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Social MedIa Marketing Tools and Services for Small Businesses

Services
Social MedIa Tools and Services
Services - Social Media header
Services - Social Media header

Social media platforms connect brands with customers, increase awareness and boost leads and sales.

Half of the world's population is connected via social media. Tapping into this tremendous global audience provides the most efficient way to connect and engage with your potential customers. Telling your brand's story through the creation of human connections will increase brand awareness and ultimately grow your business exponentially.

Social Media on different devices
Social Media on different devices
Content & Development Strategy / Accounts Management

Tugboat Group develops engaging content for social media accounts based on our in-depth analytics of your target audiences. Key demographics determine how content is presented in a variety of social media channels. From standard image and video posts to giveaways, contests or multifaceted campaigns, Tugboat is your partner for managing and monitoring your social accounts.

Content development
Services - Social Media header
Creative Support & Tactics Management

Based on your social media content strategy, Tugboat provides the service of creating all necessary visual assets. Photography, infographics, videos - we have you covered. We connect you with brand ambassadors for quick promotions or long-term campaigns and we provide you with key performance metrics for your peace of mind. 

Reputation Management
Orange star background

Customers and prospects are increasingly verifying a businesses' online reputation and seeking for referrals on social media sites. We here at Tugboat know how online chatter and posted reviews are affecting your brand and ultimately your business' bottom line. To that extent, we make sure that your brand is always presented in the best possible light - from ensuring that correct information are displayed on relevant business listings sites to managing customer reviews. We make you a shinning social media star.

Reputation Management
Reputation Management
Reputation Management
In-depth Analytics & Online Business Toolkit

Tugboat has developed a set of applications to measure key performance indicators of your social presence. We provide you with all the necessary data to determine the success of your social channel activities or, if necessary, with the right tools to adjust your performance to gain greater relevance. And once you feel comfortable to manage your social media channels on your own, we can provide you with an online business toolkit to do just that.

Reputation management screens
Reputation management screens

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CSS Key
digital

Strategic Marketing and Fulfillment

Services
Strategic Marketing and Fulfillment
Marketing Strategy Header Banner
Marketing Strategy Header Banner

Marketing exists to serve your business' goals. We help you establish those goals and define the measures of their success.

Tugboat marketing plans contain the strategies and creative tactics necessary to communicate with your prospects and targets, and advance your brand and business. Tugboat plans can contain channels such as guerilla/stunt, advertising, promotions, sponsorship, grassroots, PR and media relations, advertising, web and social media, direct mail and e-mail, cross-promotions. We identify opportunities, exploit the threats, and connect you with your targets.

Brand Launch

With a new brand architecture and new brand identity created, it's time to pull the trigger on the marketing plan that informs those that need to know. Short and turn-key for execution in-house, or deep and far-reaching requiring agency support, we prepare a suite of recommendations and tactics that inform audiences as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Announcement Advertising

Rebrands, mergers & acquisitions or multi-branch internal announcements, creative messaging and graphic communications must be tailored for relevance with the audience segment. One message does not fit all.

Video Supported Product Launches

Lean on short format video to provide history and backstory for deep brand and product launches, with consistent creative across brand, product and promotion. (Click the play button above to see Bruce's book launch video.)

BMF iPhone
BMF iPad
Bruce Ellemo book
Cold Front Ad 1
Cold Front Ad 2
Endlesssky laptop
BMF iPad
Cold Front Ad
Endlesssky laptop

Inbound & Promotional Landing Pages

Present the promotion and focus the message with landing pages designed to communicate. More than a one way funnel to a CTA button, strategic landing pages omit distraction and amplify focus on areas and subjects that cannot be avoided.

Corporate Team Launch Events
Rx Networks Brand Launch Event background image

Assemble internal teams offsite for interactive and brand relevant collaborative exercises designed to strengthen camaraderie, build corporate culture, and drive creative thinking.

eMarketing

Despite privacy laws and regulatory headwinds, eMarketing strategy and eMarketing campaigns have grown more effective in recent years, and will continue to transform in the years to come. Well considered email marketing campaigns remain extremely effective in converting prospects into first time buyers, and first time buyers into brand advocates.

JRoss Recruiters E-newsletters
JRoss Recruiters E-newsletters - join us (purple)
JRoss Recruiters E-newsletters - headline (red)
JRoss Recruiters E-newsletters - headline (purple)
JRoss Recruiters E-newsletters
Experiential Marketing
Veggie background

Sell without selling. Brand experiences are designed to engage, not to convert. Participants may not remember your words, verbatim, but they will remember how you made them feel. Tugboat helps you to present your brand and products in new, interesting and memorable ways. We help you showcase them, celebrate them, and connect your guests with the sum of their intangible essence.

Exhibiting Experiences

When a visitor exits your trade show booth, what do you want them to feel? Think? Say? Do? This is the place we start in developing your trade show experience strategy. This is where we make sure that the brand position aligns with the experience to achieve the desired outcome.

Event Promotion

Marketing tactics and efforts for your event don't stop when the ribbon is cut. The website, newsletters, postcards, advertisements, co-op placement...all of it...comes together to fuel the event, and your next event. Always be closing.

Windset button
Windset card
Windset booth
ALP booth
red bell
Wine pairing
CPMA poster 1
CPMA poster 3
CPMA poster 2
NatureFresh booth
Golfing
Windset launch
red bell
CPMA poster
Golfing

Event Participation

Disruptive experiences at strategic events can connect brands and communication strategies with C-level decision makers that are challenging to engage.

Event Sponsorships
Bid to benefit background

Sponsorship and participation in events and fundraisers for brands and charities exposes your brand to a highly receptive audience. Gain new customers and reinforce connection with existing segments by supporting causes and charities that align with your brand values. 

Promotional Content
Oculus background

A great marketing strategy or idea is only as good as its execution. Contests can turn heads and build an audience, but only if the engagement is relevant. Endorsements, celebrity connection, and mass media broadcasts shine most brightly when pickup and organic value greatly outweigh cost. And short, targeted, social media experiences must catch attention and get shared.

Xibita Oculus Rift Giveaway
Windset Farms Trade Show Video Reels
Xibita Oculus Rift Giveaway
Windset Farms Trade Show Video Reels
Video Marketing

Services - Marketing Strategy - Associated Labels Video

 

Associated Labels

Take Your Product to the Next Level

Services - Marketing Strategy - BC Trucking Associated Video

 

BC Trucking Associated

2020: Planning Our Route

Customers and advocates crave connection and personality and, if given the opportunity, will choose to see and hear your from your brand in a meaningful context. Video is the best way to share with your audiences a real glimpse of your brand and business. It allows brands to communicate beyond product and sales, and connect viewers with emotional or otherwise intangible aspects of the brand.

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CSS Key
strategy

Website Design and Application Development for Small Businesses

Services
Website Design and Development
Web Design header image
Web Design header image

The modern website is a full digital experience, connecting more people to more functionality and more platforms.

laptop and tablet images
laptop and tablet images

Today, run your business from anywhere, anytime. Yesterday's website was a brochure that allowed people to buy from it. Today, everything is integrated and responsive. Social, e-commerce, e-marketing, custom applications, apps, video, user content, leverage tools, search relevance tools, CRM, text message broadcasting, loyalty programs, user dashboards: all at your fingertips.

Consultation / Research / Strategy Development

Tugboat Group web strategies involve a combination of online and offline research, including the identification of user groups, keyword strategy, planning and execution of interviews or workshops and the development of user case scenarios. The depth of web strategy development varies considerably, depending with the scale and scope of a project, but thoughtful and considered early consultation is an important component to Tugboat web projects.

Content Strategy + Information Architecture

Based on the above and in collaboration with key stakeholders, a Tugboat senior web strategist develops a thorough site information architecture, site map and wireframe to be used by the site and/or application designers and developers. These elements will also be used to develop a content migration and integration plan with the client content manager. Concurrently, content types and styles will be defined.

User Experience + Visual Design

Creative concepts are developed for the overall look and feel of the site, as well as detailed comps for the homepage, landing pages and template content pages. These are two-dimensional, non-functioning (non-clickable) images illustrating layout, content hierarchy and user interface design for both static and dynamic content types. It is essential that all designs be extensible, allowing for site growth in the short, medium, and long-term, and that they be accessible and fully responsive across mobile devices, using web standards to meet established accessibility guidelines. Once approved, these illustrative composites are developed in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for application to the site.

Custom solutions
Truepoint.io
Location.io
Drupal screenshot
Content Integration + SEO Best Practices
Inuksuk image

The Tugboat Group development team works with client content manager(s) to develop a content development / integration / migration plan, beginning with the migration of all existing content slated for a new website. Tugboat filters, edits and writes content that hits the right combinations of key words for maximum optimization by search engines without sounding like it was written by a robot. Count on this Vancouver, BC, Canada, marketing, creative web and graphic design branding, packaging and trade show agency to NOT go overboard on stuffing irrelevant product and services keywords into a client's website copy.

Quality Assurance, Training + Support

QA is woven through all stages of a web project to iteratively build, test and refine features in conjunction with user feedback and testing results. Adherence to strict testing protocols is always maintained. Levels of documentation for established user types such as site administrators, content creators, and managers are published both within the website itself and as a document for easy access. Post-deployment, relax. We provide support services, including bug fixes, ongoing site upgrades and feature development.

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CSS Key
web

Creative Strategy and Brand Design for Small Businesses

Services
Creative Strategy and Brand Design
Creative + Design Header image
Creative + Design Header image

It’s not about designing what we think is best. It’s about designing what is right.

CPMA card 1
CPMA card 2
CPMA cover
CPMA badge
CPMA Cover
CPMA badge

“What is right” is what hits the right triggers to elicit the right response from the right targets. “What is right” requires us to suspend our personal biases and create as though we were the targets we were creating for.

Creative Solutions to Business Problems

Tugboat Tagline

9BA39667-7783-4A2A-880C-F8519F77AD90
JRoss background image

"Creative" isn't always about making an ad, something pretty, something "cutting edge" or even something you can hold in your hands. In this business, creative can't live on its own and exist for its own expression. We are marketing architects and creative is a building material we specify to achieve a desired outcome.

We believe creative is relevant thinking applied to a challenge. It's never enough to just skin a trade show booth, use info@ for contact email, or follow the rules on packaging. Relevant ideas drive relevant brands. They drive relevant brand interactions. They drive relevant brand growth.

Identity Development, Retrofit, or Polish

Your logo is not a brand. A brand is so much more than a logo. Knowing this, Tugboat practice is to create, retrofit or polish a compelling graphic identity that reflects the attributes of the brand position and personality. If there is no specified position, we can proceed in one of two ways: 1) a brand challenge or visioning session where we challenge or create the brand architecture, position and personality or 2) take you through a thorough intake where we fill in the architecture, position and personality, based on you being the "living brand”.

Legacy
Retrofit of Xibita Brand ID
Improved
Retrofit of Xibita Brand ID
See more logos
The Product is the Packaging

We approach packaging the same way we approach all creative: start with the desired result and work backwards. Packaging is about presence—table presence, shelf presence, social media presence, even Costco presence.

We consider a packaging system and standard which becomes the genesis for all packages. A program that accounts for colours, new product additions, producers, production requirements, substrates, technology advances, packing lines, human involvement, government regulations, sub-brands/brand extensions, positioning, type, legibility, retail impact, consumer habits and other considerations that can disrupt the harmony of the product line-up.

Paperboard Packaging Council Logo
Award Winning Simply Marbleous Environmental Packaging

Award Winning Simply Marbleous Environmental Packaging

Trade Show Experiences

The visitor experience at a trade show can be passive or active, and we choose active means engaging, energizing and memorable. This means saying no to images of every single product in your catalogue and yes to one singular idea designed to elicit a specific response from your target prospects.

Beyond the creation of exciting graphics and stock or custom display systems, we also help (in whole or in part) drive the entire experience, whether it's a 10x10 or 50x30. Show-only product samples, promotional items, staffing, uniforming, guerilla, sponsorship, training, advertising support, video, social media activation, contesting and that Sham-WoW factor that generates buzz on the show floor. Everything we recommend or engage in is designed to get more of the right traffic to your exhibit.

Trade show booth
Trade show booth
Collateral, Documents, Publications and Supports

We bring your brand to life on paper and in pixels. Annual reports, brochures, magazines, on-pack, posters, point-of-sale materials, media kits, digital and printed stationery, forms, guerrilla fodder; essentially anything imagined that communicates the right message and emotion to the right people.

Inlailawatash Annual Report
Inlailawatash Stationary set
Inlailawatash Cover
Inlailawatash Logo
INL Annual Report
Inlailawatash collateral
Inlailawatash Cover
Advertising

It's easy to buy space, time or pixels. It's another thing altogether to craft the compelling and relevant message that resides in that space, time or screen, and establish how it will present through all mediums as defined by the strategy. When we know what we want to have happen and how to track that it's really happening, it's a lot easier to create advertising that delivers relevance and ROI. Advertising that is meaningful to your targets and your bottom line.

JIND Poster
JIND Poster
JIND Poster
JIND Poster
Environmental Design

Brochure microsite or comprehensive web application, the Tugboat web development team covers the gamut. Contemporary display design and coding is supported by back office application development capable of standing alone or integrating with any accessible business application. The Tugboat web team are expert Drupal developers.

Windset sign
Windset entrance
Windset stairs
Windset logo sign
Windset lobby
Windset freshness
Windset reception
Windset sign
Windset entrance
Windset stairs
Windset logo sign
Windset lobby
Windset freshness
Windset reception

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CSS Key
creative

Branding, Naming and Positioning Small Businesses

Services
Branding, Naming and Positioning
Service Branding + Positioning header image
Service Branding + Positioning header image

To be successful and relevant in market, new and existing brands don’t need to be the best in their field. They just need to be unique and different.

Product Packaging - Topseals
Product Packaging - Topseals

For many clients we have been the builders and unearthers of the intangible back-ends of brands—the parts you don’t see but that you feel. We help figure out the why. What it is that will make your brand relevant to a buyer and their customers.

Brand Visioning Sessions
affinity diagrams

We begin brand work with a client visioning session where we define our targets and break the brand down into emotional and rational characteristics, define its personality, its promise and the pillars that support that promise. This session is fun and the exercises are designed to extract the brand underpinnings without over thinking them. The objective is to establish a framework for our goals, offering and personalities to work within.

Brand Platform and Essence

A considered distillation of the visioning session and exercises evolves into the brand's positioning document where we define and qualify the positioning (our stated commitment), create the outward-facing tagline that sums up our essence, the pillars that support our claim (made of key points), an ownable definition/description of the intangible and emotional product we’re selling, examples of how we might bring this brand promise to life and, finally, the brand inspiration – our mojo.

 

This positioning document acts as our filter as we begin to fill in the communications gaps in the organization. Once we have established what drives our company, it becomes very easy to know when something is right for the brand and when something is wrong for it. It will help us answer questions about sub-brands and sub-brand positions. It also de-personalizes feedback and can spare hours of debate. It becomes the emotional and personality standards that all creative that follows must support.

Brand Messaging

The brand messaging platform is the explanation of the brand pillars – the emotional and rational benefits of engaging with your brand. A brand's messaging platform is different from a product messaging platform where the functional benefits of your different products are explained and extolled. The brand messaging platform is the basis for all content creation – what to write in an ad, a news release, a website, in a brochure, etc. The messaging platform is the genesis of any stories that are developed to support and promote brand.

Brand Identity
Brand Identity Background Image

The visual representation of the brand. Now that we have completely and confidently defined who the brand is and how it carries itself, it's time to transform that essence into a visual identity. This is where we weave our core and regional brand positioning into a unified graphic suite. All possible applications of the identities need to be considered in their creation from signage to web to outreach programs.

see more logos
Brand Management

Tugboat Group delivers a brand book (kit) with every brand developed. This book contains the blueprint for the brand, including style guides for identity use, copy, type and colour, supported by a detailed brand positioning.

While strong and resilient, the best brands are living things that must be cared for, nurtured and helped to evolve. Brands must be regularly examined for relevance with audiences, as they are the real drivers of a brand.

Pantone Swatches
Logo Restrictions
Pimcore
Pantone Swatches
Logo Restrictions
Pimcore

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CSS Key
branding
BMF art card
December 11, 2020 Steve Gallagher
The Art of Relevant Trade Show Premiums

Effective trade show premiums are a must, with the desired result of a delegate departing an experience with your booth staff the target. At the Loblaw's National Kickoff convention this year, our client, Big Marble Farms, paired unique fine art take-aways with packaging and POP booth displays featuring the local Canadian artist. Numbered, limited edition prints with a stickiness factor of 10. #bememorable

BMF art card 1

BMF art card back
 

BMF art card 2

 

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