Creativity many businesses view creative services as a cost-center, when in truth, a well-defined creative service department should help to increase your bottom line. The potential value of a good creative marketing team extends far beyond copywriting and graphic design services. Instead of utilizing your creative team as implementers, the real value of these professionals is to aid you in addressing your critical business challenges.
Including your creative staff at the strategy level, will enable you to incorporate design thinking, or a human-centered approach into your business process. Start looking at the creative department as an intricate part of your client service and include them in brainstorming solutions to difficult problems.
Repackaging ideas and maximizing creative services within your business is low cost and high impact. Including the creative team in strategy sessions builds buy-in and can provide an entirely different perspective. Best of all, the team approach will ensure implementation is targeted and mission-specific, moving the team forward to develop even stronger campaigns.
Google offers a lot of very good tools to maximize your advertising investment and best of all, many are free or very low cost.
One of the most underutilized and most impressive tools is Google’s “remarketing” tool. When used correctly, this application has the potential to help you reduce your pay per click average cost as well as your cost per click.
Have you ever clicked on an ad from a website and after doing so, the same ad you clicked on appears on other websites you visit, such as Facebook, Google, etc.? This action is called remarketing.
As an advertiser, when you use Google ad words you’re essentially bidding for a word or a phrase used on your website to help you gain a higher ranking on a user’s search results page. When you use retargeting or remarketing, the tool embeds a cookie onto each user’s device to preempts the advertisements they see. This means for just pennies on the dollar, your ad can be seen at the top of the list for that user as they travel to multiple sites around the web.
Once installed, the application will assist in promoting your business for up to 90 days at an average cost between $.25 and $.50 per user. To check it out visit google.com
Happy New Year! As we greet 2016 and get back to work, it’s a great time to reflect on the past year and refocus our business priorities to take advantage of new opportunities. This is especially true when evaluating the successes and struggles of your past advertising and marketing campaigns and how they hit – or missed the mark for your business. Much like personal resolutions we make, often our business goals go by the wayside after a month or two into the New Year. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Think about having a New Year Review kickoff breakfast with your staff. Let them tell you what worked, what didn’t and solicit their ideas for top strategies they feel could better your business processes. Think of this as a fun goal setting session with measurable targets and awards. By working with your team to clearly define goals for yourself and your business this year, your staff becomes part of the strategy team – and not just the implementers. Working with your staff to create “hit lists” of desired achievements and breaking them down into digestible actions will encourage each member to have a sense of ownership and accountability for the success of the business. Scheduling quarterly milestones to work toward (and celebrating them when met) will help empower your team, increase buy-in, and will enhance your credibility as a caring manager. Best of all, reporting in to each other will help you and your staff stay on track and keep the momentum building throughout the year.
Most of our wireless device data usage happens at home or at the office. It is always important to make sure your networks are set up properly and that your mobile devices are all set up to use wireless service whenever possible. All the major telecommunications companies charge you extra money for data. That’s why it’s important to make sure your mobile devices are set up to prioritize using wireless networks whenever available.
As stores adjust to better serve consumers, they are also adding hotspots free of charge for the convenience of the shoppers. The goal is to turn shopping and going to a store into more of an experience. Taking advantage of those hotspots, be it at home, at work or out on the town, will save you hours of data usage. The goal is to save your data for when you really need it, usually when you’re between wireless areas.
Sales and marketing — two words that work hand-in-hand in any business. No matter how great of a marketing department you have, if your sales department can’t close the deal or know how to process and take advantage of leads, you’re spending good money after bad. In the same token, a really good sales department that can’t get enough leads to keep your team busy is costing you money, time and a lot of aggravation.
Start by assessing all of your marketing and advertising efforts. Break it down by media market like online versus outdoor versus print. Try to track your lead generations to the marketing efforts you’ve done. Figure out how many leads you get from anyone of the media market sources and figure out how much money you’re spending in that market to get those leads. What you’re trying to assess is your lead cost to generate one lead.
Wishing you a year of gratitude – As the Holliday season approaches, it’s important to be grateful to our co-workers and employees – those special individuals who support us throughout the year, help our businesses grow and connect with our customers. Make a game out of it and engage your staff. Ask for ideas on how to improve your website, add features, enhance content and create more value for your customers. Create a fun “creative contributor” aspect to your work week and show your employees you value their opinion and the work they do.
Think about adding an “employee of the month” page to your website. Post staff photos in their work environment and include short bios about who they are and what they do. You could even feature customer success stories and testimonials to show your clients you care about their experiences and the relationships you are building together. And remember, take the time to send out an e-mail greeting to thank your customers for their support and to wish them Happy Holidays!
I would like to personally thank SRQ for giving me the opportunity to contribute here and to the readers for their continued support and encouragement. And to Ringling College, thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach this semester and for inviting me to come back next semester. To my students, a special thank you, you have taught me even more than I would have expected and I was grateful to help you showcase your talents.
Happy Holidays!
Get website ready now for 2016 – before you head out of the office for the holidays!
Here are our top 10 tech tips to get done this December:
Have you considered blogging on your website? Sharing your insights is a fantastic way to position yourself as an authority in your line of business with minimal investment. Consider developing a simple annual editorial plan and schedule time to write at least one blog post per month. If you plan out the subjects in advance, you can even write the blogs ahead of time and post them at a defined date each month.
Blogging about your expertise will help increase your website’s SEO organic ranking rate. Translation: the more content your website is able to offer; the better chance of the site being indexed within all major search engines. Remember to keep the subject related to your business, offering tips, techniques or expertise directly related to your company and background. Encourage your readers to give you feedback, posting comments and allow them an option to share the post on social media.