In case you missed the news—you’ve got to adapt or die in this Digital Age. And for brand managers and business owners alike, building a strong online presence is crucial for success.

As we often say at Stealth Creative: Your website IS your brand; it acts as a virtual gateway for customers to discover and engage with your products or services.

So, as long as your website leaves a good first impression, you’re all set. Right?

Turns out, it’s not that simple. Because not all websites are created equal. To ensure your online platform effectively represents your business and reaches your target audience, it’s vital to invest in a website that’s built to best-practice specifications.

Let’s explore the key steps involved in creating a website that not only looks great but serves you exactly how it should.

Step 1: Wireframes and Site Map

The first step for developing your website is building a solid foundation. Wireframes and a site map serve as the blueprint for your website, outlining its structure, navigation and key functionalities. At Stealth, we understand how crucial it is to work closely with clients at this stage to ensure we have clear understanding of YOUR business goals, target audience and desired user experience.

Step 2: Design Phase

Once the wireframes and site map are approved, the design phase begins. Aesthetics play a key role in engaging your website visitors. This is where you get to meet our design team! They love to collaborate with clients, helping to spin their visions into a appealing and cohesive experiences. Logos, color schemes, brand guidelines and any specific design elements that reflect your brand’s personality are developed (or incorporated if already existing). This collaborative process will help create a website design that not only looks stunning but also reinforces your brand’s message and values.

Step 3: Development and Launch Phase

After finalizing the design, the development phase takes center stage. Stealth’s skilled developers will transform the approved design into a functional website, employing best practices for coding, responsiveness and usability. And since more than half of overall web traffic comes from mobile devices, we take a mobile-first approach to design and development. This phase may involve content creation, integration of e-commerce functionalities and customization based on your needs.

Throughout this process, we prioritize regular communication with you, so you can provide timely feedback and we can agilely address you concerns or modifications. Once the website is thoroughly tested and refined, it’s time for the highly anticipated launch.

Step 4: Initial Search Marketing Promotion of New Site

Your newly built website is ready to be unveiled to the world, but its success relies on driving traffic and attracting visitors. Incorporating search marketing strategies is the key to improving your website’s visibility in search engine results.

This is where Stealth’s digital marketing experts work to ensure SEO elements, such as keyword optimization, meta tags and proper site structure, are in place. Depending on your business’s needs, our content team can also help to create engaging and shareable content to attract organic traffic and explore paid advertising options to amplify your website’s reach.

You Get Back What You Put In.

Investing in a well-built website is an investment in your business’s success!  

By partnering with an experienced agency like Stealth Creative, you can be confident that best-practice specifications are followed, and you can ensure your website is optimized for performance, user experience and search engine visibility.

Check out our Web Services page to get a sense of what we can do. Then, drop us a line when you’re ready to start your website build. We can’t wait to be your guide!  

Jack Eschmann

Jack Eschmann is a Senior Copywriter who has worked on both the account service and creative sides of the advertising business. He enjoys crafting messages that are strategically sound, action driving and true-to-brand for each client he serves. He is also a leading member of Stealth’s content team, is an avid musician and production nerd—and can often be found laying down voiceovers in the agency’s production studio.

Check out these valuable insights from our intern, Samantha!

There’s a lot one can learn during an internship at Stealth Creative. We like to think the experience is immersive, and truly valuable when it comes to helping the next generation of marketers begin their career. But we realize that there’s a lot we too can learn from enthusiastic grads and newbies to the industry. We want to hear fresh perspectives—and keep a check on ourselves as the world continues to move at a blistering pace around us.

So, we sat down with Samantha Spaulding, (the latest honorary Stealther who’s making big waves in our Joplin office) to hear what she has to say about her experience as a Stealth intern so far.

1. Jumping from school to the agency world, how’s it been so far? What projects have you been working on? What have you enjoyed?

I’ve learned a lot from my work within the agency. The classroom taught me some of the technical knowledge and terms, but it really is a different experience living through it and seeing it all in action in the real world. I help with financial advisor (The Princeton Group), internet provider (Sparklight), and livestock product (US Whip) clients. I’ve enjoyed creating and presenting creative briefs internally to kick off projects for our creative team, and helping with research, building presentation decks and social media tracking.

2. What sparked your interest in advertising?

I’ve known my entire life that I was meant to be in business, but it wasn’t until I was 15 that I fell in love with advertising. I was selected in high school to attend a leadership program where we had three days to create a business. Everyone had to select a role (management, HR, finances, marketing, etc.) I chose marketing because of my history with creating art and interest in designing our company’s logo. This experience taught me many components of marketing–logo designs, social media, advertising, budgets… I loved the mixture, and immediately felt like it was meant for me!

3. Where should we be focusing our efforts as a modern ad agency? Social media? AI?

A combination of both—whatever trends are occurring! AI is a more unexplored field, so I think we should begin to pour our focus into learning the technology and seeing how we can use it in advertising. There may be some risks when it comes to AI, but I still think we can use it to our advantage. With the incredibly fast access to a great amount of knowledge, we can carefully and responsibly use them for research and training.

4. What’s the best kind of ad?

I like seeing small business advertisements. Since they’re typically on a smaller budget, they often must be extra creative to get attention in their niche. Seeing more small online businesses experiment with aesthetics, following TikTok trends or monitoring overall market trends is inspiring—and fun to see when it works!

5. Tell us about your life outside of work.

I like to constantly stay busy! Design was part of my education, and it’s also my side gig. I do glass paintings and digital art and produce prints and stickers for various shows and voice actors. A vacation to me is going to a weekend anime convention and networking with voice actors from big shows with artwork of the characters they voice. I sometimes sell my work online, in stores, and at conventions. I also love fashion, reading, and pretending to be a gym rat.

Have industry questions, comments or want to become a Stealth Intern yourself? Reach out to us today!

There are two phrases we hear around this time: “April showers bring May flowers” and “Spring Cleaning.”

No surprise, because according to Statista, 78% of us do some kind of spring cleaning every year. But that doesn’t just have to mean purging your closet or scrubbing baseboards. Today, we’re giving you some tips on how you can spring clean your marketing strategy.

#1 Declutter Your Assets

While there are assets that you should keep handy – logo files, for example – there are plenty that could likely move to an archive. For instance, creative or copy files that have already been produced can be moved to a server or hard drive. This way, you can still access them, but they won’t be taking up precious desktop space. Decluttering gives you a chance to take inventory of what you have in your library – while also allowing for inspiration when it’s time to freshen up those assets!

#2. Ensure You’re on Target

If it’s been a while since you’ve examined your target audience and messaging, now is the perfect time to look “under the hood” of your marketing strategy!


Ask yourself these questions:

  • Who is my ideal audience? Why?
  • Where can they be found?
  • How has my audience grown, changed or shifted in behavior?
  • Most importantly, where can they be found?

Because if you aren’t where your target audience is, you need to think about how to get there.

#3 Inventory Your Strengths

While you might keep some marketing in-house, consider if letting a trusted partner help expand your team’s capacity makes sense. Picture this: You no longer expend energy improving your social strategy or media placement. Instead, you get to do what you do best: run your business!

While we can’t help you organize your life, we can help you organize your marketing strategy. If you’re looking for a partner who wants you to succeed as much as you do, we’re here to help.

Connect with us today and let’s roll up our sleeves!

Kirsten Hackett

Kirsten Hackett

Kirsten Hackett specializes in social media marketing and loves to focus on building social communities for our clients. She has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and an MBA with a marketing specialty. When she’s not working, she’s likely hanging out with her family, baking or crocheting.

One huge advantage of digital marketing is that real-time data is available to show you how effectively your campaign is engaging your audience. Another advantage is that you can use that data to make informed decisions about ways to increase that engagement, even mid-campaign.

That’s why it’s important to work with a marketing partner who believes in the power of data and has the experience and discipline to read and respond to the story it tells.

At Stealth Creative, we’re devoted to data. We think being able to identify key metrics, dig into the numbers and communicate results in clear language is table stakes. What we do with those results to fine-tune tactics, placement and frequency is the real difference-maker.

To the person with only a hammer, all problems look like nails.

Because our digital clients represent a wide array of industries, we use an assortment of digital tools and platforms to drive the results they desire. Whether it be ecommerce, ticket sales, form fills or email opens, we never lose sight of our goal to deliver a strong return on investment for our clients.

We may design a programmatic digital display campaign to reach a custom audience, create and optimize an ecommerce search campaign, drive form fills, create segmented content for an email campaign and improve a customer’s Google review ratings—all to ensure our clients’ marketing dollars are being spent efficiently.

Here are some examples:

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Ecommerce FTW

A recent ecommerce search campaign for one of our national health and beauty clients produced a return on ad spend of 33:1. Not only did we track spend and correlate it with product sales, through access to their ecommerce and Google Analytics, we also were able to identify the users who made purchases from the campaign, which products they purchased, the dollars spent and other identifying characteristics. With this information, the client was able to send personalized messages to folks who made purchases for similar products or routine maintenance.

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Reach for the Stars

We all know how important online reviews have become for companies. Some of our clients have asked us to help them develop a strategy to engage with customers so they will leave reviews or contact the company directly if they are not satisfied with the product. By working with one of our clients in the insurance industry, we identified customers who had recent contact with the company and created a personalized email asking them to leave a 5-star review. This approach resulted in a significant increase in the ratings for our clients.

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Getting Social

A well-planned and developed social media campaign helped one of our entertainment clients set a record attendance at their event. More than $56,000 in ticket sales resulted from a spend of $3,600.

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Making a Stronger Impression

Our media buying, from traditional to digital, is handled in house, resulting in greater efficiency for our clients. We took the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau’s digital media buying in house and reduced their cpm by 40 percent, which allowed us to buy an additional 1.2 million impressions. For more details, check out this case study.

News that Just Clicks

Madison Mutual Insurance Company wanted to increase the opens and clicks on their policyholder newsletter. Our solution was to segment the newsletter by geography and policyholder type. The result was an increase of 36 percent in opens and 250 percent increase in clicks. For more details, read the full story.

Want to know more?

Spend some time with our other case studies or drop me an email at ckolsky@stealthcreative.com.

About the Author

Charlie Kolsky is a digital and analytics specialist who’s dedicated to delivering results for our clients. He’s also a pretty mean pickleball player.

Maybe your company has its external, customer-facing communication dialed in to a T.

You’re seeing results. Sales are up.

That’s great! But have you been putting the same effort into your internal messaging?

It’s okay to admit if you haven’t. The customer comes first, right? Right. But…

While maintaining relationships with customers and winning new ones may be your primary objectives, keeping your people engaged and informed should be just as much of a priority. Strong internal communication not only helps maintain the health of your company, it also helps protect the bottom line.

And it’s not as simple as repurposing your existing customer communications or firing off a few company-wide emails. You’ve got to be strategic and consistent from the ground-up.

In other words, you have to be in touch with the intrinsic values of your organization.

Invest in ‘The Employee Experience’

Work environments and employee priorities are evolving at a quicker pace than ever before, so it’s never been more important to make sure your HR and workforce teams are on the same page.

The journey your employees take during their time at your company and the various factors that affect their satisfaction, productivity and longevity—that’s the employee experience.

Benefits, compensation, work-life balance, work environment and company culture all shape this experience, but a good internal communication strategy should be the common thread that unites all of these elements. Because:

    1. A good employee experience fosters loyalty. You want to retain and grow the employees you have. Not only because turnover inherently costs more, but also because experienced employees can become powerful ambassadors for your brand.

    2. A good employee experience means you’ll be attractive to prospective employees. There is a lot of fierce competition for good candidates; you have to put your best foot forward wherever you can.

    3. A good employee experience is defined by and maintained through solid internal communication. People work better when they know what’s going on and believe in what they’re doing.

If you take nothing else away from this post, at least take this: IT’S NOT A GIVEN THAT YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE FIRM BELIEVERS IN YOUR BRAND.

If the goal of internal marketing is to wind up with fulfilled employees who are nothing short of walking brand ambassadors (it is), they must have a firm grasp on your company, processes and offerings. Effective internal communication gives your team an opportunity to be more active in the company, from onboarding to further training and company education.

Turning Inward

No matter how big or small your business, it’s easy to focus so intently on external or product messaging you’re putting out into the world that you lose sight of what’s going on right under your nose.

And even though it may seem overwhelming, getting your internal game aligned doesn’t have to be a mammoth task. Just remember:

Customer-facing and internal-facing materials should go hand-in-hand. In many cases, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Your existing marketing materials are often a good starting place for employee education. This product explainer video we created for Friendship Village employees is a perfect example of creative that’s adaptable for internal and external use.

Internal marketing strategy is just as important as external strategy. Just as you would define goals for your marketing and/or sales teams, you should develop a roadmap for your internal processes at all levels, too. What does success look like? How can your leadership and HR teams help to lift up other departments?

Tactful Tactics

From digital onboarding programs, to training videos, to business accountability tools, there are plenty of ways to maintain the health of your organization on all levels.

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Live-action or Animated Video

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Display, Search and Geo-targeted Ads

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Recruitment Collateral

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Branded Digital Onboarding Portals

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Professional Development Training

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Business Accountability Tools & Partnership

Consider your audience. What methods are going to be the most memorable—even fun—for them to engage with? What processes need to be improved? What are some hurdles management keeps running into?

The right combination of tactics depends on the nature of your company. Whether you’re in need of recruitment help or professional development training depends on your current needs or goals.

Let’s Get Intrinsic

You may know your people well, but it often takes an outside perspective to help you reach them effectively.

We created STEALTH INTRINSIC to bridge the gap between external and internal communication, giving you the tools to INVIGORATE your current employees, ATTRACT future candidates and help you BUILD a base of enthusiastic brand ambassadors from the inside out.

Check out some of our success stories and learn more about the benefits of Stealth Intrinsic.

The way you talk to your employees can be the difference between success and failure.

It’s time to start getting everybody on the same page!

CONTACT US

As the US literally blossoms back to life around us, leisure travel is quickly picking up steam. With each passing day, more and more people are planning road trips, weekend getaways, even full-on vacations. In fact, 56% of Americans expect to travel for leisure this year.*

Considering the year we just had, that’s huge.

And if you’re a member of a Convention and Visitors Bureau hoping to attract visitors to your community, Stealth has one simple message for you:

Start advertising. Now!

This is a fresh opportunity for your community to shine as an attractive destination. An opportunity to be top-of-mind as tourists reemerge. The easiest, most effective way to do this is through digital advertising (which happens to be one of our strengths).

READY TO GET BACK TO BUSINESS? CONTACT US.

Travel on Their Minds: The State of The States

In a previous blog, Heads in Beds: The Stealth Way, we outlined the general, day-to-day challenges convention and visitors bureaus face. That was, of course, before a global pandemic rocked the tourism industry worldwide. Since then, many CVBs have had to be creative about what attractions they promoted amid shutdowns (if promoting anything at all).

But as 2021 roars back to life, there are undeniable factors driving the resurgence of domestic tourism…

  1. Americans are so ready to travel. Many people have been stuck at home for a year. Families are ready to get the kids out and engaged with the world again. Consumer confidence is steadily rising, as more and more folks are getting protected by the vaccine.** The American road trip is alive and well!
  2. Americans have spending money. Financially, American households stayed relatively strong during the pandemic.† Thanks to stimulus packages, historically low borrowing rates and the propensity for Americans to pay down debt and start saving during times of social distancing, CVBs now have a critical opportunity to cash in as spending increases once again.
  3. Americans still want to support local. While Stealth can help you get in front of audiences across the nation, it’s important to keep in mind that some of your community’s best opportunities for support may not need to come from hundreds of miles away. While local businesses were undoubtedly hit hard in 2020, over 82 percent of consumers say they’d spend more to support state and local businesses after the pandemic.†† This sentiment is great news for your small boutiques and quaint brunch spots. Let’s remind the folks nearby

Be Where the People are Looking with Stealth Digital

So, it’s clear that the world is opening back up, and that you should be advertising to take advantage of it. (Like, yesterday!)

Now is the time to spotlight what’s special about your community—whether it’s indoor or outdoor-based! Get some traffic back through your museums, shops, restaurants and parks.

In addition to the full range of traditional advertising tactics we offer, Stealth will work with you to reach a larger audience with tactics like paid search, social media, content marketing and reviews when the user shows interest in travel.

If your community has an attractive mix of activities or destinations to offer—and you’re able to get in front of would-be visitors while in the planning stage—you’ll be in their consideration set for sure.

It’s time to get the word out. Let us help!

Visit Joplin Website

Joplin CVB Campaign Results

Reduce CPM by 40% - 1.2 Mil Additional Impressions - 1,400 More Clicks
VIEW FULL JOPLIN CVB CASE STUDY

Not Just Your Vendor. Your Partner.

Whether you are a smaller community CVB with a team of five or less, or a big town with a fully functioning marketing department, Stealth Digital will integrate with you seamlessly to help you define and achieve your marketing goals.

  • We pride ourselves on our ability to be an extension of your existing marketing team, not a replacement.

  • We have experience working with local CVBs. We’re familiar with your pain points. We know how to address your concerns.

  • We are motivated to help America’s communities get back to business and we can help yours reach a larger, more optimized audience than ever.

Don’t miss out. Because NOW is the time

References:
* https://www.travelagentcentral.com/hotels/stats-56-expect-to-travel-for-leisure-2021#:~:text=Compared%20to%20last%20year%2C%2036,and%20third%20quarter%20of%202021.
** https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/
† https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-16/the-american-consumer-is-flush-with-cash-after-paying-down-debt
†† https://mint.intuit.com/blog/money-etiquette/buying-local-statistics-survey/

Stealth just received some exciting news to cap off 2020: We’re an IC100 winner!

So, what exactly is the IC100, and why should you care?

The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) 2020 Inner City 100 (IC100) award recognizes the 100 fastest-growing firms in under-resourced communities across America. The winners were picked based on revenue growth and job creation during the four-year period from 2015 to 2019.

Stealth ranked 64th out of 100, based on our four-year revenue growth rate of 113.26% and job creation of 9. Not too shabby!

This year’s IC100 list had the highest number of women-owned/led companies (which includes Stealth, as a certified Women Business Enterprise). It’s an increase of eight companies from 2019 and 17 since 2015.

And here's why you should care: shared optimism.

As a veteran entrepreneur myself, the stories I heard from some of the other selected firms were the most inspiring I’ve heard in a long time. These leaders have overcome many challenges, brought revolutionary ideas to the forefront of industry, and are proving every day that great things are happening in this country!

“IC100 companies are forces of economic opportunity, optimism and transformation in their communities, and it’s an honor to recognize Stealth Creative’s leadership,” said ICIC CEO Steve Grossman. “Especially during this incredibly challenging time, as small business owners reckon with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, these pioneering entrepreneurs have demonstrated a deep commitment to and passion for their local communities.”

Countless companies and business owners have had to pivot, re-think, transition and find creative ways to thrive in the ever-changing landscape of our modern world.

We’re so proud to be included on the IC100 list. It is incredibly rewarding to be recognized alongside leaders from so many industries across the country, particularly during this really challenging year.

Even as the majority of the Stealth team have been diligently working from their home offices this year, our sense of togetherness and our focus on continuing the positive trends of the past few years is stronger than ever.

As your marketing and advertising force, you can bet that we’ll continue to embrace every challenge that comes our way.

Take a minute to read more inspiring entrepreneurial stories from the list of IC100 recipients here.

The Future Has Never Looked Brighter!
Mindy Jeffries — President and CEO, Stealth Creative

Like most small businesses in the US, Stealth is adjusting to the new normal of social distancing. We’re working from home, taking guitar lessons on zoom and going to church on YouTube. We are finding it’s harder to decline a virtual happy hour. What can the excuse be? I am too busy. That doesn’t seem to work in times like these!

How We're Helping

As a company, we are helping our clients in different ways, depending on the category. We are reducing media for some and increasing for others. Some clients, we’re advising to keep a “heartbeat” of media going, so they can jump in faster once we are on the other side.

We are also looking at short term digital solutions and moving dollars between mediums. Social media is a good alternative! People are engaging more with family and friends and turning to social media for entertainment and news. Social allows us to stay light on our feet as messaging changes daily, sometimes hourly.

To help businesses in this time of need, we are offering a free 60-minute consultation to give you ideas and action plans for your business! Please email info@stealthcreative.com to sign up.

At Stealth, we are thankful for the internet! Right now, we are all one step from being Little House on the Prairie. We plan to take this one day at a time, but now with everyone being able to work remotely, we can take it one month at a time, which is comforting.

Take a Breather

Take a Breather

If you have anxious moments, designate 15-30 minutes each day to write down what you are worried about then cross off everything you can’t control. This exercise can be a great way to refocus on your day and enjoy time with family.

Remember the six basic emotions we all have:

  1. Mad
  2. Sad
  3. Scared
  4. Peace
  5. Joy
  6. Power

Let’s focus on Peace, Joy, Power.

Working Remotely

If you can work from home during these challenging times, remember it’s a luxury that some can’t enjoy. Embrace the back to basics shift!

We aren’t experts yet, but with a few weeks under our belts, we’ve decided to compile some tips from our employees about how they are making their home offices a productive workplace.

Here are our tips so far:

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Thank You!

We are sending gratitude, love, prayers and support to the essential workers who have been working around the clock to fight COVID-19.

Life is good; you are a blessing! THANK YOU to all the businesses that made the difficult decision to work from home while we fight this virus as a country. You are making a difference.

Though the world continues to change around us, convincing travelers to spend time in our own little slice of it remains a top objective and a driving economic force for many towns, both large and small.

In fact, tourism marketing is a major contributor to the United States economy, accounting for approximately 2.75 trillion U.S. dollars in 2018.

So, who’s in charge of attracting all of those visitors (and dollars)?

At the heart of the local tourism industry are Convention & Visitor Bureaus (CVBs). The CVB is the organization that pulls individuals and groups together to market their community as a whole. Hotels, restaurants, local attractions and event promotion teams all work with their local CVB to attract visitors and locals to their businesses.

Many CVBs get their marketing dollars from state agencies and local hotel taxes. The job of the CVB is make sure there are “heads in beds” at local hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts.

But what if your community doesn’t have a pro sports team, a vibrant food scene or some of the other attractions larger cities might offer?

Small markets must take a unique approach to advertising their communities. More creativity is required in determining what is considered an “attraction,” and more strategy is needed in order to speak to potential visitors in a compelling way. (For example, there is a rising number of travelers looking for experiences that are “off-the-beaten-path,” or of historical significance. This is where a smaller community can shine!)

The Challenges Convention & Visitor Bureaus Face

But even after a town has identified what to say and how to say it, smaller CVBs will continue to face the same key challenges:

  1. Staffing
    It is typical for a smaller community to have a small CVB staff. Many CVBs are staffed by one individual who is responsible for everything from marketing their community, to acting as a step-on guide, to organizing local events to overseeing social media for their community. All of this is in addition to the daily rigor of managing a budget, attending city functions and many other administrative tasks. Therefore, self-promotion efforts are limited or too often pushed to the back burner.
  2. Budget
    A smaller community, with no large-scale attractions, is going to have less money to use in marketing their community. They are going to have to work closer with other businesses in the community to make those funds go further and will have to be creative in how they spend their money to receive the best ROI.
  3. Attractions (or lack thereof)
    Among the largest challenges for smaller communities is how to answer the question: “But what is there to do here?” And sometimes the struggle isn’t always just from outsiders. If your city doesn’t have an attraction that brings in thousands of people a year, it’s easy for even your locals to think that there is nothing to do.

It all comes down to time, money and resources.

If your staff is being pulled in many different directions, it’s important to bring in someone who can help take responsibilities off their plate. That’s where a marketing agency comes in.

When you hire an agency, you have a full team of people ready to assist with all aspects of your marketing plan. From marketing strategy, to creative design, to media placement, working with an agency increases your staff multifold. You’ve got graphic designers, digital and brand strategists, experts in all types of media placement and account executives to help keep everything on track.

With more than 50 years of combined experience in CVB marketing and media placement, Stealth Creative can help you find the best venues for marketing your community. We have staff that have worked for CVBs and have seen the challenges up close. Based on who your ideal visitor is, we can assist you in determining the best way to reach those individuals. With so many options out there, it’s important to have an expert in your corner, helping to make the most out of the limited budget you might have.

One of the CVBs we currently work with has lost several attractions over the past few years. Their focus has now turned to the local art scene, foodies who travel for the experience of eating unique cuisine, American history buffs, and individuals who want more active vacations – hiking, biking and canoeing are all great options in this area. Stealth has been able to help this CVB determine new target markets and opportunities to promote what makes their city great… and then make sure they are advertising to the travelers that are most likely to visit!

No one can be an expert in everything. But you are an expert on your community. Let Stealth be the experts in marketing your community.

As always stay tuned until the next time we go Off the Radar.

Photo Courtesy of the Joplin Convention & Visitors Bureau.

That is the question… Ah, meetings – often, a necessary evil. And when handled properly, they can be extremely effective in accomplishing business objectives, moving projects forward and opening lines of communication.
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So you’ve decided an ad agency could help you. Now what? Where do you turn to begin your search? What type of agency do you need? How do you know if it’s a good fit?

When I was on the client side of the business, it crossed my mind a few times to hire an agency. The thought was just as quickly extinguished because it was frightening! I immediately thought: Too expensive! More people to manage! Interviewing time and hassle! If only I’d had someone back then to help me realize it doesn’t have to be any of those things!

So let’s walk through these steps one by one to understand how you can easily hire an ad agency that’s the right partner for you and your company.

Building the Case

A long time ago in a faraway land, I was a beginning marketing person. I had no staff and was responsible for a pretty big marketing budget. The first thing I wanted to do was hire more help, but even more important was ensuring diversity of thinking within the marketing team.

My product was telecommunications, and my target market didn’t want it. We needed to perform some foundational work and reposition the product in the customer’s mind. And it would’ve been great to enlist the help of an agency for that heavy lift.

Many times the first battle when thinking about hiring an ad agency can be within your own company. Leadership asks: Why do you need an ad agency? How much will this cost? Why can’t you handle the marketing yourself?

Here’s my checklist to build your case for hiring an ad agency.

1) Review and understand which marketing tactics you use.

Copywriting, design, coding, events, digital media, PR, direct marketing and traditional tactics, SEM/SEO, video, website, email, social media, oh my! There are so many tactics today, and each tactic requires specific expertise and perhaps tactical software to manage.

One marketing person cannot possibly have expertise in all these things, as many of the tools in marketing require different skill sets. And even if you find an amazingly talented person, there is still is a limit on how much one person can do effectively. You may have team members with expertise in the majority of these disciplines, but chances are there’s a resource gap or two that an agency can help fill.

2) Save time.

Most business owners are busy running their business and at best have lean marketing staffs. By hiring an ad agency, you get the tools and experience of experts in specific disciplines without needing to hire, train and pay benefits to a new staff member. It’s generally more cost-effective than building your own in-house agency.

3) Consider your budget.

Understanding your current marketing spend, revenue and overall budget is a good place to start when deciding how much you have to spend on agency services. Keep in mind the revenue numbers might vary depending on if you are marketing to businesses or consumers. Remember, even a little help can be a huge benefit to your marketing resources.

4) Diversity of thinking.

Marketing is not black and white, and it really helps to have a few different brains coming together to offer different ideas for projects, tactics, creative and more. Hearing different perspectives can also help you get inside your customer’s viewpoints, which is crucial for your marketing efforts.

5) Measurement

When you hire the right ad agency, it’s pretty easy to measure success when the correct KPIs are put into place. It’s critical to have that discussion up front to ensure your agency partner understands your business goals and objectives to work with you to develop a strategy that can accomplish those goals.

6) Do more with less.

By hiring an agency who is truly a partner to help you with your marketing tactics, you can do more marketing without needing to hire more staff! You’ll have more arms and legs to help who also serve as an extension of your team.

7) Learning happens.

As you work together more and more, the ad agency learns your business, which enables a good agency to expose you to new ideas and constantly share the learning.

Picking the Perfect Partner

Chemistry is key.

Like all relationships, chemistry is probably the first criteria to focus on. Meet with the ad agency team to understand their personalities, and if they’ll mesh with you and your team.

Make sure you meet and like the head of your account as well as your day-to-day account manager. Some marketers are so wowed by the ad agency; they become intimidated by them, which does not make for a good working relationship. You and your agency should be in a true partnership.

It’s important for there to be good respect both ways. After all, you’re hiring them for their expertise and experience in specific marketing disciplines. Put that expertise to good use! Likewise, they’ll learn from you and your business to make the partnership the perfect combination.

Budget is definitely a factor.

Cost is important at the end of the day. Fewer agencies today use hourly rates and instead charge by the project itself – often with a monthly retainer in place to help you balance out your expenses. But after a discovery session with the agency, it’s wise to talk about your budget. Ideally, you, as the client, should assign the budget amount, and then the agency should divide that budget into a tactical plan. Because agencies work with multiple clients, they can often use negotiation with vendors to get better pricing for all.

The bottom line.

You and your agency of choice should ask: How can we best achieve my goals on this budget?

Final thoughts.

Working with an ad agency should be fun and energizing. It should be based on two-way trust and help you achieve much more than you and your team could do internally with current resources and expertise.

It should be a relationship that improves as you each get to know one another, and it should be mutually beneficial.

Coming up next, we’ll talk about how to work effectively with your ad agency! There are certainly tricks to that trade.

As always, feel free to reach out to talk more about working with an agency or to set up your own discovery session

I am a goal-oriented person. I set goals in every area of my life.

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Here it is: the final segment of our Agency/Client relationship series. We’ll be covering the ever-crucial task of assessing your agency’s body of work. You can catch up on our posts about deciding if you need an agency, choosing the right agency and maintaining your marketing agency relationship in case you missed them.

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Now that we’ve covered how to decide if you need an agency, and understand the questions to ask … what’s next?

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Welcome to Part II of our Client/Agency Relationship series. We’ve already covered how to decide if you need an agency. Now let’s talk about how to choose the right agency for you.

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