charleston sc marketing

Covering Your Tails

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

Amid all the hub-bub of the shave-o-matic premiere we managed to release a new starter site/blog for VetCareComplete, a new pet health insurance company in Richmond, VA. Because they were just coming out of the blocks we were able to help with overall brand planning, the new identity and tagline and the stage 1 site. The blog will be the basis of a community platform, while a companion site will rollout once the insurance plans are finalized and the company is ready to begin servicing customers and affiliate vets. In the meantime, look for true life stories from the founders (practicing veterinarians) about the crazy things pets get themselves into and therefore the reason they need comprehensive health insurance (just like their owners). Thanks to Matt, Keith and A.J.

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | No Comments »

Get Ready for Caviar & Bananas

Friday, May 16th, 2008

At lunch today we dropped in our friends at Caviar & Bananas market. Margaret, Kris and the team are in the final stages of set up…getting ready for Monday’s grand opening. The place looks awesome, and the food and drink selections are mouth watering. Downtown has been waiting too long for a market/cafe like this.

Congrats to the C&B family and be sure to stop by on Monday to check it out. In fact, stop by everyday to indulge your senses.

Topics: Fandango, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc marketing | No Comments »

Social Media Marketing Links With Zemanta

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

A while back we wrote about Zemanta, which is a plugin that scours the Web for related posts and images based on what you start typing in Wordpress or favorite blogging program.

This is our first test with it, and I can say that it’s pretty sweet. I started the title with “social media marketing” and typed a few more characters in the body, then hit the “update” button, and it presents you with this:

Even the screen shot is suggested, and I just click it an added it to the post. Sweet, huh?

The only downside is it needs about 300 characters to get more suggestions, and repeatedly hitting the “get more suggestions” doesn’t show more. I’m sure playing with some settings will help.

Now, here are some of the articles they “suggested.” I previewed them all and think they’re great.

Topics: Blogging, Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing | No Comments »

Definition of Email SPAM Changes

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

SPAM is Good

Most marketers understand email SPAM as “unsolicited commercial email.” But has the definition changed while we weren’t looking?

A recent survey from Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa tried to find out why consumers hit the “MARK AS SPAM” button and what they consider SPAM.

The interesting part - most people didn’t even cite “permission” as an issue.

Here are some of their findings.

Definition of SPAM to consumers:

56% - consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is “just not interesting to me.”
50% consider “too frequent emails from companies I know” to be spam.
31% cite “emails that were once useful but aren’t relevant anymore.”

Why did you hit the “Report SPAM button?”

“The email was not of interest to me” (41%).
“I receive too much email from the sender” (25%).
“I receive too much email from all senders” (20%).

So what does this mean to marketers? Here are a couple ideas:

Take the pulse of your subscriber base. Find out what they think about the frequency and relevancy of your emails.
Give more options for subscribers. Make it easy to segment your lists so subscribers only get the most relevant, topical emails.
Educate your subscribers. The survey seems to imply many don’t understand what the “report SPAM” button does. Help your subscribers understand the process for managing your email communications.

Topics: Fandango, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, email marketing, tech news | No Comments »

Distraction, Advertising, & Cyclists

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Although this video is for a “share the road” campaign in the UK, Seth Godin points out its relevance to marketing. “You were going to spend how much to distract me from what I was doing?”

How do you stand out from the clutter?

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing | No Comments »

Addy Time

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Had a fun Saturday night at the annual Addy awards show…four hours of chat, dinner, open bar and marketing awards. We were excited that a number of 2007 projects received awards. The Bundoran Farm website won a Gold Addy and the Best of Interactive award, the EcoFitness/BlueTurtle Yoga website won a Special Judges award for its tools/widgets, and the Charleston Area CVB Meeting Planner promotional site, Berenyi Inc. website and Drayton Hall animated timeline all won Gold Addy awards.

Other sites winning Sliver and Bronze awards included the Alys Beach website, Merge Advertising website, GetInspired Charleston website, SPCA Building Campaign website, Drayton Hall website, Ethanex Energy website, Ethanex Energy animation, Greenbrier Sporting Club microsite, TBonz Restaurants websites campaign, The Mason Building website, Garden & Gun Magazine website, New Market Charleston microsite and two DPS email campaigns.

Many thanks to all who participated in these projects…including the clients who make them all possible and the many team members who play a part in creating/launching each one. Cheers and thanks also go out to all the volunteers from Ad Fed Charleston who put in huge hours to make the awards and event happen.

Here’s a quick pic of RY, JC and MH celebrating the widget award…

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Party, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | 3 Comments »

Social Strategies For Revolutionaries: SXSW Roundup

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

You know your company needs to be involved in social technologies, but where do you start?

At the “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries” session, Charlene Li, a Forrester research analyst (my favorite of the group), gave us the strategic framework for creating a social strategy that will appeal to executives and your target audience.

If you want to dig deeper, she’s got a book called Groundswell coming out soon. This presentation was based on those findings. Here are some choice notes.

What’s The “Groundswell” in Social?

Definition: people using technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

What Process Can I use to Create a Social Strategy?

Try using the POST process (people, objectives, strategy, technology). Here’s a couple highlights from the first two. Notice technology is LAST!

People: Assessing your customers’ social activities is key. Why start with Myspace/Facebook if none of your customers are there?

To help with this, use what’s called the “social technographics ladder,” combined with knowledge of your customers age.

Obviously, age is a huge driver of adoption level, but there’s evidence more and more boomers are starting to become joiners rather than just spectators.

Objectives

Based on your objectives, you’ll want to deploy a social strategy tailored to what you want to accomplish. I had originally typed all these out, but here’s the handy chart to show what they mean, along with the tools to help out and the metrics to use to measure success.

How Do You Get Started?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. So start small. Using the POST process above, maybe you discover your customers all over the blogs discussing flaws with your product. So you could set up your own blog to help answer those issues, or even create a team (like Dell) whose sole responsibility is to root out those negative stories and turn them into a conversation.

Other important parts to keep in mind, specifically related to internal cultures and staffing:

Find people most passionate about developing relationships
Educate executives
Put someone important in charge
Define the box with policies and process
Make it safe(r) to fail

Final notes

Set up your framework and process
Start small, think big
Make social strategy the responsibility of every employee
Be patient - cultural change takes time

Topics: Blue Ion Team, Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Social Media, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | No Comments »

Two Big Yahoo! Product Announcements

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

A couple of neat product announcements from Yahoo! came out over the last couple of days.

First up is their “Open Search Platform,” which allows third parties (like Blue Ion, hopefully) to modify your search results listings by adding images, more links, and hopefully some sweet animated gifs.

Here’s one from Yelp!

And here’s one I did for Blue Ion.

Learn more about it at the Yahoo! Search blog or from TechCrunch.

Second is the launch of Yahoo! Buzz. Similar to Digg, the more votes you get, the higher your story, video, etc. will go.

Bonus: some of the most popular stories make it to Yahoo! home page! Supposedly they sent Wired 2 million visitors when that happened to one of their posts.

Check out Yahoo! Buzz here, and more analysis at TechCruch.

Topics: Fandango, Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, tech news | No Comments »

2008 Predictions: Digital Marketing & Beyond

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

As a digital marketing agency, we have to keep up with the latest and greatest in digital design, marketing, and business in general. Here’s a list of 2008 predictions and resolutions from some of our favorite resources. Enjoy.

New Years Resolutions for Microsoft and Google - From SEOmoz.org
Online Video Predictions for 2008 - From NewTeeVee via GigaOm
A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008 - From Web Strategy by Jeremiah
John Battelle’s Searchblog Predictions for 2008
Social Marketing in 2008 - From Clickz
Ten Likely Events in 2008 - From BusinessWeek

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | 1 Comment »

Blogging Resources for Charleston AMA Visitors

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

Today was the Charleston American Marketing Association’s “blogging panel.” As part of our presentation and discussion, we wanted to post some helpful links to anyone getting ready to start a blog (or take an existing one to the next level).

Resources for “Business Blogging”

Wordpress Resources (our preferred blogging platform)

Free Blogging Platforms

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing | 3 Comments »