Twenty years ago after my doctor recommended I get more exercise, I, like 40 million other Americans, went out and bought a treadmill. I knew that the odds of exercising long-term in our unfinished basement were against me (only 3 in 10 Americans exercise regularly) but I was going to beat the odds. I swore that I wouldn’t become a statistic by letting my treadmill turn into a back-of-the-basement, spider web covered, clothes hanger.

My 3-day a week treadmill regimen lasted 2 years.

Yup! I was a statistic. (Lest you think I’m a total slackard, I was exercising sporadically, but not on our expensive treadmill.)

Two and a half years ago when I decided to launch our company blog I had the same noble intentions as my early exercise aspirations. I promised myself I’d write two fresh posts a week, including compelling interviews with industry leaders, and that my entries would be GOOD. By my fifteenth post I realized that all those great ideas I’d had when I decided to become Mr. Social Media had run out. Read the rest of this entry »

I am approaching 30 years of running my own business and although I’ve made plenty of mistakes I’ve learned a few things too. I know this because my wife keeps telling me how much I’ve changed as a businessman (I assume she meant this as a compliment). Also, in almost 3 decades I’ve only ever had one employee quit because they didn’t like working for me (after only 3 days on the job).

To make a point, I’ve turned my subject matter on its head. So instead of entitling this post “10 Tips Toward Business Success” (I know I wouldn’t read an article with that tired cliché of a title), I’ve written one with a more engaging name (and hopefully more meaty content as well).

So here are my tips in no particular order:

1. Be passionless. Look at your business as just a way to make a living and nothing more. That will assure you take the easiest path to any challenge, and will expedite your company’s demise.
2. Nurture your ego. Make sure you view yourself as the supreme expert in every situation. And while you’re at it, make sure everybody else knows it too. If you look to surround yourself with people more talented than you in their areas of expertise, and give them the freedom to exercise their gifts, you run the risk of losing power even if you end up ultimately being more successful. Read the rest of this entry »

Marilyn and Mike Sullivan are special people. Not only because they are decent, honest and caring by nature, but also because they have lived through what many of us who are parents can barely comprehend. The Sullivans, along with their daughter Katie, endured the pain and loss of the unexpected death of their teenage daughter and sister, Erin.

Like many brave people who have suffered, Marilyn wanted to channel her anguish into something positive and meaningful. Just released is her book, A Patch of Comfort, A Guide for Helping Someone In Grief, which takes a different approach to dealing with loss than most books. Filled with honesty and even humor, Marilyn’s book grew out of her compassion for her friends as they tried to support and comfort her and Mike while they mourned. Some of her chapters include “Let’s Talk about How Grief Heals and Where You Fit In” and “Let’s Talk about What You May Encounter Trying to Help Someone in Grief.”

I was honored when Marilyn asked me to provide illustrations for the book. I chose a very simple style and have supplied a few samples here for your viewing. The book will soon be available from major retailers like amazon.com.

Your company’s website is the most fully-realized representation of your corporate brand. So the three questions you’ll need to answer on your website are: 1) Who are you? 2) What do you do? 3) And why does it matter? All our websites communicate our brand, whether that communication is undefined and accidental or focused and purposeful. Obviously we all want the latter. So, when it comes time to build or redesign your website consider the following:

• Branding is all about differentiation–standing out in the customer’s mind by offering something different than your competition. So, don’t get caught up in the “me too” mentality of listing the same services, and copying the look and feel of a competitor’s website. Actually, aim at the opposite. Different is good.

• Meet your customers where they live. Your customers are savvy and impatient, so do everything in your power to communicate with them and meet their needs on their own terms—not yours. Imagine they are sitting across the table from you. That means cutting out industry jargon and empty advertising “happy talk” from your website’s copy. Are they using social media? Then integrate it into your site. Are they accessing your website from a smart phone? Then make sure your site works flawlessly on hand-held devices.

• Capturing your culture is as important as marketing your goods and services. Your website is no longer just about pricing and offerings, because with so much competition out there, your customers can always find whatever they are looking for cheaper and faster. Today, people are looking for brands to identify with—so your corporate integrity and core values should ring out loud and clear. Blogs, which are generally more informal than the copy on the marketing section of your site, can go a long way to help round out your brand by providing your readers with a broader, more inclusive insight into who you are and what you stand for.

So as you busy yourself with figuring out your site map, search terms, navigation, categories, and all the other myriad considerations that go into building or updating your website, don’t overlook the forest for the trees. Make sure the true “you” (your brand) resonates loud and clear. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the decisions about whom we work and align ourselves with are determined by both our left and right brains—analytical and emotional.

I went to a seminar last week on how to market to your customers. Besides tips on messaging, the speaker stated definitively how to connect with your prospects: exclusively through email and social media. The presenter pronounced that these are the only two media that are effective for reaching today’s busy CEO (or whomever you are targeting in your marketing efforts).

The problem is that when marketing gurus become dogmatic, they are setting themselves up to be proven wrong, and based on our clients’ experience, as well as that of my own company, the presenter’s opinion is untrue.

Over the past few years I’ve questioned if my openness to using traditional print for marketing today is generational. Is it because I started in advertising nearly 30 years ago, before the Internet was used by anyone except a few universities and government agencies?

To clarify, I am not a tech-curmudgeon. I fully embrace all the digital and analytical tools available to connect people with brands. Currently my company has over 600 followers on Facebook, and we are active in over a dozen social media sites, some of which you’d recognize and others that are unique to the advertising industry.

My point is this: as advertising professionals, let’s keep our minds and options open to as broad a toolbox as possible because people access information in different ways. Here are a few facts that help present the case that direct mail is still alive (from a 2009 survey by the US Postal Service):

• Over 14 billion dollars were invested in direct mail in 2009, followed by an increase in 2010.

• 79% of direct mail recipients either read or scan their mail, which is higher than for electronic mail.

• Only 19% of retail catalogs are discarded without being read.

• 2.3: the number of weekly advertising mail pieces that affluent households (those earning $150,000-plus) intend to respond to.

Other factoids are also compelling; for instance, the belief that going interactive is the greener solution. In order for our digital world to exist, we consume huge amounts of electricity driven by power plants and massive data centers running 24/7, requiring the burning of enormous amounts of fossil fuels. And electronic consumption is increasing by roughly 24% per year. In contrast, paper producers are among the greenest industry in the world. Trees are renewable. Paper and forest industries plant about 1.5 million seedlings a day (much more than they harvest) and nearly all municipalities in the US have effective recycling programs.

Another myth is that young people aged 18 to 34 (an important demographic for advertisers) want all their information and transactions to occur online. Not so, says a recent Epsilon report. They found that 43% of the young people surveyed preferred receiving insurance information in the mail compared to 21% desiring digital delivery.

Still need convincing?

• A United States Postal Service press release points out that a market study by comScore shows that among visitors to retail websites, twice as many catalog recipients made a purchase as those who did not receive a print catalog—more than doubling the online conversion rate. A revenue increase of 163% resulted from a comparison of purchases and money spent by catalog recipients versus those who did not receive a catalog in the comScore study, and catalog recipients ordered 28% more items.

• Magazine ads? Who needs them? Well, that depends. One of our clients is in a specialized market with only several hundred prospective customers in the entire country. But all of the CEOs and managers of the companies they need to reach subscribe to a single trade publication. So the print ads we create appear prominently and regularly in the magazine—often with multiple ads in a single publication. This has been one of their major and most successful marketing media and we are happy to report that our client has not only weathered the recession during a time of rapid change within their industry, but has grown their market in the US as well as developed overseas sales (for which we have also created print ads).

• My own company walks the walk and talks the talk we advocate to our clients. Even though we are on the first page of Google for the keyword terms we have targeted, we continue a robust direct mail campaign. And our proof of success lies in the fact that our most predominant keywords remain our company’s name (with plenty of variations—hile, hile design, hile design ann arbor, dave hile, and even hill design), which indicates that people are responding to our direct mail appeal to visit our website. I know because I track the campaigns through Google Analytics and measure the increased traffic after each of our mailings.

Of course, websites, social media, digital marketing and search engine optimization are essential to growing your business and defining your brand, but let’s keep all our options open—which includes print promotions. Print creates an emotional connection with customers that digital doesn’t. Consumers hold it, view it and engage with it in a manner different from their online experiences.

Finally, since I receive over 100 emails a day, going to our mailbox to collect the mail has become a treat. As a matter of fact, I daily have to attempt to outsmart Lindsey, our Production Designer, since she also enjoys collecting the mail. And with the overall decrease in direct mail over the last several years, the print mail I receive actually gets my attention. Perhaps snail-mail is the NEW, “old” advertising medium!

I recently backed into my daughter’s car and needed my rear bumper repaired (barely a scratch on her 10-year old clunker!). I decided to get competitive bids from two different area auto body shops—one near my home and the other near my workplace. I entered the shop near home and although there was no one at the desk, I noticed an employee off to the side working on a computer. I waited at the front desk for about 45 seconds and then asked if the person at the computer could summon someone to help me. Without speaking to me, she picked up the phone and called an estimator who was working in the repair area.

Entering from a rear door, the estimator apologized for my wait and was friendly and attentive as I explained my situation. We walked out to my car and he inspected the damage. In under a minute, we arrived back in the shop at about the same time another employee entered the small office, ignoring me. I received a quote in about 5 minutes—I needed a new rear bumper. The cost: $650–$850, depending on the integrity of a lattice-like interior bumper grid as well as whether a support bar under the rear bumper needed to be adjusted or replaced.

I drove directly from the first repair shop to the second, which was located less than a mile from my office. Upon entering, I was warmly greeted (even called “Sir”) by the two staff at the desk. They offered me coffee or bottled water as one of the men, an estimator, walked outside with me to inspect my car (the other shop had brewed coffee and condiments sitting out, but I wasn’t sure if it was for customers, and I was never offered anything). Unlike at the first shop, this estimator took about 5 minutes to inspect my car. He even got on his back and looked up under the bumper and noted that the support bar was slightly bent but could easily be readjusted. He also pointed out that my reflector light was cracked and a corner of my hatchback door had lost a bit of paint, which they would touch up (something I hadn’t noticed).

Back in the shop, the estimator asked if I would be open to the option of purchasing an aftermarket bumper, identical to the manufacturer’s, but about $100 less. Of course I said yes. While waiting, several staff entered the shop from the rear repair area and each one greeted me enthusiastically. They all seemed genuine—not as if they were ordered by management to be friendly. After locating an aftermarket bumper online, the estimator worked up the bid, giving me a firm quote of $576.25. He then took a few minutes to walk me through the costs and procedure, telling me that in two days the parts would be in, and that the work would then take two to three days to complete. Sounded good to me, and I made my decision on the spot to work with auto repair shop #2.

After the parts came in, I dropped my car off and again was treated with what can only be described as courtesy above and beyond my expectations. I was offered a ride back to my office, which I declined since one of my staff was going to pick me up.

A day and a half later I received a call telling me my car was ready to be picked up. Back at their office more coffee was offered, along with a detailed breakdown confirming the project and costs. After receiving a lifetime warranty on parts and labor, I got in my car and noticed that it had been thoroughly washed and that the interior and been vacuumed and detailed (like when you pay $100 to have your car cleaned), all the more dramatic since the interior of my car had been trashed by my dog. The cleaning and detailing were never mentioned in my three face-to-face engagements. It was just icing on the cake.

I drove away from the auto repair shop almost in a dream, stunned by their conscientious service. Although I hope never to need bodywork again, they have gained a loyal customer.

In the branding and marketing world I’m part of, the ultimate goal for customer loyalty is “willingness to recommend.”  Regardless of what business you are in, follow the example of my new favorite repair shop: Treat your customers with respect, look for ways to differentiate yourself and, if you really want to grow your business, exceed their expectations.

For local Ann Arbor area residents, Whitney’s Collision West is my new auto repair shop, which I highly recommend.

(Editor’s Note: Mystery of the Temple Court has been released under the title, Amon’s Adventure and can be purchased here.)

Lead Illustrator Dave Hile has completed the cover of Mystery of the Temple Court, a new book from Christian publishing company Kregel. The book is the fourth in a series of family-oriented fictional adventure stories that feature interrelated characters and correspond to sections of the Gospel account of Christ’s life. The books include Jotham’s Journey (1997), Bartholomew’s Passage (2002) and Tabitha’s Travels (2003) and are authored by Arnold Ytreeide, but the three previous books had gone out of print and the original publisher had gone out of business. However, Ytreeide’s stories remained sought after on ebay and other used book sources and grew such a dedicated following that Kregel took notice and bought the rights in 2008 to begin reissuing the series.

Kregel, based in Grand Rapids, plans to release the new Mystery of the Temple Court in the Fall of this year.

To see the other books in the series and for more information, go to http://store.kregel.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=2100.

Putting the customer’s needs first. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it—even trite? But I was recently reminded of how important the concept is when I heard it directly from our customer. It happened when we were pitching a major rebranding campaign. We were delighted to win the account, but as an added benefit our new client asked if we’d be interested in hearing why our firm was selected. This information is like gold to us, and it is rare that we are privy to the decisions behind the client review process. Here are the main points they mentioned:

• They liked that we listened before we spoke. By doing so before presenting our capabilities via PowerPoint, we learned that one of their top criteria was finding an agency with people they liked and felt they could work with, since they had never hired an outside agency before. Good to know! Later, after receiving their RFP (Request for Proposal) we put a lot of emphasis on our personalized service and long-term client relationships.
• They liked our team approach. We presented our company as a team. We allowed each of the four staffers present to discuss their areas of expertise and what they would bring to address the client’s needs. It was clear after reading the client’s website that they placed a great deal of emphasis on humility among their leadership as well as an open, participatory corporate culture.
• They liked that our design portfolio showed a broad range of styles, tailored to different industries. Having an agency look and feel is neither right nor wrong. There are many extremely talented creative firms who have honed their design approach to perfection. (Check out Charles S. Anderson Design at http://www.csadesign.com. Personally, I’m a HUGE fan of their retro-inspired design work!) But that approach requires customers to conform to the agency’s aesthetic. We intentionally highlighted divergent styles across several different industries to demonstrate that we target each brand to the appropriate industry and end user.

So, hearing from our new client was a reminder that our pitches shouldn’t be solely about our company capabilities, but also about serving our customer. And the payoff for such basic customer-centric etiquette? By focusing on our customer, we took care of our own business (in this case in a big way, as our new client is a national leader in their field).