You paid for creative services, placed an ad, mailed the brochure, created a spectacular website and e-marketing campaign. Now it’s finally happened — you get a lead. Then what? Believe it or not, almost 50% of all inbound sales leads are never followed up. It’s the missing piece. Continue reading
Sales and Creative Services Belong Together
What kind of creative services do you need?
There are many different firms out there providing different levels and styles of creative services. Instead of being sold on a firm’s benefits or portfolio and hammering them into your situation, figure out realistically what you need, then find the firm that fits your criteria best. Here are a few questions to ask yourself about internal time and expertise. Continue reading
Graphic Design Versus Web Design
I am having déjà vu because I think we wrote about this a few years ago. However, so much as changed since then. What hasn’t changed is the divide between the two disciplines and the effect on clients’ marketing, which is that it’s not well integrated. Graphic design has basic elements that I feel web design is missing. I used to get huffy about it because a lot of web developers were calling themselves web designers when they had very little visual and creative talent. They hammered together functional but ugly and not well branded websites, and called it design. Continue reading
Who’s reading e-newsletters? More than you may think!
How many emails have you received and deleted today?
If you’re a typical business email user, you send and receive about 100 a day, and you probably delete about 48% of them. So as the emails pile up in your in-basket, do you find yourself asking, does anyone read e-newsletters any more? Continue reading
Building a Foundation for Marketing Your Service
Before leaping into the creative, when it comes to marketing your service there are several key questions to ask yourself that will reveal the best methods for marketing your service, developing a creative brief, creating the guidelines to keep things consistent and measuring success.
Get Specific on Goals Continue reading
How to Set Marketing Budgets. And Why You Should.
What are two of the most important pieces of business wisdom you’ll ever hear?
- Large or small, every business needs a marketing strategy; and a marketing plan to make it happen.
- Once marketing budgets are set – take expert advice on how to use it wisely.
Average Marketing Budgets for Canadian Businesses Continue reading
Tell Your Story With Motion Graphic Design
While ‘motion graphics’ has become a bit of a specialty form of design, the term really originated as a coverall for any computer generated animation – graphics that move. It’s not full-on computer animation like Avatar, but it’s also not the old-fashioned frame-by-frame footage and animation.
With great tools like Adobe After Affects, motion graphic design has become more of a style and is a very attainable way for B2B and other small businesses to tell their stories in video. And we know that people will stay on your website 10X longer if there’s a video. Continue reading
Top 5 Creative Marketing Ideas
Do you think you can’t compete for attention in a crowded market place? Or that it would cost too much to do it? Many give up before they start, thinking it’s just not possible, so why bother? Fear not! There are several creative marketing ideas that may get you more attention and cost less while being more fun.
Here are my top 5 favourite creative marketing ideas.
These have all been successful for our clients, but there is a common key to their success beyond the creative marketing ideas themselves… more later. Continue reading
Your Digital Marketing Strategy; Are you there yet?
With all the trend reports talking about the age of digital marketing strategy, many companies are asking, “should we be doing more?” or even if they’re in the digital game.
The first thing to remember is “digital marketing strategy” should be part of your overall marketing strategy. You’re probably already doing it to some extent, whether you know it or not. Continue reading