How to improve company culture: Start with an evaluation of the one you already have.
The culture of an organization is foundational to its success. The benefits of a healthy, high performing and tightly aligned internal culture are invaluable. Employees are more engaged. Performance is improved. Productivity is higher. The company grows. Revenue increases. Everyone is happy. But how do you know if the values [...]
Building an effective survey Part 2: Psychological factors in refining your questions
In Part 1 of this two-part blog series, we looked at the basics of survey construction. In Part 2, we’ll take a more in-depth look at the psychological factors that can help you develop better questions. Psychological factors to consider With any kind of survey, it’s important to keep a [...]
Building an effective survey Part 1: Survey construction
If a brand overhaul or refresh is in the cards for your company, there is a lot to consider. At the top of your list should be the perceptions, preferences, and opinions of your customers and internal stakeholders. And the most effective way to gather this information is through an [...]
Empathy for the invested: creative and emotion
Something very exciting is happening at d.trio. Possibly one of the most interesting things that can happen to a designer or creative director inside their own creative or marketing agency. I can’t tell you what it is yet, and that’s hard for me. One of my myriad quirks is that [...]
A day in the life of a keyword
There are approximately 7,853,934 articles on the internet about SEO. (I actually have no idea how many there are… I just made that up.) I’m sure they’re all very helpful, to some degree or another, for understanding how SEO works. But I wanted to come at it from another angle—from [...]
7 Tips for Reaching Your Niche Audience
Do you make a product for a very specific purpose? Do you offer a service that solves a very specific problem? Congratulations! That should make your marketing a lot easier, and your success is almost guaranteed! Wait. What? You’ve still got a bunch of competitors? Your product or service is [...]
Confessions (and revelations) of an imperfect leader
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my career, which I’m guessing is a common affliction of people in their 40s. I spent the first years of my career as a production artist. So naturally, the first question that jumped into my head about most projects was “what are we [...]
Financial Services Survey and Engineering Jargon
Like all good marketers these days, we like to preach about the importance of creating content. Not just content for the sake of it, but ...
Marketing for Engineers: The 5 simple machines
As a marketer (eek) and a designer (even worse) who often works with engineers, I routinely discover a couple of things I believe to be true for that particular group of people. 1. They are pretty sure they are smarter than me, and 2. They believe that just because a [...]
Songs about marketing (and marketing songs)
Given the success of our blog post about songs that feature the word “18” (no, I’m not going to link to it, just Google “songs about 18”), I thought I would try to generate some interest that’s related to something we actually do. A prolonged internet search turned up a [...]