Whenever I sit down to go through ideas for blog posts, I inevitably think of a few that sound great, only to realize hey, we already wrote that one. A lot of the things we wrote about last year are still relevant even now – maybe more so.

Looking back through our logs, it’s no surprise to find some content was more popular than others. After all, we’re still experimenting to find the sort of thing you, our readers, find most useful.

To make sure you didn’t miss any of the good ones from last year, here’s a short list of our most viewed posts from 2009.

Why Good Customer Service Is So Important

5 Reasons Not to Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession

Elements of Internet Marketing

Going Nuts? Don’t Cut your Marketing

Should You Put Video On Your Website?

Understanding Web Design

14 Practical Uses For Social Media

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Photo courtesy of kevinzim

Stuff You Liked From 2009 is a post from: RSA Blog

Wishing you a year of joy & good marketing

With the dawn of a new year, there is a lot of buzz about marketing in 2010. The “blogsphere ” is flooded with questions like, “What will be the most effective marketing media in 2010,” “Will traditional media b ecome obsolete,” and “Where are advertisers going to spend in 2010.”

Among these marketing predictions are:

1. The rise of mobile marketing and mobile websites:

This will be a pretty big one and some are even saying that the impact of mobile marketing will surpass that of social media. Be sure to pay attention to how this develops in the coming months and years.

2. Relationship marketing and customer service:

This necessity continues to grow as social media gives EVERY customer a louder voice and influence. Remember that your customers are people too, and not just any people, but the kings and queens of your business.

3. Experimentation:

When it comes to new technologies, sometimes experimentation is the best way to see if they work for your marketing. This doesn’t mean (of course) to blindly pursue new media with no clear goal, intent, strategy and system of measurement. But, it certainly doesn’t hurt to try something new. If you don’t begin experimenting, you will be left behind.

4. Social media and SEO:

We can’t forget about the meat and potatoes of online marketing. Social media and SEO have advanced past the point of being mere buzz words. Don’t expect these two to disappear.

5. Promotions in both new AND traditional media:

Whether businesses are offering incentives to gain friends and followers in social networks, customer loyalty programs, coupons, sales or charitable contributions – promotions are sure to be another 2010 trend.

Despite all the growth and trends in execution, I am here to tell you: in this new year and decade, marketing has not changed (at least in concept).  Regardless of what media you resolve to use this year, or where you allocate that budget, the fundamental principles of good marketing remain the same.

Still, the rise of the Internet, online social technologies, and the mobile web has changed how marketers need to look at communication and the people they are communicating with. It has also added elements of complexity with more marketing media, niches and approaches that need to be understood.

As always, regardless of the platform:

• Define your market and the people you are trying to reach.
• Remember what need, want or interest your product fills.
• Address the people (as people, not mere consumers existing to give you their money) who have that want, need or interest and let them know you have the solution.
• Be useful to people, helping them to find what they’re looking for, whether they know that’s you yet or not.

Simple, right?

Okay, so maybe not that simple as we still cannot forget about research, strategy, creative, experience, message, placement, etc. And we cannot forget how all of these things are essential components to any effective marketing effort.

The point here is that whether online of offline, you’re still using the same marketing principles. No need to fear – 2010 is full of opportunities for businesses and marketers using any media.

It is important to remember what and why you are marketing in the first place (and what you ultimately want to accomplish). And don’t forget who you’re talking to.

What do you see in store for marketing this year? What are you most excited about?

Image Credit: Avatar/ΣΙΓΜΑ

2010 Marketing Predictions is a post from: RSA Blog

Within the search results you not only get a link to Google maps for directions, but a link to the coffee shop’s site. Upon entering their website you are automatically eligible for a mobile discount: a free latte, which is redeemable at the register by simply showing the mobile coupon code you will receive in a text message.

Does your website work for mobile?

Does this scenario seem a little crazy or far-fetched to you? Well, it is more realistic than you might think. In fact, it’s already happening.

Mobile Marketing Today

Mobile websites are not only used as a quick way to find information, but they have become yet another avenue for marketing campaigns.

Capturing the attention of multiple generations and target demographics, mobile marketing is an intricate and interesting venture that effectively ties into other marketing efforts.

Mobile marketing can be used to help establish brand awareness through many different outlets like mobile search banner ads and SMS advertising. Before you get too excited though, remember that mobile marketing is largely useless without a properly functioning mobile website.

Your Website, Mobile

Contrary to popular belief, websites built for standard web browsers do not display very well (if at all) on mobile devices. While standard websites can have multiple features, the main purpose behind a mobile site is a simple call-to-action.

Call-to-action features allow for users to accomplish something useful, such as finding the location of a restaurant, making a hotel reservation, or subscribing to text alerts or an e-newsletter. Whatever the action is, it should be easily accessible to users as soon they land on the site.

Whether the goal is getting more customers in the door, increasing online sales or reservations, a good mobile website will help make it happen. With a growing demand from mobile web users to have accessible and customizable mobile sites, business owners and marketers around the world are working to keep their customers happy both at their desk and on the go.

How does your website look on mobile devices?

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Photo courtesy of edans

Mobile Marketing and Your Website is a post from: RSA Blog

Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘whoa, that has got to be one of the worst jobs’.  Maybe you were walking down the street and had a little pity on the poor ‘jo’ that had to spend his day analyzing smells emanating from the local locker room.  This summer (it’s over – boo, hiss) we started working on a series of commercials for Western Dakota Tech based on the creative notion – what kind of jobs would you just hate to be stuck in? Steve B. from WDT and the RSA team had a great time coming up with outlandish jobs. We landed on a few that really seemed desperate and began production. Our goal was to encourage anyone who might want to improve their life to consider taking online courses through WDT for business management and marketing. Ever had one of these jobs?

1)  Human Pinata – How fun is it to go to parties, hang from a tree, and meet the power of 5-year-olds with BATS?

2) Professional Kiss-up – Yes sir, you’re a genius! Ever notice someone following an executive around and wonder…’what do they do all day?’ Well, maybe they have to kiss-up all day long… oh joy!

3) The Shredder Guy – Initially inspired by “The Office” – we wanted to show an over-worked, under-paid person working in a small office doing his overwhelmingly mundane work. Naturally, an ‘office accident’ is likely to occur.

4) Assistant on a Leash – Don’t ya hate it when the boss never gets your name right but always expects you to know everything and be at their beckoning call?  Not the greatest gig, admit it.

Production went on and we had a blast yanking, smacking, shredding and blowing hot air all over the place.  Turns out that all of our fun paid off and the commercials received Platinum & Gold MarCom Awards.

• A Platinum Award for the television campaign promoting the online degree program. The ads tell stories about people in terrible jobs – just as a human piñata – who choose WDT to improve their lives.
• A Gold Award for the radio campaign promoting the online degree program. The radio ads tell stories similar to the TV ads.

The MarCom Awards competition received over 5,000 entries from all over the world. The winners ranged from Advertising agency to Fortune 500 companies.

WDT is showing a 20% improvement in their enrollment this year, and they’re bursting at the seams. We continued into the fall producing more emotional based commercials that show specific values WDT has to offer a range of students – hands-on training, affordability, and one-on-one attention from professors.

It’s been great working with WDT over that past several years and it gets better as we go.  Congratulations guys!

The Worst Job Gets National Awards is a post from: RSA Blog

Your website is the marketing hub

So unless you’re an online business, your brick-and-mortar store is the hub of your marketing efforts. Your website, then, should be the hub for your online marketing, and in turn, should point customers to your store.

If you sell products directly from your website, customers are already “at” your store. But even if you don’t have that e-commerce element, you’re still making a pitch of some sort to your web visitors, and trying to convince them to take an action.

Customers should be able to find all they need to know about you on your website. People make buying decisions in all kinds of places – many while sitting at home on a computer looking at a website. The website should be the hub, the focal point for all of your activity on the web: email, newsletters, blogs, social media, ads, articles, videos, etc. – all this online activity should somehow point back to your website, just as the website points to your physical store.

The website should also be tied to your offline marketing. If your website URL (http://www.yourdomain.com) is not on your business cards and other collateral, it should be. Every advertising campaign you do should involve the website. If you “fish where the fish are,” your website is critical, since most Americans – and most of the industrialized world – use the internet.

Takeaway point: your website is the most important part of your web presence. Write a newsletter, create a blog, engage in social media, but always remember your website is the hub, and the conduit from digital to brick-and-mortar.

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Photo courtesy of ndrwfgg

Your Website is a Marketing Hub is a post from: RSA Blog

Everyone has goals.

If you own, manage or work in a business, you’re a marketer. Marketing may not be your specialty – that is, you may not be the one calling the shots when it comes to marketing plans and decisions, but you are still an integral part of that activity. You are a marketer, like it or not.

Don’t think so? Think clear back to a time when (generally) a “market” meant a place in town where booths, shops and carts were set up to sell meats, produce, and other goods. That’s marketing at its most basic: a presence in the marketplace.

Bear with me, now, as I try to connect some dots.

Humans, by their very nature, are goal-seeking. We can’t escape it. Since we have goals, we also have strategies. Without thinking we form strategies and implement tactics to achieve objectives. From our perspective it seems like we’re just washing dishes or running errands, but the processes behind these actions relate to our goals. It’s automatic. It’s human nature.

The fishmonger had a marketing strategy, though he probably didn’t know it. In fact it’s debatable whether anyone really “knew” about marketing strategies until the 20th century. They existed nonetheless, good and bad – unexamined.

Everyone can agree that marketing is an inherent component of business. In fact, it’s so fundamental that you actually “do” marketing simply by having a storefront (offline or on).

Since you can’t escape “doing” marketing, and since you are a goal-seeking human, you already have a marketing strategy whether you can identify it or not. It may have been created by someone else in your organization, or it may simply be composed of various ideas you’ve encountered throughout your career, or from interaction with colleagues. It may or may not be a good strategy. Either way, you’re using it.

But the quality of that strategy really is the question. Given that most of the activities you engage in for business fall under the category “marketing” (many of them indirectly), it’s probably a good idea to take a hard look at those activities as a collective and consider whether or not the totality of your efforts is furthering your business goals.

After all, we’ve come a long way from village-square peddlers. Everything has changed: the basic economy, currency, range of customers, type and range of goods and services, the scope and scale of everything…marketing in a modern economy is much more complex. It takes multiple people, sometimes a large staff of just marketing folks. It takes strategy – well researched and articulated.

You have a marketing strategy. Ask yourself if it’s effective or not. Track data. Measure results. Refine your plan. Just don’t leave it up to chance.

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Photo credit: frli

Everyone Has a Marketing Strategy is a post from: RSA Blog

Are you ready for the holidays?   Well, it is now October – Rapid City’s first snow has fallen.  Yes, it is long-due time to start thinking about the holidays – and holiday advertising (see tips below).

With a well crafted message, promotion and placement, holiday advertising can be incredibly effective.  Whether your business is retail or service oriented and regardless of your product’s gifting nature, the holidays are an opportune time to connect with people.

Reasons for holiday advertising:

• People are in the buying/giving spirit and feeling nostalgic.
• Your competition is surely advertising.  If they’re not, you have a huge advantage!
• TOMA (top of mind awareness). During the holidays, people have a number of things on their minds.  Even if you’re not selling gifts, you don’t want them to forget about you.
• People are looking for deals and gift ideas – paying attention to ads.
• Increased sales numbers. We’ve seen clients experience a 50% sales increase (or more) from a holiday ad campaign!
• There are plenty more.  What are your reasons for advertising, or not, during the holidays?
  

Ok, but why so soon?

Honestly, the sooner the better – many companies even start planning in the summer. Locally, it is best to have your holiday campaigns planned and placed (or at least started) by mid-October!

Whether the plan is to run television ads, newspaper inserts or radio ads, the media companies have a limited ad space inventory. The time of day, shows and networks bought can have a dramatic affect on your advertising results.  Reserving  spots now will ensure you reach the right people with the right messages and at the right time to get the most out of your marketing budget.

Tips for Effective Holiday Advertising

1. Direct Mail can be great for holiday promotions.  Just remember that it has to stand out.  Especially during the holidays when everyone is trying to get people’s attention, your direct mail pieces have to be unique in size, fold, shape, colors and overall design. You’ll also need an offer (buy one, get one; dollar or percentage off; FREE; bonus; etc.) and call to action significant enough for people to care.  It needs to immediately capture attention. And remember that if it looks like junk, it will probably end up in the trash (or compost bin in my case).
   
2. Television is a common favorite for holiday advertising.  Since people are generally more emotional during the holiday season, television with its visuals, music and creative concepts, is able to successfully appeal to people’s emotions.
   
3. Radio can reach people when they’re already in the car, out and about shopping or traveling.  This can be especially good for retailers and restaurants.  Restaurants, for instance, can appeal to people busy with holiday shopping, parties, and planning when cooking is often the last thing they want to deal with.
   
4. Newspaper advertising, having similar benefits and challenges as direct mail, has to be unique enough for people to notice in the slew of ads and inserts.  This can be highly effective, though, especially for retail businesses that are offering a sale.  Many people scour sales ads in the newspaper before setting out to do their holiday shopping. Again, the offers have to be significant enough for people to care.
   
5. Web marketing before/during the holidays can greatly benefit retailers.  A lot of people do their holiday shopping online these days.  Using social media, a website, or online ads can help draw shoppers back to your physical retail store.  Offering special insentives and sales exclusively for  your online followers can get them through your front door. And as always – make sure that your offline advertising reaches your online audience by making all of your messages available online to those searching for more info.

All-in-all, if your business does not currently advertise during the holidays, it is definitely something to look into and it’s not too late.  If you do advertise during the holidays and haven’t started planning, production or placement – get on it!

Are you ready?  Have you already started your planning?  Have you already started your holiday shopping?  Do you pay attention to ads during the holidays?

Holiday Advertising is a post from: RSA Blog

Diamond’s increased advertising budget for Emerald Nuts proves to be a success.

A couple of months ago, Kyle wrote an excellent post highlighting 5 Reasons Not to Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession.  His points being:

• Your reputation can suffer.
• When times are tough, people look for deals.
• If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.
• Marketing in a recession can give you a competitive advantage.
• Cut advertising, cut market share.

I want to take another look at the fourth point here, as marketing in a recession really does give you an advantage.  In truth, marketing ANY time gives you an advantage. But when the economy is down and a lot of businesses are cutting their marketing budgets, your dollars can go even further because there are fewer or weaker messages out there to compete with.

AND I even came prepared with an example.

The Stocks section of Sunday’s Rapid City Journal featured a “behind the brand” look at Diamond Foods – makers of snacks including Emerald Nuts and now Pop Secret.  It turns out our “recession” has not taken a toll on the sales of their relatively healthy treats.

According to the Associated Press,

The company has been plowing more dollars into building its Emerald brand: Ad spending is up 23 percent so far this fiscal year… Emerald’s sales at grocery stores grew 30 percent last quarter.

Analysts expect more gains when it reports fourth-quarter results later this month.

That’s an amazing statement!  They have some pretty good ads that came from this new budget, like the one below.  Not only do they have the good tv spots, they also have all of the new ads on their snazzy website and YouTube, taking their offline messages to their online audience – sort of.

.

Well played Diamond Foods!  Great product, great packaging and great ads.  But I have to dock you a couple of points for the lack of web marketing.  I give your marketing a 7.6 out of 10.  Keep it up (and call me about SEO).  ;)

It is essential for companies large and small to understand the importance of marketing as part of business and strategy.  When money is tight, marketing is often the first thing cut.  This certainly should not be the case.  If your marketing is not providing sufficient ROI to justify it, or if you don’t measure ROI to justify it – something is wrong.  Don’t cut your marketing, reset it, or invest better to make it work!

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.” -Thomas Jefferson (and he didn’t even work for a marketing agency)

Besides…the recession might be over.

Going nuts? Don’t cut your marketing! is a post from: RSA Blog

Sometimes you just can't say it better than Mark Twain.

I love marketing quotes – the wit, the punditry, the directness – and how an entire concept can be summed up in one sentence (or two or three).  Here are some of my favs:

“Tell a story that is memorable and remarkable and worth listening to.  Seduce your customers, because that’s exactly what they want you to do.” – Seth Godin

“Strategy should be developed from the bottom up, not from the top down.  In other words,  strategy should be developed from a deep knowledge of and involvement in the actual tactics of the business itself.” – Jack Trout

“The essence of good marketing is the commitment to be something.  … You cannot hold two divergent positions at one time.” – William H. Davidow

“In good times people want to advertise, in bad times, they have to.” – Bruce Barton

“When executed properly, an ad campaign will pay for itself, then buy you lunch.” -Robert D. Sharp

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” – Mark Twain

“Delay is the death of the sale.” – Gary Halbert

“Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money.” – Jef I. Richards

“The spider looks for a merchant that doesn’t advertise so he can spin a web across his door and lead a life of undisturbed peace!”  – Mark Twain

“There is more money wasted in advertising by under-spending than by over-spending. Years ago someone said that under-spending in advertising is like buying a ticket halfway to Europe – you’ve spent your money but you never get there.” – Morris Hite

There are many, many more quotables out there (especially with all the great content now in blogs and Twitter).  Please feel free to add your favorite marketing quotes or witty sentiments in the comments!

(Image credit: Photo Mojo)

Marketing Quotes is a post from: RSA Blog

Sounds good, but why does this matter? Why is this important?

Increase the bottom line.

With the new-found ability to reach a wide audience coupled with the chance to engage and interact with their audience, businesses are not only reaching new customers, they are building relationships with people. This is important because these relationships build loyalty…and this ultimately translates into dollars. People who are loyal to the brand are buying more than just a product.

Take the French bottled water company, Evian.  They recently introduced a new advertising campaign to re-energize their brand in a struggling economy.  The new campaign combines a more traditional advertising medium, TV, with an innovative web strategy focused on sharable content and user interaction.

The new “Evian Babies” video features break-dancing, rollerskating babies. It began a sensation when the company first released the ad on YouTube and then later launched the popular commercial on television. The video’s objective was to project the brand’s values of health, youth and purity in a much more playful way than in the past.

To continue the experience, “Evian Babies” fans can visit their website, see the casting call, outtakes, and interviews of the cast (yes, 3 of the 96 babies are interviewed). Then, fans of these now famous (fake) babies are directed to their Facebook page where they have the chance to meet other fans, interact with these tiny celebs, and get the “inside scoop”.

So far, the campaign has proven to be a success – generating buzz, receiving millions of views, and thousands of fans. This is great, but, remember the main objective was to “re-energize their brand in a struggling economy”.

The true test of the campaign will lie in the coming months – the next time you go to the store, will you buy just any ‘ol water, or the one that reminds you of health, youth, purity…and cute rollerskating babies?

Web Strategies Extend the User Experience is a post from: RSA Blog