Advertising

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.

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.

4 Reasons Your Website Doesn’t Work

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Creative, Design, Marketing, Web Design by Paul McEwan on November 7, 2011 | No Comments

“How do I get leads from my website?”

I am asked this all the time. I must sound like a nutty-internet-social-media zealot when I answer  those who have been successfully doing the old school sales thing for years and years without a real online presence. So sometimes my consultation is met with a glazed expression, silence at the other end of the phone or an email response about Mary Poppins; It doesn’t get very far and my creativity is superseded with the client’s own more excellent ideas. There are many reasons a website doesn’t work that are obvious from terrible design to poor content. That list is long. Here is a short basic list of how to hire someone to make a website that doesn’t work.

1. Place little value on creative marketing ideas involving the gain of website leads. Do not take any professional consultation seriously.
   Every business is different and every solution is different. Without an audit the quick answer to “Why isn’t my website working?” is always the same: Do the basics. Want to push past your competitors? Then for the love of all things don’t be just like them.
2. Spend as little as possible on the website marketing budget because it’s supposed to just get found in Google anyway.
   A nice looking store on the corner of a busy city street doesn’t always get the business it deserves if the sign isn’t clear, it looks closed, has no access and no parking. Whether it’s viral marketing or traditional marketing, at least have a plan. If the plan isn’t followed we’ll then know why the site didn’t work.
3. Have the website automated so you never have to touch it. Your phone number on the homepage should work.
   This is taking the view that the internet is not entirely real and a website is just a cost of doing business. Imagine walking into an open house where the agent is a cardboard cut out with a pasted on grin and a motorized arm waving  back and forth. The feature sheets are there with a “please take one” sign and we follow a roped off path through the home. Yea, it would work I guess.
4. Have the site created so it will be all things to all people. Avoid focusing on a target group of search terms.
   Specializing in Vancouver Real Estate is like a lawyer announcing they specializing in legal stuff. Come on. Have some balls and choose a market, geographic, demographic or caged monkeys. Choose it.

This internets stuff is a tough sell for some. Those who don’t like being on line, don’t have time for it or simply don’t care. They have been successfully doing the same thing for years. If they are in sales then it is probably a front loaded business which is to say, they have to jump through hoops, have meetings, drive people around, gathering documents and hold hands to get the sale closed. It’s a lot of free personal time with their clients before they close the deal and see any monetary gain. It’s no wonder the internet seems to contain little or no value to them. I understand this.

Just remember, online marketing is the most scalable choice for the small business. It’s measurable and most eyeballs start their search online for almost everything. Even if it’s something a prospect needs to see and touch in person before a final decision, the search will start online. Social media is getting easier for people to use – we are just at the beginning of what the internet might eventually be, and already is: A real space thick with engagement, communication and networking places.

Do you have a question or something to add? Please do so below or contact me today

More Services for our Clients

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Company News, Marketing, Technology by Paul McEwan on May 18, 2011 | No Comments

In case you didn’t know allow us to re-introduce Tribalyell’s email newsletter online software with a fancy new web page!

We have written about this amazing email newsletter software’s trackable social sharing abilities before and you can read about that here. Social sharing from a newsletter campaign is just the beginning. Aside  from that there is the ability to create and upload your own templates, choose from a list of free templates or have us design a custom template that matches your brand and all with client personalization. You have a choice of  monthly rates or a free account with a low pay as you go rate so you don’t feel pressured to use it.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment.

Introducing E-flier Social Sharing

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Company News, Marketing, Technology by Paul McEwan on February 4, 2011 | 1 Comment

Our new Social Sharing feature in our Email Newsletter software went live yesterday, making it super easy for you to share your campaigns on Twitter and Facebook and then see a report of the results.

Before I dive into the details, here’s a preview of the new Social Sharing report. You can click it for a full-size version.

Our providers have been thinking long and hard about the best way to add this kind of social integration for the TribalYell Eflyers System. As always, the goal was to keep the sharing process as simple as possible for you and your subscribers. Here’s how it works.

In-email sharing made easy

The easiest way for your subscribers to share your email newsletter  is by adding a “Tweet” or “Like” button to your campaign. Then with a couple of clicks any subscriber can share your email with their friends or followers. To do this, we’ve introduced two new tags that you can easily add to your existing designs.

Add a “Like” button to your campaign

Just add the following tag anywhere in your email design and we’ll instantly turn that into a working Facebook “Like” button.

<fblike></fblike> turns into

When your subscriber clicks on this button in their email, we’ll load the following lightbox where they can “Like” your campaign and see which of their friends have also liked it. Here’s an example of this in action:

If you don’t want to use the standard “Like” button, just add your own text or image between the tag and we’ll turn that word or image into a link that, when clicked, loads the lightbox like the one above.

Add a tweet button to your campaign

Let your subscribers tweet about your campaigns using the new tag below.

<tweet></tweet> turns into

If your subscriber is a Twitter user, clicking that button takes them straight to a compose window with the tweet pre-populated with your campaign subject and a shortened URL linking to the web version. Here’s how that one looks:

Just like the Facebook Like tag, you can add your own text or images between the tags and that will be used instead of the default tweet button, giving you complete design flexibility.

Sharing made simple for our clients

If we’ve built templates for you, we can easily add permanent “Like” and “Tweet” buttons to them that work for every email newsletter you send. We’ve also made it simple for clients to add their own share links to any campaigns they send using the editor.

Get the word out from within Campaign Monitor

Our new social tags aren’t the only way to get the word out about your latest campaign. You can also share them yourselves right from Campaign Monitor. The report for every email you’ve ever sent now includes a new “Share” button in the top right corner. Here’s how it looks:

Clicking the “Share button” will open the popup where you can share on Twitter or Facebook with a single click.

Whenever that URL is mentioned on Twitter or “Liked” on Facebook, we’ll track the results for you. You and your subscribers can share your campaign any way you like and we’ll handle the rest.

Real-time reporting to bring it all together

While there are lots of different ways to share your campaign, we bring it all together with the new Social Sharing report. This includes who tweeted about your campaign, who liked it on Facebook and who forwarded your email on to friends. Basically, whenever anyone shares your campaign, we’ll show you who it was and how they did it.

The report is broken up into two parts. Up top we’ve got a summary of the activity so far across Twitter, Facebook and email forwards.

Below that is a real-time list that pulls all of this together into a single activity stream. See what people are saying about your campaign on Twitter, who’s sharing on Facebook and which subscribers have forwarded it to their friends.

For each subscriber that tweets, we’ll show you their Twitter avatar and a link to the tweet in question. We also link to the subscriber snapshot and display a gravatar if available for anyone who “Likes” your campaign or forwards it on to friends.

There are loads of other subtle features in this report, but I’ll leave some of them for you to discover once you start sharing. We hope you have fun with this new feature. It’s a brilliant way to learn more about who is sharing your campaigns with the world, and what they’re saying about you in the process.

More about Tribal Eflyer Service

At TribalYell Integrated Branding, we offer everything you need to create and send successful email marketing campaigns. Deliver beautiful emails, manage your subscribers and track your campaign results, all from within your browser!

It’s new, as self serve as you want and it’s free. There is no monthly subscription. You are only charged a small fee per eflier and email in that campaign.  TribalYell Efliers [Beta]

Send beautiful emails

• Build your own campaigns
• We provide a custom template designs
• Choose which customers to target

Great looking reports

• Great looking charts on the results
• See who opened, clicked and forwarded
• Drill down to individual subscribers

Manage your subscribers

• Easily add your own subscribers
• Handles unsubscribes & bounces automatically
• CAN-SPAM compliant

Target specific customers

• Create segments for targeted campaigns
• Segment based on location, interest or
  anything else you store

View the results anywhere

• Mobile friendly version
• Access results from anywhere

No experience required

• Simple interface
• You don’t need to be a ‘coder’

Conversation vs Interruption Marketing

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Marketing, Technology by Paul McEwan on December 20, 2010 | No Comments

Who came up with the phrase conversational marketing? Probably the same people who came up with the phrase interruption marketing. These phrases themselves aren’t bad descriptions of marketing styles but I’m seeing the descriptions used  for defining different marketing tools as either new school or old school and therefor, either good or bad.

For those of you who do not understand what Conversational Marketing and Interruption Marketing are, here is a brief explanation.

Conversational Marketing: Conversations happen and you are weeded out or led further into levels of brand alignment based on what you say. Contests and give aways might be used to entice you to re-tweet or post something and can help create a viral marketing spin and gain more conversation for catching already aligned people. Or to explain it differently, turn each person in the conversation into an advertiser. Facebook, and Twitter are the types of platforms where Conversational Marketing can happen.

Interruption marketing: This is a single sided conversation. An advertisement that is placed in a relevant magazine or a TV commercial that is played to a demographic who is watching a show. Interruption Marketing has interrupted you to say its thing. Considered Mass Media Advertising it is  therefor considered “Old School”. There is a trade-off that in return for the interruption, entertainment congruent with the pitch is offered as part of the better more well rounded advertisments.

For some odd reason, one is seen as good and the other as bad. Personally, I love good traditional advertising but then that’s part of my industry and perhaps I’m biased but tell me, don’t you hate missing the preview ads before a movie? I am always a little disappointed. Do people not like the Super-bowl ads? I love them. It’s part of the game on the screen!

With Interruption Marketing at least we know what we’re getting into. We either stop to look or move on. For me, (and again, my point of view), Conversational Marketing can be insidious and boring. Is the conversation real or fake? The day is coming when bots will be able to auto converse with masses upon masses of people to weed them out and get to a small percentage of those who will be lead down a garden path turning each one of them into little advertisers who tow the party line. (Also known as raving fans).

Interruption marketing tactics get used in purely conversational mediums. For instance, Twitter now sells tweets and is considered interruption advertising but with the ability to position well and so begins the confusion. They are also boring as hell, especially for those who communicate visually.

Then there are those just winging it with zero thought put into what they are trying to do.

Think Ben Think

Look Great?, Look silly

Almost 4000 tweets and 0 followers. What a charmer

How we plan advertising.

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Creative, Design, Real Estate by Paul McEwan on November 19, 2010 | No Comments

I think REALTORS® have some of the worst. advertising. ever. Just listed! Just Sold! Don’t do it!  One reason I got involved offering services to real estate was to help rid the lower mainland of some of the crap. I literally thought to myself, ‘well there must be no one offering decent real estate advertising’ and ‘I can do that’. I set out to save us all from another IJS [I Just Sold].

I have since discovered the market is thick with creative graphic and design talent and the blame for the poor advertising is the REALTOR® themselves. They simply fall into a rut of doing what the last person did or because they got 3 calls from 20,000 mailed pieces means it must be working or they just don’t know anything about it and are busy doing real estate to think about it much. They send their next listing to their graphics person to create another mail piece.

TribalYell Integrated Branding will not take on new clients who want Just Listed and Just Sold marketing pieces. And unless you have some authentic engagement going on, we will not set up social media to auto populate this crap either. We will not add to the mess you’re all in. We won’t do it – no way.

There is another way. These questions need to be asked at the start of every advertising piece.

• What are you giving?
• What do you want in return?
• What problem do you need a solution to?
• What problem do they need a solution to?
• How will it be communicated?

Notice the last question was not “How will it be written?” or “How will it be said?”. This is because communication takes place in every image, line, shape colour and yes: word. Let the creative take your communication miles and start standing out. If you do this, wear your boots because you will be standing with the crap around your ankles.

Online marketing, social media, display ads or mail out pieces all need to be good. Does this sound complicated? Then hand it over to us to look after. Let’s plan something for the entire upcoming year.

Free Client Appreciation Social Media Workshop

Posted in: Advertising, Blog, Clients, Marketing, Technology by Paul McEwan on September 17, 2010 | 5 Comments

I consider my clients, The Tribe. Being part of the Tribe has its privileges like re-tweeting everything I see you say on Twitter, joining your Fanpage and linking with you on Linkedin and now a free workshop. This kind of online networking and sharing helps everyone be found online. However, something is amiss. Not enough of my clients are online. The websites are there but they themselves are not. It’s like opening the store and leaving it unattended. So, I want to help out.

This Free Client Appreciation Social Media Workshop  is for you if you are a client and one of the 4 categories below

1. You don’t have or understand Twitter, Facebook Fanpages, or Linkedin but want to.
2. You have, and understand Twitter, Facebook Fanpages, or Linkedin but want to connect them to your website
3. You have Twitter, Facebook Fanpages, or Linkedin, have them connected to your website but don’t follow a regular social media campaign.
4. You just want to hang out and meet your other Tribe Members.

Before I can commit to a date time and place, I need to discover how many would want to attend. For those of you out of town, let’s rig up Skype. Pre-register by emailing me or commenting below.

While you are at it, follow me on Twitter, Join our Fanpage and link with me on Linkedin.