3 Steps to Creating an Effective Logo Design

Anyone can create a great logo, not everyone can create an effective logo. Hiring a graphic designer to create a logo is like hiring a sculptor to paint a portrait. Worse, buying one of the logo creation programs is equally as dangerous. A logo requires more than creating a Vector file, or an icon.

Logo Design and File Type

Not every logo can be resized, and look equally good on a business card, in an advertisement, or on a website. Many logos lose their impact when switched from print’s CMYK color mode to the web’s RGB profile, or even when converted to black and white.

While working at an ad agency - designers learn to create logos that can be used on thousands of different promotional items. They know the limitations, and expectations of the logo. The ad agency is where professional designers learn to create a logo that works everywhere. There is a reason why all Fortune 500 companies follow the same rules, and industry standards.

Branding

A logo design is the foundation of Branding. A good logo looks just as good as an avatar, as it does on a business card. It should become the company’s ID. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is by making a logo that is several layers, and then pulling it apart.

The vital importance to branding is to be consistent. Once selected, the colors should stay consistent. A set of rules should be developed to ensure the logo is always used correctly.

Internet Marketing

A logo needs to touch an emotional element in the shopper. Many DIY marketers create designs and logos that look good to them without taking into consideration several important facts:

• They are not buying their product
• They are not their consumer/client
• They rarely know who buys their product, or why

Text Treatment

The Treatment of the font is arguably the most important element. The color, font, size, shading, and Kerning all are part of the treatment. Sans Serif fonts offer more of a casual look, while serif fonts are more stoic. The ‘message’ must be carried through the entire logo. The icon connects to the brand promise.

A logo designer can create an effective logo when they understand the client’s business, the consumers, and end-users. The quick way to a powerful logo is hiring someone who already understands these elements.

Three Common Mistakes: Internet Business Survival

Most business owners know the basics of marketing on the Internet. Others know just enough to be a danger to their business. Not every aspect of marketing can be learned by reading free articles online. Once a business owner understands this, they are ready to start their own Do-It-Yourself marketing campaign.
When a business owner understands that their knowledge of marketing is ‘thin’ then they can implement the 10 secrets to internet Business Survival.

#1 – Marketing on the Internet Does Not Follow the Rules

No business owner discounts the importance of a professionally designed logo on their business card. A professional logo is designed to ‘speak’ to a target demographic, a particular audience.

Many Internet business owners make the mistake of believing that people shopping on the internet are ‘sold’ differently than in the brick-and-mortar world. Shopping behavior on the Internet follows the same trends as in the real world. Business owners need to focus on branding their business.

Branding requires the same theories on the Net, and off, because people buy the same way. Typically, the following rule

• The stores in the mall outlets receive the most sales.
• The niche stores survive longer than the stores who feet everyone.
• Branding a store increases the Return on InvestmentStores that target a narrow target market have a higher conversion rate
• Typically, 20% of all profits are reinvested in advertising, for a business to remain strong.

#2 – I Know How to Market Online

There are several ways to learn online marketing and advertising. Everyone knows the cliché phrases and basic rules.

Web Content Rules
Link building
High Page Rank
Article Marketing
Good Coding
Google luv

Many DIY internet marketers can write a paper or two on any of these subjects. What they want to remember is that ‘if it is easy – then everyone would do it.’ Business owners only need to be in the forums for a few days to hear people speaking on authority on subjects they know nothing about. Everyone knows the terms, few people understand the theory that makes them work.

If internet Marketing was ‘that easy’ then the top Search Engine Results Positions (SERPs) would be dominated by small webmasters who spend all their time talking on the web. Webmasters need to understand that most of the ‘free’ information is 2– 3 years out of date.
Example, Many webmasters still feel that using high keyword density is important. However, a couple years ago the search engines changed the rules.

#3 – Search Engines Do Not Think

When marketing to search engines webmasters need to realize that search engines see all words as a math calculation. The search engines cannot read. They really do not care about the way letters are strung together. And, they often get it wrong.These intangibles to marketing destroy an internet marketing campaign:

Marketing rules do not change when selling on the Internet

Hire the pros, or take the courses. Good enough is not good enough when it comes to reaching the top of the SERPs.
The only way to the top of the SERPs is to do it the Search Engine Way – no matter how illogical/stupid it sounds.

Don’t Just Be Smart – Look Smart

Any Internet based business can take their website to the next level and give it the same tools as the expensive websites. I compiled a few tools that I’ve found effective to help business owners create a web presence that mimics the professionally made ones.

Even a professional who has solid creative and marketing expertise can waste time if their web platform lacks power. Several third-party tools are designed to help small business owners build a viable internet and print marketing campaign.

Constant Contact

This service helps small business build an email marketing campaign. The program uses online surveys to help small business build affordable marketing lists, based on their clients and consumers, not old email lists.

Quantum Digital

Quantum Digital offers one of the most cost effective method of managing all your marketing needs, from direct mail, to on demand printing, and emarketing. The cost of $9.95 a month is to access their services and manage your marketing campaign with their help.

InfoUSA.com

This company is a great place to create a mailing or telemarketing list. Their transparency is good. They will let you build a list, and see the price before signing up, but only if you add your information to their list. The cost is about $.11 cents per name, based on our test.

Spotrunner

This service will help business start an internet or television marketing campaign. There are webinars, and assistance to help small business’ start a serious local or national marketing campaign.

AdReady

This network is Spotrunner, but for flash/web internet ads.   They offer a full dashboard to track the click through rates, and costs. They have ‘templates’ to let you create your own professional style ad.

Facebook

Facebook advertising has proven for some businesses to be more effective than PPC, or search engine optimization. The cost is less than Pay Per Click, and lets business owners pre-sell their clients.

These methods of advertising will help business owners start advertising online, in print, and on television before they have a large advertising budget.

Basics of the Buyer to Conversion Ratio

The success of an online business is directly related to the website’s ability to convert web surfers into online shoppers. It with a typical click-through ratio of 1%, and Google doubling their adWord campaign, optimizing conversion has become as important as optimizing for the web.

Once a website attracts that coveted 1% click through, retailers learn the truth about online sales. Most web surfers take three visits before they make the decision to buy. There are very few impulse buyers on the web. However, before you quit, I have some statistics to share:

It took the:

1. Telephone 38 years to reach 50 million users
2. Television 13 years to reach 50 million users
3. Internet 4 years to reach 50 million users

This behavior didn’t start on the Internet. It started with the creation of malls and the lure of ‘something better’ down the hall. In today’s eMarketing consumer, the consumer has a value. Regular customers in the system cost less money to convert than new visitors.

How Online Buyers Convert

The typical eCommerce merchant will see the same visitor return two or three times, hovering around the same items each time. Ultimately, someone will get the sale. Some of the customers you pre-sold will go to other vendors. Their pre-sold visitors will come to yours.

The gurus will tell you that a website can increase their chances of retaining the conversion. Statistics claim that 87% of publishers are unsatisfied with their conversion rates. However, 60% do nothing about it. The rest believe that, if their first effort at e-tailing fails, it is the fault of the web designer, SEO pro, or web host.

Three Stages of Shopping online:

1. Flitting Around the Internet looking for free information and tools.
2. Realizing that DIY costs, or realizing they need a product.
3. Prowling the web looking for the ‘right’ product.

This is why many e-tailers create newsletters, mailing lists, forums, podcasts, free downloads, and chats to give visitors a reason to return.

Do not give up. UK shoppers spent 26 million on the Internet in the six weeks before

Tips to Improve Your Conversion

One way to improve your conversion is to mimic the colors, ad design, and ad styles that mimic those seen on television and print media. Familiarity breeds credibility.

A DIY website will not increase conversions. Many eCommerce businesses need to start with the DIY, but the first purchase should be a website made by a professional in advertising or marketing. They know the colors and text that will convert buyers. A SEO may be able to design a site that ‘speaks’ to the search engines, but it takes an advertiser who understands ‘buyer behavior trends’ to create a website which focuses on conversions.

Another way is to take part in a community frequented by shoppers, not other sellers. This is the #1 mistake most eCommerce business owners make, preaching to the crowd. These communities decrease start-up and increase conversions by keeping you in front of your consumer, no matter how many times they surf the net.

In the end, conversions are just a numbers game. Even the worst designed website can generate sales if they receive enough traffic.

7 Ways to Improve Ad Design

I recently gave a lecture with a colleague Eric Stucki, on Direct and Interactive, The Creative Process. The topic discussed the impact of Direct Response Marketing. The success often lies in the ad design.

A few aspects of direct marketing that most business owners overlook include the ad design, message, theoffer, and testing the results and consumer impact. There are several parts of an advertisement. Each one can have a dramatic impact to a marketing campaign’s success.

• Copy
• Art
• Ad Design
• Price Point
• Button format
• Link font color
• Long vs short
• Trail term
• Billing term
• Payment options
• Benefit order

One trick is to offer something big, with something very small, i.e. In the lecture we talked about offering 50% discount, with a $10 freebie. Once you have an idea that the following tips for ‘ad design’ are not magic formulas, then they can be used to generate a good marketing campaign.

1. Ugly works best
2. Long copy is better than short
3. One word or color can make a dramatic difference
4. Use paragraphs vs. bulleted copy
5. People click links, not pictures
6. Tell people what to do
7. Stay away from multiple page flows.

When marketing online, a 2% response rate is good. This does not reflect sales, just the response to the advertisement. This may seem low, but it is statistically on par, or much higher, than other marketing medium.

The first step is to determine who you are marketing to. This is not as difficult as you may think. Just look for people who have bought, or buy, your product. Look for how the competition is already selling to them.

Create a few samples. Do not expect your first campaign to work perfectly. It takes time to create and perfect a campaign. A 2% response will require about 10000 page views per test. However, finding that one ad creates a 2% response rate is not enough. It is important to experiment with different ads to see what works best.  One ad may result in 10% response, but the people who respond may not be ready to buy. A group of ads may result in a 2% response rate for each, but the actual ‘conversion to buy’ ratios may vary greatly.

This is a brief look at creating an online marketing campaign. Trial and error, and perseverance, will help most business owners create their own direct marketing campaign.

 

The Power of Search

I recently talked to someone who enjoyed the lecture “Search and Society” from Berkly’s online lecture series by Marti Hearst. It is comforting to know that even the big companies are as terrified of search as DIY webmasters are.

Search is an incredibly valuable tool. It isn’t surprising that a ‘real world’ advertising agency became the biggest online advertising company, Google. The power of search lies in the fact that it is ‘possible’ to track data. This is the basis of Web 3.0’s data mining-toolbars and PC based widgets.

The next generation of search and page rank will give the user the power they tried to usurp under Web 2.0.  In Web 3.0, everything done will be recorded, in theory.

Search Engine Search

One of the first cases of tracking people on the web was born in the Google Empire, 2002, with the introduction of paid search, also called Sponsored search. Google matched paid advertisements with the user’s search. Until then, the search engines were paid when a banner was displayed. Google changed the rules and only charged advertisers when users clicked the link.

This was the first expression of the ‘database of intention.’ This is only the first instance of the evolution of the ‘telling what we want’ as opposed to being told what to view.

The concept of society will have a major impact on how Web 3.0 will work. There was no privacy in the old world. We were farmers who stayed in one place for generations. We’ve built a public world on cyberspace.

The web has changed the economy of information. Information that was once ‘private’ will become worldwide news once the page is indexed. This will become part of the search databases, and in turn, part of the PPC schematics.

This type of search influence in the real world is already seen in the real world. Apply for a job and the PR representative will Google your name. This brings up a whole new aspect. “Who you are in the Index is who you are in the real world.”

This can be quite devastating, as today’s’ search is not sophisticated enough to manage the task.  One professional Googled her name to find out that someone else with the same name, and year of birth, had been charged with animal cruelty, violence, and landed in jail. This individual would not be called back for a second job interview, despite the fact that that Google mixed up the records of four different people in the search.

Consumer Search

Do you think that everyone uses search engines to find a website, product, or service? Think again. A growing number of people are using Social Networks and communities to build their searches.  A growing number of people are using the search bar at Stumbleupon.com, myspace.com, and facebook.com. They are looking for their friend’s recommendations, not the search engine’s recommendations.

This raises the question of whether webmasters should be focusing on link building campaigns, or writing reviews that can get posted to Stumbleupon.com. This is compounded when webmasters look at Facebook advertising as an alternative to Google’s Adwords.  Will the conversion rate vary? It is too soon to say.

Another question put on the floor by SEM professionals is whether businesses should hire 5 – 10 people to manage lenses, forum posting, and blogs, instead of placing banner ads.     It may take a couple years to figure out the best advertising methods for the next generation of search. The only thing that is certain, is search will continue to be the foundation of advertising for the next few years.