We’re switching gears a little and posting a time lapse video of a recent photo shoot. It’s split into two segments, the actual shoot and some post shoot Photoshop “magic.” Enjoy.

Post Photoshop Workflow

Final Photo

This is the final image used in the B2B foodservice postcard.

So social media is the buzz word for 2009-2010 and we’ve been beaten over the head with it for a while. Yes, I can go into long detail about this “great paradigm” shift in consumerism or marketing strategy, but no, I’m not going to do that. Below is a “plain English” case study of a recent social media campaign we did for a client. Easy to read, jargon-free.

Client: Blueair, Inc.
Location: Chicago
Product Mix: Consumer Air Purifiers

1) Identify Objective

The client came to us with really one need: “We need to use social media.” After some discussion, the objective turned toward that fact that users of Blueair Air Purifiers had great stories about their success. Our client hears these stories everyday in customer service phone calls, but they’re rarely shared.  Wow…new objective:  “Get Blueair product users to share their good experiences.”

2) Creating A Game Plan

Building the Facebook Fan Page
After identifying a better defined objective, we discussed the building of a Facebook Fan Page. At that time, 2 weeks ago, it was a “fan page.” We added a few photos and a couple tabs to the fan page. to integrate some additional “engagement opportunity.” Ideally, we are trying to inform and educate people who are concerned about indoor air quality. There is always room for additional educational tools on the Fan page, but this was a start.

Driving People to the Site
The main question that every client has is: “How do I drive people to the Facebook page?” With the Blueair campaign we did 2 fast actions:

1.) Designed banner advertising that ran on “Housewares” specific websites.

2.) Designed an email campaign that reached 13,000 customers and prospects.

3) The Promotion

We built a promotion around Earth Day 2010. We suggested the giveaway promotion tie-in with the Blueair ECO10 Air Purifier, ultra high efficiency air purifier unit. The “engaging” part of the giveaway requested that contestants write on the Facebook Wall about their experience with Blueair.

3) The Outcome

OK guys….here are the real world results of a shoestring social media campaign. The email campaign and banner advertising media buys occurred 2 weeks before Earth Day. We drove people directly to the Facebook Fan Page. The email had a 27% open rate(# of people who viewed the email) and 5% click through rate (# of people who visited the Facebook page).

Overall, the client:

1.) Picked up over 100 great comments about how users are enjoying their Blueair Air Purifiers.

2.) Added over 200 new fans.

3.) Lastly, the Facebook received over 2,200 views during the one week campaign.

Actual Comments & Fan Photos

We love our Blueair purifiers. My whole family has allergies and once we plugged in our purifiers we all stopped sneezing. They are amazing.

We live in Wisconsin, where we are stuck in the house for almost half of the year during winter. My two kids have colds very often during the season. I bought a Blueair air purifier to help remove the airborne particles to relieve their cold symptoms. To my surprise, since I had the Blueair, they only get 1 or 2 times cold throughout the winter.

The Conclusion

The client was happy with their first dip into social media. We now have great comments posted on the Facebook wall and we’re growing that online community by engaging those people. Simple and easy. The next step is to keep in communication with our new social media “friends.”

It could be argued that there’s no quicker path to success or defeat in the marketing world than the email subject line. Is there a perfect subject line? In short, no. A powerful and effective subject line is something that while specific to the product or service, should follow a few simple rules.

1) Get Through the SPAM Filters

As spammers get more inventive with their emails, more and more legitimate messages get caught in the spam filter trap. Certain words such as “Free,” “Click,” “Cheap,” “Cash,” “Save” and “Discount,” or symbols such as “$,” “%” and “!” can act as triggers for spam filters along with many others like them. In some cases, these words and symbols may not trigger a response but placing it as the first word or the addition of ALL CAPS may be enough to send your message into the abyss.

2) Don’t Forget the From Line

As important as the subject line, the from information can make or break an email. Generally, a best practice is that the from and subject should work together and the from line should clearly communicate who you are as the sender. If you’re a sales representative for a company, a from line using your name may engender familiarity while a general marketing email is probably best sent in the company’s name.

3) Keep It Short

A subject line is like a highway billboard. Your customer is moving 70+ mph and only has time to catch a few key words before their attention is lost. Many people get hundreds of emails a day and have a hard time separating the spam from legitimate emails. If you’re adhering to CAN-SPAM laws, the customer will have opted in to receive your email. Make sure you’re using a familiar from line to grab their attention and then deliver a clear, straightforward message in the subject. Try to limit it to less than 50 words and always put the most important information first as many email readers truncate longer subject lines.

4) Avoid Pushy Language

Keep your content specific and relevant to the customer, avoid sounding pushy or salesy and avoid flashy promotional phrases and exclamation marks. Your subject line should specify a benefit for the customer. They signed up thinking they were going to get something they were interested in. Be sure to give it to them or you’ll see a steady drop in your numbers.

5) Urgency Can Sell

Does your offer have a deadline or a limited availability? Don’t waste a great opportunity! Let the customer know this information in the subject line and get ready for a measurably higher response rate.

6) Review Past Performance

Do you have a large history of sent emails and performance history for them? Don’t let that information go to waste! Periodically review your subject & from lines in comparison to open and click rates. Did something work well for you in the past? Create a new riff on that email. Also, think about using split testing to test the effectiveness of your subject lines.

In the end, your past email performance should give you an indication of what topics have generated the most activity. This information should drive your email marketing strategy moving forward.

In the internet age, how do you pitch PR material to the media? Stark LMC uses social media to collaborate with media contacts, research story angles, and generally find new ways to use PR material that has a wonderful “life on the internet.”

We’re currently using a new social media press release news room that is great for getting our clients news out to the media. The news room allows us to add new media options to any press material we develop and is wonderful for Search Engine Optimization.

Recently, our client, The Hannon Group, had their Sachi Insulated Lunch Totes featured on the Today Show’s Holiday Gift Guide segment and it all happened because of our social media PR initiative.

This is just one example of a major success with social media. It’s a great time to try new ideas. Real word PR is skewing more to “not about clips, but about clicks.” Drive more traffic to your company’s website through well planned and implemented PR programs.

The days of counting solely on a well designed website to generate marketing ROI for a business are coming to an end. In 2006, CNN.com announced that the Web reached a new milestone: 100 million sites. To contrast that, from January to April of 2009, the number of sites on the internet increased by 46 million. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the Web is a crowded place. So how do you stand out in the midst of the noise? Here are 4 ways to drive customers to your site and keep them coming back.

Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Site

Traditional marketing vehicles (newsprint, magazines, and stand-alone print pieces) a all becoming a thing of the past. These marketing methods are expensive and, in our rapidly changing age, print often can’t keep up. While there may be some value in print, don’t rely on it and ALWAYS feature your Web address prominently.

Internet marketing, on the other hand, is highly targeted, includes metrics and conversion tracking, provides low entry cost, allows for unmatched reach, and if done properly, can be individualized and interactive. Internet marketing and advertising includes everything from a properly built and optimized site to email marketing, online PR, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media.

Take Advantage of FREE!

Internet advertising can be a relatively inexpensive but don’t underestimate the benefit of utilizing free resources. Take PPC advertising for example. The click to impression ratio is often around 1%. So, for every 100 impressions of your ad on a site like Google, one person might click on it. If you’re like most people, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the paid listings and instead focus on the organic listings. These listings should be your #1 priority! There is no magic to getting better organic listings on a search engine (each search provider is a bit different) but there are some proven techniques that will help.

Start by learning how your customers are searching for your product. Google Trends and your website analytics account are good places to start. You need to understand the key words they’re using and what topics they’re interested in. Keep those keywords in mind as you write your content and create custom pages for the major topics related to your business. Include links within your content to other relevant pages on your site and get links to your pages from outside sources whenever possible.

Value Added Web Sites

Once you have a customer on your site, how do you keep them there? A good place to start is by giving them what they’re looking for. Organize your site so that it’s easy for a customer to locate products or learn about your services. Use headlines and organize your content so that it’s a pleasure to read. Nothing drives a customer away faster than dense, hard to read, copy.

Keep your customers coming back by adding value to their experience. If you’re an expert in your field, blog about topics of interest to your customers/clients. Include a newsletter sign-up option and send out periodic informational newsletters to drive traffic back to your site.

Engage Your Customers

Don’t underestimate the value and power of social media. Once the realm of teenagers, social media sites have seen dramatic growth in older age groups. In the past few months alone, users of Twitter older than 25 have grown by 84%. On Facebook, users older than 25 make up more than 60% of all users. Additionally, data from Nielsen Online shows that social networks are visited by 67% of the global online population and time spent on these networks is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time (PDF, Nielsen Online, March).

All of this being said, there are a lot of your loyal and potential customers/clients using social media. The power of social media lies in its ability to provide a platform for a business to listen to and engage with customers. These customers can then influence their sphere of friends to learn more about your business. To put it simply, when done right, social media can be word-of-mouth on steroids. Check out “When to be Social” to learn more about how to effectively leverage social media as a business. Link to your social media pages from your website and provide links back for customers who find you through sites like Facebook or Twitter.

In all of your marketing endeavors, don’t forget that your website is the key that ties all of your marketing efforts together!

As much as 2.5% of a typical sales database goes “bad” each month – 30% over the course of a year.  Don’t waste marketing dollars on old sales contacts. Below are 3 easy ways to stop the “bad” database woes.

Filter Right From the Start

• Filter out what looks like junk right at the start. Many have a habit of dumping entire Excel or CSV sheets of leads, accounts and contact data which hasn’t been screened before upload for junk data which may be completely unnecessary.

Fix It Early

• Do look for missing data elements like a missing phone number or missing zip code in the address, preferably before uploading the data or at least while entering an individual record. Appending missing data at an earlier stage when there are fewer records to handle is a lot easier than having to go through the entire database and then look for what’s missing.

Contact the contacts

• Send regular audit emails or direct mail to your contacts and track any returns. Clean them from you database. Don’t ignore them.

Do this and save your marketing budget by reducing wasted printing, postage, email service charges, and more!

It’s that time of year….our YMCA clients are clamoring to develop their annual campaign materials.  As a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, the YMCA depends deeply on community donorship to help fund important programs that help families.

Above, is the YMCA of Columbia’s annual campaign, named “Pass It On.”  This campaign brochure includes some important details of the campaign such as:

• Goals of the campaign
• Number of families helped in the community
• A special case study of a family helped
• Individual examples of what donor money will do
• Past donors who have helped

Supporting email campaigns, volunteer guides, and other collateral will continue the brand.  See more examples of YMCA marketing in our portfolio.

We believe in the power of social media. The ability to develop relationships with potential customers and loyal fans is a great way to generate positive word of mouth and user experience. Is social media the right tool for every business?

The use of social media as a B2B and small to medium sized business communication tool has skyrocketed globally, but many in the USA haven’t caught on to the wave. According to a recent Citibank survey 76% haven’t found ROI through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These sites are great tools to grow a businesses, but without education about how to leverage them, business owners have an easier time using traditional strategies. In a down economy, many will stick with what they’ve seen work in the past (website, email marketing, online advertising, etc).

Is social media the silver bullet that will grow our business when all else fails? No, but as part of a larger marketing strategy, social media can be a powerful tool. It’s all about how you leverage it. Social media is all about conversation. Talk about what you’re good at and listen to the needs of your customers. Get rid of the stereotype that social media is all about egocentric teens. Talk about your latest PR release or promotion. Maintain links with your suppliers and provide personal/rapid customer service. Listen for the latest trends in your market and see what your competitors are doing. It’s all about the dialogue. Be honest, stay on message, be an expert, stay professional, and don’t DON’T let your account go dormant.

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we love working with YMCA’s. We’re looking forward to working with Gaston County Family YMCA on their publications and web presence. Gaston YMCA is a pro at serving their community, providing positive role models, and providing creative opportunities and activities where they can serve the Gaston community and the community can serve one another.

Thanks to this great YMCA, 1 in 7 residents of Gaston county are reached through programs or as members. Community youth and families have the opportunity to experience the YMCA mission which is to “put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy a spirit, mind and body for all.”