Experience

As the Founder and Chief Digital Officer at Fierce Performance Marketing LLC, Monica Thompson is an expert performance marketer with over eight years of experience leading award-winning integrated marketing strategies.

Monica has a passion for partnering with clients to align business goals with marketing strategies, reimagine digital opportunities, and successfully deliver tangible, long-lasting value that stretches beyond a single ad or campaign.

While at Noble Studios, Monica owned strategic marketing initiatives for enterprise clients, including The Hartford, NPM, and Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters. She drove on on average over 500% in return on as spend for paid media clients, and over 50% revenue growth for organic clients.

Monica also innovated new ways to engage citizens in the public sector at the City of Reno. She earned several accolades for the Reno.Gov website redesign and campaigns like #ThinkReno. Monica also led the implementation of civic technology platforms within the organization, including Textizen, SeamlessDocs, and Socrata. Her work implementing SeamlessDocs gained national attention and she was asked co-host a webinar on civic technology for Engaging Local Leaders in Government.

Certifications

• Hubspot Inbound Marketing
• Hubspot Content Marketing
• Google Analytics IQ
• Google Ads: Search, Display, Shopping and Video

Approach

Monica takes a holistic approach to integrated marketing strategy and execution. By combining a deep knowledge and understanding of business goals and objectives, the evolving digital landscape (paid, owned and earned), and qualitative and quantitative audience insights, she’s able to deliver cohesive buyer’s journey roadmaps that connect, engage and convert with qualified audiences. 

Published Articles

The Ultimate Guide to SEO Content

How To Redesign a Website for SEO

How to Improve Brand Reputation with Local SEO

How To Integrate a Content Marketing Plan Into Your Website Redesign

How-To Prepare for the Zero-Click SERP

Performance Marketing in the Public Sector

Early in Monica’s performance marketing career, she found value in her work through civic technology. The purpose of civic technology is to assist governments in delivering services that are simple, effective and easy to use for all citizens. Similar to performance marketing in the private sector, civic technology is customer focused and strives to connect and engage on a human level.

Building a Civic Technology Program

The civic technology program at the City of Reno grew from Monica’s passion to help her government better communicate with and provide services to the citizens of Reno.

In 2014, Monica spearheaded the implementation of civic technology platforms Seamless Docs and Socrata. She developed strategic implementation plans that defined: user needs, budget requirements, marketing strategies and user feedback channels. Establishing valuable partnerships between internal and external stakeholders to foster buy-in was imperative for successful implementation. Once technologies were implemented, Monica hosted workshops to foster user adoption and participation.

In July 2015, Monica was approached by Engaging Local Government Leaders to conduct a national webinar featuring accomplishments the City of Reno achieved during the six-month pilot program with Seamless Docs. The City saved 1480 hours and $41,220 in costs, and received a 91 percent approval rating from citizens.

Check out the webinar ‘Bringing City Hall Online‘ to learn more.

Textizen is another civic tech platform implemented at the City of Reno. In 2014, an engagement objective for the communications department was to develop a mobile communication strategy. Textizen allowed for two-way communication between the organization and Reno residents.

Read ‘City of Reno Opens Dialogue on Virginia Lake Improvement Project’ to learn more about how Textizen was used to garner valuable citizen feedback.

Reno’s First Open Data Program

In 2015, Monica drafted an Open Data Policy and spearheaded a team of external and internal stakeholders to launch Open Reno. Open Reno was hosted on the Socrata platform. Monica was also lead for an internal team that evaluated strategic data releases to the portal and worked with the community to better understand data needs.

From 2014 to 2017, Monica was co-captain on Code for Reno. She collaborated with community leaders to host hackathon events, like: Open Data Day, National Day of Civic Hacking and Hack4Reno.

Read ‘Hack for Reno Summit wants data to solve city problems and you’re invited‘ to learn more.

Digital Citizen Engagement

Monica also managed the digital marketing program at the City of Reno, including all owned and earned channels. Performance was measured across these channels by citizen engagement. During her career, the city’s social media community grew by 55 percent to a total of more than 50,000 followers. In the same timeframe, online engagement (likes, shares, retweets, favorites, comments) increased by more than 200 percent. This was achieved by authentic content and purpose-driven social media campaigns, like #ThinkReno and #ReImagineReno.

#ThinkReno was launched in April 2014. By completing the statement, “i #thinkreno can be …” residents were encouraged to share how they envision our community in 25 years. Over 1500 submitted ideas were incorporated into the 2015 City Council Strategic Planning Session. #ThinkReno was nominated as the 2015 Best in Social Media Finalist by the American Marketing Association and was awarded the 2015 What’s Next Award for Citizen Engagement by Vision Internet.

Read more about the campaign. 

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

Monica’s causes include: social and economic justice, health and wellness and animal welfare. She’s proudly worked with a number of local, national and international nonprofits, like: Nevada Humane Society, Northern Nevada International Center, Healthy Communities Coalition, Silver Springs Co-op, Urban Roots Garden Classroom, Gold Coast Animal Defense League and the Women’s Refugee Center of Newcastle. Monica is constantly moved to participate in intrinsic projects that better her community.

Promoting cultural awareness and developing positive international relations are also very important to Monica. Since earning her undergraduate degree in Australia, she’s actively pursued worthwhile international programs and projects. In 2012, Monica was selected as one of twenty young professionals to participate in the U.S. Department of State’s Young Turkey/Young America Program. She traveled to Turkey for two weeks and met with a number of Turkish politicians, journalists and students. Teams discussed democratic challenges facing Turkey and brainstormed ways the country could become the leading democratic nations in the Arab Spring region.