Silver Creative Group

Tuesday Tip of the Week # 18 – Be Bold (and Smart) With Your Brand

Sam — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:58:20 +0000

In order to attract new customers, followers, and fans try something a little outside of the brand’s comfort zone. A slightly unorthodox marketing approach can open up new channels for reaching consumers and reinvigorate the overall brand. The key is to not fall victim to the “latest and greatest” fad. Just because everyone is buzzing about a new marketing strategy or technology platform, doesn’t mean it makes sense for you brand to jump on the bandwagon. Before you devote the time, energy and money, evaluate your marketing strategy and identify your objectives. If your best answer is, “everyone else is doing it,” rather than “this is a smart approach for my brand,” then it probably doesn’t make sense.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #17 – Content is King…and Queen…and All-Powerful

Sam — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:12:01 +0000

Mine whatever resources you can to find interesting original content. If needed, look beyond the product and dig deeper to uncover a compelling story. There are always interesting tidbits waiting to be discovered, even if what you’re selling isn’t very glamorous. Perhaps the product is being utilized in unintended ways to great effect, or one of employees has an amazing history to tell. Originality creates a facet of your brand that people want to learn about and, more importantly, share. The benefits of creating fresh content extend beyond social networks and boosting search engine results; the brand now has a personality that is much easier to relate to than a faceless company or organization.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #16 – Shopping Cart Abandonment Issues

paul zullo — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:45:32 +0000

Due to shipping costs, uncertainty, product price or myriad other reasons, the average shopping cart abandonment rate for an ecommerce site is well over 70%. It’s an alarmingly high number considering the context: a customer finished browsing your online store, selected items, and proceeded all the way to checkout before giving up. There are a number of ways to convince those consumers to finish the purchase at a later time. We have more than a few clients on BigCommerce’s software package. They offer a service called Abandoned Cart Saver. Now you can automatically send out a coupon code to entice the customer to come back. Research reports show that you can expect around 15% of abandon carts to be recovered using email marketing automation. Your average order value is will determine if this is a worthwhile service, but we have a feeling that the increase in sales will make sense for most.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #15 – Avoid Click-Through Claptrap

Abby — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:17:09 +0000

Despite what you may have heard, click-through rates are not the end-all, be-all metric for determining the success of display campaigns. Since the dawn of the digital age, brands and agencies have been obsessing over this simple but useless measurement. So when it comes to tracking and optimizing digital campaigns, what are the metrics we should be measuring? The truth is, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. The question to ask yourself is: What behavior do we want to elicit from the consumer? Engagement is the key, and tracking it for optimization is the challenge.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #14 – Logo Logic

Donna — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:09:42 +0000

Although the temptation to experiment when designing a logo is strong, the smart move is to simplify the creative process and nail down the foundation first. Before driving yourself crazy trying a multitude of designs, see how your logo looks at its smallest size and in grayscale or black and white. Only after it knocks your socks off at this stage is it time to start playing with color schemes. By putting the logo up to this little test, you’ll know that it will shine even more in color.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #13 – The End Goal of Social Media

paul zullo — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:39:37 +0000

Gaining fans and followers on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is an essential business tactics, but its also a bit short-sighted. The key is to look beyond building up a sizable audience on social networks and determine the next actionable step. Thinking long term, you don’t want to have to always use those other sites to communicate with your customers, even if they are great for conversational connections. You want to migrate fans over to your email database where you know you own the name and can reach out to them anytime, in a direct manner without having to leverage social media.

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UConn CITI Website Blasts Off

Abby — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:37:05 +0000

After a year of planning, design and development, we are very proud to unveil the brand new Connecticut Information Technology Institute (CITI) website. Our design and programming teams have set the bar high over the course of this project, creating a visually appealing site with functionality that is befitting of one of the leading IT and project management schools in the region.

You can read news more about the website launch here.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #12 – Always Be Tracking, or Why Analytics Will Help Your Business

Sam — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:52:49 +0000

Introduce new metrics into your business by tracking your brand’s online presence. With so many different options out there, starting with Google Analytics and funneling down to social media monitoring, not watching how customers are engaging with your brand is ignoring

valuable data that could be used to optimize the business’ online performance. Google Analytics is a free solution, and many of the social media tracking services

also have complimentary offerings (see TwitterCounter, Twitonomy, and Twenty Feet) although you often get what you pay for with these freebies. Paid options like Marketing Cloud (formerly Radian6) and Vocus Social provide more robust monitoring software.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #11 – Stay Creative With These Design Resources

Jonathan — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:42:42 +0000

The famous quote by Picasso – “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” – applies to the world of graphic design just as it does in fine arts. Be inspired by all the outstanding work being done, and feel free to borrow a concept from time to time to kickstart your own creativity. Luckily, there are many helpful online design resources out there to learn, and occasionally glean, from. Here are a few of the most stimulating; check back frequently to stay ahead of what’s popular in design.

Designing a website? You’ll want to keep awwwards.com bookmarked.

Font-heads need to be checking friendsoftype.com often.

For top packaging design, thedieline.com is a can’t-miss site.

Finally, kuler.adobe.com is the spot for finding the perfect color scheme.

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Tuesday Tip of the Week #10 – Determining the Right Message for the Right Network

Abby — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:30:16 +0000

All social networks are not created equal. Each social network has it’s own idiosyncrasies and requires a unique approach when sharing content. This doesn’t mean you can’t share the same news article on multiple channels, however it is not sufficient to solely link your Facebook page to your Twitter feed and call it a day. You must first understand the ways in which users engage with each social network and tailor your message accordingly. If you’re posting on Twitter your message must be concise and to the point. Be sure to include relevant hashtags and twitter handles. On Facebook, users are more likely to interact with rich content like photos, videos and links. Also, consider the demographics of your audience on each social network. You can utilize free tools like Facebook Insights or Followerwonk to obtain this data.

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