Jason Hill, Papercut Interactive
When I went to college for graphic design back in the mid-90s, we had one class on web design. I don’t mean one semester credit class, I mean a singular two hour class. We learned that you type in code to change the size of a font or make a straight, horizontal rule across your “page.” Nothing fancy and nobody really knew any better.
Something struck me though. The design was editable. Mistakes are often inevitable, and in print design, if you don’t catch a mistake in time, it can be costly to make a correction. But on the web, you can make changes. And even more importantly, your web presence becomes a tool, an extension of your sales team, with a global reach.
Then and Now
Our company, Papercut Interactive, turns 18 years old this year. In 2001 we were a website design company. Today we call ourselves a digital agency. It’s been incredible to see how the web has changed since I was in school. Back then, it would have sounded like a SCI FI movie to think that you could have a tiny computer in your pocket, that lets you watch a movie, listen to any song you can think of instantly or buy your next self-driving vehicle, but look where we are now.
Papercut works hard to keep up with what’s possible on the web for ourselves and our clients. We were an early adopter of responsive web design, which set the foundation for how we use the internet on our phones today. In addition to website design and development advances, our digital marketers are always staying abreast of the latest online marketing trends and Google’s often changing algorithms. But it’s some of the newer, high-impact digital tools and techniques we use with our clients that really excite me about the future.
New Innovations
We employ marketing automation to send communications to email and social media outlets, triggered by specific events we can define. It can be as simple as a newsletter emailed to your entire list, or it can be specific content given to a contact who fits a defined persona of your ideal customer. As visitors to your website interact with different pieces of content over time, “lead scoring” can be implemented. Depending on the visitor’s score, they may receive more content suited for them, or with a high enough lead score, your marketing team will pass their information on to your sales team.
Sales and marketing alignment is a mission for me personally. As a business owner, it is so important to know that your marketing is actually helping boost sales. If your marketing isn’t delivering, it’s critical to pinpoint the reason so you can optimize your message. By integrating your website, marketing automation and your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, you can get a much better picture of what ROI looks like for you. So few companies know that you can actually measure your marketing. A good place to start is to have your sales and marketing teams gather together for regular update meetings.
Seeing developments in the web like these over the past two decades, it is mind-boggling to think about what the future holds. In the meantime, Papercut focuses on bringing our digital expertise to companies, so that they are equipped to build better businesses.
What would you like to know?
In the coming months, we’ll be writing more on digital marketing trends, tools and techniques. We're excited to bring our insights of what’s possible with digital marketing for companies like yours. And, we’d love to hear what you’re curious about. Is there something in digital marketing you’d like to know more about?
Please send your questions and comments to [email protected].
