Jennifer Eden stepped into the marketing role at Original Saw knowing one thing for certain: she needed some help. Years spent as an elementary school teacher, stay-home mom, and a sort of “jack-of-all trades” at the company had prepared her for many things—but not for marketing.
“I didn’t have any marketing experience and neither did anyone else at the company,” said Jennifer. “We knew we needed a solid plan to continue growing. We just didn’t know how to go about it. Fortunately, CIRAS was there to help us.”
Original Saw, maker of high-end saws and accessories, has worked with CIRAS since 1999 on projects ranging from product development to website design. Founded in 1990 in Britt by Robert Eden, it’s now run by Robert’s son, Allen. Today, the company is considered an industry leader in American-made cutting equipment.
Until recently, Original Saw relied on outside providers to meet their marketing needs. The company brought its efforts in-house when Jennifer assumed fulltime marketing responsibilities. That’s when Paul Gormley, CIRAS project manager, suggested a marketing bootcamp. Bootcamps provide a good dose of expert guidance along with a series of webinars that focus on many digital marketing disciplines.
“The purpose of the strategic marketing bootcamp is to help clients understand what they need to know to do marketing themselves or hire internal or external resources to get things done,” said Gormley.
Jennifer was working her way through the bootcamp series when COVID hit.
“We had a plan, but it wasn’t complete,” she said. Also, COVID forced some changes on us, the biggest being updating our website as quickly as possible so we could engage in e-commerce.”
CIRAS helped the company develop a stronger search engine optimization strategy to direct more traffic to their website. Since then, they’ve also helped Original Saw with e-commerce development, social media marketing, email campaigns, and customer relationship management. Most recently, CIRAS has connected the company with a virtual chief marketing officer, an experienced marketing professional who provides Jennifer with ongoing support and direction as she continues to navigate her marketing responsibilities.
“We’re a small company,” Jennifer said. “The marketing team is just me. Without CIRAS, I wouldn’t have gotten this far. I can do only so much online research before frustration hits. Having a resource and expert to go to has saved an immense amount of time. It’s made me more confident in my decision making and it’s resulted in a stronger marketing plan for our company.”
For more information, contact Paul Gormley at gormley@iastate.edu or 319-721-5357.