Do You Really Need a Logo in Digital Marketing

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
GrowLoop

GrowLoop

For some reason some entrepreneurs think that if they’re engaging in online digital marketing they don’t really need a logo to help visually define their brand. However, these are the same entrepreneurs that also have varied and scattered brand messaging across all their digital media. They don’t have any elements that cohesively bring their brand value and message together.

I’m not saying a logo is the end all be all to bring a brand together, however, it is a visual representation of one’s brand that can easily help prospective clients, current clients and anyone on the Internet recognize and quickly understand what your brand is about.  Online a few seconds of time is about all you have to catch someone’s attention and identify who your are.  A logo and tagline — something that quickly grabs visitors’ attention and helps them understand what your company does and stands for, quickly, can be key.

Being armed with a well crafted logo and tagline, or short value proposition phrase, consistently shared across all your digital platforms and in print — on your business cards and letterhead — allows the kind of consistency needed for someone new to discover your brand.  It also brings consistency to your current clients, vendors and referral partners — they come to rely on and expect a certain look, feel and message when they interact with you online and off.

The visual of a logo offers a quick communication and/or recollection of what your brand stands for.  A small phrase, brand message, or tagline can help to reinforce exactly what the value of your brand is in a short space and time.  The idea is to build enough brand recognition over time to where your logo is really a symbol of your brand and when viewed, people can easily recall your brand’s attributes with little more than the logo image itself.  For example, think Nike’s swoosh symbol.  At this point you don’t even need the company name, Nike, to know what brand that swoosh represents.

The goal is to very easily, quickly and clearly help others understand what your brand represents and why someone might want to do business with a brand that represents that.

Article provided by GrowLoop, please visit their website if you’d like more information.

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10 Reasons Why Your Website Might be Under-Performing

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
Website Design

Website Design

There are a lot of reasons why websites don’t quite live up to your expectations but, by addressing the following issues you can help boost the popularity of your website, the number of visits you get, your leads and future customers/clients.

1)      You’re not taking advantage of social media – Social media is the modern version of word of mouth advertising and it’s a very important way to reach new audiences and promote loyalty among your current fans.

2)      You don’t have a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) framework built into your site – SEO is constantly changing, but defining your keywords, writing informative and engaging content, and entering your meta data is still the backbone of a good, search-friendly website.

3)      Your website isn’t compelling or user friendly – If people don’t like your website, your competition is just a click away. Good web design and great content is vital in today’s online marketplace.

4)      You used black hat (not legit) SEO techniques – while those emails promising to make your website number one are tempting, they often use black hat (or BAD) techniques to make your website quickly jump in search results. The problem is, if the search engines discover you are using these techniques they can ban your website entirely so you’ll never show up in the search results.

5)      You ignore your website – the search engines want to insure users get the most recent information. This means that you should “touch” the website regularly and add information so it appears to be current and not abandoned. A blog or news page is a phenomenal way to do this.

6)      You’re not actively link building – think of another company linking to your page as a referral. You want to constantly get those referrals, ask other webpage owners if they’d refer your page and add a link on their site.

7)      There’s a lot of competition in your field – some businesses simply have a lot of competition and there are so many websites competing for the same customers it’s very difficult to earn your way to the top.

8)      Your ecommerce site is not informative, easy to navigate or it “feels unsafe” – have you ever been to a website that you just didn’t feel like they were on the up and up?  It’s too easy for a shopper to just click to your competition so you simply cannot afford to look unprofessional, be difficult to navigate or lack security measures.

9)      You’re not using your keywords or you’re using the wrong ones – Keywords are still a vital part of your website, they let search engines and human visitors know what you’re all about. Just make sure you’re using the right keywords.

10)   You don’t have a clear call to action – Most websites exist for one reason (maybe two). Let your visitors know what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it.

Contact Tingalls Graphic Design if you are interested in making your website work harder for you.

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3 SEO Trends, What’s In and What’s Out

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
SEO Trends from Tingalls

SEO Trends from Tingalls

Ranking at the top of the search engines is the goal of many websites but not all of them know how to get to the top. There are a variety of different approaches you can take to improve your search engine optimization, some legitimate, others not so much. Tingalls Graphic Design stays on top of SEO trends and always recommends using best practices. To that end, we’ve come up with the latest SEO trends, what’s in and what’s out.

IN – Good Content

Content is king, especially in the world of websites. Targeting one or two keywords/keyphrases for each page and then using those keywords in content that is informative and compelling to your audience is a great way to score SEO points.

OUT – Jibberish

Keyword stuffing and spinning or just plain stealing content is a sure fire way to get noticed for all the wrong reasons and hurt your SEO.

IN – Link Juice

Are you linking to websites that provide valid information or that you trust and are affiliated with? Are these websites linking back to you? Links from one website to another are basically a referral, the more sites that refer your site, the better it is for your SEO.

OUT – Link Farming

Link farming or the practice of buying links that will refer to your site is not only out but is easily spotted by the search engines and can get your website banned.

IN – Keyword Rich Title Tags

Tailor your title tags so they mention your company name and the function or main keyword of the page they’re representing. Take advantage of this important tag to push your most important keyword/keyphrase.

OUT – Uninformative Title Tags

Too many companies still ignore the value of a title tag and label their home page as “home”. There is absolutely no SEO value in this label and you’re missing out on some prime SEO real estate.

Tingalls Graphic Design not only stays on top of the trends in the SEO world, we will implement these SEO tools into your website. Contact Tingalls if you want to boost your SEO the right way.

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6 Website Best Practices to Attract Viewers

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
Build a Better Website with Tingalls Graphic Design

Build a Better Website with Tingalls Graphic Design

Most website are designed to attract viewers and yet there are sites that aren’t putting website best practices into use and are instead turning off customers or not drawing them in in the first place. Tingalls Graphic Design has pulled together six website best practices to help you attract and keep visitors to your website.

1)      Compelling content. The content on your website is meant to attract people and keep them there. If you’re writing for search engines or trying to be too clever with your content you may be turning away visitors in droves.  Tell people what they want to know in a straight forward, succinct manner and only use search engine optimization techniques wisely.

2)      Use your design. The design of your website is meant to be appealing and attractive and to emphasize certain elements. Use it to your advantage to draw attention to important content.

3)      Be consistent. Is your entire site harmonious, do the pages relate to each other visually and carry the same message? Inconsistency can confuse and scare viewers away.

4)      Be user friendly. If it takes too many clicks to get to the desired outcome or you ask for too much personal information or if your site takes forever to load you’re going to turn off a viewer instantly and they’ll quickly click to a site that is easier to use.

5)      Make sure it works. Too often a website has a link that doesn’t work or a page that’s outdated. Check your website every so often just to make sure it’s functioning in a way that you want it to.

6)      Legitimate SEO. Make sure you have a nice, solid and legitimate search engine optimization backbone to your website so you can be found by the search engines and not penalized by them.

Tingalls Graphic Design would love to help you implement some best practices into your new or existing website. Contact Tingalls if you would like to have a free consult to discuss web design.

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Go Green – Get Printing

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Tara Ingalls

Print Marketing with Tingalls
Print Marketing with Tingalls

Print marketing may be more energy efficient than you realize and the benefits of using print could boost your company’s visibility too. The following statistics related to print marketing, the paper industry and the environment were presented by NewPage Corporation and provide some interesting insight on sustainability and marketing.

Did you know that the creation and delivery of direct mail generates less greenhouse gas emissions than an eight minute shower?

In the last 25 year annual energy consumption at US data centers increased by 24% but the pulp and paper industry reduced energy by 24%.

The footprint of paper for one 3×5 inch direct mail card is equal to roughly a minute and a half of viewing time on a website while one hour of TV viewing a day has the same carbon footprint as 1,900 letters.

In 2010, 63.5% of US paper was recycled compared to 25.5% of glass, 20.3% of aluminum and7.1% of plastics.

If you’re thinking about implementing a responsible print marketing campaign, consider a targeted campaign that only reaches a specific subset of your clients to get the most bang for your buck. Contact Tingalls Graphic Design to schedule a consult to discuss your print campaign options.

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Direct Mail, Print Design | Leave a comment

What’s in a Color? The Impact of Color in Branding

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Tara Ingalls

What's in a color?Like it or not, people form opinions about your brand every day based of one simple thing: color. In fact, color can increase logo and brand recognition by up to 80 percent! Here are some reasons not to overlook the role of color in your branding efforts.

Colors are seen by different age groups, genders and nationalities in many different ways. For instance, orange is highly accepted by young people, while people tend to dislike orange and green the older they get. Even men and women react differently to color. Females generally respond to red better than blue, while men prefer blue over red. Yellow has a higher effective value for men.

Which colors will best represent your brand? Take a look at these interesting color facts:

Red is the ultimate power color, associated with energy, danger, strength, determination, and passion. Red brings text and images to the foreground. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions.

Yellow is associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. It produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness and stimulates mental activity. Yellow is often associated with food. Yellow is very effective for attracting attention, so use it to highlight the most important elements of your design.

Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, success, and endurance. Because of its high visibility, use it to catch attention and highlight the most important elements of your design.

Green symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and stability. It also has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Green is the most restful color for the human eye. Green is directly related to nature, so it is used more and more to promote “green” products.

Blue conveys trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, and tranquility. It is considered beneficial to the mind and body, producing a calming effect. Blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Dark blue is a preferred color for corporate America.

Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance.

Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, strength, authority, and mystery. It gives the feeling of perspective and depth, but a black background diminishes readability.

Before deciding how to use color in your branding decisions, make sure you have a strong sense for your brand’s identity and messaging. Think about what mood or message you want the brand to convey before settling on a color scheme. Power? Happiness? Trust? Energy?

Need a color consultation?

Contact  the experts at Tingalls Graphic Design for a free consultation.

(Information in this article was excerpted from a presentation given by Adams Outdoor Advertising.)

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5 Reasons Why You Should be Blogging

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
Why You Should Blog

Why You Should Blog

If your company isn’t blogging regularly, you may want to reconsider the blogging option. Below, Tingalls Graphic Design has collected five good reasons why you should have a company blog on your website and how it can help you promote your company, products, and/or services.

  1. SEO – Blogs help enhance your company’s search visibility or search engine optimization (SEO) in a couple of ways. Blogs give you a chance to use those all-important keywords in a legitimate way more frequently. Blogs should be touched regularly, showing that your website is current and still valid.
  2. Authority – Blogging about your industry and your products and  sometimes about topics that are only loosely related, gives you some authority as a field expert. You become the reliable and trusted source people return to again and again for information.
  3. Marketing – Blogging is a very inexpensive way to promote your company, new products, services, and events. Use a blog to raise awareness and create excitement about what is to come.
  4. Build Relationships – Carefully written blogs can convey a comfortable sense of familiarity and a personal touch between you/your company and your audience. If they trust and feel comfortable with what you are saying, they’re more apt to think of you as someone they have a relationship with and will want to continue that relationship.
  5. Link Building – Link building and legitimate link sharing is a very important aspect of SEO, but it’s also a great way to reach out to new audiences. Begin sharing your blog with “partner” companies who blog. Use their blogs as well (with permission of course) and create a little link juice between your websites. This increases your odds of reaching new customers and your visibility on the search engines.

Blogging has become a very important tool for websites to enhance their search engine visibility, authority, build customer relationships and to market their products and/or services.

Contact Tingalls Graphic Design if you’re interested in having a blog integrated into your company website.

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PR Is Not Dead … Just like Everything Else, It’s Evolving

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
Maggie B

Maggie B

Did your first mobile phone come in a briefcase-sized carrying case that you kept under the seat of your car “in case of emergency?” If so, you – like me – are old enough to call yourself a witness to the communications revolution of the last couple decades.

As a public relations and communications professional winding my way through this revolution, I attend my fair share of seminars, educational events and networking groups. The content of these meetings and events has obviously changed over the years to address the domination of all things electronic, social, and mobile. And, as such, I’ve been hearing a frequent refrain: PR is dead. Of course, as someone who has built a consulting business based on 15 years of experience in “PR,” this is a bit of a scary statement. And one with which I whole-heartedly disagree.

Maybe it’s not as simple as the semantic shift that has us now more frequently saying “mobile” rather than “cell” (if you have a cell phone you sound oh-so 2000), but to say PR is dead fails to consider the important and awesome ways in which we as communicators, consumers, and professionals evolve over time. Call PR what you will – word-of mouth marketing, social strategy, brand building – but most of these names and buzzwords are simply components that flow from what has always been the essence of PR: how you relate to your public.

If anything, in our cluttered world of Constant Contact and counting click-thrus, I would argue PR has become an even more critical piece of the marketing puzzle. How you relate to your public becomes your brand voice, it builds your reputation, it generates content for your social channels. PR is alive and well, nurturing all that is social and mobile and helping shape how we communicate now and in the future … kind of like the wise elder watching over the young kids, trying to help them grow into healthy, productive, and responsible grown-ups.

Guest Blog Provided By Maggie Baum, Founder & President of Maggie B. Communications

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The Sure-Fire Approach to Social Media Marketing

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Tara Ingalls

I really recommend using digital marketing and social media for your local business to help promote and amplify your brand online, to help drive online engagement with your website and, as a bonus, bring some more sales to you.

Where small businesses often get digital marketing wrong is:  digital marketing is not a silver bullet for your company’s marketing.  It’s definitely not the only thing to do, and if you think it’s your sure-fire, quick-fix way to market yourself to a booming business then you’re going to be very disappointed.

In my opinion, the biggest benefit of digital marketing is the ability to initiate and foster online relationships by directing your online connections to various online destinations of value to your targeted audience.  In other words, you’re posting an article that is relevant to your target audience or you’re directing traffic the blog post you wrote on your website because it has valuable best practices for a common problem your target market experiences.  Or, it can be a great way to keep in touch with current contacts and/or interested prospects.

However, digital marketing, and more specifically, social media, is just one piece of the target-audience-relationship-building activity plan (aka marketing plan).  The idea is to build trust with those who ideally fit the profile of your ideal client – solving their problem or challenge with your solution (your product or serve).

The best advice for businesses is a combination of on- and off-line marketing.  Online, offers quick, wide-reaching capabilities that are awesome for initiating and even maintaining relationships.  The neat thing is that the more you connect with people online who like what you do the more they’ll naturally help to amplify your online posts to their own audiences – increasing your online reach farther beyond your own ability to do so, and for less money (this is where a lot of the appeal of social media for business comes in).

Off-line, or often referred to, high-touch marketing, requires more person-to-person interaction – over the phone, or better yet, an in-person meeting.  I’ve found the quicker you can move a relationship that starts online, off-line, the faster you can build some real trust with that individual, which is more likely to lead to new business for you or a valid partnership that benefits you both.

The point is you cannot use digital marketing alone, but you also cannot ignore digital marketing – together their sum is greater than the individual parts.  Local businesses often have the advantage of being able to connect in-person with their customers and prospects – be sure to take advantage of that and continue the conversation online, or initiate it online and quickly encourage an in-person meeting.  That’s a sure fire approach.

Ghost blog provided by Nick Venturella of Grow Loop.

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Creating an Effective Landing Page That Leads to More Conversions

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Tara Ingalls
Create Effective Landing Pages

Create Effective Landing Pages

A landing page is a web page that targets a particular audience and captures their information, typically through a lead form. A good landing page will be easy and comfortable to navigate and will quickly give visitors what they want. And, in theory, this will increase the number of conversions you have because the process is easier for them.

Tingalls Graphic Design has come up with some suggestions to help you make a more effective landing page so you encourage more conversions.

1)      Be clear and concise both visually and with your content

2)      Make sure there is a value to them and that it’s clearly stated

3)      Keep your visitors focused on that page, don’t encourage them to visit other pages

4)      Make it easy to share the offer/landing page by including social media links

5)      Get the information you need and only that information – people are hesitant about giving up too much personal info

Remember that getting a lead is one thing, following up on it is your obligation. You should instantly thank the web visitor for contacting you either through a Thank You page or a follow up email. Then, you need to take that a step further and promptly supply them with what your landing page promises.

If you’d like to learn more, read our blog, “Boost Your Business through Lead Nurturing”.

Contact Tingalls Graphic Design if you’d like to create a landing page that creates converts.

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