Marketing Muse from Silver Square

Be even more amazing

One of the few occasions that I have the television on is when I'm working out. It's usually on CNNor a DVR of the Backyardigans if my son is with me. Tonight I decided I needed a dose of HGTV and somewhat paid attention to the show. What did catch my attention was a commercial from Electroluxwith Kelly Ripa. She told me I could be even more amazing with Electrolux. Who doesn't want to be more amazing (especially hearing this while you're working out?)?

I liked the tag line so much that I made a mental note to myself to check out this Electrolux stuff later tonight when I knew I would have to hit the laptop for lots of time docking some research. I went to the homepage of Electrolux and didn't see anything with Kelly or how to be even more amazing on it, but I did get a selection of entry points in the form of product. I was thinking I recalled the commercial to be about washers and dryers so I went to appliances. There she was. There is my home for finding the amazment.

Now to the surprising bit - I was amazed.

I did like the site very much, and I would buy the products today if I were in the market for such items. They even took the time to make the connection from the commercial spots to the design of the site, to the shots, to using Kelly's voice, to doing it all just ever so great. Kudos. This is the way to do things across multiple mediums and actually amaze your audience. Why spend the time and money to speak to them if you're going to change your voice, sound, stage, design and more once you get them to where you want them to go?

So many people have missed this not so tiny detail. The people who want to do something, anything, to just have a marketing activity. The people who don't understand that one magical elixir doesn't exist. The people who rely too much on too little effort. The people who do what's in the budget instead of doing what's right with what you can make of the budget.

Plan it all out in your next blitz. Act like Electrolux and be even more amazing.

Brand YOU and what that says...

I want to welcome Annie S. Dimitri, Life and Image Coach, to share just how important it is for you to realize you are a brand and you speak for your company by how you dress, how you talk, what you do, etc. Give Annie a buzz to get started on a new brand you.

 

What Does Your Image Say About Your Business?

Branding your business. Lots of us spend our valuable resources of time and money, tweaking this detail, and defining that nuance, of our business so that who we are and what we offer are boldly declared to our target market. However, your most important asset and advertisement, YOU, most likely hasn’t received the same amount of painstaking care and attention. What can this do for the results of all the hard work of your marketing strategy? It can flush them all right down the toilet with a loud gurgle. And quickly.

Research demonstrates that within 3 to 4 seconds, we form preliminary judgments about people based solely on their appearance. Within 30 seconds, we have calculated at least 11 different assumptions about someone, such as their ability to succeed, sense of humor, and work ethic. Again, this is based solely on appearance.  If we don’t pass muster in that first 30 seconds, then the opportunity is shot. The one and only way to change a poor first impression is through repeated exposure, and typically, that isn’t possible. So what is a business owner to do with this information? Let there be no wailing and gnashing of teeth, or excessive martini swigging, about this issue. The solutions are very simple.

Begin by defining how you want others to perceive you (and therefore, your business) when they simply see you. What messages do you want your grooming, clothing, and body language to convey so that it is consistent with your marketing? These three components are your visual vocabulary, the personal poetry of you. Once you have that, rid your closet right then and there of any item that doesn’t agree with your message. Even your exercise clothes. Any place you go, you are advertising your business. It is that simple. You never know when and where you will meet that next client. Find stores that carry the looks you desire. Buy them. Learn to wear them. Educate yourself about the importance of your body language, and how you can use it to make an even more stellar first impression. Update your hair and cosmetics. Those sweet winged bangs and that fluffy ponytail perched jauntily atop your head were so cool back in 1985, but this is 2009. Be current. If you aren’t, potential customers will assume your business isn’t either. If all this isn’t your area of expertise, seek assistance. Image consultants, personal shoppers at Nordstrom and Saks, or just very talented friends can make all the difference in the branding of your most precious commodity—you.

Go Butler... finally you have a great website, but a couple things are still lacking

I'm a Butler grad and proud of it, but for many years their website was just bad. It was behind the time and behind in the activities which speak to the individuals they were trying to attract. Finally they have kicked up their design, shared how life is at Butler through student blogs and helped most (most) of the schools create a consistent look with the university. I really like the 'Is Butler right for me' portion of the site - good job there. In my mind though, there are still at least two big items missing...

Video is where it's at for these kids. Take some time over the next few months and get some real life video going to accompany your other web 2.0 applications. Buy some kids a video camera and see what they come up with. Make it a contest and buy a student's books next semester. You don't have to spend thousands to get personal and relate to the type of kids you want coming to Butler. You just have to be real.

After the site visitors get through the grandiose Butler branding stuff, they'll want to know about academics and the information on their school's site. These are still mismatched, inconsistent, dated and just plain horrible. Help them. Quickly. The disconnect is too great. This may very well be where a potential Butler student ends their experience and holds that last bit of information in their brain as 'Butler.' Is that what you want? I don't think so since you went through the time and effort to kick up your other presence.

So, good job, kind of. You still have a little work to do.

What is that one thing?

You have heard me say before that reading The Breakthrough Company was one of my best reads in 2008. Now I'm going to share one of the quotes from the book that, if done, could have a big impact on your business.

"Take 10 minutes right now and ask yourself, 'What one thing should I do tomorrow that will have the biggest positive impact on my business?' And then don't stop until it's done." 
        - Keith McFarland, author

Let me know your one thing and how you accomplished it and we'll share it on a future blog.

Pat, pat, pat

Everyone once in awhile you do a job very well done and you're proud of your accomplishments. While this happens often for us (shy, I know) it's not as often that we promote our work (bad, bad, bad).

Introducing the new Pete the Planner website, videos and GreenCandy.com. These sites deliver useful and relevant information for the generation Y audience and the parents who dearly love them. The new Pete the Planner site was built to move away from the stylish yet hard to maintain image-based website to a new, sleek and streamlined site that the client can udpate on his own. Adding his podcasts, radio shows, news articles and keeping his blog up to date all takes him just a few minutes each.

GreenCandy is a completely new brainchild we helped Pete form and then turned it in to reality. The site delivers big impact for subscribers to learn all they need to know to get their financial house in order. Once you're in the site, you get a funny video that describes each pod (what we call the topics, which include things like debt, investing, risk management, etc.) and loads of super cool and useful worksheets that help generation Y tackle their financial goals.

Check it out and consider giving GreenCandy as a gift to your loved one for the holiday - it's a fun, interactive site that teaches you about money like you've never seen before.

When you're reading to create your own subscription-based site, videos and web-based marketing plans, drop us a line.

The branded pen that beats them all

Imagine you're at an upcoming tradeshow and you have a guy in your booth asking about your product or service. He asks more specifically "how does your product work?" and you couldn't be happier to demonstrate. You grab one of your pens - yes, a pen - and you pull out a mini banner that has each step of your product's process. Sweet! What is even better, the pens are not all that crazy expensive, so you can gobble them up just like you would a traditionally branded pen, but this time, it comes with a display screen. This really is the branded pen that beats them all (disclaimer - I have no idea how it actually writes, which would be a deal breaker for me, but it if fits your needs and budget, give it a try).

 

Here is one place you can find the pen.

Carrier notices the importance of design

I have worked with a few businesses inside the HVAC market over the last six years, so I tend to notice and keep up on HVAC trends out of habit. I typically consistently ready two industry publications and especially take notice on new product releases. What caught my eye this month is the new Carrier EDGE Thermostat. Who says thermostats can't be cool?

For some reason, I'm kind of fasinated with thermostats anyway, let alone nicely designed gadgety stats. The EDGE is this super slim stat that looks like a mini plasma television. It comes in six optional faceplates so you can fit the stat to your home decor. I like that. The fun design tool on their site allows you to see each faceplate on the stat. I'm partial to quartz.

What's even more cool about this is that Carrier gets it. Go to the EDGE site and check out how they have delivered this product to you. Visually, it's a nicely deisgned site and they have taken the extra measure to speak to most of the more common spacial themes in a home and tied that to how the EDGE fits in to that style. Nice. The music helps deepen your experience and capture that style's emotional draw. It's just well done!

The marketing brilliance here is that people will want this and when they do, they have to call a Carrier dealer. This is a perfect example of how the big business is keeping up on trends and delivering technology and applications people want, then helping promote their contractors, the face of their business, for the product. I have nothing Carrier in my house, but it makes me want to call just to get this stat. Maybe Carrier will read this blog and send someone out... I'll take the programmable one, please.

It's not too late to start your holiday email schedule

If it's important for you to sell a lot of product through your website for the holidays, I hope you have a great e-mail schedule planned to support your effort. If not, it's not too late, but you need to get started now.

Morley Brands, LLC hired Silver Square to get them through the holiday season with an e-mail schedule starting with Sweetest Day in October. We gave their e-mails a design format to be consistent throughout the season and have scheduled out products and offers now through the end of the year. Let us help you make your fourth quarter push with e-mail.

Boring is best for e-mail open rates

Think boring is, well, boring? A recent study on open rates will have you thinking again. MailChimp monitored more than 40 million e-mail campaigns, each with over 100 recipients, to learn that boring is indeed best. Below are the top open-rate (60-87%) subject lines for e-mail campaigns.

1. [COMPANYNAME] Sales & Marketing Newsletter
2. Eye on the [COMPANYNAME] Update (Oct 31 - Nov 4)
3. [COMPANYNAME] Staff Shirts & Photos
4. [COMPANYNAME] May 2005 News Bulletin!
5. [COMPANYNAME] Newsletter - February 2006
6. [COMPANYNAME] Newsletter - January 2006 [ *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|* ]
7. [COMPANYNAME] and [COMPANYNAME] Invites You!
8. Happy Holidays from [COMPANYNAME]
9. ATTENTION [COMPANYNAME] Staff!
10. ATTENTION [COMPANYNAME] West Staff!!
11. Invitation from [COMPANYNAME]
12. [COMPANYNAME] Jan/Feb 2006 Newsletter
13. Website news - Issue 3
14. Upcoming Events at [COMPANYNAME]

What is your web strategy?

Let's begin with some facts:

• 43% of all retail sales are expected to be influenced by or made on the Internet by 2012 (Forrester research and the U.S. Department of Commerce)
• 83% of businesses use the Internet to research and find potential vendors (Enquiro b-2-b survey, 2007)
• 75% of web users admit to making judgements about the credibility of an organization based on the design and its web site (Fogg, B.J., Standford Guidelines for Web Credibility)

We all know website play a big role in business and the way an indivdiual interacts with your company - but did you know it was this significant? Do the numbers make you feel a little uncomfortable about your own website and strategy or are you ready for the world to bring it on?

We recently helped one of our clients position himself for his online introductions with the kind of face he needed to achieve his long-term business goals. Corinthian Construction was a remodeling company based in Indianapolis with big dreams to expand services and further position themselves as an estate custom home builder. Nothing says custom home like construction, right? Well, the first thing we did was adjust his company name to Corinthian Fine Homes and likewise take his branding up a notch to fit the level of client expectations for someone building a two million plus home. He had a cumbersome portfolio on his website with before and after shots that also did not speak to the type of client he wanted to reach, nor did it really show off his talents and great work! We changed that too.

Below is his new identity and we welcome you to visit his new site and browse his portfolio...he's ready for the web to start working for him. Visit Corinthian Fine Homes