Mary Coombs

Mary Coombs
Mary Coombs, a partner at Coombs Marketing, has spent the last 10 years helping small and medium size business grow their brand presence and qualified prospects using Inbound Marketing tools, SEO, SEM, and social media, as well as traditional outbound online tools like Facebook advertising and radio. She has hundreds of hours of social media presence in her client’s name. She creates and acquires relevant content for her clients to share with their target market. Mary helps her clients to segment communications to match prospects’ needs at various stages of the buying cycle. She is an expert at using LinkedIn as a prospecting tool for clients. Mary has recently completed the HubSpot Partner Certification for Coombs Marketing. She co-founded Coombs Productions, Inc in 1986 and developed it into a successful marketing agency, Coombs Marketing, which was recognized on the Fortune 500 list of fastest-growing privately held businesses. While at Coombs, she has earned a number of marketing, branding, web, and business television awards. Her client account relationships included Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Constellation Brands, Duke Energy among others. Mary is an accomplished producer of media events and a team leader in all aspects of special event management and production. She co-created a satellite industry symposium for major corporations using satellite technology to communicate with their customers and employees. Clients include, Toys "R" Us, New York Life, ITVA Foundation, Weight Watchers of America, Xerox, Novell, and Toro. Mary directed the Coombs team through brand execution for Xerox Global Services and Duke Power Business Services and rebranding efforts at Duke Energy Corporate. Mary graduated from St. John Fisher College and lives in the Charlotte, NC area with her family.
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Recent Posts

What's the Future of Social Selling?

by Mary Coombs on July 8,2014

As SocialSteve wrote in his blog post, Time To Rethink Social Media, “Facebook is changing the way it treats brand’s posts and their distribution (or lack thereof)."  You really can’t blame Facebook. Free business advertising doesn’t make for a sustainable business model, and I believe their shareholders would agree. So pony up some dough or don’t bother with a Facebook page for business.

So where does that leave social selling? My money is (and always has been) on LinkedIn!  And here's why...

What's the cost of your sales & marketing teams misalignment?

by Mary Coombs on June 10,2014

The mistrust and miscommunication that’s so often found between the two teams can act like an anchor on your company’s growth rate. 

Organizations with good alignment between sales and marketing teams achieved 20% annual revenue growth. Companies with poor alignment saw revenues decline by 4%.*

That’s why many companies work hard to generate better communication between sales and marketing – only to see cracks between the two groups re-open over time. The bottom line is that achieving sales and marketing alignment can be tough, but maintaining alignment is even tougher. 

Creating a solid, lasting partnership between sales and marketing requires a strategic approach that treats the two teams as a single, revenue-generating organization. 

The key to this approach is implementing a framework of data-driven tools and practices that help sales and marketing ...

You say "old dog, new tricks" like it's a bad thing

by Mary Coombs on May 27,2014

So, you've been in your marketing job for almost 20 years now.  A lot has changed in that time, but no more rapidly than the last 5 -10 years. In that time, marketers have had to learn to embrace email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ among others. Add to that blogging (creating remarkable content) along with all the traditional marketing functions they have done for years and and top it off with having to show a ROI and "new tricks" takes on a whole new meaning.

Know What You Want, and Know How (and when) To Get It!

by Mary Coombs on May 22,2014

For years in another iteration of Coombs Marketing, we worked with Rich Caldwell, CEO of the Planned Success Institute.The baseline of our work was around knowing what we want, and knowing how to get it. Simple right? Not so much!  It's really about having a sound goal and a measureable strategy to reach it.      

So, this week alone, I have talked to a couple of clients who really want what inbound marketing and its analytical data have to offer, but are unsure of when they want to commit to closing the deal. 

By coincidence I read a great article entitled,