2016: Giving Back, Client Highlights & A Few of Our Favorite Things
2016 is coming to a close, and wow, what a year! We imagine it’s been pretty eventful for many, and we certainly haven’t seen a dull moment in our corner of the universe all thanks to this action-packed year of diverse client work, memorable team milestones, dedicated time spent giving back and lots of good-humored cheer. What made our list of notable highlights this year? Read on for our favorites!
There’s never a dull moment in B2B marketing. One of the exciting things about the professional world we live in is that there is always a new development or challenge. B2B marketing saw major fluctuations this year, with growing interest and capabilities around making the most of data, account-based marketing and much ado about marketing technology. At the same time, the broader tech industry saw consolidation efforts accelerated, and other industries like healthcare and finance saw major changes, while some marketing tactics remained tried and true in cutting through the content noise. Here’s what kept us interested:
- Where’s Waldo on the Show Floor? – how to stand out at busy events
- Here’s Why I’m Not Reading Your Content. (And Neither is Your Audience.) – getting real about your content do’s and don’ts
- Make Room For Case Studies in Your Content Toolbox – why case studies are a much needed tool for marketers
- Get That Survey Monkey Off Your Back – the time and place for effective surveying
- All Roads Lead to Sales Enablement – ensuring your content supports sales
OMS is legal – 21 years old, that is! – and our services continue to evolve. 2015 marked 20 years our company has been in business, and in 2016 we took the impact of that experience even further. We increasingly see our clients benefiting from focus group and workshop facilitation with key industry and purchase decision-makers and sales teams are clamoring for sales enablement support. Marketing teams are also looking to us to provide even deeper and integrated content strategy that reaches niche audiences across channels, including events, social media and email marketing. Our expertise has broadened as we support publicly and privately held companies, as well as newly merged and acquired companies looking to tackle their marketing strategy and hit the ground running.
A commitment to learning, educating and practicing what we preach. As the industries that we serve evolve, as well as our clients’ businesses, so too must we. For us, 2016 has been a notable year in affirming our commitment to meet the needs of our clients as they continue down the road of better content personalization, meeting customer challenges head-on and making data meaningful.
We’ve been proud innovators in helping our clients: launch new vertical or solution areas, determine their content analytics strategy, understand content’s value at key points in the sales cycle, facilitate ABM strategy, fully integrate PR and social media practices with customer engagement programs and emphasize the importance of understanding personas and the complex buyer experience. You may have also seen us out and about learning and supporting clients at HIMSS, IBM Interconnect, Dell EMC World, Microsoft Envision and Molex during their sponsorship and volunteer effort at the 2016 Chicago Marathon.
Giving back is at the heart of OMS. This year we were excited to show support for a number of charities, including Susan G Komen, Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. We also love donating our marketing time and expertise and were thrilled to contribute to the following projects in 2016: providing leadership and strategic vision to help CAC launch their first marketing committee, marketing support around their peer donation program to support Safe From the Start, mock interviews with high school and college students through Catholic Charities’ Summer Youth Program, an infographic for Red Door Animal Shelter and PR and marketing support for Watts of Love and Cam Fund.
Client project recognition. The other thing at the heart of OMS is a commitment to great work. We’re always flattered when others think so too! This year we were a finalist in the Content Marketing Institute Awards for two categories – Best Use of Content Curation (for the weekly Transplace TIP list) and Best Topic-Specific Blog (for the LinkedIn Tech Blog). We also were delighted to launch a regular blog series of our own, the Client Round-up, where we highlighted recent client work that we were most excited or proud of. Check out a few here and here, and thanks to all of our clients for letting us showcase your work!
The OMS family grew. (Again!) You are only as good as the people on your team, and although we know we’re a bit biased, we think ours is pretty great. This year, we were thrilled to add to the OMS family with two new team members, Victoria Walden and Jason Wilson. We look forward to you sharing your 20 fun facts on the blog in 2017 and following in the shoes of this guy.
And our last memorable moment of 2016, but certainly not the least…
The experience of a lifetime: the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series! As many of our friends and clients know, a number of OMS’ers are HUGE Cubs fans. But this fall, we all couldn’t help but get swept up in the baseball excitement that ignited Chicago. The type of passion and hard work that got the Cubbies to the post-season in October and November is what we strive for every day, and we loved and excruciated over every wonderful second of the post-season. You may have even seen some of us celebrating at the Cubs parade or perhaps caught our CEO, Jeff’s blog about what the Cubs win can teach us as marketers.
This year certainly was memorable, and our lessons, successes and highlights would not have been possible without our amazing clients, employees and partners. We feel lucky to have the opportunity to work side by side with you every day.
Happy Holidays, and cheers to even more fun and success together in 2017! Don’t forget to #TMSG as you start the year off right.
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