Posts Tagged ‘brand identity’
How Steady is Your SEO Aim?
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
If you have ever fired a gun, bow, or other weapon, then you probably already understand why master hunters will tell you that a bullet or arrow isn’t nearly as important as the concentration of the person behind it. In other words, you are only as good as your focus, and it’s best to take one target at a time.
Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to search engine optimization.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to be everything for every potential customer, or targeting a half-dozen potentially profitable keywords and phrases on every page. Resist the urge. The best SEO content isn’t the longest, or even the most keyword-rich, but the content that’s pointed firmly in the right direction.
Here are three quick tips to help you study your SEO aim:
Target one keyword or phrase per page. Pick one term to focus on, and then devote your webpage, blog post, or article specifically towards it. That will keep you from having to form awkward sentences and headlines to mention it two or three times. Once you have targeted that keyword or phrase a few times, move on to the next one.
Make a keyword list and move through it. That approach is going to take more time, but you’ll achieve better longer-term results by thinking week to week and building slowly, rather than trying to optimize your site for dozens of keywords at once. Remember that good SEO takes a little bit of patience.
Know where your profits are. The keywords you should target first aren’t necessarily the ones that get the most traffic, but the ones that convert at the highest rate. Know your metrics well enough to identify them, and concentrate your firepower where it matters most.
Concentration, focus, and persistence are more important to search engine optimization than almost anything else. Keep that in mind and you’ll always be firing your optimized content with a steady hand. SEO can be confusing and many businesses don’t understand how it all works, Design Extensions can help your website rank higher, for the keywords that people actually use, that convert searches to dollars.
How Online Marketing is Like a Bad Breakup
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Bestselling books and blockbuster movies are continually filled with the theme of heartache. That’s because most of us have, at one point or another, known the terrible, sinking feeling that comes with losing someone we love.
Of course, online marketers can feel the same way when they see their best customers slipping away.
While you might not feel the same kind of depression over a missing account or decreased orders that you do when you lose a lover, either one can keep you up at night wondering what went wrong. And, believe it or not, there are some similarities, both in the way you are left and what you can do about it.
Here are some bad breakup tips you can use to fix your online marketing plan:
Don’t expect your departed customer to tell you what went wrong. You can ask all you want, but once a customer is gone, they aren’t likely to give you the real reasons they left, so it’s going to be up to you to figure it out on your own.
The exception to this rule, of course, is when your company messed up badly enough that it’s obvious to everyone why they took their business elsewhere. In those cases, learn from the experience, improve your customer service, and move on.
You can learn a lot from your customer’s next partner. If you really want to know why someone isn’t buying from you anymore, figure out who they are buying from now. What does that vendor offer that you don’t?
Often, if you lose out on a big account, it isn’t that difficult to find out where it went. Or, if you’re noticing a trend of smaller orders dropping off, see if you can find out which of your competitors is benefiting the most. Either way, you’ll learn something about what they are offering that you can’t match.
Sometimes it really is about the simple things. Differences in price, a more competitive product, a cleaner online reputation, or even better site layouts and navigation structures can all be obvious reasons that a customer might stop responding to your online marketing efforts. The answers are usually simpler than we think, so look for the big explanations first.
Losing customers is tough, but the pain doesn’t last forever. Follow these tips, find out why your online business isn’t stacking up, and then use the knowledge to either win your buyers back or find new ones. And if you want even more powerful tools to bring in those new clients, or find the lost ones, Give us a call at Design Extensions. We’d love to hlep.
Brand Identity
Monday, August 15th, 2011Brand identity should not be rocket science. You want your customer to recognize “you” as quickly as they would recognize Coca Cola, Apple, or any other successfully branded product. This is true whether you are selling a product, service, or a combination of the two. If your logo, or tag line is too complicated to understand at a glance, then it is too complicated. Colors, shapes, and fonts are an important part of many successfully brand logos.
In the design world many fads come and go, but brands that have staying power rely on something more important. They stay relevant. What is popular today, may be old news tomorrow and so while some elements of popular design are great to include is small doses, the best brands stay true to the businesses’ core values, customer base, and roots. Design Extensions will use your feedback and our experience to craft a website as well as logos, business cards, and other print collateral as needed to convey the image you want for your business.
Many businesses fail to realize their potential, simply by not maintaining uniform branding across all sectors of their business. Design Extensions can help, from business cards, letter head and other print collateral, to websites and online advertisements that keep your business’ image consistent. One of the benefits of utilizing all of the features Design Extensions has to offer is that our design team is all in house, and all files/logos/and content is accessible for use across all platforms to reach new customers. For the few aspects of your business that we may not have an in house solution for, (clothing, and novelties) we can recommend a service provider, and will be happy to design, or provide design elements to them.
