Client Background
Darcy Luoma Coaching and Consulting is a boutique leadership development firm founded by Darcy Luoma, a professional coach, speaker, and author based in Wisconsin. The firm works with organizations that want to invest in their leaders and teams to become high-performing.
Their core framework, the Thoughtfully Fit model, uses a fitness metaphor to make the case that strong leadership and team dynamics require intentional training—not just good intentions. Services span executive coaching, keynotes, workshops, team assessments, and leadership retreats.
Darcy Luoma Consulting runs on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS/Traction), meaning they operate with clearly defined annual goals and quarterly rocks. They bring the same structured thinking to everything—including how they evaluate and hire outside partners.
Client Profile
Business Name: Darcy Luoma
Industry: Business Consulting
Location: Madison, WI
Website: https://darcyluoma.com/
LinkedIn: Darcy Luoma
The Challenge
After 15 years in business, Darcy Luoma Consulting had built real credibility. Repeat clients and referrals kept the business growing. But that strength masked a significant gap: the firm had virtually no digital presence.
In Darcy’s own words, they had “probably no organic search traffic.” Their blogs were unoptimized. Their website looked good—people complimented it at the grocery store and at church—but it wasn’t doing any heavy lifting. New audiences who didn’t already know Darcy Luoma couldn’t find them online.
Three specific problems compounded the situation:
The hardest part wasn’t the problems themselves. It was not knowing the root cause. As Darcy put it: “How do you solve a problem when you don’t even know what the root cause of the problem is?”
The impact was real. Great work was happening inside client engagements. But if the right organizations couldn’t find the firm online, the pipeline would stay capped at whoever already knew Darcy personally.
The Solution
After evaluating roughly 20 marketing firms and narrowing to three finalists, Darcy Luoma Consulting chose Duct Tape Marketing. The deciding factor was Strategy First™.
One competing firm offered to cut the strategy phase to reduce cost. That was a red flag. Duct Tape Marketing held firm: no strategy, no engagement. That alignment on process matched how Darcy’s own firm operates.
Here’s how the engagement unfolded:
The Results
The results fall into two categories: measurable performance gains and operational relief.
Search and digital visibility
- Keywords including “alignment coaching,” “Darcy Luoma,” “Thoughtfully Fit,” and “Darcy Luoma Coaching and Consulting” moved from unranked to averaging between position 1 and 4 in organic search.
- Organic clicks and search impressions increased measurably after the website rebuild and content optimization.
Operational improvement
- Content that previously required three rounds of internal review—slowing down event posts by weeks—now moves through a structured monthly planning process.
- The firm shifted from reactive, one-week-at-a-time social posting to planning a full month in advance.
Strategic clarity
- The team now operates with two defined buyer personas and messaging built to resonate with each.
- Every marketing initiative is tied to a stage in the Marketing Hourglass (know, try, like, buy, refer), so the team can articulate what each activity is designed to accomplish and track whether it’s working.
- Monthly scorecard reviews replace guesswork with data.
Before, the marketing effort was spaghetti—well-intentioned but scattered. Now it’s what Darcy describes as “a well-oiled machine.”
Client Feedback
“By far, one of the biggest benefits is just knowing that the marketing is taken care of—that there’s a strategy, there’s a plan, there’s execution, and that I am no longer bogged down or creating a bottleneck or throwing spaghetti at the wall. Every month, my team meets with Duct Tape Marketing and goes through the scorecard, and we look at the numbers and we see what is resonating, what’s doing well, where do we get traction. That means it’s not a guessing game anymore.”
— Darcy Luoma, CEO and Founder, Darcy Luoma Coaching and Consulting
Key Takeaways
This engagement reflects a pattern we see repeatedly with professional services firms that have built strong reputations through referrals but have hit a ceiling on growth.
Referrals are a strength, not a strategy.
If your growth depends entirely on who already knows you, your pipeline is as limited as your personal network. Digital visibility is how you grow beyond it.
Great content without SEO is invisible content.
Darcy’s team had produced real, valuable content for years. None of it was being found. Optimizing what already exists is often faster than creating from scratch—and it compounds over time.
Founder involvement in execution is a risk, not a sign of commitment.
When the founder is the bottleneck on social media approvals, the business is limited by their availability. Removing that dependency is an operational improvement, not just a convenience.
Strategy before tactics—every time.
The moment another firm offered to skip strategy to cut cost, that firm disqualified itself. Marketing without a defined ICP, clear personas, and a mapped-out plan produces activity, not results.
A defined framework gives your team a shared language.
Amy, the internal liaison, now explains marketing initiatives to Darcy using Marketing Hourglass stages. That shared language accelerates decisions and keeps the team aligned without constant back-and-forth.