Timely
Tidbits from Media II Advertising, Public Relations, Sales
Promotion
Time
for Spring Cleaning!
Ah Spring! Time
to renew. Like your home, it’s an ideal time to spring
clean your home page as well as the rest of your web site.
Get rid of the old and worn, dust off some oldies but
goodies, create a fresh look and add some new curb appeal.
Keeping your web site fresh and clean will have the same
effect as keeping your home nice and clean: People will
see your company as well organized, caring, hospitable
and professional. Here are some tips to help you spruce
up your web site:
– Get a
friend’s advice. Ask an outsider who regularly uses
the Internet – your spouse, a friend, an associate
–- to spend some time going through your web site.
Find out from them if the navigation is easy and intuitive,
whether pages load quickly enough, and if they understand
your messages.
– Get
a professional’s viewpoint. Choose one or more of
your customers, prospects or someone else that is familiar
with your industry to do the same thing. Sure, you’ll
want to know about navigation and page loading, but these
individuals will provide an industry perspective: How
does your site measure up to your company’s competitors
in regard to ease-of-use, content, image and customer
service?
– Clean
out the garage. Get rid of, or at least archive, dated
press releases, newsletters, and the like. Make sure your
contacts page is up to date. If you have a "What’s
New" page, make sure the content is new.
– Add a
fresh coat of paint. Add some new photos, graphics or
movies and sound if appropriate. Make sure your web site’s
look and feel conforms to the look and feel of your company’s
promotional literature, stationery, signage, tradeshow
exhibits, etc. Look at your total site, are pages consistent
in regards to navigation and graphics? They should be.
– Open
some windows. Increase your presence on search engine
listings. Sure, you should set your pages up with key
words, but also investigate search engine listing services
such as Overture.com.
– Make
your home more inviting. Consider adding some interactivity
with visitors. Online polls, contests, web logs and other
interactive items can keep visitors coming back. In this
day and age, these are easy and inexpensive to add.
– Keep
good records. Is your web statistics package giving you
the metrics you need? Number of individual visitors, page
views, etc. This information is vital to measure your
site’s performance and the interest in the content
of individual pages.
Have any additional
suggestions for web site spring cleaning? Send them to
us so we can share them with other readers. Need help
in cleaning up your web site? Give us a call.
Introducing Media II’s Marcom Manager Services
Do you need
the regular assistance of a marketing communications manager
but just can’t justify bringing on a full time employee?
Like to have a seasoned professional evaluate and make
recommendations to improve your marketing communications
efforts? Got a special marketing communications project
you need help with? Media II’s Marcom Manager Services
may be just what you need.
We have several
associates with a minimum of 15 years of business-to-business
marketing communications experience. In the trenches experience
with tight budgets, tighter deadlines, and great expectations.
They are available to help you:
- Ensure that
your marketing communications dollars are spent wisely.
- Develop new,
proven ways to attract customers and build brand awareness.
- Improve
the image of your company.
- Respond to
customers and prospects better.
- Answer your
questions and concerns.
These professionals
are flexible to meet your specific requirements and are
available on a project basis or on monthly retainers.
Services available include:
- One time
analysis of your marketing communications program and
recommendations for improvement.
- Ongoing marketing
communications plan/project development, consultation
and project management.
- Tradeshow/conference
coordination.
- Public relations
planning and deployment.
- Web site
analysis and upgrades.
- E-business
support.
- Online meetings
and conferences.
- Literature
development.
- Corporate
identification.
- New product
launches.
- Advertising
media research.
- Database
publishing.
If you would
like to know more about these services and the value they
can provide, please do not hesitate to ask for more information.
A Time-Saving Idea
You know all
those calls you get at home or work form people trying
to sell you this or that? Most times those calls come
at a time where you don’t have time to listen to
the offer, but sometimes you are in the market for what
they’re selling. Here’s an idea: Tell callers
to call you back at a specific time that you reserve for
such calls, say 4:00 pm on a Friday. The serious sellers
will call you back at that time and you may get what you
need.
Anti-Spam
Legislation Gains Steam
An update to
a bill sponsored by Senators Conrad Burns, R-MT and Ron
Wyden, D-OR was introduced in April. Called the Controlling
the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
bill, or CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, this bill would ban misleading
subject lines. It also bans forged headers that spammers
commonly use to mask the origin of emails. Another of
its goals is to eliminate the practice of using opt out
practices used by some spammers to confirm live addresses
and forward these addresses on to other spammers.
The act would
also require all commercial email to include:
- A functioning
link that recipients can use to opt out of mailings.
- A"clear
and conspicuous identification that the message is an
advertisement."
- A valid physical
postal address.
Violation can
pay a hefty price. The Act gives the Federal Trade Commission
enforcement authority and provides for state attorneys
general to sue on behalf of residents and for Internet
service providers to sue businesses sending spam across
their networks. Violators can be sued for monetary losses,
or $10 per email up to $500,000, or up to $1.5 million
if the sender knowingly violated the act.
Print
on Demand, Print Personalization
It wasn’t
long ago that printing a few hundred sales sheets cost
just a couple of hundred or so dollars less than printing
a few thousand sheets. Now prices have come down and flexibility
has come up using new processes such as digital color
printing. Need 500 two-page, four-color sales sheets?
With conventional printing you’d pay well over $1
for each one. Digital printing gets you 90% of offset
printing quality for under 80 cents a sheet.
While offset
printing still is the best value for quantities of 2,000
or more, digital printing is ideal for documents that
have content that changes often such as data and price/discount
sheets.
Digital printing
also enables you to personalize individual brochures and
mailers. You can personalize to individuals or markets
fairly easily and inexpensively. Just supply a data base
of names or other information and the digital press does
the rest.
Like to know
more about digital printing, ask us.
Quote
of the Month
"You know,
politicians and diapers have one thing in common. Both
should be changed regularly, and for the same reason."
– Unknown
If
you have a topic you would like to see us address or if
you would prefer not to receive this newsletter, please
let us know. Email roy@mediaii.com
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