Inside Timmermann Group: A Company Culture Unveiled

Company culture plays a critical role in the success of any business. In fact, I would say it can be make-or-break. Over the past decade, many have mistaken company culture for some of the spiffs and benefits that an organization provides, whether is be a ping-pong table or free snacks in the breakroom. While I love Cheez-Itz and LaCroix as much (if not more) than the next person, creating a healthy and sustainable culture for an organization requires a lot more than just free snacks.

Company culture is made up of shared values, goals, and behaviors that help a team understand the Why, Who, and How of the organization.

• Why does the business do what they do?
• Who within the organization is responsible for doing it?
• How are we going to get it done together?

Most people understand What their business does (if they don’t, you have bigger problems than just culture), but making sure your team understands the Why, Who, and How is how you can ensure that your organization is successful in whatever it is you do.

Let’s take a closer look at Timmermann Group’s company culture and how we’ve come to define our Why, Who, and How for our digital marketing agency.

The Why

While everyone has an idea of what a digital marketing agency does, establishing a company culture can help clients, team members, and potential candidates understand why we’re in the marketing business and not out selling ice cream cones. This is where having shared purpose and values have a role to play.

At Timmermann Group, we’ve come to understand that our purpose is more than just marketing. We’re about results-driven marketing. For TG, it’s not just about making a website or graphic that looks pretty. Our passion is creating conversions through compelling creative. That’s what drives us. That’s our shared mission. We don’t just want to help our clients raise brand awareness; we want to help them generate leads, make a sale, or receive applications so they can do more of what they do best.

That purpose of driving results for our clients is what our team rallies around, and it’s a purpose we look for when hiring new members of our team as well. We aim to cultivate and nurture a team that shares this mission and has the passion for bringing it to fruition for our clients.

Of course, creating a company culture is more than just announcing your mission and crossing your fingers that everyone else is on the same page. You can’t create a culture with a top-down approach. To work, a company culture needs everyone to participate and contribute.

Setting Core Values and living by them is an excellent way to align a team and keep them moving in the same direction.

At Timmermann Group, we’ve put a lot of care and attention into developing (and redeveloping) core values that not only represent who we want to be for our clients but also who we feel we are, today, as an organization. Yes, your core values can be a higher ideal that you can continue to aspire towards, but they must also be authentic to your organization and your team, as well.

TG has six core values that we live by:

• Always Growing: We’re comfortable in the uncomfortable with an appetite to be challenged and level up.
• Strategic yet Nimble: We’re deliberate and intentional, but agile and responsive to change.
• Partner-First Mindset: Our goal is to set the next person up for success, whether that be our clients or our fellow team members.
• On the Ready: We are primed, present, and prepared to step up.
• Solution-oriented: We approach each challenge with a focus on partnering to find solutions.
• Step Up, Not Back: We step up, not back, proactively taking initiative and embracing responsibility.

These core values are what help us to live our purpose and hold one another accountable. We use these values when celebrating and lifting up each other’s successes, and we speak to them when coaching someone on where they’ve fallen short.

These values help us ensure we are being the best version of ourselves possible so we are able to fulfill our purpose for the sake of our clients and ourselves.

The Who

So, who is living up to this purpose and passion in the organization?

“The team.”

Done. Case closed. Who wants Cheez-Itz?

No, no, just saying that it’s your “team” isn’t enough to ensure that everyone understands what their role is and how they can make an impact in your organization. It’s more than just communicating someone’s job title and description.

When it comes to understanding the Who of your organization, everyone has to know not just their individual role but how their role fits into the bigger picture of the organization. At Timmermann Group, this is where our Accountability Chart comes in.

TG’s Accountability Chart was designed from our experiences with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). By adopting EOS, we’ve been able to provide our team with greater structure and clarity, and the Accountability Chart is one piece of that.

The Accountability Chart is similar to an organization chart but beyond simply communicating a chain of command, it also communicates the major functions within the organization and how they function together.

For Timmermann Group, it’s helped us to not only determine the main departments within our business (such as Accounts, Development, SEO, et al) but also some of the higher functions that they serve: Consultations, Creation, Conversions.

While everyone in our entire agency has the capacity to consult, create, or convert in some shape or form, these groupings have helped us to sharpen in on what each department/function really does best.

For instance, Strategy and Analytics are all about helping our clients deeply understand their business in terms of where they are today, as well as how we can get them to where they want to be. It’s through Consultation that these teams serve our clients best.

Similarly with a department like SEO or Social. Certainly, they can consult our clients, but their main function is to help our clients drive Conversions: whether it be through creating, capturing, or cultivating demand.

By having this understanding of how our agency functions, we’ve been able to have better conversations about our work as well as how we can work together as a unified team.

Our Accountability Chart has been a simple tool, and yet, at the same time, it has fundamentally changed how we think about our business. It informs our digital marketing process and the way each department can make the greatest and most effective contribution to our company culture.

The How

Of course, purpose, values, and a stellar team mean very little if our behaviors aren’t in alignment. Ultimately, it is our actions that make our company culture a success. We have to live our values, collaborate, and stay true to our results-driven approach to digital marketing.

We’ve already touched on TG’s core values but what is our approach? How does our company culture actually drive results for our clients?

We do it by embracing a full-funnel marketing strategy that is dynamic and ever-changing based on the needs of our clients. Our work shines when we stay true to our value of Strategic yet Nimble, never allowing our efforts to be static nor stagnant. We have to live in the present moment of our client’s needs and adapt to whatever the new day delivers.

Our approach is designed to help us embody this and put Strategic yet Nimble into action.

It works like this:

• Demand Creation: We ignite consumer interest and enthusiasm for our client’s products or services through targeted marketing initiatives, eye-catching design, and compelling messaging. This approach aims to manifest anticipation and desire within the target market, effectively laying the groundwork for subsequent sales and adoption.

• Demand Capture: Once the secret is out and people are looking for what our clients have to offer, we make sure they’re impossible to miss. Using a blend of SEO, pay-per-click, and targeted marketing, we help our clients show up wherever their future customers might be looking.

• Demand Conversion: Here is our bread and butter. Once we have someone’s attention, it’s time to transform their interest and turn it into action. We partner with our clients to develop customized sales strategies and special offers while making sure that their website is optimized for users to navigate and convert.
• Demand Cultivation: Last but not least, we help our clients turn customers into brand loyalists. There are no magic tricks here. It’s about helping to develop relationships with our client’s customers so that they continue to connect, engage, and even advocate for our clients.

Again, this is not a 1-2-3-4 process. It’s a flexible and dynamic process that we help our clients move through, based on their current services, goals, and aspirations. By embodying our value of a Partner-first Mindset, we make sure we are always listening to our clients and making adjustments to our approach to stay in lock-step with their needs.

That is Timmermann Group’s guarantee: we proactively partner with our clients every step of the way. No exceptions. This is not a “set-it-and-forget” approach to marketing. It’s a spirit of collaboration and continual growth that shows up in everything we do, starting within our company culture and spreading outward to the benefit of our clients.

People think company culture is just about branded swag and cake in the conference room, but it’s so much more. It’s the way of life within your company, from what you believe to how you embody those beliefs through action. Yes, the lunches, shout-outs, and TG-branded sweatshirts are a part of the culture – but that is not what draws people to a company, and even if it were, it’s certainly not what gets them to stay.

Having a clearly defined company culture is crucial to attracting new talent to your agency, as well as retaining the incredible talent that you already have, because it provides clarity within the organization and establishes an overarching purpose for the work that gets completed. It allows everyone to feel accomplished at the end of the day and go home feeling satisfied about their efforts. That is the company culture we strive to achieve at Timmermann Group. That’s our ideal and, on the best days, that’s what we’re able to achieve –– together.