Photo Credit: Glassholic/Flickr under Creative Commons license
Many of us hear it repeatedly to think like a customer, client or user and to focus on experiences and personas to develop a strategy, content and messaging. Well, the same is true for design and we’d like to add a few bonus points to our quarterly focus on this topic.
Kristen Ewald puts together an excellent post on experience design to help guide the development of your design objectives.
User experiences matter to even the smallest of enterprises. Think about all of the customers who visit your retail store, get help from a sales rep, order a service, set up a product, access your website from a mobile device, or contact tech support. Their interactions with your company or brand often determine whether or not they choose to do business with you again.
Design should not be thought of as a “nice to have.” It has become a business imperative and a competitive differentiator. With each touch point, a customer has a good or a bad experience. The overall experience it creates is your brand.
Experience strategy is in many ways quickly overtaking the role played in the past by brand strategy. Today brands can say whatever they want about “this is who we are,” but if the experience they create with their products and services is not in line with the expectation they have set, they may not succeed.
Listen to award-winning designer and design firm owner, Bernadette Rivell Daniels of Identity Brand + Design, on the importance of design in this LGK Marketing Memo.
Download the Marketing Assets Toolkit, which includes a checklist of marketing materials and collateral that require design TLC.
What guides your design strategy? Price, personal tastes, buyer personas? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
Photo credit: Flickr under Creative Commons license
Two years ago, a survey of more than 1,500 small-business owners, startups and entrepreneurs revealed that small businesses expect professional design to become increasingly important to their success in the years ahead. In a related article featured in the American Express online site Open Forum, Matt Mickiewicz, co-founder of 99designs, the company that conducted the survey, offered a few reasons why professional design should be a priority. We would like to highlight these reasons – which remain relevant- with Matt’s rationale for the consideration of those of you sitting on the sidelines of professional design.
Impression
Two-tenths of a second is the maximum amount of time subjects viewing a website took to form a first impression, according to a study published in February 2012 by researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. The longer the viewers chose to stay on a site, the more favorable their impressions were. And the part of the homepage they spent the most time examining? The logo. …The lesson here is that bad website design, including a yawn-inducing or irrelevant logo, may compel prospects to jump to your competitors’ sites in the blink of an eye.
Competitive Edge
With the rise of crowdsourcing models and other forms of online innovation, high-quality graphic and Web design services are more readily accessible to the typical business owner than ever before. Design work that used to cost thousands of dollars is now available for a fraction of that. The process is faster and less risky. Consequently, business owners of all stripes are stepping up their games. Generic DIY logos, bland business cards and clunky websites no longer cut it. …Chances are, your competition has gotten wise to the fact that the image they put out there can be a key differentiator and can make them stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Usability
Ineffective design can lead to dissatisfied customers—and as more companies wake up to the importance of design, the worse those who haven’t look by comparison. Many business owners seem to think that the key goal of a design is to make it pretty. But effective, intentional design beats pretty any day. If a visitor to your website can’t quickly find the information she’s looking for, chances are good she’ll either leave in frustration or contact customer service for help.
Return on Investment
Design has a proven ROI. Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen found in a 2008 study that ROI on a website that was redesigned to enhance usability averages more than 80 percent.
Add extra spice to your small biz marketing mojo. Join us on The Marketing Mojo Show, a live 15-minute podcast and chat, 3/19/14 at 1p.m. ET. Our topic is Brand Design and Visual Messaging for Small Businesses and features Bernadette Rivell Daniels, an Emmy Award-winning art director, graphic designer and North Florida design firm owner. Stir the conversation with a response to our question of the month [Q1: Is professional design important and why? #mymarketingmojo]. Tag responses on Twitter with #mymarketingmojo for a chance to hear your comment during the live episode and to participate in the live chat.
It’s New York Fashion Week. Designers, big and small, push the envelope beyond the runway for industry, online and consumer attention. So what could be wrong with a public relations pitch that newsjacks another high-profile event, resulting in worldwide headlines and hashtags? Plenty! It was a gaffe case studies are made of – one that the renowned house of Valentino should long regret. Last week, the designer, via its public relations personnel, sent journalists pictures of a celebrity wearing their goods at the wake for the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Additionally, as reported by the NY Post, the email that accompanied the photos contained a slew of typographical errors. Reaction was swift, and Internet outrage soon followed. The designer has since issued an apology, which we will leave to others to judge its sincerity.
Newsjacking, the art of using news events or stories for marketing and advertising purposes, is nothing new. It gives companies and brands a popular angle and a social, emotional or practical connection to the target audience. In an era of real-time engagement when word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire, newsjacking is an effective weapon for relevancy, as well as, online search engine optimization. In fact, we’re using the window of opportunity to newsjack the Valentino faux pas for this very blog post. But be forewarned and cautious, in death and disaster, there are few exceptions when newsjacking is acceptable or appropriate to push products or services, or handbags for that matter. And there are no excuses for media coverage requests laced with grammatical or typographical errors.
Small businesses can learn a lot from the Valentino debacle and we hope you’ll explore some of these tips and resources to engage prospects and customers, increase brand awareness and favorably influence the bottom line.
Tip: When reaching out to media contacts, keep it short, sweet and proofed. Most journalists and bloggers prefer emails and have little patience for follow-ups and follow-ups to follow-ups. Remember the pitch should not be about you, but, rather how your product or service meets the interests or needs of the contact’s audience.
Resource: Before hitting the send button on your next pitch, consider using one of the following platforms to enhance your writing and to review your written material for errors:
‘Tis the time of the year when we’re bombarded with endless lists of tops and bottoms, best and worst, reviews and predictions. With all due respect to the authors, distributors and repurposers – present company included, see LGK’s The Year in Tweets: 2013 Cyber Chatter -we have three tips of wisdom to maximize your momentum now and forever more.
As simple as it sounds and as simple as it is, by all means, make a plan! Refrain from jumping on the latest marketing trend, tactic or platform without knowing what you want to achieve, how you’re going to get there (time, manpower and budget) and how you want to be perceived by those ultimately responsible for boosting your business and bottom line.
Do a SELFex (self examination), not a SELFIE. You have to look back to leap forward. Be flexible, make adjustments and tweak – not Twerk (there, we said it) – when necessary.
Do your marketing thing. Do it well, do it often. Remember that marketing is a process and to be a contender, you have to be “all-in,” focused from conception to delivery to return on investment.
On behalf of the LGK team, I thank you for visiting our blog and wish you the very best in the year to come.
GB O’Brien
Principal
For daily marketing communications news online, subscribe to LGK’s free MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
It’s a fact. Many small businesses do not sell gifts, gadgets or widgets. Rather, most sell services and/or a combination of services and merchandise. These non-retail companies are just as worthy of today’s celebration of Small Business Saturday.
So carry on, shop small and spend big. But take a moment to acknowledge the small non-retailer. Give a nod to the companies that solve problems with their expertise, talent, skill and insight. All of the service providers in between and alike, from the plumber to electrician, the exterminator to landscaper, salon stylist to nail tech, handyman to mechanic, visiting nurse to chiropractor, newspaper carrier to newsstand operator, bookkeeper to business consultant, appreciate your continued patronage.
In the spirit of full disclosure, LGK Marketing Communications Collective (LGK) is a non-retail business consultant, a woman owned minority small business that provides outsourced marketing communications services. LGK sweats the marketing details for many small to medium-sized businesses so that they can do what they do best. If you own or operate a small to medium-sized business, visit our website to sign-up for the Marketing Score, a free self-analysis of your marketing efforts and potential. This tool is but one of many benefits of working with a small business.
On behalf of LGK and the millions of small business non-retailers, thank you for your support, consideration, encouragement and engagement. Happy Small Business Saturday and season’s greetings!
For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
Settle in for the week ahead, rev up your marketing engine and maximize your marketing momentum with a quick review of the elevator pitch.
An elevator pitch is an essential weapon for every company. For those who think it is merely for startups and those seeking investors, think again. You’ll find that having and delivering a succinct short summary of what you have to offer in less than two minutes is an effective marketing tool for creating favorable impressions and top of mind awareness. Having a solid elevator pitch can make the difference between an opportunity seized and an opportunity missed. It opens the door to a more formal encounter that could possibly seal the deal.
A good elevator pitch offers the following information:
The company name, category and a brief description of what the company does and the problem it is attempting to solve
The service market/target audience
The proposed solution (product or service)
The business model
The key benefit of the solution service or product
How the company compares to other familiar companies
Why the company will succeed
The vision for the company
We’re huge fans of the MediaBistro TVElevator Pitch series and invite you to watch and rate this episode featuring the venture, Go Try it On. Does it meet the criteria of an effective elevator pitch? Does it make you want to say “Tell me more” or “Hmmmm?”
For daily marketing communications news, click here to subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
As you settle in for the week ahead, spend a few moments with your favorite Morning Joe and LGK’s contributing marketing strategist, Nancy L. Hohns, as she explains the underlying dynamics every executive should understand to reconnect with consumers in an era of digital change and real time engagement. Jump-start your week and maximize your marketing momentum with this four-minute audio memo.
For daily marketing communications news and tips, click here to subscribe to the free online LGK MarCom Digest.
Every day, millions of newly minted producers and hosts join the ranks of Internet broadcasters, many without formal training. Here at LGK, we’ve heard more than many, worked with a few and unleashed our more than 30-year award-winning background in broadcast production to help you present podcast and online radio programming like a pro to engage your community, build revenue streams and maximize your momentum. Parts one and two of our Behind the Screen information sheet series examined planning and preparation, respectively. Below you will find part three, Podcast Pitfalls and How to Fix Them: Promotion.
For daily marketing communications news and tips, click here to subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
If there were awards for really bad public relations like there are for really bad films, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) would be a candidate, contender and probably clear cut winner, most notably for its handling of an agreement to accept a contentious corporate donation. The deal has since been shelved, but FAU will long be associated with the public protest dubbed Owlcatraz. The debacle, which warrants a forensic review, is not only one for the record books, but also a classic case study of public relations and corporate reputation mismanagement.
Here are the facts in custody:
Dateline: February 2013
FAU announces a $6 million pledge from the GEO Group, Inc., a private prison contractor, in exchange for naming rights to the stadium where the school’s football team, the FAU Owls, play. GEO’s headquarters are located in Boca Raton, FL, home of FAU’s main campus. GEO’s chairman is a FAU alumnus and former university trustee. In the United States and abroad, the company has been a defendant in several lawsuits involving human rights violations, abuse and neglect. The university’s announcement sparks outrage among many students, who form the Stop Owlcatraz Coalition, members of the faculty, community, local and national media.
Dateline: March 2013
In response to student sit-ins, online petitions, social media uproar and a fair amount of national ridicule (really, does it get any worse than the Colbert Report on Comedy Central?), FAU President Mary Jane Saunders meets with 250 students. She defends the GEO donation and also states that while she did not know everything about the company, the agreement was a “done deal.”
Campus protests, petitions and social media conversations intensify. While departing a FAU satellite campus, Saunders’ vehicle was surrounded by a group of student protesters, resulting in a not so civil exchange. According to news reports, a student sustained a minor injury when brushed by the side mirror of the car driven by the president and according to the university, the president felt physically intimidated, threatened and confined by the protesters.
Dateline: April 2013
On April Fools’ Day (no joke), FAU announces the withdrawal of the donation agreement, relinquishing stadium renaming rights. One day later, the group of students (now known as the FAU 7) involved in the physical brush-off received a university summons to meet with the Dean of Students to determine whether or not they violated FAU’s code of conduct and if applicable disciplinary action would follow. Four days after the meeting, the university announced it would not pursue charges against the FAU 7, but scolded the participants’ behavior.
LGK’s Take
If we were giving grades for performance, FAU would receive three Fs: Failure to act first, failure to act fast and failure to act fully – the three cardinal rules of crisis communications.
Many well trained public relations, communications and marketing professionals are scratching their heads. Since when does a prominent public university with a 50-plus year history of educational excellence decide to be reactive instead of proactive? Were the public relations blunders coming so fast and furious that the crisis communications plan, public relations strategy, process to vet donor prospects, social media monitoring program or talking points simply ignored? Surely, prior to announcing the GEO stadium deal, if administrators neglected to anticipate the slightest of backlash, shame. Following initial indications of online posts, petitions tweets or media inquiries, the administrative brain trust should have been front and center, acknowledging the issue from the perspectives of its constituencies, answering inquiries and managing the crisis. Instead, they hid in solitary confinement until the crisis was at its peak.
So where does FAU go from here? Dust off the old plans or take a course in public relations effectiveness, crisis management and corporate reputation in the new normal of real-time engagement in the digital era? To minimize further reputation damage and to rebuild trust, as hard as it may be, FAU must diffuse the still smoldering situation – admit poor handling, hold more press conferences, present visual and social demonstrations of its efforts to listen to constituencies and be responsive in a timely manner. The university needs to connect with its audiences on issues they care about (need we say prison reform), show stability and pride. We’re certain that many talented South Florida communications professionals would lend a shovel to help dig FAU out of this mess, for the university does have good programs, students, faculty, staff and stories to tell. But then again, when you’re behind bars, with blinders on no less, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
For more on FAU and Owlcatraz, we recommend two Palm Beach Post articles which give a back-story and an update so that you can judge for yourself. What grade would you give Florida Atlantic University?
For daily marketing communications news, click here to subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
Lately, a barrage of media and social attention has focused on sponsored content and channels. And rightly so, for the lines, boundaries and disclosures are increasingly hard to distinguish. Even if your extra-sensory subliminal detection talents cannot sniff out brand journalism (a fancy new term for paid content), paid consultants or slippery sales pitches, at the end of the day, it really, ultimately and decisively comes down to a matter of trust, a LGK Vision topic our esteemed colleague, Nancy L. Hohns, examined a few years back. We’re dusting off Nancy’s tips and take on consumer attitudes and behaviors to guide you and your company through this glorious age of content marketing.
A Closer Look: Consumer Attitudes & Behaviors
Nancy L. Hohns Marketing Strategist
By N.L. Hohns
As we begin to slide out of the longest economic slump we’ve experienced in more than 60 years, regaining our most important assets – the trust and confidence we had in our financial markets, our government, our businesses and ourselves – will not be easy. Along with the billions of dollars that have been lost, and the millions of jobs that have disappeared, so too has the faith and belief we held so dear in our leaders, in our corporations and in each other. Far too many of the very people and the very institutions that we believed in have overpromised and underperformed.
Results from the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer find that Trust in US Businesses fell to 38% from 58% last year, the lowest in the ten-year history of the Barometer.
Among the key findings:
Nearly two-thirds of informed publics (62%) trust corporations less than they did a year ago
Only 38% said they trust business to do what is right — a 20% plunge since last year — and only 17% said they trust information from a company’s CEO
Seventy-seven percent (77%) said they refused to buy products or services from a company they distrusted — the first time the survey explored people’s direct actions toward trusted and distrusted companies. Seventy-two percent (72%) criticized a distrusted company to a friend or colleague.
The world as we knew it is gone forever. It’s time to rebuild and revamp. To make the most of this opportunity, it’s going to take a lot of hard work, responsible, strategic planning, honest, effective communications and carefully thought-out actions that safeguard the future while acknowledging the past.
Click here for Nancy’s suggestions and to read this LGK website brief in its entirety.
Postscript: Visit this link to review the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer findings.
For daily marketing communications news and tips, click here to subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest. Maximize your momentum!
LGK Marketing Matters Blog 