Cross-Media

Promotional Products: Making your Business Tangible

Promotional products may seem overdone—after all, how many branded company pens do you have sitting at your desk right now? Or telephone number-riddled magnets covering your fridge? But promotional products don’t have to be gimmicky—and if you’re going to manage and popularize your brand successfully, you’ll need something tangible to get (and stay) in your clients’ minds.

Brand Consistency: Staying Familiar

Corporate April Fools’ Day Pranks Gone Bad

Corporate pranks have been getting edgier with every April Fools’ Day—here are our favorites from years past.

Direct Mail List: Drive Cross Media Marketing Efforts

Lists. In high school you wanted to be on them, but now it seems being on lists just leads to unwanted mail in your mailbox. The process of being the recipient of a direct mail list seems so impersonal, but it doesn’t have to be. The best way to receive a response from a direct mail list is to mix both traditional print marketing with online methods. A personalized direct mail piece can lead to an instant online response.

SUPER-SIZED MARKETING

If you weren’t watching the Superbowl to cheer against Cleveland’s rival Steelers then it’s likely the lure of the commercials drew you in. This is when companies such as Pepsi, Budweiser and GoDaddy pull out all the stops and try to make a memorable impression any way possible. But perhaps your current advertising budget can’t even buy you a 24-pack. It may time to consider an interactive marketing agency to make a big impression on your clients without leaving a big impression in your wallet.

Study Gives 3 Lessons (Hint: Start Telling Stories)

The boundaries separating advertising, PR, and digital are more than blurred — they're gone. Today, the most effective approaches take the best, most successful elements from each area of marketing and combine them into something that's far greater than the sum of its results-focused parts. It's the gist of integrated marketing.

The top tactics are triple threats, blending the control of advertising with the credibility of PR and the measurability of digital.

Email: Stop Shouting, and Enrich Your Messages Instead

Email is a backbone of an integrated digital marketing program. If used the right way, it can strengthen your relationships with your customers and subscribers. But some email cynics snicker at the concept of building a "relationship" with customers and prospects via email, likely because they treat it like a low-rent discount channel. As a result, they are only tapping a fraction of its superpowers.

Your Company's Color Should Be 5 Things

As a marketer, you understand the importance of branding. Color is a tool in your branding toolbox to help express brand attributes and create emotional connections.

Many small businesses assume color is important only to large corporations. But choosing colors is reflective of any company's unique value promise, no matter its size.

Monitoring Your Brand Doesn't Have to Be a Hassle

How do you monitor your brand? How do you ensure your company is represented in the best possible light?

Many businesses turn to Web analytics, but wrongly assume the task has to be messy and complicated. Even if you're monitoring data about your brand, you probably get more than you know what to do with — and once you have it all, you still have to decide what it means. As a result, you may seek professional help (of the data-monitoring kind). And you understandably seek to invest your precious dollars wisely.

Is Your Website Readable? 3 Tips

Reading on the Web is difficult. Computer monitors have low screen resolution, and their projected light quickly makes our eyes tired. At most, your prospects read 28% of the words on your Web page. So you need to make every word count.

A good first step: Cut your copy in half, and then cut it in half again. Your readers will love you.

Three other quick tips to improve the readability of your website: