A New Kind Of Marketing

How We ThinkFirst™

Great businesses ask hard questions.

ThinkFirst™ leverages data and multi-disciplinary marketing strategies to achieve your vision and growth goals.

Connect With Our ThinkFirst™ Strategists >
Built for Visionaries. Founded in Math.

Engaging The Flywheel Within Your Business

From day one, Valve+Meter has endeavored to transform marketing.

Your business has potential for growth.

We strive to understand truly our clients and design growth strategies based on data.

flywheel method with corrected data-driven marketing
An image of a spinning metal spiral on a black background designed to captivate attention.

Know the Goal

What Is The Flywheel Method?

ThinkFirst™ is founded on the belief that every business has unlimited potential stored within sales and operations. 

Imagine a flywheel at rest. Place sales at the right cardinal, operations at the bottom, and financial at the left cardinal. 

Each point has potential energy and when new customers and repeat buyers contact your sales department angular momentum takes holds powering your operations and driving revenue for financials.

When leads slow down all momentum is lost. Many businesses fall into cycles of unrest gaining and losing momentum, but never growing.

Now place marketing atop the flywheel. With this fourth component, transformational growth is possible. 

With a steady source of prospective customers and building relationships with your existing clients, marketing powers your flywheel. Now angular momentum takes over driving revenue. Financial reinvests in the marketing strategies that work capturing more leads for your sales pipeline.

As your flywheel accelerates, your growing business sustains the ebbs and flows of market changes.

Valve+Meter has developed ThinkFirst™ to fully understand your business, your vision for growth, and utilize the flywheel method to realize your potential.

Measure What Matters

Testing Culture

Very few businesses have the patience for true marketing testing, but the exercise is what separates the good campaigns from a great marketing strategy. A marketing test involves isolating one variable – a list, an offer, a design, a medium – and manipulating it alone to determine how that single change impacts performance.

Once proven, it involves testing the hypothesis by slowly scaling your investment; using the winning model in 10% of your universe, then 20%, then 40%, only increasing your spend or footprint as the test proves repeatedly at each step along the way. Not everything will work, so you must view findings in a failed test as a success. Findings shape the next test and takes you one step closer to a winning strategy. 

Right Action

Math and Monitoring

What you measure matters.

A well-intentioned marketing strategy will fall flat if you don’t know what performed or by how much. Everything in a marketing plan needs to be tracked and monitored. From unique tracking phone numbers to campaign codes, you must drive attribution to every print piece, email, social post and paid search campaign you test. This level of granular tracking must not stop there but should continue through the sales and fulfillment process.

Not all leads are created equal. A pay-per-click lead may close at a higher rate than a traditional print lead.

Executing search engine optimization throughout your website requires time and initial investment but ranking high in organic search results can generate high-quality leads year over year.

A key tenet of ThinkFirst™ is Math-Before-Marketing™. We collaborate with you to invest more in your strategies that earn the strongest return on marketing spend (ROMS).

You can only learn these lessons with deep research and disciplined tracking. Before we touch any tools, our experts examine your entire organization and industry. Our goal isn’t to patch cracks and stop leaks in your sales pipeline.

You need marketing partners who can build a lasting infrastructure to transcend your current condition and deliver results across the long-term.

Throughput

From Discovery through ThinkFirst™ Delivery

At Valve+Meter, you will be heard, inspired, and even challenged to change your perspective on marketing.

Valve+Meter designed ThinkFirst for the daring, entrepreneurial, and data-driven business leaders. A thorough understanding of your sales process results in a clearer definition of target criteria and a strong fit matrix for market-generated leads.

A clearly monitored pipeline provides insights on call answer rate, meeting set rate, appointment sit rate, quote rate, close rate, upsell rate, and retention rate. Each of these elements factor into lead volume goals and customer lifetime value.

When data drives your marketing, you gain control of your decisions.

Your marketing dollars are precious and should be invested intentionally and with discipline. A 360-degree review of your business allows us to identify and address any operational gaps that might hinder the performance of a marketing campaign before it ever begins. ThinkFirst analysis is arguably the most important step in developing a marketing strategy.

1 ThinkFirst™ Discovery Call

From the moment you connect with our strategists, you will experience a difference. Our curiosity and commitment to the long-term success of your organization are immediately apparent.

3 ThinkFirst™ Discovery Research

Valve+Meter analyzes your performance within your industry, marketplace, and against key competitors. 

Our subject matter experts in SEO, paid media, email, web design and development, outbound marketing, and data capture the best opportunities to power your flywheel.  

5 ThinkFirst™ Delivery

You are presented with all of our Math Before Marketing™ findings and a detailed performance forecast. 

At the end of the delivery, our strategy team consults with you to focus on the next 90-120 days of campaign launch and testing.

ThinkFirst™ Workshop 2

Our strategists and subject matter experts collaborate with you to learn about your business including exploring your vision, historical growth, and current situation. 

ThinkFirst™ Marketing Strategy 4

Building a comprehensive strategy includes defining success, determining obstacles, and developing strategies to win.

Our strategists and senior leadership project performance outcomes and define marketing performance indicators. These measurement tools align our data reporting with strategy recommendations.

1 ThinkFirst™ Discovery Call

From the moment you connect with our strategists, you will experience a difference. Our curiosity and commitment to the long-term success of your organization are immediately apparent.

2 ThinkFirst™ Workshop

Our strategists and subject matter experts collaborate with you to learn about your business including exploring your vision, historical growth, and current situation. 

3 ThinkFirst™ Discovery Research

Valve+Meter analyzes your performance within your industry, marketplace, and against key competitors. 

Our subject matter experts in SEO, paid media, email, web design and development, outbound marketing, and data capture the best opportunities to power your flywheel.  

4 ThinkFirst™ Marketing Strategy

Building a comprehensive strategy includes defining success, determining obstacles, and developing strategies to win.

Our strategists and senior leadership project performance outcomes and define marketing performance indicators. These measurement tools align our data reporting with strategy recommendations.

5 ThinkFirst™ Delivery

You are presented with all of our Math Before Marketing™ findings and a detailed performance forecast. 

At the end of the delivery, our strategy team consults with you to focus on the next 90-120 days of campaign launch and testing.

Start Your ThinkFirst

Informed Decisions, Strategic Outcomes

Through our ThinkFirst™ Workshop, we offer a meticulous industry study and market trend evaluation. Gain clarity on your position, understand competitor tactics, and refine your marketing approach for tangible results. Let’s build your strategy together!

Schedule Your Introductory Call
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