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Size Does Matter in Advertising

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Creative, Design, Marketing by Paul McEwan on May 17, 2012 | No Comments

I just had a client ask me to make something bigger so it will stand out more because one item on the ad is more important than the other.

Prominence and importance of content like a logo, phone number, tagline and so on, is also created by giving more space around something. (This is something we learn in designer school. We really do learn things there). So just using size as a way to “categorize” importance in the design of a marketing piece isn’t always the way to go. In some cases making things all bigger; the same size, or made to fill up all the room available can cause the item to be less readable and seem less important. You’ve seen those ads where there is all that space and a little logo or message in the center? Yea, that’s the idea in those.

We usually start with the headline as the largest part. But to be clear, it’s not the most important part. The headline is the most understood part of any ad and should make any reader want to know the rest of the story.

Do you agree? Care to comment?

A Thought Leader I am Not

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Marketing by Paul McEwan on May 10, 2012 | No Comments

Call Me a Thought Leader and I’ll punch you in the nose.

They say if you are a leader and no one follows, you are just taking a walk by yourself. At the risk of being a thought leader taking a walk by myself allow me to post a comment I made today on this site’s article here.

One thing social media “marketing” people seem to always miss – Not just gloss over – I mean really miss and avoid like it’s a Social Science Behavioral class someone might take in University studies… It’s emotional connection.

Emotional Connection in marketing is when the message is implanted at the most instinctive level. At that point it’s a strong connection. This is called advertising. Oh, but wait – advertising is dead.  I forgot. See, what a lousy thought leader I am forgetin’ this and fogetin’ that.

Let me just poke this little bit in here. The largest companies in the world are large because of advertising. It’s not dead, it’s just changed it’s locations.

MyStarbucksIdea does this social/emotional connection on a small level.

a site with thousands of customers who submit new product and marketing ideas and vote on them. Some of the best ideas are put into production and become new drinks, products and marketing campaigns. The customers become no longer merely passive recipients of marketing messages but are actively engaged in a whole new level of personal connection with each other and the brand.

But Jones Cola did the same sort of thing long before social media with their customer designed labels. No one needed to log on to get involved so the appeal was on a more “mass” level. Oh, another bad word “mass” tisk, tisk. I totally fail at this Thought Leadership stuff.

Thought leaders can’t go around saying the same thing everyone else is. They have to stick their necks out. But this is like sticking my neck out the window of a fast moving train. It’s going to take a long time for the social media crazy train slows down.

The real SEO Question

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Technology, Web Design by Paul McEwan on May 1, 2012 | No Comments

What if all websites were the same and everyone hired the same SEO company to do the same SEO work on each website? Who would show up in search engines first?

Invest heavily in Search Engine Optimization [SEO] and you may generate an adequate return on investment. This is dependent on what your competition is doing and how many are going after the exact same market as you and how active the particular target audience is and and and… Whatever you do – how you want to spend your money in this type of marketing is still dependent on facts.

Be mindful that search engines are not paid for organic search traffic.  They use programming known as “algorithms” to find, index and list websites. Many of these  algorithms are trade secrets and are known to change from time to time.  According to Google’s CEO, Erick Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day. With this lack of guarantees and certainty, do you really want a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic to keep sending visitors? Seomoz.org, a highly regarded SEO software company completed a study where they suggest that even “search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines.”

Before closing let’s be clear that analytics and SEO are not the same thing. Gathering analytics is all about gathering facts. These facts are important to performing good marketing in general. This marketing might include SEO and/or traditional advertising.

Avoid suffering major losses due to search engine uncertainty. Of course SEO is good but be aware. Where ever you spend most of your marketing dollars consider business practices that leave you liberated from dependence on search engine traffic.

SEO Fail: When Traffic is Not Enough

Posted in: Blog, Marketing, Technology, Web Design by Paul McEwan on March 27, 2012 | No Comments

The “numbers game” is different online.

The clearer the understanding one gets of how the internet works the better view we get of SEO and its value. Yes, SEO work done on a website can bring you sheer numbers if… and there are a lot of  ”ifs”. The big one to keep in mind is that the more crowded your market place the more amount you’ll need to spend and the longer it will take before you begin to see any traction.

How much is your competition spending on SEO? How many? What are their keywords? How long have they been doing it? These are just some of the local questions no one can guarantee.

Is spending a fortune on SEO right for you? To be honest, it’s not the best marketing strategy for every business owner and I’ll venture to say it’s simply a lousy investment on its own for industries like real estate and fitness. You need to think about what the goal of your site is going to be because there are so many other internet and real time marketing strategies that can be far more effective.  Whether well crafted, targeted mass media, print media or internet marketing, a successful campaign depends on engaging emotionally and persuading visitors that you have the better mouse trap. Just getting traffic is not enough.

Now you’re thinking, “yea but the ‘numbers game’ theory!  the ‘numbers game’ theory!”

So you believe this is still like cold calling. If you call 100 people a day on the phone with a 1% success rate you’ll get 3 customers in three days, right? Not so online.

When you call a person, there is no way of knowing if you will relate to this person until the two of you begin talking. The relationship begins to happen on it’s own and you begin targeting this person more than the last 99. This kind of relationship can’t happen through a  website visit.

If they don’t like what they see right away, they “bounce” away. Even the ones who would have related to you bounce if you’re hiding behind a bunch of sales speak and slogans that are similar to every other website in your industry.

What I’m saying here, and if you only get one thing from this post then here it is:

It’s better to invite and send visitors to your website that already relate to you than it is to pull them in by fooling a search engine.

Your website must be a high quality build and design with web pages that engage and persuade your customers so the goal of your website is realized. This is called conversion. Conversion needs more than just SEO to work.  A website where an objective that can be met as easy as possible by customers that relate to your offering and send their friends and family there will make you so busy you will have no time to worry about traffic and bounce rate.

Version Your Project

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Web Design by Paul McEwan on February 11, 2012 | No Comments

All to often a prospect points at a giant active website and says, “I want one just like it”. OK, without getting into market differentiation and longtail segments there is one thing most fail to recognize right away. And that is, [drum roll please]  how long it took that giant active website to get to the place it is today with all it’s content and traffic and stocked social media feeds and custom plugins and cowzingas and koozoodles etc, etc…

The next time you go about building a website, why not try breaking it down into smaller pieces and publishing it and re-publishing it on specified release dates. Building a website is not like publishing a book. All the chapters don’t have to be there right away. The promise of more to come is enticing. No matter how small your project, there are number of reasons building a website in versions is a heck of a good idea.

1. Publish smaller sooner to start the Google juice flowing and get indexed.
2. Adding and building content later is actually creating on-site activity. Google likes this. Your fans like this.
3. Budget your project; Can’t afford it all right away? Break it down to bite sized chunks.
4. Set it and forget it doesn’t exist on line – you may as well publish in versions.

Publishing a large site in versions requires a couple of things to remember:

Build a following first with a marketing plan. Avoid waiting until the website is complete to advertise it’s completion. Think movie trailer.  Tweeting and creating a Fanpage following is a great idea. CYGY Online Magazine did it this way. They even asked fans to vote on the logo colours prior to the site release.When the site is published it’s done with a fanfare and rides a wave of activity. Don’t forget other forms of advertising that include business cards. Include those basics in the first version budget.

Then let your fans know about the next release and what to expect. But of course, hold something back as an unexpected surprise.

Let’s Turn Real Estate on its Head

Posted in: Blog, Marketing, Real Estate by Paul McEwan on February 1, 2012 | 2 Comments

Teri Conrad had an epiphany and wrote a real estate oriented post called Who’s Brand Is It Anyway? I like the post. The epiphany she had about why brokerages protect their brand in today’s real estate market is spot on. It’s been my thinking for a long time that the brand of the brokerage does little for the sales ability of an agent with the tools they so freely have at their disposal.

More and more the real estate brokerage’s brand is sinking into the background. Proctor and Gamble or Milton Bradley seem to do it right. They supply just the right amount of name recognition while spectacularly backing and advertising the brand of the individual products first. After all, it’s their *product* that sells, not the Big Daddy brand in the back ground. I certainly can’t tell by watching an agent on Youtube or reading their feed on Twitter what brokerage they are from. Like the big Daddy Brands of old, brokerages should be following suit along with their fee structure. That right there is the key. Let’s get back to that later.

The basic problem is brokerages aren’t selling homes. They are recruiting agents. The only way they can promote themselves is through the agent. Some brokerages have even gone so far as to provide “free” marketing for their agents. (You know who I’m speaking about?). There is nothing free about that. They are simply paying for advertising of themselves at the expense of the agent having no personal brand at all. It seems like a neat and tidy package that some agents just love. Nothing wrong with it just as long as we’re all clear and on the same page.

Back to the key point: Real estate agents get nickel and dimed at every turn. Some fees and insurances are real. Some are because they have to. The brokerage for the most part is a have to.

Here’s the part about turning it on it’s head. Many often suggest that the brokerage had better start providing more or they are going to be left in the dirt. But my thinking is why don’t they simply provide less in exchange for micofees?  This is the model the music business was forced to take. It works very well. You and I, we start an online virtual brokerage that simply provides the must have legal parts and charge fees in relationship to the service it provides. The brand is way in the background like Proctor and Gamble and we let the agent brand and sell the way they want to.

What do you say? Who’s in?

Leilani from BetterLiving Group on TV

Posted in: Blog, Clients, Company News, Real Estate by Paul McEwan on January 12, 2012 | No Comments

Whenever I see one of our clients providing their expert opinions as sound bites for television reporting I get all verklempt as if it’s one of my own kids on the TV. *sigh*. I can not help myself. I have to tell you all about it. Below is a video from Global Television News that starts with our client Leilani Fong of the BetterLiving Group. The BetterLiving Group is an online real estate focused neighbourhood information provider.

Let me know if you have a TV spot you want blogged about here. Contact us.

Intel is making friends with everyone

Posted in: Blog, Tech Alternatives, Technology, Uncategorized by Paul McEwan on January 11, 2012 | No Comments

Intel, the maker of the chip we all thought was married to the PC, which became synonymous with Windows, until they started making chips for Apple computers, has released their own mobile phone. Did they use the Windows operating system? nope. Did they use Apple’s iOS? not allowed. They used Google’s latest version of Android as their OS of choice. The machine is remarkable. Take a look at the video demonstration.

Please update your WordPress Website

Posted in: Technology, Web Design, Wordpress by Paul McEwan on December 13, 2011 | 2 Comments

This is important information about your WordPress website. If your website runs on the WordPress Platform then you should know that every so often WordPress releases an update. We pass on the information to our clients. We believe you should know because as our client the maintenance of your marketing materials are important to us.

Keeping your website up-to-date is important for a number of reasons. One is security of your database and information and another is usefulness of the latest plugins and the browsers visitors use.

It’s much easier to stay instep with the updates than get behind. If you haven’t updated your WordPress platform for some time, it’s a good idea to check the comparability of your theme first.

The latest WordPress Version is called Sonny Stitt. The Version is 3.3 and it was released yesterday, December 12, 2011. You can update your WordPress website from the site’s back end. Please don’t forget to back-up your database first.

If you need help updating your WordPress Website, please contact us. We will:

• Back-up your data-base and store it in your folder.
• Perform theme compatibility check and report issues.
• Perform update to the latest version.
• Update all relevant plugins

We’re keeping our ear-to-the-ground for you. You keep on doing what you do best!

Transformer Prime’s Real Advantage

Posted in: Blog, Tech Alternatives, Technology by Paul McEwan on December 1, 2011 | No Comments

The Transformer, by my informed opinion, is the best tablet out on the market bar none. Well a new version has hit the market as promised. Sometimes these promises amount to little as we saw with Google’s latest version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Asus, the makers of the Transformers have kept their promise of a December release date and it’s called…you guessed it, Prime. It will not, however, be shipping with the newest Android OS but you can update it when it becomes available to Asus.

We discussed the first Transformer already which will stay on the market as an entry level model. However, the new Transformer Prime’s 64Gig storage with speedy performance via the Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor is starting at a mere $600. Both of these products set a new bench mark for, not just performance, but value. But here’s the big difference. The keyboard, dock adding more memory and 10 hours of battery life.