297 | Scale with Data, Not Gut—Strategy-First for Female Founders with Rita Barry
Scale with Data, Not Gut—Strategy-First for Female Founders with Rita Barry
If you’re new here, I’m Jen Vazquez. I help hyper-busy female service providers simplify their marketing on Pinterest, enabling them to book more clients, grow their income, and make a bigger impact. On this podcast, you’ll also find expert interviews and actionable tips to tackle marketing without the overwhelm. If that sounds like your jam, subscribe on YouTube or wherever you listen.
Meet Rita: The Strategy Brain Behind the Numbers
Today I’m chatting with Rita Berry of Rita Berry + Co., a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping female-founded businesses scale with a strategy-first approach. She prioritizes data-driven methods to refine customer acquisition—testing, iterating, and using actionable insights rather than gut feelings or fleeting trends.
Rita’s path wasn’t linear. She studied microbiology, calculus, and stats on a pre-med track, realized cutting people makes her squeamish (same!), moved into social services, then—thanks to a cross-country move and a two-year-old—taught herself to code during the late-2000s blogging boom. Websites led to marketing, which led to analytics, which led to an agency niche that female founders were desperate for. It turns out the combo of analytical rigor + deep empathy is a killer marketing skill set.
What “Strategy-First” Really Means
Strategy can feel ambiguous, so here’s Rita’s simple version: solve the right problems. Start with business goals first (profit, revenue, capacity), then set marketing goals that actually serve those business goals. From there, figure out the current state of play: what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing.
A few anchors:
- Map your customer journey. Literally flowchart it. You’ll see the missing steps or over-complication instantly.
- Message maps + ideal client clarity. Say the same core things 85,000 times. Consistency builds trust.
- Assess past campaigns. What performed, what didn’t, and why?
- Fix tracking. It’s not glamorous, but you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
Data vs. Gut: How to Scale Beyond You
Gut instinct matters—but you can’t SOP your intuition to a team member. Data lets you transfer trust and decision-making beyond the founder. When you can see where people drop off (sales page, checkout, call booking), you can decide whether to amplify, refine, or rebuild. And yes, the human side still matters: pair analytics with customer interviews for the words and insights your audience actually uses.
Also, tools will disagree. That’s normal. Pick one source of truth for each metric and track it consistently. You’re looking for trends, not perfect absolutes.
The Overlooked Growth Lever for Service Providers
So many service pros lean hard on traffic tactics and ignore relationship marketing. Rita’s business broke open when she started showing up in small masterminds, building genuine connections, and letting trust transfer through communities. High-ticket, low-volume service work runs on referrals and reputation. Your best clients often need to trust you before the first Zoom call—and that trust usually comes via someone they already respect.
First Steps to Get Data Working for You
Keep it simple:
- Pick one metric that would change everything. For most service providers, it’s clients per month.
- Backwards-map the inputs. Calls booked, form fills, list growth, site visits—no more than five subordinate metrics.
- Track weekly. Use a tally, spreadsheet, or calendar—whatever you’ll stick with.
- Start at the bottom. Fix the nearest bottleneck to revenue first (e.g., sales call close rate), then move up.
- Rinse and repeat. Focus on one bottleneck until it’s no longer a problem.
Work With Rita + Freebie
Rita’s agency works exclusively with female business owners. Options include fractional CMO (install the strategy brain), full outsourced marketing, or filling key gaps like copywriting, funnels, analytics, and paid acquisition.
Freebie: an in-depth marketing assessment at marketingquiz.co to help you identify the right problem to solve first.
Where to Find Rita:
If you found this helpful, leave a review and—most importantly—schedule time to implement. Download Rita’s quiz, review your results, pick your one metric, and put it on your calendar this week.
