Can social media change the way a company performs? Entrepreneur magazine decided to put this question to the test. They invited Xylem Digital, the digital arm of LeeReedy/Xylem Digital, to help take a local Denver business, Big Papa’s Barbeque, from zero social presence to big-time social network strategist—in just 60 days.

Entrepreneur will be documenting the experiment, including tips and lessons learned along the way, and we’d love it if you’d follow along. Together, we’ll see whether social media can help make Big Papa’s even bigger.

Follow the blog at Entrepreneur.com

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To avoid the junk mail bin of the financial agents we were targeting, we mailed a simple postcard that drove recipients to a personalized URL address online (PURL). The page that each person discovered was filled with data, customized to their unique location – showing them the huge potential for business surrounding them if they were to partner with Tucker Financial Group. Behind the page was the engine we built to pull relevant census data and deliver a compelling, personalized message.

Pursuing the best product innovation ideas

If you’re partnered with a reputable product development company with a proven process, coming up with new product ideas is likely not an issue for your brand. In fact, you’ve probably generated list after list of blue-sky concepts that could be viable.

So, how do you decide which ones should be taken to prototyping and eventual test marketing and which ones should be left by the wayside? Which new product ideas are the right ones to put on the shelf, the ones that have staying power for the long-term?

You need a filter

A filter that helps you save money, save time and allows you to have the fewest number of people involved in the decision-making process at every phase. By no means are we suggesting the process outlined below as a replacement for traditional validation methods. But it is a great method for killing the bad ideas and making heroes of the good ones before your brand spends a ton of money going down the wrong path.

Bringing new product ideas to life in a new way

The process of bringing new product ideas to life through computer renderings features three stages. Not all of the stages may be necessary for every project, but it’s important to follow the steps outlined below in consecutive order. It’s also ideal that each round be analyzed, with feedback and approval given to your branding agency, before proceeding to the next stage.

Stage 1: Conceptual sketches

These are very rough thumbnail drawings done in pencil. The intent with this stage is not to wow you with design, but to make sure both agency and client are on the same page with the general concept of the new product ideas before moving forward. This is the stage to make absolutely sure the ideas are right (including shape, ergonomics, overall concept) because it takes much less time and effort to redo a pencil drawing than to affect the renderings in stages two and three.

Stage 2: Flat computerized art

In this stage, a rough framework of the shape of the product and/or packaging is created using Illustrator in the computer. These files are not built to exact specs. The designer then applies graphics to the rough shapes to simulate how the final product might look for consumers. This is the stage to revise and approve the graphics that will be seen on the packaging and any textures that are being applied to the products themselves (ie. the texture on food if you’re a food or beverage company, for instance). At this stage, you may choose to do some preliminary focus grouping with the internal brand team, as well as with consumers. Ax the bad ideas accordingly.

Stage 3: Computerized 3-D models/renderings

At this stage, the agreed upon shape of the packaging/product along with the accompanying graphics are created as a 3-D model to exact specs in a separate computer program. From here, your design agency can create renderings using the 3-D models with multiple perspectives if desired. The 3-D models and renderings can be very detailed to provide a realistic vision of the end product. This stage is necessary if you want to develop a set of dimensioned drawings and/or 3D CAD files that can be used by the manufacturer for Prototyping and/or final production.

Be sure before going forward

Technology makes many things possible today, including turning lists of blue-sky ideas into viable products using a process that can save both time and money – 3-D models and renderings.

Have a company, need a business exit strategy? Well, here’s a question: Is your company really a brand? In other words, does it truly stand for something you can explain, that your customers are excited to tell other people about and that gives your company lasting value – is your brand essence obvious? If so, you don’t need us. Just put your company on the market and soon you’ll be rolling around in hundred dollar bills.

But what if, on the other hand, you have a company instead of a brand. Your customers come and go, there’s not any real momentum. It just doesn’t feel right.

Read on for the answer

Look, the fact is, if you’re successful, even moderately so, if you can say you have an idea and attributes that are unique, you must have some intrinsic greatness in there somewhere. You have something of value – you just need to think like the prospective seller of a great, but rundown house. It’s time for some sprucing up. Some focus. Bring the greatness to the forefront.

You need a brand makeover, friend

Start by finding out what you really, really stand for. What is the one greatest thing about your company? What is it that, if revealed and repeated to the world, would make your customers talk you up to their friends?

Once you have the answer, express it, everywhere, on your packaging and identity, in your advertising, in the way you answer the phone, the way you dress, the Christmas presents you give – everything. Integrated marketing services, defined. Spruce that company into a brand and let the market know you’re on the market.

You want to know a simple truth of marketing? Lean in close. Ready? Brands get tired.

There, we’ve said it. It happens all the time. You establish your brand, it grows – heck maybe it takes the world by storm. It’s like that dumb show where everybody knew your name. You’re a hit. Your marketing ROI is through the roof. Everything you touch turns to Krugerrands. And you ride that wonderful wave.

Then the sizzle fizzles, sales decline, fans disappear, people look at you like you were last season’s pleated pants – yeah the ones with four folds – yuck. What happened?

Brands get tired

That’s it, times change – you have to change too. You have to reinvent yourself like Madonna. You have to go back, find that intrinsic greatness and create a brand new strategic marketing plan. Look, people’s problems don’t go away – they’re omnipresent like Little Richard at the Grammys. But people’s problems do evolve; they get updated in new colors and shapes. And if you solved them once, you can solve them again.

Reignite the fire

Take your old product and create a new product launch. Again, find that greatness that was there in the beginning – what was it, a totally new idea or just brilliant positioning and niche marketing? Get someone from the outside, someone who brings a neophyte’s curiosity – like a certain ad agency we know – to help you discover your intrinsic greatness. Then wrap that brilliance in an appropriate tone. Make it fresh, current – most of all relevant to the way people view their lives right now.

Then, put the shiny new wheels on your classic thing of beauty, and change the world all over again.

Grab it, use it

Having instant access to gobs of information online has made it simpler to spot product and marketing trends today. It’s also made it abundantly more difficult.

How do you capture all that information from all over the world? How do you filter it? How do you leverage the most important realizations for your company and brand and its unique situation? Put applied trend analysis in the hands of your branding agency.

What is applied trend analysis?

There are trendspotting agencies all over the world you can hire that will gladly take your money. The issue is not whether they’ll discover the trends for you. The technology that feeds you trends is widely available – we use it too.

The hang-up with these agencies is that they never go beyond an autopilot delivery of cursory trends. They give you the data, sure, but because they’re strangers to your brand, they can’t and won’t make recommendations from those discoveries that apply perfectly to you. They’re a conduit, nothing more.

Applied trend analysis goes deeper by tracking the latest trends – then recommending how those trends can be applied directly to your business. You get a finger on the pulse of the industry, a current competitive analysis, a clear picture of untapped opportunities, and the ability to be proactive in your decision-making. Seriously valuable brand weaponry.

The only one for the job

This isn’t a job for a random trendspotting agency. And it isn’t a job for you, either. The assignment of applied trend analysis should be put firmly in the hands of your branding agency. Being intimate with your brand will give them the knowledge to apply trends in the most relevant and powerful way to your company. Of course, you’ll be involved with your own perspective. But let them lead the way, and you’ll find you’re the leading brand in your category.

Don’t position the old fashioned way

You know those big brands, like Pepsi and Clorox, with all the money in the world to spend on brand positioning research and development? They’ve got a secret method for spending a lot less to learn a lot more before ever launching products on a mass scale. If you’re a big brand trying to keep up or a small brand trying to make every penny count, come in close. This is how they do it.

It doesn’t take a ton of time or money

Branding firms that charge upwards of $100k, $200k or even $500k and take six months to complete a positioning project don’t want us to tell you this. There’s absolutely no reason the process has to be long, laborious, complex or expensive. What’s more, you don’t have to end up with a tome of research to decipher, hoping to dig out the one simple truth about your brand – that intrinsic greatness.

With the right process run by the right agency, it’s not a month in focus groups, not hundreds of thousands of dollars – it should be a half-day. And it’ll work exactly the same.

Make it visual and you’ll know where to go

Once your branding agency has established 3-4 ownable brand positioning platforms through their process (hopefully in far less time than the typical scenario), have them develop “preliminary advertising” to visually demonstrate each platform. This should take the form of print advertising campaigns.

As consumers, we’re used to seeing and reacting to advertising. It’s natural for us to immediately know whether an ad campaign nails it or completely misses. Use the same test for the new brand platforms you’re considering with the people in your marketing department. It’s too difficult to assess the accuracy of the positioning from only a bunch of words in a document.

Bringing the positioning to life through advertising is the clearest way to see its real-world application. In the ideal situation, the same people who develop the brand positioning should work on the preliminary advertising – keeping the strategy from being lost in translation between your branding firm and your advertising agency.

Preliminary creative goes a long way

At this point, you’ll be in an advantageous spot. For far less money, you’ll have your brand positioning – plus creative executions you can employ in a number of useful ways. We call the work “preliminary advertising” because it’s meant to paint a clear picture for your internal marketing team. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take it public.

Focus group the ideas to measure one brand platform against another. Launch the ads into a test market for a true understanding of effectiveness. If you’re planning to have an advertising agency execute the “actual” campaign, use the work to inspire their thinking after the handoff.

It’s brand discovery plus compelling visual execution. And big companies are using it to spend far less to know far more in today’s ultra-competitive environment.

There’s an interesting movement afoot in the way savvy marketers are using their offline media to drive customers to their websites. Now that all the simple, memorable URLs are gone and companies must settle for long or confusing web addresses, smart brands are replacing their printed URL addresses on posters, print ads, TV commercials and other offline media with something new: Search boxes filled with recommended search terms.

The trend has taken hold in Japan in a big way and is beginning to trickle over into other countries, including the UK, Israel and just recently in the United States. People have become more versed in online searches, and this trend plays naturally into the way they’re seeking information on the Internet. Pay attention to how often you type a specific web address into your browser versus searching in Google, even for those sites you visit daily or weekly. Our bet is that you most often use Google to find exactly what you want.

Of course, the whole movement banks on your brand’s website being search engine optimized for the key terms you want to own – making the importance of pairing SEO with this new offline media strategy a powerful combination in increasing marketing ROI.