Firebelly Marketing

I'm the founder and CEO of a company that makes award-winning bourbon and rye whiskey based in Los Angeles. A couple of teammates used to be screenwriters, and we combined our passion for bourbon and movies together to create this company. Our bottles are unique because we create an original script for every one of our products and a poster for each script that becomes the bottles' label. The labels also include characters' headshots, a synopsis of the movie, and information about the award-winning liquid that is inside the bottle.

We needed someone to take over the content creation, management, posting, and data reporting for our social media accounts with the goal of increasing our followers.

Initially, Firebelly Marketing took over our Instagram account, and then we expanded to include Facebook. Firebelly Marketing creates different types of content, including organic posts specific to each platform. The team delivers around eight monthly posts, consisting of still images, carousels, and video reels. Firebelly Marketing also posts content for our stories and reposts stories where other users tag us. We then asked Firebelly Marketing to create posts that promote in-person events since we do a lot of bottle signings and tasting events. The team creates several of these posts monthly. Firebelly Marketing manages our accounts using their publishing tools to post content. The team gathers reporting data and meets with us every month to review our goals and performance through the reports they design. The team discusses actions that have worked and aspects to improve for the next month. We've expanded our engagement to include a funnel advertising campaign that targets audience growth, engagement, and conversion. Firebelly Marketing also creates paid ads with image and video content.

We work with Jessica (Organic Social Media Director), Bryce (Director of Content Creation), and Austin (Social Ads Director). We've also worked with 1–2 other teammates on technical assistance to set up Google Analytics, although I'm unsure how many teammates work on our project besides them.

I searched on Google for small agencies because, at the time we engaged with Firebelly Marketing, we were still raising our initial funds and had a small budget. I reached out to Firebelly Marketing through their website and submitted a contact form. I let them know we were looking for a social media agency and shared our budget, and the owner contacted me immediately. The team's website stated they worked with all-level budgets, and I was very specific about our budget when I emailed them. We had a Zoom meeting with Firebelly Marketing's owner and then connected him with my head of marketing. The team agreed to work with our budget and made me feel confident in their ability to meet our needs.

We started working with Firebelly Marketing in August 2023, and our engagement is ongoing. We keep expanding the scope of the project.

Firebelly Marketing's work has yielded excellent results. Our Instagram following has increased by 10 times in 10 months. When we started working with the team, we had 400 followers on Instagram, and we now have 4,400, and that number keeps increasing every month by almost 10%. Initially, we didn't focus on Facebook and started running ads at the end of May 2024. In a month, our Facebook followers have increased almost 800%, from a few hundred followers to nearly 2,300.We had previous bad experiences with other social media companies and decided to engage with Firebelly Marketing through small projects rather than let them take over our social media entirely from the start. Firebelly Marketing knocked it out of the park right away, and over the next 4–5 months, we kept expanding our work with the team and handing them more control of the project. Firebelly Marketing meets and exceeds our goals and continues to help increase our followers and conversions on Instagram and Facebook.

Jessica communicates fantastically and is very service-oriented. Bryce is very creative, and I love the content he creates and having him on the team. Austin seems brilliant and understands how social media advertising works and how to use it best to achieve our goals.

Firebelly Marketing delivers the work they commit to and meets our goals. The team is very flexible and adapts to our needs. We haven't had to ask them to figure out why something isn't performing the way we want it to because they've already addressed it by the time we bring it up. Firebelly Marketing is on top of work and creates great content for a reasonable budget. The team is resourceful and works with what they have and does great with it.I've rarely been this satisfied with a vendor. I've learned a lot from the team, the most valuable thing being I can trust Firebelly Marketing's creativity, and letting them do their thing is the best way they'll succeed for me.

I can't think of anything Firebelly Marketing can improve.

Other social media agencies we had worked with wanted to dictate how we should sound and didn't understand our voice. Firebelly Marketing takes their time to understand our voice and helps us understand how to adapt to better take advantage of social media to achieve our goals. The team has built a level of trust to the point where I have my team review the content they create. I used to review every piece of content in the past, but now I know the team understands our brand. Each month, Firebelly Marketing sends a Google document with links to the content they've created for the upcoming month, and I'm always excited to review their work and see what they'll do next.

I’m a co-owner of Mimi Blue restaurant.

We didn’t have much of a social media presence, so we hired them to help us develop one.

Firebelly Marketing’s first campaign involved making the marketplace aware of our presence. As our relationship has continued to grow, we’ve gotten more specific with our message and the culture of our brand. The team has also run programs that require responses based on promotional giveaways to understand how well-distributed our name and brand is.

We've spent between $50,000–$100,000.

We began working with them in October 2018, and we’re still working with them.

When we were looking for a marketing company, we asked a few other businesses for advice, and Firebelly Marketing’s name continued to come up. We also looked online for someone in our local market and decided to bring them in for an interview. We felt they had a unique understanding of our company, and ironically, the owner of Firebelly Marketing regularly ate at our restaurant.

Since beginning our engagement with Firebelly Marketing, we’ve seen growth. We’ve also seen improvements in our customer’s experience and the level of engagement we get from customers.

The team always completes everything on time and delivers on their promises. If there are any issues or budget changes, they always come to us before doing anything.

We’ve been extremely impressed with their communication, and the team is highly available. We’ve watched them grow and improve throughout our engagement, and Firebelly Marketing is continuously providing us with a better experience. The team is committed to our business, understands our culture, and is perceptive about what we need.

There’s nothing we can come up with.

They will genuinely care about you as a customer and won’t just be interested in you as a means for financial profit. They won’t do something out of convenience because Firebelly Marketing is invested in your company. You’ll get what you put in from this experience, and you need to be consistent.

I am the CMO of R-C Ranch

We are a Texas-based ranch that sells the highest quality Wagyu Beef.

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Social Channel Management

Firebelly has always delivered on or ahead of the project deadlines and they've always been open to our needs and wants as a customer.

They are very personable and understand the needs of our brand. We don't just feel like a customer of theirs, but we feel like they genuinely care about our brand.

Not that I can think of. Anything that needs improvement is talked about on our monthly calls and then improved afterward.

I’m the chief experience officer (CXO) at Distance Learning Systems. Our company offers online college courses, and part of my role is overseeing all marketing and technology operations.

We needed assistance with our social media marketing (SMM) strategy to attract lead generation. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, our sales representatives traveled to different states to attract leads and host educational seminars. After the COVID-19 pandemic, we needed to change our lead strategy.

Firebelly Marketing has created and managed our lead-generation campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Before working with them, we used to manage our SMM and had the past campaign results, which Firebelly Marketing reviewed and optimized. We also set a specific cost per lead (CPL) goal for them to meet.

We’ve worked with different teammates from Firebelly Marketing. Initially, I worked with Duncan (Founder & CEO) and another teammate, from who I don’t recall their position. After we signed the agreement with Firebelly Marketing, I worked with Austin (Senior Social Ads Manager) for about 90 days, and more recently, we’ve worked with Arnelle (Marketing Manager).

We found Firebelly Marketing through an online search. We came across a national ranking that included them, and we contacted Firebelly Marketing because they were located in our area.

We invest around $5,000 monthly with Firebelly Marketing, which is over $100,000 for the time we’ve been working together. This cost includes our ad spend budget.

We started working with Firebelly Marketing in February 2021, and our partnership is ongoing.

Our main goal for this project is to have an additional lead stream for our sales representatives. One of our objectives was to reach a low CPL. We set a specific target, and Firebelly Marketing has met and exceeded our expectations by 150%.

We communicate closely with Arnelle. She takes feedback very well and is always monitoring and optimizing our campaigns. Arnelle also sends a weekly report with our campaigns’ results, and I can rely on her sending it on time since she knows I use these reports with our stakeholders.

My only constructive criticism is that our monthly fee also includes our ad spend. We’re a small business, and I’d like it if we had a performance-based rate instead of a monthly fee. However, I believe the cost is proportional to the client’s ad spend budget.

I recommend laying off your project’s expectations from the beginning. Firebelly Marketing is honest and straightforward; if you have expectations that are hard to meet, they’ll work with you and do their best to accomplish your goal.

I’m the shopper marketing manager for T&G Global, and I’m in charge of managing the digital marketing campaigns for a couple of our brands.

We hired Firebelly because we wanted a US company to manage our social media marketing efforts. Previously, we worked with an Australian firm that managed our US social media efforts. However, we wanted a US-based vendor so that our campaigns would be more relevant to the country.

We’ve onboarded Firebelly for social media marketing, content development, social media listening, and ad management. They’ve worked on knowing our brands so that they can speak for us on social media channels. We’ve discussed our goals to increase engagement and make sure that the content they create is relevant to our US audience and to other brands in our category.

I directly work with two people from their team. Other people work with them, but they don’t talk to me directly.

I found Firebelly through Google.

We’ve invested around $150,000 or $10,000 per month.

We started the partnership in February 2021, and it’s ongoing.

To date, Firebelly has increased our engagement rate by 5.8% for one brand. For another brand, they’ve increased that rate by 3.7%. On top of that, our audience size has grown by over 10,000 followers.

Firebelly’s project management is excellent. Our account representative makes sure that everything is done on time and within budget. They recommend ways for us to optimize our projects. We communicate via email. I usually use Outlook, and we do Zoom calls every week.

Their personal touch is rare — they make sure that our representative is a good fit for us. On top of that, they’re highly responsive and provide great social media expertise.

No, there aren’t any. In fact, they have an excellent selling process for us, and their pricing is highly competitive. They beat every other vendor we’ve considered. I don’t see any way they could be better.

I highly recommend Firebelly to anybody interested in social media marketing. They’re one of the best vendors I’ve worked with across the board.