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Basecamp

Basecamp is the magical software that makes project management a breeze with its comprehensive and user-friendly design. At Outmark®, we love how easy the platform makes communication for our team and clients. We’ve been using Basecamp since its inception. Basecamp has put a lot of energy into building a workspace that helps reduce interruptions and enables deeper, more asynchronous work.

We love having all communications with our team and clients in one place, with Slack-like chat in “Campfires” that are searchable within each active project. There’s even a fun feature called “Boosts” that lets you respond to comments with 16 characters and a large selection of emojis.

You gotta keep it fun, right?

You can ditch the headache-inducing “Where did I put that?” chaos of a scattered multi-app approach to project management with Basecamp’s all-in-one, organized method. Already feel less stressed? We do.

Google Workspace

Are you wondering where to start with Google Workspace? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. With so many different applications, deciding which ones to use can be overwhelming. But with Google’s seamlessly integrated tools, you don’t have to search a million locations for one file. Giddy up.

Google Workspace tools:

• Store your files on Google Drive for easy collaboration
• Write your next big ideas with Google Docs
• Make lists, capture data, and manipulate figures with Google Sheets
• Meet with clients or internal teams with Google Meet
• Create great presentations with Google Slides

One of the biggest advantages of Google Workspace is that it allows team members and clients to work async in documents. This feature reduces meeting times and improves internal communication in remote or hybrid working environments. It’s like having a virtual office where everyone can collaborate on the same project without being in the same physical location. And who doesn’t love that kind of versatility? We certainly do!

Calendly

At Outmark, we’ve found Calendly to be a great organizational tool for growing your business. If you’re tired of playing phone tag with your prospects, clients, and recruits, Calendly’s scheduling automation can be a game-changer.

All you need to do is add your availability to your website or email and share your Calendly link, and your contacts can book high-value meetings with you hassle-free. It’s like having a personal assistant who never sleeps.

The best part? You can eliminate the back-and-forth with emails and phone calls and just book that time on the spot. Want to see how we’ve integrated Calendly on our contact page? Click here to check it out.

Salesforce

Are you struggling to connect with your customers? Look no further than Salesforce. The cloud-based software aims to assist businesses of all sizes in finding, winning, and retaining customers. Known as the customer company, Salesforce offers a comprehensive suite of products that can help you connect the dots of the buyer journey across sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and IT.

With Salesforce’s Customer 360 app, you’ll have a shared view of how all these moving parts work together. This means no more frustration from working in silos or having different teams on different wavelengths. With everyone on the same page, you can streamline your business and improve internal communication.

Evernote

Feeling like your brain is a computer with too many tabs open? Don’t restart. Try Evernote.

Gone are the days of using sticky notes and losing them in your pile of paperwork. With Evernote, you can transform how you take notes and plan your projects. Its note-taking feature is so impressive that you can write down all your random thoughts and ideas that pop into your head.

But that’s not all — Evernote has a powerful search and keyword tagging system that will help you find a critical note from three months ago in no time. And the best part? Evernote automatically saves your notes online and syncs to all your devices. Isn’t that amazing? Say goodbye to the chaos and welcome the organized life with Evernote.

Airtable

Airtable is an amazing platform for teams to streamline their workflow and collaborate more efficiently. Its customizable features make it a great tool for project management, inventory tracking, and more.

Outmark uses Airtable to organize our weekly Scrum workloads and keep track of our schedules and capacity daily. With a free version that includes a wide range of features, it’s worth exploring.

Tools. We got ‘em. We know ‘em. We use ‘em. For more, check out what we do.

Teach me tools

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Across parts of the world, people, young and old, are planning their special Valentine’s Day dates and celebrations. Valentine’s Day symbolizes love in its many forms:

• Eros – Romantic love 
• Philia – Affectionate, friendly love
• Storge – Unconditional, familial love
• Agape – Universal, selfless love
• Ludus – Playful, flirtatious love
• Pragma – Committed, long-lasting love
• Philautia – Self love

In marketing, the kind of love we’re talking about in this blog falls into the agape love category. It’s a love based on principles, also called brotherly love. This kind of love binds us to others, transcends boundaries, and focuses on deepening relationships. Love plays a pivotal role in the world of marketing.

Can you envision a marketing approach that goes beyond transactions and resonates more deeply with your audience? At Outmark®, we help customers transform how their brand is perceived and experienced.

Why does love matter in marketing?

Your brand is not just a product or a service; it’s an identity, a story, a passion. Love enhances your marketing by allowing you to authentically communicate and share your brand’s essence with your customers. When marketing is infused with love, you’re not just selling a product or service; you’re sharing your story, mission, and values.

How do you show your love?

Communicate your values and overarching goals with examples of who you are and what you support.

• Send customers messages outside of normal communications to show your appreciation and how they inspire you. 
• If appropriate, ask about customers’ lives and share yourself with them to build a more personal connection. 
• Consider events or activities to build relationships between your customers and your employees. 
• Get to know close business clients more deeply to serve them better. 

BFF customers: Build authentic connections

In a world inundated with marketing messages, authenticity stands out. When you genuinely love what you do, it reflects in your marketing. Authenticity builds trust, which is the foundation of lasting customer relationships.

You can show love to your customers in many of the same ways you show gratitude. Take the time to get to know your customers and show appreciation for what they do for you. A simple way to do this is to send them branded swag like coffee cups, mouse pads, or USB drives.  

Create emotional resonance

Love has the power to evoke emotions that are memorable and drive customer loyalty. By tapping into the emotional aspects of your brand, you create a lasting impression that goes beyond features and benefits. Love-infused marketing speaks to the heart.

Create legendary customer experiences

Love is reflected in the care you put into your products or services. When your customers feel that love and dedication, it translates into a warm customer experience. 

Our friends and long-term clients at White River Credit Union told us the story of one of their members who needed a loan for his cat’s medical expenses. WRCU was so inspired by this member’s love for his feline friend that they made him a puzzle featuring all of his cats and placed it in their atrium for their members to assemble…now THAT’S love! 

That kind of love builds strong relationships and allows you to create impactful content that comes from the heart. If you’re deeply invested in your subject, your excitement and nuanced understanding will generate more authentic and persuasive marketing.

You’re more productive, successful, and fulfilled when you’re passionate when you love what you do.

Inspire brand advocacy

Love is a strategic asset in marketing. When you infuse love into your marketing efforts, you’re not just selling something or generating customers; you’re cultivating a community of brand advocates who passionately support and promote your business. Embrace the power of love in marketing, and watch your brand flourish like never before!

How do you show your love? Outmark can help you infuse love into your marketing strategy and provide next-level service to your customers.

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What is a content ecosystem?

Welcome to the jungle. In today’s digital metropolis, a never-ending content stream is flooding the internet. How much content are we talking about? Well, in 2021, 74 zettabytes of data were created. For context on how much data that is, one zettabyte is equal to 2 to the 70th power, also known as one sextillion bytes. 

With so much content constantly being uploaded online, you may wonder, how can your business’s content stand out from the crowd? Well, that’s the beauty of a content ecosystem. A content ecosystem is organized content that works together to form a strategic network of assets to promote and support a customer’s journey. A content safari to the final destination to hit download, subscribe, add to cart, etc.

The elements of a content ecosystem

Just as every habitat requires several resources to thrive, five elements work together to form an effective content strategy. Let’s break down each one.

Content streams

A content stream is a collection of content that supports a particular stage of the buyer’s journey. When you build out an ecosystem, content streams are all linked together to create a unified experience for the customer.

Asset mixes

Asset mixes will inform the types of content you’ll group into your content streams. For example, your content stream could be on the benefits of buying sustainably-made shoes. Then, your asset mix would be Instagram ads, Google Search ads, a YouTube video, and a promoted blog. Like a jungle tree, you’ll want to branch out and craft content optimized for multiple platforms and situations to reach more potential customers.

Topic pillars 

So how do you navigate through pages of content to organize your beautiful mess into mini-ecosystems of their own? That’s where topic pillars come in, swinging on a vine to save the day. Topic pillars are broad categories that can help your brand establish itself in the digital marketplace. 

To play off of our sustainable footwear example, a topic pillar for that brand may be bamboo shoes. Then, this topic breaks into subtopics to support and align with everything under that brand’s umbrella regarding bamboo shoes. It could look something like this: 

Main topic: Bamboo shoes

• Subtopic: FAQs about footwear made from bamboo
• Subtopic: A thought leadership article on bamboo footwear trends
• Subtopic: Details on the products that the brand produces with bamboo
• Subtopic: A video introducing the bamboo footwear styles that are coming out soon

Strategic links 

Want to make it easy for your customer to swing from one tree to the next? That’s where strategic linking comes in. What links do you include in your content, and what purpose do they serve? When you add links to your content, it is usually via crosslinking, embedding, or a call-to-action. The two main reasons you add links to content are to strengthen your topic’s authority and to lead your customers through the buyer journey.

Content bursts

We’ve come to the last branch in the content ecosystem. Content bursts take all the moving parts and put them into practice by dynamically configuring your content into valuable nuggets of knowledge. 

In short, a content burst is figuring out how to use the content streams you have to promote timely events, campaigns, etc. For the sustainable footwear company, a content burst may be grabbing content written about renewable resource brands to promote during Earth Day. 

Growing your business’s content ecosystem

To grow your ecosystem from the ground up, you need to be aware of the factors that impact its direction. Every business must examine its industry, target audience, solutions, and goals. This strategic web of content you weave needs to support the goals you lay out for your business. 

Whether you are reviewing existing content, starting from scratch, or it’s a hybrid approach, there are two guiding questions you and your team should be asking. 

1. Does our content guide our customers through every step of the buyer journey? 
2. Will this content help us support and achieve our customers’ goals?

The digital content world is bananas. Here’s the good news. We’re here to be your wilderness guide if you’re tired of monkeying around to get out of the deep Google search results jungle. Go ahead, drop us a vine, and swing into our inbox.

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How can gratitude grow your marketing?

At the heart of your marketing is a team that communicates with your audience. They control the voice of your brand. Expressing gratitude—both internally as a team and externally as a brand—shows your team, your clients, and customers that you care. It reminds them that you’re a real human, not a faceless company. Showing gratitude allows you to improve customer relations, brand loyalty, and productivity. 

Looking internally, we know that small groups get shit done. We also know that collaborating on projects can boost employee engagement and can have lasting effects on overall quality of work. How does gratitude fit in? According to the Harvard Medical School “…Gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.”

So, if your small, collaborative team practices expressing gratitude, odds are you’re going to accomplish more and get closer to reaching your goals. 

Take a minute to think of three things you’re grateful for and write them down. Doing this exercise makes your thoughts more tangible and will help you internalize and remember them.

If you do this twenty-one days in a row, you’ll make a marked impact on the next six months of your work, willpower, and levels of calm. Now imagine if everyone in your small team did this for 21 days too. That’s six months of higher performance levels, greater capacity for success, and an atmosphere so calm you’ll think you’re in an Enya music video.

What does “expressing gratitude” look like? 

Showing gratitude to clients and customers is all about taking the time to find a little way to acknowledge someone else’s efforts. The same way you thank your favorite barista Jessica when she makes your grande, almond milk, triple shot, extra hot, no foam latte with a splash of hazelnut right the first time, show your appreciation towards your clients by thanking them for all that they do. Do you sigh with relief when they respond quickly, or do a little dance at their thorough feedback? Let them know.

Take the time before or during a meeting to acknowledge the work your clients have done. When you’re emailing back and forth, consider adding something you’re grateful for to your signature. If you have office stationery, write them a quick thank-you letter or postcard to let them know they’re appreciated. 

Internally you can use systems like Bonusly that allow coworkers to give each other small bonuses. This not only shows coworkers that they’re appreciated but it also allows them to physically type something they’re grateful for. You can also integrate gratitude into progress meetings to let coworkers know you can see the work they’re doing. 

How do you move forward?

Maybe you don’t have a marketing department or you’re a small, collaborative, party of one (solo conga line!). In that case, you might want to consider outsourcing your marketing. Here at Outmark, we believe that marketing + happiness = growth and, in order to achieve a state of happy, you need gratitude. 

If you think about it, growing your company is like growing a relationship: it takes time, conscious effort, and appreciation. So if you want to stop flirting with your marketing and start going steady, shoot us an email at hey@outmark.com or give us a call at (425) 283-1800. And don’t worry, we don’t play hard to get

In June 2019, our team had a series of meetings to uncover what happiness means to Outmark, our clients, and their customers and clients. Happiness promotes better health and wellbeing, encourages creativity, and improves employee retention. Happy employees make marketing fun. We focused on 13 components that frame happiness for us. Stay tuned for the other 12, what they mean to us, and how they can help you grow your marketing and your business.

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