Kitson Marketing, Inc. is "KMI" for short. We've been around since 1987, founded by Robyn Kitson. We grew through the years by adding our value as an off-site marketing department for our clients. In almost every case, we were regarded like staff (or as some put it, "like family").
Currently, most of what we do has some relation to the web. We've worked hard since the early 1990s (when Al Gore invented the Internet) to understand the medium and make it central — as a communication tool — to what we do. In fact, one of the most-cited reasons our clients have for working with KMI now is that we understand how to bridge marketing and technology and sales. Gosh, we have a lot of fun!
What makes us different? We're strategy people with the know-how and resources to make the tactical plan happen. In other words, we work really well with someone who owns or runs a sizable business and wants marketing help. We listen. We research. We plan. We create. We implement. (Check out our marketing process.) And we'll stick with you for the long-haul if that's what's needed.
We have always done something that is really kind of unheard of for marketing agencies. We work very hard to teach people within your company what we do and why we do it. The goal is to actually shift the marketing sense and know-how to your internal people. Why not? These people are at the heart of your business every day. You might think that is like working our way out of a job. And perhaps it is. But we believe in the importance of passing the knowledge forward, and that's what we do. It works for us and we build deep and rich relationships in the process. And our clients make money. We like that!
InTimeTools® is a registered trademark and we're pretty proud of that. In 1999, when most people didn't have a clue what a web application was, we ventured into creating our own and, hence, InTimeTools® was born.
We developed our own CRM web application for manaufacturers — an architecturally sound and comprehensive piece of software that is in use and mission-critical to the people who use it today.
Through the years, our virtual "bench of developers" has turned out product enhancement after product enhancement. Starting with a basic system programmed in Microsoft® ASP.NET, InTimeTools® grew to accommodate more and more functions desired by sales and marketing teams as time marched on.
With that growth came days, weeks and years of continual designing, programming, testing, testing and more testing. We enjoyed it, and had an extraordinary team.
But we needed more to offer our clients than just our own products. And we found it in open source web applications.
By 2008, there were a lot of very fine software options in the market. At that point, we decided to open the scope of what we offer clients to what was available "out there." And what a great decision it was! Now we could truly delve deep to find technology solutions to match with specific sales and marketing needs. If what we found needed a little custom programming, we could do that, too.
When KMI entered the web application market in 1999, it was in reality, the "pioneering days" of internet technology. In this past decade, we have learned how to identify web applications that are constructed well and, of course, work...and then we match them to client needs.
It's a great niche to being in — marketing expertise combined with technology know-how — because it's a need many businesses have a hard time filling. Generally, our competition can do marketing, OR they can do the technology.
At KMI, we do both. We help companies put technology to work!
Marketing and Sales Agency + Web Technology = KMI
KMI offers companies our marketing services, plus our abilities in putting web technology to work for your business. Here is who we are:
We are a marketing firm.
Have been since Day 1. We work with companies to help them creatively build brand, position their company, and ultimately increase business and productivity.
We are a technology firm.
Have been since fall of 1999. At first, we dramatically altered our business to accommodate our own intense product development, which gave us deep insight into the strategies and solutions of the programming world. Then in 2008, we embraced the technology that others had created. In doing so, the expanse of new products that were available opened our world to serving our clients even better.
We are a sales firm.
With over 30 years of collective sales experience — from on-the-street business development to sales management — we enjoy helping companies make more of their sales efforts. And we coach and teach on the art of using technology tools (CRM) to excel.
Plus, we host.
KMI has our own servers and software co-located in a secure world-class data center. We host web sites and web applications.
Turnkey solution.
Stan Kitson joined Robyn in the business in 1990. Upon graduating from the University of Minnesota/Mpls. (1978), Stan moved to Madison, taking a job in radio sales at WMAD-92FM. He moved to Country Q106 in 1982 as they launched a contemporary country format (quite a "hot" move at that time) and was promoted to Sales Manager and then General Manager. One of the areas he particularly enjoyed was hiring and training great sales people...and he did a lot of that. In fact, many of the people he introduced to radio sales in the 1980s are top producers in the Madison market today.
By 1990 Stan was yearning to offer a full range of marketing services to his clients, and so in 1990, he joined Kitson Marketing.
The 90’s focused primarily on business-to-business marketing (B2B). Working with manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers, often as the off-site marketing director, he developed lead generation programs, tradeshows, catalogs, research and branding campaigns.
In the late 1990s, with the Internet quickly gaining popularity, both Stan and Robyn realized the amazing capabilities of internet technology to streamline sales and marketing processes and increase sales and improve overall productivity. In 1999, they developed InTimeTools, the division of their company that would focus on using private web-based extranet systems to do business, especially in the areas of customer relationship management (CRM).
The early days proved a good training ground to learn from the challenges of implementing new technology and how to successfully bring it into an organization and increase user adoption rates.
Since the turn of the century they’ve developed and implemented web applications including proprietary CRM applications, extranets and interactive websites.
Robyn Kitson founded Kitson Marketing in September of 1987. She had always dreamed of owning a marketing firm and her career path had purposely placed her in positions to gain the experience she would need to do it well.
During her maternity leave with her second son in April of 1987, plans took shape and the agency became reality that September. By 1990, she convinced husband Stan that this is where he needed to be, too.
Robyn grew up in a newspaper family with both parents partners in publishing the weekly Cottonwood County Citizen in Windom, Minnesota. In college, she spent her four years there with a job on the side at the Minnesota Daily. When she married Stan in 1979, they moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where she worked at Madison Newspapers and Isthmus Publishing before becoming promotion director for the Madison Civic Center. By 1987, she was ready to hang out her own shingle, and Kitson Marketing began.
Kitson Marketing started as a marketing firm specializing in marketing communications for manufacturers, distributors and dealers, and specializing particularly in catalog production, tradeshow marketing and communications.
By 1999, Robyn and Stan decided to add a web application division to their company and that was the beginning of InTimeTools®. The focus of this division was to help clients use web technology to do business processes online.
Today, Kitson Marketing InTimeTools has combined the two divisions and consults with clients most specifically in the areas of sales and marketing strategies, processes and systems to build client relationships and grow revenue.