The 6 Most Essential Marketing Activities

September 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

You’re a small or medium business, and your marketing team’s really small (or you don’t have one). You see so much advice around, so many things you need to do: SEO, email marketing, PR . . . where do you even start?

Believe me, I feel your pain. Always having worked in small marketing teams with a very limited budget, I know you’re expected to do a lot with next to nothing. How do you prioritize?

Below are the six most essential marketing activities that I believe every business should work on, in order of priority. So if you’re just starting out, you can start with #1 and work your way down. Read more of this post

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Designs of the Quarter: Image Editing

May 15, 2012 by Leave a comment

The third category for the Designs of the Quarter contest was image editing. Our image editors work on pictures and make them more clear, or more complete, or remove backgrounds, or change colors, or make other modifications that the client wants.

This design won first prize, and you can see why. Something that starts as muddy-looking and shadowy becomes a clear image that conveys speed and power.

Image Editing: Gladiator

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Mother’s Day in Advertising

May 12, 2012 by Leave a comment

Because Mother’s Day occurs in spring, ads for this holiday often feature pastels and tend to be heavy on the pinks and purples. The fonts tend to look like script or fancy calligraphy and flowers are commonly used.

I didn’t know until I started doing some research, but Mother’s Day is one of the top sales opportunities for salons and spas–we all want to pamper mom because she takes care of everyone else the rest of the year. So it wasn’t surprising when I asked our team for ads designed for this holiday that this one turned up. It gets your attention with the bright, feminine colors and uses the same light blue in the logo to highlight the sale price effectively.

Mother's Day Ad: Pedicure

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Designs of the Quarter: Videos

May 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

Video has emerged as such an important marketing vehicle it’s no surprise that our team is busy creating showcase, montage, pre-roll and post-roll videos and editing them for our clients. Our multi-media clients provide the service to their small- to medium-sized business clients. Typically, video would be too expensive for these advertisers. But the types of products we produce are affordable and take the SMB’s promotional efforts to a new level.

Here are our top picks from our video production work last quarter.

The first winning video ad uses a variety of effects to bring in all the different elements, separated by the curtains—a perfect device for a theater. The use of the fonts is appropriate to convey information that complements the moving elements.

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Designs of the Quarter: Print Ads

May 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

In our first Designs of the Quarter contest this year, we had a slightly different format. We awarded three designs in each of three categories, instead of three designs overall. The categories this time were: print ads, video and image editing.

Today, I’ll share the winning print ads with you.

This first ad is really striking in its layout and the use of fonts and colors. The ad design lives up to the slogan: “Makes other bourbons feel underdressed” by complementing elegant imagery with classic fonts and understated colors so the product is dominant. This bourbon suggests it is in a different class of spirits and the design reinforces that point!

Print Ad for bourbon

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The Art of Marketing: Social Media and Word of Mouth

May 1, 2012 by Leave a comment

Continued from here.

Seth Godin on “Leadership and Creativity”

Advertising is about interrupting as often as possible average people with our average product. As long as we make more than we spent on production, media, etc., the cycle continues: ads  —–> distribution —–> profit   (and back around again). If you are going to interrupt everybody, then you better sell something everybody wants.

Now there are 30K products in a supermarket and 17K new ones introduced each year. Previously, there were four television channels. Now there is satellite radio, Comcast, Facebook (where everybody is their own channel), etc.

In the past, ads didn’t have to be good. You just needed to buy a lot of them.

Remarkable means worth making a remark about. Creating something that somebody wants to talk about it the toughest adjustment for people to make.

Rather than mass-market, you have to make something for a specific sub-segment. Permission is the only asset that you can build now. You won’t get opt-ins for an average product.

Anticipated, personal, relevant. Somebody has to pick you.  Read more of this post

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The Art of Marketing: Relationships and Metrics

April 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

Last week, I was at the Art of Marketing conference in Chicago. With speakers like Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, Randi Zuckerberg and Avinash Kaushik, the event was nothing short of amazing.

If you weren’t there, you missed something special. But I’m not just gloating. Read on if you weren’t there, for I’m going to share what I captured  and what inspired me in all the sessions. You’re welcome!

Keith Ferrazzi on “Relationships for Revenue Growth”

Relationships are critical to success but we don’t know if demographics relate to relationship styles. Your “circography” was locked by about age three and it revolves around a basic question: are people safe? Another consideration is whether you are conflict-avoidant or confrontational. From that age on, we are basically looking for examples to reinforce what we thought was true back then.

What overrides this psychology is the fact that we are all human and long to be connected and tribal—to belong. We also need to influence and our relationships are an indication of our ability to do this. Read more of this post

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Ten Principles of Communication Design

April 26, 2012 by Leave a comment

On World Communication Design Day, we bring you the ten principles of communication design we work by.

1

Read and follow instructions carefully. Nothing frustrates a client faster than wasting time providing instructions that are ignored and having to repeat them. Make sure you understand them upfront, complete the work and check the instructions again to confirm that you complied.

Follow instructions Read more of this post

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Hair and Makeup Ads

April 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

What is different about hair and makeup ads is that you typically can’t get away with a lot of copy and clutter. A single photo often dominates and communicates the feeling of the company or product. When women buy beauty products, they buy a dream and photos have to convey these aspirations at a glance.

Color is also important to these ads because colors are the basis for good-looking hair and makeup. More than almost any other type of creative, the colors have to be right on.

In this ad, the goal is to draw in customers who want to freshen up their looks for spring. The photo has a lovely woman wearing makeup in cool tones of teal and pink. The designer picked up on this and used the same colors in the headline and again in the offer of a free makeover. The other important info–the location and phone number–is featured in a bright pink background.

Print Ad: Spring Color

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Differentiating with Direct Mail

April 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

How many emails did you receive in your business account last week? How many from outside your company did you actually read? For those that you didn’t read, how long did it take you to determine an email was a pitch, ad or other promotion?

Email is a relatively cheap marketing tactic so companies of all sizes can use it to target potential customers. And that’s pretty obvious by the volume of junk that comes our way—day and night!

If you are anything like me, you get hundreds of offers, updates and notifications a day and read somewhere between one and five percent of them. Even when I have “time” on the weekends or while standing in line using my phone, I’ve just run out of patience for the same old stuff in the same old way.

When I get snail mail, I’m also discriminating but actually open many of the envelopes. The reason is that I’m taking a break once per day to read my mail but am trying to work all while the emails roll in as interruptions.

We also use email at Affinity Express but have been leveraging direct mail more frequently in the past two years. It is more expensive in terms of production, materials and postage but it can be a tremendously effective if you use it selectively and follow these tips. Read more of this post

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What We Mean When We Say We Design Ads

April 12, 2012 by Leave a comment

Isn’t it difficult to have your ads or marketing materials created by someone in a remote office?

Not really. The input we receive from customers varies from detailed instructions to a few scribbled lines of copy on a sheet. Our designers are pretty good at figuring out what works for the product and the brand.

The input for this ad has more direction than many and you can see the person has a solid idea of what he or she wants. We are comfortable following instructions and execute down to the letter for these customers. The more information they provide, the more we adhere and deliver exactly what they want.

Print ad for aging at home, with input

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AESB 4.0: Our Cloud Tool to Manage Both Digital and Print Marketing Products

April 10, 2012 by Leave a comment

AESB 4.0

What’s new about AESB 4.0? A lot.
By making the processes of digital and print production more efficient and enabling digital and print services to be ordered and proofed through a single interface, we believe AESB 4.0 will be a game changer for the news publishing industry.
AESB 4.0 has several unique benefits for users:

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Easter: Bunnies, Eggs and Crosses

April 5, 2012 by Leave a comment

Easter comes early this year and brings quite a few ads to our designers from companies eager to tie into the holiday and generate revenue. But not all ads at this time of year focus on business and festivities.

As with most holidays, there are traditional colors and images for Easter. Typically, we are asked to feature colorful eggs and the Easter Bunny. The desired colors are almost always pastels: pink, blue, purple, green, blue, yellow and orange.

A case in point is this ad for Pharmasave, complete with a bunny, eggs and pastel colors. What I find interesting is that the retailer is not promoting any products or prices but they are likely to get good traffic by offering free photos with the Easter Bunny. Kids for miles around will be lining up for a turn and the parents will probably pick up “a few things” while waiting. Pretty smart!

Ad for free photos with the Easter Bunny

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Make Your Fans Work for You

March 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

Celebrate your biggest fanThe power of word of mouth is that it isn’t a marketing channel the way other marketing channels are. It’s your customer recommending you to other people and automatically comes with more credibility than a press release or a post on your company blog. And one of the most wonderful things social media has done is that it has amplified the power of word of mouth.

But that doesn’t mean you sit down and do nothing. That fan who touts your services does it because she loves your services, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help her along. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate a thank-you.

Take it a notch further. Make your customers and fans feel really special. Make them proud to associate with you and make them want to boast about you.

Here is a 6-step guide to making your fans work for you. Read more of this post

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Selling Design Services to Your Customers

March 22, 2012 by Leave a comment

Wedding invitation designed by Affinity ExpressWe often work with clients who offer printing services to small businesses or to consumers for business cards, brochures, letterheads, posters, invitation cards and so on. But how can you capture more printing work per customer and increase your profits? Sell higher-value design services!

Identifying customers who are in need of design services is the first step to selling. How do you do this? In four simple ways.

What do you see?

Your biggest clue is the document that the customer wants printed or copied.

  • What is the condition of the customer’s original document? Is it well-designed or do you see obvious problems: stretched or blurred images, difficult-to-read text?
  • If the customer wants a copy of a printed document, is the original in good shape? Does it have markings on it or things taped onto it?
  • Did the customer provide only hand-written copy that they want you to type up and create a document for?
  • Does the customer own a business, but doesn’t have a logo?

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Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

March 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

Because my first name is Kelly and I was born and raised in New York (where the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held), I feel eminently qualified to review these holiday designs. So before you go out for a green beer (or many), take a look at these ads our team designed. It’s no surprise that many are for bars or clubs.

This one trots out all the standards for St. Patrick’s Day. You have the leprechaun, the beer, clovers and several shades of green. There are not one but two glasses of beer, in the event you didn’t already associate the beverage with the holiday. What works especially well is the bar’s logo–you can’t miss the red among all that green.

The one day everyone's a little Irish

This one has everything you want in an ad for the holiday. The theme is obvious, the information is easy to find and there are no extra elements. The large beer screams, “drink me!” As a result, the message is clear: come party and have fun with us at Hooligans.

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Marketing Metrics Every CMO Should Track

March 15, 2012 by Leave a comment

Marketing metrics every CMO should know!CMOs (and CEOs) are focused on the big picture, while the rest of us lower down the totem pole get our hands dirty. (Well, except for Kelly, who loves getting her hands dirty. Figuratively speaking.) The big picture does emerge out of the small details, and that gorgeous Monet is, if you stand close enough, made up of blobs of paint.

But when you’re more focused on managing your people and putting together your marketing strategy, it can be easy to lose sight of the details. Here are some details that it pays to never lose sight of, because they paint a very real picture (that’s my last metaphor, I promise!) of your marketing performance.

1.  Visits to Your Sites/Profiles

I don’t mean you should write down last week’s number of website visits on your cuff, but you should know whether the number is closer to 1,000 or 20,000, and whether it’s growing or otherwise. You should also roughly know the number of relevant visits. For example, we get a lot of visitors from India because we have an office here, but we don’t offer our services in India, so for my purposes, the relevant number is the number of visitors from North America.

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8 Tips on How to Stand Out at a Trade Show

March 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

The Affinity Express booth at the Mega Conference 2012

Our booth at a recent newspaper conference

There is an art to creating large-scale trade show exhibits, but it can be just as difficult to create displays for small- to medium-sized businesses, when every inch of space counts.

Many conference attendees do not have a lot of time to spend in the exhibit hall and may not be interested in stopping for anyone (unless you’re featuring a great giveaway, candy or beer!). Plus, depending on the venue, there are likely to be dozens or even hundreds of other companies vying for their attention.

Here are some tips to help you maximize your impact when creating a ten-foot exhibit.

1. Choose the Right Hardware

With a smaller booth, chances are that you are not paying to have someone else set up your exhibit (such luxury!). Therefore, the smart option is to select hardware that is fast and easy to put up and is also light for shipping but sturdy. This is not difficult, as there are quite a few options available today. Affinity Express has two exhibits that each take about five minutes to set up, from unpacking and securing the hardware to hanging the visuals. Although I can’t exactly drag an exhibit across McCormick Place myself, the booth is light enough that it saves money on shipping compared to one or more cases weighing hundreds of pounds.

Before you start designing your graphics, be sure you have measurements from the manufacturer and adhere to those specifications.

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Attending the Key Executives Mega Conference

March 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

Camaraderie. Camaraderie would be my first word of choice to sum up the Key Executives Mega Conference this past week in San Antonio. The feeling in the air was electric and the conversations between sessions revolved around new technologies, growth of audience, sharing with digital and, most importantly, working collaboratively. The discussions were not just about who had the best product, but rather, who had the best product and how they wanted to share their journey.

It’s always a risk when trying something new, but many times the best outcomes are because of these risks. Some of the best insights come from your colleagues in the same industry and what better place to share your experience? Mega Conference 2012 in San Antonio, Texas.

Buzz words and phrases like mobile, retention, disruption, positioning for growth, becoming the local agency, and modernizing the newspaper world all have deep meaning for us at Affinity Express. I attended the conference with David Grant, executive vice president, and Kristin Meidell, vice president of operations for Affinity Express. Our discussions in our booth were not along the lines of traditional sales pitches, but rather conversations that elicited future thought.

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Top Seven Cloud-based Tools I Use Every Week

March 2, 2012 by 2 Comments

What, this isn't how you use cloud computing?Our business relies pretty heavily on two tools built by our teams: IDEA (Interactive Digital Entry Assistant) and AESB (Affinity Express Service Bureau). AESB is used by many of our news publisher and retailer clients to order print design, while IDEA is currently used by everyone else and for all other services. (We have written about IDEA here.)

Our tech team is working on a big revamp of AESB that will make it smarter and cooler and way more amazing than before. Hearing our people rave about how our cloud-based tool will revolutionize the business and make our clients’ lives easier made me think of all the awesome online tools that are already in use in other industries. I, personally, rely heavily on these seven. They have all the usual advantages of web tools—they are fast and can be accessed from anywhere. (Also, most of them are free or have free versions, except Constant Contact.) But more than that, they are easy to use and fairly intuitive and they serve my needs awesomely.

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Print Ads for Restaurants

February 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

Here’s another round-up of ads our team worked on. (Yes, we work on more than food ads, but those seem to catch my attention most.)

I have had this ad filed away for a long time, to use in the right post. I love how the food takes center stage, and that picture just makes me dizzy with hunger. They kept the copy minimal (but right on target) and just let the picture do the talking.

Seafood ad

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