We specialize in viral marketing and new venture development.

 

Take Your Message Viral

Are you ready to launch your movement?  If your organization has compelling stories to tell and is enthusiastic about listening to the stories of others, social media could be exactly the missing piece in your communications/marketing strategy to engage and enlarge your customer base.  Through social media, trust is earned, not bought.  And with that trust comes enthusiastic, passionate customers who can’t wait to tell their friends about you.

We equip you to engage your customers through the use of social media.  We help you launch your “movement” the right way, taking your message viral and letting your customers tell your story for you.  We “do” social media, but even more so, we “coach” social media so that your team can effectively run your social media efforts on an on-going basis.  In some sense, our goal is to work ourselves out of a job.

We have expertise with the tools (twitter, facebook, blogging platforms, YouTube, Slideshare, myspace, digg, etc), but the key to our work is applying those tools specifically and cleverly for your situation and customer base.   They couldn’t care less about which tools you use, but they do care about being delighted by the entire experience surrounding your product or service.  Whether you are looking to deepen the engagement of your current customers or expand your base of customers, we can help you.

Some of our previous work include:

• Developed a social media strategy to create a broad, grassroots movement in Illinois, resulting in coverage in WIRED magazine, Mental Floss, Reddit, Neatorama, CBS2 Chicago local news, and Chicago Parent.
• Conceived of a social media campaign that was covered in the Chicago Sun-Times.
• Worked with a 25-person organization on a strategy that yielded ~2,000 fans on their Facebook Fan page.
• Established and led an online group of 300+ executives in the area of social media.
• Developed sophisticated metrics for a 30,000-member web community’s market penetration, engagement levels, and overall value.  Metrics became incorporated into senior management dashboard.
• Coached non-profit organizations on how to maximize their investment (time, mostly!) in social media.
• Developed a social media strategy for a growing business looking for additional growth opportunities.
• Developed a social media and web strategy to increase client retention and opportunities for up-sales.
• Utilized twitter as a conversation leadership tool, a marketing tool,  as well as content curation tool.
• Built credible twitter accounts with consistently 2:1 follower/following ratios.

For more information, also check out our social media case studies, social media articles, and reference center (all these in bold are current pages)

 

New Venture Development

Turn Your Ideas to Reality through Innovation Best Practices
Our team also has extensive experience around helping businesses launch new products and services that impact the world.  Whether working with large corporations strategizing about their next new product or with entrepreneurs launching their passion, we love providing expertise and perspective in that marvelous tension of start-ups – where there is still so much unrealized potential for impact and yet, there are so many critical decisions that have to be made.

Learn from best practices of the best innovators of the world and apply their strategics and tactics to maximize your success.  Some of our past experiences include:

• Founded an industry website and blog in 2005 that was acquired by a prominent publisher in 2009.
• Led product development efforts at two organizations (one had annual revenues of $1 billion), implementing an organization-wide process to generate, analyze, and prioritize new business ideas.  Collected 300+ ideas and developed 20 full business plans.
• Executed a partnership strategy that led to a new $4 million product line.
• Launched a new marketing program that led to 1,000 new customers per year.
• Developed and executed a marketing & development strategy for a 10-patent life sciences portfolio, leading to 30 new prospective partner contacts.
• Developed a strategic improvement plan for an existing product line, leading to a ~90% increase in revenues.
• Developed an innovative advertising vehicle that increased online ad revenues by 190%.