The Bee Docs' Brand

As I have mentioned before, I have been working with graphic designers on an update of our logo, website, and marketing materials. As part of this effort, I have been working on defining and clarifying the Bee Documents brand.

By "brand" I mean the characteristics that make Bee Documents unique. What makes us different than Microsoft, Apple, OmniGroup, Delicious Monster, Panic, or anyone else? This is a marketing question because the marketing should communicate and reinforce the brand to customers who are learning about Bee Documents.

However besides marketing, the "brand" question is also important, even more important, for other reasons. It can serve as a guide for choosing new products to develop, employees to hire, features to prioritize, and more. A strong brand is not just about perception, but also about reality. For me, the "brand" serves as a goal and guide, a representation of the way I want to do business as well as the way I want others to think of the company.

With that said, here are four pillars of the Bee Docs brand to which I gave a lot of thought and presented to the design team working on the new logo:

HUMAN TOUCH

First and foremost, I want Bee Documents to be about people. The people who use the products, the people that make the products, students, teachers, artists, film makers, professionals, parents, writers... The list goes on and on.

Sending out hand written thank you notes is an example of an effort to make a human connection to customers. The new website will feature customers and their work as much as our product. We'll continue to seek out ways of bringing humanity, human relationships, and human contact to the center of our brand.

Not enough software companies focus on people (I include my own in this criticism). I do have to give a shout out to Plasq though who gets this more than anyone else I've seen. Their customers are featured all over their website. Their team has also been very thoughtful and encouraging in communicating with me personally, even before I won any awards etc... Props to Plasq. Patagonia and U2 have also been inspirational for me in this regard.

NATURE INSPIRED

I believe nature contains the very best examples of design both in form and function. So many tech companies look to other tech companies for inspiration and it shows in their products and marketing. I hope to look to nature for inspiration and I want people to feel that connection when they use our products or encounter our marketing.

ARTISAN

What I mean by "artisan" is products that reflect the designers point of view, a distinct character, and a connection to a specific culture. In other words, the opposite of generic or anonymous. Artisan products don't seek to please everyone but they are made and consumed with passion. To me artisan also implies a relationship between producer and consumer (see Human Touch).

CINEMATIC

Apple has been encouraging developers to be "Cinematic." This is a challenge that I embrace. Not only do I want our marketing and products to be cinematic, I also want to enable our customers to be cinematic using our products. To me, cinematic means excitement, motion, sound, storytelling, and expression in a highly visual medium.

So those are big goals! I believe our work so far has reflected these characteristics but that it will be a continuous journey to reflect them even stronger. Some of these characteristics have been part of my brand thinking since the beginning in 2002 ("Nature Inspired"), some are newer ("Cinematic"). I'm sure the brand will continue to evolve as we learn and as we grow.

Marketing Bee Documents - Getting the word out

I wrote earlier about how we track the success of our marketing efforts. I wanted to list some of the marketing techniques we have tried and give some comments.

"Traditional" Marketing

• Phone Sales - Early on we hired a local phone sales company to ask lawyers some survey questions. This cost a few thousand dollars and we didn't get one person to talk to us. I won't be doing that again!
  
  
• Direct Mail - We had some Bee Docs postcards printed up. I can customize the content and I usually send the postcards our to targeted clients when we release a new product or in coordination with other marketing efforts.
  
  
• Print Ads - We've ran some print ads in the local bar association journal. Though these ads don't often turn into immediate sales, I believe that it helps people trust you when they have seen your name in their trade journal. It seems to be that local association newsletters are a better value than the big national publications.
  
  
• Web Advertising - The Google Adwords program has resulted in a handful of new customers. As far as "traditional marketing" goes, this has been the most productive media. It takes time to get everything tweaked so that these ads are effective though.
  
  
• Trade Shows - It is fun to set up a cool display and meet potential customers in the flesh. At this point, I have only done local association trade shows, but it would be fun to do a Mac World or something like that in the future. It certainly isn't a cheap way to advertise though.
  
  

Press Releases

The Mac sites and Law Technology News have been great about publishing my press releases. I always get a large number of hits when they mention me in their publications. Press Releases are definitely a priority every time we do something new.

Free Software

I have been doing a cost comparison between the cost of traffic from web ads and the cost of developing free software that also generates web traffic. It turns out that I can sometimes whip out a program in a few days that will generate web traffic for months to come. It's a pretty good marketing technique that fits my expertise. You always want people to get warm fuzzies every time they hear your name, and giving away free stuff is always helpful to that end.

Community Participation

For Bee Docs' Timeline we tried something new. Instead of keeping everything secret until the product was ready to launch, I released a beta version about once a week and had people sign up on a mailing list to be informed of the releases and provide feedback. I was surprised at the amount of people who signed up and the great feedback that I received. This blog takes things one step further. Getting the user community involved in the creation of products has really been fun, has generated lots of traffic, and helps increase the number of times people mention Bee Documents in their blogs.

In the coming weeks, we will use the blog to announce a new product that is in development and will be posting updates and our design ideas so that folks like you can follow along and participate in the creative process. Stay tuned!