Marketing

It’s hard to make things easy. And, it’s even harder to be visually appealing at the same time.

In the earliest forms of advertising, copy was king. Strong use of words and typefaces would be effective in your marketing piece, but not everyone understands concepts and information at the same rate. Some people can understand messages quickly while others need help to grasp what is being said. Visual aids are a way of further explanation. Nowadays, we’re able to relay much of what we once had to explain through the written word with the use of images.

Consumers have seen themselves moving away from wordy messaging and finding that most engaging piece of advertising in a graphic or photograph. You might recall a spoof we posted about how Microsoft would redesign Apple’s iPod packaging.

The very best visuals take a complex idea or series of connected ideas and make them instantly understandable. Just the right visuals make those ideas even more memorable. Use of visual tools led to longer retention of information. Visual aids allow a speaker to use verbal and nonverbal communication to solidify the message and provide a point of reference for the mind.

Visual representations of information, or infographics, are often used to support information, strengthen it and present it while leaving the amount of explanation required to a minimum. Using appropriate visual aids are the essential ingredients. Here’s a good reference to infographics to see how effective they can be without an explanation.

So when you have an advertisement that you want to convey to your consumers, give serious thought to using accompanying illustrations that will complement what you are trying to convey.

Here’s a video from the 2008 TED Conference of Chris Jordan on how he takes raw data and depicts it in his art in a more visual language. Notice how using visuals that integrate just enough to clarify his presentation. This makes for a powerful communications combination.

One thing that helps to unify a team of professionals at any business is maintaining a consistent level of understanding. When there are many subject matter experts throughout all levels of a business, it can often be difficult for every department to be keen to the terminology being used.

This is especially true of newer online media. There are often terms and technology that we float around, that many of our peers only partially understand, or don’t at all.

At Bing, we organize team building meetings to help cross-train each other in aspects of our work that can be a bit fuzzy. This past Friday, I gathered a group to discuss Web and Internet Marketing Terms. We looked at words and phrases we often use, and better defined them with real examples online.

We broke the meeting down into three parts:

1. User Experience
2. Internet Marketing
3. Search

For User Experience, we talked about a few popular topics such as:

• Above the Fold – CNN.com is a good example of how all significant content on the page is placed so that it is above the bottom of the browser.
• Content Management Systems (CMS) – WordPress sites are great for content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML.
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – CSS Zen Garden where you can see the same HTML change dramatically with CSS.
• Rich Media/Web 2.0 – as you can see on CBS’s website with episodes of CSI provides examples of Social Media; Usabillity; and Viral Marketing.

For Internet Marketing, we covered keywords related to Analytics – Conversion Rates; Cookies; Cost Per Click (CPC) – as with Google Ad Words; Cost Per Impression (CPM); Impressions; Mobile Marketing; Paid Listings; and Pay Per Click (PPC).

For Search, terms such as Algothrims – discussing the “Golden Triangle” that web analysts use to define user tendencies, Crawlers/Bots/Spiders, Ranking, Search Engine Markeing (SEM), and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Being better informed helps a company to be more versatile and aware of opportunities to help clients and business partners achieve greater success. Need a consultation? We’d like to hear from you!

At an International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) meeting, I was listening to a presenter develop his concept around Knowledge Management. I started thinking, we’ve all heard “knowledge is power.” If you’ve spent any time at all on the web, you probably get the picture that business culture is adapting that idea more into “sharing knowledge is power.” Essentially adding the fifth P of marketing – participation – to the original marketing mix: product, price, place, and promotion.

This is most visibly relevant to organizations externally with new technologies and communication channels like this blog. But it’s also important internally – how to communicate strategy, important project details, employee benefits, schedules, etc.

We’ve been discussing this here at Bing quite a bit lately. What are the appropriate avenues for each type of information so people can easily stay in the loop, and ultimately become more productive, efficient, and profitable?

Knowledge Management isn’t just a tech concept, it’s a business philosophy. It is an evolving set of principles, processes, and organizational structures that help people share and leverage knowledge and ideas to meet business objectives. But even in this age of web 2.0 and sharing, it’s ironically not an easy philosophy for everyone to grasp.

For example, you may be thinking, “why should I share my ideas?” You aren’t alone. Many people hold back because they:

• are insecure about their knowledge.
• don’t trust others with the value of information.
• are afraid of negative consequences/feedback.
• believe knowledge is their competitive advantage.

By sharing knowledge, you gain more than you lose. Sharing knowledge creates synergy. If I share an idea, just creating the dialogue with other associates helps me shape and improve the idea, thus benefiting from their unique insights and knowledge. So, participate! You’ll quickly sense the benefits of collaborative effort.

It’s hard not to notice it and even harder not to talk about it. The economy is in a rough spot right now.

Everyday we hear of the negative impact it’s having on businesses of all sizes. Companies are being forced to cut budgets to make ends meet during the hard times. What’s usually one of the first to be slashed? Marketing!
Advertising during economic downturn is certainly not a marketer’s dream, but it also doesn’t have to be a nightmare. I recently stumbled across a bevy of articles about advertising in a recession. For the most part, the articles underscored one main point. Don’t cut the marketing budget – completely.

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You may remember this video showing a tongue-in-cheek look at how Microsoft would redesign Apple’s iPod packaging:

Apple has always been admired for its design, all the way from the products themselves, to the packaging and advertising. Basically every bit of Apple you see has the same clean, spare design that still manages to provoke an emotional response.

In the November issue of PC Magazine, John Dvorak writes that Microsoft, on the other hand, is perceived as being perpetually in “bad taste”, even though they use good design firms, and a lot of what they do looks great. Their downfall is that they don’t have a single vision of what their brand should look like. And that is something that Apple does better than any company on the planet. It helps that Apple has one guy at the helm: Steve Jobs, a “dictator” who ensures that every step of the way, the product reflects his own vision. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is another company that does an incredible job of maintaining its brand identity through myriad product lines. And we all know who runs that place with an iron fist.

At Microsoft, there is a committee of individuals who pool together all their ideas and end up with an “agreeable soulless product.”  There’s no payoff for being different or adventurous – making something safe is the most important thing. Doing something too radical might alienate the other members of the committee or worse. As a result, they never get in the news for doing anything exciting or crazy that captures the public’s imagination. Sure, not everything that Apple’s done has been a huge success, but for every Newton and PowerMac Cube (which I own and love, by the way), you get an iPod or an iPhone – products which outshine all competitors and have redefined the market.

Reading this, I immediately drew a parallel to the graphic design world. It’s a commonly repeated adage that “design by committee” is anathema to good design. With a single vision, you do have the possibility of winding up with something completely hideous, but by the same token, you could easily end up with something sublime. Without a bunch of different opinions needing to be taken into consideration, an artist with a single vision can create a work that has soul, consistency and beauty. Of course, this is not always possible with the constraints of business, needing to adhere to company policies set by lawyers and executives (see video above). Most of us can only imagine what it would be like to work for a benevolent dictator with an eye for design. Challenging, sure. But what beautiful things you could create.