Dane Dittemore

Two key projects that have helped mature my marketing expertise have been leading and managing a company re-brand and product re-brand. These are the basic blocking and tackling elements of an organization. Everything in the business flows to and from these initiatives. This is especially true as more of the BTB buying cycle is in the hands of the buyer. That's why it's important for every company to dress for success digitally.  Simply put, the content, messaging, brand tone, and packing of services has become mission-critical to success. More than ever, buyers want to know what they get for their investment because many times they are putting their careers on the line. This is especially true in the tech space.

1.) corporate re-brand

I led the corporate re-brand at LightBound, which took place over a period of 18 months. We leveraged the service of MilesHerndon, a local branding organization. While I didn't actually do all the work, I was the strategic lead and came up with most of the content, messaging, and product category brand colors. In particular phrases like "Your IP Foundation", "Essential for your business", "Always On", "Always Available", and the concept of "The Headlines", "The Scoop", and "The Soup" for our News Blog. I also wrote all of the content for the product brochures and associated Web pages.

the problem

1. Like many other infrastructure providers in the telecommunications industry, our sales and margins were slipping in 2012 as we began to compete with regional and national providers like Amazon AWS, Bluelock, Expedient, Centurylink and Comcast. These 800 pound gorillas continue to dominate the market - making it difficult for a $20MM private company to compete.
2. We were an "IT Services" company (Too Generic & No Brand Identity)
3. "We do that" (Anything for a buck & No unique Value Proposition)
4. "We have that" (No Overarching strategy for Product Development)
5. Abysmal Web and print. No Social presence (Difficult to buy & Difficult to Sell)
6. New sales lead origination was primarily based on the relationships of our CEO.

THE goal

We needed an "Easy" button. Our services needed to be "easy to buy" and "easy to sell". No easy task if we were to avoid further commoditization. 

• Build brand trust and value that extends beyond our CEO's reputation
• Develop a strong story that can be consistently woven into brand touchpoints
• Create better awareness of LightBound's product offerings and capabilities
• Reposition LightBound as a premiere and premium brand
• Demonstrate strength, scale, security, experience, and speed

the initiatives

1. Brand identity: Build the brand based on Local, Hometown, Trusted, Who's Who customer base
2. Content & Messaging: New Website/Print - with focus on brand identity and specific product solution categories
3. Evangelize the brand in advertising, Web, Print, Social, and Events

the process

My contributions and original ideas

My specific contribution was the concept of "Your IP Foundation", an identifiable and unique tagline for LightBound. Something that the buyer would identify LightBound as a provider of IT Services that tells an overarching story of who we are and what we provide. Since virtually all telecommunications services are based in Internet Protocol (IP), and our services are "foundational" to a company's business, I coined the term "IP Foundation". In order to make it personal, I added "Your". Unlike other service providers and competitors who focus on bundling and price, this positions LightBound as a premium service provider in an industry with eroding margins and comoditization. The IP Foundation then becomes an underlying theme for all our services and incorporates our 24x7x365 Network Operations Center (NOC), which is also a value added part of all our services. Like other tech providers, we have the color thing going on, so it's not completely original. I'll give you that.

2.) product re-brand

The Product Re-Brand efforts ran concurrently with the Corporate Re-Brand, and we enlisted the services of Innovate Map, a local start-up. The overall product re-brand strategy was to identify each major product category by color and a descriptive adjective to help differentiate our services. So, we ended up with 5 categories: Core Datacenters, Local Cloud, Choice Network, Advanced Internet, and Integrated Voice. The adjectives that we chose were critical to our value proposition. "Core" (the datacenter is core to your business), "Local" (you know where your data lives), "Choice" (unlike other providers, you choose), "Advanced" (it's more than just Internet, it's 10 carriers configured for High Availability), "Integrated" (we integrate dial-tone, connectivity, and the PBX for a superior user experience).

As of 2017, I initiated a sub-product initiative to brand each service within the main categories as well. For example, within Integrated Voice, we now have Hosted PBX, Cloud Contact Center, and SIP Services. The plan is to create sub-products for each of the main categories as we develop and launch new products. This also makes SEO easier because Google can crawl the site faster. Like many tech companies, the colors associated with the various product categories helps the buyers identify with each category and more easily recognize other things that we do.

Advertising.Events.socials.branded merchandise

We advertise with the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana Pacers, Indy 500 and are sponsors of Techpoint, the Indiana non-profit for the advancement of technology initiatives in Indiana.

3.) management of external marketing partners

In August of 2016, I chose Torchlite as an ongoing marketing partner for content creation, editorial, newsletter, social, PR, and e-mail marketing (nurture campaigns and Lead Gen). Torchlite is headed by Scott McCorkle, former CEO of Exact Target, who was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2013 for $2.5B. The Torchlite team knows a thing or two about marketing, so a great opportunity for me to learn from the best marketers around.

The first task was to develop a blog. My goal was to create a blog that was unique and would allow me to test what prospective and current clients care most about. I needed to know if our prospects and customers wanted to read about strategy vs. jargon, the latest products & current events, or techies who wanted to read all the details and understand the acronyms.

So...I came up with The Headlines, The Scoop, and The Soup. The results were interesting. What I though clients would care most about is what I care about (the strategy without the jargon), but that wasn't the case. As you might guess, they cared mostly about the details (The Soup). Lessons I quickly learned is that I did not have a firm grasp of our ideal customer or ideal prospect (Persona). That would start to change as we aligned sales and marketing. In particular, as we started to implement Hubspot. I have authored or co-authored all of the blogs on our site the the help of a freelance editorial team recruited by Torchlite.

4.) website re-development

Taking a step back in time for a minute...

The initial Website development and Brand identity was established in 2014/2015 and represented what I call "First Base", meaning that we had a website and prospects/customers could see all the services we offer, our value prop, and some of the clients we provide services to...but that's all the site did for us. We had no  blog, content, call to action and no social presence to drive traffic back to our site. No real way to market to prospects and originate leads.

More importantly, we had no control of the Website because our branding partner had hired an external developer so we could not add content/pages quickly or easily.

So, it was time for Website Redevelopment, or what I like to call "Second Base". I Hired external web developer through upwork.com to port the Craft CMS site to WordPress. Knowing that we had internal resources who knew WordPress as well as some internal creative resources who could re-purpose our creative assets, WordPress became the platform of choice. The project came in on-time and on budget at the negotiated price of $3,500! 

the problem

1. Speed to market for new products - Changes to the Craft CMS took to long and were very costly (because our branding partner had control, and they were outsourcing the development to a third party programmer). 
2. No measurable ROI - Minimal tracking, reporting, and analytics
3. Lead Generation and Lead Origination - We were not targeting the right demographics and contacts for 1:1 marketing and nurturing

THE goal

The overarching goal for re-development was to to gain control of the content, pages, and call to action forms to increase inbound lead generation.  

The Results

I'm quite proud of the results and, if I may say, quite simply some of the best marketing for a $20M tech company that I've seen. I was able to accomplish all this with NO staff. I led the effort and hired some freelancers, but the site and brand extension represents Dane Dittemore.

5.) Development of Sales Collateral

Phase 1 of sales collateral was very basic so we could get started, but after the first year, I took the collateral to the next level and standardized the templates with more and better interactive content. 

6.) Testimonial Videos

This one was 100% my effort. The testimonial videos were shot, edited and posted by me with NO budget and no direction. I used my own iPhone7, shot the video in 4k, scheduled the interview, developed the interview questions, did the interview, edited the video using Adobe Premiere (which I learned on my own time), rendered the video, created a YouTube account, posted on YouTube, and posted on our Website. 

7.) Budgeting

8.) All things social