Out of the Fog Marketing

Check out the great NY Times article about the debate over IKEA changing their font in their 2010 catalog. Design does matter. A logo designed for $200 more times than not looks cheap. Creating a professional, polished and modern identity for your company is well worth the time, money and effort.

Take the first step by completing our brand personality quiz. It only takes 5 minutes and is fun to boot. When you're ready to brand or re-brand your company, our graphic and identity experts are waiting.

Here are a couple of our recent logo designs:

Labels: better marketing presentations, branding, identity, quiz

Are your Powerpoint presentations putting your audiences to sleep? Check out the slide:ology website. There's an interesting blog post on presentation trends to watch in 2009.

Labels: better marketing presentations, better powerpoint, duarte, slideology

Cisco and Facebook? Yes, folks they have a relationship. B2B Marketing recently reported on Cisco's use of social networking and Web 2.0 tactics to launch their Aggregation Services Router 1000 series. Usually stoic Cisco even has a Second Life property.

Research firm Universal McCann has a detailed report out with social media statistics. One of the more interesting stats is 36% of survey respondents thought more positively about companies with blogs. It's interesting blogging is becoming part of branding and corporate validation.

So does your company have a Facebook group, Squidoo site or Twitter page? In this new landscape the daring companies which try it will come out ahead I believe. We already see fabulous search engine ranking pages for Squidoo sites on niche topics and Twitter tweet pickup. So dive in...the water's fine.

Labels: b2bmarketing, better marketing presentations, cisco, facebook, Internet marketing, social media, social networking, squidoo, twitter, universal mccann, web 2.0

I'm a super huge fan of Tom Peters. I attended one of his speaking engagements in 1995. This seminar and his book The Pursuit of Wow! were largely responsible for me starting Clarity Quest a few years later.

However, I don't know what he and his team are thinking on his new website. Did anyone tell him that red is the most difficult color to read? I know the exclamation marks are his brand element, but using them in the navigation menu is completely over the top. There's so much information on this site, I easily lose interest because I can't quickly figure it out.

Ok, maybe I'm ADD after a long day but compare Tom's site to Seth Godin's. I think you'll see the huge difference.

Labels: better marketing presentations, blogs, gurus, michigan web design, pursuit of wow, readability, seth godin, tom peters, user interface, web 2.0

Here's my prediction...big ad agencies and PR firms are history.

Seth Godin is dead-on about specialization in his new book, Meatball Sundae. Firms that start as exciting, different, and specialized and stay that way prosper. Our firm is a perfect example - we handle only technology companies.

However, as companies focus and specialize, they cannot service clients within one agency. Successful marketing and advertising firms are building a web of contractors and partnerships on which to rely. Most already do have a "virtual network".

How many "partners" does your company have? Are they all inside your normal channels? Why?

Oh, and sorry Hillary for plagiarizing your title.

Labels: better marketing presentations, channel marketing, marketing specialization, meatball sundae, parternships, partners, seth godin, technology marketing

Using local geography in your online key phrases can be an extremely effective tactic when your business wants to rank for competitive keywords. By exploring local search, small business owners and marketers can benefit from both direct lead generation and general brand awareness.

Recent research by the Kelsey Group reported that 70% of Americans consult the web before making local buying decisions, while 36% of search engine queries now request local results. We use geographically-rich terms for many of our clients. Vision Computer Solutions would have a tough time ranking for "computer repair" but ranks on Google page one for "Michigan computer repair".

Daniel at Wordtracker wrote a great article covering more on the long tail of local search.

Labels: better marketing presentations, link building for SEO, local business listing, long tail search, michigan

I just came across Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog on Seth Godin's blog. Wow - what an amazing amount of useful information related to the design and delivery of presentations. I'm so glad to see another designer tackle poor Powerpoint design as I'm a big fan of Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points. He overnight changed the way our firm designed our client pitch presentations.

Reynolds' blog discusses the presentation styles of many business leaders and public speakers. It's fascinating. The one thing most of the presentation styles have in common is no more than one point per slide and one eye-catching visual per slide. At first, I was somewhat hesitant to use a "design-centric" presentation in front of nuts-and-bolts technology firm owners. But, in over 40 presentations not one person in the audience has commented negatively. In fact, even among design firms we stand out when pitching ourselves.

Everyone who purchases the new Presentation Zen book will get $130 worth of credits to download high resolution stock images from special selection plus a coupon code for 25% off your first purchase of $65 or more.

If you don't have a New Year's resolution yet, you might want to consider "make better presentations".

Labels: better marketing presentations, better powerpoint, better presentations, cliff atkinson, garr reynolds, istockphoto, microsoft powerpoint, presentation zen, public speaking, seth godin