Internal ideas lead to sharper outside messages for five finalists

My company - Lancet Software, took home the hardware in a little business building contest promoted by a local magazine. We won an award for best practice in communications and marketing...

I got to make a speech... I hadn't done one for some time, and this one was limited to just 4 minutes - I couldn't afford much stumbling. I did an old trick - I recorded the speech, timed to the second. Transferred it to my iPod, and listened to it about 100 times in the 2 days leading up to the event. I've never been so confident, or gotten so many good laughs because my timing was "on" before.

Here's a bit of the article... the picture of me (with Tika) on the blog is from the article's photo shoot.

Loud and clear
Internal ideas lead to sharper outside messages for five finalists

by Elizabeth Martin

When it comes to communications and marketing, five finalists show that a little creative thinking can create a big business advantage.

To wit: Connecting with customers in a new way landed Bard Advertising a finalist position. When a prospective client asked to learn more about the firm’s capabilities, but specifically begged not to see another PowerPoint presentation, the company knew it had to put its best creative foot forward. The end result was an interactive game in which prospective clients are asked to guess how the company obtained measurable results. Bard won the business, and a new sales tool.“In all cases of our presentation, people were amazed at the results,” says Barb Stabno, founder.

Employees rule
California Closets uses plasma TVs within its Bloomington store to showcase its new sales displays at the beginning of each year. But after the displays were revealed in the beginning of the year, the TVs sat idle. So, the company decided to use the TVs to better communicate with its employees. Today the TVs are installed throughout the company’s offices and display financial information, success rates, and bonus updates as well as information submitted by employees. “The fun part is throughout the important information we pop in pictures of company functions,” says Michele Skjei (pronounced Shay), vice president and franchise co-owner. Using the TVs to communicate and acknowledge employees helps engage people with different learning styles as well, she says. Some employees want to read information, while others want to see or hear it. “People get turned on, they get stimulated, they want to be part of the company,” when they’re engaged, says Skjei. She adds that when the TVs are appropriated for their original purpose of showing the new sales displays, her 32 employees tell her that they miss the steady stream of company information.

California Closets has a unique take on its employee newsletter, as well. Instead of a long missive drafted by executives, the company distributes a brief newsletter written by the employees themselves.“Less is more in my mind,” says Skjei. “One page, one side, that’s it. ”Having employees draft the newsletter gives management an insight into morale and other issues. “If you let them write the newsletter as though it’s not the company newsletter, you get a different perspective.”

'Addicted' clients
Tom Niccum, president of Burnsville-based Lancet Software Development Inc., got to his latest marketing strategy through lateral thinking. His firm decided to market its Web design services for small and mid-sized companies through a stored value card, much like the ones used at many coffee chains. So what is lateral thinking? And how does one begin to see the similarities between coffee bars and Web design?

Niccum describes it this way: “What if Web design was like fast food? It would be cheap, fast, reliable,” he says. And, he adds, you don’t haggle over the price of fast food. The card allows customers to pay for a certain amount of Lancet’s Web development time and then use the time as they see fit. The LancetCard is targeted to micro and small businesses at which, Niccum says, an employee’s brother or niece is often hired to do Web design.“Our first big challenge was how to create an offering that would make someone fire their relative,” he tells the audience. Lancet now gives its card-holding customers a Web site where they can see how much work has been done on their site and how long it took.

The benefits to Lancet go beyond simply marketing. The fact that the cards are pre-paid allows the company to anticipate its workload and staff accordingly.“Like Starbucks, we now have addicts,” jokes Niccum. He told the audience that the company now has customers who are constantly tweaking their sites because the stored value makes it so easy to do. But the stored value has differentiated them from other Web design firms too. “We wanted to do something, rather than just say something, about why we’re different.“We think the paradigm has a lot more to be squeezed out of it,” says Niccum, whose firm posted $2.88 million in revenue in 2004. He envisions a “Domino’s model” in which “your Web site is done in 24 hours or its free.”

Plan B, fast
MetroConnections in Minneapolis is a full-service meeting planning company. But the company discovered that its clients were overwhelmed by the variety of services available through the company. So, beginning in 2000 MetroConnections gave each of its divisions a separate identity and logo. But then came September 11, 2001, and the entire hospitality industry was turned inside out. MetroConnections lost $1 million in business in the week after Sept. 11, says Tom McCulloch, vice president of marketing and conference services.

“We decided we needed to figure out what our customers were thinking,” says McCulloch. Working with an industry publication they discovered that the majority of meeting planners were proceeding with plans to hold meetings, but they were no longer holding these meetings in locations that involved travel. So, MetroConnections, which had marketed itself nationally, decided to refocus its efforts on the Twin Cities. But its rebranding efforts paid off as well. “Because we had developed our independent brands, we learned that there were a lot of people that hired us for transportation that knew nothing about our other services,” says McCulloch. Metro Connections refocused its sales database and marketing efforts on cross-selling to existing clients and has been reaping the rewards ever since. McCulloch says that Metro Connections is on track to make 2005 its best year since 1999.

High notes
Musical performers The O’Neill Brothers have been able to harness the power of the Internet to sell more than 1 million CDs. The company now sells $1,000 of wedding music per day through their site, says Tim O’Neill, half of the eponymous duo. Sales have increased 40 percent in the past year.“Marketing today is the easiest that it’s ever been,” O’Neill tells the audience. “The Internet allows small companies to look like big companies.”

As an example, O’Neill tells of the company’s efforts to find a female vocalist for The O’Neill Brothers’ upcoming concert tour. O’Neill says he sent an e-mail along with a link to the duo’s Web site to the management of 1980s pop singer Deborah Gibson. Shortly thereafter, O’Neill received a call from Gibson’s management and an agreement was reached to have Gibson join The O’Neill Brothers for this year’s tour.

So how did a 10-person company out of New Prague, Minnesota, create such a Web marketing success story? “Because we have embraced the Internet, because we realize that 90,000 people per month go to Google and type in ‘wedding music,” explains O’Neill. Previously, the company had directed hits from Google directly to its home page. But when the company realized that it could use the demand for wedding music to increase sales, it began directing those searching the Internet to a specialized landing page featuring The O’Neill Brothers’ wedding music.