8 Suggestions for a Winning Web Site Design

For today’s small and mid-sized organizations, a Web site is a definite must-have in your marketing mix. With nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population having access to the Internet, chances are your customers – and your competitors – are among those users.

You may be one of the “little guys” looking to level the playing field. Or, maybe you provide a service that prospective customers want to research before making a purchase decision. Perhaps you find yourself repeatedly answering the same questions. In all cases, a well-designed Web site can help to solve a number of your business challenges.

Writing a Short Note Goes a Long Way

Shut down the computer. Turn off the cell phone. Disconnect the fax machine. If you want to send a message that’s sure to be well received, write a note.

Notes are ideal networking tools as they establish one-on-one contact between you and receivers. It may seem old-fashioned, but the simple gift of a handwritten note is still a prized communication in today’s electronic world. Recipients often keep and remember handwritten notes, while emails are usually read and deleted. It only takes a moment to write a couple of sentences to someone special, but the benefits can last a lifetime.

Six Steps to Cut Through Direct Mail Clutter

The average person is exposed to thousands of commercial messages each day.  Only a small percentage will be remembered. It’s the age-old challenge that marketers face, especially the little guy who lacks a big budget.

Small businesses often rely on direct mail and printed marketing materials to communicate with their customers and prospects.  Like other media vehicles, direct mail needs to be well-executed to hit the right mark. There are a number of ways to strengthen your approach and enhance your message, regardless of the size of your business or budget.

QR Codes Marry Print and Mobile Marketing Communications

A recent study by InfoTrends, a worldwide market research and strategic consulting company, found that 64.7 percent of marketers have some familiarity with mobile barcode technology known as a QR (Quick Response) code.

Simply put, a QR code is barcode that encodes data. It is read by a smartphone much like a scanner reads the pricing information on a barcode at a grocery store checkout. When scanned, a QR code most commonly takes you to a website that has been optimized for mobile devices. But within the data, a QR code can contain other information including a phone number, calendar event, contact information (vCard), SMS (text) message, or geo-location (mapping) information.

To “read” a QR code, you need to have a smartphone with a camera that connects to the Internet and a QR code reader on your phone. Some of the newer smartphones have a built-in QR code reader. If not, you have to download a reader to your phone. A few popular ones are Neoreader, QuickMark and OptiScan. There are many others and most are free.

From business cards to invitations to posters and print ads, QR codes help make any printed piece more interactive – and can provide valuable information about a product or service. QR codes often link to websites. However, many marketers make the mistake of driving customers to a home page – or worse yet, a home page of a website that is not optimized for mobile devices.

How Printing Advances are Revolutionizing The Way Businesses Communicate

Digital technologies have changed the printing industry more in the last decade than in the last five centuries. With even more exciting developments to come, it is really just getting warmed up. Demand for printed materials continues to grow as companies work harder to get the attention of customers and employees. In addition, electronic commerce has opened up new demand for printed catalogs, posters and mailers to complement online marketing efforts. This combination has escalated the printing business into a $370 billion global industry. One result of this growth is a variety of new printing technologies and techniques that are revolutionizing how printed materials are created and produced. Businesses that understand and take advantage of these changes will be well positioned to have greater impact in the marketplace and move ahead of their competition.

Printing Developments Create New Opportunities

Planning is essential to get the most from your print projects. Printing has gone far beyond putting ink on paper. Today there are many ways to reduce costs, increase impact, motivate response and extend the usefulness of print materials. Consult with your print communications provider before you begin a project. He or she should be able to advise you on how to maximize opportunities, given these exciting printing industry developments.

2012 FootPrint Fund Recipients Announced

Members of the Allegra Marketing Services Team pose with the 2012 Recipients of the FootPrint Fund for Nonprofit Friends.

Click to download recipient book.

The recipients of our 2012 FootPRINT Fund for Nonprofit Friends were announced Wednesday, March 14th at Wildwood Country Club. The recipients met for breakfast and a short presentation on strategies for nonprofits from the Allegra team.

Community support is a core value at Allegra-East. That’s why we give back 2% of our sales annually to organizations who serve the community. The FootPRINT Fund is designed to aid nonprofit organizations in their quest to create lasting impressions. Since the program’s inception in 2004, over 60 local organizations have been awarded grants totaling more than $445,000. Nationally, the Allegra Network has awarded over 2.5 million to non-profits in the communities of our more than 200 locations. We hope the FootPRINT Fund we have established will help our local organizations and associations leave their “footprints” in our community through increased awareness and visibility. We challenge each of you to use these print services awards to build a better community, one step at a time.

Jennifer Eberle speaks about "Six Strategies for Nonprofits". Click to download presentation.

• American Diabetes Association
• Assumption High School
• Bellewood Presbyterian Home for Children
• The Child Connection
• Custom Quality Services
• Debra of KY
• Family Scholar House
• Gilda’s Club
• Kentucky Derby Festival
• Kentucky Humane Society
• Little Way Pregnancy Resource Center
• Mercy Academy
• Michala Riggle Beat Autism Foundation
• St. Michael’s Catholic Community
• USA Cares
• Wednesday’s Child

Leave a comment to congratulate these fantastic organizations. Interested in applying? We will begin taking applications in December. Contact us at 502-895-1530 for more details.

Lots of Activity

You may notice a lot of new activity on our blog. As we get our official launch underway, we wanted to populate “marketing smarts” with some of the past articles and information from our network. That way our customers and new visitors can start with helpful information already at their fingertips. As we plan new posts and information, what would you like to read about? What questions can we answer about marketing, creative, interactive, print, mail or signs?

Track for Better Results

Have you ever felt like you were pouring money down the “marketing drain?” Marketing is a great tool to reach and engage with customers if done correctly, but when it is done ineffectively it is just an unnecessary strain on your time and money.  So how do you know if you are going about your marketing in the most effective way?

Track it

With an ever increasing variety of communication channels available, measuring the true impact of marketing can be overwhelming.  Nonetheless, it’s necessary to track with as much detail as possible in order to know if a marketing strategy is working for your business and is delivering the best ROI possible.

One example of an effective and simple way to track what’s working and what isn’t is through call tracking.  Call Tracker programs show what is driving customers to call you.  They allow you to capture and measure your leads by determining where, when and how you received phone calls from your customers.

Call Tracker programs also track from which campaign the phone call originated.  So if your business has an online banner ad, outdoor marketing campaign and a website, call tracking will allow you to easily see which advertisement attracted the interest of the customer who is calling you. You get an insight into what’s motivating your customers to respond.

You can use this information to identify which campaigns and promotions are working best, allowing you to transfer your budget to those campaigns and discard the ones that aren’t working.  No more guessing – give it a try!  You might be surprised which of your communication channels are yielding the best results for your company.

Designing Brand Identity

Click to view on Amazon.com

To kick off our new blog, I am going to start by recommending one of my favorite “go-to” books on brand. Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler is a staple in the design, creative, branding field. Now in it’s third edition, the book goes step by step through the entire branding process from positioning and naming, to taglines, logos, and executions across various mediums. I often use pieces of this book to educate my clients that are going through the branding process. If you are thinking about starting a new brand, rebranding your current organization, or just want to tweak what you have, this book is a great place to start. Once you get going, give me a call to brainstorm and hit the ground running with your amazing new branding! Enjoy.

What other great books do you recommend for branding or marketing? Comment below and it could show up in our reviews.