Reinvigorating Marketing Tools and Processes

Telesis Technologies – Consolidating and Upgrading the Brand

Situation

The Telesis brand, image, and message had grown muddled and outdated over the years. Multiple generations of logos and taglines were in use. Marketing collateral consisted of a single lengthy (and expensive) catalog, with little focus on customer benefits and no effective positioning of products. The significant advantages that Telesis enjoyed as a leader in the product identification equipment market were lost due to the overall poor approach to marketing communications.

Approach

Greg worked with the sales team to develop a thorough scope of work for a rebranding project, and then engaged numerous marketing agencies to understand their processes and costs for meeting Telesis’s needs. Upon settling on an agency, Greg involved the global sales and engineering teams in exercises designed to define Telesis’s advantages in the market to develop core messages, largely focused around intangible elements such as their experience and unique global presence.  In working over the next several months with the agency, Greg developed a new logo, tagline, image, messages, photography, and collateral with a tie back to the traditional Telesis brand so as not to lose any existing equity.  Greg also improved the positioning of Telesis’s products using a good/better/best approach by application, and created industry-focused collateral highlighting solutions specific to customer needs in key growth markets such as aerospace, medical devices, and electronics.

Results

The updated branding approach was successfully introduced throughout the early half of 2008 to good reception from the sales team, manufacturer’s representatives, and distributors on a global basis. Greg took a new, updated approach to trade shows as well, generating greater interest. The new “mark of confidence” theme was widely considered a success in re-establishing Telesis as a leader in its core industrial markets while positioning the company as a credible source in new markets (such as electronics) and new geographies (most specifically, China and Taiwan).

Mayfran International – Expanding the Marketing Arsenal

Situation

Mayfran’s marketing materials were in desperate need of an upgrade.  The website had grown outdated after approximately eight years with limited new content.  The German-based content management system (CMS) was difficult to work with, the navigation had always been confusing, and inconsistencies had grown between the multiple sites serving different languages and regions.  Additionally, the literature was out of date and inconsistent in content and appearance between the US and Europe, lacked a focus on customer benefits and application-specific recommendations, and was plagued with significant gaps in coverage.

Approach

Greg engaged with an external website developer to implement a new CMS system and update the appearance, navigation, and content of the website, driving consistency through a single global English-language site which was directly translated into seven additional languages.  The new website incorporated application- and industry-specific content, capitalizing on new application profile tools which Greg had developed to provide examples of successful projects to potential customers.  Greg also led efforts with an outside vendor on search engine optimization (SEO) to boost search results and traffic, while driving more dynamic content in cooperation with colleagues in Europe and China to keep the website fresh and interesting.

Results

The new CMS system allowed for more dynamic web content and, combined with the SEO program, resulted in a significant improvement in search results for Mayfran.  This in turn measurably increased web traffic and other metrics such as pageviews per visit, and Mayfran dealers and customers reported much greater satisfaction with the new website and selling tools.  Greg continues to work on enhancing the functionality of the website through form design, interactive tool development, and, should the potential audience grow, social media.