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Despite a poor economy, Trilix Marketing Group is taking full advantage of its position in an industry where belt-tightening is common, and has been consistently growing since the company’s inception five years ago.

“Even though we are in a down economy and the marketing budgets generally get tighter, we are still on a tremendous growth path,” said Todd Senne, president of Trilix.

Company CEO Ron Maahs said clients who recognize the opportunity to gain market share in a down economy often ask for new and unique ideas to reach target audiences. “It is not the time to be complacent if you’re a corporate entity,” he said. “So I think people are more willing to listen now, and I think we have discovered that.”

In fact, Senne said, a few of Trilix’s clients have actually increased their marketing budgets because they think now is a good time to expand marketing efforts.

“Going into this slower period is the best time to do so, because you have fewer people you are competing with,” he said. “It’s the time to grab market share because you’re buying low. Take your profits when it’s good and don’t spend as much, and when it’s bad, that’s when you should ramp it up.”

But despite such advice, most companies do the exact opposite and cut their marketing or advertising budgets, which often results in a significant loss in market share. These cutbacks in marketing expenditures cause some marketing companies to go out of business or significantly reduce staff sizes, Senne said.

Growth and expansion

Yet for Trilix, the opposite is happening, and the poor economy has actually helped spur some of the company’s latest growth.

“The upside to this is, a lot of other agencies in town have been having layoffs and cutbacks, and it has opened up recruitment opportunities,” Senne said. “So we have had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who wouldn’t have been available six or eight months ago, and it even brings new talent in. It’s a good combination to have right now.”

Trilix, which started with an 11-person work force five years ago, now has 22 employees and plans to expand its staff by three once it moves into its larger office in the Offices at Northpark in Johnston.

“We held off on a couple of (hires) just because you don’t have a place to put somebody and no one likes to work in a hallway or a closet,” Maahs said.

Trilix began moving over the holidays into its new 8,500-square-foot home, which is about 3,500 square feet larger than its current facilities. Senne hopes the roomier office will allow for staff additions, and said that if Trilix “stays on the same path, we’d be close to 30 (employees) by the end of 2009.”

Changing the face of marketing

In just five years of operation, Senne and Maahs said, the way Trilix does business has changed drastically to accommodate the increased demand and ubiquity of the Internet.

“It used to be the Web was a part of a company’s marketing efforts, whereas anymore, it seems to be more the center and things extend out of it,” Maahs said.

And although a lot of companies still create traditional marketing materials, such as brochures and direct-mail pieces, Senne said, “the Web has gone from an add-on, to the Web being the center of marketing activity,” with the direct mailings, brochures and television advertisements directing you to the company’s Web site.

“If you’re an online brochure, that doesn’t cut it these days,” he said. “You have to be a portal that is interactive, and you have to have value overall. If you can pull that into your Web site, then you have yourself a winner.”

Senne said a lot of companies are adding other online components to their marketing packages, such as Facebook and MySpace pages, Twitter accounts, podcasts and blogs – all of which create a high level of interactive and social networking with the companies’ target audiences.

“When you see your representation on the Web, and that is the only way people are reaching you, then that is who you are, and now, this is your opportunity to put on your best face,” Maahs said. “If it looks like a green screen from 15 years ago and if (the visitors) don’t feel like it is going to work, then they won’t take the time.”

The two said people form their first impressions of a company within the first few seconds of visiting its Web page.

“It’s like a storefront with a broken sign and three light bulbs,” Senne said. “Everything might be fine on the inside,” but if the outside looks sketchy, most visitors won’t take the time to find out more about the company. “It’s setting the experience and the expectations. Most of us buy on emotions and whether you feel good about (the product).”

But staying ahead of the trends and keeping online interactivity up to par can be a daunting and costly task for businesses searching for the right site.

“What might have been $8-, $9-, $10- or $15,000 Web sites five years ago, are now $60-, $80-, $100- or $150,000 Web sites that can do all those things and (the clients) don’t care because they understand the value coming back to them,” Senne said. “Asking how much a Web site costs is like asking how much a car is. Well, do you want a Mercedes, a Bentley, a VW? It just depends on what the end use is going to be.”

And Maahs joked that clients “usually end up wanting a Cadillac.”

However, both Maahs and Senne said that though a company may invest a sizable sum for the initial development and programming of a Web site, the following years require very little maintenance, and generally cost the company a fraction of the initial costs.

Squatting on URLs

But the cost of a pristine Web site can be deceiving, especially if a company has to pay a premium to obtain the rights to a Web site address, or Uniform Resource Locator (URL), that has already been claimed by a speculator. Yancy De Lathouder, a technology director at Trilix, noted that a lot of dot-com Web addresses have already been purchased and are currently being used or occupied by other entities.

“Every six-letter URL or below has been taken – every single iteration of them,” he said. “So you can move on to dot-net or dot-org, but obviously everybody wants a dot-com.”

Senne said that if a company is trying to purchase a Web site URL but realizes the specific Web address it wants has already been purchased, it can contact the owner of the URL and buy it from them.

“There are a lot of squatters out there,” Senne said. “Anything you can think of, they go out there and they take it all up.”

But give credit to the squatters, Maahs said. “Capitalism is wonderful. It shows that there is value, and it shows the value of the platform.”

Investing in URLs often puts the original purchaser in a good negotiating position, and Senne has heard of companies paying thousands of dollars for desirable Web addresses.

“We had a client last year, a bank, and we never ended up getting it, but it was $80,000 to buy the URL that they wanted,” Maahs said. “And so we said, ‘No,’ but then talked about it some more with them and they came down to $20,000 and it’s sort of like well, they own, they got it, and that’s a heck of an investment.”

Yet some companies have taken a different approach when finding the perfect Web address for their companies, De Lathouder said, and sometimes businesses will name their companies based on which URLs are available.

“You can name yourself based on some phrase that you know no one has, grab that URL, and then call that your business,” he said. “It’s weird how for some companies, you kind of name your business based on what URL you can get.”