New Year, New Ideas: 3 Smart Strategies to Jump Start Your Marketing

The beginning of a new year makes everyone feel like a fresh start is possible, and businesses are no exception. Plenty of opportunities exist online if your goals include making improvements or ramping up your marketing efforts in the new year. You know that maximizing your brand’s exposure is the key to gaining new customers or maintaining the base you already have, so when you make your company’s list of new year’s resolutions, make sure to include a commitment to exploring new avenues for marketing on the web. If you feel as though you’ve exhausted all possibilities for online promotion of your business, think again! Numerous options are available that you may not have considered.

1. Expand your social media efforts.

By now, if you don’t have a Facebook page that is frequently updated with new content, you’re way behind in the marketing game. It’s estimated that 15-25 million businesses – both large and small – have a presence on the social media giant. And with 500 million people worldwide using Facebook, a business would have to be crazy not to create a page. So, assuming you’ve already established a Facebook presence, it’s likely you’ve also connected with customers and potential customers through Twitter or LinkedIn, as well. But what about Google+? Or Pinterest? Instagram? In this tech-connected world, it’s essential to not only stay on top of the social marketing trends, it’s also imperative to spread your marketing efforts across many different platforms to reach as many potential customers as possible. So, where to begin? As with any marketing plan, it depends on what services and products you’re selling. It makes sense that a product that has visual appeal would benefit from marketing on a visual social media platform, such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, or Flickr. Establishing a following on any of these sites literally raises your company’s visibility via images and copy that can be shared and made viral instantly. To add more power to your visual message, establish a YouTube channel and upload short video presentations of what your product can do, or use the Vine app to create looping videos. If your company offers a service, Howcast is a great place to post how-to videos that can be shared across the other social media sites. Building your brand via social media is effective, but only if you update your content frequently; after all, the goal is to maintain your presence. If you find that constant updates are overwhelming or daunting, think about utilizing the services of a website like Hootsuite, which offers a bulk scheduler that can send out up to 350 pre-made messages to the social media sites your company uses. Not only will that free up your time, it can also prevent consumers from being bombarded by your messages – the scheduler can be used to space out your updates.

2. Publish, publish, publish.

If you haven’t already embraced content marketing, now is the time to do so. Content marketing is essentially targeted marketing that doesn’t scream “targeted marketing”. You create content in the form of articles or blog posts that your customers will be most interested in. It should be relevant, purposeful, and considerate of your audience’s needs and intellect. Content marketing takes a step back from in-your-face sales techniques, and instead informs your audience about what you have to offer. Content marketing is highly effective, and doesn’t feel pushy. If you’ve been using content marketing via blog posts, you might want to try to mix it up a little bit – especially if you’re running out of fresh content. One way to spice up your marketing efforts is to add a podcast to your website. A podcast can provide a weekly or bi-weekly bite-sized chunk of information to your customers that won’t require the time it might take to read content. Keeping the podcasts to about a minute in length is enough time to hook listeners, keep them engaged, and possibly leave them wanting to know more about what you have to offer. Perhaps the best aspect of podcasts is utilizing content you’ve already created, thereby opening an entirely new channel of exposure for your product. In recent years, the internet has exploded with blogs by “experts” in nearly every subject. To give additional exposure to your blog or podcast, employ the services of a blogging superstar in your field to provide a guest blog or an interview. You don’t have to limit yourself to bloggers, of course; finding other influencers in your field for “guest” opportunities will not only increase awareness of your company, but also provide an excellent opportunity for SEO leads to your website. The best part of utilizing guest bloggers is that more than likely, that guest blogger will post the blog on their site, which in turn drives even more visitors to your business blog. Cross-referencing is a great click-generator. Keeping your content visually inviting should also be a priority as you resolve to freshen up your marketing efforts. Web visitors love to see visual representations of information, and infographics add spice and interest to any online content. If you deal with technical or difficult-to-understand concepts, adding a visual element such as an infographic can be extremely beneficial. Several apps are available online to create interesting, colorful representations of complex information. Sites such as piktochart.com or infogr.am are easy to use, and free. And best of all, the designing is done for you.

3. Capture customers when they’re searching.

None of these suggestions will work very well if your company can’t be found online, and that’s why you may want to investigate cost-per-click, or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) advertising. One of the largest and most popular online advertising methods is Google AdWords. People worldwide search Google for information a billion times each day. If your business shows up at the top of Google’s search engine, you’re guaranteed to draw in new customers, or at the very least, get more exposure. The key, of course, is to come up with the right keywords to generate the most visits. The AdWords platform allows you to specify what keywords entered by searchers will generate your ad. You can be specific about services your business provides, or you can limit your ad to a particular geographic location. Customization is offered in varying degrees; you can even select your ad to appear on certain days of the week, during specific hours, or even whether the ad is shown on mobile devices only. Cost-per-click works based on what budgetary parameters you set; for example, you set a daily budget, and are only charged when someone clicks on your ad, not every time it is displayed. According to the AdWords website, you specify the maximum amount you're willing to pay for visits to your website. The bid you make determines how high up on the search results page your ad appears. Don’t just limit your efforts to Google, either. Facebook offers a cost-per-click service, as does the Bing search engine. Several other companies provide the service, as well.

Stay the course

No matter what new ideas for marketing your business and products you choose to explore in the new year, the most important element in your endeavor is to stay consistent. If you start out the year with a focus on making changes, stay committed to maintaining those changes. Your customers will expect you to follow through, and your success may depend on it.

---

Six Lessons from the Google School of Logo Design for a Digital World

Recently, Google set the design world abuzz when they unveiled their new brand identity. Gone was the familiar, sophisticated serif font reminiscent of classic books and newspapers that rolled off the printing presses. In its place, a new mark that retains Google’s trademark rainbow of colors but with a new sans-serif typeface of the company’s own creation called “Product Sans.” Love it or hate it, Google’s reasoning behind their redesign and what they hope to achieve with this new logo offer some interesting insights that any company in today’s multi-screen, multi-device world should take into consideration.

1. Size matters.

In their article rolling out the redesign, Google cites the need to “create a scalable mark that could convey the feeling of the full logotype in constrained spaces” as one of the challenges that they wanted to address. The need to consider a variety of screen sizes has become incredibly important over the past few years with the growing adoption of small-screened devices – from mobile phones to wearables like smartwatches. The relatively tiny screens on these devices put space at a premium, and most brand marks that were created prior to the advent of these small screens struggle to adapt to a much smaller canvas. For a visual brand to be successful in today’s world, you must ensure that it can scale and adapt to work effectively on any screen size or device.

2. You must consider the whole ecosystem.

In the not-too-distant past, when designing a new visual identity, there were only a limited number of applications that had to be taken into consideration: business cards, letterhead, signage, collateral materials, ads, product packaging, etc. This is why many early websites were little more than digital brochures. Companies took what they already understood (printed brochures) and tried to port them over to a brand new medium (the Web). This was obviously not an optimal solution, and since then, web design has come a long way from the days of static brochure sites. In much the same way, it’s time for logo design to evolve by taking into account the full array of digital platforms in which brands must reside today, including websites, mobile apps and social media sites, just to name a few. Taken as a whole, these make up a complex ecosystem with different channels that build upon and feed off of others. As a result, Google’s new identity takes the form not of a singular logo but of a system comprised of three “elemental states” that are flexible enough to be used across all mediums and platforms:

• Google logotype: The sans serif logtype retains Google’s signature multi-color sequence.
• Dots: A dynamic distillation of the logotype that takes the form of four animated, perpetually moving dots that are used for interactive, assistive and transitional moments.
• Google G: A compact version of the Google logo that works in small contexts.

When evaluating your own logo and how it translates across different platforms and channels, it’s important to make sure that all of its elements and iterations work together seamlessly so that they feel connected to your core brand identity in order to protect the integrity of your brand throughout the ecosystem.

3. There’s more to logo design than choosing a typeface.

Talk to someone who does not understand the nuances of design, and they are likely to assume that the process of creating a logo is comprised of little more than selecting an attractive font and maybe adding an illustrated icon in front of it. In truth, however, logo design is its own unique and complex discipline. Just as Google did, any successful logo design process must consider the weight and legibility of that logo along with “spacing, clearance rules, and specification for in-product treatments.” It also must factor in big-picture thinking, such as how the logo will transform in various applications (when it must be displayed in black and white versus full color, for example) and whether it sets the right tone for the brand. Yes, using attractive letterforms is part of designing a quality logo, but this process goes way deeper than just font selection.

4. Performance matters.

How quickly a website loads is more important today than ever before. With mobile devices making up a larger and larger percentage of website traffic, and with emerging countries becoming an important part of the audience on the Web, the need to create sites that load quickly for all users is paramount. To accomplish this, website designers must look for ways to streamline a site’s overall file size. The new Google logo is only 305 bytes, which is a significant decrease from the old logo, which weighed in at ~14,000 bytes. Google actually had to deliver a text-based, non-image version of their old logo in some instances, but the new one is so small that it can be delivered to all connections, keeping the brand identity consistent. Overall performance is critical to the success of a website – after all, no one ever complains that a site loads too fast. You may not be thinking about download size and performance when creating a logo, but you should be, because improved performance should be a thread that runs through every decision you make on your website. Better performance can mean happier visitors, improved search engine rankings and better conversions rates for your website.

5. You can’t please everyone.

As soon as the new Google logo debuted, there were people praising the design as well as those tearing it down. Even within the design community, reactions on Twitter ranged from “The beautiful balance of utility and joy” to “I love the font in the new Google logo – a revival of Paul Renner’s rarely seen 1934 masterpiece, Futura Jackas” – proof that no matter how well-reasoned or well-intentioned the principles behind your design are, you simply cannot please everyone. One of the most challenging realities of a redesign, whether it is for a logo, a website or an application, is that you are forcing change upon people who did not ask for or expect it. Even if the change is for the better, it’s human nature to favor the familiar and therefore to react strangely to a change that they did not initiate themselves. Couple this with the fact that people are more likely to contact you when they dislike something than when they like it, and a redesign can quickly generate what feels like an overwhelming amount of negative comments. For some companies, this initial wave of critical feedback can be scary and may lead to the temptation to revert back to the old design. But you cannot give into this! If you followed a good process and if the new design is well thought-out and executed, you need to give it time for people to grow accustomed to it and embrace it. You cannot please everyone, but given ample time, you will find that a quality redesign will win people over, and all of those detractors will fall silent.

6. Redesign for the right reasons.

Because introducing a new visual identity can be disorienting for your customers, and because there’s no purely scientific method to ensure your redesign will be well received, it’s important to make sure that there is good reason behind your decision to reinvent the look of your brand. With Google, the logic behind their decision was clear: “Since its inception, the Google.com homepage has been strikingly simple: The quirky, multicolored logo sits above a single, approachable input field on a clean white canvas. But as technology moves forward, the canvas itself is changing, and the inputs and needs are becoming more diverse. New classes of devices and ways to interact and communicate have emerged with wearables, voice technology, and smart devices in the world around us. Users now engage with Google using a constellation of devices, and our brand should express the same simplicity and delight they expect from our homepage, while fully embracing the opportunities offered by each new device and surface.” In short, Google needed a new identity that would represent the brand as effectively to someone who is typing keywords into a search bar on a desktop as one who is using a smartwatch as one who is using a device that may not yet even be conceived – or at least available to the general public. Likewise, while you should never redesign your company’s logo just for the sake of redesign itself, if your brand has evolved since your logo was originally conceived – whether in terms of the products you offer, the audience you serve or the channels and platforms through which they interact with your brand – it may well be worth the risk to introduce a new, modernized identity that will support the growth of your company now and for many years to come.

---