Blue jeans and websites…what a few years can do.

Thankfully, I missed the bell bottom jean generation when a kid and just now, barely as an adult.  I have managed to stick to the traditional straight cut jeans despite the best efforts of some nearest and dearest to me.

What is the relationship to a website?  Hopefully you ask.  Well, some sites out there are stuck in generation one – just like my loyalty to “normal” jeans, some by choice or neglect.  The victim of outdated design, fashion and functionality.

The website we own or share sends a message to visitors, an outdated might serve the bill for preschool connect the dot templates – but for a printing firm – it points back to the darkroom days.

So where does your site stand?  If you would like an unbiased opinion on design, fashion and functionality drop us a line and we will share feedback.

BTW, the peg leg style should be back in about 10 years…lookout!

How to Gain Interest for Your Business Through Facebook.

Facebook offers a new and exciting way to communicate between marketers and consumers.  If you have a business you can create a Facebook Page that is an interactive portal to your desired consumers.  It is important to come up with a strategy to gain fans, influence people, and build a presence on Facebook.

Here are some recent Facebook Facts: Revenue of $2 billion and a valuation of approximately $50 billion.  It has over 750 million active users who have returned to the site in the last 30 days.  People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

There are many different ways to engage your consumer through your Facebook Page.  Here are just a few:

1. Posting Updates:  When a page administrator posts an update, it gets pushed to the fan’s Home News Feed.  The best practice is to place an update whenever there is any new content on your website, like a blog post or a new offering.
2. Posting Events: A great way to get consumer interaction is to hold an event at your place of business.  When you already have a selected audience who likes your business, it is easier to get involvement.  Once a consumer accepts an invitation, they can also share that activity.
3. Keeping Your Page Updated:  It is important to at least make two changes a week on your page.  Even if no one is viewing it, if you continue the good practice of posting relevant information, it will gain traction and take off.
4. Personalizing Your Page: If you add an album of your workplace or even your team, this creates a sense of personalization that consumers can relate to.  They will more likely react and engage if they feel a sense of being able to connect.

Have you created a Facebook Page for your business?  If not, let us get you up and running.  A key element is keeping your brand in mind, while creating an atmosphere that will be loved by your potential consumers.  At Servant Marketing Group we make branding our first priority, across all measures of marketing, including Facebook.

For years, my wife and I both had a vision to create a website for our community to initiate UNITY among Christians and local churches.  This personal passion was coupled with my professional experience to create HISNetWORKS.net, a vehicle to promote UNITY in our community in the name of Jesus Christ. Molly and I both felt that UNITY starts between the individual and God. When men and women look to God first and not at each other to solve the other’s issues, marriages would be stronger and families will be built up in a Biblical way.  Through these growing relationships, we hope to see marriages, families, churches, businesses and entire communities strengthened.  We also want to meet the practical needs of our neighbors, so this network will be expanded in the areas that God reveals as fruitful.

HISNetWORKS.net is a Christ centered social platform that helps you stay connected to interests, activities, ministries, events, and people that you care about most. In this era of unprecedented social connectivity, it is almost overwhelming the number of ways for us to communicate with one another.  We created HISNetWORKS.net to be used as a tool that would allow for rich, meaningful relationships to be formed in the context of a Christian community.  We see the church as the first social network, and created HISNetWORKS.net as an online extension of the church, that overcomes geographical, denominational, and cultural barriers.

Sadly, Molly Mizerak went home to be with the Lord on June 1, 2011 before our vision came to pass.  I felt a strong call of God to make this dream a reality in Molly’s memory and to serve God and the community.  Molly shared her vision to a group of pastors in Leesburg in 2010 and this video has become the catalyst for HISNetWORKS.net. See Video Below.

“Unity begins with us and our repentance. We have to start with ourselves, asking God to search our own hearts & see where we have offended our brother or sister. We must submit ourselves one to another that Christ may be glorified and honored. If we keep our hearts right – God can move.” – Molly Mizerak  

 Please try it out and be blessed!

In our first installment we considered the historical foundation of measurable direct marketing, and touched on the need to creatively test and track response. With the new found measured accountability direct marketers drove to find the most efficient means to target their appeal. In this issue, we will focus on discovering a target audience for a product.

Take for example, the direct sales efforts of the door to door vacuum manufacturer’s representative (one of the earliest forms of direct marketing). Let’s chart the exercise starting with a broad shotgun strategy and fine tune or target for a rifled approach to probable segments.

1. Broad stroke question – household or place of business?
2. Refined answer – Place of business
3. Broad stroke question – Self maintained or hired cleaning service?
4. Refined answer – Self maintained
5. Broad stroke question – In town or in city
6. Refined answer – In town

With this simple exercise the salesman has identified a target audience – something like a small retail business operating on main street in suburban town. As opposed to a larger firm located in a hi-rise building in the big city. Both may be worthy of a pitch but we have now identified two targets – that require two different styles of direct marketing.

If the salesman wants to sell units to individual retail businesses – he may be best served going door to door and pitching directly to the shop owner – who very well be the same person vacuuming the store. If, on the other hand the salesman wants to target the city dwelling building audience he will target the cleaning companies servicing that district of the big city. Herein lies the beauty of direct marketing, we have the ability to target or message to both audience segments simultaneously and track responsiveness. Refine and test and uncover other more refined targets.

The example given is simplistic yet the principles can be creatively applied to any product, service or appeal. Sometimes a fresh outside perspective is all that is needed to uncover hidden gems. Look to industry leaders in your marketplace to glean ideas on target audience practices – and start asking the questions!

As I talked about UNITY in marketing last month, I was reminded how this concept translates to a unified work place as well.  As businesses begin to make an effort to focus their messaging in order to improve the effectiveness of their marketing programs, the exercise also positively effects business practices.  As team members start to have a better understanding of the marketing message that their company is trying to present, they also start to have a better understanding of the corporate culture. Many times the corporate culture of a company is never defined until the marketing messages are refined.  It’s exciting to see our clients invest in this type of exercise, because it shows they really care about how their company is being portrayed.  The caring attitude of the leaders of the clients we work with is then filtered through the entire organization and everyone gets excited about the direction and future of the organization.  If each team member gets an understanding of the grand vision of the top executives and really gets excited, they can’t help to share that excitement and in turn become motivated sales people for the organization.  Allowing the team members to be part of the branding process is vital to creating a team environment that can cross the barriers of management.

In my business career, I have always tried to keep my team members involved in corporate decisions and vision casting.  I believe that I have always had one of the most dedicated teams because of that open thinking.  My teams have always felt that they are part of the future of the organization and their dedication to the success of the company soars. I’ve been around a lot of other business owners that keep the vision and company goals tight to the chest in fear that employees might see how financially successful the company is and therefore ask for more money. That can become an issue, but if it does, I’m afraid you simply have the wrong players on your team.

At Unity Business Solutions, we decided to take the principle of UNITY and apply it to all of our business operations. Our goal as a company is to help our clients to quickly go through the same process to have the biggest impact.  

Is your organization in UNITY?    

Websites are becoming primarily driven by imagery. Great photography that grabs the viewer; less copy to bog them down. As you put together your website, the questions arise: where do you get great photography, and what does it cost? There are two sources for photography: stock and original. Stock is available from an existing pool (…ocean…) of imagery. Original photography is commissioned from a professional photographer. How do you choose? What route do you go?

When making the decision on how to acquire photography, two factors to consider are availability and dollar cost. Let’s analyze these two factors from the perspective most often used by people:

Availability:
Stock photography: There are a literally 100′s of millions of images to choose from. Do a Google search for “stock photography happy family”. You get over 41 million results.
Original photography: There are no images to choose from. You start from scratch each time.
Winner of availability comparison: Stock

Dollar cost:
Stock photography: It’s cheap. Really cheap. A site I clicked on from the “happy family” search offers images for $1.67, less than two dollars.
Original photography: It’s more expensive. Think hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Winner of dollar cost comparison: Stock

Conclusion: when you need photography, choose stock. It’s cheaper and there are millions of images to choose from.
Bottom line decision.
Easy.
End of discussion, right?

Wrong.

There are two bottom lines to look at here.
One bottom line is the balance in your business checking account––easily measured in dollars.
The other bottom line is much more important: it’s the balance in your brand’s “perception” account––much more difficult to measure. How is your brand perceived in the marketplace and how is that perception affecting the growth of your business?

Let’s do another quick analysis of the two factors mentioned above––availability and dollar cost––this time from the perspective of building the balance in your business’s “perception” account:

Availability:
Stock photography: There are a literally 100′s of millions of images to choose from. Do a Google search for “stock photography happy family”. You get over 41 million results.
Original photography: There are no images to choose from. You start from scratch each time. Thank goodness. No one will have the same images. The images will be authentic to you and your business. You have the opportunity to really craft your brand and control how you are perceived in the marketplace.
Winner of availability comparison: Original

Dollar cost:
Stock photography: It’s cheap. Really cheap. A site I clicked on from the “happy family” search offers images for $1.67, less than two dollars.
Original photography: It’s more expensive. Think hundreds to thousands of dollars. However, damaging the credibility of your brand through the use of generic images could cost far more.
Winner of dollar cost comparison: Original

Your brand is your single most valuable asset. It determines how customers make their buying decisions. You have to work hard to build it, and even harder to maintain it. Brand value is measured by soft-edged things: credibility, reliability, responsiveness, attention to detail, innovation, uniqueness, differentiation. These are the things that matter most to your business. Every day, people make buying decisions based on these factors. (Notice that I left out price as a measure of brand value. How else to explain Apple selling $2000 computers when $400 computers are available that will do the exact same thing? More on that below…Diluting your brand with generic imagery, design, or writing damages your bottom line.

The real bottom line on stock photography is:
Stock photography dilutes your brand.
It’s not specific to you and your business: it’s generic.
It’s not real, it’s a stand-in for the real thing. It betrays your customers’ trust.
It’s not genuine. It doesn’t show your business; it shows what someone else thinks your business looks like.
Stock photography is not authentic: it’s like a rented suit off of someone else’s clothing rack. It stands out––like a sore thumb.

Here’s a little story about the importance of your brand, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and how that perception is directly connected to your company’s bottom line:
Steve Jobs left Apple Computer in 1985 (… actually, he was voted out by Apple’s board of directors…) and immediately started a new company, NeXT. His vision for NeXT was to embody all the ideas that he started at Apple and refine them into hardware and software products. The first thing he did at NeXT, before making a single product, was to establish NeXT’s brand. To do this, he hired the legendary designer Paul Rand (Google him) to create the company’s logo. For NeXT’s brand logo, Jobs paid Rand $100,000.

Jobs believed so strongly in the value and importance of his brand that he invested a significant portion of his severance from Apple into the logo. He understood that in the marketplace, you can bring forward a great product, but without a well-defined brand, it will fail. He understood that the brand is the roadmap for every move the company makes as well as the narrative every customer will bring to mind when they think of the company.
NeXT did not become a household word because Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, bringing with him the focus on brand and customer value, turning Apple from an on-the-brink basket case in 1995 to what it is now: the most successful company in the history of American business.

The lesson of this story is not that you should spend $100,000 on your logo. The lesson is that your brand is paramount; it’s everything. Guard it like the life of your business depends on it. Your brand is yours to enhance or diminish, and the market will respond.

To reframe the question posed at the beginning of this blog post:
Why should you use original photography instead of stock photography?
In two words: BRAND AUTHENTICITY

Think long and hard about your brand, its value, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and where you want to take your company. Then, invest accordingly.

Post By: Rick McCleary – rickmccleary.com

Stock Photography or Original Photography? (…does your brand really matter?…)

Websites are becoming primarily driven by imagery. Great photography that grabs the viewer; less copy to bog them down. As you put together your website, the questions arise: where do you get great photography, and what does it cost? There are two sources for photography: stock and original. Stock is available from an existing pool (…ocean…) of imagery. Original photography is commissioned from a professional photographer. How do you choose? What route do you go?

When making the decision on how to acquire photography, two factors to consider are availability and dollar cost. Let’s analyze these two factors from the perspective most often used by people:

Availability:
Stock photography: There are a literally 100′s of millions of images to choose from. Do a Google search for “stock photography happy family”. You get over 41 million results.
Original photography: There are no images to choose from. You start from scratch each time.
Winner of availability comparison: Stock

Dollar cost:
Stock photography: It’s cheap. Really cheap. A site I clicked on from the “happy family” search offers images for $1.67, less than two dollars.
Original photography: It’s more expensive. Think hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Winner of dollar cost comparison: Stock

Conclusion: when you need photography, choose stock. It’s cheaper and there are millions of images to choose from.
Bottom line decision.
Easy.
End of discussion, right?

Wrong.

There are two bottom lines to look at here.
One bottom line is the balance in your business checking account––easily measured in dollars.
The other bottom line is much more important: it’s the balance in your brand’s “perception” account––much more difficult to measure. How is your brand perceived in the marketplace and how is that perception affecting the growth of your business?

Let’s do another quick analysis of the two factors mentioned above––availability and dollar cost––this time from the perspective of building the balance in your business’s “perception” account:

Availability:
Stock photography: There are a literally 100′s of millions of images to choose from. Do a Google search for “stock photography happy family”. You get over 41 million results.
Original photography: There are no images to choose from. You start from scratch each time. Thank goodness. No one will have the same images. The images will be authentic to you and your business. You have the opportunity to really craft your brand and control how you are perceived in the marketplace.
Winner of availability comparison: Original

Dollar cost:
Stock photography: It’s cheap. Really cheap. A site I clicked on from the “happy family” search offers images for $1.67, less than two dollars.
Original photography: It’s more expensive. Think hundreds to thousands of dollars. However, damaging the credibility of your brand through the use of generic images could cost far more.
Winner of dollar cost comparison: Original

Your brand is your single most valuable asset. It determines how customers make their buying decisions. You have to work hard to build it, and even harder to maintain it. Brand value is measured by soft-edged things: credibility, reliability, responsiveness, attention to detail, innovation, uniqueness, differentiation. These are the things that matter most to your business. Every day, people make buying decisions based on these factors. (Notice that I left out price as a measure of brand value. How else to explain Apple selling $2000 computers when $400 computers are available that will do the exact same thing? More on that below…Diluting your brand with generic imagery, design, or writing damages your bottom line.

The real bottom line on stock photography is:
Stock photography dilutes your brand.
It’s not specific to you and your business: it’s generic.
It’s not real, it’s a stand-in for the real thing. It betrays your customers’ trust.
It’s not genuine. It doesn’t show your business; it shows what someone else thinks your business looks like.
Stock photography is not authentic: it’s like a rented suit off of someone else’s clothing rack. It stands out––like a sore thumb.

Here’s a little story about the importance of your brand, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and how that perception is directly connected to your company’s bottom line:
Steve Jobs left Apple Computer in 1985 (… actually, he was voted out by Apple’s board of directors…) and immediately started a new company, NeXT. His vision for NeXT was to embody all the ideas that he started at Apple and refine them into hardware and software products. The first thing he did at NeXT, before making a single product, was to establish NeXT’s brand. To do this, he hired the legendary designer Paul Rand (Google him) to create the company’s logo. For NeXT’s brand logo, Jobs paid Rand $100,000.

Jobs believed so strongly in the value and importance of his brand that he invested a significant portion of his severance from Apple into the logo. He understood that in the marketplace, you can bring forward a great product, but without a well-defined brand, it will fail. He understood that the brand is the roadmap for every move the company makes as well as the narrative every customer will bring to mind when they think of the company.
NeXT did not become a household word because Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, bringing with him the focus on brand and customer value, turning Apple from an on-the-brink basket case in 1995 to what it is now: the most successful company in the history of American business.

The lesson of this story is not that you should spend $100,000 on your logo. The lesson is that your brand is paramount; it’s everything. Guard it like the life of your business depends on it. Your brand is yours to enhance or diminish, and the market will respond.

To reframe the question posed at the beginning of this blog post:
Why should you use original photography instead of stock photography?
In two words: BRAND AUTHENTICITY

Think long and hard about your brand, its value, how you’re perceived in the marketplace, and where you want to take your company. Then, invest accordingly.

Post By: Rick McCleary – rickmccleary.com

A keystone to direct marketing is the ability to measure response, and discover what offer produces the best result. To better understand where we are today, it makes sense to study the early days of direct marketing practices…so back in time we go…to the 1940’s. To a time where mass television adoption had not taken root, and direct sales – that is door to door – was alive and prospering, and radio ruled.

Direct Selling was an early form of direct marketing or direct advertising or mail order sales, and remains an effective channel today. The goal was simple and easy to measure. The salesman either sold a widget or he did not, rather simple to track response – Sale or No Sale…and on to the next prospect and/or neighborhood.

Pioneers of the industry, suchas Lester Wunderman, recognized that the principals of direct selling could be applied to “other than front door” marketing channels (like radio, print and mail), with a high degree of measurability. Marketers where able to target and test offers and measure response to see what produced, just like the direct seller pushing vaccums. As a sidenote, in the 1940’s millions of young people, primarily men of the war fighting age, read comic books – we will delve deeper into the topic of audience targeting in a future issue – just know that it played a role in direct marketing way back when.

So the stage was set for developing a control package or advertisment. Marketers tested ad placement, copy, colors, headlines, time of radio spots, on and on to find what worked best and became the control – for all future tests to attempt to beat. Test and measure, test and measure. The pioneers leverage the accountability of direct marketing to prove to clients that they knew what channels would work for a given widget, and they could support their claims with results – for better or worse.

Today, we have more channels to choose from, more data to model, greater reach and points of connection to develop relationships – and we are able to measure the responsiveness of a given message. So, testing and measuring remain fundamental to the modern direct marketer – just as they did in the 1940’s.

And, even if you do, how’s it working for you?  How do your customers and clients like being interrupted and shouted at by ads, press releases, direct mail, billboards and cold calls?

Um. I thought so.

So what if they found you?  What if new customers could come to you out of nowhere to tell you they are ready to buy the product or service your company offers?  Wouldn’t that be sweet!

That is the essence of inbound marketing — it is a strategy focused on getting found online by customers.  The term “inbound marketing” is relatively new jargon and was coined by the company HubSpot.

Inbound marketing centers on using your website as an information and communication “hub” that integrates three main digital marketing tactics: content marketing (like blogs), search engine optimization and social media marketing.

But it starts with a new perspective on your company’s approach to marketing.  Rather than shouting about what you do through traditional outbound marketing, your site and your marketing must become an information center and a resource for related links and market information. People find you as they search online for information and come to you when they are ready to purchase.

Why does it work?  Well, my friend, the world is changing. Consumers are no longer passive about being interrupted by ads, billboards, calls and other traditional outbound marketing that shouts at them.  They just tune it out. Is that what you want your budget to accomplish?  But if you think of yourself as a publisher of informative content that stimulates discussions online, all of a sudden you are an asset rather than an interruption.  Your information is interesting and helpful, your site becomes the place where people come to get information about what they want. And your company becomes the vendor from whom they want to buy.

There will always be a place for some outbound marketing, but if you haven’t considered inbound marketing, you are missing an opportunity to move your company to the next level at a more favorable ROI over time.  Educate customers and they will come to you. Shout at them, and they will tune you out.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/Inbound-Marketing-vs-Outbound-Marketing.aspx#ixzz1S0OwLUc7

Bill Bellows is the CEO of OneWhitePixel, a Reston-based global developer of mobile apps for the iPhone, iPAD, mobile web, and Android platforms. He was the co-founder and CEO of Copithorne & Bellows, a worldwide marketing and communications consulting firm that worked with Intel, HP, EMC, Iomega, Xilinx, Creative Labs and other technology leaders. His company grew to more than 200 people in the U.S., Europe and Asia before it was acquired by Omnicom Group of New York in the late 1990s. 

As the internet progressed, so did the need for better networking platforms, and it was only a matter of time until a network like Facebook was born.  Facebook was launched in February 2004, soon to be followed by Twitter in July 2006.  Facebook has over 750 million users, and Twitter has 200 million.

If you are not on Facebook or Twitter, you need to be, and here are some reasons why:

1. You can gain an audience that wants to hear about what you are selling. The people that “like” your business Facebook page, get a news feed every time you post something new. Facebook does a great job at showing the impressions and activity of every post.
2. Being on Facebook and Twitter, gives you an edge on your competition.  If you have an active Facebook page or Twitter account, you are more likely to be perceived as a personable company.  People will better relate to you and what you do.
3. Your business has the ability to be viewed as you want it to be. One example is that you can post pictures both on Tweets and Facebook.  This gives your audience a more personal connection to your company.
4. It only takes a few minutes a day to stay active, and to gain a positive reaction from your audience.
5. Everyone is doing it!  Are you?

The hardest part about starting a Facebook Business Page or Twitter Account is staying active.  You need to make it a weekly, if not daily routine, just like checking your e-mail.  If you would spend 5 minutes a day updating your Facebook or Twitter, it would become second nature to you.

A few key ways to gain followers:

• Include a link in your email signature to both your Twitter and Facebook pages.
• Link your personal Facebook to Twitter.  This way, anytime you tweet it will update on your Facebook page.  This reminds your friends on Facebook that you are also on Twitter.
• Post relevant information that will benefit your users.  You will gain more users because of traction.
• Follow and befriend people that are interesting to you and your business.  Most likely they will follow you back, especially if your content is relevant to what they are interested in.

Business and social networking just makes sense. If you need help setting up Facebook or Twitter for your business, please call Servant Marketing Group.  We can have you up and NETWORKING in no time.