Proliferation

Apr 25
0

How Do Good Slogans Influence Public Perception?

By | advertising, content marketing | No Comments

Good slogans are a mainstay of any successful marketing campaign. Since the dawn of advertising, these short, often simple phrases have been used to promote everything from diamonds to drain cleaner, cereal to cell phones, fast food chains and car insurance.

From digital marketing firms to old-school ad agencies, everyone in the industry knows the power of a good slogan. But how, exactly, do slogans work to influence public perception of your brand?

In essence, a slogan works by building a link between your brand and a higher purpose — whether that be a call to action, a broader concept or a far-reaching cultural norm. Through a powerful slogan, your brand transforms into something greater than the sum of its products; instead of selling a mere physical object, you are selling an idea. The more unforgettable the idea the better — as The Atlantic wrote in 2011, “The best slogans capture higher purpose in a memorable way.”

While it’s tempting to appeal to some grand, lofty purpose, a brand’s slogan still needs to have something to do with the brand itself. Stray too far from your brand’s original purpose and you’ll likely succeed only in confusing your target audience and digital marketing companies alike. Without a clear link to your brand’s identity, your slogan will bomb as badly as Dr Pepper’s “It’s Not for Women” (yes, that really existed).

A good slogan can also appeal to consumers subconsciously. Any digital marketing firms can tell you the importance of a call to action, but where slogans really shine is through call to actions that don’t have any specific endpoint. Consider the well-known Subway slogan, “Eat Fresh.”

The slogan itself is a clear call to action, but to what, exactly? “Eating fresh” is a rather vague concept; at what point has someone “eaten fresh?” In creating a slogan that primes customers for an unattainable goal, Subway ensures its consumers will always keep the sandwich company in some deep recesses of their minds, in endless subconscious pursuit of the elusive goal of “eating fresh.”

From digital marketing firms to multinational corporations, everyone relies on slogans to get their brand message across in one way or another. Whether your slogan speaks to family values, personal success or maintaining a healthy lifestyle, a company mantra that resonates well with consumers is one with staying power.

Apr 22
0

Fostering Engagement With Content Marketing on Social Media

By | content marketing | No Comments

Have you found recently that while on Facebook, a website that you were recently looking at has now been showing up on your feed and on the ads? With this new way of content marketing, it’s hard for a person to not notice your business.

At Fusion 360 in Utah, we have been popping up on Facebook pages and are up to date on our content marking and know how to promote it.

With as many people as there are on Facebook in Utah and across the country, putting your business and logo out there will create a stronger audience for the company, making people aware that you exist and you’re the company they need to succeed. Many may already have a Facebook page and Twitter account with many followers and likes, but many of those likes could be considered fake likes, meaning they may have liked your page but they’re not here to look at it.

How to Use Content Marketing

Posting your content on Facebook daily will create an interaction with you and your customers. Many ways to do this include posting a blog, video or an image. Even if your images and videos aren’t always consistent with your company, the meme you post could create likes for your page, creating an audience that will see your marketing content.

Other Sources of Media

Besides Facebook, get accounts on Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube; these social websites can also help push your content marketing over the edge and can be shared between different social media platforms.

If you’re trying to figure out if your content marketing is building that traction, there are different websites including Facebook that can help you see what demographic is visiting your Facebook page and their location among other things.

With social media on the rise here in Utah and around the globe (while being a main source of marketing for your company), learn to utilize social media for yourself and your content marketing — it’ll help grown and make your business aware among the numbers.

Apr 22
0

Slaying Your Content Marketing Challenges

By | content marketing, marketing, Utah | No Comments

By now, most companies are starting to get the message that content marketing isn’t a fad. In the information age, content marketing is marketing. Even still, businesses in Utah and beyond build long lists of reasons why they can’t make it happen. They make small problems seem like massive dragons ready to burn their careers to the ground. But by adopting some new ways of thinking about content, there are really no dragons you can’t slay.

Here are some of the biggest content challenges we hear about and why they’re not so bad.

I Don’t Have Enough Time

This is one we’re sick of hearing. Anyone can make time for priorities — and if you’re doing marketing at all, content marketing is definitely going to be one of your primary areas of focus. A quick 30 minutes of unfettered typing can lead to a bunch of different content types, whether it’s a blog article, some social media posts or even quick, low-production instructional videos. Not only that, but who’s to say you have to be the one creating the content? Many companies have had success inviting their clients to write blog articles for them, and still more have hired marketing agencies in Utah to fill their content gaps.

I Don’t Have Any Ideas 

Ten minutes with a pen, a pad and a few people is all it takes to get a huge list of ideas ready for local markets like the state of Utah, or bigger markets like the whole country. Ask yourself questions like:

  • What makes our company different from others in Utah or the world?
  • What expert knowledge about our industry can we share?
  • What about our manufacturing or development process might be compelling to talk about?
  • What is happening in our industry now and how can we comment on it intelligently?
  • What are our clients struggling with and how can we ease some of their burdens with content?
  • At what times has the client been satisfied, and what are their stories?

Among the answers to these questions is a huge list of potential videos, articles and more.

My Brand Doesn’t Lend Itself to That Kind of Marketing

Given what we already discussed above, you should begin to see that even a boring product or company has compelling stories, whether they involve internal processes or client success. The home appliance market in particular might seem boring until you think of what Utah-based company Blendtec has done. Just by using one of their blenders to destroy various things, Blendtec has become a YouTube sensation and a household name, all while selling a ton of blenders.

I Can’t Get the Execs to Sign Off

For many, gaining executive approval is the biggest challenge they’ll face. Executives will wonder why their employees are spending time writing a bunch of articles, and making a bunch of videos that might not even discuss their product directly. Those still stuck in the always-be-closing mentality, won’t like the idea of slowly building trust and authority with prospects. Your job will be showing them how much success other companies have had with content marketing. You’ll need to reveal a detailed plan of how content marketing applies to your company, and what gains you can hope to get from it. You strategy might focus on a local market, like Utah in our case, or it could cast a wider net across the country or world. With a compelling plan in place and a clear picture of the potential ROI, most execs will give you a shot.

It’s Too Expensive

This is a pretty common misconception about content marketing. When you see long-form ebooks, highly stylized infographics and videos with stellar production, content marketing starts to look mighty expensive — but it doesn’t have to be. Audiences will forgive lower production values for information that helps them. How many times have you sat through a fuzzy YouTube video because it had the info you need? The real value you provide is in the quality of the information itself. Great packaging helps, but if you have solid information that’s useful for your target audience, your content will succeed — even on a budget.

Conclusion

Content marketers are always going to run into challenges, whether they’re a small Utah-based shop, or a huge national firm, but there are none too big for agile marketers handle. With a little know-how and a firm belief in successful content marketing, there’s no challenge too big for the knights of content to slay.

Apr 19
0

The Facebook Metrics You Should Care Most About

By | content marketing, digital marketing, Facebook, marketing agencies, Social Media, web development, website design | No Comments

Facebook boasts just over a billion daily active users, making it a huge storehouse of potential customers that businesses can pursue. Since most businesses and digital marketing firms are on board the Facebook train by now, the next step for them is understanding some of the metrics Facebook provides — and how those metrics can be used to improve posts.

Page Views

Page views refer to how many people have visited your Facebook page. This is useful because it can show you how many people were either curious enough about your brand to look you up, or wanted to interact with more of your posts after seeing them on their news feed.

Reach

For Facebook, reach refers to how many users viewed your post. This helps digital marketing firms because you can see which posts gather the most reach, compared to which aren’t doing so well. While this information is useful, it it’s not nearly as useful as seeing how many people engaged with a particular post.

Impressions

While reach refers to number of people who saw your post, impressions refer to how many times your post was seen. This is different, because the same user can see your post more than once if one of his or her friends shares the post. Impressions are a useful metric because they give you a clearer picture of how many times your message is appearing to your audience — and can be a good indicator of how shareable it is.

Engagement

For digital marketing firms in particular, the keyword for social media is, of course, “social.” Engagement measures the percentage of people who interacted with your posts, either through commenting, liking, sharing, etc. This is one of the most useful metrics — because the best type of content is the kind that’s interesting enough for people to share with their friends. The beauty of Facebook is that if you’re sharing something your audience likes, they will do a lot of the legwork for you.

Videos

A major focus for all digital marketing firms is video. If you’re posting videos to your Facebook page, you’ll want to know how many people are actually watching them, right? What’s more useful, though, is seeing how long people have watched your video. Facebook will provide you with the number of times your video has been viewed for at least ten seconds. If videos consistently under perform and people begin to watch but quickly bounce, that’s a solid indicator that your videos need some improvement.

In Summary

Facebook provides these statistics for a reason, so don’t forget to make studying them a regular part of your social media strategy. Only by analyzing stats and understanding how your posts are performing can you continually improve your digital marketing game.

Apr 18
0

The Importance of a Company-Wide Style Guide

By | web development, website design | No Comments

For any company or brand maintaining consistent style, branding and visuals are absolutely essential. No matter whether you’re working at a small startup company or a multi-national corporation, having a style guide to refer to is invaluable for anyone in the website design profession. Here’s why.

Let’s say you’re working as a Web designer for a small company. As the sole designer, you come up with all the company logos, fonts, colors and other miscellaneous elements yourself. Now say the company is expanding, acquiring new big clients, and now you’re working with a team of website designers and Web development professionals. Do you want to have to personally teach each new employee that comes in the specifics of your company’s style and branding? Of course not!

Enter the company style guide. With a handy style guide that covers everything a Web designer needs to know, from fonts and hex values to logo sizes and placement, you’ve just saved yourself a hell of a lot of time and effort.

So what does a style guide for company website design typically entail? A company style guide can include information regarding brand voice, company colors, brand logo, positioning and terms of use, typography, specific icons or icon sets and much more. You can even include information on brand history & vision, social media guidelines, copywriting guidelines, design layouts, grid standards and examples, depending on your company’s needs.

A comprehensive company-wide style not only ensures everyone at your company knows what they’re doing, it also ensures that some inexperienced designer doesn’t come along and ruin all your hard work. For freelance designers, a style guide can function as a great housekeeping tool, allowing you to return to work with an old client without too much hassle.

Above all, a company-wide style guide ensures your work will stay consistent, and certifies an efficient, high-quality level of production. For website design professionals everywhere, your style guide is your instruction manual — don’t forget it!

Apr 15
0

How to Become a Video Marketing Master

By | advertising, Video | No Comments

In the current digital age, it’s become apparent that content marketing and video play a key role in the work of any advertising agency, from Utah to the East Coast. Video can easily capture someone’s attention — and video makes it increasingly easy to deliver a message. In advertising, things that are visual have been proven to be effective, helping to incorporate and engage your target viewership.

The Stats of Video Marketing

According to comScore, an American Internet analytics company, “just over 45 percent of Internet users viewed at least one video per month, and the average user is exposed to an average of 32 videos a month.” This is quite the amount of videos being watched. Imagine if your own video was being viewed that many times a month — it would make an incredible difference in your website’s traffic. Major retailers report that 90 percent of their shoppers find that video plays a critical role in a shopper’s purchasing experience.

Why Video?

In Utah and around the world, video is becoming a preferred form of marketing among consumers. A video is effective and can make the products or company more visible — rather than just the words on a page. According to a survey conducted by Internet marketing services Demand Metric and Ascend2, video is being used for brand awareness by 52 percent of marketers, and online engagement by 42 percent of marketers. The second largest distribution of channel usage by companies is through video sharing website like YouTube. The marketing services found that this was the second most effective distribution channel, just below the companies’ or brands’ own websites.

How to Make Engaging Videos

Any advertising agency would argue that most people aren’t excited to see the advertisements before their videos, but even so, this is a great way to market. As a Utah-based advertising agency with a video, you only have 10 seconds to grab the viewers’ attention. This is a critical thing to learn, because this will give you an idea of how long you want your video to be. Desktop users only have an attention span of approximately two minutes — so keep your videos short and to the point.

Make sure any video that your advertising agency produces is high quality — nothing makes your company look bad like a low-quality video. Your video should provide information that is both useful and informative. Also, making your videos user friendly can make it more appealing. Make the video interactive: have surveys your Utah consumer can take, make it engaging, but don’t get crazy.

Make sure you’re utilizing your videos for SEO purposes as well — include hashtags and your brand name. As an advertising agency in Utah, this will be critical to helping your client get the best of the best when it comes to their video marketing.

Apr 14
0

How Colors Affect Your Website

By | web development, website design | No Comments

Colors are very curious — they can make you feel something and change your mood. As a web designer, it’s important to pick the right colors for your clients’ websites. You wouldn’t want a yellow website for a funeral home, or a black website for children. As a web developer, it’s important to know what color schemes to use to help set the mood of the website. 

Color Theory

When it comes to picking colors, it’s important to understand three words: contrast, complementation and vibrancy. There are different shades to every color, so knowing what colors are going to contrast the colors you’ll be using will be important to you.

Complementation is similar, but these are colors that will accent each other such as blue and yellow.

Vibrancy is where mood setting comes in; picking a warm color will tend to energize the user, while a cooler color will be more relaxing. Knowing these basics will help you understand how the colors are going to work for you.

Design Principals

One easy design principal to remember in web design when picking colors, is to put a lighter color on your background, so that your text is easy to read. When designing around text, don’t get super creative — you want to keep the area simple.

If a web developer is looking to get a reader’s attention, make sure that you have colors that are contrasting, like using a gray background and lighter foreground. People’s eyes will usually look at the brightest color first — usually white, and that color will grab their attention. Using a variety of contrasting colors will help keep focus on certain page elements.

Color Scheme

Web designers can find a variety of color schemes, and picking that scheme can be a tough decision. Colors can bring out different feelings in people, like cool colors versus warm colors. As a web developer, there are different tools you can use to find schemes such as Adobe and Photoshop. These tools can help you find what color scheme and mood you’re trying to set.

Apr 14
0

How to Tell If Your Website Is Doing Well

By | web development, website design | No Comments

You’ve just completed an amazing website, complete with videos, graphics and intelligent copy. You know you and your family and friends have visited the website, but what about the public? How can you tell if your website design company did a good job? There are different tools you can use to measure the traffic on your website, so you can see just how popular it is compared to your competitors.

Mistakes You Could Be Making

At this point, you’ve probably noted that millionth visit on your page — and that does deserve a pat on the back — but does that really show how popular your website is? Don’t always focus on the upward trends, because you may be missing what’s going down. You may be getting that millionth visit, but how many monthly visits are you getting? This is important to understand, because people may not be returning to your website, due to your website design or some other reason.

Looking At Metrics

Looking at metrics can help you to see what is popular on your website and how many people you are pulling in. Let’s say you’re measuring the time people spend on your website — this can be another way to measure average engagement per visit. When you are able to measure the time on your site, you can see how engaged people are on your website. Say you find that on average someone is on your site for 50 seconds, and that you have an average of four page views a day. You can measure this for weeks, and when hits go up, this will help you notice if changes occur due to your website design, or for another reason.

Be Aware of Conversions

When a customer visits a website but does not interact much with it, such as when browsing Amazon, this does not result in a conversion. The website design itself isn’t the problem, this is actually something called “multi-channel conversion.” This means that you have visitors, but you’re not gaining loyal customers, whether your website exists for purchasing items or not. As a Web designer, it’s important to create something that will help your customers find the answers they are seeking. It may take time to gain loyal customers, but it’s a place to start.

Checking your metrics and other resources to see how popular your website is will help you decide what website design changes you may want to make, or help you find a new way to market. Keeping these in mind will help you to better understand both your website and your visitors.

Apr 11
0

Mobile Content Marketing Mistakes You Might Be Making

By | content marketing, Utah | No Comments

Creating a good mobile content marketing strategy is crucial for any business, whether you’re based in Utah or on the East Coast. People don’t walk around carrying laptops — you see people walking around Utah on their mobile phones. People are glued to their phones twenty-four-seven, so having your website optimized for mobile is essential.

It may seem simple enough to make a mobile site, but crafting a good mobile content strategy requires skill and finesse. Here are some things content marketing agencies should watch out for when implementing a mobile strategy.

Fit the Mobile Marketing Strategy

Your website may already be mobile-friendly, but you can use certain types of graphics and designs to really get the most out of your mobile content marketing game. One popular content phenomenon is the infographic. An infographic is typically designed by a graphic designer, and works as a visual tool to get your message across.

Unfortunately, infographics can often be lacking in the mobile-friendly department. You have to zoom in on them, scroll up and down, etc. It’s a lot easier to view them on a computer, where you can view the entire graphic with one glance. If you are planning to use infographics for your company in Utah or elsewhere, try using a HTML5 landing page that can share the information. This will ensure engagement with consumers remains high in the long run.

A Lack of Typography in Mobility

Don’t be afraid of typography — when it comes to content marketing, typography is something that you’ll want to understand. According to Content Standard, typography “is the art and technique of composing all the visual components that make up the look and feel of your copy.” Yes, your choice of font can make a big difference in your mobile content marketing. Keep in mind that your chosen font, point size, line length and spacing will affect how comfortable your consumer is when using your website.

Too Many Words

In Utah and elsewhere, people are using their phones on the go. People are looking for apps that give them what they want — and quickly. Potential consumers don’t want to have to read through pages and pages of information to find an answer. Make sure that your website is “skimmable,” meaning that your consumers can easily find what they are looking for, all on one page.

Too Slow

How fast your mobile site runs doesn’t really have anything to do with your design — or does it? Make sure that your design can be loaded quickly onto any device. Test your marketing content on different devices, and check to see how long it takes to load on each browser. It’s important to find that middle ground, so that your website can work at its best across all mobile devices.

Too Bad, So Sad

Have you even taken a chance to look at your own mobile website? Do you use it often? Being the owner of a website may make you feel as though you don’t need to see or use it. In fact, using your own mobile site regularly may help you build empathy for your users in Utah. If you can walk in the same shoes as your customers, you’re going to know exactly what they want from your website.

Apr 08
0

From Print to Mad Men: How Advertising Became Digital

By | content marketing, digital marketing | No Comments

Cup of Coffee By a Computer

The real point in advertising is to get the name and product out in the public — while simultaneously making it not only look good, but fantastic. With major changes in entertainment and culture, the way that advertisement companies have presented their clients’ products to the community has changed. It’s important to find the right marketing company so that you’re getting up to date strategies on marketing and advertising here in Utah. A lot has changed between the paper era of yesterday to the digital marketing era of today.

The Beginning

Advertising didn’t really show up until the 18th century when the printing press was invented. The first newspaper ad in America came out in 1704. Many of the first advertisements however, were for recruitment. In 1776, during the American Revolution, notices were put out asking for recruitment. It may not be advertising for a product, but it’s advertising nonetheless.

Getting Bigger

Soon events were being advertised, and not just in small print, but on billboards. The first billboard was put up in 1843 advertising the Ringling Brothers. This was a smart way to market, even if it hadn’t hit Utah yet — mainly because Utah hadn’t been established yet. This era was when advertising started to really kick off for companies. Kodak started advertising for their camera in 1891, and this was the beginning of brand identities. Slogans were being thought of and companies were finding target audiences.

The Mad Men

In the 1920’s, soap operas were now appearing on radio and television, creating a whole new market for advertising agencies. This gave companies the opportunity to reach a wide audience, and in 1941, the first television commercial was released by Bulva Watches — it only cost nine dollars. Then the mad men came into play, when advertising agencies hired psychologists to help them understand the nature of people and what was most appealing to different demographics. This would help with focus groups, and help advertising companies really create emotions and thoughts in their television and radio ads. 

The Digital Age

We’ve entered into the digital marketing era, where advertisers now put their names and brands on the internet. This helps digital marketing companies and advertising agencies reach out to more than 5 million people. Now, digital marketers are able to let the consumer see what they want to see. This makes digital marketing a lot easier in Utah and around the world.