Scaling a Local Direct-to-Consumer Strategy With Agility

Faced with a critical need to move a substantial surplus of premium wild-caught Alaska salmon, a family-owned company sought to significantly amplify its direct-to-consumer (DTC) presence in Portland, OR. Their goal was strategic: to forge a resilient balance between established wholesale partnerships with major grocers and online retailers and a thriving direct connection with local consumers. They needed a nimble partner to navigate this urgent challenge.

The opportunity

For us, this was more than just a business challenge; it was an opportunity to champion a sustainable, family-run operation bringing exceptional quality to our own community. The immediate need to connect their surplus with Portland consumers presented a chance to not only drive revenue but also to cultivate lasting relationships and brand loyalty within a market that values authenticity and local connection. This engagement represented a pivotal moment to help them build a stronger foundation for long-term growth and impact.

How we helped

To cultivate a thriving DTC relationship with Portland consumers, building brand loyalty and diversifying revenue streams, we:

• Immersed in Their World: Recognizing the critical need for speed and a deep understanding of their unique challenges, we embraced a truly agile approach. We immersed ourselves in their operations – understanding the journey from Alaskan waters to Portland plates – allowing us to craft strategies that were both effective and aligned with the local market nuances.

• Uncovered Untapped Potential: Conducted a comprehensive current state assessment spanning marketing, website performance, analytics infrastructure, market dynamics, and competitive landscape to pinpoint key DTC and go-to-market (GTM) opportunities and actionable recommendations.

  Engineered Customer Acquisition: Defined clear customer acquisition goals and architected a multi-faceted strategy, deploying targeted tactics to significantly boost visibility, deepen engagement, and drive higher conversion rates within the Portland market.

  Amplified the Voice of Portland Customers: Gathered invaluable DTC feedback directly from both current and prospective customers, translating these insights into tangible improvements in brand voice, core messaging, content strategy, website organization, and product evolution.

  Prioritized for Impact: Designed and expertly facilitated a strategic planning workshop, collaborating with the client to prioritize a robust backlog of DTC and GTM initiatives, ensuring focused execution on the highest-impact opportunities.

  Accelerated Value Delivery: Established a dynamic weekly, agile operating model, fostering continuous review and prioritization of backlog items, resulting in accelerated value delivery, increased marketing outputs, and measurable business outcomes.

  Strengthened Brand Identity: Developed comprehensive brand guidelines to ensure consistent and impactful communication across all touchpoints, informing the visual and verbal identity of the website, social media, email marketing, and public relations efforts.

  Deepened Customer Understanding: Defined nuanced customer personas, providing a clear understanding of target audiences to tailor content, craft compelling narratives, and refine key messages across every customer interaction on the website, email campaigns, and social media platforms.

  Fueled Consistent Engagement: Facilitated collaborative sessions to define core content pillars, thematic categories, and compelling story ideas, populating a dynamic content calendar and integrated campaigns to ensure a consistent stream of educational and value-added content for customers, subscribers, and followers.

  Optimized Digital Experience: Designed high-fidelity templates and persuasive copy for social media, blog posts, email communications (including automated trigger emails), and key website modules, all informed by data analytics to maximize ongoing customer engagement.

  Elevated Website Performance: Designed a strategic website refresh, delivering detailed mockups, refined copy edits, and clear directives to significantly enhance user experience (UX), improve information clarity and organization, and boost engagement with the brand, content, and product offerings.

  Empowered Data-Driven Decisions: Shared actionable best practices around data collection, analysis, and interpretation, providing practical tips to progressively mature the client's data-driven decision-making capabilities.

  Guided Media Engagement: Provided strategic direction, tactical guidance, and compelling copy best practices to public relations interns, empowering them to conduct effective media outreach and engagement within the Portland community.

  Cultivated Strategic Partnerships: Actively contributed to brainstorming sessions focused on developing impactful partnership programs with prominent local wineries for upcoming events, collaborative marketing initiatives, and mutually beneficial opportunities.

  Uncovered Key Insights: Designed a comprehensive customer research program to systematically gather critical feedback on user experience, product satisfaction, messaging resonance, and overall brand perception.

  Prepared for Growth: Designed a compelling investor pitch deck and provided strategic best practices for investor presentations, equipping the client to confidently secure funding in preparation for the upcoming fishing season.

  Enabled Sustainable Growth: Provided strategic recommendations for ongoing enablement across critical areas including trigger email automation, business model optimization, website enhancements, product offering refinement, strategic promotions, and leveraging data and analytics for continuous improvement.

What made a statement

We were incredibly proud to partner with this passionate Alaskan salmon company and contribute to their growth in our shared Portland community. Witnessing their immediate success in connecting with local customers and building a stronger direct-to-consumer model was deeply rewarding. This engagement underscored the power of agility, local market understanding, and a collaborative spirit in achieving tangible results and setting the stage for long-term success.

The client enthusiastically shared, “As a Portland-based craft seafood business we turned to Statement Co. for a refreshed go-to-market strategy in our DTC partner programs. We experienced some quick wins from the project and look forward to more wonderful results with the Statement Co. team!”

We look forward to seeing their continued flourishing in the Portland culinary landscape.