Out little marketing and advertising blog that’s growing is going to get a slight change in look over the next coming week. We’ve been developing in house a new WordPress template that is just a bit more graphically rich than our current version. I’ve also been inactive on the blog posts, so expect a new one from me by the end of tomorrow.

Like a song or a painting, there are an infinite number of approaches you can take to create your company website. Continuing the comparison, there are karaoke and paint by number methodologies that you should steer clear of. Why? We believe your web  (now more than ever) is the front line of your marketing and should have a personality and message that truly depicts who your company is today and why customers should pick you over your competition.

The more recognized the brand the more you can concentrate on information and functionality. In our case, building sites for the B2B world, our customers are well known but in smaller circles. With an emerging  change of the guard in decision makers (younger, more educated, more  internet savvy and increasingly more female) we feel injecting some clear messaging and marketing spin is a critical ingredient.

Within our transportation niche, customers put online management tools and real time visibility ahead of everything else. They feel the need to compete with big integrators like FedEx and UPS and many put their website on hold for years until this functionality is in place. As much as these online tools are now a necessary part of doing business, I think this is a mistake. Here is why…

First. Your website makes an impression on several  markets. Existing customers, potential customers, existing and prospective employees, partnership opportunities and possible strategic alliances. Your web development approach can address all these elements now while your back end functionality is being developed. When they are ready to marry up, we’ll arrange the wedding and your IT department can take a well deserved honeymoon. The “front end” can work for you immediately and needs to be developed independently anyway….why wait?

Second. Your customers could use FedEX or UPS now. Why don’t they? In the same way you can’t offer the same level of online functionality (they have 30,000 people in their respective IT departments)they cannot offer the same level of customization and personalized service that smaller companies excel at. That’s the slingshot that can bring the giant down. Keep it loaded.

Third. Your customers ‘ requirements are as unique as a top ten song or a Picasso.  There is a reason you exist. Recognize that uniqueness and speak to it. With the help of a well developed site and the latest search engine marketing you can pull customers in that need your brand of service. It’s not immediate, it may take 6-9 months to see results…but it’s time well spent.

Years ago, a friend of ours gave me insight into a key process behind business innovation. Essentially to get creative solutions to a particular challenge, you gather a diverse group of people willing to engage in a divergent exercise where every idea (at first) is a good idea. To arrive at this thinking you might be asked by the meeting chair to take on the personality of someone famous or pick an object from a box of miscellaneous items to help you come up with some thinking outside the usual.

When you’ve exhausted all the ideas in the room, the next step is then to converge on THE IDEA, the one that the group collectively can see to fruition. This is where the 6 thinking hats come in. Edward de Bono is a well known author with the agency world and divided thinking in to 6 key areas that collectively can improve the quality of your decision making by spotting issues and opportunities that come to light through alternate perspectives.

In short, the White hat is the reference thinker, the Red is more intuitive, the Black an eternal pessimist, the optimist is Yellow, the creative Green and the Blue is all about process. There are no bad hats but you need to recognize what colour is needed at what time in the process. By using backward/forward questioning you then determine the action items to achieve your ultimate goal. As a quick example, if your goal is to achieve 20% sales growth you pose the question- We’ve achieved 20% sales growth, what had to have happened? The answer might be we added 10 sales people. Okay we’ve added 10 sales people, what had to have happened? The answer might be we closed down a poor performing warehouse to free up funds, and so on…

Our company puts a lot of effort into the divergent/convergent process and it has enabled us to create fresh thinking and targeted messaging for each customer’s marketing. So far, after 6 years on this journey we are able to keep delivering great results and “thinking inside the hat” is a big part of it.