Branding Simplified


Into the Fray is dedicated to helping business owners demystify marketing through design, sales, the digital revolution and more. I want to bridge the gap between yourself and any designer or creative firm you may use. Better armed you will get what you want how you want it without feeling like design and selling is all ‘magic’.

You can understand design. You can communicate your message clearly and concisely. All it takes is work and time as you step.. into the fray.

May 18th, 2012

What My Cat Has Taught Me About Marketing: Spam

My mother is very very familiar with AT&T’s new U-Verse plan. That’s because I’m pretty sure they killed an entire forest with how many promotional mailers they’ve sent to her in the last six months. She doesn’t want it and her annoyance was very clear when she went to get a new iPhone at a local AT&T store. The poor counter lady looked up her account information, got the marketing alert flag in the computer and promptly asked “Well this is exciting. Did you know you’re in a U-Verse service area?”

My mother’s angry retort “Yes. I know. I KNOW. I don’t want it. I JUST want my phone!”

This isn’t spam in the way we traditionally look at it. Spam is usually for male enhancements, false princes of Nigeria looking for someone to help smuggle in a few million dollars or other stupid illicit offers.  But this incessant marketing and pushing of the same product over and over has a negative effect on many people’s attitudes.

My cat could have taught you that.

My big orange tom, Winnie the Pooh (Pooh for short), likes to yowl at night.  That is he did, until he finally pushed me too far and the water sprayer came out.  Now Pooh wasn’t looking for a fancy lady cat, he’s neutered, he just wanted someone to play with him and pet him.  He thought that if he made enough noise I would get out of bed and do just that.

Instead he got sprayed with water until he learned that yowling = unpleasant cold wetness and stopped.

Consider the tolerance of your customers the same way. You can yowl and yowl about a new product or service, but that’s not going to get you the attention you really want. Find the people actually interested and don’t spam them with the same message.  If they’re interested, they’ll respond. If they aren’t you’ll be closing the door on their interest in your other products if you keep yowling.

May 17th, 2012

Flexibility in Marketing

One of the benefits of being a small business and wanting to get the word out is that you don’t need a huge interested audience to make things happen for you. If you’re doing your marketing right it won’t even be that expensive to experiment a little.

What do I mean? Well, recently it was suggested that I try a very radical and potentially off-putting marketing ploy. If it worked, it would be seen as ballsy, original and confident. If it came off wrong, it would be pretentious, melodramatic and superfluous.

Because of the narrow line I would have to walk to achieve success, I was hesitant to go forward with the idea. My current marketing wasn’t bad, per ce, even if the response rate was not very good. I wasn’t eager to risk lowering that small percent to a big fat zero just for the chance of raising it to something truly wonderful.

What was next suggested by my fellows (you have begun creating a council of people you can bounce ideas off of, right?) were two ingenious ideas.  One was to send the new marketing ploy out to half of my prospective customers and the old one to the other half. The other idea was to send both out everyone, but the new marketing ploy under a pseudonym so if it took off, I would know that my phone calls were because of the new marketing technique and if it didn’t the blame wouldn’t be associated with my current name.

Both are excellent solutions for getting around that ‘risk fear’ that we all have as entrepreneurs. Remember that as a small business you have a great deal of flexibility. Use it!

May 16th, 2012

Inspiration Wall

Design is visual in nature. I’ve mentioned before it’s a good idea, if you’re looking to learn some basics of design or if you’re a designer looking to keep creativity flowing, to collect clippings of ads and images that strike you as interesting, impactful or otherwise desirable.

However, just stuffing them in a folder sometimes isn’t enough. Sometimes those pieces by themselves are like small puzzle pieces – you can’t see the whole of the idea your mind has been gathering until all of them are put together. For that, you need a large empty space.

I recommend a wall.

By pinning/taping/sticky stuff-ing your inspirations pieces to a wall you create a collage of all the things important visually. The wall can become malleable, shifting as you remove or add more pieces. It’s a great place to go when you’re hitting a creative brick wall or contemplating a new marketing campaign.

The information over-load can also serve to show you which of your ideal designs still stand out in a crowd of the best-of-the-best so you can also learn what techniques will help you stand out against competition.

If you haven’t started, go out and buy a bunch of magazines, newspapers and trade journals and start clipping. Print out web ads that impress you. Start pinning up everything – ideally almost nothing from your industry at all, so you’re not prone to just copy-cat a competitor.

Inspiration pieces may seem like a lot of work for no apparent gain at first, but the more you develop and hone yours the more you will rely on it for creating great designs.

May 15th, 2012

What My Cat Has Taught Me About Marketing: Avoiding Obsolescence

The domesticated feline was long ago just a wild animal. It’s objectives of food, shelter and survival were achieved on it’s own without human intervention. One day this changed. One day, humans figured out that having cats around could be helpful in protecting their crops and stores from things like rats and birds.

I’m sure it was just a convergence of markets. The humans had a high byproduct of rats and birds, which the cats wanted. The humans wanted to be rid of those creatures and the cats were happy to oblige. A partnership was born.

Eventually that partnership evolved, the cats becoming more and more used to the humans and the humans more and more used to the cats. Cohabitation occurred and then the unthinkable – the humans started to feed the cats.

How did the cats get out of the heavy lifting of mousing and into the luxury of being cared for? When did they stop being a work animal and start being a lap warmer?

I can’t tell you which cat came up with the genius idea to change their marketing strategy towards humans, but it worked like a charm. Sure there were some marketing faux pas (the black plague) but eventually cats really got things going for them. With a growth in urban development cats weren’t simply obsoleted.

They rebranded themselves as companions, rather than work animals.

Now I have two cats whose major contribution to my life includes furballs and bed-time snuggles. That’s a long way from the mouser, and neither party seems unhappy with the arrangement.

Markets change. If a cat can figure out how to adapt, can’t you?

May 14th, 2012

What Do You Need All Those Programs For?

Adobe is famous for having a ridiculous number of programs in a huge variety of packages. Do you need the designer or the web software package? Can you just buy one individual software like Photoshop?

So today I’d like to give a run-down of what many of the major Adobe programs are used for and what their specialties are.

Adobe Photoshop

The most famous Adobe program, this is used for photo manipulation, heavy graphics like a large photo-heavy poster, cropping of images for transparent backgrounds and digital painting. Photoshop is an excellent utility knife of a program. It is one of the most versatile for opening different image formats including EPS and AI files (though it will no longer BE a vector image after that point). You can create fliers, brochures, banners, posters and even websites using Photoshop. However, Photoshop does have a few downsides: one being that while it can be used for fliers, brochures, posters, etc it tends to make those files HUGE.

 

Adobe Illustrator

A revolutionary and very intuitive vector program, Adobe Illustrator and create images using mathematical formulas.  What does this mean? It means anything you create in Illustrator can be enlarged or shrunk infinitely without any resolution problems. Also, the file size tends to be very small, even for a large banner. The addition of being able to ‘create outlines’ out of text guarantees that your font will turn out exactly how you want it to because it turns every letter into a vector image. Illustrator is most famous for making graphics, esp logos, but it’s very handy for fliers, brochures, posters and web images one you get the feel for it. A word of warning: while you can insert normal jpg and gif images into an Illustrator file, they will not be turned into vector-images. Use this feature sparingly as it really increases the file-size.

 

Adobe InDesign

Completing the triumvirate is InDesign. InDesign was especially made for banner, brochure, magazine, catalog and newspaper layout. It is the most powerful tool for large or multi-page documents, especially ones with tons of images in them. Why? InDesign has this really neat trick. Unlike Illustrator or Photoshop when you “Place” an image into InDesign, it doesn’t actually put the image in. Instead it links to the folder where the image is residing.  This is why it’s important to keep all your project images in a project folder (so if you have to back it up you have all the needed images). What this does is allow you to design with hundreds of images without overloading your computer’s processor. It also allows easy uniform processing to PDFs of varying resolutions and compression sizes: from Press Quality to Web Quality.

When file size is your main concern, it’s best to alter the images in Photoshop, make the illustrations in Illustrator, save all those images into a project folder and put them together in an InDesign file. If you get no other Adobe programs, these will keep you pretty well ahead of the game design-wise.

 

Adobe Acrobat

Allows you to create, manipulate, add editable forms to etc PDF documents. Very useful tool, though I’ve since found out that, since PDF is an open source format, there are many cheap/free versions of this available. It’s nice if it comes with your package you buy just for uniformity’s sake.

 

Adobe Dreamweaver

I don’t use this much, truth be told, though I’ve heard it’s gotten better since it’s redevelopment from Macromedia (Adobe bought Macromedia). Dreamweaver is primarily an HTML/website builder that uses WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interfaces and a large amount of pre-programed buttons and widgets to make a website. Frankly, compared to Joomla and WordPress I would take those over Dreamweaver simply for the simplicity and lack of needing substantial coding know-how.

 

Adobe Premiere

An astoundingly powerful video editing program. I know only the very surface of how to use it and even that is pretty impressive.

 

Adobe Encore

Creates beautiful DVD Menus and helps you burn DVDs that can be played on normal DVD players. One of my favorite programs to learn how to play with. You can do slide shows, import bookmarks from Premiere and AfterEffects as ‘chapters’ etc.

 

Adobe Soundbooth

Another very intelligent audio-editing program. I’m not entirely sure why it seems to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and would have liked to see it have more audio-mixing ability.

 

Adobe AfterEffects

A great add-on for Premiere. It is useful for creating animations, special effects and interesting transitions for video clips.

 

Adobe Flash

Now if you want to get SERIOUS about animations, this is the program for you. Not only can you create powerful flash animations, but it’s also great for creating flash-based websites with a lot of fun interactivity. The sky and your patience/planning are the limit here.

 

Adobe Bridge

I really like Adobe Bridge – it is a grea device for bridging media from one Adobe program to another. Say you want to create a video on Premiere with some Photoshop flies, and Illustrator image, some AfterEffects clips, a Flash animation and a Soundbooth edited clip. Bridge makes jumping and browsing between all of these super easy and functional.  In fact, the interactivity, easy navigation and simple compatibility between Adobe’s programs is what has made it the industry leader.

So these are all the major Adobe programs I know and use. Many of these programs have similar knock-off free programs that I’ve covered in a previous blog post. There are some other Adobe programs but I’ve honestly never touched them so I’m not good at reviewing or explaining them. I hope this helps you if you decide you might want to go down the path of buying Adobe programs or learning how to use the free versions.

http://frayblog.com/?p=612

Adobe does now have a monthly subscription service you can try if you’d like the power of the software but don’t want to commit to the massive price tag of their software. It might be a good option if you’re tried of the free stuff and ready to move on.

http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html?promoid=INOTE

May 7th, 2012

No Blog Updates This Week!

I’m going to be out of town for a week with limited access to a computer until May 14.  In my stead I’ve assembled a host of great resources and marketing tips for you to look over.  Have a fantastic week!

Social Media / Web News

Mashable
http://mashable.com/

A few interesting Mashable stories:

Interest in Pinterest Reaches a Fever Pitch
http://mashable.com/2012/04/29/pinterest-interest/

12 Essential Tools for the Content Marketer
http://mashable.com/2012/04/27/essential-tools-online-marketing-content/

Why Pay-Per-Click Ads Are Wasting Your Money
http://mashable.com/2012/04/30/paid-clicks-losing-you-money/

 

Marketing Concepts

Simon Sinek: Start With Why
http://www.startwithwhy.com/

Start With Why Blog
http://blog.startwithwhy.com/

Scott Ginsberg “Hello, My Name is Scott”
http://www.hellomynameisscott.com/

Scott Ginsberg’s “UNFORGETTABLE First Impressions” Article Series
http://www.hellomynameisscott.com/unforgettabletrade-first-impressions-be-social-gift-giver

http://www.hellomynameisscott.com/unforgettabletrade-first-impressions-its-all-about-them

www.hellomynameisscott.com/unforgettabletrade-first-impressions-locate-cpi

http://www.hellomynameisscott.com/unforgettabletrade-first-impressions-time-not-your-side

 

Becoming a World Class Speaker

Craig Valentine’s Free 52 Tips to Becoming A Better Speaker
http://www.52speakingtips.com/

Craig Valentine’s Blog
http://www.craigvalentine.com/blog/

Andy Harrington’s Professional Speakers Academy
http://andyharrington.kajabi.com/sq/6171-squeeze-1

May 4th, 2012

Take Us On An Adventure

Why are Vat19 and Blendtec highly successful? Because they take us on an adventure.  It’s not enough to simply show how a product could be useful or talk about the feature- NO! These companies take their products to extremes that delight and entertain us.

Vat19 takes our inner child by the hand, grins broadly and shouts ‘Hey, watch this!’ or ‘Wow, check out how cool this is!’.  From water balloon warfare to rave parties filled with monsterously huge gummy bears to pranking the boss – their video commercials are an instant hit with fans. Vat 19 doesn’t just tell you about their products, they give you a passport to fun and imagination.

Blendtec waggles it’s brows and asks “Will it blend?”  Sure they’re showing off how tough and effective their blenders are, but that isn’t what keeps people coming back to watch their commercials and buy their expensive elite products.  It’s the 12 lighters exploding as the blender’s blade shred them to plastic dust.  It’s five feet of broom handle getting eaten into fine mulch. The mad scientist power of it all hits a primal adventurous cord that’s addictive and inspiring.

When you market your products or services, are you entertaining? Are you speaking to emotions or logic? Are you taking people on an adventure?

May 3rd, 2012

Functionality vs Visual Appeal

It is darned hard for a designer and a coder to work together on a website. They represent two sides of a coin – the analytical and the artistic.  I’ve seen designers try to code and coders try to design and in neither case have I seen the same effect that each could do if they worked together in harmony.  Designers end up making sloppy code and coders end up making stilted design.  Maybe I’m wrong and you know a few people who break this mold, but it certainly isn’t the norm.

As a designer I spent the better part of my earlier years believing functionality was pointless without an earth shatteringly unique design. After all, who would bother to stay long enough on a boring website to see how well it worked?

It’s true that without some decent professional appearance people will not give your website a great deal of attention and in these days of template websites it’s harder and harder to get away with poor design. However, a beautiful website whose website’s SSL isn’t working won’t get many orders – if any at all. Is there a point to drawing in and interesting customers who can’t trust your site enough to buy from you?

If you’ve been reading some of the person-to-person development books I’ve been reviewing like Crucial Conversations, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Entreleadership you stand a better chance of bringing both sides of this equation together.

When both sides have learned what the other side needs and how they work, they can work together far better than alone or, worse still, at odds with each other. So don’t shirk development books and seminars as wishy-washy, because without good people-person skills you’re very likely going to have to choose between functionality and visual appeal.

Why have one, when you could have both?

May 2nd, 2012

Give Your Content a Spin

The hardest thing to promote is yourself or something you are responsible for creating. Even designers have the most difficult time designing for themselves. However, while many business people under they need someone to help them with polishing their ‘look’ few realize the need for revisiting and polishing their marketing text. (Bodies of text are often called ‘copy’.)

I get it. It’s hard to get the words right to both convey the facts and tell a compelling story to the communities you want to reach. Remember, you are the boss of your product/service so you have to make the first valiant attempt at getting the words onto paper. Just like a rough sketch of a marketing layout, it won’t have to be super slick or refined.

Just… don’t stop there ok?

Revisit your copy every few days, preferably during a period of the day when you are least interrupted and most productive. After that, run it by other people – lots of other people. We all have an innate sense of what sounds good or doesn’t, and a multi-faceted approach to figuring that out will help hone your message.

There are many services that will take your copy and rewrite it with a great deal of marketing buzz and panache, which might be something you want to consider. Or, more cheaply, you might hire a freelance writer to rev up your text for cheaper. If you’re lucky, maybe you have a few people either in your company or in your friends and family who have an expertise in this field.

Whatever you do, don’t leave your first draft well enough alone. Even the best writers go over their work several times and get feedback!

The good news is that with practice, mimicking other good messages and getting a better handle on the vernacular of your target audience you can become confident and exceptional in your own ability to write excellent copy.

May 1st, 2012

Review: We Are All Weird by Seth Godin


Down and Dirty: 4.5 out of 5

A short idea-packed energy booster for ideas, genius and artistry.

I just love the entire premise of this book: We are RICH.  That is, compared to so many we have choices of where we live, what we buy, what we wear, what we eat and finally: what we do.

Having choices makes us rich.

Seth begins with talking about the man who is on the cover of his book and how, by out standards we would think him dirt broke, but he considers himself rich, certainly rich enough to choose to be weird.

The rest of the book helps build on (or towards) many of Seth’s other books like Purple Cow, Tribes and Linchpin. It’s not just a call to doing truly weird marketing but to creating truly weird, amazing, beautiful, new, unexpected ART.

Art, by Seth’s definition is not just a painting or a sculpture. It’s the product of your unique talents: from the way you manage to make a guest feel welcome within five seconds to mastery over a garden. Art is a service, a product: something to be admired and appreciated.

We Are All Weird is a wonderful short book that pleads the case for being Weird, explains why Normal isn’t working and how Fake Weird and Fake Normal absolutely fall short. Check it out, the audio version is less that three hours long and I’m sure it wouldn’t take much longer to read the physical book either.

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