Your website is the first place that prospects and current customers go to check out your product or service. It’s important that the user experience be a positive one, from the first visit to the 50th. Take a look at your website’s overall design and analytics to determine what may need a refresh. Are the primary images on your site a little tired? Do they still reflect your core brand? Is your search optimization (SEO) drawing in good prospects who stick around, or do you need to tweak your meta information – keywords, descriptions and page titles? All of the above can help to optimize the effectiveness of your website.
Here are three recent examples of how we worked with clients to “freshen up” their websites for better branding, user interface and security.
Sometimes simple tweaks to a web page layout can have a big impact. An annual review of Clare Computer’s analytics revealed that events had become an important way of driving traffic. Consequently, more emphasis was placed on promoting events on the homepage by replacing the twitter feed with an events feed.
A completely new website for Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous included improving the user experience by making it far easier to get to information about meetings and resources with a single click. On the administrative (backend) side, a new content management system (CMS) was added for easy updates by staff and volunteers. Security was a top priority to ensure that member information was never compromised. With this, the CMS and an online store underwent a ground-up reassessment to ensure back-end security.
Don’t underestimate the power of updating messaging and images to refresh your site. On this website for network security company eSoft, we worked within its existing site infrastructure to add a series of edgy, hard-hitting header banners. This messaging and graphic design reflects the new marketing direction the company is taking. This economical solution is helping to carry the existing website until a planned new site is up and running.
This year, the Super Bowl is fighting back. According to Eric Kass in his post “For Second Year, Super Bowl Has Social Media Command Center” there will be over 100 Social Media volunteers working in New Orleans to answer questions and disseminate important information about the event and its locale, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. So the NFL and the Super Bowl, along with the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation are going to be ready for the social onslaught.
As we’ve talked about in the past, for social media to really go viral, there has to be a personal, heartfelt connection. When that happens, the numbers go through the roof. Let’s see if the 49ers and the Ravens can get that kind of personal excitement going on!
A marketing tool to help you become better known and increase awareness of your business is public speaking. However, landing speaking engagements takes some work. Here are five ways to help you get booked as a speaker.
1) Define Your Speaking Topics
Define your expertise with a catchy or compelling headline that will clearly distinguish you from the competition. Placemaking Group’s CEO, Dennis Erokan speaks to audiences on the topic of “Get Famous,” as well as “Get Famous with Social Media.”
Staying in touch with trends that can support or negatively impact your marketing success is key. Here’s a compilation of marketing communication trends – some newer than others – to consider as we head into 2013.
Mobile Devices Own the Day: As the power and sophistication of mobile devices grows, they’ve become the “central processing units” for our lives. Make sure your business is visible on mobile. About 55% of the U.S. population owns a smart phone, and 78% of them don’t leave home without it. Source: Social Media Today
The Daily Deal is Dead: Consumers are losing interest and merchants are sour on offering such large discounts. Many are moving into offering special packages but at full price and in niche markets such as extreme adventure travel. Source: San Francisco Business Times
We talk a lot about “Getting Famous” here at the Placemaking Group. What we mean by that is simple. Leveraging your expertise to establish yourself as an industry leader and to increase your visibility will help your business thrive. In this week’s video, Placemaking Group’s President, Dennis Erokan, explains.
Here are a few steps you can take to “Get Famous” in your field of expertise.
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
It is quite possible that your product, company, or destination is something that the media would like to write about.
In order to get coverage for your story, it helps to know what the media is looking for. There are several tools and strategies you can use to get in front of reporters.
Sign up on HelpAReporter.com (HARO). This is a website where reporters, writers and producers list topics they are writing about and request specific interview sources. You can sign up for free on this. By using this site, we have placed stories for several of our clients, including HFS Consultants, a healthcare consulting company specializing in healthcare management, operations and strategic planning: Read the rest of this entry »
In this age of online interactive everything, it is easy to lose sight of other ways to market your brand beyond websites, social media and email. Printed marketing materials are still an important element in any marketing campaign and a successful campaign is one that utilizes a variety of media to get the message across.
A beautifully printed piece can speak multitudes about the value or credibility of your brand and help solidify how you want to be perceived by your target audience.
Design plays a big part in the success of these printed items. A good looking leave-behind piece can be a powerful and memorable promotional tool if done right. Your brand must be solid across-the-board, with consistent logo use, color palette and message tone. Your family of marketing materials should work in unison. When someone gets that superbly designed and well thought-out postcard with the clear call-to-action supported by beautiful photos and hard hitting headlines, they need to feel like it came from the same company they see represented online. A unified color palette and similar graphical elements can do this quite nicely. Read the rest of this entry »
You’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. Read the rest of this entry »
