Quick… when was the last time you sat down and thought about your ABC’s?
If you think the alphabet is just for little kids – and not something that your small business can benefit from – think again! Even though you might struggle to get the song out of your head for the next few hours, these ABC’s can spell success when it comes to local SEO and your small business:
There are tons of tutorials that explain how to physically get onto the web – like how to find a good hosting company, how to find the right web designer (or how to set up pre-packaged themes yourself).
But once you do all of that, how do you actually get SEEN?
The word Moustache is French and is derived from the Italian mostaccio. Well, so it says on Wikipedia.
Although the World Beard and Moustache Championships define six categories for moustaches (The Natural, Hungarian, Dali, English, Imperial and Freestyle), I tend to associate the moustache with watching too many episodes of Fu Manchu; German fashion and a certain character called Borat.
As an integrated communications agency, we were amused recently to receive a direct mail pack from Google.
Surely a giant of online advertising doesn’t send out direct mail? So why are Google putting things in the post?
In fact a direct mail pack from Google shows how joined-up marketing thinking really works. Google wanted to reach out to agencies to increase their propensity to include AdWords online advertising in marketing proposals. So what would be the format that would best gain our attention and convey a sometimes complex message?
The term ‘brand’ is a confusing term for many, yet it’s freely and liberally used in many conversations. We hear it on an almost daily basis... but every time we do, it’s nearly always a reference to a company’s desire to redesign its identity, refresh its website or deliver a message to a particular target audience.
Whilst these are essential components for many brands, there is so much more involved. In fact your brand is composed of five key parts – positioning, storytelling, design, price, and customer relationships.
I’m sure that it won’t just be retailers who experience a downturn, if not stagnation, from the effect of a full summer of celebrations. To say our phone lines went quiet would be an understatement.
So how can businesses of all types make budgets stretch further?
Why not follow the Olympic example and invest in Teamwork, otherwise known as Partnership or Affinity Marketing.
Your business has a website. Who cares if it’s not that visible on the latest Samsung Galaxy or iphone 4?
The truth of the matter is that you should care. Research shows that 50%(1) of users accessing your website on a mobile won’t ever return after a bad experience. To bring that home that’s 50% of your mobile users lost as potential customers
But so what? If only 5% of people accessing your site are using mobile anyway this figure only represents 2.5% of your audience.
We’ve all got a stash of visuals that never quite made the grade, nor won the account or were simply rejected in favour of another of our ideas.
Once upon a time these would have been filed away in a portfolio and parked on shelf until the next spring clean. Nowadays they’re primarily parked away in some form of digital archive never to be seen again.
Fantastic news. In October we were appointed by one of the UK’s leading coffee companies to develop a creative rationale, website and online activity for their leading own-label Fairtrade coffee.
Stocked by major supermarkets Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, our brief is to revitalise the brand following a recent redesign of its packaging. A lack of huge budgets has prevented our client from going head to head with the coffee majors so our aim is to target niche users, who care about the provenance, taste and value of the products they buy.
Is it every marketers dream to create an ad campaign that goes viral, where the circulation ends up in millions, far surpassing any budget they may have been able to afford?
I know as a creative marketer I would love to put my name behind a hugely successful campaign but it’s not for the faint hearted. For every campaign that succeeds there are probably many more that don’t even reach the consciousness.
The volume of mail sent in the UK has been reducing at a rapidly accelerating rate over recent years, from 21.5 billion items in 2007/08, to 18.8 billion in 2009/10*.
And it’s easy to see why; direct mail is time-consuming and costly to produce, let alone to post. Add to that the reduction in Royal Mail collections and deliveries and you can see why many companies have turned to the internet as a cost-effective way of reaching out to customers.
Why spend thousands printing brochures that cost even more to post, when customers can just look things up on the internet – and virtually for free.
“Logic and over-analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love—the more you analyze it, the faster it disappears”.
Famed for his soundbites, as well as his creative brilliance, Bill Bernbach was one of the original advertising greats. Beginning his career as a copywriter, before founding Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1949, his work (and his soundbites) are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.
How often do you ever see anything new in social media. Something that pushes the boundaries just a little bit and demonstrates a communication channels true possibilities?
The Desperados experience not only pushes the boundaries, it offers a real breakthrough on YouTube
Have a look at youtube.com/desperados
There are a lot of tedious things in life and top of the list has to be the traditional agency portfolio.
You know the sort of thing '.... a team of committed and experienced professional, dedicated to the highest standards of creativity...' and so it drones on and on.
