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4 Ways to Acquire Existing and New Customer Information

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:47:39 +0000

If you already have a retail store, you have many opportunities to connect with existing and potential customers and acquire their information for marketing. When you expand this storefront to the Internet, your opportunities mount even further. Gathering customer information allows you to continually reach your customers and prospects, either through online or offline marketing campaigns.

Depending on your business, you may want to send regular newsletters, monthly email specials, calendar events, postcards, or catalogs to current and potential customers. The more information you collect about each patron, the greater impact your marketing efforts can make, the stronger understanding you’ll have about your customers, and the better you’ll be able to serve them.

Before you begin building a database of existing and potential customers, make sure that you understand the basics behind protecting and ensuring their privacy. Businesses need to build customer trust and protect the data they’ve gathered. Make sure your new contacts are fully aware of the ways you’ll use their data, regardless of how you collect their information. The best way to do this is by instituting a “privacy policy.”

A privacy policy simply explains to your database what you’ll do with their personal information. Depending on your budget, you can either use a free policy wizard to create a basic privacy policy for you, like the one at p3pwiz.com, or you can hire a copywriter or an attorney to develop a more complex policy for you, but this is usually only necessary for very large corporations that sell products online, offer password-restricted user functions, or deliver other advanced features on their website.

Some questions to address when creating your Privacy Policy include:

Do you, or will you ever share or sell customer information with outside parties?
If you do sell their information, who will you sell it to and what will they use it for – contests, advertising, simple sales, or order processing?
If you use customer information to send promotions out, how frequently can they expect these?
What should your customers do if they want to opt-out from mailings in the future?

Proactively addressing your customer’s potential questions builds trust and confidence and keeps you compliant with growing federal privacy legislation. For more information on privacy, your responsibilities when collecting data from minors, or securing financial information, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s online resource on the subject (http://ftc.gov/privacy/).

If you collect customer information online, post your detailed privacy policy on an easily-accessible page on your website and ask those giving you their information to read it. If you gather information at your store, keep your privacy policy posted in plain site near your sign-up mechanism, put pamphlets that customers can take with them somewhere by the sign-up mechanism, or be prepared to brief the customer before taking their information.

Once your privacy policy is in place, you can start building your contact list. Here are four quick and easy ways to gather new customer information, both online and off:

1. Add an “opt-in” mailing-list sign-up or newsletter subscription to your website. Opt-in means that the person is choosing to give you their information. Customers and prospects enjoy receiving valuable information, discounts, newsletters, and “email-only” exclusive offers, so if you position the way you’re going to use their information correctly, they’ll be more willing to give you their information. Give your website visitors the opportunity to opt-in to your promotions, then follow-up with an email marketing campaign every two to four weeks to stay in touch.

2. Offer a free download. A great way to draw interest and gather contact data is by offering a free download on your website. Examples of free downloads include:

White papers or research reports. These reports usually show industry trends, comparisons between various problems and solutions, and other industry-specific findings. Sites that offer these reports often suggest that visitors download these items to learn about the latest trends in their industry.

A short manual or ebook. These may be offered by any industry and adapted accordingly. For instance, a pet-supply store might offer a pet-care guide in the form of a medium-sized pamphlet or an online version of the work, known as an ebook.

A special report. Special reports are usually reviews or overviews of certain topics. Examples of downloadable special reports include things like a review of audio equipment provided by an audio/video shop, or a report exploring the importance of long-term care insurance authored by an insurance agent or agency.

A coupon. You’re familiar with coupons – certificates that consumers can redeem for discounts on certain products and services. Clothing stores, pharmacies, and just about any other retailer can offer downloadable coupons or rebates for customers, and various service providers can also integrate coupons into their marketing mix.

When your visitor requests this download, send them to a new web page where they’ll fill out a short registration process. When visitors are focused on downloading a free item at the end of the registration process, they’ll offer information freely.

3. Put an email sign-up sheet or book near the cash register. Many walk-in visitors would love to receive exclusive promotions, discounts, or special offers, but will forget to sign up if they have to visit your website when they return home. Popular clothing shops will often put a mailing list sign-up sheet or book next to the cash register and ask each customer if they’d like to put their email address on the list as they’re checking out. And restaurants will often use the “fishbowl” approach – they’ll ask customers to drop in a business card into a fishbowl or a similar container to win a free drink, appetizer, or lunch. If you offer a good incentive, customers will have a receptive disposition and won’t thing twice about giving you their information.

4. Include a tell-a-friend option on your website and email promotions. Word-of-mouth advertising is one of the most valuable customer-acquisition methods. When friends recommend an product or service to a friend, that referral holds much more weight than if a business alone boasted about its benefits. Let your website visitors or email promotion recipients tell their friends about you. This system can have a powerful, domino effect. To add this promotion’s function, ask your web designer to include the program on your website or do it yourself by using a free, tell-a-friend service like Refer A Friend.

It’s easy to leverage the strength of your online and walk-in traffic and encourage each visitor to join your contact database. These people have already shown interest in your products or services in one form or another – either by visiting your web site or your store. When you implement one or more of these strategies you’ll be on the path to building a strong, targeted contact list of current and potential customers that are eager to buy your product. Once you establish consistent communication with those people you’ll be able to watch your bottom line grow exponentially.

Technorati Tags: customer database, build customer database, increase clients, attract clients, attract customers, increase website traffic, website traffic

10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:45:34 +0000

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It’s the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it’s going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo, search engine tips, search engine optimization tips, search engine mistakes, seo tips

How to Create a Google Sitemap

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:39:13 +0000

One of the hot new website promotion tips du jour is the Google Sitemap. This is a small XML file that sits on a website and provides information for Googlebot when it comes to visit. Is this file useful? What does it do? How do I create one? How do I get Google to find it? Well, let me tell you.

Firstly, the general consensus on whether or not a Google Sitemap is useful is that, well, the jury is still out. The official stance from Google is that this entire program is in Beta so there are no promises or guarantees. Perhaps by understanding what this file is for we can infer its usefulness.

A Google Sitemap is, essentially, an XML file that contains information on all the web pages in your site. You create this file, submit it to Google, and Google will read it. What Google does from there nobody really knows. You can specify certain parameters in the file such as the location (URL) of your web pages, when they were last modified, how often the pages are updated, and what each page’s “priority” is.

Perhaps Google is relegating these Sitemap submitted results to a secondary index where they compare the results to their live index. This might let them know how people use (and abuse) the program. It is my opinion that the vast majority of participants in this program are website designers and marketers who are trying to give their clients a teenie-weenie leg up on the competition within Google. That’s not to say that there isn’t any value, though.

It is possible that by telling Google where all of your web pages are you can improve your web page saturation in their index. This may indirectly improve your rankings by getting an unlinked or deeply linked page into the index that wasn’t previously there. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s difficult to know if Google is even using Sitemap information in their live index.

So now that you’ve decided that you want to create and submit a Sitemap of your own, here’s how:

Firstly, you need to create your XML file. Don’t bother doing it yourself. There is an excellent free online utility at www.sitemapbuilder.net.
You must now submit the Sitemap to Google. Visit www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login and login with your Google account. Don’t have one? Don’t worry – that’s free, too. Once you’ve logged in you can add as many Sitemaps as you like.
Don’t forget – whenever you update your website (by adding, removing or relocating web pages) be sure to repeat this process. You won’t need to resubmit your sitemap to Google, though.

Technorati Tags: google sitemap, how to create google sitemap, xml sitemap

The Concept Behind CSS

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:37:14 +0000

The concept behind CSS (a.k.a. cascading style sheets or style sheets) is really simple. CSS allows you to create a single document of code, similar to an HTML file, that lets you specify the colors, fonts, backgrounds, etc. of a web page. The CSS file is then linked to from the web page(s) that you want to have the same styles that you specify.

CSS allows you to make changes to all of the web pages that link to the CSS file at once by changing a style in the style sheet, instead of having to manually change every style in every HTML file.

If CSS did this and only this, they would save you a lot of time to say the least, especially if you have a large or multiple web sites. This alone is worth learning CSS, however, style sheets allow you to do this and much more.

CSS also allows you to:

position text and graphics precisely where you want to
add rollover effects to links
control the spacing between letters, lines, margins, web page borders
specify the units such as centimeters, pixels, points and more
hide content from certain web browsers in certain situations. An example of this is when you have some content that you want to appear only in your web pages, but not in print.

Some Benefits of CSS

Your web pages load faster because there is less code to transfer
There is less code to type
It is easier to have a consistent look and feel to your entire web site
Updating and maintaining websites is much easier and less time consuming

In the end, CSS can save you a lot of time and effort and is very easy to learn.

Technorati Tags: css, what is css, css concept, benefits of css

Let’s Design A Website That Sells

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:33:14 +0000

Would you buy meat from a grocery store that left the bad meat in with the good meat or wasn’t clean? Would you buy a car from a sales lot that had totaled automobiles on the front lot? I wouldn’t and neither would you. Your website is your grocery store; your car lot. You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing to buyers. One that tells that buyer that you are not an amateur, but instead a trained, seasoned professional. Your site is a direct reflection of your product and that is why that having a well designed website can make or break your sales.

The first thing to keep in mind when designing your website, is “surfability”. Take a few minutes a look around at several web pages. What makes them appealing? Were there some that you closed out of immediately? Why? Take notes and do your research. Keep in mind that when a person visits your site they have a goal in mind. They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Give the person what they want without having to search for it. Be sure that all the information on your site is relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your main page serves a very specific purpose. It should be an avenue by which the customer can shop your site. It should be easy to view and load very quickly. This is your first impression and we all know that first impressions can either close the deal or loose the deal. Make it simple. It is best to have links that are easily viewable by the reader that will navigate them to where they want to be. Tables are often a great choice when deciding on a way to design the main page of your site. Your main page should load very quickly, chances are if it takes the page more than ten seconds to load even on a 56k modem, the customer will click away to save time, hoping to find the information or product elsewhere. To increase the loading speed of your main page you should avoid large graphics or excessive graphics. Too many banners or special effects can cause a page to load slowly as well.

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you should stick to mild colors. If your site is a content site where the user will be doing a lot of reading, it is best to stick to black and white. Color can be added when using tables, as a way to brighten up the page, but remember to keep the overall look of the page professional and appealing to the audience that will be visiting most often. Since screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good idea to set the pixels to a standard 800×600. You may also choose to set the tables in your web page to span a percentage of the page rather than a set number of inches. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes. You should remember that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you, and therefore you should be sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page.

Be aware of the fact that the overall look of your website is a way to make money. The appearance of the site, if designed properly, can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product or service.

Technorati Tags: website that sells, website marketing, website design, website design that sells

5 Ways to Build Brand Recognition Online

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:30:11 +0000

Developing brand recognition online is one of the greatest marketing advantages you can attain to grow your business. With so many other online marketers promoting their goods and services it is very easy to be lost in the shuffle. The choice is either to be more dominant than your competitors or gain separation from them. It is much easier to simply develop a unique online brand because domination takes a lot more time and effort. Done successfully your unique business brand will allow you to send promotional messages that more people will hear.

With that said here are 5 very effective ways in which you can develop a unique online brand that will give you a definite advantage over your competitors.

Use Imagery

Using a relevant image or even a photo of yourself is simply helping to reinforce you with the identity or reputation you want to be affiliated with. An online brand needs to be recognized not only through words and deeds but visually as well. As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Build Upon Positive Attributes

In order for you to gain trust online you need to build a positive reputation. By placing an emphasis on those things positive about you and your business your online brand will reflect favorably with people. Since you are dealing with the general public your approach should be clean and clear so that there is little room for misinterpretations. Always try to focus on things you know people are attracted to or are looking for since this will help boost your positive image.

Maintain Consistency

No matter what type of strategies you use online for marketing purposes, always remain consistent to the brand you are building. Whether you circulate content, participate in social media activities or even leave comments at forums and blogs, be consistent!

Relevant Domain Name

As easy as this may appear on the surface, finding the exact right domain name for your business brand will likely be difficult. There is much competition for domain names on the internet, in fact I recently read that there is a fear the internet will run out of domain names by 2012! What!

In lieu of the ‘perfect’ name you may be seeking you will probably need to rely upon your creativity. Come up with several different names that are relevant and applicable to your business, and then go see what is available. Happy hunting!

Identify Yourself

When attempting to build trust and believability on the internet it is important to let people know who you really are. Creating an identity or fictitious character is ‘cute’ but this is only short term and will not build the trust you need or are looking to develop.

Developing brand recognition is a subtle yet key advantage that will give you an edge over other online marketers. Having a unique identity minimizes your competition therefore making it easier for you to get your marketing messages heard. In this way you are able to dominate others without putting forth as much effort. The 5 approaches reviewed above will help you develop a unique business brand and are very easy to implement. The only requirement of you to make this work is to be consistent and patient in your efforts. In the end the wait will be more than worth it.

Technorati Tags: brand recognition, brand building, online brand, online brand recognition

Branding: 7 Important Questions and the Straight Answers

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:28:29 +0000

Consider these important questions about branding and the brutally honest answers that could help you sell more and save you lots of money that is typically wasted on branding. If you sell yourself as a branding expert – you might not like these answers. These are frank answers that demystify branding.

1. What is branding? Branding is the ongoing process of creating and enhancing the brand. The brand is the emotional connection that encourages your clients to cling to the organization, product or person. It is important for you to understand that branding is an emotional connection. And emotion is devoid of logic.

2. Why is branding important to business? Effective branding builds that emotional connection. The more emotional that your clients are about you, your company and your product – the easier it will be for you to sell to those clients. You can appeal to emotions instead of logic. Emotions, although more complicated, are easier to influence than logic.

3. What mistakes do companies make with branding? Many entrepreneurs get confused about branding. They believe that branding is about logos, fonts and pantone colors. That happens because graphic designers and advertising agencies, masquerading as marketing experts, claim that branding is about image.

Often bad marketing decisions and wasted money are justified with the phrase, “It’s good for branding.” Branding is not the goal – it is a tool. The goal is to sell more.

Many corporations fall into this trap. The corporate branding police insist that every PowerPoint slide be a particular color, including the company logo and in the company fonts. Readability and purpose are thrown out the window by the branding police because they lose sight of the purpose and focus on the tool. Maybe they should be fired.

4. How can business build a strong brand? A strong brand is about feelings. First you need to decide the feelings that you want to evoke from your customers. You need to be clear on your intended message and the mindset of your best customers.

You can build feelings by the way you treat your customers. You need to treat them in a manner that stands out from the competition. Southwest and WestJet airlines demonstrate this well.

5. Give an example of successful brands. Nike and Coke are companies that built strong brands because of huge marketing budgets and mass marketing over time. That’s the most common way that most well-known brands were built. Unfortunately it’s too often emulated by small business as the only way.

Harley Davidson and Buckley’s cough medicine are examples of branding built on creative positioning. That method is the smarter choice for businesses without multimillion dollar advertising budgets.

6. Is branding the best marketing approach? No. Branding is only one approach to marketing. Marketing is about making customers want your product. Branding is about building an emotional bond with your customers. It takes time to build that bond. And branding requires one of two things in abundance – money or creativity.

7. What is the alternative to branding for small business? Small business can do something that’s better than branding. They can build real relationships with their clients. Big corporations can’t do that. That’s why big corporations spend millions of dollars on branding. Small business has a better tool. They can build real relationships.

When you are building your brand ask the important questions and get the straight answers about branding.

Technorati Tags: branding, branding tips, branding strategy, brand strategy

Internet Marketing Basics: What worked years ago still works today!

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:17:25 +0000

Internet marketing can seem mystifying not only for beginners, but for moderately skilled internet marketers. With all the courses, forums, blogs, reports, seminars and teleconferences available to help people learn how to get traffic to their sites, it is one of the most overwhelmingly dense subjects on the internet.

Unfortunately, and this is perfectly true, most of the advice or “expert” tips are outdated or completely false. Since anyone can publish on the internet, you have a mixed bag of good information followed with much more bad information.

The mysticism of internet marketing is created largely by this glut of some good and mostly bad information. It makes the whole topic SEEM like rocket science when, in fact, much of what was true about internet marketing years ago is true today.

Most people think that since search engine marketing changes every five minutes, that ALL internet marketing tactics must have changed as much in the same amount of time. Not true.

The basics, like trading links, article syndication, testimonials, forum signatures, joint ventures, affiliate programs – most work as well today as they did years ago. That is, if you know how to value the work above for what it will truly do for your website traffic.

Funny thing is, no one places much value on the above tactics anymore because there is always some “new” tactic around the corner that claims the death of everything that came before it. And most people blindly follow that advice as if it were true.

Most of the time, this is to the detriment of their internet marketing efforts. The basics are what work all the time and what have always worked on the internet.

You can always experiment with new things, as long as you have not forgotten to do the basics. The basics proven to drive traffic, page rank, link popularity, and branding to your business.

Conservative, relevant reciprocal linking
Article syndication
Participation in your field and among your market (forums)
Blogging
Offline advertising
Non-reciprocal linking tactics
Press releases
…and many other proven methods.

Everything else is just a big experiment until proven to work over time. “Over time” being the operative words. Lots of flash in the pan crack pot schemes work for awhile. But most never stand the test of time.

Links from a widely syndicated article will never fade away, yet I see people chasing down fly-by-night linking pyramid schemes as if they truly believe something like that is a smart thing to base their internet business on!

Tens of thousands have walked away from their dreams, gone back to their depressing, predictable, slave-la! bor jobs never knowing how close they were to actually succeeding.

Good people have left this business proclaiming it an utter lie that any average person can make it with an internet business and an internet marketing plan.

I guess there is truth in that statement. Average people do in fact quit this business before they ever get started because average people fall for tricks and schemes that above average people avoid on their way to success.

If you have read this far, you are probably in the above average category. Why? Because average people would have take one look at the list of things I mentioned that are the bread and butter of internet marketing and saw nothing but hard work. And they’d be right!

Above average people don’t shy away from work though. I don’t know a single soul (and my rolodex has some of the biggest names in internet marketing in it) who got where they are today without a lot of hard work.

You can succeed in internet marketing if you are not afraid to work, and not constantly tempted by those who say you can succeed without it!

Focus on the basics of internet marketing and stay with them as you try new strategies. We all experiment. But successful internet marketers never leave their bread and butter tactics behind unless they cease to be effective.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing basics, how internet marketing

Corporate Branding – Will they remember you?

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:13:38 +0000

In today’s market selling quantity seems to be the rule of the day. Slap together something quick and don’t worry about what flies out the door, it doesn’t even matter who the purchasers are.

Companies who focus on branding will stand out amongst the crowd. Why? They have recognized that most buyers’ especially online buyers need confidence in doing business with an established entity. Nothing shows your commitment to your business like a well developed branding strategy. Having a great logo is the first major step towards cultivating this development. Sure there are plenty of “out-of-the-box” logo solutions and the prices are more than appealing to a business that doesn’t recognize the value of their corporate image.

The Difference

Why should you spend more than $300 on a logo? Would you buy a car for $1000? Chances are if you do you’ll be paying a lot more for maintenance and the headaches it will bring. You always get what you pay for. This can’t be stressed enough. If you are willing to sabotage your business from the very beginning by neglecting the image you portray to your potential clients, that logo will be costing you a lot more than you’re willing to invest. A professional Graphic Designer will invest a lot of time, researching to produce a logo that is truly unique (vital to branding and making your mark) and introduce you to a solid first step in Branding your company as a powerful entity. A logo is further enhanced by the elements built around it. With everything related to design, everything should be custom made, now more so than ever because the competition for capital is increasing. You have to be better than your competitors in as many ways possible.

For the young start-up company, budgets may disallow you the option of working with a professional designer. There are plenty of great designers out there that won’t gouge your pocket book but be certain that they are capable of creating exactly what you want and that they have the experience to expand upon the logo design provided. You want someone who is business savvy and has demonstrated their applied knowledge. They must be able to foresee the bigger picture. The success of your business rests on this.

Putting it Together

Generally speaking the more experienced the designer the higher the rates charged. With the experience you will usually get a product that has been developed and refined over time. A veteran Graphic Designer will be designing with the big picture in mind taking your investment dollars further. The numbers quoted are relative to what they generate, a client will be happy to invest money when they see return. If the image developed for them attracts customers price becomes secondary. Recognize the value of your image and take your logo very seriously. As human beings we are visual.

For the long haul

Generally a business that has quality services to offer and takes their image seriously will understand the value of investing in professional design. Most successful businesses know how much they must devote to marketing in order to generate the sales they desire. Those marketing dollars will be more effective if your Branding approach was cultivated properly. If you take your business seriously chances are you’ll attract the same. How do you want to be viewed?

A Bit about the Logo

For the most part focus was placed on the business mentality rather than the logo itself. There are different types of logos. Many large corporations utilize strictly text or abbreviations. Companies like DELL, IBM, RCA, ABB, etc. Text logos are very popular and are easily integrated across the Branding board. Iconic treatments are also utilized by many businesses. An icon can be very powerful in identifying a company. Take Apple or Nike for example. Using imagery is a very powerful strategy in branding. Symbols guide us in our lives and daily activities. Icons can be very simple and clean to more complex utilizing gradients and simulated 3D. Illustrative (beyond iconic) is less frequently used but can work effectively for companies that usually want to portray a timelessness or “natural” homey feeling typically found on a bottle of tomato sauce or organic potato chips.

Everything outlined above can dictate the price of your logo. The logo is a powerful aspect of your company. It should take time to create and will require much attention if it is to create a powerful Branding strategy. Be sure that the logo designer of choice is willing to provide you with mock ups and multiple revisions and is willing to help take your company to the next level.

Technorati Tags: corporate branding, corporate brand

Get Branded!

admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:11:26 +0000

Every business needs an image. What better way to create one than to have a consistent business branding? It is fundamental for every business to be recognized. Each and every element of its structure must come with a public face. The face of your business must contribute to the overall look of a company.

To start, websites are one of the most popular and efficient tools in business branding today. With the emergence of the World Wide Web, no business can ever reach its maximum potential without a website.

Basically, what a website does is to create an online image for a business. This means that on a certain web address, details about the company can be accessed. These bits of information are extremely useful for potential as well as existing customers. They can be as simple as the description of the business or its services and products, images and footages of the products the company is offering for sale. They can also be the contact details about where the company can be reached once the customer is interested. Marketing campaigns and press releases can also be placed on the company website.

Once the website has been created it includes all of the necessary contents. The next thing to do is to establish an online presence. This is done by doing search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is a technique common to many internet marketers. Search engine optimization works by designing a website in a manner which will make it appear on the top ranks of a search results page when prospective buyers search for it. It follows the principle that when it appears on the top ranks, readers see it as the most relevant to their searches. In effect, more traffic can be expected to the website.

There are many ways to do search engine optimization for a site. These include article marketing, press release writing, keyword incorporation, Web 2.0 creation, link wheels, link submission and bookmarking campaign. These can all be used at the same time while there are instances where only a few of the techniques are employed. The key is to use them in a way to help the website. Substance, strategy and timing all come into play with these elements. Otherwise, the tools will not achieve their desired purpose.

All these are done to increase the relevance to the site with a goal for it to gain more traffic. Once online presence is established, the image or business branding starts to build up. Its presence in the cyber community is starting to take off.

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