New vision. New website. Same Tiller.

If you haven’t already heard, we launched a new website! This project has been in the works since last summer, and we’re thrilled to finally share it with you. But we don’t just want to show you our epic new design. This website represents a pivotal moment for Tiller, so we want to explain why we did it and why it matters.

Why it was time for a new website

We always tell our clients that a website needs to tell a story: how a brand came to be, why it exists, and where it’s headed in the future. Our website had been telling Tiller’s story since 2018 when we rebranded on our 10-year anniversary.

At that time, we considered ourselves the “agency for all”. We didn’t have a niche. But a lot can change in a few years. In hindsight, we should have seen it coming. We began working with tech and software companies in 2015, and over the years we’ve gained considerable experience. And recently we’ve seen more and more tech and software companies pop up in our sales pipeline. CMOs have been asking us how we can help them define their brand, stand out in a heavily saturated market, and ultimately reach ambitious goals, fast.

The more we worked with these brands, the more we realized just how much Tiller could help. And how much we loved it.

So we started thinking. And by thinking, we mean reading, researching, and validating a hypothesis that Tiller could, and should, niche down and become a marketing agency for tech and SaaS. (You can read more about how we came to this decision and what it means for our future in the Letter from the Founder). We participated in one of our own brand development workshops to help us define where we wanted to be in 3-5 years. Engaging in these workshops ourselves brought enormous clarity to our new vision.

Once we had settled on this new mission and target audience, it was time to tell people about it. We began sharing this with sales prospects, but we knew that changing our vision meant a new website was on the horizon too.

What the website needed to communicate

We identified what we needed to change about our brand and website to serve our new audience well, and then crafted a site that would communicate these key points:

We lead with strategy.

Startups and scaleups want to work with a strategic partner who can steer and guide them towards their goals. As we wrote new copy for the site we emphasized that every single thing we do at Tiller is done with the end goal in mind.

We get tech and SaaS.

We understand the challenges that tech and software companies are facing, and we’re also aware of what’s at stake if brands don’t take action (e.g. if you don’t nail your brand positioning, you might land in the wrong market). We leveraged elements of Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework and explained what was at stake for our new audience.

We’ve expanded our offering.

Tiller has grown and evolved a lot since our last website rebuild and we’ve been steadily expanding our services to meet the needs of our tech and SaaS customers. But our website didn’t reflect the full breadth of our services. So we expanded our new sitemap to include these newer offerings (product design, SEO, CRO, content marketing, and more).

We’ve elevated our design.

With a new focus and target audience, we needed a way to stand out in the market. So we reimagined elements of our brand identity – expanded our colour palette, explored new illustration styles, and refined our brand character – to bring Tiller to life and show off our creative side. (Side note: we are seriously obsessed with our new colour palette!)

We’re proud of our story and our culture.

Over the past few years, we’ve had countless people share how much they’ve loved hearing Tiller’s story. And as an agency of 12+ years, we have plenty to share. We built out entire pages dedicated to Our Story and Our Culture. These pages share transparently about how Tiller came to be (including key lessons we’ve learned along the way) and what it’s like to be part of the team. These pages are especially important as Tiller is growing fast and we’re actively looking for smart and talented people to join our team and help us build our future.

Why any of this matters

Well, because we know firsthand that a clearly written, expertly designed, high-performing website can make or break a company. After all, we’ve built our entire business around helping companies get it right. To fulfill our new mission we needed to be clear about who we serve and what value we offer. We also needed to explain who we are as an agency because hiring an agency can be very personal. You want to find the right team – people who share your values, believe in your vision, and care about your success. Our new mission required a robust new website that would clearly communicate this to tech and SaaS companies and let them know we’re here to help them make an impact.

So, what’s next?

So much. We’re incredibly excited about entering 2021 with a new focus on tech and SaaS, and we can’t wait to share success stories with you along the way. Oh, and one other thing – we have an exciting new website integration on the horizon that will transform how we engage with our prospects and customers. Stay tuned for more. Or, if you’re really curious – go check out liveweb.io.