Happy Halloween

October 31, 2011 Leave a comment

Witch's Cat

With Diwali celebrations in India last week and Halloween today, it seems like a special time everywhere! Diwali is the festival of lights and if you’re in India at this time, you can expect to see every window in every home or shop lit up with traditional oil lamps or the equally ubiquitous strings of electric lights. If you’re in India, happy Diwali!

To the rest of you, happy Halloween. Have a terror-filled, dark and gory holiday and (if you aren’t busy setting out candy or making last-minute adjustments to your costume) check out these designs created by our team. Pretty creepy, huh?

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Repurposing Content

October 21, 2011 3 Comments

100% RecyclableAs a marketer, I’m constantly inundated with advice on what I should be doing. Apparently, marketers are now publishers, but not the old-fashioned magazine publishers who only needed to worry about one issue for the month. We have blog posts to write (and they’d better be long and well-written and useful and frequent), newsletters to send out regularly to our subscribers, website copy to frequently update (to catch the attention of the elusive search engines), the Facebook page to continually update and monitor, the Twitter account to be briefly witty on, the press releases to send out and reach the media, sales collateral to keep engaging and current, events to plan for, and maybe ads to create and manage. Don’t forget the internal communication: at Affinity Express, for example, we have a quarterly newsletter, as well as memos and posters we often put up to inform our internal audience.

How does a small marketing team with limited resources do all this?

1. Read widely.

Not only is reading about industry news and best practices essential for you to learn, it also helps you think and may provide material for a blog post. I’ve blogged about a book I read (and that was a fiction book and not about marketing or business, so don’t be narrow in your selection), articles that I disagreed with, a blog post and speech that inspired me.  I also routinely cull industry articles and put in a few of the best links into our monthly newsletters.

2. Dig into what’s already available.

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Learn Marketing from the Competition

September 6, 2011 13 Comments

Spy on your competitors' marketing activities How much time and effort you need to spend on marketing depends partly on what your competitors are doing. Are they doing something that you aren’t, and that might work for you? Are they getting a lot of visibility online, and you need to catch up fast? Or are they relatively clueless, and you just need to keep on doing what you’re doing?

Here are some areas you can easily look at and see how your competitors fare. All you spend is some time at your computer.

1. Website

How effective is your website versus your competitors? It’s time to find out.

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The 6 Most Essential Marketing Activities

September 2, 2011 6 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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Cool Things Newspapers Are Doing on Facebook

August 11, 2011 2 Comments

You’ve heard it before: newspapers should be using Facebook. But what should they be doing?

Here’s what some of the best newspaper pages on Facebook are doing right. (Instead of looking through all newspaper pages I could find on Facebook, I started out with this list. I also included a few from here.)

Read on to see what Facebook features you should be taking advantage of (even if you’re not in the news business). Read more of this post

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How to Outsource Marketing Design and Keep Your Brand Consistent

August 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Print ad for laundry service

Print ad created by Affinity Express

As I ask (and answer) in my post at Search Engine People, how do you outsource marketing without losing your voice? Let’s take design. How do you outsource design of your ads and marketing materials without losing consistency?

Managing an outsourced team can be no different (or difficult!) than managing a team in-house, provided you follow the rules.

For example, rule #4:

Give detailed, specific instructions.
I can’t tell you how many times our clients fail to do that and are surprised when our designs don’t match their expectations. If you have something specific in mind, you have to really tell them what you mean. You can’t just say “make it like our current logo, only better.” You have to say, “I don’t like this black box in our logo because it makes us seem unapproachable. Replace it with something pink and poufy and transparent.” Yes, the designer will use their judgment: that’s what you’re paying them for. But you can’t give them vague statements and expect them to read your mind.

Now go over and read the rest. Don’t forget to tell me what you think I got right and what I missed.

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5 Steps to Ensuring Quality Through Training

July 22, 2011 1 Comment

Classroom trainingFor an organization with a unique business model like ours, it’s not enough to hire designers who are knowledgeable about design; we also need our employees who can deliver on client requirements, whether that means simply following instructions or getting creative.

With clients being half the world away, as distant culturally as they are physically, this is a challenge we deal with every day:

How do we ensure that our people deliver quality designs, every single time?

When I asked one of our associate managers for training how she thinks quality becomes ingrained into organizational culture, she said:

“Training has to be taken very seriously. We have to bridge the resources we get and the expectations of the client with training. Not merely classroom training, but on-the-job training has to be handled sensitively, so that best practices are shared.”

Here’s how we do it. Read more of this post

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Designing Our Facebook Page Welcome Tab

July 7, 2011 4 Comments

I had been coveting the interesting welcome tabs other brand pages had on Facebook, so I asked Kelly if we could have one of our own. Never one to refuse a reasonable request, she asked Mel if he’d be interested in designing one.

Now Mel knows that if you give clients options to choose from, they’re more likely to approve your work. So he sent us three designs to choose from.

Facebook welcome tab design with orange background

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Happy Fourth of July

July 4, 2011 Leave a comment

Hope our readers in the U.S. are enjoying the long weekend!

Happy 4th of July: vector artwork image with fireworks

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Branding is NOT a Luxury

June 23, 2011 5 Comments

White beverage boxes with blue caps: no branding or textThey’ll tell you, you can’t afford to think about branding if you’re a small business. They’ll tell you it’s a luxury because it’s only for the Cokes and the BMWs. They’ll tell you you have better things to focus on, like sales, for example.

They’re dead wrong.

Anyone who says any of the above doesn’t have any idea what branding is. Branding doesn’t mean you spend millions on an advertising campaign that features sports stars and TV celebrities. What it does mean is that all your communications—from the sign outside your office to your website to the uniforms your staff wear—all show the kind of business you are (or want to be). They communicate that you’re great at what you do and that you want to serve your customers. Branding says whether you’re a fun, casual workplace or a staid, old-fashioned one. It reinforces whether you’re in business for the long haul or a fly-by-night operator. It helps your customer connect and remember every experience they had with you and to like buying from you so much they’d be willing to drive across town or pay 30% more.

Now tell me that isn’t important to you.

So how do you brand if you’re a small business and can’t afford an ad agency? Here are some simple rules to follow. Read more of this post

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It’s Summer!

June 21, 2011 3 Comments

Embroidery digitizing sample from Affinity Express

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. And as usual, we celebrate it on the Affinity Express blog by sharing a few summer-themed designs from our team.

What are you doing this summer? (Actually, I’m going away this weekend, to a cottage in a forest–glad you asked!)

Going on a vacation? Going camping, maybe? You’ll need a tent. Read more of this post

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Why Commenting On A Blog Is Like Going To A Dinner Party

June 7, 2011 1 Comment

Don't forget to use coasters!As several commenters pointed out on this post, there’s not much difference between virtual and “real” face-to-face communication except for the medium you use. The same rules apply: remember your manners, put the other person at ease, be cheerful, be gracious.

That is the premise of my post over at Search Engine People. In my several years of exploring the blogging medium, I’ve realized how powerful commenting can be as a way of making new contacts. If you leave witty insightful comments on someone’s blog, they or their readers may want to follow you back to your blog and see what you write. You can find people whose views you agree with, and a blog comment saying so might even lead to a friendship. (I have several friends whom I’ve got to know through blogging, and I know that’s pretty common.)

You can also get business opportunities. The reason why I was invited to post on the Search Engine People blog in the first place is because the editor liked a comment I left on a post there.

And if that’s not enough to get you to go over and read my post, here is one of the tips I share:

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SMBs and Online Marketing

May 26, 2011 3 Comments

Facebook Page designed by Affinity Express for BNOW DentaleMarketer recently reported results of a survey of online marketing tactics by SMBs with the headline: “For Small-Business Marketers, Are Fewer Channels Better?”

The gist of the article is that use of online tactics by SMBs has increased tremendously since 2010, but the effectiveness of these tactics has decreased. For example, 86% have a website in 2011 compared to 52% in 2010, but the reported effectiveness of the company website has gone down from 68% to 64%.

eMarketer explains this phenomenon thus:

A rush of small businesses to new marketing channels can mean that less experienced respondents are now reporting on the effectiveness of their efforts, which would naturally be lower than those who have been using a channel for many years. In addition, some small businesses could be overreaching by trying to tackle too many channels at once, without the necessary time and resources.

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Happy Geek Pride Day

May 25, 2011 Leave a comment

"she's geeky" (I'm geeky)Star Wars may have passed me by, but I’m a self-professed geek. (In school, I had thick glasses and reading was my favorite past-time, unlike my more cool friends.) 

So let’s wave our geek flags high today and catch a Hitchhiker’s movie tonight (or get in bed with your favorite Terry Pratchett, whatever grabs you.)

And of course, check out these embroidery digitizing and vector artwork designs from our team.

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It’s Spring: Ads and Designs for the Season

May 24, 2011 2 Comments

Somewhat like fashion, advertising sees seasonal trends. We get deluged with orders right before the holiday season, for example, and we wrote about Easter-themed advertising last month.

Now that it’s spring, our designers are working on ads and designs that reflect the change in season: so more of outdoor activities such as gardening and soccer, and lots of blue skies and flowers, and of course, no more snow.

Print ad for fishing

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Redesigning Business Cards to Include Social Media Info

May 10, 2011 6 Comments

So my post on business cards made Kelly wonder why we weren’t including social media URLs in our business cards. (In my defense, I had suggested it, and we decided to revisit it next time we wanted to get new business cards printed. Yeah, working mostly online also means I don’t get to use them as often as I’d like.)

Anyway, Kelly suggested that a) we redesign our business cards to include our social media info, and b) that the three of us in marketing be the first to get the new business cards before rolling them out to the rest of the company. Wheeee!

So Kelly, Mel (who’s our fantastic designer) and I put our heads together (virtually, of course) and had a nice long, argumentative discussion on how we want our new business cards to look. Mel had to make a few studies so Kelly and I could agree on the one we all preferred (no easy feat, because Kelly and I seem to have very different views about design. She mentioned yesterday that she can predict which design of a set I’ll pick as it’s always the one she likes least–probably because we are each other’s devil’s advocate so often!)

Now if you want to add (like we did) your blog URL, Facebook page, Twitter profile and LinkedIn company page (and maybe some other social media profile you have) on top of your website URL, phone and fax numbers, physical address, and logo (not to speak of your name and job title), that card isn’t going to look pretty unless you get creative. Read more of this post

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Happy Mother’s Day

May 8, 2011 2 Comments

Have you called your mother today?

Here are some print ads that our clients are using for their Mother’s Day promotions (with a little help from us). Tell me which you like best!

Mother's Day ad with tulips

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Happy Cinco de Mayo!

May 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Here are some Mexican-themed embroidery digitizing and vector artwork designs created by our team for various restaurants.

Embroidery digitizing and vector artwork Mexico-influenced designs

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5 Design Mistakes Email Marketers Still Make

May 2, 2011 6 Comments

As an email marketer, I regularly seek out advice for creating better campaign emails. I know there is still a lot I could improve if I had the resources (time, for one!), but I try to do the best job I can. And some of the most basic and effective of all that advice is pretty easy to implement.

Which is why it surprises me when I get an email that flouts a “rule” that I’ve read about for some years. So here are some mistakes marketers are still making with email. Make sure you’re not one of them! Read more of this post

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Happy World Graphic Design Day!

April 27, 2011 Leave a comment

Affinity Express Holiday Card: Degas' Dancers in Pink

We live and breathe graphic design at Affinity Express, so today is something to celebrate! 

We wanted to take this occasion to share some of our best designs and design expertise from the past year.

Designs Created by Our Teams

Here are some of our best designs from 2010 and from 2011 so far. And some print ads and online ads we created, and some holiday cards created in embroidery.

Tips on Design

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