Proliferation

Mar 08
0

The Psychology Behind Clean Website Design

By | web development, website design | No Comments

Say two websites are selling the exact same service at the same rate. One website is a messy, difficult-to-navigate maze and features what appears to be a side navigation bar that hasn’t been updated since 1998. The other site — which again, sells the exact same service for the same price — has a clean website design, simple navigation and an appealing layout.

Upon which site will most people bestow their favor? Without a doubt, most end users will opt for the clean website design. Here’s a breakdown of the psychology behind why clean, simple site designs resonate more with end users.

The Science Behind Simplicity

A clean website design serves several purposes outside of its intended aesthetic appeal. An optimized micro white space (the minuscule area between letters and lines) not only looks better, but it also makes text easier for website users to read. Elegant simplicity also creates a positive, lasting first impression; this is critical for several reasons. Not only does a favorable first impression contribute to a lower bounce rate, it also creates a propensity for users to return in the future. A clean, sleek site layout that runs quickly and smoothly instills trust with the end user — coupled with a sense of luxury and efficiency.

Clean Navigation Increases Traffic and Revenue

In addition to creating a lasting impression on end users — specifically users who are visiting your site for the first time — a simple site layout with easy-to-use navigation increases onsite traffic and thus revenue. A site may sell a product or service for a lower price than a competitor; however, if end users can’t access a product, shopping cart or checkout due to a busy and confusing layout, the purpose of the site is ultimately defeated. Alternately, a site that’s easy to find, navigate and use will yield much higher statistics in terms of incoming traffic, revenue and positive consumer feedback.

Mar 08
0

Communicating Brand Message Via Influencer Marketing

By | advertising, marketing | No Comments

In a nutshell, influencer marketing is a specific type of marketing that focuses heavily on utilizing key industry leaders to convey a brand’s message to a sizable market. While traditional companies focus on reaching a target audience through direct means, marketing companies that employ an influencer-based approach either hire, pay or motivate influencers to spread the word about a brand, product or service to the general public — both online and offline.

Influencer Campaigns Thrive with Social Media, Content Marketing

Influencer marketing requires a couple of different types of marketing support to be successful. Almost every influencer campaign employs two additional advertising tactics: social media marketing and content marketing. Because most legitimate marketing companies should already have a solid grasp on both these areas (and if they don’t, you should seriously question their capabilities), incorporating influencer marketing tactics is more of a natural next step than it is a step in a different direction.

Influencer Marketing Isn’t Word-of-Mouth

Don’t be fooled; influencer campaigns are not the same as word-of-mouth campaigns, although the two can be (and are often) used interchangeably. Most marketing companies who employ influencer-heavy tactics almost certainly utilize word-of-mouth communication channels to spread positive information about particular brands, messaging and product popularity. How influencer campaigns differ, however, is that they designate a key person or correspondent to leverage their status, influence and connections to create buzz for a product, service or idea.

Using Influence, Connections and Status to Target Audiences

This type of non-traditional marketing uses a set of unique building blocks to create successful campaigns. Aside from identifying the initial influencers for the designated product, brand or service, influencer marketing goes one step further by creating a campaign that directly and aggressively targets specified audiences within an influencer’s direct reach. It’s essential for influencer campaigns to conclude with thorough, conclusive metrics tallying the reach and sales for the sum of the campaign. Based on how successful or unsuccessful this data may be, future influencer campaigns may change accordingly.

Mar 08
0

The Holy Trinity of Content Marketing: Channels, Strategies and Tactics

By | content marketing | No Comments

It’s well-known that content is an integral part of marketing; however, the million dollar question on every organization’s mind is: how does content marketing fit in? While it’s not exactly its own channel, like, say social media or search engine optimization, marketing companies from Utah through the Midwest are relying heavily upon the incorporation of content marketing into these channels for successful advertising campaigns. So where, exactly, does content marketing fit in?

Perhaps the primary focus of content marketing is to relay a message or story to your target audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re targeting an audience in Utah or a consumer base on the East Coast; content plays the critical role of conveying your brand’s story to your audience. Choosing how the audience receives the content comes second to the primary goal of conveying the brand relevance and personality via well-written content.

Strategic Content Through Brand Stories

In the same way that any type of marketing campaign, whether content-centric or not, needs an outlet to reach new target audiences, it also needs a solid strategy to be successful. And while content can’t be purely categorized into one sole “strategy,” it certainly can be designed to fit an effective marketing strategy.

The theme that your content intends to express to audiences is the core strategy of any marketing campaign, whether you’re targeting an outdoorsy audience in Utah or preppy Ivy League schools on the East Coast. Your content strategy should consist of a successful relationship between the channels that you use and your overarching theme.

Pinpoint Focus, Then Employ Tactics

The tactics behind content marketing consist primarily of how, when and where you choose to broadcast content. For example, a successful content marketing tactic might involve steady, organic link building through 100 percent unique articles, blogs and infographics. Before deciding on a particular tactic, however, analyze what your end goal is. Is it brand awareness, higher SEO rankings or more on-page conversions? Once you’ve pinpointed your primary focus, you can utilize the most resourceful content tactics possible.

Mar 07
0

How to Make a Competitors’ SEO Strategy Your Own

By | digital marketing, SEO | No Comments

Search engine optimization, informally known as SEO, is a complex and multi-faceted field that requires expertise in several different areas in order to be successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re attempting to rank your site among search results in Utah or those on the East Coast — the playing field shows no preference when it comes to quadrants such as keyword competitiveness, inbound site traffic and user-friendly content.

So with SEO being such a competitive field (In Utah and in surrounding areas) how can you successfully (and legally) navigate the task at hand? To be frank, try taking a cue from your competitors. As much as you might view competitors as business rivals, competitors can be your best friends when it comes to search engine optimization.

Re-Spin Your Competitors’ Content

Although the phrase “content is king” still reigns in the digital kingdom of SEO, the phrase itself could benefit from a bit of a facelift. Although content certainly is one of the integral components of search engine optimization (whether you’re ranking for Utah-centric search terms or otherwise), the playing field has added a new referee: ideas. To take search engine optimization seriously means you absolutely must be aware of the content ideas your competitors are spinning, and then execute them with more precision and appeal.

Track Competitor Traffic with Link Mirroring

The advent of easy access to search engine research tools such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer have made it easy to not only track your competitors’ inbound links, but to mirror them. Although you should refrain from completely mimicking the strategy of your competitors, it’s vital that you become privy to where your competitors are getting their information. To beat a competitor, you must first get inside the mind of a competitor. Tracking and analyzing competitor links is the first step in accessing the thought processes of serious, major-league competition.

Mar 07
0

Why Can’t Spotify Win the Advertising Battle?

By | advertising, Audio, commercials | No Comments

It’s not news — or at least new news — that Spotify ads have a relatively solid anti-fan base online. With 20 million paying subscribers in 2015 alone, there are bound to be some rankled or slightly irritated users — but why? Why do Spotify ads in particular seem to have a dedicated hate-following online, versus similar (albeit slightly different) music platforms such as Pandora or Songza?

After briefly browsing through some of the user reviews online, it appears that there are at least a couple of things Spotify is getting wrong in its advertising department. And with more than enough advertising agencies willing to weigh in and fix the problem, there’s no reason why the music platform shouldn’t be stepping up its advertising game.

The Ads Clash with the Listening Experience

Although it’s nice that Spotify offers a free, ad-supported version of its music services, this doesn’t mean there aren’t strings attached to the listening experience. Most advertising agencies attempt to curate their ads to fit the general tastes of the product or services’ target audience; however, it appears (from a user’s perspective) that Spotify attempts none of this. The result? Misplaced, erratic ads that ruin the listener’s vibe. In addition to feeling irritated, most users express vehemence at having their workout routine mix interrupted by an ad for Trojan brand condoms.

There Are Too Many Consecutive Ads

If the ad content wasn’t annoying enough, another factor of the Spotify ad problem involves the amount of ads that are played between songs. While other music platforms such as Pandora may play one or two ads between songs, Spotify will play multiple ads that successively aggravate the listener. Most advertising agencies do not endorse this kind of approach.

Encouraging Listeners to Upgrade to Premium

If Spotify’s intention with its ads is to encourage listeners to upgrade to the ad-free Premium version, it would probably behoove them to start by building a more favorable fan base. The duality of Spotify is that while its services are awesome — and almost a necessity — their ads are isolating listeners and causing what might become an irreversible schism among music enthusiasts everywhere.

Mar 07
0

The Evolution of Internet Website Design

By | Design, web development, website design | No Comments

Since the since website went live in 1991, the website has been an enduring staple of Internet activity. From static, text-based webpages rendered in black and white to the dynamic, highly-responsive websites we have today, both the design and applications of websites have changed immensely.

Let’s take a look back at how website design used to be, not all that long ago.

The Early Internet

What do the first websites and the dinosaurs have in common? By today’s standards, they were both rather primitive.

Life as a website in the early days of the Internet was a simple existence; 16 colors were supported by most computer monitors, but the early websites only needed three: black, white and blue for hyperlinks. For early websites, text was all you needed — images didn’t come into the picture until 1993. Textures came online later, in 1994. And don’t even think about using CSS — HTML was the only programming language in existence.

The Dark Ages

The Internet’s limited color palette got an upgrade in 1994-1995, from the original 16 to a whopping 256 colors. Web designers ran with the new color opportunity, unleashing an onslaught of obnoxiously bright, garish webpages and flashing neon advertisements (like the ‘70s, but for the Internet).

1995 and 1996 introduces PHP and CSS programming languages, which bring with them the opportunities for vastly improved website design. Unfortunately, Web designers in the late ‘90s were too busy filling their homepages with sparkly, animated aliens and those things that looked like Bratz dolls to take notice of anything besides HTML. Geocities reigned supreme. It was a dark time.

The New Millennium

The year 2000 brought with it fun things like gradients and colors that didn’t hurt people’s eyes quite as much. Also, fear of the Y2K bug. As websites become more complex, design changes to become more user-friendly, with a focus on menus and other navigation tools. Internet Explorer continues to gain ground on previous monopoly-holder Netscape, forcing web designers everywhere to optimize their websites for the ill-fated Internet browser.

The Awkward Teenage Years

Around 2003-2004, the Internet proliferates in an explosion of more subtle color options and Flash-animated activity. Splash pages are very in vogue around this time. As dial-up Internet begins to fade and cable and Wi-Fi are incorporated into more homes and businesses, the Internet becomes accessible to a wider range of people.

The Internet starts to figure out what it wants to be, bringing us early social media pioneers MySpace and “The Facebook,” blogging website WordPress and YouTube in 2005. Design-wise, people are intrigued by the concept of video and are continuing to make everything a little bit easier on the eyes. Cell shading is a big thing.

Internet Young Adulthood

Having more or less figured out what it wants to be, the now grown-up Internet spreads its wings and works on subtle improvements. Social media proliferates, YouTube becomes a legitimate website and Google makes the lives of people around the world a little less frustrating.

Drop shadows and more realistic imagery become popular as screen resolutions get better and better. Color schemes are a thing. People are really into scrolling. Responsive design becomes more important.

Present Day

With a wealth of programming languages and design tools, today’s websites are more responsive and customizable than ever. Web designers have a multiplicity of options, a huge array of possibilities — and yet the prevailing trend is minimalism.

Aesthetically pleasing fonts are widely available, high-quality images are in abundance and animated GIFs and videos can be embedded every place imaginable. Most importantly, Internet Explorer is finally dead. Now if only people would pay their Web designers more, I’d say we’re living in an Internet renaissance.

Mar 04
1

Product Placement in Hip Hop & Rap

By | marketing, Music | No Comments

While Beyoncé’s shout out to Red Lobster in “Formation” was hard to miss, product placement in rap & hip hop music is often more subtle — but no less pervasive. From Run-DMC’s influential track “My Adidas” and Golden Age hip-hop’s fascination with Cristal champagne to Jay Z’s incessant name-dropping of fashion designer Tom Ford, marketing agencies got nothing on hip-hop’s biggest artists when it comes to clever and persistent product references.

From luxury cars and Air Jordan sneakers to chain restaurants and brands of fancy alcohol, check out these blatant brand product endorsements from both big-name rappers and lesser-known acts alike.

 

fusion_rappers

Mar 04
0

Can’t-Miss Steps of an SEO Audit

By | SEO | No Comments

SEO audits are notorious for being time and labor-intensive. There are numerous ways to improve your website’s SEO — from high-authority backlinks to properly-optimized images and website URLs. While an SEO audit can go in different directions depending on a business’ needs, there are some things an SEO audit simply can’t do without.

Mobile First

It’s 2016, and mobile is king — if your website isn’t mobile-friendly by now, you’re going to have a bad time. From Utah to the East Coast, Americans can’t get enough of mobile Internet; 75 percent of Americans now bring their phones with them to the bathroom. Start by taking Google’s mobile-friendly test, utilize a mobile sitemap and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and put a focus on responsiveness.

Data, Data, Data

This is SEO we’re talking about, so data is huge; performing an SEO audit means going through Google Analytics, AdWords data and Webmaster Tools, to name a few. All this data gives you insight into cost metrics, conversion rates, useful keywords, traffic metrics and more. Need to know how much traffic comes in from Utah, the West Coast or from other websites? You got it. Without the support of hard data, your SEO audit will go nowhere.

Tackle 404 Pages and Duplicate Content

You know what good websites don’t have? Error pages and duplicate content. Eliminate or redirect error pages as needed and get rid of duplicate content as soon as possible; duplicate information doesn’t look good to Google, much less to your users.

A Fast Website is a Good Website

Slow loading times can kill Web traffic: not only will users hate you, but search rankings will be negatively affected as well. Run PageSpeed Insights tests, enable browser caching and enable compression to reduce space. And as for any reputable website, finding a good Web host is absolutely essential.

SEO audits are a complicated business, and with all the little details it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees. Whether you’re a small business in Utah or a larger corporation, focus on these essential steps to make your next SEO audit a rousing success.

Mar 03
0

Mobile Internet Use Around the World

By | digital marketing, marketing, Mobile marketing, web development | No Comments

In an increasingly global marketplace, marketing companies and digital advertising agencies around the world are devising methods to reach diverse audiences from the flat landscapes of Utah to the mountains of the Himalayas. With landlines and reliable access to electricity available sparsely in many locations, more and more people are turning to mobile as their primary method of Internet access — as are those in more developed nations.

As mobile grows in global popularity, marketers need to increase their mobile presence accordingly — or risk missing out on potentially lucrative opportunities. Take a look at these mobile Internet statistics and demographics and get a leg up on the mobile marketing game.
Mobile-Around-the-World

Mar 02
0

Content Marketing: Fact Vs. Fiction

By | advertising, content marketing, digital marketing, marketing | No Comments

Content marketing is easy, right? All you have to do is write a couple of blog posts, choose a few stock photos and call it a day, right? Wrong. From Utah through the Midwest, there are a plethora of myths surrounding how content marketing works. Some of the key attributes of this niche marketing genre require client to consumer trust, strategic brand investment and a healthy relationship with social media outlets.

Whether you’re believe old wives’ tales about re-spinning content or buying into the idea that marketing and advertising are one and the same, here’s the real scoop on fact, fiction and theory when it comes to content marketing.

Content-Marketing-Fact-Fiction