Step #1 – Website and e-mail marketing

In Step #1 you can build a compelling one-two punch for your business.  I trust this goes without saying, but it is imperative that you have a fully functional website up and running.  Your website is your digital storefront/billboard/welcome mat for your business.  Not having one is a mortal sin, but having a website that is out-of-date or non-functional is just as bad.  What are the keys to a good website?

First of all, you need to make sure the site is well-designed.  It should be clean, easy to navigate, and fully convey your brand and messaging throughout.  Make sure it doesn’t take fifteen clicks to get to the pertinent information.  It should be easy for anyone to figure out who you are, what you do, and how to get in touch with you.  Also consider the amount of text on each page.  Unless your products or services are highly technical, try to limit the number or words you use.  Convey your message clearly and in simple fashion.

It is equally as important to make sure the website is designed in a way that will allow you to keep it updated.  Too many times companies invest in a custom website, but must rely on an outside company to make any updates or changes.  We highly recommend building a website with a Content Management System (CMS) platform such as WordPress.  This will provide you with a significant amount of control and ease-of-access to make updates and keep your website fresh and engaging.

With your website where you want it, make sure you integrate e-mail marketing into the mix.  You’ll want to have a landing page, opt-in page, or form somewhere on your website.  This will provide people with an opportunity to share their e-mail address and begin receiving newsletters or other e-mails from you.  The easier you make it for someone to provide their e-mail address, the faster you will build a relevant e-mail database to use for marketing.  Consider providing access to a whitepaper, e-book, or some other kind of “digital goodie” to incentivize/thank each person for sharing their e-mail.

Once you have a marketing list, you can begin to e-mail your clients and customers, prospects, and partners.  Be careful not to abuse your list (sending e-mails too frequently or e-mails that lack any relevance).  Those companies who really figure out the right message and frequency to their e-mail marketing strategy will be able to deliver strong call-to-action messaging to drive additional business.  You will want to make sure you are using an e-mail marketing program that can help measure key statistics and keep you in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act.   The investment is worth it for the insightful data and for mitigating your liability.

Do you have a creative way you are leveraging your website?  How are you using e-mail marketing to drive business?    What is working for you?  Share your thoughts and opinions with us!

When it comes to marketing, there’s nothing quite like trying to keep up with the slew of emerging digital marketing tools to make you feel old and dated.  They seem to spring up quickly and multiply like rabbits!  Sometimes I’ll hear someone mention a hot new digital tool and think “huh?” while I run off and quickly do a Google search.

I have decided enough is enough.  I am putting my foot down on digital, (at least for the next week or so) which is why I want to spend some time talking about those old, outmoded traditional marketing tools.  I’m kidding of course!  Often, while we are all wrapped up in what is new, bright and shiny, we forget about some of the tried and true tools that still deliver results consistently.  When your team is made up of a lot of young, talented individuals, you can quickly forget that the entire world isn’t tied to Facebook, using Pinterest, or checking-in with Foursquare.  Sure, the demographics are certainly leaning digital, but you might be surprised to find that every marketing tactic in your arsenal doesn’t need to be digital to be relevant.

I was chatting with the VP of Marketing for a National chain in the travel industry last week.  He mentioned to me that 50% of their customers still prefer a direct mail approach.  While it may sound like an antiquated approach in the traditional marketing sphere, it is hard to beat something physical in the hands of your customers or prospects if it is getting the desired results.

It is the tangible and authentic feel of some of the traditional marketing tools that still makes them successful.  At the end of the day we like to connect with things, we like to touch them, and interact with them; we like to feel like they have some personal connection to us.  Sometimes a very well executed flyer, brochure, or direct mail piece can speak volumes about your business.  A well placed ad, especially in a highly targeted publication, can still reach the ideal audience for your product or service.  As radio and television become more decentralized and fragmented, there are opportunities to pick up valuable air time at a fraction of the cost. Right now there are businesses telling their story using traditional broadcast formats and finding success in their given markets.  One of the most effective of all the traditional tools is investing time and energy to connect within your community.  Whether through sponsorships with local events and organizations or providing support to a non-profit or charity event, this type of exposure is by far the most real, tangible interaction you will ever get for your business.  (Look for a future article discussing creative ideas for leveraging an event or partnership).

Again, I don’t want all of you to run off and put an end to all of your digital marketing initiatives, that’s not the point of this article.  We will spend plenty of time examining the power of digital marketing tools as well.  My hope is you will remember or at least consider the value traditional marketing can provide.  It’s ultimately about broadening your reach through multiple channels.  You might even consider how traditional marketing can strengthen your digital marketing efforts.  Although we have a lot of amazing developers and programmers working at xiik, we’ve worked diligently to keep our traditional offerings robust.  We have designers, graphic artists, strategists, and researchers ready to help your company develop, revise, or execute a comprehensive traditional marketing approach.  While it may be exciting to focus on emerging tools, please resist the temptation to put all of your “eggs” in the digital marketing “basket.”

What do you think?  Do you feel old?  Do you see the power of traditional marketing tools?  We would love to hear your success stories?  Reply here or leave your response on Twitter or Facebook.

Where to begin? I grew up loving business and have a real passion for marketing and strategy (probably one of the reasons I am now working at xiik). It seems natural to start this series with the basics…a real 50,000 foot view of marketing. It’s hard not to really “xiik out” when I think about where we’ve come in the world of marketing. There are so many amazing digital tools at our disposal and some tried and true traditional tools that work equally well. If we step back in history for just a second it’s amazing to consider just how far we’ve come.

In 1992, just 20 short years ago, a good marketing mix for a business might include: print advertising, direct mail, community sponsorships and engagement, and local radio and television commercials (if you had the budget). So simple we could probably manage our marketing plan in our sleep.

In 2002, we were still relying heavily on these traditional tools. Maybe we were using e-mail to do some marketing. If we had the budget, we probably had a website, but it was likely very static. There was still no Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, no saturation of text messaging, and blogging was still the little brother to message boards and chat rooms. Wow! How times have changed!

You might be wondering why this history lesson is relevant to you. Quite simply, the level of complexity that Presidents, CEOs, and Marketing Executives have to navigate just to keep their company and their brand at the forefront of consumer’s minds is overwhelming. While it might seem easy to say, “We’ll just stick with what works for us,” the reality is a fully optimized mix of marketing tools is the only way to remain relevant and positioned for success in today’s fast-paced business climate.

If you have an in-house marketing team there can still be a lot of value in using an outside firm to assist with strategy and execution. Regardless of the size of your marketing team or breadth of your marketing capabilities there can be a real savings of time, resources, and energy when you look for external assistance. Pardon me for the in-blog commercial, but the reason I get so excited about xiik is the fact that we have the ability to deliver the most cutting-edge digital marketing tools, while still maintaining good old fashioned expertise with traditional marketing tools as well. This approach can be a real win-win and can keep you from falling too far behind to the competition in terms of your marketing mix.

In the coming weeks, I am going to delve deeper into both traditional and digital marketing tools and further expand on the growing complexity of marketing today. Soon you will understand why having multiple marketing tools in your arsenal just makes good business sense and why finding the right marketing partner to help you can make all of the difference.

In the meantime, if you think your marketing plan might be due for a “check-up,” please send us an e-mail or give us a call.

Here’s a quick question as well: What area of marketing do you see as being most challenging for your company or business to execute? We’d love to hear your feedback!

Mutt Strut, a dog walk around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, is the signature fundraising event for the Humane Society of Indianapolis (IndyHumane), bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the non-profit organization every year.

The 2011 IndyMuttStrut.org website

Several years ago, the event had only one section dedicated to it on IndyHumane’s website. For an event of this magnitude, this had to change. IndyHumane needed to raise more money at the event to support its services, and it needed to do that by sharing more info in better ways with its followers.

In 2009, IndyHumane chose xiik to design and develop Mutt Strut’s first dedicated website. In addition to giving Mutt Strut an enhanced brand experience for supporters, the site integrated the event registration system IndyHumane had successfully used in prior years. That year’s event broke previous fundraising and attendance records, attracting thousands of people and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2010, IndyHumane worked with xiik to redesign the site again, giving it a smoother interface, the ability to feature videos on the homepage, and a comprehensive FAQ section. The event broke its previous records again, in spite of a torrential day-long downpour.

This year, in addition to hiring xiik to develop the back-end of its newly redesigned website, IndyHumane again used xiik to redesign IndyMuttStrut.org, integrating design elements from the event’s new branding, photos from past events, and RSS feeds with updates on fundraising goals. The event raised more money than last year.

The success of the past several Mutt Struts have been due in part to IndyHumane’s ability to share the most pertinent information about such a big event in a simple yet effective way. How many times have you planned to go to a special event – a concert, fundraiser, fair, etc. – only to be frustrated by the lack of information online? A dedicated, easy-to- use website helps any event.

Whether you’re a for-profit business or a non-profit organization, you need a good web presence to promote your major efforts – it’s the easiest, fastest way to get the most important information out to the most valuable people.

Have you used a particularly great special-event website lately? Seen one in need of a touchup? Or do you know of a great event that doesn’t even have a web presence and is missing out on its potential? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Our support didn’t end there. On the day of the Mutt Strut xiik launched the Web site for the 2011 Indianapolis Poster Pooch Contest, a contest that will determine which Indianapolis-area dog will be the face of next year’s Mutt Strut.  Dogs are voted on by their human companions, who can log onto the site to vote for their favorites. The winning dog will be decided by having the most votes when the site closes at midnight on Friday, July 9.

Indianapolis-area residents can submit photos of their adorable pooch that can be voted on by the public. To register your pooch, you must make a minimum $5 donation and each vote is a $1 donation. Be prepared to enlist your friends and family to vote for your dog – the current leader has more than 300 votes. Have no fear, though, because voting is still open for several more weeks so there is plenty of time to get a rousing campaign for your pooch going. You can even use the site to solicit support from your friends and family by sending emails encouraging them to vote for your pooch.

And if you don’t have a pooch, surely you know someone who does, or you enjoy looking at photos of cute pooches. Log on today and find your favorite – you’ll be helping provide a second chance to the animals at the Humane Society of Indianapolis who dream of one day being a poster pooch (or kitty!).

Whether you want to show off your pooch, or see others’ favorite pets, we hope you join us in supporting this great cause.

The most notable additions are the full size mannequins that just so happened to grace us with their presence overnight a couple weeks ago. Our best guess is they ran away from Hollister because, let’s be honest, nobody can stand the smell of that place for more than 15 minutes. Their names are Xira [Zira] and Xahn [Zahn], but I have a feeling those names change every week since nobody can remember. No big deal – mannequins don’t have feelings.

Graffiti seems to be popping up more and more around the office and bathroom walls. Our front door sidewalk is tagged with the xiik logo and games of hangman make bathroom time even MORE fun. Give us chalk and you’ll be sure to see the 8-year-old in each of us. That is, all of us except Donny, who has a strong aversion to chalk.

So overall, we have just been making ourselves at home here and making it as fun and comfortable as possible. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop by and try to solve our latest hangman puzzle.

Not since 1972 has a hometown team been in the Final Four and man is Indianapolis pumped: fans have crowded Monument Circle for pep rallies, a giant blue “B” has been formed in the windows of the Indianapolis Power & Light building downtown, and yard signs line Meridian Street, their stakes in the soft spring soil.

Although references to the movie Hoosiers have been tired for some time now, it’s hard to not feel a twinge of goosebumps. After all, basketball is a hallowed institution here in Indiana.  Butler has long played a role in this tradition because its basketball arena, Hinkle Fieldhouse, was the largest basketball gym in the nation for several decades in the middle of the 20th century.

Tonight, Butler will hopefully make more history. In classic David v. Goliath fashion, Butler is taking on basketball behemoth Duke for the NCAA Championship.

In honor of our Butler Bulldogs, we present their fight song:

We’ll sing the Butler war song,
We’ll give a fighting cry;
We’ll fight the Butler battle–
Bulldogs ever do or die.
And in the glow of the victory firelight,
Hist’ry cannot deny
To add a page or two
For Butler’s fighting crew
Beneath the Hoosier sky.

The xiik geeks would like to congratulate the Bulldogs for making it this far in the tournament and wish them good luck against the Blue Devils tonight!

When a client or prospective client contacts xiik to develop a Web site, brochure or marketing campaign, one of our first questions is always going to be, “What do you want to accomplish?” We ask this because every company has different goals. It also helps us to learn more about a client. Often, but not always, a client may not have an end goal in mind, but just think they need “marketing.” However, marketing without a purpose is like trying to shoot a target in the dark. If you’re not sure what your goal should be, here are a few things to consider:

• The Status Quo: Think about your company from an outsider’s perspective. If staying objective is too hard to do, literally ask people (not employees!) what they know about you or your company. Do they know who you are and what you do? What you stand for? Is their perception of you positive or negative?

• The Goal: What do you want people to know about your company?

This is just the beginning of the strategy process. Although strategies may take some time and planning to develop, a solid strategy acts as a roadmap for achieving your goal(s). Just like a good coach won’t send his team into a game without an end goal (winning) and a series of plays to achieve the win, a good marketing firm won’t run a client through a gauntlet of marketing options without knowing the intended result. Anyone can shoot an arrow in the dark, but turning on a light always helps with hitting your target.

Evaluate Your Goals
How has your business changed in the last year? What’s 2010 going to look like for your industry? Do current sales meet your expectations? Are you making a compelling case for your product or service to a targeted enough audience? What have you learned? We all work hard every day to keep the little gears grinding, but it’s crucial to take a step back periodically to tweak your overall course. Sit down to restate what you want for 2010, assess what worked in 2009, and imagine how you can shake up those pieces that need more focused attention or an entirely new tactic.

Listen to Your Audience
The best source of advice is often those people you are looking to please the most: your clients. They can offer valuable clues to engage them if you’ll just listen. Now, listening doesn’t involve just our ears anymore; there are many tools marketers can use to better understand their audiences. If you haven’t already, install data metrics & tracking software like Google Analytics on your web site to audit geographic demographics and behavioral patterns of your site’s visitors. What pages keep your visitors’ attention the longest and where do most flee the site. Research tools like Quantcast can be leveraged to get an interesting picture of the internet trends for your target audience. And get on board with digital word-of-mouth by staying involved with social media sites.

Audit Your Methods of Communication
Remember when people used to just talk to each other? Like face-to-face? Yeah, well there’s an increasing number of ways to interact with your clients and the most successful efforts are those that integrate several modes of communication, proportionate to the habits of your target market. Your options these days are in-person, phone, HTML email, your website, ads on other Web sites, social media, and traditional forms of advertising like mailers, print ads, television, and radio. Do you have the right mix? Are the tools you’re using having effect? Are you cross-promoting (i.e. social media links in email blasts)? Is your website too content heavy? Consumers respond more to visually engaging experiences online rather than a page of text. Are there any opportunities to convert paragraphs into interactive media like video, slideshows, etc?

Rethink Your Budget
Some businesses think they should axe their marketing budgets when the economy goes south, but there are more responsible tactics to trimming expenses.  Strong, effective marketing campaigns don’t always mean dropping big bucks.  Consider the return on your investment, which is highly trackable these days. Strategically targeting and communicating with your audiences can help grow your business. Can you redirect resources from an underperforming activity to one that’s working? Is the underperforming activity failing because your approach is not quite right or because it’s simply not a smart way to reach your audience? Ask these questions before making cuts. And marketing cuts may be unavoidable, but the most critical imperative is for you to prioritize. It may take more planning, but as the economy rebounds, your business will have remained relevant and visible in the public eye. And you’ll outperform those less savvy competitors.

Be True to Yourself and Your Business
Be authentic. People are often smarter than we give them credit for and many can see through a false façade. We as consumers appreciate authentic, heart-felt communications. And in this digital age, anyone can try their hand at the latest new-fangled gadget or digital idea; but those who succeed in digital media approach it with careful planning, research and strategy. Does your brand adequately reflect your company’s values and culture? Avoid hyperbole. Sure, find the magic in your company’s story, but don’t over-promise and under-deliver. Good branding (and by extension, marketing) is about defining an identity and purpose of being that everyone can unabashedly embrace. Create an organization in 2010 that you, your employees, and your clients can all be proud of!

Our new creative office has changed significantly since then. We can’t even recognize the place now. Okay, that’s a stretch, but we really have done a lot to make it more inspiring to the creative brain. Everything from desk layout to our secret snack stash is a little piece of genius that we all take daily pride in. And as we’ve been adding more folks to the team, those snacks go faster and faster — not something I’m too fond of: Dang’nabbit, who drank the last Capri Sun and ate the last string cheese! Just kidding. The new staff additions are amazing, regardless of snack consumption.

And fear not, we still have Yoda watching over the office. He keeps us in line and productive. We’ve also geeked out the walls with a couple of film posters that you can see pictures of below. Finally, one of our favorite aspects of the office is the two walls painted with black chalkboard paint. We express our interactive natures by writing all over the walls like kids. Really nerdy kids. And one of those walls occupies the bathroom — we don’t waste a minute! Topher even went as far as writing a Thanksgiving message backwards on that wall that reflects correctly in the mirror so you could read it. How clever!

Our Geek Bar will continue to grow in such details that encourage new ideas and ways of thinking. Some of these additions may seem minor, but they go a long way to getting ourselves outside the proverbial box and letting folks have a sense of humor, which is always a creative place to be. How can your office benefit from a little more company culture?