With Strike I recently launched a new, low-cost marketing campaign that has utilised both a glossy, personalised print and a unique matching micro site. This combination of media has given Strike the ability to finely target a specific audience and measure in great detail the number of responses and amount of interest the campaign generates.

We’ve developed a system which allows us to generate personalised duplicates of the same micro site and it has given us a real advantage when we launch our direct mail campaigns.

How does it work?

The most significant ‘call to action’ within our direct mail campaign is a personalised web address, unique to the recipient, i.e. “Go to www.strikedesigns.co.uk/{recipient’s-name} to find out more”.

The fact that this web address has the company or recipient’s name within it has proven to really catch the reader’s attention and rouses intrigue. The contact is thinking ‘what have they published online about me or my company?’ which makes them want to visit the site.

This intrigue is the first step of our measurement: Brilliant! The direct mail campaign has grabbed their attention and we know the contact has visited their personal space on our site because we receive an automated email to let us know, great first step!

The next level of measurement, to help us establish the specific interests of our new visitor and the services that may benefit them, is to track any further pages they visit on our site.

Since we already have the visitor’s contact name, and phone number in our database, we can then follow this up with a call. We have a good idea now of their specific interests, so we have a better conversion rate and we save a lot of time, for us and the new client!

What other mixed media marketing methods have you used, how successful have they been? Tell me more, or if you would like to find out further information with regard to implementing this method for your own business please get in contact.

Today, after a month of voting, SmokinSigs finally has a Logo decided on by our prospective users.  The winning logo is below and the SmokinSigs website will be updated in the next couple of days.

We are still asking that people guess what SmokinSigs does…. bit weird announcing a new webapp and asking people to suggest what it may do, but we wanted to start this app off with a twist and really get users involved from the get go, by doing this it has also helped stem ideas, those users who may not of got it exactly right have come up with other ideas for the app that we may well use in the future.

So an unusual method to launch this app by asking people to 1. choose the logo and 2. guess what the app does. But it’s really proved beneficial as it provides buy-in and feedback from the get go…

To stay updated with what SmokinSigs is doing you can follow us on twitter here and join our facebook page

Please tell your friends about this new webapp and competition and if you have any comments about what we’re doing add them in the comments below…. especially to do with the design of the new logo and our method of communications so far.

Out with the old.

Why out with the old? For a few reasons really, I felt people weren’t really “getting” the message behind my old logo, peoples comments were “too goth” when actually it was representing a tattoo. A tattoo being very strong self expression and when a brand has managed to get people to voluntarily tattoo their brand onto a persons body, I feel that any brand must of really succeeded as the person has very strong emotional ties to the brand. I play basketball on a regular basis for the Windsor Warriors and the amount of players that have a Nike tick or (Micheal) Jordan logo tattooed on their bodies is quite outstanding. Anyway people were not getting the connotations behind my tattoo so time to move on, the second reason was that my website needed a refresh (which I’m currently undergoing) and the natural place to start for me was a new logo, to get a feel for where my new site was going.

Initial thought process

This was very much as self branding, self promotion process and I really wanted to focus my design on my interests in my life. So what are the interests in my life?

Geekery, which covers social media, computing and gadgets

Business, I really enjoy applying my skill sets to solve business needs particularly in the marketing environment

Basketball, as I’ve already mentioned

Design, has been passion of mine from a very early age

Music, have always had a keen interest in music, especially funky hiphop, motown, blues funk and soul (MOBO) although I do not souly listen to this type of music and in my younger years enjoyed DJ’ing with friends such a DJ Tigerstyle 3xWorld Champ.

Influences

My influence came from supreme beings clothing label spin off geek (p.s. if you know anywhere I can buy this stuff anymore send me link) along with @imjustcreative latest logo set…I loved the way he had created lots of different logos for the same brand to represent different connotations of his services.

So I set to the design and had a pretty clear idea where I was  going with it. Below was my first initial drawing, admittedly I’m not the best artist in the world but it really good to get my ideas down on paper quickly which cements the idea for me and provide clear direction.

Initial Design

So after creating my initial design I decided to pas it round to a few peers and clients to get their feedback, the response was pretty succinct loving the new look, as the old logo is a little “goth”, but really not sure abut the rainbow. The rainbow was there to portray radio signals (like a RSS icon) and the fact that I broadcast information on a regular basis, this was not getting across as the comments I was getting back were things like “the rainbow looks a bit playmobil” at this stage I had not chosen my final type face for the logo either.

Here are some of the other comments:

I like it – shows you work with all types of businesses, looks trendy but serious, & it’s a bit different…

I prefer your new idea logo, thought the present one looked a bit goth : )  Not sure about about the rainbow behind the people, otherwise looks great.

I think it’s so important to get feedback on your work as much as possible and with discussions over the phone, IM and twitter I received some great feedback from people, and also by contacting my clients I have also managed to pick up some additional work… communicate communicate communicate.

Finalising

So after all this feedback and a few more tweaks, removing the rainbow and choosing a better typeface I was complete and very happy with the final design! I was also really taken back by the amount of positive feedback I received from twitter facebook and email.

Here’s some of it

One comment was made that “it may help if you have strap line with the logo” so will be implementing that in due course, along with my BrandNew web site so……watch this space!!

If you have any comments or feedback on this article I’d love to hear what you have to say please comment below this post aslo don’t forget to share the post in your social networks using the share option below.

The Presentation has audio which last approximately 30mins …. so turn those speakers up!! Remember you can follow me on Twitter @brandjoe or email me joe [at] brandjoe [dot] com or contact me direct from the site here

Whether you have a new website or one you’ve had for a while, to gain more visitors and encourage repeat visits you will need to regularly promote and update it in order to build your audience, generate leads and ideally sales.

This month I will highlight some methods you can implement to gain a larger audience for your site:

Announce your site updates, latest news and special offers with the Magma newsletter engine by Strike Designs

(sorry big plug there)

When you launch a new site or every time you make a noteworthy change, add a new offer, product or feature to your site, it is recommended that you email a relevant list of contacts informing them of the benefits of visiting your site.

You could generate an opt-in subscription to an email newsletter through your site and use this to promote your new additions and special offers. There are plenty of services out there that will provide this functionality including our Magma Email Newsletter Engine.

Make your site search engine friendly

So I covered how to get the most from search engines previously, but here’s a quick recap.

To ensure you are getting the highest possible, natural placement within search engine results:

* Use intelligent titles and meta information.
* Offer great content, keeping your desired target audience in mind.
* Acquire high quality links (more about this below).
* Ensure the code that your site is built from is optimised and accessible to search engine spiders.
* Submit site maps (specifically to Google).
* Keep content fresh and updated regularly.

Ensuring your site is at its best in terms of search engine placement and visibility will go a long way to keeping your traffic levels up and if it’s done well, your visitors will closely match your ideal target audience.

Link exchanges

Another method to boost your search engine ranking, promote your site and increase traffic is to link exchange with other businesses. Ideally, any company you link exchange with will dedicate a whole page to your site, containing high quality keywords and phrases relevant to your business.

The sites you exchange links with should also compliment your business. For example if you’re a wedding planner you could source link exchange partners that sell wedding cakes, jewellery, flowers, etc. By doing this, not only will you generate more quality traffic coming from your link exchange partners but your website will become a valuable resource for your visitors, providing them with relevant information they need and encouraging them to return regularly.

Email signatures and stationery

All emails you send out should have an email signature or be contained within a well designed stationery template that can be used to publicise your business and promote your company identity. Your email signatures and stationery should contain your company’s brand elements, such as your logo, colour scheming and key company messages. Also include all the available details of contacting you, including your website address, your name, phone and fax numbers, addresses, etc.

It’s just as important to ensure you promote your website off-line. Places to think about including your site’s address include:

* Letterheads,
* business cards,
* flyers,
* brochures and catalogues,
* labels and packaging,
* merchandise bags,
* invoices and compliment slips,
* fax headers,
* company vehicles or staff uniforms / name badges,
* display units, posters and banners.

You can track the success of your off-line links by using addresses unique to your marketing materials and business stationery (ie: www.yourdomain.com/promo ) and then use website analysis tools such as Google analytics to monitor the popularity of these pages.

Publish yourself and your business online with blogs

Blogs provide a great way for you to communicate with your customers, directly on a regular basis and help you portray yourself and/or your company as experts in your field.

Publish relevant information in your blog such as articles, media releases, industry news, surveys, etc. As well as promoting your site, your blog can help you gain feedback from your customers. Creating a blog, especially on a separate domain will also help you increase your search engine rankings (providing you provide plenty of quality link backs to your site and your blog’s content is directly relevant to the page you are linking it to).

There are plenty of free options for setting up and maintaining your blog. One of our favourites is Wordpress. Practising what we preach we will shortly be launching our own blog, so watch this space!

Other methods you may consider for publishing yourself online are on social networks such as myspace, facebook and twitter, or there are other options such as creating TV shows via youtube, podcasts or slideshows at slideshare.net. Remember to ensure you have links back to your site from these pages.