My name is Woody Stoudemire and I’m a North Carolina-based fractional chief marketing officer. Armed with three decades of strategic and creative marketing experience and expertise, I am ready and able to help your company – right now, part-time, and as needed. To provide my full attention to clients, MarketingGhost fractional CMO services are provided to an exclusive, limited amount of clients annually.
Contact me to discuss your marketing challenges.
I’d be happy to schedule a 30-minute meeting.
When Woody first approached BETCO about his month-to-month, virtual Marketing Director service. BETCO was just emerging from the “Great Recession”, which had effectively ended new self-storage building products for a few years. We liked the concept of hiring a 30-year marketing veteran on a part-time basis. The first year we worked together, Woody was able to build a cohesive marketing strategy, rebrand the company, and create and implement inbound/outbound marketing that helped grow our first-year sales by 60%. Our second-year sales grew by 40% and enabled us to add a second production shift. Our marketing program is now highly organized and a CRM is used to measure leads and keep our internal sales team organized. Although Woody requires no contracts and is month-to-month, he has led our marketing program for four years at the fraction of the cost of a full-time Marketing Director. Woody is trustworthy, knowledgeable and he understands how to take companies to the next level.
We have always had a great reputation for building our line of reliable, HASKO heavy-built machines within the hardwood flooring industry. However, most of our marketing efforts were minimal and didn’t reflect the quality of the machines we built. Woody helped elevate our branding in one year with a logo, business card rebrand, overview video, product videos, press releases, trade advertising, social media, inbound marketing, and a new trade show booth. He invested the time to understand our business, our culture, and our overall goals to craft a strategic marketing plan to help us reach additional woodworking markets that had been previously untapped. Woody was easy to work with and we are extremely pleased with the results.
This message is an expression of my appreciation and gratitude for your professional contribution in reversing our stagnation in top-line sales. Your creative marketing strategies and inputs have become synchronized with our field sales activities. This has produced a significant uptick in new customers and increased sales opportunities. Many new contacts, when visiting PDS, have remarked favorably on our revamped website. Our website is giving the impression that PDS is much larger than we actually are. As a result, we are pleased with the value received from our marketing budget and our reduced previous spending waste on lackluster trade show results.
Woody conceived strategic marketing concepts and executed plans to rent vacant buildings, raise property values, and stimulate retail sales. Since the strategy was prepared in 2000, many recommendations are still in place – the street flags that mark downtown, outdoor dining, Art Crawls, Farmer’s Market, and a beer festival- Hickory Hops, among others.
After 20 years in business, Cline Associates saw the need for a refresh on their branding efforts and brought Woody in to take the lead. Providing the creative impetus for the complete re-branding, including logo, business cards, website, and more, Woody left Cline Associates with “something that any large corporation would be proud of,” according to President, Dean Cline.
In a down economy, Woody developed a fundraising strategy to raise $3.6 million in capital for the expansion of the Science Center to include a water touch tank and a digital planetarium. The strategy included name creation, branding, a campaign plan, and successful execution.
Woody helped launch Applachian State University’s new Hickory, NC campus, called the Hickory Metro Higher Education Center (HMHEC). A strategic marketing plan was created and executed which enhanced brand awareness to the point that the Center experienced a tripling of enrollment within the first four years of its existence.
In 2010, Woody stepped into the role of Virtual Marketing Director for the Japanese-based machine tools manufacturing leader, which did not have an in-house marketing department. As a result, Murata’s approach to marketing was reactive. Applying proactive, strategic marketing concepts, the company has seen tremendous results during Woody’s tenure. In 2013, under Woody’s leadership, the Turning business unit experienced its best sales year in the company’s 40-year history.
Southern Glove, is a personal protection equipment (PPE) manufacturer that has been family-owned since 1945. Woody has helped the company with marketing deliverables for over 10 years and has managed the comprehensive marketing program as marketing director for four years. One highlight of the Southern Glove marketing program was the deployment of a new responsive website and inbound tactics such as a blog, Pay-per-click, email campaigns, and social media content distribution. Within a year, the company realized a 90 percent increase in monthly visits to the site, 50 percent more pages viewed, and nine times the mobile visits.
As virtual CMO for Beech Mountain Club, Woody built a strategic plan to recruit new and retain existing members. From this plan, new messaging and tactics were launched within a newly rebranded public-facing website. Additionally, Woody participated in and evaluated the tour that prospective members took and offered suggestions to improve the overall experience. Existing paid search accounts were reviewed and revamped, and a local billboard campaign was implemented. Results included heightened brand awareness both locally and regionally, increased web traffic, and lead generation. Within the year, Beech Mountain Club increased retention over previous years and is far ahead of the plan for adding new members.
Precision Drive Systems (PDS) hired Woody to virtually direct their marketing program in mid-2017. Woody helped with marketing management, as well as, helping PDS to establish an annual marketing budget and executed the creative and management of all the inbound/outbound content and deadlines. Due to longevity and a woodworking focus, PDS is well known and had saturated the industry. In 2019, an aggressive push was enacted to recruit the much larger and lucrative metalworking industry. Through customer surveys, analytical data and market research, Gotham significantly helped the profitability of PDS, while raising brand awareness and inbound sales opportunities.
BENZ is an established brand in European markets, but despite a great reputation for advanced engineering and tooling performance, the company’s North American presence, BENZ, Inc. lacked brand awareness in its target markets of wood, metal, and composites. Woody developed a strategic plan that encompassed a new web presence, print and online marketing, trade shows, direct marketing, both paid and organic search, and social media.
Since launching BENZ, Inc.’s brand strategy, the company has experienced growth in name awareness, brand recognition, leads, and sales. Revenue has grown an average of 28% over the three years Woody has managed the marketing program.
Woody conceived a strategic plan to position, BETCO a metal storage building manufacturer as a single-source self-storage resource. The results have been dramatic. In the two years the company has worked with Gotham for strategic marketing planning and execution, BETCO sales increased 60 percent in the first year and are on pace to grow another 40 percent in the second (current) year. Due to increased demand, BETCO added a second shift and is presently at 100 percent of manufacturing capacity.
