Here’s a great post on the patent design Michael Jackson submitted in 1993 for shoes which enabled him and his dance troop to lean forward 45 degrees during “Smooth Criminal”. Very cool!

Publishing customer stories on your website is a great way of building trust, credibility and persuading people that buying your product is the smart thing to do.

Here are a few websites which show how customer stories can be harnessed as a powerful part of your marketing:

http://www.acsysinteractive.com/ – eye catching visuals place customer stories centre stage on the website for this digital marketing agency

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/product/casestudies.mspx – never one to shy away from publishing information on their website, Microsoft offers over 200 stories on how its dynamic software division has solved real life supply chain and business management problems

http://www.sun.com/customers/index.xml – Sun Microsystems actively request stories from its customers as part of its ‘customer reference program’. Its website also offers videos and podcasts for insight on how Sun helps customers overcome challenges in the IT world

http://www.sybase.co.uk/about_sybase/customer_success_stories – Sybase’s website is a great example of how you can harness video to enable your customers to share their stories on how you’ve helped them solve problems

http://www.nationalnumbers.co.uk/customer-stories.htm – the very nature of a personalised number plate means there’s often a story behind why people buy them. The stories on this website also provide inspiration for visitors on why they should buy one for themselves

http://www.colourfulcoffins.com/customer_stories.html – literally any product can be given emotional impact with a personal story. Many people prefer to treat funerals as a celebration of a person’s life, and you can’t get much more personal than the reasons why they’ve chosen to buy a custom designed coffin

http://www.stannahstairlifts.co.uk/en/customer-stories-transcripts-2.html – sharing the experiences of your customers can give a competitive advantage. If you’re shopping for a stair lift then you’re more likely to give Stannah a call after reading feedback from some of their customers

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Have you heard of Delicious? It’s a great way of organising bookmarks and memorable sites so that you can easily access them no matter where you are, what computer you’re on or what browser you’re using. We’ve created a bda work account, which makes things more fun because we can discover sites that other people here have tagged which we might otherwise not have come across.

For example, I might find a site with a heap of free icons; I can then tag it with ‘icons / resources / whatever’ and then when someone else is looking for some icons, they will (hopefully) see the site I’ve tagged. Likewise if someone is reading a site about bullet proof rounded corner methods, they could tag it with ’roundedcorners / tutorial / whatever’ and when I’m feeling a little bit nuts, I can see the site and voila! Rounded corners! :

The easiest way to start using Delicious is with the firefox add on. Tagging / bookmarking a site is then as easy as either a) right-clicking and choosing ‘bookmark this page in delicious…’ or b) hitting the big ‘tag’ button next to the address bar.

If you think we’ll enjoy the site, tag it with for:thinkbda and it’ll show up in our suggested sites list.

If Firefox isn’t your thing, or if you don’t want to install the add-on, there are other tools you can use.

Happy bookmarking!

Our series on beautiful website design wouldn’t be complete unless we made a special mention on the most popular blogging platform around – Wordpress!

Downloaded millions of times and with a massive fan base of developers supporting it, Wordpress is an open source publishing platform that’s growing in popularity all the time.

Content management systems are designed to be easy to update with new content, and using Wordpress to build an entire website offers many advantages, including:

Ease of use – posts and pages can be added without any complicated coding language

Free plugins – Wordpress’ functionality can be extended with over 5000 free plugins. Popular plugins enable you to optimise your content for search engines, to add social bookmarking buttons and to record stats on what your visitors are looking at

RSS – visitors can subscribe to your site’s feed and keep up to date on your latest content without having to revisit the site, great for relationship and trust building

Interactivity – visitors can comment on your content, ask questions and interact in an open format

SEO – in basic terms, Google ranks websites based on how regularly they’re updated and the number of links from relevant sites. Regularly publishing useful articles people want to share can achieve both these aims

Easy to use and easy on the eye

Whether it’s powering an online portfolio, a news/magazine style site or an online shop, Wordpress can be used for a wide variety of purposes.

Here’s our top ten of beautiful sites built with Wordpress:

1. http://www.enroutefilm.com/ – an online showcase of Canadian short films which are also screened on Air Canada flights. So grab some popcorn, grab a notepad and decide which short firm is a worthy winner.

2. http://www.blup.fr/ – this smartly designed personal blog of web designer Dew illustrates its pop culture focus through its beautifully designed header. The blog design also provides an attractive frame for his photos and posts on what’s interesting in the world of Dew.

3. http://www.jrvelasco.com/ – this blog offers a ‘veritable panoply of literary, visual and aural diversions’, with an intro that’s as long as a post on its own. The unique, personalised header and navigation gives this website the impression of being an interesting place to spend some time, if you speak Spanish.

4. http://www.homedesignfind.com/ – if you’re fan of Grand Designs or Property Ladder you might want to have a read of this interior design online magazine. The authors provide a daily guide to the latest furnishings, trends and ideas that can give your home a unique look.

5. http://ecoki.com/ – if you aspire to live a greener lifestyle then this site offers organic recipes, eco-fashion and an online community sharing their passion for all things eco-friendly. The front page is divided into clear categories and the strong visual element makes it easy to find topics of interest.

6. http://icondock.com/ – if you’re a designer and would like some interesting new icons for your print or web projects then this site offers icons galore. You can buy icons in sets and subscribe to their blog for the latest in all things iconic.

7. http://www.45royale.com/ – this web design studio loves Wordpress so much they’ve used it to power their own website. An eye catching banner, prominent hero text and clear links to their latest projects and blog makes this a great showcase of their talents.

8. http://anidea.com/ – don’t like this website’s theme? Then change it simply by selecting a different one from the dropdown box. This digital advertising agency promotes their expertise by offering insight and smart thinking, rather than with a boring online brochure.

9. http://www.gomediazine.com/ – this art and graphic design magazine offers helpful tutorials and a range of resources for the digital artistic. You can easily wile away some time watching videos, entering polls and engaging with its enthusiastic community.

10. http://www.twiistup.com/ – this bright, vibrant website presents the online portal for an LA based Dragons’ Den for startups. You certainly get a feel for how Twiistup can be a bit livelier than traditional stuffy conferences. Let’s hope it makes its way to this side of the pond.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

This week we’ve been welcoming Lee Williams, a design all-rounder, to the bda team. So we’ve been making sure he knows how everyone has their tea and when it’s his turn to buy the cakes. But on a serious note, Lee is a bit of a whiz with Flash. So you can expect to see plenty of snazzy Flash driven websites trundling out of the bda labs very soon.

Now, when I say Flash I know many of you think of sitting impatiently, twiddling your thumbs and debating whether to boil the kettle whilst waiting for a website to load. Well, Flash has grown up a lot since its misspent youth in the 90s, when it was misguidedly used to create firework displays of animation despite the wheezing data rate of dialup.

Ten years on and Flash is now a respected and versatile programming language. Rather than just for intro videos, Flash can be used to create interactive websites and the quality of applications you’d normally expect to be on your desktop. With people’s expectations of websites growing all the time, Flash is becoming the language of choice for many developers wanting to create richer online experiences.

So, to clear up some of the misunderstandings on Flash (and because it will please Lee) this week we’re focusing on beautiful Flash website design.

Google CAN now find Flash based websites

One of Flash’s Achilles’ heels used to be that Google had trouble reading it, which meant Flash sites struggled to be found in the search results. But as Flash has advanced so has the ability of the search engines to read it, and now Flash driven websites are becoming just as easy to find as their html cousins.

The advancement in Flash has freed developers to become ever more creative in the sites they can create. Flash can be used to graphically present complex concepts, and being able to create interactive animations means multiple layers of info can be easily navigated at the click of a mouse.

Here are 10 of our favourite beautifully designed Flash websites, which illustrate how Flash can be used to create interactive online experiences that enhance brand engagement:

1. www.m-prism.com/main.htm – navigating this site is like exploring a map of the cosmos. To delve deeper you simply click on the central planet before zooming in on its orbiting moons

2. http://www.samsungcamera.com/st50/ – they say every picture tells a story, and this website provides a series of narrated mini-stories displayed through pictures and videos captured on a digital camera

3. http://www.gtiproject.com/ – if you had a toy racing car track as a child then you might want to whiz over to this site. After gaining entry to a secret lab and taking a tour around the track you can have a go at setting your own fastest lap

4. http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html – members of this advertising agency have all contributed their facial features so you can have fun mixing and matching to make your own creation

5. http://okaydave.com/ – this website makes a portfolio of pdfs as sophisticated as a cave painting. You can enjoy a pleasant journey trawling through Dave’s scrap book of past design projects accompanied by his narration and video diary

6. http://www.gettheglass.com/ – making sure the kids drink their milk can be a hassle for any parent. So send them to this website where they can play games and learn more about milk at the same time

7. http://www.subspecies.co.uk/ – what better way to sell T-shirts than using monkeys with machine guns? Opening to a hail of bullets and parasailing chimps, this website is certain to be a hit with those who take choosing their t-shirt brands seriously

8. http://www.sectionseven.com/ – websites are often designed to act as an online portfolio, and in this case it’s meant literally. Click to open their workbook as you would in the real world, and sift through their samples to see what this design agency is all about

9. http://www.goblincreative.com/en/ – dressed up as a trendy iPhone app, click around each room to discover more about this web marketing agency. Learn more about their services, sit down to watch a movie or play a game of darts if you want to

10. http://ff0000.com/ – why wait for people to find you in Second Life when you can create a virtual world of your own? On the Red Interactive you can create your own avatar, fly around and chat to other guests. Just remember to play nice

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Spending hours on a blog post can be a waste of sweat and tears if visitors don’t stop for a read, which is why blog design is so important. Blogs should be functional, easy to navigate and easy on the eye. So you should think carefully about the elements you need to include and how your blog can reflect your personality.

Good blog design aids readability, and provides an elegant frame in which your carefully chosen words can shine.

Pulling readers into your content

Web visitors are a judgemental bunch, with the attention spans of gnats. So your blog design needs to tell them at a glance what you’re about and whether they might be interested in what you have to say.

Your blog’s header is the first element people will focus on when they arrive. So it should reflect your personality and appeal to your target audience if it’s going to pull them into your writing. Many aspects of a blog can be easily customised yourself. But if you really want your blog to pull in readers then paying for a professionally designed header can be a canny investment.

Your header can be used to display your logo, illustrate your topic or to feature a slogan telling people what you’re all about.

Other elements

You want to keep people engaged with and reading your blog for as long as possible. So deciding where to position elements that helps them navigate your content is worth some planning.

Elements could include an author bio, subscription options, links to recent posts and a search box so people can delve into your archives. The most important links should be kept above the fold, which means they should be visible to every visitor without the need to scroll down the screen.

Links to your Twitter and Facebook profiles are also popular, but you should be careful not to clutter up your blog’s sidebar. You don’t want visitors feeling overpowered by too much going on and clicking away in confusion. Sometimes simplicity is best.

Minimalist style or action packed collage?

In basic terms, minimalist blogs are carefully arranged to feature plenty of white space and evenly arranged images. Links and widgets are kept to a minimum so that visitors’ attention is focused on the blog’s actual content.

Alternately, you could take the approach adopted by many graphic designers and fill up the screen with graphics, logos and customised icons. There’s a fine line between creating an impression of organised chaos or a blog designed by a child left alone with the crayons. But when done well it’s certainly eye catching.

Top Ten Beautiful Blog Designs

Here’s a mixture of different blog styles, layouts and personalities. Whether minimalist, collage or retro, what these blogs all have in common is that they’re excellent examples of beautiful blog design:

That INDIE Dude

Loodo.com.br

Pays Sud Gatine

L’effet Créa

Objectified

Surfstation.com

No MILK Today

Meagan Fisher

Lynnterpretation

The Bond Makeover

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

You hear a lot of buzzwords and phrases in our fast paced marketing world. But one that’s continuing to gather pace and fans as it rolls into boardrooms is that of ‘conversational marketing’.

Everyday we form relationships through the things we say and the way we respond to those said by others. With it so important in the real world, it’s unsurprising that marketers are eager to adopt adopt a conversational approach to engaging with consumers.

The idea of marketing being a ‘conversation’ has been a hot topic for the last decade. But is there any real value in conversing with your customers? Or is it just evangelistic hype?

What is conversational marketing?

The idea of marketing becoming a conversation was first given legs by a set of theses in the ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ way back in 1999.

Its premise was that, in more innocent times, ‘markets’ were places where people met to talk about goods and services, as well as to buy them. But this dialogue has since been drowned out by advertising telling people what they should think and buy. The Cluetrain Manifesto’s big idea is that the arrival of the internet, and the ability for people to talk about goods and services online, means that companies can no longer dictate what their marketplace should think.

The conversations people have over the garden fence can now be broadcast to (theoretically) millions. So marketing now needs to engage with consumers in a two-way dialogue if it wants to remain relevant.

For the last decade The Cluetrain Manifesto’s big idea has been an almost cultish call to arms amongst legions of bloggers and internet marketers in heralding the internet as a new dawn in communication and the death knell for traditional advertising.

The Cluetrain now has fresh legs in the form of social media gurus, preaching on the influence wielded by people on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Now every company needs a community manager, or risks drowning in a flood of unchallenged negative commentary.

Taking a step back

Getting excited about the potential that social media offers for engaging with customers and boosting your profile is one thing. But thinking its created a revolution in how companies should communicate, and that all the old methods are now dead, is perhaps a step too far.

Dell is often held up as conversational marketing’s poster child. They’ve been very active in harnessing every tool to respond to criticism, engage with customers and to use feedback to implement improvements.

However, as an interesting debate between Dell and a critic in the comments of this E-Consultancy article highlight, conversational marketing is just another channel in the marketing mix. It’s not a replacement for methods that continue to be effective when used well.

Another channel, rather than a revolution

It’s certainly worth creating a Google alert for your brand, so you can listen out and respond to criticism in any far flung corner of the web. But you shouldn’t feel that you need to rush out and start creating fan pages on every social media site just to show that you ‘get it’.

The key, as always, is relevancy and value. So there’s no point creating Facebook groups and a Twitter campaign unless it’s something your customers will want to engage with.

Instead, your marketing should focus on delivering content that’s of value and relevant to your customers’ needs and interests. Email, for example, is still highly effective, and with modern database management one-to-one campaigns can be targeted to match individual preferences.

So, whilst it’s worth keeping an ear open and responding to what is being said about your brand, don’t think that conversational marketing is now the only way brands are built or that the old methods of marketing are now dead.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

A mistake many companies make is to use their marketing as an opportunity to pat themselves on the back and praise their achievements. But nobody likes braggers, boasters and conversation hogs. People like those who take an interest in others, show empathy and offer solutions to problems.

So your marketing should be focused on being likeable because, as every salesman knows, people prefer to buy from those they like.

Being expressive helps you be more likeable

Internet psychologist Graham Jones this week blogged about a study on how people formed impressions of others based on their Facebook profiles. The study concluded that a person’s likeability was gauged by how well they expressed themselves through their words and photos. Those who came across as genuine, personable and open were preferred to those who were guarded about what they revealed.

The marketing lesson from this is that to be more likeable online you need to be authentic, real and transparent, and present a human face to your organisation. A photo of your head office and a blurb praising your sales figures won’t do. People buy from people, not concrete buildings.

How to be likeable

In his popular book ‘The Likeability Factor’ former Yahoo! customer insight executive Tim Sanders defines likeability as a combination of friendliness, relevance, empathy and realness. These characteristics are all as applicable to success in marketing as they are to general life:

Friendliness – what tone of your voice does your marketing use? Is it approachable, upbeat and engaging? Or has it fallen in the trap of using long words and clichés to try and sound impressive?

Relevance – people respond to marketing that’s about their problems, concerns and desires. Your editorial content should be about the shared passions with your customers and focused on their preferences and interests. It shouldn’t be about on yours.

Empathy – people buy products and services to help solve a problem or to improve their lives. So your marketing should show understanding and sympathy for your customer’s predicament and offer solutions.

Realness – authenticity helps you appear trustworthy. Employing fakery, exaggeration and manipulated figures will backfire. Customers will ignore your calls and delete you from their address book when they can’t believe anything you have to say.

The nature of modern marketing is that of an ongoing conversation with your customers. And being friendly, interested in others, empathetic and real are all characteristics expressed through conversation.

So you should approach your marketing in the same manner as how you’d approach a one-to-one chat with your customers. Because being likeable is often regarded as vital to success in life and this is equally true of your marketing.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Oh, poor old Gordon Brown. He tries to experiment with a new tool for engaging with voters and it gets attention for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps someone should have told him that YouTube isn’t just another platform for pushing your message (and not to rely on cue cards to be reminded when to smile).

In Gordon’s defence, he simply made the same mistake many brands are guilty of: using new tools, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, for shallow self promotion, rather than offering people content they actually want.

Authenticity is the key to social media marketing

Whilst most of the criticism has focused on Gordon’s awkward impression of a Cheshire cat, the underlying problem with his foray into YouTube is that the video offered nothing of real value to viewers, and he made the marketing sin of not understanding his audience. In the world of social media, authenticity is the key.

Instead of trying to genuinely engage with voters’ concerns, Gordon used YouTube as a virtual soapbox to try and boost his popularity with empty gestures. Even the comments were turned off, which is another social media faux pas.

How Gordon should have used YouTube

When used properly, YouTube can be an effective marketing tool. By providing useful videos that answer people’s questions, offer industry insight or show how your product solves a problem, you can build an affinity with your brand.

Or if you’re feeling brave, you could try creating branded entertainment in which your product is the star. Blendtec’s ‘Will it Blend’ channel is YouTube’s poster child of how this can be done.

So the key thing to remember is that you shouldn’t use YouTube to simply push your message. Creating TV style commercials in which you vainly praise your company isn’t how you’ll win friends and influence people in the world of social media.

Publish and promote

Once you’ve created your ‘How To’ clip or video offering industry insight, make sure you don’t just upload it, sit back and hope for exposure to grow on its own. With 150,000 videos uploaded everyday, it’s going to have a lot of competition.

Integrate your YouTube campaign with the rest of your marketing. Add a link in your email signatures, paste the video onto your home page and add it to your email marketing campaigns. If your video is interesting enough then it might even spread virally through the power of Twitter and other online networks.

So remember, when marketing on YouTube your video must offer content that’s of value to viewers for it to be effective. People like to do business with those they’ve got to know and trust, so be authentic and don’t use YouTube simply to push your message.

Shame nobody told that to Gordon.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In their 80s heyday TVs ad men ruled the break as their domain, and would marvel audiences with their creative brilliance and 30 second blockbusters. Budgets were generous, and top agency creatives were treated with the reverence of a Hollywood director (which one or two even became).

But times have changed. Now rarely a week passes without whispers of channels merging or collapsing because of the failure of the ad break to keep them alive.

If TV is a sinking ship then advertisers are now abandoning it in droves to chase after the audiences that left long ago.

People now prefer to spend their evenings on the web, where they can control what content they want to receive, which is the barrier every advertiser now faces in remaining relevant in today’s marketing mix.

Giving people what they want

In a recent post, marketing Einstein, Seth Godin commented on the challenges and opportunities advertisers face if they want to be successful online.

Without TV programmes to be paid for or limited slots to fill, the cost of running commercials on the web is low. This means companies who previously didn’t have the budget to compete with the big boys now can. Now anybody with a camera can start their own ad campaign.

Whilst Seth hails this as a great opportunity, it’s going to be difficult to create commercials people will watch when they have the attention spans of goldfish.

As with all modern marketing, the answer lies in being able to offer content people want to consume in exchange for their time.

More than likely, this will come in the form of entertainment, as shown by the popularity of the ‘Will it Blend’ commercials, featuring a sales message amongst the flying debris of iPhones and golf balls.

What about Susan Boyle?

Working out how to make commercials people will watch on the web is the puzzle facing every advertiser. And some are already missing out on millions whilst trying to figure it out.

You’d have thought ITV’s execs would have been rubbing their hands with glee over the Susan Boyle phenomena. But unfortunately they’ve been slow to take advantage of the 100+ million views of her YouTube clip, leaving them penniless.

It’s estimated that a brief ad slot before her clip could have netted £1.5 million revenue for the beleaguered channel.

So, advertisers can learn two things from Susan Boyle:

1. It’s often what the product does that people are interested in, rather than the presentation
2. If they can offer people content they want to consume then they might have a chance of delivering their commercials along with it

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Your advertising has to compete with a lot of noise these days. With so many channels competing for attention, creating advertising that gets you noticed can be tricky. Not only do you need to engage the interest of ad weary consumers. But your ads also need to have the ‘wow’ factor that makes people sit up and think ‘I want one of those’.

Working out how to create ads that jump out and pull people in is a tricky puzzle. This is why so many brands are waving their cheque books at celebrities and signing them up to give their ads the ‘X’ factor.

Why are celebrity endorsements powerful?

Whenever they’re seen in ads, celebrities transfer their positive qualities, such as their reputation, talent and likeability, onto the product. They also act as the brand’s spokesperson, giving it credibility and the thumbs up in the eyes of their hero worshipping public.

Celebrity endorsements can raise awareness, increase a product’s appeal and influence the buying decisions of fans wanting to emulate their favourite stars, which is why so many brands are happy to pay millions for a brief share of a celebrity’s limelight.

However, as with all advertising, celebrity endorsements cannot build a brand on their own. It takes time, patience and delivering a consistent message through every channel to cement the positive thoughts and feelings people associate with your products.

But having a famous face appearing in your ads can give your brand that extra special ingredient that will help it stand out on supermarket shelves.

A few famous celebrity endorsements

Paul Merson – you’d be right to question the suitability of an ex gambling addict, who lost £7 million and went bankrupt, being the public face of a betting shop. However, the ex-Arsenal player is a well known face and is certainly someone Better Bet’s customers can relate to. Nobody can question his authenticity as a gambling man.

Girls Aloud – the band created by TV now make sure they stay on it at as much as possible. Endorsements for Samsung, Coke Zero, Ultimo lingerie and Sunsilk helps them maintain a high profile even when their music videos aren’t being played.

Johnny Rotten – the ex-anarchist and former Sex Pistol has given many the biggest shock of his career by being so successful at selling butter. Whilst an anti-capitalist in his heyday, he’s now being praised for helping to increase Dairy Crest’s business 85% in the last year.

Barack Obama – whilst the popularity of the new President continues to defy his critics and his halo remains intact, Brand Obama is regarded as the World’s #1 brand. With the image of an exceptional negotiator and communicator, his unofficial endorsement of Blackberry is estimated to be worth $30 million in marketing. And the best part is that he hasn’t been paid to do it.

Prunella Scales – the ex-onscreen squeeze of John Cleese is currently rated as the UK’s most successful celebrity endorser. Her series of humorous ads, with Jane Horrocks in tow, marching around Tesco is estimated to have generated sales of £2.2 billion for the supermarket giant.

Tiger Woods – perhaps the best example of a celebrity becoming synonymous with a brand, the successor to Michael Jordan as Nike’s brand spokesman has helped transform a ‘start up’ golf brand into the most popular clothing label on the fairways. With sales of $600 million a year, Nike Golf is also now competing to be the top brand for clubs and golf balls. No wonder Nike named a building after him.

The moment when the ball pauses after this putt at the 2005 Masters is probably worth millions in free advertising alone:

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

I came across a great site recently called datelance.com. In essence it’s a marketing site for a US design agency, dressed as an earnest attempt to find one of their employees – the eponymous Lance – a new girlfriend. Apparently he’s the only single person at Logoworks, and his colleagues are keen to get him hooked up. Within the FAQ section of the site you’ll find a very pertinent: “Is Lance desperate?” question, which is answered with “Lance is definitely not desperate”. Phew.

Anyway, the good news is that bda has its very own Lance. He may not have a Harvard MBA, but he does look good in a dinner suit. His name is Adam. We haven’t built him his own dating website, or created an advertising billboard, but if you are interesting in dating Adam, you can always drop us a line at ideas@thinkbda.com and we’ll make sure he gets your email.

In its Madison Avenue strutting heyday, advertising was the only way to sell. Back when people spent their evenings reading newspapers or glued to the TV, brands relied on ads to grow desire and plant jingles in people’s minds.

But unfortunately for the once cocksure ad man, people and times have changed.

The old adage of ‘advertise or die’ is now being replaced by ‘evolve or die’. People are binning newspapers permanently, and fast forwarding or switching off the TV altogether.

The problem with advertising

Advertising’s first aim has always been to grab attention. Then it implants an appealing collection of thoughts and feelings that spring to mind when people are trawling supermarket shelves.

The problem is that consumers have been dazzled with advertising for so long that they’ve started ignoring it. Over time, the unfulfilled dreams promised by ad men have created cynicism, and an attitude has grown towards avoiding ads altogether.

So, brands need to find new platforms for engaging with their ad weary public. For many, this has simply meant diverting their budget online.

But as studies are showing, people are forming buying decisions based on the quality of the content brands provide, and not just on their advertising.

Brand perceptions are being formed online

Last year brands spent nearly £3 billion chasing after the migration of eyeballs onto the internet. But simply raining down ads isn’t an adequate response to the way in which people use the web.

A survey of UK consumers, last year, found that 86% had researched a company online before deciding whether to buy their product. And 22% always conduct an online background check before parting with their cash. Whilst these stats sound promising, less than half (49%) found the information they were looking for.

So, brands should start providing useful content on their website if they want to engage people’s interest and influence their buying decisions. After all, people use the internet to find information, not advertising.

Brand perception is built at every touch point

Advertising can be expensive and makes less of an impact than it once did. There are also now too many other ways in which people can engage with your brand (and they’re looking for a conversation that isn’t one way).

So you need to consider how your business is engaging with customers at every touch point. Whether it’s via magazine ads, direct mail, email or customer service, every engagement influences how people perceive the quality of your products.

And as the survey shows, people are increasingly demanding informative, useful content that answers their questions and assists their buying decisions. Which is why advertising alone, ultimately, is no longer enough to satisfy the needs of today’s cynical, connected consumer.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

For the last week people have been bookmarking, blogging and Tweeting like mad about a new report on social media marketing. Put together by popular blogger and white paper specialist Michael Stelzner, the report features responses from 700 marketers on how they’re using social media to boost their exposure.

The report indicates that whilst marketers are enthusiastically joining the ‘social media gold rush’, few know where to start looking or how to unearth its riches.

Here are a few of the report’s nuggets:

• Nearly 9 out of 10 marketers are using social media
• Most (72%) have only started using social media in the last few months
• Whilst time might be the main expense involved it doesn’t come cheaply. 64% are investing over five hours a week in their campaigns
• The most popular social media tools in order are: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook (only 41% are posting onto YouTube)
• Over half gained greater exposure, increased traffic and new business partnerships from social media

Social media → exposure + engagement

With 85% of small businesses reporting greater exposure, the report’s findings show why social media marketing is becoming so popular, and why it’s not just a passing fad.

Whilst we’re under gloomy recessionary clouds, many marketers can’t afford a new brochure, glossy ads or their own exhibition stand. So the low cost of social media makes it an enticing avenue to explore and play around with.

And a lot of playing around needs to be done because social media is still in its infancy with marketers still only taking their first hesitant steps. This was reflected in the survey’s most commonly asked questions:

• What are the best tactics?
• How can I increase the effectiveness of my campaigns?
• Where, on earth, do I start?

Whilst it’s tempting to sit back and watch whilst others struggle to get it working before attempting it yourself, it’s only through experimenting that you’ll discover how to use social media effectively.

New tactics are needed to get the most out of the new tools. Relentlessly pushing out sales messages isn’t going to work when your audience has the power to switch you off. People now want engaging experiences to go with the product. And to buy from those who’ve taken the time to build a relationship with them.

Social media provides the tools to engage with people and create these relationships.

So, if you haven’t already, open a Twitter account, start blogging and consider starting a Facebook group for your business. Nine out of ten marketers are already doing it, and they can’t all be wrong.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

So you’ve built your website and ready to start greeting customers. But first you need to make sure your site can be found.

In follow up to last week’s post on Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO), here are 10 free tools for boosting your search engine ranking, and welcoming more visitors to your virtual shop:

1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – the first step in any SEO campaign is identifying your keywords. This handy tool will let you know which keywords to target, as well as offer suggestions on popular phrases you might not have thought of.

2. Wordpress – now you know which keywords to target you’ll need to boost the number of times they appear in your content. More than just blogging software, Wordpress offers an entire content management system for adding keyword packed articles. With 100s of customisable themes to choose from and a vibrant community of plugin developers, Wordpress can transform your website from a static brochure to a resource of industry news and info. Publishing great content will also work wonders for your search engine ranking.

3. XML Sitemap Generator – whenever you add new content to your site you’ll want to make sure Google knows about it. Sitemaps help the search engine’s spiders crawl around your site and understand what it’s about. This generator will create a search engine compliant sitemap that you can upload to your home directory every time your site is updated.

4. Google Webmaster Tools – after you’ve uploaded your sitemap you can use this handy utility to analyse its data. Google Webmaster Tools shows you how the search engine views your website, and, crucially, it will let you know if there are any problems to fix, such as broken links.

5. SEO Book’s Rank Checker – created by Aaron Wall, one of the SEO scene’s most respected bloggers, this Firefox plugin enables you to check where your site is ranking in keyword searches. You can save the details of every campaign and run reports from your browser in seconds.

6. Hubspot’s Website Grader – this award winning tool can run an SEO health check on your site before awarding it a grade and offering advice on how it could be improved. You can discover how effectively your site is described, its readability level and how often it has been bookmarked on social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg and Delicious). Should you wish to show off, the Website Grader provides you with code to paste into your site so you can display a badge featuring your search marketing quality score.

7. SEO Quake – this plugin for web browsers adds a toolbar displaying info on the SEO effectiveness of websites, as well as underscore entries on the search results page. You can check the number of your website pages that have been indexed by the different search engines at a glance, as well as spy on the success of your competitors’ campaigns.

8. Backlink Watch – along with regularly adding great content, you’ll want to build up the number of inbound links from relevant sites. If you’re posting useful content then you should start to attract links naturally. But it also helps to post comments in forums and on blogs to let people know you’re there. This handy tool will let you know who’s linking to your content, and track the success of your link building campaign.

9. StatCounter – once your visitors start arriving you’ll want to be able to know what they’re looking at and how long they’re engaging with your site. This free tool offers a wealth of valuable info, such as what links visitors are clicking on, how they’re finding you and in which country they’re based. Warning: checking your stats in the hope of seeing a flood of new visitors can be addictive.

10. Google Analytics – no list of SEO tools would be complete without mentioning Google’s free analytical software. It tells you everything you need to know about your visitors and the ‘stickiness’ of your website. The insight you gain into how visitors are interacting with your site can help you understand the journey they’re taking and what pages need improving to push more visitors to the contact page or checkout till.

Search marketing is a complicated beast. But at least with these tools you’ll have a fighting chance of understanding how it’s done.

As mentioned last week, getting onto page one can take weeks, months or even years for competitive terms. But the sooner you implement an SEO strategy the sooner you’ll be able to greet customers finding you through the search engines and buying your pixelated products.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Internet marketing should be easy. You just cobble together a website and wait for the sales to roll in, right? Well, if it was that simple we’d all be internet millionaires by now, smugly sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere.

But unfortunately for us, there are a few barriers to remove before you can expect the enquiries to come flooding in. Firstly, people have to be able to find you. Otherwise your investment in a website is waste of pixels.

To get noticed, you have two main options: pay per click advertising or search engine optimisation.

Pay per click (PPC)

Launched in 2000, pay per click (PPC) is the system of sponsored ads that have amassed Google its fortune. PPC is a quick, easy method of generating traffic. You simply choose which keywords to target, work out a budget and wait for the visitors to arrive.

What makes PPC attractive is its measurability and ability to show its ROI in clear numerals. Campaigns are also simple to manage, with clear data on conversions and how your money has been spent.

What’s less appealing is the high cost of popular keywords (although a way around this is to target the less obvious but cheaper ‘long tail’ phrases).

Another problem is that PPC is only a short term solution. If you decide to cut spending then your website will simply disappear into the depths of the search listings, never to be seen again.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO, on the other hand, is the long term alternative to PPC for getting to the top of the natural listings (and attracts 72% of clicks).

Working how to optimise websites to appear in response to certain queries is a complex process, and has given birth to an entire industry. Legions of SEO bloggers and consultants diligently work away trying to guess what line of code will magically push their clients’ sites to the top of the rankings. The problem for them is that nobody really knows for sure (and Google isn’t telling).

What we do know is that SEO involves having the correct page structure, tags and back links that tell Google what your website is all about. But SEO isn’t just a job for the technically minded or IT department. It’s also the quality of your content that impacts your ranking, making SEO the responsibility of marketers as well.

Good quality content improves your ranking due to the nature of Google’s business. Their success relies on providing the most relevant results. Consequently, it’s the websites regularly updated, with articles, blog posts and other keyword rich content, that receive the thumbs up and get pulled to the front.

Useful, well written articles can also attract links from other relevant websites (aka blogs), which is another key figure in the mysterious equation for getting onto page one.

Content marketing

Being able to drive traffic to your website is one hurdle, working out how to convert that traffic into sales is another. Your website needs to be able to change how people think and feel about your company if it’s going to convert them into customers. You can achieve this through your content.
Well written articles that offer to solve a problem, provide useful info or valuable insight can build trust and confidence in your expertise. They can also make your website ‘sticky’, keeping visitors glued to your content and engaged with your website for longer. This gives you more time to encourage them to take action and leave their email address before they leave.

PPC or SEO?

Investing in a content driven SEO strategy offers long term benefits compared to PPC. Once your website starts ranking highly for your key terms it’s likely to stay there. The drawback is that reaching such lofty positions can take weeks, months or even a year for competitive search terms. This makes SEO difficult to justify if you want quick, quantifiable results.

Ultimately, deciding whether to rely on PPC or SEO to generate traffic depends on the nature of your business and structure of your website. A sensible approach is to treat PPC as a quick, easy way of attracting customers, and SEO your long term objective.

Either way, internet marketing is a complex, evolving puzzle. You can endlessly spend your time making tweaks and word changes to improve your website’s conversion rate. So any images of sipping cocktails on a beach will have to stay on your desktop’s background for now.

In follow up to last week’s brochure design tips, we thought we’d discuss why you should consider printing your brochures digitally, rather than rely on good old lithographic.

Digital is being hailed as a revolution for small business’ print marketing: compared to litho, digital is quick, often cheaper and can deliver messages personalised to your customers’ interests.

Why is digital printing different to lithographic?

Traditional litho ‘offset’ printing requires the creation of a plate for every print, which is then used to transfer the image via a rubber blanket onto the paper.

Litho is great for printing 1000s of catalogues, magazines and books at a relative low cost. But its cost is less attractive when you’re only after a few hundred brochures and flyers.

Digital printers, on the other hand, don’t require the creation of a plate. Instead they use software to render digital images directly onto the press, bypassing the need for an expensive plate altogether. This offers numerous benefits…

What are the benefits of digital printing?

Cheaper – without the need to create a plate for every image, small businesses can print small quantities of brochures, flyers and business cards cheaply. There are already a few web-to-print businesses (such as moonpig.com and lulu.com) that have sprung up to capitalise on the low cost of small, customised print runs.

Faster – each litho print run takes a long time to setup. Digital presses, however, can be setup quickly and are capable of enabling next day, or even same day delivery.

Greener – the elimination of a plate, and shorter make-ready, means you also don’t need all the other printing materials and waste that go along with them. So you no longer have chemicals, ink and paper filling up your bin; and because you only print what you need, less chance of obsolescence. Some digital printing machines are even designed with their own recyclability in mind.

Customisable – every print can be customised to include unique content, such as the customer’s name, personalised URL and relevant images. Personalising marketing helps improve the response rate because people are more likely to engage with content that’s relevant to their interests. Litho, on the other hand, only allows a static ‘one size fits all’ message per print run.

High quality – the quality of digital printers is rapidly improving, and is almost indistinguishable from traditional litho. Their reliability is also getting better, and eventually they’ll be just as consistent, and competitive, at long print runs too.

Digital printing puts one-to-one marketing into customers’ hands

Digital print has opened up print marketing to small businesses by making it cost effective to deliver timely, relevant and personalised messages. This is the type of marketing weary consumers are crying out for, so digital print technology has arrived at just the right time.

Here at bda we’ve experienced first hand the benefits digital print offers for one-to-one marketing. In a recent campaign for Siemens, digital printing enabled us to create individual brochures personalised to match the responses customers logged on their website. This enabled Siemens to not only deliver marketing finely tuned to their customers’ interests, but also saved cash because they only needed to print what was requested, rather than end up with a pile of unwanted brochures gathering dust.

Litho still has a role to play in printing mass produced materials. But for fast, cost effective and personalised one-to-one print marketing, you have to go digital.

_______________________________

BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With all the fuss about the internet, it’s easy to forget about one of marketing’s workhorses that’s helped businesses promote themselves almost since the invention of the printing press. The fact is that a large proportion of people still prefer to receive offers in print, which is why the humble brochure deserves to be respected.

A brochure should reflect your expertise, professionalism and the quality of your products. And it needs to be eye catching and captivating if you want it to effectively promote your company.

But even creating a simple brochure in which all the elements are working together can be a complicated process. So to get you started, here’s bda’s top ten tips for designing brochures you’ll be proud to hand out, and are more likely to be read and responded to:

1. Identify its purpose – what do you want the brochure to accomplish? Do you want it to announce a new product? Raise your company profile? Or generate sales? Deciding on your brochure’s aim early on in the design process is vital because it will influence its tone, appearance and the result you can expect to achieve.

2. Work out the hierarchy of info – write a list of all the points and information you want to include in the brochure. Then put them into a prioritised list ensuring all the most vital info is at the top. This will make it easier to plot out what needs to go on each panel of your brochure.

3. Use high quality images – your brochure should provide a visual feel for who you are and what you do. So you should invest in high quality stock images or professional photography that reflects the expertise of your company. Trying to save money by using free clip art or pictures from a friend’s camera is only going to cost you in the long run in lost sales.

4. Make sure it’s well written – your brochure’s words need to appeal to your target customer, sell your benefits and reflect your personality. So choose your words carefully or hire a copywriter to choose them for you.

5. Select an appropriate font – the style of lettering you use will influence your brochure’s visual appearance and reflect the personality of your company. Try and avoid over used fonts, and don’t necessarily copy whatever’s popular at the moment. Font fashion changes quicker than that on Oxford Street.

6. Proofread – read through it several times, read it out aloud and read sentences backwards before you sign it off. Spelling mistakes can damage your credibility, and lead to your freshly printed brochures only making it as far as the shredder.

7. Paper quality – select paper that’s within budget and reflects the quality of your product. Normal weights for brochures range from 80gsm to 350gsm, whilst there’s a wide range of qualities to choose from. Choose paper that reflects your brand message without bankrupting your marketing budget in the process.

8. Choose a finish that enhances its appeal – there are a huge range to choose from, such as gloss varnishing, embossing, foiling, laminating and special finishes such as flitter etc. So choose the type you think best enhances your brochure’s feel, look and message. As with paper quality, some special finishes can be expensive, so ensure you get different quotes before committing to production.

9. Personalise to improve response – customising your brochures with personalised URLs (PURLs) as part of an integrated campaign can increase the response rate because people love seeing their own name in print. Modern tracking also enables you to capture data you can use to make future campaigns even more personalised and targeted.

10. Be realistic about what your brochure can achieve – after you’ve decided on all the elements above and sent your design off to the printers, you shouldn’t sit back and expect the sales to come rolling in. Ultimately, your brochure is a teaser for building intrigue and interest in your products, services, company or event.