Against the Grain: Marketing

Are you considering hiring an advertising agency? Before you send out an RFP or start shopping around, determine what kind of relationship you’re pursuing. Do you need a vendor to fulfill orders or a partner to generate new ideas and help guide your strategic marketing efforts?

Vendors help you meet your marketing goals; partners help you set and exceed them. Vendors cut ties during economic challenges and leadership changes; partners weather the storm together. Vendors complete your projects on time. Partners fill a need you never knew existed because they understand your customers and industry.

To maintain a competitive-edge in today’s ever-changing market, you should move beyond the project-vendor relationship and explore an agency partnership. An experienced account team can help you set achievable goals and create a strategic plan to turn an idea into an award-winning solution.

Successful client-agency partnerships are built on trust, and it must be earned. Your agency should demonstrate an unwavering commitment to help you succeed. They should invest the time to get to know you, your company and industry. In turn, you should notify them about internal and external changes and challenges affecting your business. They can analyze the situation objectively and may be able to spot an opportunity.

In any relationship, partners run the risk of growing complacent. Don’t let your marketing efforts get stagnant. Your brand, company and products evolve over time and so should your marketing campaigns. Challenge your agency to bring you creative solutions. Be willing to take risks. Trust your agency to guide you through the rebranding process.

Do you still want a vendor? Consult Google. If you’re looking for a partner, give Trilix a call. We combine innovative ideas with marketing expertise. Together, we can form the sweetest partnership since Ben and Jerry—without the ice cream headache.

If we’ve learned anything from our celebrity-obsessed, reality-TV-addicted and perpetually young culture, it’s that maintaining your image is critical to remaining relevant. A fresh look can be just what a company needs to attract a new audience or keep an existing one. Here are some things to think about when considering updating your brand identity.

• Only refresh the identity because of actual changes in the business, not just because you feel like it.
• Be sure the changes you make don’t affect existing customers’ brand loyalties.
• Get an idea of what customers want and what they have come to expect from your brand. Measure their perceptions of your business and incorporate what they like about your company into the new identity.
• Approach the refresh realistically.
  • You may not have the budget for an entire revamp.
  • You can do small tweaks overtime.
  • Make sure you do what works best for your company.
• Accordingly, your refresh may have to work with the old identity, meaning it will have to fit with your current look without alarming the customer.
• Involve and educate the whole company in the refresh process. This way, employees will understand the reasons behind the change, which helps to create consistency and recognition.

There are a lot of factors to think about when considering your brand identity. Trilix’s creative and account teams can help you figure out what is best for your company.

They speak in code, literally. They build and design award-winning websites for Trilix clients and they know the ins and outs of the interwebs like the backs of their hands. They are the Interactive Team. We sat down with them to learn how clients can improve their web presence and maximize their SEO.

Trilix: Building and designing a website is just one component to creating an integrated marketing campaign. What are some things clients should take into consideration when merging traditional marketing with interactive efforts?

Interactive Team: Merging the worlds of traditional and online marketing focus on consistency. Care should be taken to maintain consistent messaging across all platforms of a campaign. A proper campaign should not only include a web presence, but should also incorporate social media.

Trilix: Why is it important for businesses to have an integrated online presence?

Interactive Team: The primary benefits of integrating an online presence are content, access and measurement.

• Traditional content is constrained by the size and format of the piece, but you can use it as a teaser, with a link to your website, in order to drive traffic to more in-depth and interactive content on your website.
• Incorporating an email or social media component is a great way to access a different consumer, which you may have missed using, solely, the traditional piece.
• Online media allows you to measure several aspects of your web traffic, such as clicks, opens, visits, time spent on a page, etc., which provides a snapshot of how they are using your content.

Trilix: What are some common misconceptions regarding web marketing?

Interactive Team: One of the biggest misconceptions is that if you build it, they will come. You can't just build a website and assume that your sales or exposure will increase. You need to create a reason for them to engage with you. Another misconception is that content isn't important. Visitors come to your site to gain information. If that content isn’t there – the website has no purpose. You can use content and key words to drive traffic to your site and increase your SEO.

Trilix: How do you stay on the leading edge of web development, and how does that benefit our clients?

Interactive Team: Our team has more than 35 years of combined experience. We stay on the cutting edge by attending educational conferences, networking with peers in various markets, and reading industry magazines, websites and books.

Trilix: How are mobile apps and websites changing interactive marketing, and how can clients determine which one is right for their business?

Interactive Team: Smartphone sales surpassed PC/desktop computer sales for the first time in 2011. Everything is going mobile–whether it's a strategically designed mobile website or a native mobile app. It is necessary for you to utilize this growing communication channel, and we can help you determine which mobile option is best for your business.

I love stories – any kind – whether they’re found in the pages of a book or newspaper, flickering from a movie screen or being told aloud. It doesn’t matter if I have heard them a thousand times; stories have the ability to fill me with a renewed sense of wonder and intrigue. It is that passion, that connection and commitment to storytelling that propelled me, and many of my colleagues, to work in advertising.

I find that many of my co-workers share the same passion for their work as I do for words – and we are lucky. We are able to merge what we love to do, with what we do at our jobs everyday. We don’t leave our passion at the door – it extends into our outside interests. By reading a new novel, sketching greeting cards, networking or perusing the ever-evolving world of social media in our spare time, we are expanding our knowledge and discovering new ways to enhance our talents.

These pursuits of our individual passions help us collectively bring innovative ideas and deliver superior results to our clients.

In today’s world, where conversations are shared across multiple platforms at the click of a button, you can spread your brand’s marketing message to your target audiences easier than ever before. Whether you use traditional outlets or embrace social media, make sure that your brand’s message stays consistent across all communications platforms.

Here are a few things you should consider:

• Develop a few key marketing messages. Identify your top products and services and explain what distinguishes them from your competition. Create talking points to help your customers understand how they will benefit from your products or services. Review and update your key messages regularly to share recent data, support marketing campaigns and promote new products or services.
• Maintain your image. Visual branding is an important part of your integrated marketing communications plan because your logo, print collateral and website design tells your company’s story. Create a style guide specifying fonts, logo sizes and color schemes to keep a consistent look. You should also incorporate your visual branding on all official communications, e.g., newsletters, press releases and your company’s Twitter background and Facebook profile picture. When you create a consistent look, people will begin to automatically associate your visual branding with your company.
• Get the word out. Don’t shy away from social media! It is a powerful communication tool that allows you to support your traditional marketing efforts and listen and interact with your target audience online. You can tailor your communications to fit an online forum but the key messages should stay the same. Remember, when you communicate via social media, you are representing your brand online so always be transparent, respond promptly and be respectful of others’ opinions.

Integrated marketing campaigns allow you to use traditional and online media platforms to reach your target audiences. Keep your messaging consistent across all communication channels to raise awareness about your products and services to create a stronger brand.