Based in Leeds, Sarah Edwards is a marketing strategist and founder of Purple Banana Marketing.
Launched in 2019 as part agency and part consultancy, Edwards works with a range of agency clients to help build their internal marketing strategies working as an outsourced marketing director.
Here, she shares a recent week in her life.
Monday
Right on time (as always!) our human alarm clock – aka our five-year-old boy Jude – bursts into our room and a new day and week begins full of optimism and opportunity.
For me, the best way to start the day must be with a swim in our local lido. Call me crazy but you can’t beat being in the elements and the cold water really helps put me in a good head space. Come rain or shine it’s my happy place!
Before diving into my inbox or my various client ‘to-do’ lists on Trello I like to start the week by looking at the business goals and priorities I’ve set myself for this month and quarter. This way I’m always keeping one eye on the business whilst keeping my clients happy.
As a business owner myself I know all too well how easy it is to let your own business priorities sink to the bottom of the list, but I make it a priority to dedicate time each week to look after my own business as much as I do my clients.
The focus of my time today was mainly being a marketing director for my own business!
I have my weekly check-in with my assistant Hannah, who not only supports the delivery of client work, but also takes responsibility for some of our own marketing and sales activities too.
We’re currently reviewing Purple Banana Marketing’s own strategy and systems to ensure everything’s in good shape – practice what we preach and all that!
Today we were looking at the different stages and activities in our nurture funnel and where our dream clients are in their customer journey with us, making some necessary tweaks to the configuration of our CRM automation workflows so we’re continuously improving what we’re doing.
Tuesday
I was on the road down to Cheshire today to help a client finalise their annual marketing budget. I love getting out to meet clients, for me it’s one of the key ways to building long-lasting genuine relationships. Plus, I’m very much a people person!
To give you a bit more context and insight into the nature of this marketing transformation project… our client, a packaging agency that’s been delivering amazing work for major food and beverage brands for over 40 years, came to us 12 months ago as they were fed up with being their industry’s best kept secret and needed help getting their marketing strategy in good order but didn’t know where to start!
Roll forwards a year and we’re now in the final throes of their journey and about to relaunch the agency to the world. Exciting times ahead!
It really has been a warts and all project. We’ve facilitated the development of a new value proposition, together with a brand story and tone of voice which has then shaped a new creative for their brand identity, and of course a website overhaul! Not to mention the sprucing up of their internal marketing and new biz processes and tech. It’s been a fantastic team effort, and the final outputs are looking great.
Most recently we’ve been putting the finishing touches on their tactical plan including the content topics, modes of activity, and channels that will get them in front of their dream clients. So, today is all about finalising the marketing budget with the agency’s Sales Director ahead of their new financial year.
We’re all about goals and measuring success here at Purple Banana so it’s important that we show how the marketing budget relates to the 3-6-9-12 month goals we set out at the beginning of this journey, which will aid that all important internal stakeholder buy-in.
It was quite an intense day today with lots of number crunching and triple checking of data, so the two hour drive back to Leeds is a chance to switch off and enjoy some peace before I have to switch into mummy mode.
Wednesday
Before I dive into any client work, I spend the first couple of hours of the day participating in an online workshop “Thriving not surviving: Using creativity to build resilience” hosted by a local organisation – #WECAN – who put on a fantastic array of workshops and networking events for women in business.
One of our core values is to ‘Be kind’ – not only to others but to ourselves as well, so making sure we carve out time to look after our mental wellbeing and do things that will bring us joy is important to us here.
After lunch it’s time to hop online and deliver a workshop for another client. This time it was with the founder of a tech solutions provider who came to us when he was looking to establish a sister arm to his existing agency and needed support in building out his business offering and sales and marketing strategy.
Today’s session was all about gaining clarity on who their dream clients are; the problems their clients have but don’t want, the results they want but don’t have, and the solutions and value our client can deliver.
We used a few different marketing tools to help us do this – picking the best of what is out there today! These sessions tend to be very interactive and involve a lot of probing from me and a lot of reflection and digging deep from our client!
After the session I quickly send the notes to Hannah to write up into our main strategy deck.
Thursday
I was really excited about today as it started with a planning call with a photographer that we’ve commissioned to do a photoshoot for Purple Banana! I can’t wait to bring our own brand to life and show a bit more personality in our marketing.
Once we finalised the shot-list and agreed outfit changes and props it was time for a marketing review with one of our client’s internal marketing teams. This agency, who delivers communication strategies and content for women’s health brands, completed its transformation journey with us at the start of the year, and now I’m playing an advisory and mentoring role to the team who are in the throes of implementing the plan we developed together.
We all know old habits die hard and it’s too easy to stay in our comfort zone, so my role now is about ensuring the team remain focussed and the plan stays on track and most importantly continues to evolve as they start to see great results.
During this session we look at the goals we set for the last quarter, what strategies we’ve implemented, what results we’ve achieved, and if these are taking us in the right direction.
I love working with client’s internal teams as it’s where I lived my life before Purple Banana. I get a real buzz out of helping marketers overcome some of the challenges I’ve faced in the past and working together to come up with new ideas and better ways of working that I can share with other clients too.
Friday
As a business owner I think it’s important to understand why we do what we do and create our own judgement of success rather than letting society’s ‘perception’ of it dictate. For me, I know I will have done a good job when Jude turns to his pals and says… ”That’s my mummy bossing it!”
Granted with him being only five-years-old, I think I’ve got a bit of a wait (and by which time I very much doubt he’ll be calling me mummy!), but it’s important that I build a business around what I want from my personal life. So, today I’m downing tools and helping with his class school trip to a local outdoor adventure park… I think I might be found rocking back and forth in a cold dark room by the end of today… either that or doing a few lengths at the lido again!
