When it came to the Høstfest’s new website, they knew what they wanted: A site that reflected the Høstfest experience while providing potential festival goers with all the information that they’d need. As such, the chief aspects of the redesign were as follows:

Design: We needed to give last year’s website an update. As Høstfest looks to invite a younger audience, we needed to show them what the festival is really about. This new look will be carried through in all of Høstfest’s pieces this year, including the online on-sale campaign that is currently happening and will go through the end of May. We did this through pictures of the festival, graphics and colors.

Showcasing Facets of the Festival: Høstfest is so much more than concerts and lefse; they honor the heritage, provide education to the youth, have a fine dining restaurant and on and on. That may not be known by most, but by breaking up the navigation so that it is more user-friendly, people will see more of all that the festival has to offer.

Functionality: Many of the forms once only available through snail mail are now accessible for people to fill out and submit on the site. We also will be adding a scheduling feature that will allow festival goers to plan their day in advance so they don’t miss out on the stages, shows, and features that are happening each day of the festival. We expect to launch this in September, when the schedule is more finalized.

Social Media: We are tying their social media into the site as well, which will give visitors more real time updates. We have also tied this into the e-newsletter template that we’ve created for Høstfest.

Ease of Admin: The old Høstfest website wasn’t as user-friendly, so this year we wanted to give Høstfest a site that they could edit at will, with minimal technical support. This is now happening – they are updating daily without having to run content and changes through us first.

En To Tre: The En To Tre fine dining experience is such a major component of each year’s Høstfest that we wanted to showcase this part of the festival with its own look. Visitors will be able to look at menus in advance, see chef profiles and make reservations. This is Scandinavian dining at its finest and it needed a look and functionality to match.

The overall package makes for a website that is almost as exciting to visit as your actual trip to Norsk Høstfest. Check it out now at www.hostfest.com. The 35th Jubileum celebration is just getting started. Visit the new Høstfest website often for updates as the festival draws nearer.

ECHO Bear Cat, the parent company of longtime KK BOLD client Crary Industries, recently came to KK BOLD looking to give their website at www.bearcatproducts.com a substantial upgrade. What ECHO Bear Cat wanted in their website was a place where their customers could find all of the information they needed for the sales process, from research to point of sale, online. They wanted a site that was the equivalent of their informational brochures, with all of the specs and information on all of their products, where potential customers could go and have all of their questions answered before making their purchase.

We gave ECHO Bear Cat exactly what they asked for in their website. The new site is jam-packed with information on all Bear Cat products, from wood chippers to trimmers to PTO machines to log splitters. The site has its own Buy Guide feature, linked right from the homepage, where customers can choose their equipment and get answers to their qualifying questions. We also set up the site to be easily self-administered by the Bearcat staff, so that they can edit or add pages whenever needed. Finally, we also gave the site a dynamic design, one of two excellent options that we presented to Bear Cat to choose from. You can see for yourself by visiting the site just how visually-pleasing the end product is.

The good folks at ECHO Bear Cat were extraordinarily pleased with the work we did on their new website. “The level of functionality on the new site is exceptional,” says Kurt Kainz, Marketing Manager. “With all of the levels of access and information provided for our customers, buying an ECHO Bear Cat product has never been so easy.”

So if your yard or worksite needs the best in outdoor power equipment, check out www.bearcatproducts.com for all the information to make the right decision. It’s a website befitting the quality, dependability and craftsmanship of the ECHO Bear Cat brand.

1. Actually review it.  Time is the biggest factor in not paying closer attention to the things happening away from the cash register, but just like anything else in the day-to-day business world, understanding the “why” is important. Take a look at your email open rates, website analytics, social media insights and rewards club sign-ups to begin understanding more completely where marketing dollars need to be allocated.

2. Drill it down. Segment it by region and frequent users, then take it one step further and match it to gender and actual sales that this group of customers generates. These classifications give an objective way to boil down the ocean of information to find out which marketing efforts are adding value and which need to be adjusted.

3. Combine online analytics with sales data. What activities actually translate into revenue?  Are the users who spend more than four minutes on your site from the next town more likely to book lodging, entertainment and a pre-paid meal? Do the entry and exit pages tell you something else about your product and end consumer?  What is the conversion rate? How many pages does the average user view before exiting or making a purchase? This simply tells you if the information is easy to find or if messaging is consistent throughout the site.  Tracking these kinds of indicators over a period of time points to where optimizing is needed.

4. Define a communication plan. Based on what the data shows about the most profitable segment of customers, decide which communications approach is going to benefit the bottom line.

5. Make conclusions. After the dust settles, make the data do more. Consider which of the segments needs to be reactivated to drive sales? Which messages are meeting the mark? Which segments offer the most opportunity?

Don’t let these pieces of helpful insights lay around the office for another day. Data can do more, so let it!

One thing remains constant in the Facebook world: Change is happening quickly. Here are five reasons why page administrators and marketing management should enjoy the most recent changes.

1. More Control, Less Mess

Utilize the message option for your community to be in direct contact.

• Some pages, due to their community importance, have been forced to discontinue the user’s ability to post on their page’s wall because of the high number of comments. Pages that were meant to be social spaces were made messy and unreadable. Now, the ‘comment container’ houses the most recent comments for the public to see, as well as a see-all option to scroll through the history.
• The timeline now features a direct message option. It serves as a social extension of customer service or management departments and gives admin personnel a way to remain anonymous. This feature can be removed, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. The admin panel that launched with the new timeline for pages gives a snapshot of how the page is acting and reacting to its users. The admin panel highlights page notifications, new likes and messages since the admin’s last visit. Previously, a generic indicator flag sent admins on a proverbial goose chase to track the activity, creating more work while wasting time. This new feature makes it easy for page activity to be tracked and measured in real time.
• Administrators can hyper-manage their page by using the activity log. Page updates, user comments, photos and interactions are listed here in chronological order. One click allows a non-admin post to the page’s timeline, either highlighted or as a comment, to be hidden from the page or deleted from existence.

2. Socially Speaking

Friend's content about a brand will be featured here

• The timeline gives us the first look at how Facebook is revolutionizing the Internet into a smarter, more intuitive, semantic web. Let’s say your favorite brand was Harley-Davidson and you were visiting a Harley-Davidson page. Now not only do you see which of your Facebook friends are connected to the page, you also are served up a post or an update made by one of your friends about that specific brand. Facebook has begun populating pages with relevant posts made inside or away from the page. A recent link, social mention or conversation that included the brand’s name is prominently placed within the timeline. Using an application that connected your family members? Although Facebook hasn’t confirmed it yet, posts by a family member are presented more often.
• These changes have encouraged users to visit pages that had been generally neglected. On average, Facebook users like around 115 pages. That number nearly doubles within the 25-30 age category due to their five or more years of social activity. With the new timeline pages, each visit to a page is essentially a new social experience.
• Since the timeline for pages rolled out in early March, pages have seen an increase in engagement. The combination of the face-mash and recent posts about a brand have spurred both on-and off-page interaction, hitting on the list of reasons to ‘like’ this improvement.

3. Visually Appealing

Make a post more prominent with the highlight option.

• The new design changes have introduced the cover. This can’t-miss image comes with its own set of guidelines, but allows for a first impression that can either go well or the opposite direction. This billboard-like image should give users a taste of the brand free of a desperate marketing message. The old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” rings true here.
• If you are currently using custom applications, you have dealt with the various changes in this arena already. Facebook has expanded the width of apps from 515 pixels to 810 pixels, and everybody likes more space.
• Facebook pages are a space to tell the story of your brand, feature your company culture and have a little fun with your audience. An additional feature that sets up timeline to be more visually appealing is the ability to highlight an update. The highlighted update spans both columns of the timeline within its respective date. Take advantage of this attention-grabbing option and create content that garners your audience’s approval.
• Historical preservation is not just for encyclopedias anymore. Facebook pages now have the opportunity to tell their story with milestones much like personal timelines. Major breakthroughs, important company accomplishments or significant dates make for interesting content for readers. Keep in mind that milestones are not meant to be created for every new hire or product created, unless of course there has been five years since the previous one.
• Although it isn’t directly connected with the timeline rollover, users can also now make any picture posted on Facebook into a full screen image. Images are still limited to their original size before Facebook’s automatic truncation when seen in their timeline or newsfeed. The expansion takes an image to its largest capacity, so there’s no need to have unreadable text!

4. Strategy More Important Than Ever

Pin important posts.

• If you’re not already implementing a social media strategy, take some time to plan one to manage your content, integrate multiple campaigns and keep the team on track. The ability to pin an update to the top of your timeline is now available. Previously, updates would be pushed down the page in chronological order. On active pages, posts would be archived after just a few days, thus requiring recycling content to keep important information at the top of the page. Now, important updates can be placed as the first post for up to seven days.
• One of the changes timeline presents is the discontinuation of fan-gating. Fan-gating refers to an application that met new page visitors with specific content, generally insisting that a user should “Like” the page in order for exclusive content to be revealed. Automatic fan-gating was replaced with specific urls for applications. So, when you’re using Facebook as your page be sure to utilize those specific URLs to drive traffic and your message.

5. Need a Name Change?

Page name changes can now be requested.

• The name of your page is important because of the search component. Although it has nothing to do with the timeline, the page name has everything to do with the end-user. Pages with less than 100 likes are able to make changes to their page name with little more than a click of a button. Pages with more than 100 likes can now make a request to change a page name. Keep in mind that this is not just the vanity URL, It is also the way your page will turn up in search results and how it appears on your newsfeed.

With these changes bring new opportunities to create experiences for your audience. Be sure to try them out and see which work within your strategy and which do not.

Take social media head on with a team of content, web development and design experts to back you up. The bold social media approach is complete and gets noticed. More questions about the new Timeline for pages? Tweet @boldstephanie.

KK BOLD president LaRoy Kingsley and account services director Stephanie Schoenrock attended the 2012 National Indian Gaming Association Trade Show and Convention in San Diego, from April 1 to 4. Steph and LaRoy represented KK BOLD amongst thousands of other attendees, including our friends at Prairie Knights Casino and Resort, Grand River Casino and Resort and Nisqually Red Wind Casino.

The NIGA conference is an annual 4-day gathering of more than 500 exhibitors and over 5,000 attendees, representing more than 200 Indian tribes from 49 states, six countries and seven Canadian provinces. NIGA attendees include Tribal leaders, council members, Indian Gaming commissioners and regulators, and staff and facility members of Indian casinos and their representatives nationwide. As the only Trade Show & Convention created by the National Indian Gaming Association, the convention occupies a special niche in the gaming market.

KK BOLD has attended the NIGA conference for many years running now. Our reasoning for attending is to spend time for our Indian Gaming clients, to attend seminars and trade shows, meet vendors, keep up on industry trends and to maintain our position as a leader in the Indian Gaming market. We meet new people, see some old friends, make some good contacts and introduce our business to a wide array of individuals and businesses.

Congratulations to the National Indian Gaming Association for another great show this year, with attendance up and an outstanding presentation as always. We look forward to being in attendance at next year’s NIGA Convention & Trade Show, and to continuing to be a part of a yearly gathering of the best and brightest in an industry we love to be involved with.

The Minot CVB needed a new website that was more user friendly for web users. Visitors to the site needed quicker access to important information, such as hotel availability and events in Minot. We helped to implement several new features on the site, such as:

Geo-targeted content – The Visit Minot website is customized to display different information depending on the location of the visitor to the site. For instance, Canadian visitors would get a slightly different experience than a visitor from Fargo.

Mobile version – With the proliferation of smartphone usage in the present, it was important to provide a version of the Visit Minot website that was more easily accessible on mobile devices. The website now has an accompanying mobile-friendly version for enhanced readability on a small screen.

Enhanced Content Management System – The staff of the Minot CVB can now more readily and easily manipulate content on the site than they could in the past.

MyMap – The site now allows visitors to create a Google Map-based itinerary and save it for later or print it out.

A lot of work has gone into the creation of the new Visit Minot website, and the final website really speaks for itself. Whether you’re a resident of Minot or a prospective visitor, check it out at visitminot.org and we think you’ll agree.The new website is now live and appearing on a screen near you.

In the bold world of agency life, I wear a lot of different hats on any given day. From the worst (hard drive crashes, networking snafus, that sort of thing) to the best (client meetings, networking socials, that sort of thing), there are things I’ve learned from a variety of fictional characters. These are a few.

Montgomery “Scotty” Scott

Occupation: Chief Engineer, USS Enterprise, United Federation of Planets

Trait to Emulate: Under-promise and over-deliver

Scotty is the master of making the impossible happen. When the Captain says he needs something in three hours, Scotty often informs him it will take something more along the lines of three days. In the end, though, the script is on the Captain’s side and Scotty once again earns his (other) nickname: “Miracle Worker.”

While the benefits of being the hero who came through in the clutch are obvious, keep in mind that this trait is dangerous to over-emulate. If you repeatedly tell a client that they have unrealistic expectations on a timeline and then manage to meet those unrealistic expectations, eventually they (like Captain Kirk) will come to assume that when you say “it can’t be done” you are simply blowing smoke and trying to make yourself look good when you come through yet again.

Angus MacGyver

Occupation: “Troubleshooter” for the Phoenix Foundation

Trait to Emulate: Fixing problems with what you have on hand

MacGyver is so famous for his ability to fix things with simple household objects that his name has become a verb, ex. “I MacGyvered my sandal with one of those bread-clip things. Works great again.”

Anyone who has dealt with IT budgeting is familiar with the need to work with what you have on hand. Cobbling together a working laptop for a seldom-used conference room deployment out of the spare parts of three older machines which had various mechanical failures, that sort of thing.

James Bond

Occupation: Royal Navy Commander, Secret Service Agent Codename 007

Trait to Emulate: Adaptability and grace in various settings

When you think James Bond, there are a lot of things that come to mind. Gadgets, perhaps. An English accent, of course. Beautiful women, dangerous men, guns, explosions, the list goes on and on. But one thing to note is what doesn’t change, no matter what sort of trouble Bond has gotten himself into – his ability to adapt to the situation and remain relatively cool and collected.

Now of course, even as bold as our agency is, I rarely find myself across a poker table from a man with a bleeding eyeball and sinister henchmen (though the guys in the A/V department are close). But I do find myself needing to switch gears quickly and remain calm, even when others around me might be in panic-mode. One morning I might be restoring important documents for a visually distraught co-worker, yet that afternoon it is time to don the suit and tie and start talking with potential (and existing) clients at a social.

Dana Scully

Occupation: Special Agent with the FBI

Trait to Emulate: Healthy skepticism

Dana Scully is, for the first several seasons of the X-Files, the unbeliever. Every weird thing that happens to her and her partner must have a plausible explanation, or so she believes. Often she’s right. Sometimes the ending of an episode is left inconclusive. However, toward the end of the series’ run, she is convinced. She has seen too much to remain skeptical, and once everything else has been ruled out, what remains, no matter how illogical, must be the truth.

Healthy skepticism in the agency world is a must, these days. If we jumped at every new thing coming down the road and suggested it to our clients, we’d look pretty foolish. Once something has proven itself, however, we need to be knowledgeable about it and quick to get our clients up to speed so they can make use of it. Let’s take Google+ as an example. Right now the general consensus is that Google+ has a relatively limited following. It had huge growth when it first went public, but now people equate posting something on Google+ to making a speech to a huge room with 1 person in it.

That doesn’t mean things will stay that way. Change happens fast on the web, and today’s Facebook could be tomorrows Friendster. That’s why we call it “healthy” skepticism. I’ll believe it when I see it isn’t a bad stance to take on something like Google+ becoming the de facto social media outlet.

Kalvin Kingsley is the operations director for KK BOLD. He doesn’t actually wear a lot of hats, rarely even wearing one during a given work day. He says they might mess up his faux hawk. He’s also the only person on staff who knew that MacGyver’s first name was Angus.

Souris Valley Long-Term Assistance works as a representative for the people of Minot who currently lack the means to assist themselves in Minot’s rebuilding efforts. There are currently 780 homes in the Minot area with families that are single parents, elderly, or are in other ways unable to get back on their feet by themselves. The group has so far raised almost $4 million to pay for home building supplies and labor.

With the money they raise, the Souris Valley Long-Term Assistance will pay for skilled labor to come to Minot from across the country to help get homes “sanitary, safe, and secure.” This won’t necessarily mean rebuilding homes from top to bottom, but they hope to get homes in a state where at least people can return to their homes, whether that’s providing one bedroom, a toilet, a sink, a bath or a kitchen. Every little bit helps towards the overall effort.

The Souris Valley Long-Term Recovery committee came to KK BOLD and asked us to provide them with logos, so that they would have a unified look to represent their organization. The logos we designed for them were intended to visually reflect each agency by the good works that they are doing.

Each individual logo is connected by the common theme of the image of a rising sun, meant to represent the rising of a new day in the Minot area. Thanks to groups like Souris Valley Long-Term Recovery, we all hope to see that new day begin for all affected families. KK BOLD remains committed in assisting Minot to rebuild with this effort an in any future efforts to come.

Here’s the cliff notes. Google represents buyers from across the globe up to three billion times a day, the number of times that search queries are registered using a Google search engine.  Google’s method of understanding their consumer say that when you’re hungry, the closest sandwich is the best sandwich and when you’re on the go, a shortcut is helpful. Delivering the right content at the right moment is why digital advertising is so powerful.

The advantages of digital marketing start with control. Sure, an advertiser has always had control over where the billboard is located, the print ad is placed or which radio or television station airs the message. Digital’s capabilities expand past space and enter into time. The digital advertisement for the product or service is matched with the needs of the consumer, based on their digital body language, and is positioned to be at the right place at the right time. Information is served when it’s desired and easy one-click buys with visible purchase characteristics are the result.

Digital advertising is versatile without being volatile. Online impressions, clicks and web data are all highly measurable. Therefore, they lend themselves to be highly criticized. The data, though, allows quick changes mid-campaign and, more often than not, changes are able to be made. Online campaigns that aren’t performing can be adapted to intercept a new trend and respond to information. No longer do we rely on estimated numbers of viewers, general traffic counts and a percentage of the market’s viewers to decide whether or not consumers are being reached.

Take advantage of the online environment and reap the results. No longer does a rural business need a six-figure budget to reach a regional consumer. Instead, launch a unique online campaign with interactive banners and highly targeted messages and your consumer will find your product or service at the corner of place and time.

Clay walked into our agency 15 years ago during a blizzard wearing a full-length leather trench coat, cowboy hat and a ponytail that reached nearly to his waist. He was applying for a creative copywriter position we had open and he wowed us with his wit, humor and his intuitive understanding of advertising in the marketing mix. It didn’t take us long to realize that to take full advantage of Clay’s skills, we needed to have him leading our agency’s overall creative process and he became our first “official” Creative Director.

During the past 15 years, as KK BOLD has grown and expanded, we added an interactive division, online services and full in-house audio/video production capabilities, and Clay has been able to adapt, integrate and keep our creative product fresh and at the cutting edge of top-flight marketing standards. One of Clay’s best qualities, however, is something that our clients don’t get to experience on a regular basis, and that is his ability to make those around him even better. His attitude, commitment to excellence and understanding of what it takes to get the most out of people motivates his co-workers and makes for a fun and positive work environment.

Thanks, Clay. We look forward to many more years together.