Faster Alone, Further Together

Faster Alone, Further Together

Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Move fast and break things.” For a while this was a motto that you could find on my lips daily. While I do believe that there is still a lot of value in breaking things, I am rethinking some of my thoughts on speed. 

This does not mean that delivery to clients on time is not valuable or that some things need a hyperfast turnaround to be effective. Rather, I’m rethinking what it means to be successful in the long run. 

An African proverb reads, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” At the beginning of our business, I was alone and lots of things happened quickly. But even with my propensity to work hard for a long period of time, there is only so hard I can work and only for so long. There is a point of diminishing returns.

Additionally, while I am good at many things, I am great at very few. When breaking into a new service field with lower rates than others, there is room for services of varying quality. To improve the quality of our service and the quality of our products, other people who can SPECIALIZE and FOCUS on things more than I can are essential. 

“Specializing” and “focusing” are two themes that have become increasingly apparent to me over the course of 2020 and 2021. The theme for 2022 reflects this: Faster Alone, Further Together. 

For Adelsberger Marketing to become both The Best Place to Work  in West Tennessee and the Premier Creative Agency in West Tennessee, I have to embrace this thought that we can go further together. The sprint of starting a business leads to the emphasis on speed, the building of a company and leaving a legacy, requires a team working together over a marathon. 

Points of emphasis on our theme in 2022: 

Additional training and delegation to the team. 

Making intentional choices to bring team members on things that would normally be a solo activity. 

More transparency and inclusion in leadership and business development decisions. 

New Avenues may be started alone, but will be planned to expand to the team as part of the planning process. 

Are you still trying to go faster alone or have you transitioned to further together?

Good Times at Gerdau

It is a surreal feeling to be standing near what looks like and feels like man made lightning. But that is exactly what you experience in the bowels of the melt shop at the Gerdau Steel Mill in Jackson, Tennessee. Gerdau hired Adelsberger Marketing to come in and create a new library of images and video for use locally and for their corporate office. We had an adventure over two days in safety gear exploring all facets of the mill. (In the height of summer among molten and piping hot steel.)

The Gerdau team did a fantastic job of keeping us safe during the entire excursion, even though Kevin was constantly trying to get in trouble. We were even able to get the drone involved for some of the exterior work. 

We paired our on the ground work with design back in the office and helped develop some advertising options for Gerdau to use in the Jackson area. This is one of our favorite shots that we took just before our camera overheated!

A few years ago Kevin was on a tour of the facility with Leadership Jackson and at that time, he asked for a chance to go in the skycrane. That request was quickly rejected by the tour guide, but 6 years later, Kevin finally made his way into the sky crane!

We really enjoyed working with Gerdau. As an international company, it was fun to work with their corporate marketing department and the local representatives to help document this mill. It’s fun knowing our photo, video, and design could be used here in Jackson, in Florida at Corporate or down in Brazil at the company headquarters. 

Creating a better advantage for Advantage Manufacturing

 

Back in mid-2020, we had our first opportunity to work with Advantage Manufacturing, a leading producer of injection molded plastic components located in Friendship, TN. For that first project we worked their team with them to create an updated sales deck, complete with photography, logo package, and custom graphics. 

 

After that successful pandemic project, the Advantage Manufacturing team realized their need for a functional and updated website. With the success of our first project together, Director of Business Development, Chris Stiller came back to our team to develop a new online presence. 

While we had the benefit of already having a recently updated photography portfolio of products, we rounded it out with new headshots of leadership positions, equipment, and behind the scenes on the factory floor. By capturing high quality photography, we were able to create a visually appealing website for Advantage, even though it is a typical factory setting.

As an injection molding manufacturer with supply chain management, Advantage appeals to a wide range of customers – from firearms manufactures to disposable medical products to non-decorative automotive parts. Understanding all of these potential customers of OUR customer affected the way we designed the site for Advantage and we are excited to have launched a website for them to appeal to all. 

Are you ready to launch a new website for your business? Schedule a meeting with us today! 

Clutch Names Adelsberger Marketing A Best-Performing B2B Provider

Clutch, the leading B2B market research firm, recently released their list of Tennessee’s best B2B service providers for 2021, naming Adelsberger Marketing as one of their Best Performing B2B Providers for 2021. The companies they ranked are skilled in video production, web design, custom software development, SEO, branding, and more.

Adelsberger Marketing is honored to once again, be named a leading provider of video production services in Tennessee – and be the only marketing firm listed from West Tennessee outside of Memphis. Our team works hard to continue to provide a high level of quality creative content for our clients.

To determine Leaders Award winners, Clutch studies a company’s industry expertise and ability to deliver. They evaluate various factors, including brand reputation, services offered, and quality of Clutch reviews.

“Clutch is proud to recognize the leading B2B companies in Tennessee,” said Clutch Sales Development Representative Nate Weavill. “These 50 companies offer high-quality work, and they also display the highest standards of customer service and professionalism. We know that working with them will result in a positive engagement.”    Want to read some of Adelsberger Marketing’s Clutch.co reviews? Visit our profile here: https://clutch.co/profile/adelsberger-marketing

For the full list of Best-Performing B2B Providers in Tennessee for 2021 as ranked by Clutch.co, visit, https://clutch.co/press-releases/recognizes-best-performing-b2b-providers-tennessee-2021

Want to read some of Adelsberger Marketing’s Clutch.co reviews? Visit our profile here: https://clutch.co/profile/adelsberger-marketing

Major Changes Coming to Email Analytics

Tim Cook doesn’t giveth, he just taketh away. This time it’s inbox tracking. 

Most marketers are well aware of Apple’s recent war on digital marketing. The changes to tracking with iOS14 are just starting to be felt and the change of the direction and tone they are setting will change our ecosystem. 

But Apple is doing what they said back in 2019: “The future is private.” 

With the latest WWDC, Apple announced the next big swipe at marketers: Apple Mail users will have to opt-in to allowing email opens to be tracked. While the numbers are still being sorted out from the last update, it looks like most people will not be opting into tracking. Which is a reasonable step for most people to take when presented with the request to allow tracking.  Therefore it seems likely that people will not opt-in to email tracking. 

While this is currently just going to be in Apple Mail, it stands to reason that Apple sets trends in this industry. Remember how everyone made fun of the iPhone for dropping the headphone jack? It was not long till everyone else copied that.

The arms race will be interesting to watch: Will Mailchimp throw a public fit like Facebook did? Will Constant Contact develop a work around? Will Apple launch its own email service that doesn’t follow the rules?

What to do about it? 

Know that Apple is once again changing the rules. In the near future email reporting will be affected. 

-Make good use of the time we do have left by testing open rates on different types of headlines. Headlines will be awfully hard to test against each other when these changes take effect so use this time and make records. 

-Start building better content. Using the data you have currently and focus on making better emails going forward. Stop sending lower quality emails and focus on good ones. In other words, make it hard to not open. 

-Use UTM parameters in email messages. If you are not already doing advanced link tracking in your emails, now might be a good time. UTM parameters might end up being one of the first and last working reliable analytics. 

-Diversify your marketing methods. Email will still be a good tool to use. But as Google tries to sort people’s email for them, and Apple takes swipes at tracking, determine how else can you reach your people reliably. Unfortunately, I think this means that texting will continue to grow in its use by commercial entities. The second best attention feature left to use is push notifications, so getting customers to download your app will also become more prominent for marketing. 

Steve Jobs believed in hardware and software that worked perfectly together. This ended up creating a walled garden that was a hindrance to Apple for many years. But now, this walled garden, where they get to dictate the rules for so many people, may end up being the greatest advantage of our age. Apple sees the future as private for our benefit but also their benefit. It will continue to make our jobs harder, so begin communicating that to your clients to help set expectations of performance as these changes come down.

Introduction

The simplest definition of marketing that I have is this: Marketing is the effort of getting someone’s attention and motivating them to take your call to action/goal.

Continue reading

Facebook Vs. Apple

Why is Apple releasing a privacy-focused update and why is Facebook spending enormous amounts of money to object? It affects the core of both of their business models. 

Apple has positioned itself as the privacy champion in the digital space. I do believe this will be a winning bet for the company to make. And much like other seismic shifts Apple makes expect the other tech companies to follow suit after Apple has set the standard. Also, while this may seem like a moral high ground move, it is ultimately a business decision. 

With the release of iOS 14.5 Apple is taking the first big shot in the tech world against the way the system of internet advertising has been run. Here is a summary: 


-iOS is on somewhere between 40-60% of the smartphone market in the US.

-The way iOS addresses things will affect how others in the space behave.

-iOS14.5 has a privacy update that does not allow apps to track you unless you opt-in. 

-Previously apps would track you by default, now they require permission to track from the default. 

-Facebook and the internet has almost always worked on an opt-out model, so you were by default being tracked.

What it’s not: 

The end of Facebook advertising. You can still target those who are already your customers with permission. This primarily affects third party advertisers like companies that most people have never heard of. Facebook will still have lots of data on its users to use for targeting but third-party sites may have less info to work off of. 

What the results of this going to be? 

More paid apps, less targeted advertising, more privacy online, more income for Apple via the app store and less income for Facebook and other digital advertisers. Delayed results and less accurate results from ad campaigns. 

What to do?

If you are running eCommerce conversions or app conversions, read up more on Facebook’s news releases. If you are running web conversions, be sure to verify your domain. Consider investing in Email Marketing and Google ads as we are unsure of how much damage this will do to Facebook ad campaigns. 

 

For further reading:
Facebook Releases- https://www.facebook.com/business/help/331612538028890?id=428636648170202

Apple Releases- https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-use/

Making Ideas Presistent

*This blog is partially highlighting Sticker Mule, a company we use, as a sort of sponsored post, just wanted to put that out there*

As previously mentioned, we love themes instead of new years resolutions. Themes give you a much better chance at success in making your life more of what you would like it to be over the course of a year. But how do you keep it up? You must think about it and revisit it regularly. As a team, we talk about it weekly at our staff meeting. As a person, I have a reminder in my task manager to make time to work our on our big annual projects every other day.

So far we are doing great. We have hit our executions for that theme for January. Most of these things will not be known to the public but it will be important to us.

But I also believe that making an idea visual – making it be available to be seen in places that will make it help stick and become part of your vocabulary and your daily operating system of life. One of the ways I frequently do this is by changing the background of my phone lock screen. I put inspirational or challenging messages here regularly to help remind me to work harder. Our process theme is captured in the quote by Richmond sculptor Elizabeth King: “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” With some hand-lettered art by local artist, Maria Stewart, we have made that a cell phone background here.

But we also had stickers made by Sticker Mule that we have given to our team. I am putting them on places like my laptop, which is a place I can not help but see it everyday:

 

If you want to make an idea work, you have to be persistent about it. Revisit it often, evaluate what it means, and spend time implementing it. Two books I would recommend on making ideas happen for your team: Traction (Wickman) and the 4 Disciplines of Execution (McChesney, Huling, Covey).

Also, be sure to expose yourself to it all the time.

A great way to do that is with a sticker. Sticker Mule also has some new tools to make stickers easier to make if you don’t have a graphic design team on standby: Trace​​, Upscale​​, & Redraw​​. These tools can help you take your idea and make into reality (the reality of a sticker of course).

Even if you see an idea every day, without action, it will remain a simple sticker, or a few lines of text, and fail to become the life-improving concept that it could be.

Theme for 2021: Process

Resolutions are trash; themes are much better. 

Resolutions are inflexible and a year is a long time for a person to stay focused on a goal. I find that quarters are a much better time frame for goals. Annual themes save us from likely failure from having hard set goals. It also gives us the opportunity to modify the meaning of the theme as the year progresses. For example, Kevin in January is different and in a different situation from Kevin in July. (Imagine, if you will, something that could completely change a year for an entire planet.) Read about last year’s theme here.

2021s annual theme for myself and Adelsberger Marketing will be PROCESS. While reading Seth Godin’s new book, The Practice,  I came across this quote from Richmond sculptor Elizabeth King: “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”

 

 

Having a set process for what we want to achieve can help us do our best work even on days or times when we may not feel like it. If you want to be a writer, it’s a good idea to write every day. You may not want to write every day. But making it part of your daily process can help with forcing yourself through the “writers block.” I did this one year without thinking much about it. I decided I was going to post a new photo on instagram every day for a year. There were a lot of days I didn’t want to do that. But forcing myself through the process of posting everyday helped me see more of the beauty around me. I was even able to see more opportunities for photography in the everyday world.

 

Process as a theme works itself out in a few different ways for us:

  1. Process in personal life.
  2. Process helps pursue the best.  
  3. Process allows growth and decentralization.

 

Because we are professionals, we have to show up. We have to show up every day. We have to do the work. Even when we don’t want to or feel lazy. Or when we are too busy. I want to implement more processes to save me from myself on days when I feel tired, lazy, or overbooked. Our intentions can waver. But if we craft our processes carefully, they will provide correction for our intentions.

 

One of the major ways this will play out for Adelsberger Marketing in 2021 is outlining the processes we already do in a documented format. This way, we can make sure we complete the steps each time. Process will not only save us from disinterest or laziness but also help us fight against forgetfulness.  Many of these processes will take the form of checklists. Checklists can be profoundly helpful for humans. In 2008, the WHO created a standard checklist for surgeries to help cut down on avoidable deaths from the operating room. Surgeons are some of our most educated citizens – who would think they needed a checklist to be better? But after these checklists were implemented, they saw a 40% drop in avoidable deaths and a 1/3 drop in complications. 

 

Process is not necessary because someone is not a quality person or team member. Process is necessary because we are humans. Humans are prone to error. Whether it be distraction, exhaustion, or disinterest, checklists can be course correcting. We will be pivoting more toward these to help improve our processes in order to deliver the best possible outcomes for our team and clients. 

 

When you have a standardized process, you can also work to improve that process. It is difficult to improve something that changes every single time. We have some processes but they are not detailed and completely repeatable.  Also, they are not fully communicated to the team. As we continue to grow as an agency, we need better defined processes that are fully communicated. Looking back, I have not always communicated processes well. This is a failure of my leadership but it is also one that is overcomable. The best time to start is now.

 

Free theme cell phone background here.

Adelsberger Marketing Named Clutch Top 20 B2B Service Provider

Adelsberger Marketing was recently named to the Top 20 B2B Service Providers list in the state of Tennessee by Clutch, the leading B2B ratings and review platform. Recognized leaders are considered to be the very best in their specialized field. Adelsberger Marketing is recognized for its marketing, content creation, video production, and website development accomplishments.

While being recognized as a top firm in your field is always an honor, being recognized by Clutch.co is particularly important to Adelsberger Marketing. While many sites rank companies based on reviews and feedback, Clutch gathers reviews based on in-depth interviews conducted with actual clients. These aren’t just reviews that we’ve asked our favorite clients to give, but instead third-party managed interviews that give a true representation of our work product and our clients’ experiences.

We intend to stay on this list for many years to come by listening to feedback and continuing to learn from our clients’ experiences. If you want to check out some of our reviews and rankings, visit our Clutch.co profile here: https://clutch.co/profile/adelsberger-marketing

Click here to view the Clutch Press Release