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
How Search Engine Marketing Has Brought Billboards To Their Knees
/in Ads, SEOThese days, search engine marketing is king. Television, radio, newspaper and even roadside billboards have begun to fall by the wayside as Google and other advertising providers have brought the ability to target advertisements down to the individual, to the masses. In fact, the goliath of advertising spending – TV – is set to be overtaken by search engine marketing and online advertising in 2017. Meanwhile, billboards continue to be a miniscule portion of advertising spending in the U.S., with $9.2 billion spent in 2015, while online advertising had about $67 billion spent by advertisers with a much higher growth rate.
We’re always available to talk, anytime you want to take a look at how search engine marketing can help your business thrive.
For this post, a study by MarketingCharts supplied the statistics.
Statistics
The biggest reason billboards are not growing as fast as search engine marketing and other channels is they can’t be tracked. When a person drives past a billboard, you as the advertiser won’t be able to track whether they saw the advertisement, whether they later go to your website or call you, whether they see your ad again later or who they were (demographically speaking)!
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can track all of those things and more, making sure that your ad is as effective as possible!
Location
With billboards, you can only place your advertisements in certain locations: alongside roadways, in city centers, etc. And you’ll need to rotate the billboards in order to be able to reach new audiences, with no guarantee that people are actually looking at your billboard.
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can target ads directly at certain demographics, and with Google you can even target ads at people who live on a certain block in a city! This means they will be served the ads in many places across the internet, without having to waste money showing the ad to people who aren’t your target customer!
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with search engine marketing!
How Search Engine Marketing Has Brought Billboards To Their Knees
/in Ads, SEOThese days, search engine marketing is king. Television, radio, newspaper and even roadside billboards have begun to fall by the wayside as Google and other advertising providers have brought the ability to target advertisements down to the individual, to the masses. In fact, the goliath of advertising spending – TV – is set to be overtaken by search engine marketing and online advertising in 2017. Meanwhile, billboards continue to be a miniscule portion of advertising spending in the U.S., with $9.2 billion spent in 2015, while online advertising had about $67 billion spent by advertisers with a much higher growth rate.
We’re always available to talk, anytime you want to take a look at how search engine marketing can help your business thrive.
For this post, a study by MarketingCharts supplied the statistics.
Statistics
The biggest reason billboards are not growing as fast as search engine marketing and other channels is they can’t be tracked. When a person drives past a billboard, you as the advertiser won’t be able to track whether they saw the advertisement, whether they later go to your website or call you, whether they see your ad again later or who they were (demographically speaking)!
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can track all of those things and more, making sure that your ad is as effective as possible!
Location
With billboards, you can only place your advertisements in certain locations: alongside roadways, in city centers, etc. And you’ll need to rotate the billboards in order to be able to reach new audiences, with no guarantee that people are actually looking at your billboard.
With online advertising and search engine marketing, you can target ads directly at certain demographics, and with Google you can even target ads at people who live on a certain block in a city! This means they will be served the ads in many places across the internet, without having to waste money showing the ad to people who aren’t your target customer!
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with search engine marketing!
4 Awesome Stats To Help Small Businesses Win At Email Marketing
/in Email Marketing, SEOEmail marketing can be difficult. One of the best ways to make sure that you’re successful at it is to be consistent. You may need help with that, and we’re always available to talk about how we can help you increase your revenue. But besides consistency, what other tips can help make your email marketing more effective?
HubSpot, one of the largest email marketing solutions out there, supplied the below statistics for this post.
1. People Are More Likely To Click Certain Words
When you’re writing the ‘call-to-action’ for your email, stick with something which includes “Click Here” rather than “Go” or “Submit”. “Click Here” has a much higher click rate than the other words, meaning more people will head to wherever you’ve linked the button to which is hopefully a landing page on your website!
2. Images Are Preferred To Text
Before you start typing your first draft, consider doing more with less. Use images to help get your message across. It turns out that 65% of people prefer more images than text in their emails, so be sure to capitalize on that with descriptive imagery and fewer words. We generally suggest 200 words or less per email.
3. Don’t Send Plain Text
In line with that, images are only visible in HTML emails. Even if they weren’t, 88% of users prefer to receive HTML emails over plain text emails, plain text meaning that there isn’t any formatting, fonts, colors or anything like that. So while some of your customers may find value in having emails be bare bones and get straight to the point, a vast majority appreciate a little flourish and style.
4. Optimize For Mobile Reading
And, we believe the most important tip here is to optimize your emails for mobile devices. 80.8% of users are reading emails on a mobile device!
Your email marketing software may be able to help you with this, but be sure to send yourself and/or your staff a test email and open it on multiple mobile devices to see how the images show up and how the text wraps, as well as if the links/buttons are able to be clicked easily.
Contact us anytime to chat about how we can help boost your ROI with email marketing!