97 Degrees West
Branding and Marketing Strategy Experts

Women entrepreneurs of today are fearlessly conquering every industry, be it in e-commerce, education, sports, travel, and fitness, to name a few. A lot of challenges dot women’s path to success, which they have overcome. One such inspiring woman is Vera K. Fischer, the CEO and President of 97 Degrees West, the Brand Marketing Agency, who, 16 years ago, envisioned running a marketing and advertising agency in Texas. Today, 97 Degrees West holds the record for the longest tenure woman-owned agency in the city of Austin. 97 Degrees West helps SMBs and multimillion-dollar enterprises solve their branding, marketing, and advertising challenges.

Vera mentions that some companies that are well established for decades have paid little attention when it comes to branding and marketing processes. This ultimately results in playing catch up to their competitors. “Attracting new customers doesn’t work on its own any longer. Implementing marketing processes can be challenging at certain times as it requires a huge amount of time and dollar investments,” explains Vera. 97 Degrees West strives to tackle this issue early on in their engagement with clients. “We primarily work with the CEOs, presidents, owners, and founders to understand their business model and growth goals. We do a level check to validate their growth in the next 6-12 months, in other words, are their growth goals realistic” says Vera. 97 Degrees West then goes on to formulate strategies for their clients’ branding, marketing, and advertising by leveraging both traditional and digital methodologies. They put together the strategic plan and executes it with a considerable amount of brand and market positioning along with messaging.

The success story of one of their clients best exemplifies Vera’s value proposition. Lexus of Lakeway, which is Lakeway’s home to the first and only luxury car dealership, wanted to stay in the Lakeway market due to the overwhelming number of Lexus vehicle owners. The key objective was to capture active car shoppers at competitive dealerships—BMW, Cadillac, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Infiniti—in the Central Texas area. Lexus of Lakeway was looking for ways to convince this particular group of customers to consider Lexus as their next vehicle by offering a concierge “best drive” service; and also to entice them physically visit the Lexus of Lakeway dealership.

We always implement our metrics at the front-end, never at the back-end. We put the tracking mechanism in place so that we can have a sustainable and ‘real’ reporting at the end

97 Degrees West’s primary strategy was to create a luxury experience around the decision making process for anyone shopping for a new vehicle–the test drive. The dealership wanted to connect with their customers in a less intrusive interaction where the experience ruled out ‘getting the sale at all costs.’ 97 Degrees West created the Lexus “Best Drive” campaign, which was executed through digital banners and a branded scheduling landing page that allowed a customer to scheduled a test drive when it was convenient for them. When they arrived at the dealership, they were greeted by a product specialist and taken to the car they had selected to test drive without the usual “sales pitch” experience. “The delivery was sole to the unique device IDs captured from their competitive dealerships. The list of device IDs was refreshed six weeks into the campaign for a total of a 12-week media flight. “We always implement our metrics at the front-end, never at the back-end. We put the tracking mechanism in place so that we can have sustainable and ‘real’ reporting at the end.” mentions Vera. This digital strategy allowed 97 Degrees West to eliminate the waste surrounding other digital media efforts.

With several success stories in its sleeve, the company continues to be a leader in the space. “97 Degrees West believes that for every business to thrive, continuous research about the market and its customers’ needs is required. We are constantly moving forward at a rapid pace with strategies that focus on the customers’ customer,” concludes Vera.