Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

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Facebook vs. your Brand Site

Monday, August 23rd, 2010 by David Morgan

400 million…500 million…..and still growing. Whether you “like” it (pun intended) or not—Facebook is dominant in helping companies build relationships with their clients. Look at the chart in the article below (thanks to AD Age…)—and with the likes of Starbucks having 12.7 million fans, and growing at almost 79,000 a DAY-you can’t help but consider facebook as a dominant player for customer relationship marketing.

The article in Ad Age today (http://bit.ly/aHknVx) indicated that most of these brands while gaining popularity with their fans on Facebook were losing audience on their web site. But look closer—each of these facebook “pages” are consumer products. And each is driven by a contest, sweepstakes, free offer, etc. Facebook is a great channel for customer engagement—but don’t lose sight of an integrated campaign. While most of the sites in the top ten mentioned above lost web fans, there still is room for the web site in a marketing campaign.

Walgreens, while building a Facebook fan base of more than 500,000, has seen no dropoff in traffic, which hit 6.7 million in July. Within Facebook, Walgreens is finding what works best are fairly frequent short updates, often ones that involve posing a question that prompts a response. Sites with e-commerce are using Facebook as an integrated campaign tactic-driving the consumer to the other channel—and keeping them engaged.

The moral of this story? I’d say don’t keep all your marketing eggs in one basket. Facebook is a force to be reckoned with…to be sure-but keep it in perspective of your overall strategy. Keep the customer connected with you, using whatever tactic is best for them.
Call us at Force 5 if you’d like some assistance. We’re here to help!

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Is Your Website Customer-Centric?

Friday, May 21st, 2010 by John Jambor

In case you haven’t noticed the web is changing. There is a huge movement underway toward clean, simple, user friendly websites that promote productivity and, consumer interaction. The average consumer doesn’t care how creative a design team you have or, how technically advanced your development team is. They want information. Honest, peer driven information.

Whether a potential customer is at your site to buy a product, comment on your organization, read reviews, download a podcast or, read your latest blog entry, it’s your job to keep them interested and coming back. This is what customer-centric website design is all about.

So what is a customer-centric website?

Simple.  A customer-centric website focuses on your customers and what they want. Today’s online consumer is not interested in your company, products or services – they are interested in themselves. A customer-centric websites is structured so the customer can easily find what they want or get answers to their questions. By focusing your website on customer benefits and, ensuring a unique user experience, you will not only increase loyalty you’ll generate the much coveted word-of-mouth advertising; both key drivers of online sales.

There are a few basic steps you can take to get started on the road to a customer-centric website
• Clearly define your product or service and how customers will benefit from it
• Make sure your contact information is never more than a click away
• Clearly organized and easily navigable site content
• Place links in consistent locations and include them on every page
• Review your content for spelling and grammar mistakes
• Allow customer feedback on products, services and the site
• Make it easy for customers to get what they want
• Ask customers for a bare minimum of information to register or sign up
• Include in-depth, well written FAQ’s
• Make it easy for a customer to get support

A successful customer-centric website is created by meeting customers’ needs better than anyone else. If you focus every aspect of your website on meeting your customers’ needs you’re much more likely to remain a preferred provider. Remember, your customer is your best source of advertising. Give them what they want and they will tell the world.

Don’t get left behind.  Take the next step toward a true customer-centric website. Contact Force 5 today at 574-234-2060 or info@discoverforce5.com.

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Its Springtime! – Time to dust off that Brand.

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 by David Morgan

With spring time comes spring cleaning. Dusting off the shelves, cleaning out the garage (still need to do that!…), and just a general wash down and clean up – it’s work, but it really feels good when you are all done!

Spring is a great time of year. Finally, FINALLY, the color green returns, flowers sprout, and everyone has a little more spring in their step as the sun gradually warms up the world.

So how about spring cleaning your brand? In the winter of 09, (actually all last year) many companies “hunkered down” just to make it through the recession. Amidst the layoffs and reduced sales, marketing and promotional activities also took a hit. Even though studies have shown that those who kept up their marketing activities in bad times come out of recessionary periods earlier and faster than those who didn’t –many companies just couldn’t do what they needed to do in regards to Brand building and marketing.

Now’s the time to get started.

Your brand is you life blood, it’s who you are—the soul of your company. EVERY marketing tactic, whether it’s a web site, a business card, or how you answer the phone is part of your brand.

Dusting off your Brand-

Let’s look at some basics to get you started this spring. We ask the question of our clients—Who are you, What do you do, and Why does it matter? These questions seem simple enough—but sometimes hard to answer—especially that last one.
You’ve heard the phrase “elevator speech”. That’s when someone says “Tell me about your company” when at a party, a trade show, or at lunch—or yeah, on the elevator. Do you have a concise statement that can answer all three questions? Do some work this spring on your elevator speech. The process of thinking through this is invaluable. After the elevator speech, you might be asked—“Wow, tell me more…” That’s when you might want to tell your back story…

Back Story-

I really like this concept. Every Brand should have a Back Story. Basically, the premise is that every brand has a story—a story of how they got started, why they do what they do…. Brands don’t start at launch, they’ve been around awhile, and they have a story. And though a brand’s franchise is an important statement that tells us who the brand is, it doesn’t tell how the brand was born, or why it came to be. That’s why every brand needs a back story. Or else, why should anyone trust that brand? After analyzing a few brands’ websites and history, it was easy to see the ingredients in a great brand story: information delivered straight from the source and authentic. With authenticity comes transparency and credibility. The voice of the back story – whether that’s the company president or the employees also lends itself to credibility.

Look at these Stories:
One of my favorite companies is Kashi. Great marketing. Their story is told from both their marketing team and their product developers, inviting consumers to “meet us” on their website. Did you know they only have 70 employees?
Another one is Ocean Spray. Their story is told by a collective of three cranberry growers, citing their history as well as the history of cranberries and grapefruit.

And the back story isn’t just a timeline and history of when Grandpa started the company, it’s the story of why.
What our brand samples are doing is a key example of a brand connecting with consumers on their level—a personal level. They’re not talking down to consumers – they’re talking with consumers. And with that approach, it opens up dialogue between the brand and the consumer.

So, as part of your spring cleaning, do you have a concise elevator speech and brand back story? Sit out on the porch, watch the season come alive, and dust off your brand. Happy Spring from Force 5!

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I Need a New Website – Now What Do I Do?

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 by John Jambor

You finally decide your company needs a new website, but you have no idea who to call. You check the yellow pages, Google web design, ask friends and family, and you’re still overwhelmed with all the choices. Who do you call when your brother-in-laws sisters boyfriend will do the job for $500. “We Are Web Sites”, the best web shop on the internet, will build your site for $2,000 and, “The Interactive Agency” down the street wants ten times that amount for a website and an integrated marketing campaign.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an online expert who knows all the new technology or you know about this “World Wide Web thingy” that’s kind of cool, picking a company to build your website can be a daunting task. In the following article I will explain some of the key differences between a web shop and an interactive agency and what you should expect from both.

Your Brother-in-Laws Sisters Boyfriend

Don’t do it! No really; don’t do this. After months of stress and frustration (because the basketball game with his buddies was more important than working on your site) you will end up with a website that looks like, well, you paid $500 to your brother-in-laws sisters boyfriend to build. Remember your website is the face of your company to millions of online people. Is this the image you want to portray?

The Web Shop

There are several different types of web shops. There is the design centric shop, the technology centric shop and the canned – just add your own copy and pictures and have an online presence today – type of shop. With the design centric shop your site will look great. It will portray exactly what the designer thinks of your company. With the technology centric shop your site will have all the bells and whistles whether you use them or not, and with the canned shop you will be forced to form your site around their cookie cutter solution.

No matter which of the three “web shop” solutions you choose there are several constants you can be sure of. Your business needs, determining who your consumer is and what they are looking for, search engine optimization, and your overall marketing plan will not be considered. Now, I’m not saying these are bad designers and programmers. They are probably great at what they do. What I am saying is that they either don’t have the time, desire, or knowledge to create the true online tool your business and your customers deserve.

The Interactive Agency

The interactive agency approaches websites as an extension of your entire marketing plan. They focus on your brand, and integrating your digital marketing campaigns into your overall marketing plan. The starting point for any interactive agency is learning who you are, learning your competition and, understanding your consumer. The second step is information design. Interactive agencies take what they learned in the first step and organize it in a way that creates straight forward navigation, and presents information on your website to best meet your consumer’s needs. This is the heart of a consumer centric website. For a detailed look at consumer centric websites watch for my next blog. Step three consists of the actual site design and build. Interactive agencies utilize a team of highly skilled designers and programmers to create your website. The design team creates an aesthetic, yet simple to use, look and feel focused on keeping the consumer engaged. The programming team takes into account consumer usability, accessibility and, search engine optimization. When complete your website will pass all validation testing, and will be well guarded against common hacking practices.

The job of the interactive agency doesn’t end with completion of your website. Your Website is only the beginning, the creation of what should become the backbone of your entire marketing plan. Now it’s time to look at, among other things, social media, pay per click campaigns, banner ads, email campaigns, product specific micro sites, personalized URL’s (PURLS) and, integration of digital marketing into traditional marketing efforts. The interactive agency is never far away. As your strategic partner they will routinely review, test and recommend upgrades to ensure it remains up to date, relative in search engine results and, in compliance with the latest best practice recommendations.

So now you understand that yes, anyone can build a website but to get the most out of your marketing efforts an interactive agency is the best solution. To find out how your business could benefit from using a full service interactive agency call Force 5 today at 574-234-2060 for send us an email at info@discoverforce5.com to schedule your discovery meeting.

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Generating creative ideas for your brand or company

Monday, April 5th, 2010 by Jeremy Smith

Lately, we’ve been busy – busy ideating that is.

Ideating – which is a fancier term for brainstorming – is a core necessity or foundational step within an advertising and marketing agency’s process of generating creative ideas.

In almost every case, these creative ideas deliver a need or provide a solution to a client problem.  However, good ideas don’t have to be limited to only serving clients (although being paid for good ideas is crucially important).  Reinventing the company website, modifying new business collateral materials or working on a pro-bono campaign can be extremely empowering and beneficial in boosting morale.  Simply put, creative ideation is an enjoyable way to get lots of fresh ideas out on the table and get everyone thinking and pulling together!

Where do you start?  What are best practices?  Sounds like a perfect opportunity for another Force 5 – Top 5 list.  Without further ado, the following rules serve as our guiding light to productive ideating:

  1. Come prepared to participate
    • The meeting requester should provide a pre-reading assignment (like an initial creative brief or client contact report) so everyone knows the key objective(s) in advance
    • Do some preliminary research.  Consider the basics like the brand or the company and their competition– but dig deeper
    • Independently ideate and bring at least one, well thought-out idea to the meeting
  2. The moderator is the captain
    • Arrange for 75-90 minutes of discussion.  I find that one hour is often not enough, but participant’s schedules may dictate the desired duration
    • Have a plan!  Think about what you must take away from the meeting by scripting key questions in advance
    • Keep it moving.  Don’t interrupt or cutoff a speaker, but after a specific idea or topic has been exhausted transition to the next discussion point
  3. All ideas are good ideas
    • Withhold criticism.  Someone else’s idea may spark a separate idea later in the process – so don’t automatically discard an idea because you don’t think it has merit
    • Specifically avoid saying “no” and “we can’t” – these words can derail the session because the people being told no will often shut down and stop contributing to the discussion
    • Instead, build on the idea by implementing the “yes, but…” scenario – “Yes (I hear what you’re saying, even though I might not agree) but perhaps we could consider…”
  4. Capture as many ideas as possible
    • Use large post-it notes or a white board to capture all of the ideas in writing, so everyone can see what is being encapsulated and can build on the ideas later in the process
    • Try to organize ideas by category but remember the most important thing is to capture as much info as possible – if you can’t easily categorize simply jot-down in chronological order
    • If need be, politely stop the person speaking and ask them to succinctly restate their idea to make certain  you’ve accurately depicted all of their key points
  5. You’re done, now what?  (post-ideation)
    • Immediately following, write up all of the ideas and distribute to everyone who participated.  Ask them again to confirm that you’ve accurately captured all of their ideas
    • Time permitting, leave the ideas up on the wall – this allows people to come back and build on all of the ideas afterwards (because sometimes it’s good to step away, then come back)
    • Determine if another ideation meeting should be scheduled.  Perhaps you didn’t’ get as far as you would have liked, or maybe you’d like to drill down even further

Need help generating creative ideas for your brand or company?  Let Force 5 play a role in assisting you and your organization in meeting and exceeding your marketing objectives.  We’ve love to ideate a solution for you!

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Do’s And Don’ts Of Running Facebook Business Pages

Friday, March 26th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrath

More and more businesses are moving to Facebook as a platform to reach new customers and communicate with existing customers. It is becoming increasingly important to set yourself from the pack in the world of Facebook business pages. Make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook business page by following Force 5′s Do’s and Don’ts of running a Facebook page for your business.

Do: Post at least daily. A stagnant page will often be forgotten and be viewed as irrelevant. If you don’t have the time to stay within view of your customers, you more than likely will not be the first option they think of when they need your services.

Don’t: Send frequent mass emails to your fans. This could be viewed as a form of spamming and is often annoying to many users. Although this can be determined by industry, typically the limit is weekly – although we recommend monthly or quarterly.

Do: Post questions or conversation starters. Engage your audience and let the conversation and interaction drive the relationship. This will keep you relevant with your fans.

Don’t: Post personal information. This is more common than you may think. The line of business and personal life in most cases should not be crossed and is important not to blur. Create rules within your organization to help curb any chance of posting anything sketchy and of course use your best judgement.

Do: Ask questions about your fans. Market research can be tricky to gather. Facebook is filled with opportunities of gathering customer information to better know your core audience. Ask questions, create polls, engage your audience with thought provoking questions.

Don’t: Just post links. Mix your posts up. Ask questions, post links, post photos, post a news update, ask a question, comment on posts, etc. Don’t come across as a machine, mix your content up and keep your fans on their toes.

Do: Post various forms of media. Utilize photos, music and videos as a way for your fans to see “inside” your organization. Behind the scene insight is a great way to connect with your fans and gain trust.

Don’t: Sell something all of the time. Post your deals respectfully and without salesman clichés. Create a tab where fans can find the deals you are offering and don’t let “Act Now” posts dominate your wall. Let interaction do the driving.

Have questions? Post a comment below or on Force 5′s own Facebook page.

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Okay…It’s Finally 2010…Now What?

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 by David Morgan

Unfortunately last year many business’s pulled back on their marketing and advertising efforts. “Well, something had to give”, a business owner told me. Unfortunately, marketing initiatives may have been the last thing he wanted to pull in a bad economy. Study after study has shown that during down times, the companies that continued marketing came back to “the black” quicker and stronger than those who pulled the blanket over their heads and waited for the storm to pass. However, money is money….and when you don’t have it….or want to keep what you have as much as possible, you try to focus on the most effective method for creating ‘awareness’ without breaking the bank. Many of our clients are saying their objective this year is to create awareness of their company and product and grow the business.

“All I need is a new brochure!” my business friend cries. But that approach is tactical. A new web site, a couple of print pieces, maybe a new logo—those are only tactics that need to be driven by a strategy—a marketing plan—and that plan HAS to be driven by brand. Without brand strategy, his brochure is just a waste of a good tree.

It’s all about the brand. At Force 5, we believe that to increase awareness and business, it’s essential to establish a powerful and consistent brand image.

So why is brand development so important, and why now? Brand development is an investment – a proven investment. A good brand sets you apart from the crowd. Your brand is your evidence of distinction, what makes you different and unique from your competitors. Without distinction, you’re just another vendor, brand X. Without distinction, you could be just a commodity. And we all know how commodities are traded—price-the lowest price. When price is the only measurement of value of your company or product-you lose. If you are fighting in the trenches with only the lowest price, you are fighting everyone in the marketplace. And in today’s economy, when everyone is looking to get back on track—the low price game is being played hard.

However, when you have distinction, a proven and defensible brand, you rise above the fray. You can command higher prices, you are a leader.

A good brand means equity –true value to the company. There are examples of proven brand equity on a national and local scale. Coca Cola is ranked number one on Interbrands top 100 global brands of 2009, a spot they’ve held for nine consecutive years, and their brand alone accounts for 51% of the company’s stock market value. That’s millions and millions of dollars. What would it cost you to buy the name Coca Cola—not the plants, not the product—just the name??…That’s brand equity.

Your brand differentiation carries more weight today than ever before.

Fortunately, no matter how young or old your business is, you can still bring your brand to life. You can help an existing brand evolve or you can develop strategies to re-establish your brand.

At Force 5, we ask our clients—Who are you, What do you do, and Why does it matter? On the surface, these are easy questions, but sometimes tough to answer…

Our brand discovery process, called “Soul Searching,” provides the perfect insight into a company’s distinction. When we facilitate a session, we recruit the CEO, VP marketing, marketing managers, sales managers, folks from operations and sales people with the clear pulse on the buyer. We spend hours in a process of distilling information. From simple facts, to identifying unique value propositions, we build in a delivery mechanism by empowerment and incentives like training, technology or new customer service guidelines to assure that the newly created brand distinction is delivered constantly and consistently. The outcome is the foundation for the new or revisited brand strategy and a crystal clear and memorable internal and external brand communication. Why involve the CEO? Because brand development is not a marketing initiative, it is a corporate initiative. It must start at the top, and permeate from the President down to each and every worker. When everyone has shared in the authorship of your brand’s unique distinction, then it becomes the foundation of all production, marketing and sales initiatives.

So, It’s 2010—What’s your brand?

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Adobe’s Flash In The Pan?

Monday, February 15th, 2010 by Nevin McElwrath

Adobe’s Flash has had a successful run the past few years. While the latest usage statistics show a slight decline, it still employs an impressive 95.89% browser install base as of Jan, 2010.

Some concerns have been raised lately with Apple’s decision not to include Flash support in it’s newly announced iPad (which runs a modified version of the iPhone OS). It’s been known that Apple’s iPhone does not support Flash. Apple blames Adobe’s buggy implementation of the Flash plugin as one of many reasons, causing poor battery life, security holes, application crashes, etc. While this is nothing new, the spotlight has again been focused on the lack of Flash on the iPhone OS.

Other reasons for Apple skipping Flash support that I think are much more important are HTML5 and the open standard of SVG.

One of the many critiques of Flash is that it is not an open standard. Many, including myself, believe closed platforms tend to stifle innovation and prohibit standard adoption – this, coming from a Flash developer. Also, the Flash plugin has long been sub par in performance on the Macintosh platform – but Adobe is finally taking small steps to remedy these issues. Is it too late?

In order for the web to move forward with a common standard and new innovative tools at hand for developers to use to create the next big thing, we NEED open standards. Period.

Adobe has an opportunity here to develop an HTML5 and SVG authoring tool, waiting to supplant Flash when it does eventually fade away along with proprietary video codecs and browser plugins.

As for myself, I welcome new venues and technologies to learn, as long as they allow for innovation, freedom and creativity in not only the resulted medium, but development as well. The next few years will be the litmus test for Flash in whether it has a place on the web or not. I believe strongly that openness on the web is the future and if a proprietary plugin expects to make the cut, some changes need to be made.

Robert Scoble has a good analogy:

Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.

Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.

But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.

What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.

The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.

Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch tackles this very topic in his blog post.

Admittedly, I would be sad to see Flash go. I love the control you have over your assets. As of right now, there really is no open alternative to that kind of control. jQuery and other JS libraries are just not there yet – but there is much promise. Combine jQuery with HTML5, SVG and time – you just may have a Flash killer.

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Tips for Creating your Company’s Facebook Presence

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 by John Jambor

Facebook isn’t just for keeping up with old friends and family, sharing photos, and finding lost classmates. With over 125 million users worldwide your business can benefit greatly from this social networking giant.

Mari Smith, Facebook for business guru, and author of 10 Reasons to Use Facebook for Business, has stated that millions more will join Facebook in the coming months and years, and the vast majority will use Facebook primarily for business purposes.

So you agree that your company needs a Facebook presence, but you have no idea how to get started. Setting up a business page on Facebook can be a little confusing. So I’ve created the following list of tasks to walk you through the process.

1. Create a personal Facebook account. Business pages are created, accessed and managed from within your personal account.

2. Create your business page. This is actually a very easy. The registration process gathers all the necessary information to get started i.e. business name, description, mission, products etc.

3. Become a fan of your business page. You need to be your business first fan. Without a fan your page will not be seen when a search is performed.

4. Now get social!

a. Link your Facebook page to your website.
b. Link your blog to your Facebook page.
c. Invite people to become a fan of your page.
d. Search out related businesses and become a fan of their pages.
e. Finally, communicate.

i. The more valuable information you post on your business page the more likely you are to be found.

Creating your business page is only the first step. Now you have to make sure your page is accessible and populated with relative content. Following the items in step four above is a great place to start. With access to millions of users daily Facebook could become an invaluable marketing tool for your business.

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An American Brand

Monday, September 14th, 2009 by David Morgan

-David Morgan, Certified Brand Strategist, Force 5

American clothes are making a comeback. In the Sept. 7 issue of Brandweek, there was an artiticle about “made in the USA” clothes becoming cool again. It seems that the research shows that we are buying American made products over cheaper products. Sixty four percent of those surveyed said that buying American brands is part of “what it means to be a good citizen today.” It seemed to me that American made clothing lost its luster several years ago. There were some exceptions, (L.L. Bean and others…), but even Jean Giant Levi took a hit from Calvin Klien and Sasson. Even if the brand seemed American, the garmet was being made in Indonesia. But the recession is changing all that. Consumers are “looking under the hood” a bit more–looking for that “made in Amerca tag” Woolrich, Zippo, Red Wing–all are having good sales. Buyers are looking at their roots – if its made in America, and you buy in America, there’s a job in America.

So whats the take away here? America has a brand. The spirit of America, the heart, the soul–is what people think about when they see that “made in America” tag. When I was a young guy, only cheap toys were “made in China”, and didn’t have a very good reputation. China reputation for quality goods has now changed. Countries have brands–whether they like it or not–whether they have tried to development it or not. Everyone and every company has a brand. What’s your take on this? Is “made in America, local, here at home” something you can capitalize on with your products? Think about it…

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