Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

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The Advantages of Screencasting

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Do you often find yourself sitting at your computer noodling through a solution to a challenging technical problem only to find that the next time you need to perform the same task, or even worse, the next time you need to show someone how to perform it, you have totally forgotten the steps to success you had painstakingly sleuthed out? Well say hello to your new best friend, screen capture or casting. By simply capturing the activity on your screen and a voice over as you work through a solution, you can now walk the viewer through complex concepts more efficiently, helping you explain any subject with more depth and understanding.

Here at Placemaking Group we often use screen casting to record walk-throughs on the back end of our custom CMS system, “elfCP”.  We are able to perform specific tasks in the admin panel for a client’s website and record the process with voice over tips and direction.  This streamlines and simplifies the training process by showing the client exactly what to do step by step onscreen. The best thing is that the videos are then available for them to reference whenever they need a refresher course on completing a certain task or a when a new employee takes over the responsibility of completing it.

Here is an example of a walkthrough we created for one of our clients using the built in QuickTime Player screen recording feature.

 

Think about how you could utilize screen casting to your advantage in the business you are in; maybe it is demoing a new piece of software you have created, or maybe it is simply showing your employees how to fill out their electronic timesheet correctly, speeding up productivity and clearing up confusion … the possibilities are endless and exciting!

Software
Looking for a screencasting application? For the little video above, we used the built in screen recording function in QuickTime Player, which works great, and if you have a Mac running 10.7 or above you most probably have it right there in your Applications folder for free!

Here are a couple more options to check out  if you want to start your screencasting adventure and dont have Quicktime already installed:

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Like the look of our  ELF content management system, contact us for a more thorough walk-through and see how it could work for your site.

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Post by Jannah Lyon, Creative Director, Placemaking Group.

 

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Video | 10 Comments »

The Forgotten Tool: Community Relations – Where the most important “deals” get done

Thursday, December 13th, 2012

The Internet changed our world and then the recession rocked it. With lightning speed, public relations experts, public information officers, communication and marketing departments embraced Internet communication tools overnight.

We’re now experts – or quickly becoming experts:

  • Websites are more engaging
  • SEO is the name of the game
  • Email communication has replaced paper newsletters
  • Online advertising is commonplace
  • Social media is becoming understood and implemented more effectively
  • News releases are sent out over the wire and through targeted email lists
  • Blogs’ content has improved significantly and is published on a timely schedule (more…)

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Posted in Advertising, Online Marketing, Publicity, Social Media | No Comments »

QR Codes – When to Use Them and When Are They Just Annoying

Monday, November 19th, 2012

QRCodeYou’ve seen QR codes (or Quick Reader codes -example to the right is one for our website),  but perhaps you don’t know what to do with them or why they are there. Of the 110 million U.S. smartphone owners (comScore, August 2012) only about 4.5% scanned a QR code last month, according to comScore. Why, and more importantly why should you scan the code?

Most people don’t see the reward to sign up for an email or get a white paper as enough incentive. QR codes have been in use internationally for over 10 years, but only about 18 months in the U.S. They were invented by Toyota in 1994 as a way to manage inventory of parts.

They are a great tool for marketing if you know when to use them. So how to best use a QR code? They have opened up lots of interesting possibilities. Here are some of the best ideas we’ve found for QR codes. (more…)

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Mobile Digital Strategy, Web sites | 2 Comments »

Brand Messages that you Remember

Thursday, November 1st, 2012

How do you get people to remember you and your company? Sometimes, it can be a great sentence or phrase that sticks in your mind.

There are a few that we can’t forget, “Where’s the Beef?” went from being the Wendy’s slogan to a presidential challenge in the 1984 campaign. “Good to the last drop!” worked for Maxwell House coffee for a few generations.

A great slogan can be really helpful. We use our Branding Blueprint with our clients to develop the entire messaging for our clients. And a brand message can turn into a great slogan.

You can also play around with one that is already there. Kare Anderson, in her blog post Craft and Attention-Grabbing Message, writes about how “…the Redwood Hospital in Northern California launched a billboard campaign to seek blood donations with this appeal: “Got blood?” That was a play on the “Got Milk” slogan.

The important thing to remember is a great slogan needs to have a clear meaning that is connected to your brand message. If you get off point, no matter how funny, no one will make the connection back to you and that is a waste of your time and money.

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Marketing | 5 Comments »

10 Tips on Better Calls-To-Action (CTA)

Friday, October 26th, 2012

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the triggers for your marketing success. If done right, they grab people’s attention and point traffic to offers and help generate leads.

According to Maggie Georgiev, an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot and frequent contributor to various marketing blogs including MarketingProf.com, calls-to-action (CTAs) should be used in each and every one of your marketing tactics:  emails, social media updates, press releases, trade shows. And we 100% agree, with this recommendation.

Here are a few additional thoughts from Maggie and other sources on how to create an effective call-to-action.

Tip #1 – Know What You Want Your Customer to Do: For every marketing tactic, there should be an associated action. Always ask the question “What action do I want my customer to take?” before heading down the production or posting path. For instance, before you produce a marketing video ask yourself what you want viewers to do after watching it?

Tip #2 –  Think Before and Beyond Product Purchase: An effective CTA can lead people in that direction, but a product purchase will seldom follow as a direct result of an isolated marketing tactic. View your marketing as an integrated system that combines different channels and assets.

Tip #3 Good CTA design works: The goal of your call-to-action is to attract the attention of website visitors, and one way to convey its importance is through strategic design.

  • Size matters. Make the CTA large enough to stand out without overwhelming the design
  • Create contrast to make your CTA pop. Use contrasting colors that are in your general marketing color palette. Avoid using patterns. Use visually different fonts or make certain words might be larger or more emphasized. But, CTA must be easy to read.
  • Try unusual shapes.with call-to-action shapes that are rare, asymmetrical, unexpected.
  • Point your customers in the right direction with arrows or other directional graphic elements.
  • Use color and size to clearly differentiate between multiple calls to action. The most important should be brighter or bigger in size.

Tip #4 Keep Your CTA in Context: Keep in mind that the context of your page will affect click-through rates, so make sure there is a clear connection between your call-to-action and the content around it, on a website or in a brochure or newsletter.

Tip #5. Think Text, Not Graphics: The Eyetrack III study found that in ads, website visitors read more text content than graphical content. Essentially, people looking for information will look for text, not pictures.. While you should focus on your call-to-action text, the raphics will help convey meaning and strengthen the message.

Tip #6 Be Clear: Wording should be clear, specific, and action-oriented. Visitors focus on the words in text ads more than on the graphics. So what makes your copy compelling? “The number one rule,” says Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MECLABS, “is clarity trumps persuasion.”

Tip #7 Start with Subjects and Verbs: The very first piece of advice in the classic book Writing Tools encourages writers to start sentences with subjects and verbs. In the English language, we read from left to right, and verbs and subjects help us to glean the meaning of a sentence. By not including a verb in the CTA copy, you aren’t prompting readers to take action, which can hurt the clicks from your call-to-action and reduce conversions.

Tip #8 Include Numbers in Your CTA: People do not respond to vague statements. That’s why using data and numbers helps to demonstrate that your message is clear and direct. Numbers can set the right expectations and unambiguous. This technique is successful not only for call-to-action copy, but also for blog post titles (like this one!), press release headlines, and email subject lines.

Tip #9 Don’t Overuse Adverbs: Actually, adverbs are the part of speech that gets the fewest number of shares on Twitter, according to Dan Zarrella’s Science of Social Media research. They are behind adjectives, nouns, and verbs in shareability.

Tip #10 Be Brief, But Not Too Brief (90 – 150 Characters): The standard advice for calls-to-action has been “short and concise.” Don’t write convoluted copy that will take your visitor a long time to read but offer  enough information about the benefits and specifics of your offer. Don’t shorten it for brevity’s sake.

Contributed by Dianne Newton-Shaw, Placemaking Group Account Supervisor

 

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Posted in Advertising, Design, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media, Video, Web sites | No Comments »

Make Your Downtown Famous with a Seven Step Marketing Plan.

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

How do you make your Downtown Famous? How do you get visitors to shop and eat at the restaurants? How do you get businesses to move in?

California Downtown Assoc.

Miriam Schaffer and I are going to be giving a talk about those issues this week at the California Downtown Conference in Riverside, CA. If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, there is still one day, so do it!

We at the Placemaking Group have had the privilege of helping to make many downtowns famous. When we start the process, one of the first things we do is to get the group who hired us to understand that there are specific things that make your downtown different from the downtowns of neighboring cities. Sometimes if you’re too familiar with your own downtown, you don’t even realize the differentiators. That’s where we come in. We’ll talk to the people walking in your downtown. We talk to the businesses that are there. We’ll listen to what is said and what isn’t said. (more…)

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Posted in Advertising, Issues Management, Marketing, Publicity, SEO, Social Media | 2 Comments »

BamMagazine.com Launches September 15, 2011

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Just like BAM Magazine but without the paper.  That’s the new paradigm. If you want to keep up with breaking news, you can’t wait for it to be written, printed and then distributed.

Jerry Seltzer, in his blog post “Extra, Extra, read all about it” writes about how he used to subscribe and read three newspapers. Now he get’s his news online. So, we’re doing the same thing with BamMagazine.com.

Here’s what Jim Harrington reported today… BAM magazine will return as website – San Jose Mercury News www.mercurynews.com

(more…)

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Posted in Advertising, Journalists, Marketing, Web sites | 4 Comments »

Keeping track of Social Media success.

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

One of the questions that we are asked on a regular basis is, how does one decide if their Social Media program is a success? What are the Key Performance Indicators? Alban D’Sa, the Operations Manager at Quay Appointments in Sydney, Australia asked this in LinkedIn.

The answer is a simple one. You look at what you are trying to achieve with your goals and use the Social Media tools that are most helpful. Then you look at an indicator to tell you if you are succeeding. One of my favorite success stories in City Social Media is Suisun City. It has two Facebook fan pages. One is for the Downtown Waterfront District, the other is for Suisun City in general.

Both give information about the locale. The Waterfront District is more about business. It has over 400 members. That makes sense for a business environment. The city fan page has almost 2,000 fans. It is much more oriented toward the fun going on in the city. Scott Corey says that it’s easy for him to be the Marketing Manager for the city because it has such good stories to tell. The important thing is, he makes sure those stories are told.

Andy Moore, Director at iThnk.com of New Zealand says, “KPIs such as number of followers/fans, amount of traffic to your page or site and the depth of comment threads from your posts are all good ways of keeping tabs on your social media campaigns.

He suggests “choosing the indicators that are most the relevant to your objectives at the outset of your campaign and monitoring these on a regular basis to make sure you’re on track. For example if your goal is to really engage with people I would monitor the amount of comments and responses you’re getting with each new update.”

He wrote a blog post on this subject recently so please check-out the link below if you’re interested…

http://www.ithnk.com/2010/07/02/what-is-social-media-success/

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Publicity, Social Media, Web sites | 2 Comments »

The lifespan of a brand.

Monday, August 30th, 2010

After reading my blog post ReBranding is rarely sucessful, unless you keep it real, Irv Hamilton, Placemaking Group’s Senior Vice President had this to add…

The comments on branding were very interesting.  But there are several aspects of the process that I think if often overlooked.
One is the lifespan of a brand.

Sometimes a brand spans a long period of time.  Other branding does not have a long life.  In some cases the life span — long or short — is intentional.  And with other branding programs, the life span of a branding effort is affected not by management decisions, but by external circumstances.  Anticipate how long a branding strategy will be valid, and act accordingly.

Another consideration is how the changing marketplace either strengthens or weakens a branding program.

Over the years one of branding efforts that I have thought to be both appealing and functional has been the Yellow Pages program based on the slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking.”  Sadly, the Yellow Pages and your fingers are obsolete sources of information.  You could re-brand it based on a new theme such as “Let your search engine do the walking.”  But somehow it doesn’t the same ring.  Pity.  I’m going to miss those fingers.

You can build a case that self-deprecation is a foolish branding strategy.  Imagine the planning committee sitting around looking for a branding strategy that focuses on the shortcomings and weaknesses of the company, its products and its services.  Ridiculous?

Hardly.  AVIS spent large amounts of marketing money successfully pushing the fact that they were a runner up rather than a leader.  And the once-small producer of fruit products still announces, “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.

Having said all that, we have two important pieces of advice for branding strategists.

First, don’t forget that timeframe plays a key role in branding.

And second, nearly everyone wants to be a leader.  That means there is plenty of room to recognize the silver and bronze medalists.

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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Publicity | No Comments »

Printed and mailed communication can be very effective.

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Is printed paper communication totally old-school? Is the only way to go on marketing and communications outreach to do it digitally? I was talking to Jeff Rubin, The Newsletter Guy, today. He’s been producing newsletters for companies for years. Many of his clients switched to digital in the last few years, often to save money on postage. And I’ve been on that side.

But one of his clients, Mechanics Bank, is doing something interesting. (more…)

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, Web sites | No Comments »

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