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TREKK Inc. |
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January 18, 2016 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Full Service Advertising Agency Providing Website Design, eCommerce, Content Management, Inbound Marketing and Trade Show Campaigns |
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CEO
TREKK Inc.
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – 1/18/16
CEOCFO: Ms. Terry, the tagline on your website is, “Smart Ideas for a Smart World.” What does that mean for TREKK? Ms. Terry: It’s a direct reflection of today’s ever-evolving multi-channel marketing reality. Everything today has Smart in front of it. It’s a phrase that means we are increasingly connected via the cloud or wireless technology. Mobility has changed not only the demand for content in new forms but also the consumption of that content. If marketers want to connect with customers, employees and stakeholders, they have to communicate with them in smart and relevant ways. Smart Ideas align our service offering with this new emerging reality.
CEOCFO: How does TREKK help its clients achieve those goals? Ms. Terry: TREKK is always working to make sure our services are relevant in a changing world. We have been in business for 20 years this year, and 20 years ago was the dawn of the Worldwide Web. Back then, we were building websites when other ad agencies weren’t. Five years later, that was no longer unique. We moved onto content management systems that helped our clients deliver more relevant and personalized content. Today, we’re helping clients drive website traffic with inbound marketing. And we’re helping them stand out in a cluttered marketplace with technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality.
CEOCFO: How do you know when the balance is tipped? Ms. Terry: We have a team of 20 people who are constantly watching for emerging communication channels and technologies. This is truly one of the secrets to our success. It’s a part of our organizational DNA. We have become exceptionally good at timing the market as it relates to technologies and acceptance of those technologies by the markets we service. Understanding what’s possible makes transferring these technologies into a practical solution set possible.
CEOCFO: When you are engaged with a client and creating a program for them, what elements might you look at that less experienced people may miss? Ms. Terry: The technologies change all of the time. What doesn’t change is starting each project or program with a list of goals and objectives. That’s the only way we can deliver on marketing and revenue goals. Depending on their audiences, and objectives, it could be things like search engine optimization, search engine marketing and inbound marketing to drive traffic to relevant website pages and strong calls to action. It’s all about being where your customers are and then bringing them back to a place where you can deliver exactly what they are looking for.
CEOCFO: Would you walk us through a typical engagement? Ms. Terry: What we would do at the beginning of an engagement is to spend as much time as possible with as many stakeholders in their organization as possible. We need to get a feel for who they are, who their customers are and what they are trying to accomplish. From there we put together programs designed to deliver on revenue goals. One of the most important things that we do when developing programs is put metrics in place so we can measure the results of what we are producing. Then, we are able to sit down with our clients and tell them what worked, as well as what should be changed or optimized. Without that analytical process, we would not be able as effective for our clients as we are.
CEOCFO: How do clients come to you? Ms. Terry: Clients for the most part come to us by referral. We probably get most of our clients because a contact at a company leaves and goes to another company and takes us along. That has led to some very longstanding relationships with clients. We also get many straight out referrals, where our clients will refer their colleagues to us. We also do inbound marketing for ourselves, so we kind of walk-the-walk. We are subscribers of HubSpot, so we have a database of content and we are constantly pushing out information through our blogs and emails; all of the different ways that we would recommend to our client to communicate with their customers, we are doing the same thing. Plus, we are pretty vocal in the markets we serve; we do a lot of industry events and take every opportunity to speak as subject matter experts whenever we can.
CEOCFO: What do you look for in your people? What intangibles are important? Ms. Terry: We look for people who have an open mind and a dedication to serving their internal clients, their colleagues, and their customers. They have to be willing to learn and change constantly. We also look for a good personality fit, because we like to have fun. If we are not having fun, we cannot provide the best service to our clients. Our employees who are developing programs have almost as much at stake as the client does, so we are constantly celebrating those successes.
CEOCFO: Did you understand that day one, or did that philosophy develop over time? Ms. Terry: I did not understand that on day one. We started with four people and all of us had been in management positions. We started the company because we wanted to do things our own way. As we grew, it became so apparent that the most important part of our success was our employees, making our employees happy, and making sure that they were in an environment where they could thrive. That realization happened over the course of the last 20 years, and probably hit hardest around the time of the .com bust, when business became harder for us. It was easy for us for the first 5 or 6 years. We never had to have a sales effort, as business just came to us. However, we had to change the way we did things after that, and we had to change the way in which we hired people. That is when the realization hit that is was all about our people.
CEOCFO: Are there services that you offer that companies are not utilizing as much as you think that they should? Ms. Terry: It is definitely strategic planning, and I think it is because everything happens so fast today. Back in the early 1980s, I worked for an agency and things happened a great deal slower, so you had more time to think about what you were doing, developing, designing and communicating. Today, things happen so fast that it is even more important to think strategically. Yet, our strategic services are not as utilized as much as more tactical services like design, programming, content development, video and interactive.
CEOCFO: What is next for TREKK? What might be different a year from now? Ms. Terry: Our service offering will definitely be different, and I cannot even tell you what that will be because we follow what is evolving. We tried back in the day to be a great deal more about inventing and innovating things, but we learned half way through the life of our company that it is expensive to be constantly on the bleeding edge. Therefore, we keep an eye on what is going on out there to see what the needs are going to be next year or five years down the road so we can develop those capabilities.
I can tell you that our offering will continue to grow along the lines of mobility and delivery of content in the emerging landscape of wearable’s and new devices yet available in the marketplace. It’s an exciting time to be working in this space. The emergence of technologies such as AR and VR will continue to change the way we interact with information not to mention machines. Certainly companies will need to manage all of this content as well as the analytical result of these interactions. It still will be about the content moving forward and we will align our offering with whatever form our clients’ prospects and customers wish to consume.
CEOCFO: TREKK works with companies on trade shows. What is the key to standing out among the hundreds or thousands of companies all assembled in one huge place? Ms. Terry: It is interactivity and piquing their interest to the point where they come to your booth. We’ve gotten pretty good at helping our clients stand out on the trade show floor. It needs to start with a multi-channel strategy that spans pre-show, onsite and post-show communications. We’ve also learned the importance of working with booth staff to ensure they have the skills and the information to be able to take that visitor to the next step. Our job is to create the kind of buzz that captures attention and gets them into the booth, but if you don’t make a connection with visitors, you won’t be able to continue the dialogue.
CEOCFO: Do you work with internal marketing people at some of the companies you work for and how do you navigate some of the challenges/conflicts that often occur? Ms. Terry: One of the biggest challenges for us, and always has been from day one, is that the internal people that we work with are not just marketing people. They are technical people, IT people and accounting people. We need to navigate that inner circle, have a good understanding and get all of those people together many times in the same room to build consensus about what it is that we are trying to accomplish as a company.
CEOCFO: Put it together for our readers. Why choose TREKK? Ms. Terry: We can be a tremendous resource for our clients in regards to the application knowledge we have about the multichannel methods we have been working with for the last 20 years. Not too many companies in our space understand all the pieces needed to deliver and exploit a message “to the ends of the network.” For us this is our primary driver.
Then we do everything that we can to make the service and the programs that we are delivering as extraordinary as possible. |
“If marketers want to connect with customers, employees and stakeholders, they have to communicate with them in smart and relevant ways.” - Laura Terry
TREKK Inc.
Laura Terry 815-520-8798
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Laura
Terry