Meet the Member: Maura Webster, LillaBlu Strategies

Maura Webster describes her path to having her own marketing company as “long and winding.”

Her resume includes jobs — for her high school alma mater in alumni relations to working in a boutique PR firm representing “people who were concerned about making a name for themselves” in Washington, D.C., among them — that seemed like they had little or nothing to do with marketing. With work in government, politics, and non-profit, she ended up in a “real” marketing role in the educational technology space. There it all came together when the company became big and demonstrated to her just how much she wanted to work for a small company, and why.

So, in January 2015, she created LillaBlu Strategies, fashioning it in a way that reflects what she learned on that long and winding path.

“Working for different organizations, whether for profit or non-profit, you find out what really clicks with you,” said Maura, LillaBlu’s founder, chief executive officer, and chief strategist.

What clicks with Maura is less about metrics and measurements and more about people and relationships.

“I was more concerned with showing the real meaning and passion for a company,” she said. “I’m not going to play to the clicks and the numbers.”

Maura describes LillaBlu as a marketing and communications company “focused on strategic analysis, creative development, implementation, growth and management of MarComm initiatives. LillaBlu Strategies was born to bring a big picture approach to organizations of all sizes, from technology start-ups to established energy companies, local businesses to corporate entities looking to grow, re-brand, or take their business to the next level.”

According to Maura, she and her company are all about authenticity.

“I was driven to do authentic,” she said. In engaging a client, she said she wants to understand what it is they really care about. Then her job, she said, is telling that story to who the client wants want to reach.

Maura, who primarily works from her home in Massachusetts, is a virtual member of the Cooperative Venture Workspace at 36 Maplewood Avenue in downtown Portsmouth, N.H.

The Workspace offers a range of solutions to a range of professional needs. In-house memberships — part-time, full-time, and executive — are joined by virtual memberships that include the business mailing address, access to Workspace amenities, and access to meeting space.

For Maura, the mailbox address she has at the Workspace in and the access she has to conference room space helps lift her business to a level of expertise and panache that reflects the professional vibrancy in Portsmouth.

“The space is awesome,” said Maura. She has meetings in the Workspace with clients and hosts webinar events.

“I like having a community,” she said.

She also likes having a business of her own, that reflects her view of how to run a business. As she said in her blog when she created LillaBlue: “It was a long-time dream of mine to build my own team – a group of dedicated, talented, fun-loving, creative professionals who share my belief that building, fostering, and nurturing relationships is critical in everything you do in life.”