Digital Natives. Small Business Focused. Minnesota-Based.
Blue Ox Websites & Marketing is based in Minnesota, with remote employees across Central Minnesota and the Twin Cities. We love helping small businesses, startups, and nonprofits get found online so they can spend less time worrying about their website or marketing and more time serving customers.
We’re dedicated to strengthening our local economies and communities, which calls for resilient businesses. Most of our team members stay with us for 8 years or more, not just because we build great websites, but also because we value learning, teamwork, remote work, and family.
What Drives Blue Ox
Mission
We build innovative websites and honest marketing strategies to help small businesses and nonprofits grow—and make a bigger impact in communities.
Vision
We’re here to grow alongside local small businesses and nonprofits, building lasting partnerships that help communities thrive.
Guiding Values
Creativity: Custom solutions, not cookie-cutter.
Reliability: We show up and follow through.
Approachability: No jargon, no gatekeeping.
Community: We grow with the businesses and nonprofits we support.
Remote First
At Blue Ox, we prioritize flexibility and choice while focusing on making meaningful connections with our coworkers and clients. While we’re primarily virtual and WFH, our teams meet in person a few times per year to celebrate accomplishments and brainstorm big, new ideas.
Benefits & Perks
Flexible PTO & Company Holidays
Prioritized work-life balance, with flexible PTO and 23-25 observed days off.
Family Planning
Paid family and medical leave, including for adoption.
Employer-Matching 401K
50-100% retirement matching.
Perks & Stipends
Monthly internet and equipment allowances to support remote work.
Learning & Development
Mentorship from senior team members, conferences, certifications, and online learning opportunities.
And More!
Meet the Blue Ox Team
Meet the team! We’re a small, local crew of real people who care about helping businesses succeed online.
Employees
Logan Gruber
ReFounder / Marketing Director
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2016
Katie Carlson
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Cloud, Minnesota
Tenure: 2015
Kelsey Meyer
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Joseph, Minnesota
Tenure: 2017
Jonathan Gamble
Writer / SEO
Base: Cottage Grove, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Zeineb Kadhkadhi
Social Media / Designer
Base: St. Cloud State University
Tenure: 2018
Jen Gruber
Social Media / Designer
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Careers At Blue Ox
Application
Digital Marketing Myths You’ve Internalized & Why They’re Wrong
/in SEODigital marketing myths continuously pop up these days, from client meetings or on ‘digital marketing myths’ lists on sites across the web.
We’ve been scouring the web for digital marketing myth lists and comparing them against beliefs our clients hold, and discovered that many of these lists have ‘myths’ which aren’t even commonly held beliefs anymore. So we set out to display some myths here that we still find prevalent among our clients, friends and family so we can provide real value in our digital marketing myths list. Enjoy, and let us know if you have questions!
1. Negative Reviews/Comments Are Bad News
We have our own proprietary review management software, so when we’re pitching this to clients they’ll often say that they need it because they have a few bad reviews they want to get rid of. We reframe the conversation right there, because bad reviews are not inherently bad for business, and in fact can help! Here’s a few ways to make that negative review or comment a good thing:
A. Opportunity To Grow
A bad review of your business is an opportunity to grow. Take the complaints the person is making, decide which hold merit and see if there is a way to address those complaints so another bad review like that doesn’t happen.
B. Evens Out Your Rating
The bad review doesn’t necessarily doom your Google or Facebook star rating. One or two bad reviews actually helps even out your stars a bit, as people tend to think the perfect 5-star rated companies might be manufacturing reviews.
C. Good PR opportunity
Responding to the review is a great PR opportunity. Take the time to really listen to the customer, and respond in a way so as to either address the issue or open up discussion on how the issue can be address. Thank them for pointing out the flaw in your system or bad egg on the staff, and encourage all customers to provide you with critical feedback. Other customers will see how smoothly you handled the review and think better of you for it.
2. Message Personalization Isn’t Possible
This myth hits home for people using LinkedIn, Google AdWords and email marketing.
A. LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, if you’re using Sales Navigator or another tool, it can feel downright overwhelming to market your business and brand at a mass scale while trying to personalize the messages. One way of doing it is to spend hours on it each day. Another way is to use software, like our proprietary myProspector, to help you create templates to contact other users which are easily and quickly personalized on a mass scale, within LinkedIn’s guidelines.
B. AdWords
In AdWords, people who are just getting used to the system might only set up a few variations of a display campaign for different geographic areas or different income brackets. But in AdWords with display ads, your ads can be personalized down to an email address, zip code (or even down to a few blocks) and in other ways. This means you can really personalize messages to fit a specific person you may know, or someone who fits a certain profile.
C. Email Marketing
Another way to personalize is through email marketing. Most email marketing solutions now allow you to segment your email lists, and it’s something you should take advantage of. For instance, if you have a list of customers from your pizza store, you may want to segment them by people who mostly order online and those who mostly order in store, and tailor different deals to them.
3. Visitor Volume Is A Key Website Metric
Visits are great. It’s nice to have people looking at your website, but volume of visits alone doesn’t mean much. In Google Analytics and other software which helps organize your website and marketing data, what you really should be looking at are the following metrics:
A. New Users
New users is a way of tracking how many new visitors have navigated to your website within a timeframe. This allows you to see if the same people are coming time and time again or if you’re able to attract new potential customers with your AdWords, social media, email marketing or other strategy.
B. Pages/Session
This is the number of pages a visitor views per session. Typically more is better, and if you’re seeing your average drop down near 1 you know people are clicking on a link to your site and then heading back out without looking anywhere else. That’s not good.
C. Average Session Duration
This is how long a visitor stays on your site before navigating off. You want to see a good amount of time here, but it depends on your industry. Adding value to the page, like more engaging or informative content, a video, a download or other things can help bring this number up, with the goal of getting them to remember your brand and feel their time was spent wisely. If the average session duration is low, it means they probably didn’t find what they were looking for.
D. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is a measure of how many visitors leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Anything less than 70% is typically considered a ‘good’ bounce rate, so if your bounce rate is already very low it means people are finding something of value in your website!
4. Social Only Works For Select Industries
This is a big one. People feel that lawyers offices or other ‘traditional’ or ‘boring’ industries have no options when it comes to social media. It simply isn’t true, you just have to find the channel that fits your brand, and craft your strategy to how people want to interact with your service.
For instance, with a law firm, LinkedIn is a clear winner for most law firms because it helps build your reputation among the business community, no matter what kind of lawyer you might be.
Facebook might not seem like a natural choice, but it may be that people don’t want to post directly on your wall or about you, they want to find your contact information quickly and easily or drop a quick note into Facebook Messenger to see if they really need to come in for a consultation or not.
There is always a channel or strategy that will work, it just takes some time to find the right fit.
5. Visitors Won’t Convert On Mobile Devices
If you aren’t able to convert visitors into customers or sales leads when they’re using mobile devices, it isn’t the visitor’s fault for using a mobile device – it’s the content’s fault.
You need to take a look at your interface and the way people actually use your site from a mobile-first website design standpoint, and find a way to simplify your process. From reducing the number of fields to fill out in a contact form, to one click downloads for ebooks, there is a way to do it, you just have to find it.
For help figuring out how digital marketing fits into your business, and to separate fact from fiction, drop us a line.
Digital Marketing Myths You’ve Internalized & Why They’re Wrong
/in SEODigital marketing myths continuously pop up these days, from client meetings or on ‘digital marketing myths’ lists on sites across the web.
We’ve been scouring the web for digital marketing myth lists and comparing them against beliefs our clients hold, and discovered that many of these lists have ‘myths’ which aren’t even commonly held beliefs anymore. So we set out to display some myths here that we still find prevalent among our clients, friends and family so we can provide real value in our digital marketing myths list. Enjoy, and let us know if you have questions!
1. Negative Reviews/Comments Are Bad News
We have our own proprietary review management software, so when we’re pitching this to clients they’ll often say that they need it because they have a few bad reviews they want to get rid of. We reframe the conversation right there, because bad reviews are not inherently bad for business, and in fact can help! Here’s a few ways to make that negative review or comment a good thing:
A. Opportunity To Grow
A bad review of your business is an opportunity to grow. Take the complaints the person is making, decide which hold merit and see if there is a way to address those complaints so another bad review like that doesn’t happen.
B. Evens Out Your Rating
The bad review doesn’t necessarily doom your Google or Facebook star rating. One or two bad reviews actually helps even out your stars a bit, as people tend to think the perfect 5-star rated companies might be manufacturing reviews.
C. Good PR opportunity
Responding to the review is a great PR opportunity. Take the time to really listen to the customer, and respond in a way so as to either address the issue or open up discussion on how the issue can be address. Thank them for pointing out the flaw in your system or bad egg on the staff, and encourage all customers to provide you with critical feedback. Other customers will see how smoothly you handled the review and think better of you for it.
2. Message Personalization Isn’t Possible
This myth hits home for people using LinkedIn, Google AdWords and email marketing.
A. LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, if you’re using Sales Navigator or another tool, it can feel downright overwhelming to market your business and brand at a mass scale while trying to personalize the messages. One way of doing it is to spend hours on it each day. Another way is to use software, like our proprietary myProspector, to help you create templates to contact other users which are easily and quickly personalized on a mass scale, within LinkedIn’s guidelines.
B. AdWords
In AdWords, people who are just getting used to the system might only set up a few variations of a display campaign for different geographic areas or different income brackets. But in AdWords with display ads, your ads can be personalized down to an email address, zip code (or even down to a few blocks) and in other ways. This means you can really personalize messages to fit a specific person you may know, or someone who fits a certain profile.
C. Email Marketing
Another way to personalize is through email marketing. Most email marketing solutions now allow you to segment your email lists, and it’s something you should take advantage of. For instance, if you have a list of customers from your pizza store, you may want to segment them by people who mostly order online and those who mostly order in store, and tailor different deals to them.
3. Visitor Volume Is A Key Website Metric
Visits are great. It’s nice to have people looking at your website, but volume of visits alone doesn’t mean much. In Google Analytics and other software which helps organize your website and marketing data, what you really should be looking at are the following metrics:
A. New Users
New users is a way of tracking how many new visitors have navigated to your website within a timeframe. This allows you to see if the same people are coming time and time again or if you’re able to attract new potential customers with your AdWords, social media, email marketing or other strategy.
B. Pages/Session
This is the number of pages a visitor views per session. Typically more is better, and if you’re seeing your average drop down near 1 you know people are clicking on a link to your site and then heading back out without looking anywhere else. That’s not good.
C. Average Session Duration
This is how long a visitor stays on your site before navigating off. You want to see a good amount of time here, but it depends on your industry. Adding value to the page, like more engaging or informative content, a video, a download or other things can help bring this number up, with the goal of getting them to remember your brand and feel their time was spent wisely. If the average session duration is low, it means they probably didn’t find what they were looking for.
D. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is a measure of how many visitors leave your site after viewing only 1 page. Anything less than 70% is typically considered a ‘good’ bounce rate, so if your bounce rate is already very low it means people are finding something of value in your website!
4. Social Only Works For Select Industries
This is a big one. People feel that lawyers offices or other ‘traditional’ or ‘boring’ industries have no options when it comes to social media. It simply isn’t true, you just have to find the channel that fits your brand, and craft your strategy to how people want to interact with your service.
For instance, with a law firm, LinkedIn is a clear winner for most law firms because it helps build your reputation among the business community, no matter what kind of lawyer you might be.
Facebook might not seem like a natural choice, but it may be that people don’t want to post directly on your wall or about you, they want to find your contact information quickly and easily or drop a quick note into Facebook Messenger to see if they really need to come in for a consultation or not.
There is always a channel or strategy that will work, it just takes some time to find the right fit.
5. Visitors Won’t Convert On Mobile Devices
If you aren’t able to convert visitors into customers or sales leads when they’re using mobile devices, it isn’t the visitor’s fault for using a mobile device – it’s the content’s fault.
You need to take a look at your interface and the way people actually use your site from a mobile-first website design standpoint, and find a way to simplify your process. From reducing the number of fields to fill out in a contact form, to one click downloads for ebooks, there is a way to do it, you just have to find it.
For help figuring out how digital marketing fits into your business, and to separate fact from fiction, drop us a line.
Why You Need A Local Web Design Company On Your Side
/in Web DesignWhen you’re ready to redesign your website or build the first website for your business, there are a few things you’ll probably look for: samples of work, expertise, partnerships with Google, something bigger than a one-person shop, etc. When you’re looking for that web design company who is the perfect fit for you, don’t forget to check out your local area for great design companies like us! Here’s why.
Customer Service In Person
The biggest benefit of a local web design company is meeting in person with not only the account manager, but also the web designer and content writer.
A national corporation may be able to put you on the phone or let you communicate by email with your designer, but there’s no way they’ll fly you or the designer halfway around the country or world to work together in person.
With a local design company like Cohlab, you can come down to our office or we can meet at yours to discuss the specifics and get a solid footing off of which to build the perfect website of your business.
Targeted Design
The design of a website is largely based off of your industry, but it’s also based off of the needs of your customers and differentiated from your local competitors. A local web design firm is going to know your competitors and understand your customers at a local, personal level a national firm never will.
Localized Content
Also, the content on your website needs to be fresh and engaging and specific to your customers needs. That’s why at Cohlab our writer will meet with you to get the full story, and follow up with any questions they may have as the content for your website is created.
Besides website design, it’s also important to have pages directed at certain search terms, groups and cities in order to better draw them in through search engine optimization. This is an additional service we provide as a local web design company which can help you get ahead of your competitors who use a nation-wide web design firm.
For local website design, give us a call. We’re ready to meet in person with you.