ACS Creative

In mid-May 2009, Google relaxed its U.S. trademark policy and began letting resellers, review sites and sellers of compatible, complementary or replacement products include trademarked terms in ad text even if they don't own the trademark or have the owner’s approval to use it. Now, six months later, ACS Creative wants to know whether you’ve taken advantage of this policy change and, if so, how is it working for you?

What Was Then
Prior to the policy change, Google let companies other than the trademark-holder bid on trademarked terms (e.g., VAIO), but only the trademark owner (e.g., Sony or a Sony-authorized company) could use the term in the text of AdWords ads. So, for example, lots of companies that sold or serviced Sony VAIO laptops were out of luck: They might secure ad placement on the keyword “sony vaio laptops” but were forced to deliver a vague ad, something along the lines of


Needless to say, searchers looking for Sony VAIO laptops would most likely click on the most specific and relevant ad—one that mentioned “Sony VAIO.” Trademark-holders benefitted in two ways:

• Their ads stood out because they (and authorized companies) were the only advertisers who could use the brand name in their AdWords ads
• Click-through rates stayed generally low due to limited competition

What Is Now
Now, a reseller who advertises via AdWords can create specific ads for each of the brands that they sell—under certain conditions. Google believes this change helps both searchers and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across its networks in the U.S.

Criteria. In the U.S., Google permits use of a trademark in ad text under the following circumstances:

• Ads that use the term in a descriptive or generic way (e.g., Apple, if you sell the fruit)
• Ads that use the trademark in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically—
  • Resale of trademarked goods or services: The advertiser's site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term. The ad’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user can purchase the trademarked goods or services from the advertiser.
  • Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts or compatible products from the advertiser.
  • Informational sites: Third-party providers of non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term can use the term in ads. Such an advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of goods or services of a trademark owner’s competitor.

Google reviews ads that use trademarked terms plus their landing pages before the ads appear on Google search results pages (maybe a one-week delay). Finally, Google still prohibits competitors, counterfitters and critics from using trademarked terms to their advantage.

Results. The Google ad landscape has definitely changed since the policy shift—where you once found just an ad or two mentioning a brand name, now you're likely to see a brand-name search term appearing in most ads. For example, a recent Google search on “sony vaio laptops” produced the following PPC ads (top and right-column Sponsored Links):



Sony’s ad (Sony VAIO® Official Site) still holds the top position, but every ad in the right column contains the branded terms (Sony, VAIO, Sony VAIO) either in the ad’s headline or text (or both).

Who Wins? Who Loses?
In theory at least, trademark owners; searchers; resellers; sellers of compatible, complementary or replacement products and third-party information sites all seem to win in this situation:

• Trademark owners maintain a top ad position because of their superior Quality Score
• Searchers get relevant ads from more vendors
• Resellers, service providers and sellers of compatible/complementary/replacement parts can present more specific, compelling ads and better compete for ad positions
• Informational sites can market focused knowledge and recommendations

But, what’s actually taking place in practice? That’s what we want to know. ACS Creative invites you to share your experience with Google’s "looser" U.S. trademark policy for AdWords:

• Have you noticed any increased click-through rates (CTRs) for your ads?
• Has your conversion rate changed?
• Are you spending more money on your PPC ads because you have to bid higher (i.e., there's more competition) for the same terms you used before?
• Is your ROI increasing or decreasing for your AdWords campaigns?

Please share your comments directly in this post or email me at mattc@acscreative.com. Look forward to hearing from you!

If you’re serious about your business, it’s time to get serious about LinkedIn! Maybe you don’t know what LinkedIn is or perhaps you’ve started a profile—personal or business—but you haven’t invested the time to build out your network or make working LinkedIn a habit.

Now’s your chance! Commit to taking just 15–30 minutes on each of the next 21 days to explore LinkedIn and get first-hand experience with the features and benefits it has to offer you and your business. You’ll be glad you did.

What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site that launched in 2003 to enable and enhance professional networking. As of October 2009, LinkedIn boasts more than 50 million registered users worldwide, representing 170 industries. About half of LinkedIn users reside in the U.S.

LinkedIn helps registered users develop and maintain a detailed network of business contacts they know and trust. As a registered user, you can invite anyone (whether a LinkedIn member or not) to connect with you on LinkedIn and start the relationship-building process.

In a nutshell,

• Your LinkedIn network consists of the people you directly connect to (1st level connections), the people your direct connections connect to (2nd level connections) and all the people they connect to (3rd level connections)—so it’s big
• You can use this extensive network to gain an introduction to someone you want to know and connect with through a mutual, trusted contact
• You can use your network to find and recommend companies, business opportunities, people and jobs—just like you do with offline networks
• You can research companies—and your competitors—to learn about their employees, location, offices, important news and activity on LinkedIn
• You can ask and answer questions to engage with others, build community and enhance your professional reputation
• You can establish new business relationships through professional, industry, alumni and other types of groups
• You can list jobs and search for potential candidates
• You can manage virtual and offline events
• You can conduct market research, share interesting articles and resources with customers and prospects and post your professional presentations

As you can see, LinkedIn is a powerful social network that provides robust capabilities to benefit businesses. Through dedication and setting aside a manageable amount of time each day, you can establish a respectable presence on LinkedIn, check out its special features and begin to experience some of LinkedIn’s usefulness to businesses. Are you ready to take the challenge?

What to Do in the Next 21 Days
To help you take action over the next 21 days, here’s a suggested task list, starting with basic tasks then exploring additional features and functionality. Some of these tasks you’ll do once, some you’ll do frequently or even daily and some just occasionally.

These suggestions in no way exhaust all you can do with LinkedIn, but at the end of three weeks, you’ll understand the site’s capabilities, overcome the “overwhelming-ness” that new users often experience with LinkedIn and realize some of the important benefits to your business.

Your To Do List

1. Sign up for an account or revive your old one by signing in at LinkedIn.com.
2. Create or update your personal profile. Start by filling in essential information and plan to add more detail as you go along. The more detail you add to your profile, the more exposure and trust you’ll garner within the network.
3. Build connections—at least 10 each week: For starters, invite your colleagues, hook up with your existing contacts who are LinkedIn members, invite your customers and partners, ask your direct connections for introductions to your 2nd-level connections, search for others in your industry you’d like to connect to. LinkedIn provides tools to make this ongoing process relatively painless.
4. Create or update your company profile.
5. Get to know your way around the LinkedIn Learning Center.
6. Update your status every day with professional news about you or your business.
7. Share content and links to articles that your growing network will find interesting and useful.
8. Respond to emails that appear in your Inbox each day; send messages to touch base with select contacts.
9. Join one or more groups and engage in discussions and conversations.
10. Display your blog posts, Twitter comments or other social networking feeds on your profile.
11. Ask a question on LinkedIn Answers.
12. Use LinkedIn Answers Advanced Search to discover questions people are asking in your industry, identify unanswered questions that you can answer and determine how active your competitors are. Answering questions on LinkedIn Answers can be time-consuming, but the value of building your reputation as an industry leader is significant. LinkedIn Answers often show up in the results pages of major search engines.
13. Write a recommendation for a partner, vendor or supplier; request one from a satisfied client.
14. Upload a professional presentation to display in your profile.
15. Create a simple poll to engage people and gain insight; share the results with your network.

Don’t forget to visit the ACS Creative company page and feel free to invite me to join your network. Good luck with the challenge!

According to the 2009 Marketing Industry Trends study conducted by Equation Research in June of this year, 59% of brands surveyed reported that social media is part of their current marketing activity, and another 23% said they plan to implement social media within the next year. But the path to adoption isn’t always smooth—brands also revealed barriers they’ve encountered along the way:

• “We don’t know enough about social media to know where to begin”
• “There’s no established way to measure the effectiveness of social media”
• “There’s no funding for social media in our budget”
• “We just don’t have time to invest in starting a social media program right now”
• “Social media is not a proven/tested strategy”
• “We have legal constraints/corporate policies that prevent us from undertaking these types of marketing activities”
• “Social media is not a good use of employee time”

Is your business still on the fence about social media because of barriers? Here are a few suggestions to help you break through those barriers to take advantage of the benefits social media has to offer.

Start Learning
There’s no time like the present to start learning about social media—and no lack of traditional and online resources, either. Try this three-step plan to jumpstart your company’s social media learning process:

1. Chances are some of your employees already participate in one or more forms of social media, so provide opportunities for them to share their knowledge and opinions.
2. Share good online resources to provide a basic understanding of the key types of social media services: social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn), Twitter, blogging, online video/photo sharing (YouTube, Flickr), forums, podcasting, widgets and wikis.
3. Seek insights and recommendations from marketing professionals (e.g., ACS Creative) who know your industry and have experience planning and implementing social media strategies.

Collect a Variety of Data to Measure Effectiveness
Businesses that incorporate social media in their marketing programs measure effectiveness in a variety of ways. Tracking traffic, links, mentions, new leads, conversions and sales; monitoring comments, feedback and sentiments; and measuring “buzz” are a few of the ways businesses collect data to evaluate their social media efforts. Set up a plan for measuring success as you develop your social media initiative to ensure that you collect data for evaluation.

Revise Your Existing Budget to Fund Social Media
Even in 2009’s challenging economy, businesses are finding ways to fund social media marketing, and more often than not, they divert funds from traditional marketing channels. According to the Equation Research study, brands that embrace social media marketing currently allocate about 8% of their marketing budget and indicate that they plan to increase that allocation in 2010. The good news is that social media campaigns often are much less expensive to run than traditional campaigns (e.g., print/TV ads, events/tradeshows, direct mail marketing), so reassessing existing traditional programs might free up all the dollars you need to fund your social media efforts.

Distribute Responsibilities to Find Time for Social Media
Make time for social media by enlisting the help of everyone in the company in ways that make sense for their job. Approach social media in the same way that you approach email or phone calls: as a fact-of-life of doing business. Customer service reps might feel right at home monitoring and contributing to Twitter; the CEO might best contribute by writing a blog post on a regular basis. Your tech team might opt to monitor your forums, while your sales team focuses on cultivating leads. Coupling social media responsibilities with things your employees already do keeps the time commitment under control.

Seek Out Case Studies and Anecdotal Information
Not being a “proven/tested strategy” yet doesn’t mean that your business won’t reap a lot of benefits in the meantime from participating in social media activities. It’s still early days for social media, but the anecdotal evidence that’s mounting up is impressive. Search the Web to find case studies of successful use of social media in your industry to support your case. Two good sources for examples of social media that works include the Business Blogging Blog from the Social Media Business Council and Peter Kim’s Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples.

Work with—Not Against—Legal Counsel
Rest assured, you’re not the only company to face a legal barrier, and it doesn’t need to mark the end of your social media aspirations. In a Social Media Today post about a recent event addressing social media’s legal risks and limitations, Vanessa DiMauro echoes the sentiment of one speaker that the goal is to help legal move away from saying "no, because ..." to saying "yes, if ..." when it comes to social media policy. Her advice for getting beyond the legal barrier:

• Legal needs to be well-versed in social media rewards, opportunities, rules and tools to really be able to help the company succeed. Seek out counsel “in the know” about social media.
• Legal needs to be involved in the social media business planning life cycle early on as a trusted adviser. Involve legal “up front” in your social media projects to avoid delays and setbacks.

Rethink “Good Use of Employee Time”
Is building better customer relationships good use of employee time? Because ultimately, that’s what social media helps a company do more effectively. It’s all about creating ways to have conversations with your customers and prospects—answering questions, addressing concerns, correcting misconceptions, offering insights that help solve problems and pointing out other good resources—to make the life of your customer better. Who can argue against that?

Social Media—Worth the Extra Effort
If you run up against barriers in your efforts to introduce social media into your company’s marketing strategy, whatever you do, don’t give up. The benefits of social media are worth the extra effort to find a solution that works for your particular company. Listening, understanding, educating and problem solving are your tools. Put them to good use for social media.

According to a recent LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll of 1,015 advertising decision-makers from agencies or corporations, advertisers continue to rely on a mix of media types for their marketing campaigns. But most important, the data also reveals that a compelling 80% of those surveyed say they use Internet advertising in an integrated campaign with other media at least some of the time. If you’re not already doing so, maybe it’s time to figure out how you can use Internet advertising in conjunction with the other campaigns your company runs to better meet your marketing objectives.

Putting Internet Advertising in Perspective
By far, Internet and print media draw the most favor from advertisers: About 9 in 10 advertisers say they use each type, the study reports. In contrast, about 5 in 10 advertisers say they use radio or television ads, and 4 in 10 use cell-phone digital ads.



The study also reports that the use of Internet advertising and cell-phone digital advertising is on the rise: 74% of those who use Internet advertising say they’re using it more often than they did at this time last year; 69% of those who advertise on cell phones are using that tactic more frequently as well.

Internet Advertising Practices
In terms of how advertisers most typically use Internet advertising, more often than not advertisers are integrating it with the campaigns they run on other media.



Of all advertisers polled, 50% say they most typically use Internet advertising in integrated campaigns, and another 30% report they use Internet advertising in integrated campaigns as often as they use it in stand-alone campaigns. Just 13% report they use Internet advertising most typically in stand-alone campaigns, and a scant 8% of the participants don’t use Internet advertising at all.

What Internet Advertising Brings to Integrated Campaigns
Advertisers who use Internet advertising report that they do so to drive a variety of marketing initiatives: to build brand, trigger information-gathering in support of offline transactions, drive online transactions and promote community around their brand.

With these findings in mind, here are a few ideas about how you can use Internet advertising in conjunction with other campaigns that you might run to better serve your customers and prospects:

• Build brand. Whether or not customers and prospects actually click on your Internet ads, your brand benefits from appearing where your customers are. And if your Internet ads coordinate with the ads your audience sees elsewhere, all the better: You send a consistent and reinforcing message about your brand that builds trust in your company. If you haven’t yet tried any Internet advertising, what do you have to lose? For greatest impact, be sure to supplement your efforts through other channels.

• Trigger information gathering. With more and more customers using the Web to gather information before making a purchase, your company can couple Internet advertising with other campaigns to make information-gathering that much easier. Providing specific landing pages that present the information decision-makers need most before they make a purchase and promoting those landing pages across all your campaigns is a valued service to customers—and can make the difference between whether a customer chooses you or a competitor.

• Drive online transactions. If your goal is to increase online transactions, integrating Internet ads with other media campaigns so that all lead to the same specialized landing page and transaction process takes away confusion for the customer. There’s nothing worse than going to a company Web site and not being able to find what an ad promises. And running stand-alone ads that send different messages most likely means customers will pass you by.

• Promote community. Internet advertising is a great way to promote community—a forum, Twitter stream, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn group, specialized social network—around your company and brand. Running integrated campaigns wherever your customers frequent—online or offline—that invite and encourage them to participate is a great way to build up community.

To best serve your customers, your company needs a presence online and offline. Internet advertising provides a relatively easy way for you to begin integrating your online and offline efforts so that you send a strong, unified message to your audience wherever it might encounter you. Be sure to contact me at ACS Creative if you need help integrating your marketing efforts—there’s no time like the present to start taking advantage of the benefits integrated marketing can deliver to your business.

Over the past decade, the most notable change in business marketing has been the emergence of the company Web site in a starring role, from its humble beginnings as part of the supporting cast. The evidence is staggering:

• 92% of technology buyers turn to vendor Web sites for information (MarketingSherpa)
• 89% of US Internet users go online to research (Ruder Finn); 71% of consumers research a business online before making a purchase
• 85% of B2B buyers go online at some point during the purchasing cycle; 83% go online specifically to find a vendor (Enquiro Research)
• US online sales will reach $145 billion in 2010 (eMarketer)
• Online or offline, vendor Web sites are the single most influential factor for B2B buyers in making a purchasing decision (Enquiro Research)

With such a spotlight on your corporate Web site, what do you have to lose if you don’t redesign it and keep it up to date? In a nutshell: plenty.

An outdated Web site creates many problems for a business and its prospects and customers. Slow-loading pages, difficult navigation, error pages, buried content, accessibility issues and barriers to completing desired actions all cause visitors to move on to more desirable sites—like those of your competition. Here are 8 ways an outdated Web site can affect your business.

1. Your target audience can’t find you.
Small Business Brief reports that 80% of online purchases begin with search. If your site hasn’t yet been optimized for the search engines, you’re missing out on important traffic to your site. You need to help your target audience find you, and that means appearing in the first couple of pages of search results, which takes some special tactics (SEO). Older sites often aren’t easy for search engines to traverse and index their Web pages, which makes it even harder for searchers to find you compared with updated, optimized sites.

2. Bounce rate is high—few leads.
Visitors take just a few seconds to decide whether to spend time on your site. In fact, Carleton University's HOT Lab (Ottawa) reported that human brains can make flash judgments about visual appeal of a Web page in as little as 50 milliseconds (about 1/20th of a second). Furthermore, these initial impressions carry over to other characteristics of your Web site and your company (e.g., credibility, trustworthiness) via a “halo effect.” A high bounce rate with little time spent on your site resulting from a lack of appeal and functionality that your target audience expects means few leads and, subsequently, fewer conversions.

3. Conversions are subpar.
Web sites that have grown uncontrollably, are poorly organized, are hard to navigate, bury their content, have non-specific landing pages or have no clear conversion path are destined to drive visitors away from completing a desired action. Their solution? Escape to another site that’s easier and less frustrating to navigate.

4. Customer retention declines.
Internet users today seek valuable, relevant information on an ongoing basis from sources they trust to help them solve problems or make decisions. They will choose to engage with you on a continuing basis if you provide fresh content that objectively informs, helps them and is easy to find in all the ways they like to receive and interact with that information. A site with static, outdated content, no support for RSS or social media platforms and a lack of vibrancy and “life” sends the unfortunate message that you don’t care enough about customers to provide what they expect and need. Customers will look elsewhere.

5. You lose business to your competitors.
If your site isn’t optimized for search and a competitor’s is, you’ll lose traffic and potential business. If your site loads too slowly, searchers and visitors will jump ship—perhaps again to your competitors. If your competitors offer opportunities for your target audience to engage and interact with them in a variety of ways (e.g., through forums, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, LinkedIn) and you don’t, you’ll likely lose their interest. In short, today’s company Web sites and online presence need to work hand-in-hand to better serve customers and prospects than their competition does. Taking the lead and ensuring that your site is attractive, up-to-date, search-friendly and socially savvy is more important than ever.

6. Can’t “grow” your authority in the industry.
The best way to become more of an authority in your industry is to provide meaningful content that gets read and virally promoted (authentically) on a regular basis. Authority doesn’t “happen overnight,” and unless you’re able to easily add content to your site on a regular basis (e.g., via a content management system), you’ve got an uphill battle. By redesigning your site, you can add capabilities to make it easy to publish new information—and notify interested parties—to help establish a presence in your industry.

7. Your brand is at risk.
Your brand is more than your logo, and your Web site sends a loud-and-clear message of how you value and respect your visitors, prospects and customers (not to mention your company). Many sites were previously designed to serve the company rather than the customer. Build your brand by providing a Web site experience that your target audience will recognize, value, promote and come back to again and again.

8. Profitability declines as Web site maintenance expands.
Web sites cost money, and as they become more and more complex over time, the cost of maintaining them creeps up and up. Fortunately, a Web site redesign can turn that trend around. With today’s technologies and tools, you’ll find you often spend less on basic maintenance—with better results—and keep your site easy to upgrade in the future. Yes, you probably will still need a Web master for implementing the greater variety of functionality on your site, but that person won’t be spending time making minor changes and updates that your staff can handle. Efficiency and a well-designed “back end” go a long way to saving money in the long term.

Do You Need to Update Your Web Site?
Now more than ever, you need to send a strong, clear message about your company and brand to build confidence and trust and to show where you’re heading in 2010 and beyond. How better to take center stage away from your competition and put the spotlight on you than through a redesigned Web site that awesomely serves your target audience and demonstrates your leadership moving forward?

Let me know how ACS Creative can help you.

So It's been a couple weeks since Part 1, so just-in-case you need a refresh....check out Part 1 here

Okay, so as I stated in Part 1, Social Media Marketing and Viral Marketing can be very effective marketing strategies...BUT, effective execution and implementation can vary from company-to-company. Let's take a look at a couple examples:

---
    Company: Higher-End Manufacturer Car-Dealership

        Key Facts:
            - Currently they do NOT participate (not active) in any form of social marketing and/or viral marketing
            - Have an existing customer base of around 5,000
            - Roughly 25% of existing customers use their service department for recommended tune-ups
       
After initial analysis, their desired marketing-breakdown is as follows:

        Horizon 1: GOAL = To Increase Yearly Revenue
        Horizon 2: OBJECTIVES =
                    A) To Increase # of Cars Sold (Used & New)
                    B) To Increase the # of Customers Utilizing the Dealerships Service
                    Department for Scheduled Tune-ups
        Horizon 3: STRATEGY = Hmm, let's see...

Given the scenario above, what strategy(s) would better support their goals and objects:
            (A) Social Media Marketing?
            (B) Viral Marketing Campaign?
            (C) Both?
            (D) None of the Above? (....bet you're thinking right now; "man I miss school" :) )

---

Although many-professionals could prove to you that all-4 are correct...however, within the context of this discussion, I like (A); Social Media Marketing the best!

Here's why...

--

7 Practical Uses of Advanced Search Operators
What makes the search operators quicker to use than the Advanced Search page is that you can type them directly into the search box. You can also combine them in creative ways to find very useful information. Furthermore, Twitter Search lets you create ongoing searches that deliver results to your RSS feed reader (e.g., Google Reader) for review at your convenience.

Here are seven ways to use the Advanced Search operators to help your business capture useful information from the Twittersphere. Have fun experimenting to see what works best for your business!

(Note: Twitter Search is not case sensitive—you can enter everything in the search box in lowercase. In the following examples, the use of upper- and lowercase is only to improve readability.)

1. Eliminate “noise” from your search results
Often when you do a simple word/phrase search, you get back so many tweets that you can’t find the ones that are most useful to you. Excluding retweets (when users resend another Twitter user’s message) can help eliminate a lot of duplication. Simply search on the word/phrase and append –rt to your query:

“Internet marketing Washington DC” –rt

This query will return a list of messages that contain the exact phrase “Internet marketing Washington DC” but not any retweets of messages that contain that phrase.

2. Use hashtags to enhance your search capability
Hashtags are words or strings of letters and numbers that are preceded with the # symbol. Twitter users include a hashtag in a tweet to indicate that the tweet pertains to a particular subject grouping. Hashtags make it easy for you to search for tweets that might be applicable to a particular topic. By searching on hashtags instead of a simple term, you eliminate any tweets that might include the term yet not be relevant to the exact topic you had in mind.

For example, if your company runs a special event (e.g., the Virginia Web Designers Meet Up), you could start a hashtag (e.g., #VAdesignersMU) that everyone in the group can include in their tweets about your event. Then, to find all the comments pertaining to your group, you simply enter the hashtag in the Twitter Search box:

#VAdesignersMU

If you want to exclude any retweets, you enter

#VAdesignersMU –rt

If you just want to find comments (excluding retweets) from a certain date range, you can enter

#VAdesignersMU –rt since:2009-07-12 until:2009-07-16

3. Find tweets about your company
To find all the tweets that mention your company name, you might simply search as in the following example:

“ACS Creative” OR ACSCreative OR “Affordable Creative Services”

Using OR lets you check for several possibilities that people might use for your company name in their tweets. In this example, because acscreative is also our Twitter name, this type of search will return mentions as well as all the tweets we sent out and any replies to us. To find only the comments that mention your company and exclude those from you or to you, you can enter

“ACS Creative” OR ACSCreative OR “Affordable Creative Services” –from:acscreative –to:acscreative

4. View tweets to and from your competitor
If you want to monitor all the tweets to and from a competitor that’s on Twitter (e.g., Twitter name acmevisual), you can enter

to:acmevisual OR from:acmevisual


5. Find tweets that refer to both you and your competitor in the same tweet
If you want to find all the people who refer to your and your competitor’s Twitter name in the same post so that you can be sure to reply, you can search for

@acscreative @acmevisual

Note that when you enter terms consecutively in the search box separated by a space, Twitter Search returns all tweets that contain the first term and the second term (and so forth) somewhere within the tweet.


6. Start conversations with Twitter users who live near your business
Are you a local business that likes to connect with people in your community? Perhaps you’d like to invite newcomers to visit your business or even offer a special coupon or discount to new customers. Twitter Search provides two operators to help you discover Twitter users in your area to engage in conversation: near and within.

To see tweets from people in your area, you can enter something similar to the following phrase in the search box:

near:WashingtonDC within:25mi

Note that if your city name has two or more words, enter them without any spaces between words. You also can enter a zip code or airport code in place of the city name. Twitter bases its search on locality information provided by users in their profile.


7. Become a local resource
Twitter Search also lets you discover tweets that satisfy certain conditions—for example, tweets that ask a question, those that have a positive or negative tone and those that contain links. By answering questions in your industry area, you can engage current and potential customers, help your community and establish your business as a resource.

For example, we’ve found that people have lots of questions about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Here’s one way we can find Twitter users in our locale who have questions that pertain to that particular topic:

near:DC within:25mi “PPC ads” ?

This search would return tweets that contain the exact phrase PPC ads and ask a question, from people within 25 miles of Washington, DC.

You can use a similar tactic to find people who might be having a problem that you can solve [if they indicate so by including a frowny :( symbol in their tweet]:

near:DC within:25mi “PPC ads” :(


So, it's easy to see how you can quickly build some interesting search queries with the Advanced Search operators. Be sure to drop me a line about your successes!

As a strategic graphic design and marketing agency, I get asked this question quite often by some of our best clients. And as someone who believes in the holistic approach towards online marketing / digital advertising...I tend to answer with the 'ol "well both...but like most marketing efforts, they have to be done with a purpose and they must be used correctly."

Let me expand a bit deeper....
First off - Yes, I'm one of those "your marketing needs to have a purpose" types. Whether collaboratively with those clients wanting to be involved (preferred method!!) or within our own creative group, I always start the marketing planning process by establishing (from the top-down) the:

Whether you decide to work with in-house staff or an outside design firm on your next Web design/redesign project, chances are you might not be familiar with some of the specialized language and terminology that designers and developers use when they discuss the project with you. Here’s a list of five types of down-to-earth, online resources to help you brush up—before or after the fact—on what they’re talking about.

1. Glossaries
One of the best ways to quickly learn about Web design concepts is to read a good glossary—that is, one with clear, concise definitions and descriptions of the terms and acronyms related to Web design. You can look up terms you’re not familiar with, or if the glossary is a short one, you might choose to skim all the entries for a quick overview. Here are several glossaries (the Web provides many to choose from—some good, some not so much) that you might find useful to cover all the bases:

• Web Design Glossary from Buzzle.com—A good short list of common terms and straightforward definitions—a really easy read
• Web Design Glossary from About.com—A longer list of terms, each of which links to a definition and additional resource articles from About.com
• The Motive Web Design Glossary—A very comprehensive, up-to-date list of terms, each of which links to a detailed definition, a list of related terms and additional information and references
• Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources—From Smashing Magazine, this useful guide also provides links to in-depth information and additional resources from other authoritative sites (as a bonus, you might make a hit with your designer/developer by recommending this resource to them)

2. Wikipedia
No list of resources would be complete without mentioning Wikipedia. If you’re looking for an encyclopedic-type overview of Web design topics that leans toward the technical with lots of internal links to more detailed information, a bit of historical background and a huge list of references, then Wikipedia might be your best bet.

3. Web Design Reference Guide
Peachpit Press’s Web Design Reference Guide provides a “30,000-foot view of Web design topics.” It’s a collection of short articles (originally blog posts) that describe all things Web design–related, from Web basics to usability and accessibility to Web site optimization and what happens on the backend server. Although some of the articles date back to 2003 and 2004, the straightforward, conversational-style explanations of core concepts make it worth a browse.

4. Web Style Guide
Yale University Press’s Web Style Guide, 3rd edition: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites is a practical, non-technical book about designing Web sites. The book tells you what you need to know about Web design in plain language, with easy-to-understand examples and a great reference section. Now in its third edition (published January 2009), the Web Style Guide emphasizes fundamentals and contains all the latest information about Web design. And best of all, the book is viewable in its entirety online.

5. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine launched in 2006 with the goal of providing useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. You’re not a designer/developer, you say? No worries—the magazine provides information suitable for people with various levels of expertise, from non-designers to newcomers in the design field to seasoned experts. The glossary mentioned previously is a good example of the type of helpful information you can find on the site.

The magazine also specializes in presenting the latest trends and techniques in Web design. For example, Web Design Trends for 2009 lets you get up to speed quickly on some of the new design features your Web designer might suggest for your site. Whether or not you understand all the technical details, the examples give you plenty of ways to see new features in action.

Raise Your Web Design IQ
Regardless of your role in your company, if you’re involved in a Web design project at any level, it’s advantageous to arm yourself with the basic knowledge you’ll need to understand and communicate effectively with your designers/developers. If you don’t find the information you need from the suggested resources in this post, or you simply want to chat further about Web design, please don’t hesitate to contact us at ACS Creative—we're more than happy to help.

99.9999% of internet users are familiar with the Google Logo; in fact, it's probably the most recognized logo on the web.

The notable thing about the Google logo is that Google is constantly changing it —but NOT changing it. Even when letters are omitted completely, colors are changed, or images are added, it's still the Google logo.

It begs the question: How far can you deviate from a visual concept while maintaining a solid brand identity? Google had the good judgement to represent itself with a colorful palette on a simple white backdrop, and refer to itself only by its simple six-letter name, making it flexible enough to work symbolic representations of current events and other visual messages into.

So when it was announced a few months ago that Affordable Creative Services was about to go through a metamorphosis, reemerging rebranded as "ACS Creative," we all got kinda excited. The Sterling office played the biggest role in the new brand development, but we all pitched in our ideas and concepts for the new ACS Creative, Inc. company logo.

This is the one we've been using for a long time:

Eventually, after months of comps, and revisions, and more comps, and more revisions, Russell, our President and founder, made the selection of our new logo: 

I think our previous logo had two powerful elements to it; one was the red swoosh. The other was the word "Affordable" on top, which appealed to small businesses and thrifty clients. I'd say the Creative part was important too, but if people were searching for a graphic design or marketing firm, they probably already understood that message.

During the new logo creation process I was strongly in favor of keeping the red swoosh intact for brand recognition. However, after taking the new logo in for a while I realized that the floating red glyph could be viewed as a different opportunity— could it be a sign that we should test out the Google deviation theory on our own brand? By itself, a triangular shape doesn't relate to our previous branding, and emphasis on the "A" character isn't completely necessary since the 'Affordable' part has been absorbed by the initials A-C-S. What it does have is the potential be a clean slate for our new brand to develop, and a way to showcase the "Creative" part of the acronym...

So a group of designers here did some focus testing on a recent afternoon. We tasked ourselves with quickly creating images out of the glyph. Granted we weren't wholly concentrating on relating the visuals to the brand at first. Sometimes it's necessary to take a thing to its limit before scaling it back. Not to mention it was really fun and we liked doing it.

And as Google has taught us, sometimes it's more important to show than tell when designing a brand identity.

 

Aaaaah … summertime, the season of sun, fun and easy livin’! A three-month breather from business-as-usual before you ramp up to full steam again in the fall, right? For most businesses, summertime also means people out on vacation, days off for holidays and perhaps a shortened work week or early closings due to “summer hours.” What’s the best way to handle your corporate blog during these atypical summer months?

With a little foresight and planning, you can ensure that your blog will continue to provide valuable content to your readers throughout the summer—regardless of who might be posting. Here’s a list of a dozen ideas for blog posts that you can use to create a simple content plan or editorial calendar to take you through the summer.

1. Lists
One of the easiest types of posts to write is a list-based post (like this one). You can highlight the best books related to your industry, top Web sites that customers can use as resources, best practices for using your products—you get the idea. Be creative and specific to make your list-based post one that readers will want to bookmark and pass along to others.

2. Data presentations
Presenting juicy data about your industry or market is another good strategy for a post. With so many research groups providing study results or executive summaries on the Web, it’s relatively easy to find interesting data to talk about. Search the Web, check for research that professional organizations in your industry have published, review trade magazines or browse the archives of research companies such as Forrester, Gartner or Nielsen. Not only can the data itself be fascinating to your readers, they’ll also appreciate your perspective and interpretation of the data.

3. How-to articles
Explaining step by step how to do something related to your products and services creates a valuable blog post. And the topic doesn’t even have to be complicated—just useful to your audience. For example, a garden center might explain how to clean out a backyard pond, an accounting firm might outline steps to set up a small business account in QuickBooks, a full-service marketing firm (like ACS Creative) might explain how to go about choosing a graphic designer.

4. Tips
Like lists and how-to articles, tips that make a customer’s life easier also make good blog posts. Perhaps you can provide 10 ways to optimize your product, 5 ways to improve customer service, a dozen ways to generate more sales leads, 20 ways to save energy in your customer’s business. And if your tips are seasonal-specific, all the better: Now your post is timely as well as relevant.

5. Interviews
It’s now easier than ever to interview someone and publish the results in your blog, and readers enjoy the personal connection from this type of article. Certainly consider interviewing someone in your company—the CEO, a product evangelist, a customer service representative—whom your customers would like to hear from and know more about. It’s a chance to put a human face on your company.

You also might consider interviewing an outside expert within your industry—simply pull together a list of questions and ask the person to respond to them via email. Lots of people might not make time for a face-to-face or phone interview, but they might agree to answer a few questions at their leisure.

6. Answers to customer questions
Chances are, you already support one or more ways for customers to ask questions about your company, your products and services or the industry at large. Gather up all those questions and use them as starting points for blog posts. Even if you have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your Web site, you can answer the question in more detail or with more examples in your blog and link to your FAQ.

7. Polls
All types of free software and services (e.g., PollDaddy, MicroPoll) exist today to help you conduct simple Web polls. And even though these polls aren’t “scientific,” it doesn’t mean that they’re not interesting to your customers. People love to know what other people think, do, need and so forth. You also can ask questions on social platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter to get data on a specific topic. With so many opportunities available, why not plan one or a series of polls and discuss the results in an upcoming blog post?

8. Opinion pieces
In most industries, there are compelling topics that evoke differing points of view and opinions that customers need clarification on. How does your company stand on these issues? An opinion piece is a great way to educate customers and provides another opportunity to humanize your company—not to mention giving readers an opportunity to add their opinions, too.

9. Expansions of a previous post
Perhaps you really didn’t have the time or space the first time around to fully explore a topic with as much detail as you would have liked. Now is your chance to revisit the topic on a different level, with a link back to the original post.

Or, perhaps you’ve updated a product or service and can revise your best practices article. Or, maybe you did a “best of” article in 2008 and can update that for 2009. Lots of research is conducted on an annual basis, so you can expand on a series of posts by looking at the trends over time.

10. Product reviews
Your current and potential customers expect you to be an industry expert who can provide sound advice about the products and services in the marketplace. Take the opportunity to review—or at least to summarize the uses, pros and cons—of those products and services to help your customers make a sound purchasing decision.

11. Audio or video posts
Really, it’s not hard to do! And so many topics that you might write about are much more interesting when you present them as a short podcast or video. Incorporating audio or video files in your post is a great way to show a different side of your company. Several of the ideas we’ve already discussed make good candidates for audio or video treatment: data presentations, how-to articles, interviews, opinion pieces, expansions of previous articles. Or, offer a video take on an industry trade show to give nonattenders a glimpse of the happenings. Here’s a chance to be really creative in putting together a unique blog post.

12. Industry news and developments
Finally, providing regular updates of key industry news, trends and developments is extremely useful to your customers. As is the case with product reviews, your customers look to you for this type of information. Often, you can expand this type of article in another post that’s an opinion piece or a comparison of products and services. Again, all you need to do is a little research on the Web (e.g., Google News is an option), check trade magazines and professional organizations, search Twitter or check local and national news sources to aggregate up-to-date news for your customers.

And here it goes...my first blog! This should be interesting. I honestly have no idea what to write about. I'm not a writer, I'm a graphic designer! Maybe I can tell you a little about myself...

Before graphic design came into my world, even from when I was little, I always knew I wanted to do something creative in life, but back then, I had no idea what my options were. I was also lucky to have parents that were supportive and not set on me becoming a doctor or engineer (seemed to be the hopes of a lot of my family members for their kids).

Once I got into the art program at Virginia Commonwealth University, I got a taste of all the different creative fields out there. I narrowed my interest into three: architecture, interior design & graphic design. In the end, I felt graphic design would allow the flexibility in creativity that I was looking for. Till this day, I have not regretted my decision :)

As I said before, I am not a writer, but I do think I am a "visual writer". I have to be able to say, visually, anything and everything about a client, what they represent, what they are trying to portray, displaying a certain mood, all with color and graphics...which can be very challenging at times. It would be easier to write, "I'm professional laundry service but different from others because i have a coffee shop and bar downstairs" vs. coming up with a logo that would portray all that.

Here at ACS Creative, I never know what kind of project I am going to be working on and/or what kind of industry the client is in. There is always something new. This helps keep design fresh and challenging. Keeps the mind working! :)

Wow! I wrote a lot. I guess this blogging stuff isn't so bad ;)

To many businesses, the term integrated marketing simply means ensuring that all marketing messages and creative elements are consistent across every marketing channel—online and offline—that the business utilizes. And while consistency of message is certainly an important aspect of integrated marketing, it’s really only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.” Let’s examine the less obvious but equally—or more—important concept underlying successful integrated marketing programs: commitment to customer-centric marketing.

Perhaps a Picture Says It Best
A post in MarketingProfs’ Know-How Exchange forum asking about integrated marketing generated a lively discussion of the topic, which the following Wordle diagram sums up:



(Recall that Wordle diagrams use size to indicate how frequently a particular word appears in the text that the diagram represents.) As this diagram depicts so well, your customer—every bit as much as your communications—needs to play an important role in your business’s integrated marketing strategy.

Why Is a Customer-Centric Strategy So Important in Integrated Marketing?
Quite simply, because your customers and prospects lead integrated online and offline lives—they move frequently and seamlessly in and out of online and offline worlds—and they expect the same of you. Wherever and however they meet and interact with your business, your brand and your products and services, they expect no disconnects, no Jekyll-and-Hyde experiences. Not only do you need to provide consistent messaging and branding across channels, you also need to provide consistent experiences whether your customers interact with you online, over the phone, face-to-face or through your content.

A customer-centric strategy means that handoffs from one channel to another (e.g., a URL from a direct mail piece that sends the customer to a page on your Web site) need to be seamless as well and part of a unified experience that the customer has with your brand. A customer-centric strategy means that marketing, sales and customer service work together to ensure that all the “parts” work harmoniously and transparently to help your customers complete what they set out to do.

Where to Begin?
If a customer-centric integrated approach to marketing sounds complicated, you’re right—it can be. Depending on the size of your company, it’s often hard enough just to manage your messaging and creative to ensure consistency across channels, let alone tackle customer-experience issues. But the rewards of pursuing a customer-centric integrated marketing strategy are plentiful in the form of increased trust and respect, competitive advantage and the perception that your company really “gets it.”

Let us know how ACS Creative can help you achieve your integrated marketing goals.

continued from part 1....

So I left the last post stating that the tools that marketing and sales need to be effective is where professional graphic design comes in. Allow me to go expand....

Effective Graphic Design conveys your marketing efforts in a clear, concise, and pleasing manner to its viewer (i.e. customer, investor, employees, industry, etc..).

Effective Graphic Design links your companies strategic mission to your audience. Whether it's your online marketing (or digital marketing) or more traditonal marketing methods, it will deliver YOUR solution in a way that best fits your audience.

Effective Graphic Design helps your salesforce deliver value-creating materials, insight, and thought to your potential customers.

And finally, Effective Graphic Design helps to establish your companies credibility, value, and trust with your customer.

Don't let all of your valuable time spent on strategic marketing and sales efforts go to waste, by poorly designed communication tools.

As one of our Creative Director's here a ACS Creative, I get to talk to clients a lot about marketing, sales, graphic design, and how they all fit together. More specifically sometimes, the important role graphic design plays in their marketing and sales efforts.

(I like to keep things simple, so excuse my rather "simplistic" definitions)

Marketing tactics (both online/digital and traditional) should help a company position itself to the marketplace. It should identify WHO it helps, WHAT problem it solves, and HOW it will benefit you....which, if done effectively, will help build awareness to the marketplace and hopefully create leads for its sales force.

Sales tactics should help position the companies product or service to the specific customer. It should help provide awareness to potential problems (known or unknown by the client) that your product or service helps to solve.

The effective tools needed to assist (both marketing and sales) is where professional graphic design comes in......(Stay tuned for part 2, when I expand a bit more)

...continued from Part 1

How Your Company Benefits
Besides simply spreading out the writing workload, team blogging provides several other benefits to your company:

• High-quality/low-stress posts: Writers have more time—and less pressure—to deliver a steady supply of fresh perspectives and in-depth content
• Opportunities for non-writers: There’s more to producing a top-notch blog than just writing posts, and you can share all the other blog duties (design, planning, scheduling, commenting, promoting, project management) among non-writing members of your team to involve more people. I especially like this one as you really get to see the creative side of folks.
• Morale building: Being part of an important PR and marketing initiative that enhances your company image and delivers tangible results brings people together and builds camaraderie and morale through working toward a common purpose—and besides, it’s just fun
• Opportunities for press coverage: Especially when you start a blog to launch a new product, your posts build excitement and provide fodder for new press stories
• Flexibility: Depending on the size of your team, you can schedule bloggers for specific days of the week, month or quarter or make them responsible for a week at a time—whatever works best for your company and your team
• Coverage for vacations and illness: Rather than skipping a post (or two or three) when your writer is away from the office, you can schedule around vacations or illnesses and keep your blog alive and well, creating a seamless experience for your readers

Executed wisely, team blogging offers significant advantages to both your readers and your business. If you haven’t given it much thought up to now, you might find the team approach to blogging is a refreshing alternative for your readers and your staff. After all, summer vacations are just around the corner.

You might have noticed that several of my colleagues contributed posts to the ACS Creative blog over the past several weeks, and maybe that gave you an idea:

“Hey, we could do that and really spread the blogging workload around!”

While that’s certainly one benefit of team blogging, it only seems appropriate to highlight some of the many other pluses that come into play when you decide to give team blogging a try.

How Your Readers Benefit
First and foremost, you need to think about the benefits to your readers—presumably, your target audience of customers and prospects. How will their experience improve? Will your readers welcome a broad selection of writers and topics vs. a single voice? If you have a loyal following already, how will they handle the change? Fortunately, from a reader’s perspective, the benefits of team blogging usually outweigh any potential drawbacks.

One of the key reasons for writing a company blog is to reach out and build relationships with your target audience. And team blogging helps you do just that—in fact, many times over because the variety of personalities, perspectives, experiences and points of view that your blog can include will appeal to a wide variety of readers. For example, if your company produces technical products, some of your readers might be very interested in getting the inside scoop on the nitty-gritty, technical details and capabilities of a product, while others might seek basic how-to information about using the product, and still others might want only high-level news and updates. By including writers that regularly address these different viewpoints, you’ll attract and satisfy a broader audience than you might reach through one writer alone.

Another big plus of team blogging is that by involving numerous writers with specific strengths or specializations, your readers get the best knowledge and expertise your company has to offer.

Here at our Ad Agency we have many talented folks. Most all of the designers have formal training in graphic design and/or website design....however, most of the folks in our creative group have further nurtured their skill into becoming experts in digital advertising and online marketing. Sharing their knowledge, with their unique creative perspective is of priceless value for us and for some of our clients.

Another example would be, large companies that produce many product lines (e.g., Microsoft comes to mind) often organize their blogging efforts around a network of team blogs that address individual products or product families. The benefit to readers is in-depth knowledge from a team of passionate experts with a vested interest in the product they’re writing about.

Finally, using a team of writers means your blog will be updated more often, which results in a livelier, more dynamic experience for your followers (not to mention better traction with any of your online marketing and/or search engine efforts). Maybe your readers have requested more frequent posts from your company, but you don’t think your current blogger has the bandwidth to supply them and complete his “real” job as well. By taking a team approach, you can satisfy your customer wishes and inject additional energy into your blog without overwhelming any single member of your staff.

Stay tuned for Part 2 (where we explore further benefits for your company)

Next up from Team ACS is Jill Artman Boehm, Art Director/Graphic Designer and an awesome Catalog Queen. From brochures to catalog production to logos and identity, Jill brings compelling designs to the table and always delivers high quality work that exceeds expectations.

1. What do you most enjoy about being a graphic designer?

I enjoy the constant changes that occur during any given week. I might work on a logo, a brochure, a tradeshow booth and a website. It keeps your "design mind" fresh and it challenges you to come up with new ideas.

 

 

2. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got started in graphic design?

I have always liked ads and advertising. One of my earliest memories is of getting a scrapbook for Christmas when I was five. I drew a few pictures but it is mostly filled with ads from magazines. I picked out anything that was interesting or really eye-catching. The Speedy Alka-Seltzer ads were a big favorite of mine.  I always knew I wanted to be an artist of some kind. When it came time to go to college, I picked the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. Partly because of the weather (I grew up in Indiana) and partly because they have extensive training in Advertising, Typography, Design and Photography.

 

 

3. What is the most challenging part of your work and can you share a project that you are working on right now?  

The most challenging part of any design is interpreting what the client wants and needs. We worked with an established hair salon in Virginia who was moving to a new location. Their signage on the overhang of the shopping center had to match the others in the center, so it didn't really match the design aesthetics we had created for them. When they moved in, a lot of their clients didn't know they were open because the windows were tinted and it didn't look like the space was occupied. We created a look that matched their aesthetic and created collateral materials to support that aesthetic. The window design incorporated their logo, the website and phone number and we used part of the brick wall to showcase photos of the inside of the salon to show how beautifully renovated it was on the inside. Now the eye-catching graphics make people stop and take note of what they had to offer.
 

 

4. How do you stay creative when you are working under pressure?

This business is all about deadlines. Sometimes those deadlines can create stress but sometimes they can spark a great idea. It is hard, but you have to stay focused on the end product. I work on a sportswear catalog project that is several months long and has many different aspects and variables. You have to make a schedule and delegate different tasks associated with the project, all the while keeping your vision for what the end product will be.

If you have any questions or if you would like Jill to work on your next project, please do not hesitate to give Team ACS a call! You can visit us at www.acscreative.com.

...Next up will be Ed Ruff for our Thursday interview. Stay tuned!

I don't think success is quantitative— it's an art form to keep yourself satisfied with your own work, and it's less about money, fame, or winning than it is about balance and perspective. 

 

Outside the office, I've entered illustrations into two art annuals this year and both books rejected my work. You'd think that might be discouraging (ok, maybe it is just a little), but it really made me want to try harder. In fact, I ended up so inspired that my next piece went on to receive multiple awards, has been published in two magazines, and got me a nice letter from the editor of a third art annual saying "You really need to enter this in our book!" 

 

Engaging in healthy competition is one of the best ways I've found to keep my designer fire burning, no matter what the outcome. And there's been no shortage of that at the Fairfax office lately. This morning I finished up a "rehash" design comp for a data management company's website that will be reviewed alongside an upcoming new design from my cohort Michelle.

 

 

Several designers at ACS Creative have been working with the folks who brought us this site for a few weeks now and they've picked Michelle's designs every time. Michelle is a fantastic designer it's no surprise these guys were hooked on her aesthetic after the first comp. In the end it doesn't really matter whose design they pick, as long as it's best for the client— but like with the art books I've really enjoyed the extra push to work hard.

And speaking of Michelle - she's interviewing everyone at ACS Creative Fairfax this week to make personality profiles for the blog... this could be an antidote to people like Matt not knowing how awesome the Fairfax graphic design team is.