3 Tips for Renovating your Web Presence for Less than $500
As the sun is finally starting to come out in Vancouver after many months of rain, it seems that many people’s minds are turning to the proverbial late Spring / early Summer activity: the home renovation. I admit that I too have been caught up in the frenzy, and have of late been covered in a great deal of paint, primer, dust, and blisters (and some new manly callouses to go with the pads of toughened finger flesh that serve me as a guitar picker).
But I’m looking forward to the completion of the job; a clean and happy home that incorporates the best of the old, with new innovations and inspirations. And that’s really why you renovate, isn’t it? Rather than just buying something new, you disrupt the comfy piles of detritus for a fresh start that doesn’t get rid of the old things that work. It’s a start that incorporates what is still useful and comfortable about the old, with the clean, fresh and exciting of the new.
Such as it is with our homes, sometimes our online presence can use a freshening up. You don’t necessarily have to get rid of the old things that work, but tighten the screws, slap on a fresh coat of CSS, and re-caulk the sidebar widgets … ok, I’m getting a bit carried away with the metaphor, but you get what I’m saying.
So, here are three ways to help you give your website a boost without busting your marketing budget:
Read more…
Marketing to Marketers 101 – Six tips for presenting to marketers
Last week the RewardStream marketing team attended BCAMA’s Vision 2011 Conference , an annual marketing conference presented by the BC Chapter of the American Marketing Association. The theme of this year’s conference was around community building and a host of heavy hitters in the industry were brought in to speak. The quality of the speakers was very high, which was not surprising, but I was struck by the diverse styles of presentation and narrative. For the most part all of the talks were extremely successful in one way or another, and it led me to think about what makes a successful presentation. In particular, what makes a successful presentation to a room full of marketers?
As we all know, and love to remind ourselves, marketers are a bit of a breed apart. We’re smart, media savvy, love shiny, pretty things, and are generally interested in people and communication to varying degrees. We like to understand how systems work; systems of people, systems of business, systems of psychology and sociology and how those systems can be analyzed and distilled from the vapor of nuance and opinion to the concrete reality of actions and plans. We understand the value of entertainment in marketing. There are different sub groups of marketers for sure – writers (the folks sitting in groups of two or three against the wall making hushed comments or tweeting incessantly), designers (laughing just a little bit louder than everyone else and dressed not so “businessy”), quantitative marketers (pouring over spreadsheets, Google analytics and ROI), but we all have one thing in common … we love things that are cool. Cool gear, cool clothes (whatever style you prefer), cool copy, cools ads and cool technology.
So what makes a presentation cool enough to keep a marketer sitting still for 40 minutes? Continue reading to discover what we learned:
Review: Brains on Fire
From the moment I picked up “Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements” at my local Chapters, I was hooked. The name alone spoke volumes to me. First of all, I am a marketer for a technology firm that develops some really cutting edge ways to help marketers engage with customers (and customers with each other), so I need to keep ahead on the latest trends. Word of mouth marketing is super trendy right now, so of course I want to know more. Secondly, I think that the nature of command and control marketing needs to change, so the idea of “igniting” movements is intriguing to me. Finally, I really liked the cover art. Hey, I’m a designer; I’m allowed to make purchases just because the packaging is cool.
A bit of the back story: Brains on Fire (BoF) is not just a book, but an advertising agency out of Greenville, South Carolina. To see how they describe themselves, here’s the meta-description from their website source code (yep, I’m a nerd as well as a marketer and designer):
“Brains on Fire helps organizations build movements. Born out of the bond between
word of mouth marketing and identity development, we are devoted to helping organizations
discover and sustain excitement about who they are and why they exist.”
“Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements” is sort of a set of uber-case studies, detailing ten word-of-mouth marketing “lessons” illustrated with examples from past BoF movements.
After reading the introduction I knew these guys were going to be right up my alley. What the authors really seem to realize is that marketing is about people and relationships, not just companies talking about how great they are. We’ve all heard it a million times – marketing and advertising are everywhere, blah, blah. The message itself has become almost as meaningless as the advertising it refers to, it is just the background noise of our technology driven, consumer age. So, rather than harping about the problem, the Brains on Fire folks have come up with some really interesting ways to break from convention and make marketing more about connecting people to each other and the things that are meaningful to them.