Impact Story | Marketing Technical Assistance | Michigan
Building stronger marketing capabilities for small businesses across Southeast Michigan
Marketing Technical Assistance
Ann Arbor SPARK partnered with Revby to provide individualized marketing assistance to small businesses across Southeast Michigan. The program combined marketing strategy, branding, website development, and implementation within a three-tier service model.
Program Delivery
Revby worked directly with business owners to identify marketing needs, develop customer-facing resources, improve digital presence, and complete projects that required specialized marketing expertise and implementation time.
Program Impact
Across 67 business engagements, Revby delivered 379 marketing deliverables and 1,678 hours of support.
At a glance
Small businesses joined the program with diverse goals, from attracting customers and improving their online presence to strengthening their brands and expanding services.
Assessments revealed a common challenge: owners often lacked the marketing strategy, resources, or capacity to turn their goals into action. While some needed to align existing channels with business objectives, others required guidance on audiences, positioning, and marketing priorities.
Revby addressed these needs through tailored consulting and implementation support based on each business’s circumstances.
Customer identification, value propositions, competitive positioning, and marketing channel priorities.
Websites, brand assets, customer-facing materials, content strategies, and digital marketing tools.
Specialized marketing expertise and project time to develop, improve, and maintain marketing activities.
Insight
“Business owners entered the program with different levels of marketing knowledge and experience. Some understood which customers they wanted to reach but had not identified the most appropriate marketing channels. Others knew their websites, branding, or customer outreach needed improvement but lacked the expertise or capacity to complete that work.
These differences became clearer through individual assessments and consulting sessions.”
1 engagement
30 engagements
36 engagements
Work could include customer personas, value propositions, website and digital-presence assessments, competitor analysis, SEO recommendations, and channel-specific marketing action plans.
Work could include branding resources, messaging and content strategies, channel-specific marketing tactics, social media calendars, and marketing performance tracking. Website work could also be included based on the approved scope.
Work could include new websites, improvements to existing sites, eCommerce integration, hands-on campaign execution, refined marketing assets, KPI dashboards, and handoff plans for ongoing marketing activities.
1 engagement
Work could include customer personas, value propositions, website and digital-presence assessments, competitor analysis, SEO recommendations, and channel-specific marketing action plans.
30 engagements
Work could include branding resources, messaging and content strategies, channel-specific marketing tactics, social media calendars, and marketing performance tracking. Website work could also be included based on the approved scope.
36 engagements
Work could include new websites, improvements to existing sites, eCommerce integration, hands-on campaign execution, refined marketing assets, KPI dashboards, and handoff plans for ongoing marketing activities.
The program tailored marketing strategy and implementation to each business’s needs, from foundational planning to comprehensive marketing execution.
1 engagement
Marketing clarity through customer personas, positioning, website assessments, and SEO recommendations.
30 engagements
Marketing materials and scalable systems, including branding, content strategy, social media, and performance tracking.
36 engagements
End-to-end marketing execution, including websites, eCommerce, campaigns, marketing assets, and KPI dashboards.
Review the business, its customers, existing marketing activities, digital presence, and immediate priorities.
Identify the marketing work to be completed based on the business’s needs and assigned service tier.
Complete the agreed marketing strategy, branding, website, content, campaign, or digital marketing work.
Review completed deliverables and provide resources, performance tools, and recommendations for continued use.
Revby responsibilities
Capability 01
Reviewed existing marketing activities, customer audiences, website performance, digital presence, and competitors to establish individual project scopes.
Capability 02
Developed customer personas, value propositions, marketing plans, channel recommendations, and action plans based on each business’s priorities.
Capability 03
Created or refined brand identities, messaging frameworks, marketing collateral, website copy, new websites, and existing digital resources.
Capability 04
Developed content calendars, channel-specific campaigns, customer outreach resources, social media systems, and marketing assets.
Capability 05
Developed KPI frameworks, marketing tracking resources, dashboards, and ongoing recommendations, alongside completed project documentation.
67 Projects Across 14 Industries
The program served businesses across professional services, creative industries, health, retail, technology, hospitality, and other sectors.
Websites, Marketing Strategies, Branding, and Customer Acquisition Resources
Revby’s project work covered both marketing strategy and the development of customer-facing resources. Across the 67 engagements, the program recorded work in eight deliverable categories.
Three Findings for Economic Development Organizations
Of the 67 engagements with assigned service tiers, 66 received Tier 2 or Tier 3 support.
The distribution demonstrates that most classified engagements involved marketing development or implementation beyond foundational assessments.
Tiered technical assistance can help programs match consulting resources and implementation capacity to the work identified for each business.
The program recorded 22 new websites and 35 website improvements.
Among final-survey respondents, 88% reported creating or updating a website or online store, while 57% reported improvements to their online presence.
Website development and digital-presence assistance can be significant components of marketing technical assistance, particularly when participating businesses need support completing technical work.
Across 67 engagements, Revby delivered 1,678 hours of work and recorded 806 project tasks.
These activity measures were accompanied by completed deliverables, participant-reported tangible benefits, and increase in combined internal marketing assessment scores across matched projects.
Combining delivery records with outcome assessments and participant feedback can provide a more complete picture of the work delivered and the changes reported through a technical assistance program.
Combining Economic Development Support With Marketing Execution
Ann Arbor SPARK managed program structure, eligibility, outreach, and referrals, connecting businesses with marketing assistance.
Revby led assessments, project scoping, consulting, implementation, and outcome reporting.
Together, they combined business support infrastructure with hands-on marketing expertise, from customer positioning and strategy to websites, branding, content, campaigns, and performance tracking.
Testimonial
“They’ve been leading much of that on-the-ground implementation of our program. They’re the ones meeting with the entrepreneurs where they’re at … to provide that tailored support.”
Kristine Nash Wong
Ann Arbor SPARK
Bring Marketing Expertise to Your Small-Business Support Programs
Revby partners with economic development and entrepreneurial support organizations to deliver tailored marketing consulting, branding, website development, content, and implementation.
From business assessments to project completion, we help owners define priorities and build practical marketing resources.
