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Alpha Green Energy – Website Launch

Branding, Strategy, Website Development • Comments (0)

On November 3, 2014 • By Georgette Kakridas
LoudMouth Strategies develops and launches new website for Alpha Green Energy.

Our team has been hired on to help in a two phase approach to developing Alpha Green Energy’s website. The first phase of the project was to re-design and re-brand the entire company’s image. Our creative team helped to develop a new clean and crisp logo and engaging, modern website design. In addition to re-branding and re-designing the company’s website, our team worked to refine the company’s message through copywriting. We designed a more modern business card and produced a their marketing collateral layout. Our team is excited to move into the second phase of the website project which will include an e-commerce component so that customers can purchase products directly off the website. We are Alpha Green Energy’s marketing agency of record and support them in ongoing graphic design, copywriting, marketing strategy, SEO/SEM and website maintenance work.

Elements to Project:
- Website Design
- Website Development
- Logo Development
- Branding
- Collateral and Business Card Development
- E-commerce
- Copywriting
- Content Strategy and Messaging
- Social Media Branding
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Tailgaters Tap House and Grill – New Website Launch

On October 23, 2014 | Branding, Marketing, Strategy | By Georgette Kakridas
Targeting Mobile Users Through Google AdWords

Best Practices, Marketing • Comments (0)

On August 26, 2014 • By Georgette Kakridas

Article provides via Smashing Magazine

“Know your audience” has stood as a fundamental marketing principle since long before the web. When advertising online, you need to take into account one of the most basic factors of the audience you are reaching: what devices they are using.

The most popular online advertising platform, in use by marketers of all sizes, is Google AdWords. Up until early 2013, AdWords allowed advertisers to set up separate campaigns to target mobile devices. Best practice generally entailed targeting mobile, desktop and sometimes tablet users in unique campaigns.

Then, in a bold move to push the importance of mobile usability (some would say to drive up its own revenue), Google announced it would no longer allow campaigns to target by device, as part of what it called “enhanced” campaigns. Pay-per-click (PPC) managers made outcries about Google’s forced decision to remove control from advertisers, even cautioning people against upgrading immediately as the option became available to do so.

A year later, the dust has settled somewhat as advertisers have adapted to the new campaign format. With the ability create device-specific campaigns gone, they’ve modified tactics with their campaign structure and bidding strategy to best reach people across multiple devices.

Why should you care about who’s using a mobile device and who’s not? First of all, people often behave differently when browsing on a phone versus a desktop. In reviewing data from a site that received just over three million sessions over the past year, users spent an average of 2:42 when coming from desktop and 1:16 from mobile. That shows mobile sessions dropping off after about half as long as desktop sessions. A smartphone user might not care to spend time sifting through an extensive product inventory, instead just wanting a number to call or immediate directions to a location.

Secondly, costs can vary widely by device. A study by Marin Software shows that the average cost per click on mobile was 26% lower than the desktop average in 2013. Also, the average cost per lead or sale might be more or less on mobile. Advertisers who take this information into account will see the need to control bids by device in order to maintain their target costs for leads.

Thirdly, visits from mobile might provide more or less value to a particular advertiser. For example, the owner of an e-commerce website might find that desktop users put more items in their carts and spend more on average.

Fourthly, you might want to drive mobile users to different pages than desktop users. Especially if your website is not responsive, you might have separate URLs for mobile. While a responsive website is ideal, your agency might be forced to work with a client’s existing website when running an ad campaign.

So, how do you build a campaign that targets only mobile devices via AdWords? The short answer is you can’t. However, a number of workarounds are available.

First, let’s look at a couple of AdWords features that focus spending on mobile: bid modifiers and mobile-preferred ads.

AdWords Features To Target Mobile

USE BID MODIFIERS

Enhanced campaigns introduced a feature called bid modifiers, which allow you to increase or decrease bids by a percentage for ads appearing on mobile devices. A number of PPC professionals have suggested using bid modifiers to focus a campaign’s spend on mobile placement. You could set a low general bid and increase the mobile bid modifier to 300%, the maximum percentage allowed.

To set a bid modifier, go to the “Settings” tab in your desired campaign and select “Devices.” You’ll then see statistics broken down by device and the option to change the percentage for mobile.

However, this technique will not completely exclude desktop searches. In a test across multiple accounts, Brad Geddes found that about 19% of searches still end up occurring on desktop.

CREATE MOBILE-PREFERRED ADS

Another option is to create mobile-preferred ads. When you build an ad in AdWords’ interface, selecting a check box enables you to mark the ad as mobile-preferred. Such ads are an opportunity to customize messaging specifically to people on mobile devices. We’ve improved both clickthrough rates and conversion rates by using phrases like “Call now” in mobile-specific ads, because searchers can click-to-call from a phone.

To create a mobile-preferred ad, just click the check box for “Mobile” under “Device preference” when making an ad via the web interface.

However, even these ads are not guaranteed to appear only on mobile or to prevent standard ads in the same ad groups from showing up on mobile. PPC Hero put this to the test and found that a number of desktop impressions still occurred with mobile-preferred ads.

USE SMARTPHONE-SPECIFIC AD SIZES

When running display campaigns, the 320 × 50-pixel mobile leaderboard ad size will appear specifically in a smartphone browser or app. You can even create animated ads in this format to get more attention. If you want to run them on mobile devices that don’t support Flash, AdWords offers an option to convert the Flash files to HTML5 when uploading them.

This ad size is great for driving branding, because it takes up an extremely visible portion of a mobile screen, often on top. Clickthrough rate tends to be high. In one campaign, I saw an average of a 0.5% higher clickthrough rate on these mobile ads than the standard desktop sizes (a pretty significant difference for display ads). Be aware, however, that people often unintentionally tap these ads on a touch device, especially while playing games. If you are encountering a high bounce rate from these ads, then consider excluding mobile apps. Bryant Garvin has written about a quick and easy way to do this.

We’ve looked at some options available in AdWords to focus on mobile. Next, let’s consider another platform that allows for more granular targeting at the device level than AdWords.

Direct People To Proper Pages

While a responsive website is the ideal option, if you do have a separate mobile website, make sure that users who are coming from mobile devices will see the proper page. One of the worst mistakes you could make is to forward all mobile visitors to a generic home page. I’ve audited campaigns whose ads were set up to very carefully link to very specific inventory items, only to completely lose all of that value because no equivalent pages existed on mobile. Make sure that individual product and service pages forward to their respective mobile versions.

AdWords also lets you use ValueTrack parameters in ad-destination URLs to specify mobile and desktop versions. People who click on ads will be directed to the proper page based on the device being used.

Try Bing Ads

While Google might have removed the capability to target separate campaigns at mobile devices or tablets, Bing still allows you to segment by device; you can still create a mobile-only campaign to reach searchers on Bing and Yahoo. While Bing-powered search accounts for a much smaller volume than Google, I’ve found that allotting a portion of spend to Bing Ads to be valuable for many clients, with less competition, as well as a generally lower cost for leads. For one particular client with a limited budget, we found that the cost per lead averaged about $20 less in Bing Ads than AdWords; so, we shifted money over, resulting in a stronger return on investment from their ad spend.

To set a Bing Ads campaign to serve only on mobile, go to the “Campaign Settings” tab. Under “Advanced Targeting Options,” select “Device” to choose the devices on which to run your campaign. You can also set bid modifiers here, as in AdWords.

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Content Shock: Brands Face Their Moment of Truth

Best Practices, Marketing, Strategy • Comments (0)

On April 25, 2014 • By Georgette Kakridas

The writer brings up some very interesting points in regards to the amount of content that is being pushed through social networks and the internet every day. We are bombarded with constant content and messaging, whether we are searching for it or it just decided to pop up while you’re viewing a website, like those annoying commercials that just automatically start playing and you can’t turn them off, clearly at that point user experience isn’t even taken into consideration. We agree with the writer in saying that as time progresses, marketers and content writers will have a harder time getting their stories or brands message out into their target markets. We really enjoyed reading this article and we hope you all take the time to read it as well. Original Article is from Contently.com –

At SXSW Interactive last weekend, Subway rented out a square block outside the Austin convention center and turned it into a festival field of free food to celebrate their new “Eatovations;” inside, they were showing off a mind-control video game. Sounds like a modest marketing win at worst, right?

Not so much. Even on Monday — the first warm, sunny day of the weekend — the Eatovations field was mostly abandoned. The mind-control video game was generating surprisingly little press. It seemed there was just too much else going on at South By. Too many startups. Too many brands. At any given moment, Subway was just one of hundreds showing off a cool technology, just one of hundreds giving away free food and drinks.

And within the marketing crowd at the conference, there was a palpable fear that the same competitive saturation would make content marketing as difficult as SXSW marketing.

This theory is called “Content Shock,” and it was the subject of a panel I was on down in Austin. It goes something like this: As more and more people get into the content game and create better and better content, it’s going to be increasingly difficult and expensive to earn people’s attention. That’s because you’re going to have to tell awesome stories to stand out, and telling great stories on a consistent basis takes time, money and effort. And since there are only so many people out there and only so much time that they can pay attention to media, some brands are going to fail.

This is true. Publishing is really hard, and the competition is heating up. Digital media upstarts like Vox, BuzzFeed, and Business Insider are raising money that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Simultaneously, brands — seeing diminishing returns for TV commercials, print ads and display — are scrambling to become publishers. Everyone creating content is competing against everyone else creating content. It’s a free-for-all, with alliances and power positions changing faster than a game of Risk.

A lot of brands would prefer to sit this game out; after all, winning over an audience means getting a lot of things right. You need to find the right niche, like American Express did with small business and OPEN Forum, and like Red Bull did with extreme sports. You need a site that’s incredibly pleasant to read. You need great writers and designers working for you, and you need to pay them competitive rates. You need to be reevaluating and optimizing your publishing efforts every single day. You need to organize yourself in a way that enables you to work swiftly and intelligently.

Brands are approaching their marketing moment of truth as they contemplate this challenge. Those that are proactive and build an audience for their content — such as Amex, Chipotle, Red Bull, Samsung, GE and Net-a-Porter — will be in an incredibly advantageous position. Their publishing efforts will give them a direct connection with consumers at scale, while their late-to-the-game competitors will struggle to compete, and find it more difficult and expensive to catch up each year.The stragglers will experience Content Shock alright, but on the flip side, those ahead in the brand publishing arms race will experience Content Euphoria.

The good news? There is absolutely nothing stopping a brand from becoming a great publisher and experiencing Content Euphoria for the next decade.

It takes money, yes, but brands have the budgets to fund successful publications; doing so only costs a fraction of a TV campaign. There are hundreds of talented journalists out there ready and willing to helm a brand publication, as long as it’s authentic and ambitious. Salary and creative control are powerful recruiting tools. And if you doubt the ability of great editorial minds to win audience share when given the proper resources, just look at the successful, upstart publications we see popping up every few months.

It’s getting more difficult to get ahead in the content race every day, though, and as a result, whether a brand finds themselves in the Content Shock group or the Content Euphoria elite will be heavily determined by what they do in 2014. Will they race ahead and build the publishing empire that will sustain and drive their marketing for the next 25 years? Or will they lag behind, doomed to play with a stark handicap for the foreseeable future?

Brands can afford to ignore SXSW, but they can’t ignore this reality. SXSW lasts nine days, but the content race is forever. And it’s just heating up.

What’s the deal with the Content Strategist? It’s something we created at Contently because we believe in a world where marketing is helpful, and businesses grow by telling stories that people love. Take advantage of our tools and talent and come build that world with us.

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10 Online Strategies for Your Next Product Launch via @Mashable

Best Practices, Branding, Marketing • Comments (0)

On February 10, 2014 • By Georgette Kakridas

Long gone are the days when announcing a new product was simply a matter of putting together a news release, sending it off over the wire and counting on major news outlets to spread the word. Today, because consumers are able to get information from a variety of sources and platforms, a successful product launch requires an integrated approach; one that includes traditional, social and online marketing tools. Here’s a look at how to focus these approaches into one concerted effort around a product launch. (View Original Article Here)

1. Traditional Methods

Even though new media seems to get all the glory, traditional television, print or radio media outreach remains an effective way to expose a never-before-seen product to the masses. Be sure to clearly spell out the elements of your product that make it newsworthy. How is it different from your existing products? How is it different from other similar products? What benefits does it provide to the consumer? You can also go a step further and subscribe toHelp a Reporter Out, ProfNet and NewsBasis. These are great resources for connecting with journalists who are looking for experts and story ideas.

Don’t discount other proven methods like advertising, trade shows, speaking opportunities, promotional events and direct mail. Ignoring them can lead to wasted opportunities. If you invest the time to truly understand the demographics and behaviors of the people you’re hoping to reach, you’ll know if these traditional methods are worth your time and investment.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Before you begin your online efforts to market your new product, you must have a “home base,” which ideally is a search-friendly website or blog. When launching a product, to aid both potential customers and contribute to optimized search engine performance, consider creating a product-specific landing page that features photos, descriptions and/or video. Make sure this page is appropriately coded for search, complete with keyword-rich copy, title tags, header text, a unique URL and meta information that succinctly describes your new product. Make sure this page is visible and easily accessible from your home page, at least for its initial release.

To build your online content library, consider enhancing your traditional media outreach efforts and social media news presence by distributing your product press release using paid services with both text-only and multimedia options, such as PR Newswire, PRWeb andPitchEngine. If you’re looking for a less expensive route, Free Press Release and PR Logallow you to share news for free.

3. E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is a fantastic way to provide specialized content to people with whom you’ve already built relationships. Consider offering a pre-order for your new product, exclusive only to e-mail recipients. Or, offer a sneak peek at the new product before it’s released to the public. This will help to nurture and reward your existing relationships and continue building on the trust you’ve already earned.

Additionally, you may set up an e-mail drip campaign that sends messages on a regular schedule at timed intervals to keep your product or service top-of-mind with your customers, and also to keep the sales funnel flowing.

4. Online Advertising

Tools such as Google AdWords (and other pay-per-click services) can boost awareness and funnel parties directly to your product. Online advertising allows you to get in front of a specific audience but with wide reach.

Another option is to do some research to determine the most widely read blogs and sites in your industry and also those frequented by people in your target markets. Advertising is often the main revenue generator on these sites and blogs, so it’s a great way to begin building relationships with the editors and site operators for a chance to get in front of the people who are most inclined to care about your product.

Don’t overlook opportunities to advertise on social networks. Some have predicted that $4 billion will be spent on Facebook advertising alone in 2011. Marketers are already realizing the benefit of getting in front of this giant’s more than 500 million users.

If you choose to pursue any of these options, make sure the ads are clickable and direct all referrals to a targeted landing page on your company’s website. This page should have content specific to the new product, along with information on how and where to purchase it.

5. Social Networks

When your product is ready to go, inform your current customers and brand enthusiasts by updating your existing social networks. Whether you have a presence on one of the well-known platforms and/or another niche social network, craft catered messages for each. But, don’t just post to any of these social networks and walk away. There are many tools available to help you manage multiple social network profiles, keep the information up-to-date and continue to communicate with your connections, while providing the social proof needed for people to buy.

Naturally, these networks are filled with potential for people to share your information. For this reason, make sure you provide valuable content. Try different mediums for discussing your new product, such as videos, podcasts, photos and/or live chats. Many people are nowgetting their news, or topics of interest, from social networks and e-mail sharing, so this is a perfect place to get your product information in front of an audience that has already been “sold” on your business.

6. Geolocation

If you have a physical location your customers frequent, utilize geolocation tools likeFoursquare or Gowalla to further your marketing gusto. By closing the gap between online marketing platforms and a physical store, you are encouraging sales through different channels and fully connecting the buying experience. Offer special deals for your business’ mayors, and promotions for your best customers; this kind of strategy goes a long way in creating a lot of buzz for your new product.

7. Group Buying Sites

Groupon, Living Social, Deal On, My Daily Thread and other collective buying sites continue to grow in popularity and offer the opportunity to introduce and incentivize the purchase of your product to an opt-in audience. These sites give you the ability to customize your product offer by market and expand the product’s reach beyond those who are already familiar with your company.

8. Blogger Outreach

Blogging has grown tremendously in the past five years. Even though Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010 report found that 65% of blogger survey respondents are hobbyists, it’s likely you’ll find several bloggers in your industry who have very active communities and traffic/subscriber numbers that blow traditional media websites out of the water.

Blogger outreach goes hand-in-hand with traditional media outreach when it comes to generating interest for a new product, and the approach and methods used are much the same. Understand the blog, its audience and its content before sharing information about your product. If it makes sense, offer your product for the blogger to review.

When working with bloggers, remember this golden rule: Treat them with the same respect as you would traditional journalists.

9. Social Media Influencers

Using a strategy similar to traditional media outreach, take the time to research, locate and understand the most active social media users in your target markets. These people are at a unique advantage, having earned a large and tuned-in set of viewers, listeners and followers. While the payoff might not be immediate, creating relationships with these highly influential people can lead to valuable long-term opportunities.

While there is no universally accepted way to define and measure influence, using tools likeTwitter Grader and Klout will give a good indication of the major players in the social space and in your specific industry or market. You can also take it one step further and narrow your search by category. Tools like Twello allow you to search a directory filtered by self-identified expertise, interests and professions. This can be especially helpful for identifying Twitterusers in a subfield that directly relates to your new product.

10. Online Retail Sites

Invest in partnership opportunities with well-respected online retail sites to improve the availability and credibility of your business and product. Advertising on sites such asAmazon, eBay and Google Product Search will place your product in an environment searched by people that have already identified themselves as inclined to buy.

Amazon, specifically, offers a program called Amazon Advantage that allows sellers to delegate order fulfillment and shipping to Amazon. In addition, these products are eligible for “Free Super Saver Shipping” and are labeled as “shipped and sold by Amazon.com.” This provides buyers with the peace of mind they might not have when buying from an unknown vendor or site.

Get Customer Feedback

After your product has launched and your marketing and public relations strategies are underway, use a program like Radian6, Awareness, Netvibes, HootSuite, etc. to monitor your customers’ responses to your new product. This is a prime opportunity to open up the lines of communication with your customers and to show you care about and will listen to their feedback to improve future products.

To include your customers in your company’s product development and initiatives, consider tools such as UserVoice or GetSatisfaction to get an idea of what the people would like to see in the future.

Conclusion

With all of the social media tools available today, companies are truly missing out if they don’t evaluate the opportunities to execute a social/online strategy that complements their traditional marketing and PR programs for a product launch.

While it’s not commonplace for all of these tactics to be used, they should serve as a launching pad for your company to be creative and to choose the best strategy for you.

What experiences do you have with integrating traditional and online methods to make a product launch successful? What opportunities would you add?

More Business Resources from Mashable:

– What to Look For When Hiring a Community Manager
– 8 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Get More Out of Twitter
– 5 Masterminds Redefining Social Media Marketing
– 24 Professional Events & Organizations for Social Media Strategists
– The Future of the Social Media Strategist

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pavlen

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