DAYTA Marketing. Agency Vista

Jan 10, 2023

Introducing the New Dayta

It seems introductions are in order: We are proud to announce the launch of our new brand name and branding elements. As of January 2, 2023, we are officially Dayta , your trusted fractional marketing team. After over a decade of evolving to meet the demands of the ever-changing marketplace, Dayta now offers much more than digital marketing solutions. The decision to transition from “DAYTA Marketing” to the more streamlined “Dayta” was informed by this substantial growth as a brand, and reflects the company’s positioning at the intersection of marketing and consulting. “Dropping ‘Marketing’ from the name provides a much cleaner look,” said Dayta CEO Gordy Meyer. “It allows us to expand our consulting services beyond marketing and into sales.” A new name also provided a welcome opportunity to update Dayta’s visual branding elements. A redesign was long overdue; Dayta’s previous logo had remained largely unchanged in the 10 years since our inception. A new logo was developed to both reflect the change in name and better represent the modern, approachable Dayta of today. A diverse group of Dayta team members and leadership contributed to the discovery and design of the new logo and brand color palette. Senior Design Specialist Kelly Imholte described the group’s intention to echo the previous logomark to some degree while developing the new design. “I wanted to bring the yellow ‘sun’ circle into the new branding, both as a callback to the previous logomark and as an illustration of the bright and positive ‘It's Possible’ motto that our team exemplifies,” he said. Out with the old, in with the new: Dayta’s new logo incorporates elements from the original while establishing a fresh sense of character . In addition to the inclusion of the “Dayta sun” as a visual element, it was determined early on in the discovery process that the new logo should, like its predecessor, be text-based. The team worked together to develop a custom typeface that conveys our unique brand voice and approach to business. “Kelly and I both had very similar custom typeface designs, which were merged and refined to create the final logo,” said Senior Design Specialist Shane Fertig. The final typeface includes rounded letterforms to complement the circular shape of the Dayta sun and to “give the logo a friendly appearance,” according to Fertig. For scalability, a corresponding icon mark — a simple yet striking lowercase “d” with the Dayta sun — was developed to represent these core characteristics in a more compact package. Dayta’s brand colors were also updated to provide more flexibility and variety in design applications. Even our signature yellow shade was tweaked slightly, according to Fertig. “I selected a slightly darker shade of yellow reminiscent of the (previous) branding color to maintain some continuity while still allowing for visual distinction,” he said. “This darker, athletic-gold-inspired yellow was also chosen for its versatility in design.” Bright, distinct new colors were added to expand Dayta’s secondary palette: Day Off, a balanced blue-green, Clear Skies, a brilliant light blue, and Sunset, a bold brick orange rooted in red and Dayta yellow. The palette’s neutral shades include a true black, warmer black, and warm grays. Viewers of our website and social media can expect to see further implementation of the new branding as 2023 continues. Our website has already transitioned to its new, truncated address, www.dayta.com , and sports the updated logo and icon mark. Clients will note that their Pod members’ email addresses have also been updated to reflect the new domain name. On behalf of everyone at Dayta, we’d like to thank you for your trust in our team and capabilities, and for supporting this energizing new chapter in our company history. We look forward to continuing to deliver the enterprise-level fractional marketing services and consulting that have made Dayta what it is today Interested in rebranding your own business or organization? Dayta delivers! Click here to read a recent rebranding case study by the Dayta marketing experts, then request your free 90-minute marketing assessment .

Dec 30, 2022

DAYTA Q&A: Why Training Matters for Marketers

There’s more to assembling a successful marketing team than recruiting all the best and brightest talent, Avengers-style. How can you as an employer ensure your employees’ long-term satisfaction with their roles? Continued professional education and training is critical to the success and cohesion of your team. We talked with DAYTA’s own Alison Zetah, our Instructional Designer and Learning Facilitator, to dive deeper into her role—the first of its kind for the company—and the significance of training in creating and strengthening marketing teams in the digital age. Hi, Alison! Tell us about your role at DAYTA. What does a day in your life look like in your position? My position is new at DAYTA, and my official title is Instructional Designer and Learning Facilitator. In a nutshell, this means I organize and create education or training materials for staff. My day-to-day covers a wide range of responsibilities including organizing onboarding training for new staff or transfers, developing training manuals, implementing our new learning management system, gathering staff feedback and trying new processes to better support them in their role. I try to create a solid foundation of learning for staff from which they can grow and be successful. While this is my first position as an Instructional Designer, I have always worked in education in some capacity, including a K-12 school and even higher education. After receiving my undergraduate degree in Communication from the College of St. Benedict, I spent a few years working and traveling abroad before returning to school and receiving my M.Ed. in Education Technology. I knew I loved adult education and, in particular, using technology to improve learning outcomes. I worked for two and a half years as an E-learning specialist at Centracare before pursuing my current position at DAYTA, which I was interested in because of the opportunity to work more directly with staff. Why were you excited to take on this role at DAYTA? What opportunities for team growth or continued development did you see? Not only did I see the opportunity for my own professional growth at DAYTA, I was thoroughly impressed by the sheer talent of the staff that make up this company. Their experiences, stories and abilities continue to wow me nearly a year into this position. Additionally, the fact that leadership had created this position for a company as small as DAYTA was unusual, and I find that to be very telling of the kind of company DAYTA is — a small but innovative company committed to supporting and improving the employee experience and, by extension, that of their clients. I knew then that I wanted to be part of this group. One of the first opportunities for growth I saw at DAYTA was something I am sure other other businesses can relate to: Remote work and its challenges, including feelings of isolation amongst members of different teams or departments, which can lead to potential miscommunication amongst the staff. This is especially difficult for new employees who don’t have the same opportunities to build relationships outside of virtual meetings. One interesting aspect of my role was re-structuring our onboarding process to improve staff outcomes, and as part of that initiative, we implemented a program to encourage inter-departmental connections among new staff hired at DAYTA. We’ve gotten some great feedback and are hoping to continue expanding the program in the future. Why is training critical for a marketing team? The world of marketing is so varied and full of change that training is absolutely critical. Training and development at DAYTA is not new; in fact, leadership’s understanding of the importance of education is why my position was created in the first place! If you’re working with a team that isn’t staying up to date with trends, processes and technology, your company could be missing out on opportunities to strengthen and grow. In order to manage that overwhelming amount of information, your company needs to have a system in place to develop, store and present training effectively. Without such a system, you risk overwhelming and confusing your staff, leading to burn-out and dissatisfaction in their role. Staff who understand their role and have the resources needed to complete their work are going to be happier and more successful in their position. My goal is to make accessing those resources simpler and more intuitive in order to make us a more effective team. Tell us about DAYTA’s training efforts and how you are implementing them. What is the focus of our current training efforts? Why are those our current areas of focus? We know from research that the first 6 months at a new job are critical in helping staff determine if they will stay with a new company long term. DAYTA is focused on not only hiring talented and skilled employees, but also doing what we can to retain those staff once they are here. There are a number of initiatives our leadership team has created to make this happen, and my role is just one small part of that. Research indicates that an employees’ onboarding and training schedule in their first few weeks tends to leave a strong first impression of how the rest of the company is run. With that in mind, the bulk of our efforts in this last year have been focused on continuing to improve that experience. This has included soliciting staff feedback, developing an organized and intentional onboarding schedule for each role, initiating an informal mentorship program and, as mentioned before, facilitating cross-departmental relationships among newly hired staff. It’s important when implementing change that we do so with as much contextual information as possible. I couldn’t have accomplished half of this without staff being willing to share their experiences, ideas and examples of what has or hasn’t worked well in the past at DAYTA. Interested in DAYTA’s upcoming speaking engagements and events? Click here to learn more about our educational programming and access our exclusive presentations and resources! And don’t forget to subscribe to our DAYTA News email newsletter to be notified of upcoming events.

Oct 14, 2022

Your Employer Brand: The Make-or-Break Factor in Recruiting

Employer brand is your reputation in the job marketplace, and it can make or break your recruiting strategy. Candidates are the consumers and employers are the product. It’s your responsibility to “sell” candidates on your workplace and open positions, and your greatest asset is a strong employer brand.

Sep 29, 2022

The Need For Speed: How to Motivate More Efficient Customer Journeys

As marketers, we spend a lot of time ideating on customer journeys. Knowing how people choose your business—and acting strategically to make that choice as easy as possible—is critical to your success.

Jul 27, 2022

Solving Supply Chain Woes With Marketing

The disruption of manufacturing supply chains has emerged as one of the most impactful business challenges of the COVID era. As an overwhelming majority of manufacturers experience a surge in demand, many are making significant changes to their supply chains. According to Forbes , when asked about the methods they’re using to circumvent supply chain disruption, 71% of surveyed manufacturers are redesigning their supply chains with technology, 58% are increasing their supplier base, 55% are demanding more transparency from their suppliers, and 45% are re-shoring or near-shoring. But beyond the operational and supply chain optimizations necessary to survive upheaval, manufacturers in the COVID era must make tough decisions about where to focus their resources to mitigate risk and provide the best ROI. Prioritizing and conserving energies is especially crucial for smaller manufacturers who do not benefit from the same sizeable supply chain functions and crisis-tested processes as a larger company. When resources are spread thin, marketing efforts are often the first to get the ax—but by making data-backed decisions on what market segments to focus on and which differentiators to highlight, manufacturers can actually leverage their marketing to help navigate their supply chain issues. The key is not redirecting your marketing spend to other pain points, but optimizing your marketing to provide the best possible ROI. Determining Your Highest-ROI Customers Start by evaluating and ranking your customers. While it’s good practice to treat every client equally from a customer service standpoint, when it comes to ROI, not all clients are of equal value to your business. Zeroing in on the clients who offer the best ROI will keep you from suffering from a lack of focus. After all, if you try to serve everyone under the sun, you’ll unavoidably waste time and energy on low-ROI or bad-fit clients and spend too little time on your high-ROI, good-fit clients. When determining which segments of your audience to focus on, ask yourself these questions: Which customer segments show the most lifetime value? Which customer segments are critical to sustaining your business? Which customer segments are critical to growing your business? Once you’ve identified these critical segments, look at where they overlap. What do those customers need? Those needs are going to provide you with the highest ROI—but which of those needs can you realistically fulfill at this time? Remember that the needs you can fulfill now may not be your primary product line, and may not offer a long-term solution. It’s at this point you’ll want to determine the labor or other resources needed to fulfill this customer segment’s needs—like specialized talent, additional sales representatives, and updated marketing messaging and campaigns—and source them. By focusing on satisfying this market segment’s needs, you’re making a worthwhile investment in the highest-ROI clients. Identify Your Strongest Differentiators Now it’s time to evaluate your competitive differentiation with regard to your highest-ROI customers and relevant offerings. Do you need to strengthen areas of differentiation? In most circumstances, cost is not an effective area of differentiation, so you’ll need to look elsewhere to find your strongest elements. Process is a valuable differentiator, particularly if your process is especially sensitive to the customer’s experience. Taking the time and resources to define your process visually on your website and in other marketing materials can help set customer expectations and increase their trust and confidence in your capabilities. Now is not the time to be precious about protecting the proprietary je ne sais quoi that makes your process unique—be upfront about your process and what it entails so customers understand what to expect. As humans and as customers, we want to feel heard, so highlighting your process’s collaborative approach can be effective positioning. You’ll want your marketing materials to visually communicate how your process reinforces that collaborative approach through discovery and ideation, being sure to center the customer experience throughout. If you offer custom manufacturing, show how your process starts with the client’s problem rather than selling them a predetermined solution. A reputation for being easy to work with can also be a valuable differentiator. Perhaps your process gives your team an advantage over competitors in terms of efficiency, timeliness or customer communication. Or, looking at your customer satisfaction performance metrics, you may find that you have an especially prompt response time, guaranteed call answers by an expert, or uniformly outstanding responses across different communication channels. Any of these stand-out qualities could be expanded into differentiators highlighted throughout your site, social media profiles, and other marketing materials. By positioning your strongest differentiators front and center, you’re making it easy for prospects to choose you with confidence. Align Your Business & Your Priorities Once you’ve determined your prioritized customer segments and offerings and layered on your competitive differentiators, it’s time to make the necessary changes and communicate with your team to align your organization around these priorities. Start by getting your sales and operations teams up to date, ensuring they’re on the same page and empowered to make decisions that support these new priorities. In your discussion with these teams, you’ll want to cover three core concepts: Process. Review your process and its strongest qualities. Talk about best practices re: when and how to walk customers through your process. Timelines. Particularly during times of supply chain disruption, it’s crucial to set accurate timeline expectations early. Does your sales team provide clients with transparent, realistic timelines for production? Capabilities. Give your sales team a refresher on your capabilities, ensuring they understand any limitations. Review any factors that increase complexity in both the short- and long-term. As you continue working to synchronize your organization, consider how your marketing and sales teams will support the new prioritization. Your differentiators will need to be integrated into your sales and marketing materials, but the messaging must go deeper than simply stating your offerings and your strengths. Refer back to your highest-ROI customer segment and your strongest differentiators. Your messaging will need to both resonate with your prioritized customer segment and focus on the advantages and benefits your differentiators give the customer—not just what the differentiators are. Once your messaging is updated, it needs to get in front of your customers and prospective customers. Consider how best to bring awareness to your existing customers about your ability to fulfill their needs: Is it a relationship play through your sales or customer service teams? Is it marketing-driven, or supported via email or other channels? Of course, you’re not only trying to reach your existing customers. You’ll also need to brainstorm ways of reaching new customers, particularly the ones in your prioritized customer segment. This may look like a referral play for your sales team to execute with your current partners and customers, or it may be an outbound sales play in which your team generates a list (using Zoominfo or another source) and then breaks it into territories for sales. If your sales play will need to adapt or evolve to more effectively meet the market, now is the time to make those changes with your team. Finally, determine how you will measure the success of your efforts and iterate. You’ll likely need to define some metrics or KPIs around this initiative to help you gauge success. Be realistic about the length of time necessary to accurately measure success, too—unrealistic expectations about overnight success could lead to abandoning an effort before it had the chance to pick up steam. One of the most critical components of successfully aligning your organization with your newly-defined priorities is communication with your team. Without clear communication to the organization at large around your plans—and their support of this new direction—your efforts will be less impactful than you’d hoped. Communicate early and often with your team to ensure they’re clear on the path forward and the reasoning behind the decisions. Framing the changes as an effort to defend your business and strengthen your position in the market will help to build support and excitement around your efforts. Determining What to De-Prioritize As a final note on priorities, it’s important to touch on the other side of the coin: De-prioritization. By definition, not everything can be a priority—if everything is prioritized, then nothing is. After you’ve determined your areas of priority as outlined above, consider what you will de-prioritize while these elements take precedence. Your organization and efforts will lose focus—and therefore efficiency and efficacy—if things are only ever moved up in importance, so take a good, hard look at what can be pushed to the back burner until the tumult has subsided and plan accordingly. While the current climate of supply chain issues may not last forever, your response to them will have a lasting impact on your manufacturing business. By prioritizing marketing efforts that focus on your highest-ROI customer segment and highlight your strongest differentiators, you can set realistic expectations for new and existing clients and grow your business—even in these turbulent times. Learn how DAYTA's fractional model can support your sales and marketing efforts.

Nov 18, 2021

DAYTA "Bites"

Gather 'round the table. We have a lot to be thankful for this year! As we head into the holiday season, we hope you are planning to enjoy plenty of fun, relaxation and delicious food. To share some of the joy of this season we gathered together some of the DAYTA team’s favorite recipes. THANK YOU and enjoy!

Sep 29, 2021

Web Design Tips for Orthopedic Surgeons

You know the orthopedic surgeons at your clinic are awesome — but does your clinic’s website communicate that to your current and potential patients? Great web design is critical in helping your practice reach prospective clients and turn them into clients for life.

Sep 23, 2021

Initiating Innovation: 4 ways to encourage out-of-the-box thinking

Innovation. Why bother? If your business is family-owned and operated or has a longstanding legacy in your industry and community, you may question the wisdom of investing time and money into innovation. But rest assured: Even the most steadfast, unchanging brand can benefit from innovation, whether in its products, services, internal processes or external branding.

Sep 16, 2021

PCI Case Study

“It is our responsibility to defend and grow our clients’ brand,” and with PCI, we did just that.

Sep 16, 2021

Adara Case Study

In the 3 months following the process change, Adara had 364 applications through the website. In the prior 3 months they had fewer than 10.

DAYTA Marketing

DAYTA Marketing

DAYTA Marketing Blog

Introducing the New Dayta

DAYTA Q&A: Why Training Matters for Marketers

Your Employer Brand: The Make-or-Break Factor in Recruiting

The Need For Speed: How to Motivate More Efficient Customer Journeys

Solving Supply Chain Woes With Marketing

DAYTA "Bites"

Web Design Tips for Orthopedic Surgeons

Initiating Innovation: 4 ways to encourage out-of-the-box thinking

PCI Case Study

Adara Case Study