marketing budget. This made it impossible to track the costs of rebranding and client acquisition separately, causing financial disorganization and inefficiencies.
Lesson Learned: Clearly delineating costs, especially during expansion or rebranding, is essential for understanding financial performance and making informed decisions.
Challenges in M&A Due Diligence: Matt highlighted three acquisitions with varying degrees of success: (1) a location with reputational issues that required a significant public relations push, (2) a highly competitive market where new services had to be introduced to compete, and (3) a newly opened location with no existing customer base, requiring a much larger marketing investment than anticipated.
Lesson Learned: Thorough due diligence is critical before M&A decisions. Understanding the specific challenges of each acquisition—such as competitive environments, reputational issues, or lack of a client base—ensures realistic expectations and avoids costly surprises.
Kathy Guillory and Matt Wilhelmi – Episode 3
In this episode, Kathy Guillory joins Matt Wilhelmi, Sr. Consultant with Strategic Voyages Business Consultants and author of Taboo Business Questions, to present her solutions to the case study discussed in Episode 1.
Case Study Review:
The case study revolves around a national Medspa company with over 20 locations that was experiencing challenges in managing its membership software, marketing, and branding consistency. The company had issues with inconsistent branding across its locations, lacked local targeting, and was not set up to scale efficiently as it grew. Kathy Guillory, a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, was consulted to help address these issues and provide scalable solutions.
Symptoms and Root Causes:
- Inconsistent Branding:
- Symptom: Different locations of the company displayed inconsistent branding, leading to confusion and a lack of cohesive brand identity across locations.
- Root Cause: The lack of a centralized, standardized branding process or tools to maintain consistency across multiple locations, possibly due to varying levels of marketing expertise at each location.
- Lack of Local Targeting:
- Symptom: The company’s marketing efforts were not effectively reaching local audiences at each location, missing opportunities to tailor messages for specific markets.
- Root Cause: The absence of localized marketing strategies or tools to customize campaigns for each region, as well as a disconnect between corporate and local teams.
- Limited Scalability:
- Symptom: The company was not prepared to manage marketing and operations efficiently as it expanded beyond its current number of locations.
- Root Cause: Inefficient marketing processes, reliance on manual work, and lack of scalable systems that could handle larger numbers of locations without overwhelming the existing team.
Kathy’s Recommended Solutions:
- Development of Playbooks and Templates:
- Summary: Kathy recommends implementing a centralized playbook with templates, toolkits, and processes for all locations to follow. These resources should be easy to use, repeatable, and scalable to ensure that every location adheres to the brand guidelines and marketing processes.
- Lesson: Standardized tools and processes are key to ensuring consistency and scalability as a company grows. This prevents individual locations from creating their own materials that may not align with the brand.
- M&A Playbook and Due Diligence in Marketing:
- Summary: Kathy stresses the importance of having a well-documented M&A playbook that outlines how to handle the marketing side of acquisitions, including managing digital listings, social accounts, and CRM migration. She also emphasizes conducting thorough due diligence on the acquired brands, including their reputation and marketing assets.
- Lesson: Marketing due diligence is as important as financial due diligence in M&A deals. Understanding the acquired company’s brand health, digital presence, and operational challenges will prevent costly mistakes later on.
- Implementing Scalable Marketing Operations Early:
- Summary: Kathy suggests focusing on optimizing the company’s marketing operations and processes early, particularly by implementing self-service tools that allow local teams to create their own marketing materials while maintaining brand consistency. Doing this before reaching a larger scale (e.g., 200 locations) ensures that growth is smoother and more manageable.
- Lesson: It is crucial to establish scalable systems and processes early, as doing so after a company has grown significantly is much more difficult and disruptive. Early investments in scalable operations will pay off as the company expands.
Each of these solutions addresses the root causes of the company’s issues and prepares it for efficient, sustainable growth as it adds more locations.
