By Kyle McCabe | October 6, 2010

Sometimes your color preference doesn't matter...

As Amanda mentioned in her recent post on designing professional logos, designers tend to approach their work in a different way than many people think. Our decisions aren’t arbitrary – it’s not like ordering food, where you just pick whatever you happen to like at the time. There needs to be purpose.

Many of the decisions designers make are based on some external criteria. In this business, that’s usually the audience being catered to. A common experience, however, is for the client on a project to override some such decision based on their own personal preference.

Often, however, the client isn’t even part of the desired audience. So while their preference might be relevant because they own the project, it doesn’t necessarily help the project be more effective. As a simplistic example, if the audience mostly responds to blue and the client wants it red…well we’re missing the boat.

Think about that next time you start a project: are you part of the audience you are trying to appeal to? If not, how might your preferences interfere with reaching that audience? If so, do you think your individual preferences are representative of the majority of that audience?

In either case it would probably serve any project well to find out exactly what that audience likes or prefers, and base decisions on that data, regardless of the personal preferences of the project team.

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Photo courtesy of pinksherbet

By Amanda Simpson | September 28, 2010

Professional logos

I don’t know how many times I’ve started a project for a new client when I hear those soul-crushing words, “The client will be sending the logo later today, it was designed by [the vice-president's wife/the boss' daughter for a high school art project/So-and-so's neighbor's son Johnny - don't worry, he's into computers...].” Yeah, you get the picture.

Why does this frustrate me so? It’s simple. Your logo is one of the most important parts of your brand, and it can make or break your company. An easily recognizable brand allows your company to stand out from the competition, and builds trust and loyalty in your customers. A well-designed logo will help build a strong brand, and it’s not something to skimp on.

This takes me back to why Johnny, the neighbors boy, should not be designing your logo. Johnny might have some artistic ability, and that’s great. But he’s not going to approach your logo the same way a trained professional will.

You can’t set yourself apart if you don’t know what you are up against. The first step in building a strong brand is to research the competition. After you know what the competition is doing, you need to consider the following: What graphics should you be using? What colors should you choose? Which fonts represent your image best? How will you use your logo?

All of these questions (and their answers) factor into creating professional logos.

Creating Logos

Graphics
Keep in mind not every logo has to have a graphic element. Some of the best logos ever created use only text. For example: FedEx. Have you ever noticed the arrow hidden in the text? Or Coca-Cola, no graphics, just that ever-recognizable script font.

However, if you insist on having a graphic in your logo, there are some things to consider. The uniqueness of the graphic is important – it sets your brand apart from the competition, who you certainly don’t want to look like.

Your logo should have a balanced image. Simplicity makes a stronger design; extra clutter will only confuse your audience, making the logo harder to digest quickly. You want a design that is easy to see and recognize at a glance.

Colors
I have discovered that many people will approve or disapprove of a logo color based on their own personal likes or dislikes. This is the worst approach you can take when creating your logo. The colors you chose should be based on your target audience and the feelings you want them to experience when using your product.

Likewise many people think designers choose colors based on personal preference. This is not the case. In fact, a good designer understands the psychological impact color can have, and how to use this to their advantage. For example, red has been shown to raise blood pressure. Probably not the best choice if you are a trying to sell spa services. Color can also vary depending on cultural differences. White can mean one thing in the United States, yet mean something completely different in Eastern Cultures.

Fonts
Your choice of font (or typeface) is just as important as the graphics and colors. There are thousands of fonts (no one really knows how many world wide) and each font has it’s own set of characteristics, which, like color, have an impact on the viewer. There are curvy feminine fonts, bold masculine fonts, playful fonts, the list goes on and on. Again, your target audience must be considered: you wouldn’t want to use a thick, bold font if you were selling a high end make-up line. Nor would you use a straight, cold font to brand your toy company.

Media
What you use the logo for can impact the success of its design. For example, it might need to be readable on business cards and other print material, websites, t-shirts, electronic billboards, television, or a physical product. The size of the logo for each of these media is a big factor, as some logos are simply a mess at small sizes or look really odd blown up to a larger size. Another factor is the material the logo is printed on – some materials can make a logo look very poor.

Professional Logos

This is why – if you need a professional logo – you shouldn’t bother Johnny the neighbor kid. He’s going to put something together based on his own preferences, without any thought for how these various factors affect your brand. And just like any part of your business, ignoring the factors that affect how your customers feel about you is brand suicide.

By Tarah Heupel | September 16, 2010

Alert: Shameless self-promotion ahead!

In addition to web development, video production, print design,  SEO, and all the other creative services we offer at RSA, we also have a stellar event management team that spends much of the summer running across the Midwest to spearhead the Wyoming State Fair, Central States Fair, and South Dakota State Fair.

This year our newest RSA team member, Scott Bruce, pitched in to help our event management team with the wide range of duties we handle at the South Dakota State Fair in Huron. After providing transportation, helping with a political campaign video shoot, and serving as all-around good-spirited gopher, Scott was handsomely rewarded with this photo opp:

Scott with the lovely Martina McBride

The well-heeled Martina McBride hit the main stage as Saturday night’s headliner, where she played to a packed crowd.  A lot of sweat and hard work went into all of this year’s fairs, but our event management team pulled through with flying colors. Now they’re sitting down for a well-deserved breather before getting started on next year’s events…great job guys!

By Kyle McCabe | August 31, 2010

Search Engine Marketing... it's not voodoo

There’s still a lot of confusion out there about what a search engine marketing firm does – and doesn’t do – and I think this confusion is holding businesses back or causing people to waste a lot of money on false expectations.

Put simply, search engine marketing (SEM) is just what it says it is: marketing. It’s not search engine sales, or search engine lead generation, or search engine voodoo…it’s just marketing; bringing your products and services to market.

I can bring your product to someone who is searching for it (that’s the market). I can’t force them buy it, or contact you, or stop them from going to a competitor. We can take measures to influence these decisions, such as improving website usability, but SEM by itself does not do this.

This is why it’s so important to look at your web marketing efforts in a wholistic way: SEM works with site design and usability works with copywriting works with social communication. And it should all work together with your offline marketing efforts, as well.

Still confused? Tell me about it in the comments – I’ll answer any question you might have.

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Photo courtesy of me’nthedogs

By Kyle McCabe | August 19, 2010

Lego Ninja is serious about content strategy.

In the late ’90s content management systems (CMS) were rare. Those that did exist were either underdeveloped, by today’s standards, or just slightly customizable template systems (RIP Geocities).

Back then we hand-coded websites, for the most part, and clients had very little access to make updates to those websites. The internet gods looked upon this and saw that it was good. So, of course, they changed it.

Enter the CMS

These days you can’t throw a cat without hitting someone who wants full access to change their websites. It’s now common for clients to ask for a CMS-based website, and I can’t blame them. If you’re making a lot of changes to the site, it’s certainly more economical to do it yourself than pay someone else to.

But is it really as  simple as it sounds? That depends on a few things:

1. Do you know HTML? The CMS of today, though relatively well-developed and easy to use, still requires some level of web code knowledge to keep things together. It’s not drag-and-drop, at least not yet. Yes, you can bold text and change the colors – but creating page layouts or typography any more complex than a basic Word document takes a little more doing – usually in the “source” code of the CMS editor.

2. Do you have the time? Having access to make changes to your website might save you a few bucks, but it’s certainly not going to save you any time. Besides having to think about keeping the information on each page current (planning, researching), you also have to actually go in and make the changes yourself, troubleshoot issues that crop up while doing so, and maybe take care of the thousand other things you were already responsible for.

3. Do you have a plan? Remember Legos? I remember Legos. I played with those things until I was 15. They were awesome. I built all kinds of things: spaceships, battleships, castles, planes, trains, and time machines. I’ll admit it – sometimes I didn’t know what I was going to build when I started. Those masterpieces usually ended up looking like Frankenstein’s monster…but with more blocks.

But the ones I planned…they were *art*. And that’s the lesson here. If you don’t have a solid, ongoing plan for your website’s content, there’s no CMS in the world that’s going to make it work. It’ll be a mess, and a huge waste of time for you.

Here’s the truth: no CMS is going to allow someone with no web knowledge and a million other responsibilities to manage their website effectively. That’s not what it’s for. The CMS allows easier access to the content on a website. This does allow those with little knowledge of the web or code to make changes and updates to a website, but it isn’t – and was never meant to be – a substitute for a good content strategy and web developer.

Does your website have a CMS? How’s it working out?

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Photo courtesy of thrig

By mstumpf | August 17, 2010

[This is a guest post by by Michael Stumpf of Parlee Stumpf. It was originally posted on the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies blog.]

We are often asked: “How do we reach out to new customers?”

Well the answer, for businesses large and small, is the same.
The value proposition in your marketing must be relevant to your target market…to the audience you are trying to reach. This means, your target market must be clearly defined. And you’ve got to buy into their ‘worldview’ – those things that are important to them.

Smart marketing doesn’t try to change someone’s worldview.
You’ll never sell a Rolex to someone who has no money, or doesn’t want to spend their money on an expensive watch. You’ll never sell a Harley Davidson to someone who believes it’s dangerous riding the road that way. You’ll never sell an airline ticket to someone who’s afraid to fly. And you’ll never get someone to buy a smart phone when all they want to do is make telephone calls.

Instead, you need to identify a group of people – an audience – with a worldview that matches your product or service. And communicate with them. And frame your branding/product story with words and images that reinforce the existing worldview they already believe in. Or, the harder course, convince them that your product or service is an option with benefits that they should seriously consider.

I was recently paging through an issue of hip Details Magazine. Departments there include Culture and Trends, Style and Advice, Celebrity and Entertainment and Sex and Relationships. According to Wikipedia, Details is an American monthly men’s magazine published by Condé Nast Publications, founded in 1982. Though primarily a magazine devoted to fashion and lifestyle, Details also features reports on relevant social and political issues.

The magazine has dozens of ‘lifestyle’ ads throughout. And I was struck by the wide range of target markets the ads focus on in one publication. Three of those ads are here. And those ads reach out to three distinctively different audiences reading the magazine.

Now, more than ever, it’s important that you clearly define the target market for your product or service.

In web applications, behavioral targeting is a sophisticated technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns with well defined audiences. Behavioral targeting uses information collected on a person’s web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which information is most relevant to display to that individual. Practitioners believe this helps them deliver their online advertisements/content to the users who are most likely to be interested in their products or services.

It’s a highly sophisticated approach, but clearly designed to not only target an audience, but engage them on a much more focused level.

Behavioral marketing for web audiences can be used on its own or in conjunction with other forms of targeting based on factors like geography, demographics or the surrounding content.

Defining the audience for your business.

The following questions may help you begin to assess the best way to approach your audiences.
1. Who is your target market?
2. Where is your target audience located?
3. What do they think about your current brand?
4. What do you want them to think about your brand?
5. What’s really important for them regarding your products or services?
6. Who else is competing for their loyalty and business?

Define the brand for a great relationship with your audiences.

Conversations about brands and branding sometimes get bogged down in weird or esoteric terminology that no one understands. But when you break through the clutter, the confusion and the contradictions, it’s easy to understand what branding really is.

Branding is a way for a company to make more money. And once you get it down right, your audiences – your customers and potential customers – will buy from you than from someone else. Brands are the emotional and psychological relationship you have directly with your customers. Strong brands elicit good thoughts and positive emotions with their audiences.

By effectively branding your enterprise, you create an identity that resonates with selected audiences. You form emotional relationships with customers. That’s important because people don’t always buy products logically, they buy with their emotions.

With branding, you need to apply four basic principles to your marketing. And it doesn’t matter whether you are Federal Express, Apple or the local coffee shop.

Here are some of the branding principles:
• Forget about a long list of features and benefits
• Focus on creating a very simple, singular, clear, engaging message
• Adopt and dumb down one, absolutely killer selling idea
• Market the selling idea, not the product or service

Branding focuses on an idea. It could be an expensive idea like the prestige of driving a Lamborghini or an inexpensive idea like staying open later than competitors.

The bottom line.
There’s simply no substitute for knowing everything you possible can about the audiences you serve and the audiences you want to attract. Do all the market research you can. Not only externally by monitoring trends, competitive advantages, new developments, etc. But also internally, survey your existing customers to determine what they like, don’t like, want and need. Combine that research with a solid brand presentation, and you’ve just increased your odds of getting that cash register singing.

By Tarah Heupel | August 5, 2010

As self-professed social media junkies, we have a pretty robust obsession with keeping tabs on what’s happening right now in all facets of the marketing world. We constantly have our eyes peeled for info about emerging technologies, new platforms, and most importantly, innovative campaigns that mix it up in new ways.

Take, for example, some of the inspiring (or at least creative) work we’ve been passing around the office this week:

• Omo detergent: This Brazil-based campaign is taking the marketing + GPS recipe to a whole new level. The company planted GPS tracking devices in 50 boxes of detergent, which activate when the consumer takes them off the shelf. A promotions agency will follow the lucky buyer home, surprising the family with a video camera and a day of “outdoor fun.” A bit on the stalker side, perhaps, but definitely a new way to reach the consumer.
• Levi’s Walk Across America: This two-minute stop motion commercial nixed the aggressive sales pitch and went viral. It’s a visually stunning piece, and we’re partial to the footage of good old Mt. Rushmore. YouTube views hit nearly 2 million in just two weeks.
• Domino’s: The pizza chain’s rebranding strategy continues with the admission that food commercials may actually (gasp) doctor the product before filming it. The Show Us Your Pizza challenge encourages hungry people to upload their own pictures of Domino’s pizzas for a shot at cold hard cash. Simple concept, but we give it an A+ for engaging the audience.

These campaigns all incorporate a social element: from the Levi’s video that’s been shared and commented on thousands of times to a dedicated website that will feature footage of Omo’s winners and their stories, social media has become an integral part of the marketing mix for both big brands and small businesses alike. Traditional advertising continues to be a major player for most businesses, but combined with social, the results can be especially powerful.

Of course, social media is constantly changing, which is both exciting (for us) and intimidating (for some of our clients). We see a lot of small businesses that are interested in venturing into social, but they’re nervous about getting started. Should they be on Twitter? What about FourSquare, or LinkedIn, or Facebook? Should they start a blog? What crazy stunts do they have to come up with to be competitive? With new tools emerging as “the next big thing” all the time, businesses are overwhelmed and unsure how to spend their time and money.

Our advice? Don’t worry about tackling every social media platform or replicating million dollar detergent stalking campaigns. Start small – focus on your business goals and pick a tool that will best support your initial efforts.  It takes commitment to build a successful social media strategy, but it doesn’t have to be over the top. Provide helpful information, talk with (not at) your audience, and post often. It’s really that simple!

Still confused about the whether social is right for you? Take a look at the answers to some  social media FAQs Kyle posted awhile back.

By Tarah Heupel | July 22, 2010

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), many business owners don’t understand how it works or how to use it – so this week we brought in the big guns to help demystify the process.

The SEO Expert

Woessner, SEO Guru

We had the pleasure of bringing in renowned SEO expert (and one-time RSA intern) Stephen Woessner from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse to host public workshops and meet with our staff.

Stephen kicked off the week with a seminar for small business owners, sponsored by RSA and AAF Black Hills. More than 40 people turned out to learn Stephen’s 15 simple steps to SEO, and we’ve heard some great feedback from attendees who took home a step-by-step plan for optimizing their sites.

For those of you who missed out, you’re probably wondering what big secrets Stephen revealed. We can’t give you all the details, but Stephen’s book is a great resource for business owners who want to take a stab at doing it themselves. Want to try to do SEO yourself? Here’s what you should know.

Learn SEO

You can learn SEO pretty easily, if you take the time and focus on it. Going through a book like Stephen’s will give you a simple step-by-step tutorial that will have you on your way pretty quickly. There are also vast quantities of resources out on the web on the subject, so there’s really no excuse not to learn SEO if you have the time and it needs to be done.

And even if you don’t do SEO yourself, it’s still a valuable subject to understand, especially when it comes to working with someone else to get your website optimized.

Do SEO Yourself

Yes,  it’s possible to  optimize your own website. The question is how long will it take you to learn SEO, and how much time do you actually have to spend on it? If you are a business owner or in-house marketer,  your schedule is probably already packed.

In order to do SEO yourself, Stephen recommends spending about an hour to an hour and a half per page, per month. So if you own or manage a website of 20 pages or more, you’re talking about more than 20 hours per month of work just to keep it optimized.

Is it worth your time?

In order for your site to reach its full potential, it needs to be optimized. But whether you should do SEO yourself or outsource is ultimately dependent on how much time you have to devote to SEO. It’s possible that your time might be better spent focusing on other aspects of your business or marketing, and hiring someone to take care of the SEO work makes sense. Hey, some people change their own oil – and that’s really cool. But there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone else to do it, either!

Snaps to Stephen

In addition to the AAF seminar, Stephen also hosted a similar seminar for the Black Hills Home Builders Association. We were thrilled to see so many local businesses turn up to learn more about SEO, and a big thank you goes out to all who attended.

Stephen also graciously agreed to spend an entire afternoon letting RSA staff pick his brain for new ideas on maximizing SEO and social media for our clients. Needless to say, we learned a few new things too.

For those of you who attended Stephen’s seminars this week, what did you think? Are you ready to do SEO yourself, or would you rather outsource?

By Kyle McCabe | July 14, 2010

In a brilliant and entertaining blend of traditional advertising and social media, Old Spice simply nails it here.  With a traditional TV spot posted on Youtube, they simply monitored comments on the video, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, and then shot and posted video responses to some of them.

Simply amazing. This has got to be the first time in a long time any advertising, by itself, has made me want to purchase a product!

And they’re still doing it. Prepare to waste your afternoon…

By Kyle McCabe | July 7, 2010

A while ago I wrote about the idea of being “transparent” or “authentic” in the social web. My theory is that full transparency is actually over-disclosure (and therefore undesirable), and authenticity just means don’t be fake (rather than meaning “show yourself without any sort of filter,” as the word might imply).

This theory applies to social business (use of social media for an organization) as well.

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Transparency in Business

No single person is obligated to tell anyone anything (outside the legal sphere), but good communication demands a certain level of honesty.

For business, depending on the type of organization, you may be obligated to share certain information with employees, shareholders, customers, and the government. The relevant question, however, is where and when to do so.

Much of the information you might communicate to shareholders or employees probably isn’t appropriate for social media. But when communicating with customers, potential customers, and the public at large, reasonably honesty goes a long way.

Some advice:

• Own up to your mistakes, and do it quickly
• Be as quick to acknowledge failure as you are to boast success
• Respond to negative feedback in a constructive way, without giving people the runaround
• Let people know who they are talking to – a person is much more attractive than a brand
• If you post or reblog someone else’s idea or content, give them credit

Authenticity in Business

Authenticity is just as important for business as it is for personal, social activity. If you want real relationships with real people in any arena, a certain level of genuine openness is essential. The difference for business is that authenticity is about the brand, not the people.

We all know what it’s like to see or hear ads that just seem fake, or hear people talk in ways that seem inauthentic (by the way, we’ll help you drive granular methodologies leveraging next-generation applications to integrate leading-edge infomediaries). Our reactions may vary, but I would guess most people recognize this kind of artificiality for what it is, and reject it. No one who talks this way is being authentic.

Some advice:

• Your mode of authenticity will depend on the brand you represent. If your brand is about “quality customer service,” well you better not be treating your customers like an inconvenience
• Likewise if you tell a customer you’ll fix a problem, then fix it – don’t give them the runaround
• Neither should you be telling people you do things you don’t really do. If you sell a product of moderate quality in order to keep to a certain price point, don’t tell people you sell a product of the highest quality
• Don’t lie unless you’re a liar and want to be known as such
• Authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean you have to show the negative side of your organization, but when you’re showing ANY side, make it real
• If you’re ashamed to be authentic in this way, you need to change your business

Growth of social media gives us a new opportunity to expose the real “us” – business or personal – to other people. This is a good thing – it builds trust and long-term relationships.

So if you’re going to embark upon any social communication effort, just get rid of the old business persona of detached, callous, robotic nonsense. Be real.