We’re celebrating our company’s 15th birthday today. My oh my, how the time flies! In the past birthday posts, we were sentimentally reviewing our past, but in this article our eyes are looking firmly into the future. Armed with another year’s worth of business lessons, here’s what lies ahead for our company.
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Here’s our thought process this year: based on 5 premises, we’re documenting 10 guidelines we want to work on in 2017.
5 Premises for 2017
Premise 1: Doubling-Down on What We Enjoy Doing
What we enjoy doing is what has kept us going for 15 long years.
Without joy, there is no motivation to show up for work every day.
When the times are hard, you remind yourself that this is more than just a job for you. You remember that you actually love being in the internet industry. You love watching it change and you take pride in improving the bits and pieces you can reach with your work.
Therefore, our first criteria for our next year in business will be to enjoy ourselves more. When we enjoy ourselves, our clients notice it in the quality of our work, and the attitude with which we approach their projects.
Premise 2: Doubling-Down on What We Excel At
We’ve got this from John C. Maxwell, the guy who knows a thing or two about leadership:
Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
Meaning: spend more time improving what you’re already good at, not what you’re bad at.
Of all the skills we possess, what are we best at?
To answer this question means to find the ideal service or product with which we can help our clients the most.
Therefore, in 2017, we’ll offer more of our top expertise, which lies at the intersection of website copywriting and website architecture. See the decision nr. 2 below.
Premise 3: Doubling-Down on What Works for Us
There is no one true way to do anything. All the best practices in the world are merely options you can experiment with in order to discover what works for you.
That also applies to:
- how we market ourselves
- who we choose to do business with
- how we run our company
- who we choose as our heros
For example, content marketing has always worked for us for attracting leads. However, at times we stop doing what has been proven to work for us, in order to try new things. This is one of our biggest mistakes, one we continue to make.
No more. In 2017, we’ll do more of what works, and we’ll mostly ignore everything else.
Premise 4: Doubling-Down on What Is Profitable
Since we’re not getting any younger here, it becomes quintessential that we maximize the returns on our time invested. The more value we capture for ourselves, the more time we buy to create new value we can return to the world in the form of products, services, and donations to the causes we believe in.
Therefore, in 2017 we’ll be looking to invest our time where it yields the most profit, while meeting the other three criteria (it needs to be enjoyable, we need to be good at it, it needs to work well for us). We’re definitely creating highly scalable profit through affordable digital products.
Premise 5: More Focus, Less Clutter
We’ve been trying to focus for so long, but we seem to continuously be doing too much, on too many fronts, without the glue to keep it all together.
To make a decision about focus is hard when all you’ve got are hunches, feelings, and personal opinions. Now that we’ve got some data to support our decisions about focus, for 2017 we decided to:
- offer only select services (the ones where our expertise meets customers' demands)
- serve fewer industries
10 Decisions for 2017
Decision 1: Focus on Specific Industries
Committing to focus is hard. When you have a decade of legacy - legacy code, legacy services, legacy ways of doing things - cutting the Gordian Knot comes at a price.
In 2015, we decided to rebrand and launch more focused services. In the process, we chose the Business-to-Business segment as our focus. That decision meant that we’d stop serving B2C segments such as e-commerce clients, something we were known for in the past.
But in hindsight, focusing just on B2B was not focused enough. We did want to serve certain industries only, but frankly we were scared that we’d choose the wrong ones.
So, we waited to see which industries, which types of clients would be most interested in our services. It turned out that the clients contacting us about our services were the ones we were hoping to attract in the first place.
Therefore, starting in 2017, we’ll be adapting everything we do to creating solutions for three specific B2B industries:
- Technology companies
- IT solution providers
- Business services
Decision 2: Improving Website Copy + Website Architecture Is Our Superpower
We’re lucky to be passionate about one (or two) disciplines so much, that we’d pay others to be able to practice them.
Website copywriting and website architecture is the intersection of two marketing disciplines where we can create magic. We can transform long, uninspiring walls of text to well-structured landing pages that keep the visitors clicking and reading until they’re ready to make their first move.
We’ll throw more time and more money in further honing our superpower. As long as websites stay relevant as a sales tool, we’ll stick with services and products designed to make B2B websites better.
Decision 3: More Content Writing Services
As of 2016, 89% of B2B marketers in North America are using content marketing.
The situation in 2015 in our part of the world (Croatia, Southeast Europe) was very different. According to our own research from 2015, only 54,5% of B2B companies had news / blog / articles on their website.
Having a news section on your website is the first step toward strategic content marketing, but that first step can sometimes be too much for many companies.
Also, only publishing company news is not enough. Companies are so busy and so short on staff that they can barely find the time to write about the projects they completed.
This is where we come in with our content writing services. We can write the essential content for your website:
- product / service descriptions
- case studies / customer success stories / references
- news / articles for your blog
Yes, it’s possible for us to write your website content, even if we’re not your employees.
Decision 4: More Productized Services
The more complex the client project, the harder it gets for us to estimate it well.
That’s why we’ll design special service packages for the most popular requests we get asked about. Our plan is to make our services:
- more affordable for the client
- more profitable for us
- easier to explain
- easier to buy
- easier to deliver
- consistent in high quality
If you want to get notified about new service packages, you’re welcome to join our newsletter.
Decision 5: More Strategy Offerings
72% of B2B marketers report strategy as one of the deciding factors which contributed to their increased success.
We’re already working with clients on documenting and implementing their digital marketing strategy. In 2017 and beyond, we’ll work on making digital marketing strategy creation more accessible to our ideal customers.
Decision 6: Create Products
Creating product-based revenue for Logit is one of our greatest career goals.
In 2016 we created and launched our first product: the B2B Website Content Writing Guide. It’s a massive collection of worksheets with questions which guide you through the content writing process.
We’re already working on similar infoproducts that will teach you about website copy and website architecture and help you create a more effective presence for your company online. Through our products, we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned since 2000, when we made our first baby steps in digital marketing.
Decision 7: Produce Epic Content
If we’re going to create something, let it be epic.
Epic, as in: bigger, more beautiful, more audacious, and authentically us. We’ll publish less, but with more substance. We’ll actively look to fill the gaps in the knowledge that’s available online.
Watch this space for more.
Decision 8: Attract Clients Interested in Long-Term Cooperation
As we explained in our article about our website content writing process, it takes time for us to get to know our clients and their businesses in order to deliver our strategy-oriented services.
That’s why we can work best with clients who are in the digital for the long haul. We’ll be helping existing clients as well as taking on new projects, but we’ll pick new projects based on their potential for the kind of long-term work we excel at.
However, we’d love to hear about your project. Contact us and describe how we could contribute to your success.
Decision 9: Visualize All The Things!
At the moment, the written word is our medium of choice. This, however, must change, as online content is increasingly becoming visual.
Videos, presentations, animated gifs, infographics… Although written words aren’t going anywhere, the future does belong to publishers who learn to express themselves visually.
Soon we’re launching new, more visual content for educational purposes.
Decision 10: Simplify All The Things!
Simplicity, like focus, is hard too. We’ve tried too many things in the past year, spread ourselves too thin, and failed to create continuity, inspite our best intentions.
We’ll simplify marketing tactics, the delivery of services, the number items to track on our daily to-do lists, the number of projects we handle.
By making it simpler, we’ll do better. Improvement excites us.
Happy New Year, Everyone!
I don’t know if we’re going to implement all the decisions immediately, and I don’t know how fast we’re going to succeed. I’m interested in the journey, not the destination.
Having read all of the above, I realize there’s so much to do today, this month, this year. I’ll be off now; I’m creating the ticket nr. 22754 in our project management system.
I wish to thank everyone - and I mean everyone - who has been a part of my company’s journey for the past 15 years. I am looking forward to continuing where I left off in 2016, and I can’t wait to meet new fabulous people.
Happy New Year!
Visnja Zeljeznjak, Logit co-founder