MarketDesign Consulting
The IT Marketing Experts

Let’s face it: businesses have challenge after challenge ahead as the world rapidly evolves. Moreover, not very often do organizations get to harness the expertise of the leading thinkers and strategists to overcome the long-standing challenges of their business. As for technology organizations looking to drive real results with marketing solutions crafted specifically for IT audiences, they can place their faith in MarketDesign Consulting, a New York-based boutique marketing consulting firm.

“We’ve been in the VAR/MSPs shoes and we know what works, because we’ve seen it, tried it, and refined it over a decade,” begins Kara Rudy, owner of MarketDesign Consulting. As the former director of digital marketing for a global IT reseller, Kara has witnessed first-hand the need for creativity to meet accountability and the need for corporate KPIs and metrics to measure actual Marketing Return on Investment, not vanity metrics like blanket impressions or website visitors. Banking on her deep-seated knowledge of building brands, creating captivating stories, and measuring marketing in the IT space for nearly 15 years, it was a natural progression for Kara to bring her 15 years of IT and marketing experience to other technology companies through MarketDesign Consulting.

“I realized what I loved to do the most is building brands and telling stories that enable a company stand out from all the competition. This is why MarketDesign Consulting was founded–to build and refine brands while bringing clients integrated marketing plans that reach beyond just field marketing and events,” says Kara. She elaborates that in the broad-spectrum IT manufacturer to VAR/solution provider landscape, it becomes imperative to understand the many nuances, abbreviations, marketing principles, manufacture rebates, and value statements required to make a real impact to sales and marketing alignment and the company’s bottom line. Having lived both sides of marketing in IT, both as a consultant to and a marketer for IT companies, Kara effortlessly infuses her proficiency in strategy, design, and execution to drive productivity, process, and growth for her clients. In fact, to add to the alignment, reporting, and execution of marketing, sales, and service strategy for IT companies, MarketDesign became a HubSpot partner, quickly climbing to Platinum status in under 12 months. A user turning implementer, Kara and her team at MarketDesign support sales, service, and marketing teams by aligning the business onto one integrated customer relationship management platform.

MarketDesign Consulting equips businesses with diverse marketing services–from brand development to digital marketing campaigns, HubSpot consulting, and website design and optimization–and builds their marketing strategies to bring new prospects into the conversation. As a HubSpotcertified Platinum Partner, MarketDesign empowers its clients with the right tools, processes, and procedures to effectively market their VAR/MSP/SaaS business. The company seamlessly integrates marketing principles with design ingenuity to propel clients’ business towards real success. A typical client engagement process in MarketDesign Consulting essentially begins with ‘learning’ the details about the clients’ organization–where it stands, how it plans to move ahead, and why it is aiming to change its investment/ marketing strategies.

MarketDesign Consulting was founded to build and refine brands while bringing clients integrated marketing plans that reach beyond just field marketing and events

“Answers to these questions allow us to unearth an authentic and unique positioning statement that separates them from the rest of the competition in the space,” says Kara. Once the unique elements of the client’s business are determined, the company then moves ahead to create elements that set the tone of the brand differentiation process. MarketDesign Consulting executes the entire digital marketing plan to build a brand story and brings it to life.

To illustrate more, Kara cites an instance when MarketDesign consulted with a national software reseller that had a strong event strategy in place, which included conducting events, partnering with manufacturers, leveraging marketing funds, and so on. However, the client lacked an integrated approach that involved building and executing a digital, content, email, and SEO strategy missing the effective two-way conversations with its consumer base. Kara and her team then began with a full website redesign, focusing on the brand’s central messaging. Her strategy was to go beyond just the conversation on the website and build an entire knowledge center around the client’s offerings and a unique service consulting and training approach. By moving the company to the HubSpot CMS, MarketDesign Consulting created a comprehensive annual engagement plan, expanding its HubSpot platform into HubSpot Marketing Pro and Sales enterprise, revolutionizing the client’s entire approach to how marketing and sales align and connect with their customers, prospects, and partners. Today, thanks to MarketDesign’s strategy and execution, after just 12 months of focused and integrated marketing with the right business enablement platform (HubSpot), the client attributed over $10M in revenue to marketing campaigns.

Scripting similar success stories for numerous clients, what’s even more impressive has been MarketDesign Consulting’s ability to pivot clients’ marketing plans and build enhanced engagement in a tumultuous time period. Continuing on this path of innovation, MarketDesign Consulting doubled its revenue in 2020. Celebrating its second anniversary, the company has aggressive plans to expand its team. “We are looking to hire efficient HubSpot executors, communications strategy manager, and candidates who have experience in the both marketing and the technology industry,” remarks Kara. Centering her belief around an integrated approach to the push-pull theory, Kara and her team will continue building effective communication strategies and PR campaigns to boost their clients’ standing.