...we are also supporting this event.

Fit for Business - Link to story where the only sponsor mentioned is Mercedes. No mention of us or indeed Cats Solutions.

If you send a news story to a journalist with key information on the sponsors of the event, do expect them to be cut out of the loop. No. Unfortunately it has been and I had to say something here to let you all know.

Sponsorship is another great way to market your organisation.

There are many charities, smaller businesses, football clubs etc that all could do with either a little more cash in thier pocket (couldn't we all?) or help with skills that they don't have, so can't deliver without your help.

If you have the skills to lend in trade off for splashing you name all over the place then - how many people will see this? How many people will also say... "They must be kind people to be helping them out" - it builds a good view of your business in the eyes of the public.

Task for next week:

Find a charity this year that is looking for help and assistance that you can lend your services to or support financially. Put a page on your website about them, get your logo on thiers and away you go.

If you approach the more local based organisations, most will jump at the chance for help if they lack the skills you posses. The larger charities are harder to break into... but obviously more rewarding in terms of marketing opportunities.

Report back and tell me how you get on.

Filed under  //   Advice   Charity   Creative Rush   Marketing   Sponsorship  

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The businesses that think about their Christmas marketing as late as August might not cut it! "LATE" I hear you scream... "that's early!"
 
When you look at retail, planning a season like Christmas starts at least 18 months ahead.
 
Why do so many businesses only think about Christmas a few weeks before?
 
If retail rely on Christmas for aprox. 70% of profits why do businesses not try and tap into this also? If it is the season to be jolly, then jolly well get on with it early.
 
The main reason for this lack of proactiveness is lack of strategy and planning.
 
If there is one piece of advice I could get £1 for everytime I said it, it would be "plan & strategise" - be proactive rather than reactive. I would then have my own pad on a beach somewhere in the sun with my yacht parked up on the quay.
 
Most small businesses are just going about making their widgets and trying to get as many people as possible to buy them. They are not in the business of being marketing experts. Planning should be done by the marketing specialist with 12, 18, 24 month aims. These should be reviewed regularly and measured with the delivery of any marketing activity. If you can't measure it then it is not worth doing.
 
Outsource your marketing or get a non-executive director on board. Someone who is a specialist (like me?LOL!)
 
Forget Christmas 2008 now - you've missed the boat - focus on the year ahead in 2009 and where you want to be.
 
Get a marker pen and a sheet of paper now - go on!
 
Write down 3 aims that you want to go for in 2009 - goals that are not easy to achieve but at the same time are not impossible. Stick this on the wall next to your desk and go for it. Writing them down will keep the clear in your mind and will foster the minimum level of focus you need.
 
My final point - don't just throw mud at the wall hoping some will stick, be tactical and strategic about your marketing efforts in 2009.

Filed under  //   Christmas   Creative Rush   Marketing  

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On the surface of things, ready-made web templates are often sold as one of the most cost effective way of building a website for your business or organisation and the ideal option for the novice webmaster or site owner.

However - things are not always as they seem when using templates yourself or used by your developer. There are some difficulties that you may stumble across that you should be aware of before you decide to use one over the skills and experience of our web design team at Creative Rush.

The Back-End

The one problem that will first hit you is that the template will need editing. Not a really big problem as there are 100's of web editing programmes available for you use, many of them are free and some even built into internet browsers. The issue arises when you look at that code and think 'Ahhhhhhh! What is that!?' Unless you have any experience with looking at HTML code, or whatever language it has been written in, you may get stuck.

However depending upon the web editing programme that you choose, you may find that it has wizards and walkthrough's to help you in amending the code in the template. Some editors even have predictive text coding built in - but for most of these you will have to pay for them.

Using the wizards and prebuilt functions in many of the web editors results in your website becoming clogged with 'fat' that you don't need - code that just isn't required and code that can cause your site to slow down or even become less search engine optimised. Try to keep you code as lean and 'fat free' as you can.

The other drawback of using a different editor than that used by the creator of the template is that the site may not even display properly in it. The editor may not support the technology or language used to build the site and as such becomes useless.

The Front-End

Once you have your web editor sorted and understand how the back-end code works the graphics within the template will need to be changed. Most templates that you can buy come with Photoshop or Fireworks created graphics. You will need to have a program that will read and edit these or one to recreate the images you want to use on your site. Some of these are not cheap but again free software is available for this purpose.

Today the best templates that you can buy, which is now most of them, use external style sheets. These again will need editing to enable you to change the template design but be mindful that if you don't change enough, if someone else buys the same template, your site look very similar. Bear in mind that a good knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will be required for you to do this and also to ensure that what you change has no impact on the design, layout or structure of the site in the many browsers that are out there. A 10 pixel margin in one browser may be a 20 pixel margin in another!

Things to consider

I would recommend that if you choose to develop your site using a template solution, either by doing this yourself or paying someone to do this, always choose a template that uses, HTML navigation and CSS for layout and structure.

Unless you know what you are doing, try to avoid templates that use JavaScript or images for navigation, are web editor specific (for example Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe DreamWeaver) and avoid at all costs sites that use frames.

Normally forgotten

Most templates are built by designers or developers that forget to include anything other than the page names in the meta tags. A meta tag is text written in the code of a web page in order to provide information to a search engine about the contents of the page. This is hidden from the visitors to your site but is very important. Just because you can't see it when viewing your site, does not mean that it is not important.

What is the alternative?

There are a couple. When you look at getting a website up and running you need to buy the right domain name (web address) and choose the right hosting provider - there is a lot of leg-work to be done here but that is a story for another day. Once you have you domain hosted by the provider of your choice you may find that they have a 'web builder' application. Similar to the template option this will allow you create a web page using pre-defined templates. The limitations with this is that you may find that you can't do exactly what you want and put things where you want them on the page!

A Content Management System (CMS) is a collection of tools specifically designed for the creation, editing, organising and deletion of information from a web site. The major plus is that in most cases a CMS requires little or no knowledge of HTML coding in order to create new web pages. Free CMS systems are available and may be installed on your hosting when set up. Some of the more advanced CMS's (the ones you normally have to pay for) allow for a completely bespoke design to be built into it, enabling full control over the design, structure and use of the site. This is normally done by the company that you are buying the CMS from.

Another solution is to have a web development agency to design, and maintain if required, a bespoke site for you. This clearly gets you exactly what you want, how you want it and more often than not gets you a completely unique site that will look and feel like no other.

So what?

Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide at Saatchi and Saatchi says "We have moved away from an Attention economy, into an Attraction economy." This means that we must focus on the engagement and emotional connectivity with our consumers. We need to think less about being irreplaceable but become much more irresistible.

If we look across the internet and find that we are moving from website to website, seeing similar designs, layouts, royalty free stock images used on websites, then it all merges into one and no one stands out. How can you start to nurture a relationship with your consumers if firstly they have no interaction with your site as they have seen dozens like it and it does not engage them?

Be different - move away from templated design if you can. Avoid the pitfalls of looking like others in your marketplace. Rather than think about the return on investment, 'Oh its only £10 for a template and I can get that hosted for £1.50 a month', think about your return on involvement. In todays fast paced economy it's all about the inspirational customers that will talk about your site to others, rather than being able to shout from the rooftops that you have 1000's of visitors to your site day in day out.

Creative Rush

If you would like to know more about how our web design team at Creative Rush can help deliver you an individual site that will work for you and your business - get in touch today

Filed under  //   Creative Rush   Web design  

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