Kelly Braun

As Chief Marketing Strategy Officer, Kelly leads the development and execution of comprehensive marketing strategies that enhance brand positioning, drive revenue growth, and strengthen customer relationships across a diverse portfolio. Kelly brings more than 25 years of experience spanning journalism, advertising, and both traditional and digital marketing — a unique blend of creative vision and strategic insight. Her career has encompassed work with manufacturers, large agricultural corporations, small businesses, and everything in between, giving her an unparalleled understanding of what resonates across B2B and B2C audiences. Her hands-on expertise, developed while serving as Creative Director and Content Strategist, ranges from website copy and video storyboards to taglines and long-form content. She combines strategic thinking with creative writing skills and is passionate about fostering collaboration, believing that the best marketing outcomes emerge when talented teams align around shared goals. When she's not at Marketing Essentials, Kelly cherishes spending time with her family and loves stories in all formats, self-help and motivational books, and podcasts. A self-described health enthusiast, she also enjoys working out and healthy eating.

Posts by Kelly Braun

Digital Marketing Trends: 8 Graphs That'll Help You Understand [Updated]

AI didn’t make the human parts of marketing less valuable. It made them more valuable.

That’s the thread we found running through HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report. The teams getting real returns from AI aren’t the ones with the best prompts. They’re the ones with a solid brand voice who know it well. They have a comprehensive website and content strategy that can hold the traffic they earn. And they are putting in the laborious work of keeping their data clean.

As a certified HubSpot agency partner, we pulled eight graphs from the report that tell this story:

The Top Goal Flipped — and So Did the Top Challenge
Your Brand Point of View Is the Differentiator Now
Mid-Market Marketers Still Lead With Their Website
The Channels You Own Return the Most
Everyone Can Publish Now. Few Can Differentiate.
AI Sends Less Traffic — and Better Buyers
Lead Quality Beats Traffic as the KPI That Matters
A Marketing Performance Pulse Check

How Much Does Manufacturing Marketing Cost? (And Is It Worth It?)

One of the most common questions industrial marketers ask is: how much does manufacturing marketing actually cost?

Families Are Using AI to Research Senior Living. Here's What the Data Shows.

The family researching your community may never have typed your name into Google. Instead, they opened ChatGPT and asked a question — something like “my mom keeps forgetting to take her meds, and I'm scared to leave her alone, is it time for assisted living?” or “are there senior communities near me that let you keep pets, not just small ones?"

Your Next Customer Is Asking AI For the Answer. Will Your Manufacturing Company Come Up?

Engineers, procurement and purchasing managers aren’t waiting for your sales team to call. They are typing questions like "What's the best orbital stretch wrap machine?" or "Which industrial supplier should I consider for X?" into ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot – and getting an answer in seconds.

The Difference Between Online & Offline SEO

Even as recently as a few short years ago, the process of search engine optimization with regard to your online presence was simple -- you would pick the keywords that you hoped would attract the most business and focus on those in everything you posted online.