It is the ones that push the limits around them that get noticed. There's nothing wrong with being different. In fact, we find those that are different are the ones that change the world for the better and most remembered. This is why we've changed our name to Business YETI from JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing. There are many reasons for this but the biggest is we are not like any other marketing company out there. We are focused on return on investment (ROI) and showing it to you. We never pushed people to realize that half of our revenue comes from paid advertising for our clients on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, and social media. This goes along with our idea we should be a silent partner helping our clients grow.
So, what is with the name change to a mythical character and how does it "change things". We asked ourselves the exact same question! Over the past five years, we've looked at what have done, what was working in marketing, and what wasn't. This made us think that a true change is in order beyond the changes we were already doing. Here are some of the reasons for our name change:
- Now Limiting the number of clients – We've chosen to focus on a limited set of clients (no we won't tell you how many!). We also will no longer be accepting of every business that walks through our door. At first, we thought this was counter-intuitive as we are in the business to make money after all (even not-for-profits need to make more money). Then as we dug deeper, we realized that we can't help all businesses and we would be doing ourselves and our clients a disservice just taking their money.
- Limited the number of active new clients – Even though we are going to limit the number of new clients we bring on we have in the past routinely run a dozen new projects at the same time. Now we're limiting that to three new active projects at any given time. The reason we did this is so we can knock projects out faster and give our clients a more personalized touch. When we reach four and above, we put those items in the queue and if someone doesn't want to wait we'll help them find someone who doesn't have this type of restriction. No one has complained so far in having to be in our queue and we're thankful for that.
- Life is short – When it comes to our lives, we only have one. There is no starting over with your life and you only have this one to live. This made us realize that if we're going to spend a third (or more) of our lives at work we have to have fun and not waiver from it. We started off five years ago with Nerf guns and bullets hidden throughout our office and it's not uncommon to see a stray bullet whoosh by during the day. Now we are making this fun more visible by incorporating a YETI into our overall theme to show the world we are different, fun, and a bit mysterious to keep those around us on their toes.
- Why a YETI? This is one of the most fun reasons. A YETI is a perfect creature for a business like ours. They are different, unique, are hard to find (if ever), and cannot be compared to any other.
- Increase in storytelling – We believe deeply in the art of telling a story. This is why we've been working with local county governments to showcase businesses around their towns, talking with these local businesses, and listening to their stories. Storytelling is only the first part but it has to start with the story. You cannot get engagement, sharing of a story, or people wanting to learn more about you until the story is written. This is why we always believe in telling the story whether it's in writing, podcasts, or video.
- Change – All too often businesses will do the same thing over and over again hoping for different results. We believe this can't happen. If you notice that you once advertised in the newspaper [insert your current marketing method here] and you see the market dwindling that you need to stay in the newspaper (for a while) and look for where your customers are as they are no longer in that area. You need to adapt and change. This is why we believe that you can only make a difference by researching your customers and adapting to their changing needs.
All the above tells part of the reason we've changed our name. The other is our old name just wasn't memorable or fun. In fact, our name was stuffy and "old" (even though it was only a few years old). When you think of names like Google you don't think of the biggest search engine (well you do now). Google actually came from the word google which is a mathematical term that represents a very large numeric value of 10 to the 100th power, or the factorial of 70 (70!). It is written as the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.
We needed a name to showcase how we are different, fun, and not your typical digital marketing company. We needed something that people would remember whether they saw our mascot or the name would resonate better than our owners' initials. We're not saying there's anything wrong with our owners' initials. It's just that it didn't define our company culture. It defined him and not what we truly believed in at the core.
It's with the above that we are showcasing why we are a memorable, unique, and professional marketing company while also being bold, standing out, and constantly adapting to changing market conditions. We are confident the next time you see our new mascot, hear or read the word YETI you will be thinking of us and that is what we were trying to achieve.