Innovation through collaboration at Hookd Promotions

Rich Palzewic

Staff

August 18, 2025

CHIPPEWA FALLS – Collaboration through innovation – that’s how Founder/Owner Lee Heike said the team at Chippewa Falls-based Hookd Promotions describes its approach to digital marketing.

Heike said the company delivers high-quality, targeted and effective digital marketing solutions that help their clients learn and grow.

“The experts at Hookd will develop a custom strategy for you based on your individual marketing goals,” he said. “We can gather data from your target audience to help you achieve your marketing goals.”

From engaging emails to viral videos, Heike – who founded Hookd 13 years ago – said the company creates content that makes other businesses look good.

“The content we create can be used in online ads, social media posts and so much more,” he said. “From B2B to B2C, our team of experts can help you engage with your target audience in new and inspiring ways.”

Though Hookd’s headquarters are in Chippewa Falls, Sarah Gordee, director of sales, said the team functions as a virtual organization.

“We focus on the digital space, and that serves us well,” she said. “We’ve done projects nationwide, but we’re rooted and connected to the Chippewa Falls Valley, La Crosse and the Winona, Minnesota, markets mostly.”

Heike said he credits Hookd’s longevity to its ability to evolve and remain relevant in a constantly changing industry.

“We listen to our audience, and do what will help them,” he said. “At the end of the day, we help businesses and organizations communicate better with their audiences. That audience might be donors, new patients they are trying to reach or people who want to build new homes. We represent a lot of different industries.”

Though there’s no shortage of digital marketing firms, Gordee said he believes Hookd’s tight-knit team of five truly stands out from the rest.

“There are a lot of organizations that exist, but many are based in bigger cities,” she said. “We’ve heard our clients say, ‘We tried this with another company, but I didn’t feel like they were listening and understood what we needed.’ Everything we do is custom, but that doesn’t mean everything we do is so highly priced [that] you can’t afford it. We’re working to be accessible to small businesses while still providing a high-quality service.”

Changing with the times

Heike said a lot has changed since he founded the company 13 years ago, with the biggest shifts happening in technology.

“We laugh all the time that most of the stuff we do now didn’t exist 13 years ago,” he said. “About 28 years ago, when I started working in [the] media [industry], I was reporting on radio and TV. When I made the transition from journalism to marketing, we were shooting on DVCPro at the time. That was in the early 2000s.”

Heike said the shift from journalism to marketing came naturally to him.

“I was still working in video and telling stories in that same way,” he said. “I worked in the private sector for a while, until I went on my own. It’s fun to see that amount of change in that amount of time, but I think it’s even more fun to keep up with it and have conversations with people about it.”

Heike said when he mentions “digital marketing” to most people, they have a look of exasperation on their faces.

“It’s great to help them navigate through it all,” he said. “We call it our ‘secret sauce’ – just being real and helping people.”

As with many businesses in this ever-changing technology world, Heike said he’s not sure a day goes by when Hookd doesn’t talk about AI – artificial intelligence.

“AI is a really effective tool right now for us, and it’s evolving,” he said. “We also know by next year, it’s going to be so much better. We’re not only utilizing it, but we’re helping educate people about it, because we’re the folks they talk to about digital and technology stuff.”

Heike said AI has played a role in bringing more clients to Hookd.

“Recently, for the first time, a gentleman called me and said he was interested in working with us for his business [by using ChatGPT],” he said. “And I said, as I always do, ‘How did you hear about us?’ He said, ‘I use ChatGPT, and I asked it some questions and told it to narrow it down … [and that] I’m looking for a local company.’”

After learning about Hookd from ChatGPT, Heike said the potential client called the company.

“AI and ChatGPT are not only helping your company in what you do, but they’re helping others find a good quality company like Hookd,” he said.

How it began

Heike said reaching 13 years with Hookd feels like a significant achievement, especially since his research shows only 30% of businesses last that long.

“That means 70% of the businesses that started when we did are no longer in existence,” he said. “When you look at it that way, and looking backward, we’ve definitely achieved something.”

Heike said working in marketing at a car dealership from 2006-12 taught him valuable lessons that ultimately inspired him to start Hookd.

“I was on the management team,” he said. “I wanted to learn and absorb as much as I could and then utilize it on my own. I always had an entrepreneurial spirit.”

While at the car dealership, Heike said he found motivation in the manager meetings, which brought together managers from all different departments.

“They talked about all their sales, but when I came to the table, I was an expense and solely an expense,” he said. “They knew I was elevating their brand, but then they asked the question – ‘Do you truly know if what you’re doing [with marketing] has brought people in?’”

Heike said he could make correlations and best guesses, but he couldn’t really give them an answer.

“I couldn’t actually look at the numbers and say, ‘Yeah, we reached this many people…,’” he said. “When I started in 2006, our website at the dealership was an accessory. It was something that was nice to have, and every button made a whistle, spun or moved. It was like a toddler’s toy, but at the same time, I’m not even sure our inventory was up to date or if we had our pricing updated [on the website].”

From there, Heike said he realized digital was the way to go.

“I didn’t want my work or contribution to a company to be subjective,” he said. “That’s why I decided to go out on my own.”

How it works

Gordee said when Hookd starts working and having conversations with an organization, it’s about understanding what the organization is and what they are trying to accomplish.

Initial meetings, she said, are a conversation about learning more about the organization, and vice versa.

“If we find there are synergies in what we do and we can help them, I go back to my team, we do a brainstorming session and we look to learn about the organization,” she said. “When we work with organizations, we look at their website, social media, what marketing they’ve done in the past, etc. We also understand who their audience is.”

After brainstorming and researching, Gordee said the Hookd team identifies the best platform to use to reach the right people.

“Sometimes it could be through TV commercials, or in our case, what we call streaming TV or connected TV,” she said. “It could be because you need to show up on Google search when somebody is trying to find information about you, it might be that you want to advertise on LinkedIn, etc.”

After the platform is decided, Gordee said Hookd reaches back out to the organization with custom recommendations.

“[I’ll say], ‘Here are the avenues we think are best,’” she said. “We do the research and create messaging that resonates with the people we’re talking to and launch campaigns. What are the things people connect to and interact with online, and what’s drawing that traffic to your website? From that, we tweak and optimize campaigns over time.”

Gordee said it’s much more than just creating an online campaign or video – “it’s much deeper than that.”

“It may entail creating content, and content comes in a lot of different forms,” he said. “It could be a newsletter, emails or videos. It also might just be imagery and messaging that’s talking through an ad campaign. The platforms we use are multifaceted to reach the audience you’re trying to reach in the right way.”

For more information about Hookd Promotions, visit hookdpromotions.com.