Laura B. Whitmore Of Positive Grid On The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today

Eric Netsch, CEO of Tapcart
Authority Magazine
Published in
9 min readAug 26, 2022

You need to know your customers. Take the time to understand not just their motivations, but what turns them off. Map out your customer’s journey for each persona so you can truly understand where they might hit obstacles and where their pain points are. Then hyper focus your strategies on eliminating all the friction in the journey. We just took another look at our customer journey and found new opportunities for different types of content we can create to tell parts of our story.

As a part of our series called “The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Laura B. Whitmore.

Laura B. Whitmore is a music marketer, singer/songwriter, event producer, journalist, and founder of the Women’s International Music Network and the She Rocks Awards.

After graduating from Hofstra, Whitmore worked for CBS Records and Korg USA where she handled marketing, PR and artist relations for Korg, Marshall, and VOX. Whitmore additionally served as editor for Korg’s ProView Magazine and of the Vox Catalog, for which she won a Davey Award for her efforts in 2006.

After 20 years working with Korg, Whitmore founded Mad Sun Marketing, handling marketing, PR, artist relations and additional services for numerous industry leaders.

In 2012 Whitmore founded The Women’s International Music Network, an organization dedicated to providing support, information, and community to women in all walks of life within the industry. The organization serves as an outlet to share news pertaining to female musicians, projects and products relating to women in the industry, special WiMN event details and other events in the community. The WiMN produces the She Rocks Awards, a ceremony that honors trailblazing women from all areas of the industry.

Since 2020 Whitmore has served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Positive Grid, a revolutionary music technology software and hardware company that is changing the way people approach music making. The company has launched numerous widely praised and highly successful products including the Spark, Spark Pearl, and Spark MINI amplifiers, in addition to several desktop and mobile apps that support musicians across all levels of experience.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I have always loved music — singing, playing guitar, writing songs. I come from a pretty practical family who pushed me to go into the business side of things. I actually really wanted to go to Berklee College of Music for performance, and even had their catalog sent to a friend’s house in secret! We compromised with a music business course of study. I wasn’t sure at first, but I found myself loving the combination of performance and creativity along with the ability to build a plan and a foundation to make it happen. I later got my MBA in marketing and really love the creativity of this career path. I’ve been in the music industry ever since and continue to make music, too.

Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

Prior to taking the marketing helm at Positive Grid in April 2020, right after lockdown, I had been working as their marketing agency. We had launched a new smart guitar amplifier called Spark in late 2019 as a preorder, thinking we could ship by Christmas. With all the challenges of COVID we had some unavoidable delays. By the time we were able to ship, it was a frenzy — the product had really taken off and it catapulted the company forward. To date we have sold over 300,000 Spark amps, which is a huge accomplishment for a musical instrument company. It’s created a shift in the way people learn and play the guitar.

What’s the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson did you learn from that?

Oh man, I definitely made mistakes, but I don’t think of them as funny. I remember supervising a print run for [major keyboard brand] Korg’s magazine, ProView and noticing after it was on press that there was a typo in a headline (this was way back!). Had to stop the presses and re-run that form. Cost us a pretty penny. I learned to have multiple eyeballs review things, don’t make assumptions and try to step back and slow down to ensure excellence.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

We have been digging into the emotional side of why people play guitar, what makes them keep coming back, how do we keep them encouraged? We’re working on a series of user focused videos that really tap into what does success mean for casual guitar players, and how do our products help them get there. It’s very rewarding to know that products like Spark really encourage and inspire people, give them new meaning as musicians, and help people find new and fun ways to express themselves. We seek to share that inspiration and encouragement in a very genuine way.

You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?

The first one that comes to mind is open-mindedness. I love when our CEO says, “Yeah we can do that and it could work, but what can we do that no one has ever done before?” Being humble enough to walk away from your idea for a better idea is difficult but crucial.

The second is risk taking. Calculated risk taking. It’s impossible to go from good to great without taking risks. Having a safe space to do this is essential. And I also think once you decide to take a risk you have to see it through. If you chicken out in the middle, then it’s impossible to know if your risk would have worked.

Finally I think focusing on the strengths of your team and helping them to excel is also crucial. Not everyone is like you. Not everyone can stomach the same risk level that you can, for example. But really searching for and identifying their strengths, nurturing them, listening, helping them to grow. That’s how teams work together at a high level. They feel respected and seen.

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about eCommerce. In my work, I focus on improving shopper engagement, so I’m very passionate about this topic. As you know, mobile has taken center stage in terms of how people are engaging and transacting with eCommerce stores — leading a lot of stores to lean into mobile-first shopping experiences like mobile apps. Can you help articulate a few reasons why an eCommerce business should consider creating its own mobile app?

We do have a mobile app associated with our Spark Amp that adds smart functions to the product. We’ve been working to add and boost community and communication features. The mobile app serves as a platform to engage customers, send them updates and messages for new products, and keep them involved in our ecosystem. I think the key to making a mobile app work is to think of it as a communication platform. It’s not only about selling, it’s about creating a relationship with customers, giving them reasons to return and having them feel like part of the family.

The cost of paid ads is at an all-time high. What are some alternative strategies to reach your target consumers that don’t involve paying a third party like Facebook and Instagram?

There are many. We look at the full funnel so that we are engaging potential customers throughout their journey. We often focus on working with influencers, lots of organic social engagement, PR and 3rd party media, and we’ve been developing upper funnel affiliate relationships. We also develop special content for mid-funnel — blogs, how-to videos, infographics and more. We work with partners to co-market to our respective audiences — which is a great way to reach potential customers for low cost. We’ve also really honed in on building our email list and strategizing the best way to use it. Data and tracking is key to make sure we’re focusing on the most effective elements.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are your “ Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today?” Please share a story or an example for each.

Focus on Customers

First of all you really need to know your customers. Take the time to understand not just their motivations, but what turns them off. Map out your customer’s journey for each persona so you can truly understand where they might hit obstacles and where their pain points are. Then hyper focus your strategies on eliminating all the friction in the journey. We just took another look at our customer journey and found new opportunities for different types of content we can create to tell parts of our story.

Invest in Content

Create content that helps not only attract customers but educates, inspires and helps them to know you better. Think about what motivates your customers and helps them to make a purchase decision. In some cases there can be a lot of steps to that buying decision — reading articles, watching videos, reading reviews, asking questions in a chat group. Be there with great content that helps them to feel good about their decision. We’ve just started a series of content to help people who are learning guitar to take the next steps in their journey. It’s educational and puts us in front of them as they move forward.

Attribution and Data

As someone who has been in marketing for 35 years, it’s crazy to think that in the “old days” we didn’t know what the effects of our spend were. We had an idea but not real data. Today it’s essential to use the tools available to map out the effectiveness of your spend at all levels. Not every action leads directly to conversion, so make sure you are tracking the right things. For example, we just launched a new organic social engagement strategy, and we’re looking at CPMs for engagement and reach metrics — views, shares, saves, likes. If we only looked at conversions we’d stop now, but we are building future customers by creating engaging content and encouraging them to interact with us. Tracking this data and attributing its long tail effects are what we are looking at now.

Full funnel strategies

We used to be fairly segmented internally between the MarComm and eComm functions. Now we work as an integrated team to make sure that our campaigns and messaging strategies are hitting our target audiences and personas at all funnel levels. Someone sees a social post with a tip on learning to play. They engage with it. Then they are served a blog about tips for learning to play guitar, which brings them to our site where they are offered more content and encouraged to join our list. Then we might go to lower funnel communications like promotions and reasons to buy now. Integrating the journey can take time but leads to stronger outcomes as it all kicks in.

Be where your customers are

It’s tempting to focus on platforms that are set up for you as a marketer to get data, make decisions and see results. But customers can be everywhere! We are not only looking at sales channels, but multiple communication channels. We’ve had spontaneous, quite large groups focused on our products pop up on Facebook, Reddit, forums. Communicate where your customers are. Sell where your customers are. Oh, and KNOW where your customers are!

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I actually started an organization called the Women’s International Music Network 10 years ago to help create opportunities for women in the industry and give them a voice. Creating a platform that encourages diversity has been very meaningful and I have seen progress over the last 10 years. But there is still so much work to do.

Aside from helping to improve diversity within companies, we also work to expand the market by reaching more diverse audiences. Many don’t know how to reach or market women or other diverse targets.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find me on Linked In and of course, follow us at PositiveGrid.com, facebook.com/positivegrid/, instagram.com/positivegrid/ , and twitter.com/PositiveGrid

I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!

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Eric Netsch, CEO of Tapcart
Authority Magazine

CEO of Tapcart, a codeless mobile app builder that helps Shopify brands to create an owned marketing channel to reach, engage, & convert its audience