Citibank Shows the Danger of Exercise

Using unexpected humor can help identify your brand. A Citibank commercial shows the lighter side of defective merchandise while promoting their service. People love to laugh at themselves, so you don’t have to be serious about your product or service all of the time.

Knorr Frozen Entrees Uses a Bad Word

Knorr Frozen Entrees has taken a different approach to reach their target audience. To get your attention, their TV commercial uses a bad word. It’s creative, interesting and it works. Think ouside-the-box with your target audience and you will attract attention to your company’s website as well.

Website Design Process, Part III

Now that you have identified your target audience and we now know who the competition is. We have a clear understanding of who is buying your product or service and who is selling it to them. What’s the next step in the website design process?

Step three is to establish your brand identity. This would include every aspect of your product or service. Think Starbucks for business people, Apple for ‘cool’ computer people and even Hannah Montana for ‘tween’ girls. Here are some thoughts for moving your brand identity forward. Answer these questions from the standpoint of your target audience.

- Does your company name make sense?
- Is your logo identifiable?
- Are the colors that you use consistent?
- Does your website match your print marketing materials?
- How does your brand differ from your competitors?
- What other brands does your target audience buy?

According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is a name, term, design, symbol or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand has also been described as representing a consumers’ experience with an organization, product or service. Both descriptions are correct because a brand is what the product or service looks like and also what it feels like.

Spend a little time working on your brand identity. Ask current and potential customers what they think about your brand. Review the competition and see what works for them. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just make life a little better for the target audience.

Website Design Process, Part II

Okay, you have identified your target audience. You’ve narrowed down the list of potential customers and their demographics. What’s the next step in the website design process? Unless you want to create your website in a vacuum, you need to see what other people are doing in your industry.

Step two in the website design process is to review the competition. What we’re talking about is good old-fashion research. And the great thing is that with the Internet as your partner, it doesn’t take long to accomplish this task. 

I’ve heard many businesses say that they don’t have any competition. Let’s get one thing straight, every business has competition. And competition is healthy for everyone. Consumers and businesses alike. Competition helps your website business because you don’t have to make the same mistakes that others have made. Here are some ideas to work with when researching the competition.

- Find 10 businesses that sell your product or service
- Where are they located?
- Are consumers buying their product or service online?
- Buy a product or service from a competitor
- Review their marketing materials
- Review their sales figures
- Try to speak with a sales person
- Find associations of your industry
- Research trends from statistics that associations provide
- Find 10 more business that sell your product or service

I could list 100 ideas for researching the competition. Just keep at it. Never stop looking at what others are accomplishing in your industry. Research, review and reevaluate. Keep updating your website and marketing materials. See what works for others and how you can benefit.

Website Design Process, Part I

Design is an important element in the development of your website. How a site looks and feels can determine if a viewer is interested or not in your product or service. Usually the visitor makes that determination within 3 seconds. That’s right, I said 3 seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to get your message across.

The first step in the website design process is to define your target audience. If you say that ‘everyone is my audience’, then you need to go back to the drawing board and refine your answer. No product or service is needed by everyone. In fact, you could waste a lot of time and money finding that out the hard way. So do your homework now by clearly defining your target audience. Here are some basic questions to ask yourself:

- Who does my product or service help?
- Am I targeting consumers or businesses?
- Local or national?
- Is it men or women?
- What is the age-group?
- Do they buy my product or service online?
- How often do they buy?
- Who do they buy from now?
- What are my projected sales figures for the first year?
- What is the total market sales for my product or service?

Website design begins with knowing your target audience better than anyone. And most of the data is available on the Internet. Your competitor’s website can also provide a wealth of information. If you already have a website up and running, and you’re not getting the desired results, then redefining your target audience can help.

Keep in mind that the smaller the target audience the better the results. Just like in archery, many people can see the target, but the most successful hit the bulls-eye. Next in this series about website design, we’ll discuss how your competitors play an important role.

Ohio Website Design, Part III

Website design is important in building a brand identity. NEX Transport, an Ohio-based international contract packaging, distribution and export company, has created a new website to display their services to the shipping industry. Flash animation was used to enhance the website and the opening is great.

Apple Commercials Attract Visitors To Website

Apple is one of the top brands in the minds of their target audience. Their TV commercials quickly point out the difference between themselves and their competition. A large number of consumers go to the Apple website soon after viewing one of their (very funny) commercials. You can take a page out of Apple’s playbook by re-energizing your company’s brand image. Attracting more visitors to your website begins with good website design, SEO and creating effective marketing and advertising vehicles as well. Build a better brand in the mind of the target audience and you will attract a large audience to your company’s website.

Ohio Website Design, Part II

Morrison Sign Company, located in Columbus, Ohio, has created a new website for their business.  The website design for this company effectively promotes their products and services. The portfolio page in particular displays photos of their work in a creative manner. Flash animation adds interest to the website as well.

Ohio Website Design

Lawhon & Associates, an Ohio-based environmental engineering services firm, created a cool website design for their business.  The company brand is established with prominent logo placement, good color palette and Flash animation.  It’s rare to see engineering firms with a bright looking website.

NY Times Article on Publication Website

NY Times article ‘Publications on Fitness and Health Head to Web’ describes the trend of publications to increase their website efforts.  Hearst Corporation is seeking to improve the branding of their publications. The NY Times article covers the financial side of the business very well. It would be helpful to the reader if the article spoke towards publication website design as well.  Good website design allow users to dig deeper into relevant information quickly and build a strong relationships.  Strong relationships mean repeat visitors to the website.

Cool Website Design in Columbus Ohio, Part III

Here’s an example of another well-designed website located in Columbus, Ohio.  This website is for the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority (OAQDA).  Flash animation was used to show a portfolio of photos about OADQA.  The navigation is easy-to-follow and helpful for the target audience.

Design a Successful Website

Designing a website is a lot like climbing a mountain. It takes discipline and focus to accomplish your goal. Here are some ideas to help with your journey to the top.

- Develop a passion for your online business
- Make a commitment to succeed
- Explore other websites
- Know your target audience
- Research competitors
- Develop a strong brand image
- Create a comprehensive content outline
- Create and produce the best work possible (or hire someone to help)
- Adapt to changing conditions
- Accomplish your goal by publishing the website
- Measure results
- Update frequently

After you’ve built a great website, let folks know about your business. Your online marketing efforts should include; Choosing a variety of promotional vehicles, delivering a consistent message and budgeting aggressively.

Another Cool Website Design in Columbus Ohio

Another great example on how to improve your website design using Flash animation.  Ohio Technical Services is an asbestos inspection and removal company located in Columbus, Ohio.  The Home page effectively leads you to more information about the company. 

Cool Website Design in Columbus Ohio

Who says that teaching can’t be fun? Lively website produced by the Ohio Insurance Institute (OII) focuses on explaining weather safety issues to children in Ohio. OII even created a club for the school-aged children to join. Looks like a great tool for teachers. Flash animation website design at its best. 

FedEx Shows Us Why Some Meetings Are Useless

FedEx has a one of the funniest commercials running on television.  It portrays a scene where meetings are useless, and some people are clueless.  But by using FedEx, you can still get the job done. The main message throughout this commercial and their campaign is that FedEx offers a range of services that help small businesses meet their needs.  Well done.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

There’s no secret to driving traffic to your website.  It takes planning, hard work and execution. Picture of your website as being located in the middle of a corn field.  How would anyone be able to find it?  You basically have to plow a path leading to your website. The more paths that you plow, the more opportunities there are for your target audience to find your website.  And by connecting the paths, you create additonal chances to connect with users.  One path could be optimizing your site for search engines. Another path could be to increase links back to your site. Think of those paths as strategic methods and you’re well on your way to improving visibilty with your target audience.

Adding Flash Improves Website Design

Bring your website to life by adding a Flash animation.  If customers and prospects are not excited about your website’s design (and maybe not excited about your business), introducing Flash animation can help.  Flash, a software product from Adobe, has a steep learning curve so you may want to consider hiring a professional company that is experienced in developing Flash websites.   It’s all about driving traffic to your website and Flash can help spread word-of-mouth marketing.

Blogs are the Future of Marketing

If you have a business, then you need a blog.  According to Technorati the blogoshere has grown from 100,000 blogs in March 2003 to nearly 73 million in March 2007.  The numbers suggest that this is no longer ‘bleeding edge’ technology.  Blogs have become mainstream as a valuable source of information for Internet users with interests that range from travel to computer hardware.  Not all blogs are created equal however and there are a lot of, to put it mildly, sub-par blogs that offer little or no value.   For that reason, companies that understand how important it is to connect with customers and prospects will utilize a professionally produced blog.  Here are some important points: 

- Hire a professional maketing firm to build your blog
- Utilize multiple authors to write articles
- Write articles about solving customer problems
- Use photos and graphic images to make your point
- Encourage feedback to articles
- Update blog as often as possible
- Find ways to connect to the blogosphere and extend your blog’s reach

Your business blog should offer solutions to customer problems, not just a sales pitch to buy your products or services.  Update your blog at least once every week and cover a wide range of topics specially tailored for your target audience.  And don’t forget to take advantage of the many methods for connecting with other blogs and blog aggregators such as; Digg and del.icio.us.

If this all seems ‘Greek’ to you, don’t worry.  There are plenty of resources available on the Internet to help your busness create an effective blog.  The great news is that the technology to create a blog is open-source (meaning free).  And there are many other solutions available as well.  Forget email, start a blog to move your business into the future!

YouTube, McDonalds Make a Commercial

Fernando Sosa and Thomas Middleditch, two unknown actor/musicians, posted a rap video about Chicken McNuggets on YouTube and created a sensation. The video eventually was spotted by McDonalds and a 30 second spot was created to run on commercial television. Mr. Sosa was also interviewed by Neil Cavuto on FNC. It just shows how creativity, marketing and Web 2.0 access can level the playing field in marketing your business.

Marketing Your Business 2.0

If you opened up the doors of a new business 15 years ago, your marketing (Marketing 1.0) would have consisted of advertising in the local phone directory, printing up business cards, stationary and brochures and waiting by the phone for the customers to call. Once in a while, when business was slow, you might even take out an ad in the local paper or drop off a few business cards at a trade show.

There were computers back then and a new phenomenon called the Internet was breaking loose, but all-in-all marketing was pretty basic. For example, if you needed to research the competition, you would try to find a copy of their brochures. For information about larger potential customers you would have sent away for annual reports. You would have read about general business news in the local or national newspapers. And local information about your industry would have come from associations and membership organizations. Researching prospects and customers would take you to a place called a library. It was a place that everyone went to, to get the information they needed. Yes, those were the days!

Now, imagine that you have been asleep since then and unaware of the new technologies available for the past 15 years. (You can choose your own reason for sleeping that long!) You’ve suddenly woken up to a new world of marketing. What used to be a simple world of basic marketing is now a world of Blogs, Widgets and Wikis. To say that times have changed is an understatement. Technology now allows us to market our businesses in ways we never could have dreamed about. And even though we haven’t been asleep the past 15 years it’s still amazing to imagine the potential of utilizing this technology. Welcome to Marketing Your Business 2.0.

Marcy Design will bring a fresh perspective on how your business can take advantage of this brave new world of marketing. We will review new products, services and Web sites related to marketing. Feel free to review the RSS feeds on this Web site to gain a better understanding of what’s out there. And let us know if you have any questions or new insight to share. One last thought, according to the consulting firm Capgemini, more than 80% of consumers surveyed in 2006 said they used the Web during the buying process, twice as many as in 2004 and more than four times as many as in 2002. This new world of marketing revolves around the Internet.