Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
Red Hot Topic #12: Breaking Down Brand Barriers
Posted by Tracy Stottler | Filed under Advertising, Travel Marketing
Every great brand has a personality. And like a real person, a brand builds relationships based on its characteristics and reputation. That is why defining the elements of your brand is essential. A brand is not simply a logo, a symbol or a tagline. A brand is a living entity—a collection of perceptions and beliefs that live in the hearts and minds of your customers. It’s the basis of communicating who you are.
But before you can work on building your brand, you must carefully analyze the possible barriers to its success. Certain market conditions can hinder your effectiveness, so it’s vital to identify and avoid those barriers early on. We urge you to consider the following in your own analysis.
Competition
Understanding what is available in the marketplace and potential consumer desire is essential to brand positioning. It is important to compile a list of your competitors, areas of benefit not currently claimed by them, any possible weak positions and ways in which your product shows superiority over the competition. This will put you at a distinct advantage in developing plans and creative concepts that garner results.
Positioning
To be effective, a company’s position in the marketplace must be unique, desirable, believable, deliverable, integrated and consistent. Work to establish brand positioning based on these criteria in order to develop successful marketing plans.
Location/Targeting
In the world of marketing, it’s about defining and redefining the targets. You need to know who your customers are before you can craft and deliver a message that speaks directly to them. It’s vital to have the resources necessary to mine the most accurate data and identify the high-quality sources that provide the best-qualified leads.
Timing
Is there a demand for your product or service at this time? Are there seasonal or time-sensitive considerations? By identifying exactly when the planning and buying are happening, you’ll be in a better position to build marketing delivery at a time when people have an interest in your brand.
Internal Buy-In
A brand cannot thrive simply by putting your logo everywhere. It’s about attitude, which starts with your senior leaders and staff. Your organization needs to understand your core brand values and live and breathe them every day. You need internal advocates that are your spokespeople, who demonstrate what your business stands for. Without this support from the ground up, a brand rarely succeeds.
Cost
Investing in getting your brand right is critical to laying the groundwork in any future marketing activity. You wouldn’t build a house without a foundation, and you shouldn’t build a marketing plan without solid branding in place. Most effective branding efforts can be costly, so unfortunately, it’s the step that is most often missed or, worse yet, cut from the strategic planning process. Finding the time and resources to get the right branding in place is the most important thing you can do.
Take control of your brand with the proper investigative and analytic approach, and be sure to stay current on market trends by subscribing to industry publications and newsletters. For more information about how you can crush your brand barriers, contact jgurtman@danacommunications.com.
Cover Your Bases
Posted by Michele Clerici | Filed under Advertising
I was once compared to a baseball umpire. As a professional proofreader, it’s my job to make the calls on the rules of language and accuracy. When I do my job right, no one notices. But if I make a bad call, I’m bound to have an angry crowd to face.
The reason why I like this analogy is because it perfectly illustrates why proofreading is vital to any successful brand. You’ll always hear about the obvious tenets of building a strong brand, like research, strategy, design, analysis, etc. But what about the importance of quality control?
We say that a brand is not a logo, a symbol or a tagline. It is a living entity—a collection of perceptions and beliefs that live in the hearts and minds of your customers. We say that a consumer should experience your brand in every facet of your product or service—from the hotel front desk to the company Facebook page. It’s in the way you design, the way you sell, the way you decorate, the way you speak, the energy you show and the tone you take. Whether you realize it or not, all of these elements contribute to how people perceive your brand. And unfortunately, so do your mistakes.
If you want consumers to trust your brand, you must show them your trustworthiness. If you want them to rely on you for their needs, you must show them your reliability. And no matter what your intentions, if you produce flawed creative and informational output, people will see your brand as flawed too.
Quality assurance is paramount to effective marketing. Just like a proofreader’s job, it may go unnoticed by your audience when done right, but you can bet that it will be front-page news when it’s not.
You have a limited opportunity to capture—and keep—the loyalty of consumers. If you want to win their business, you’ve got to play the game right—and that means taking the proper steps to ensure flawlessness in your brand messaging.
It’s batter up, and all eyes are on you. So be sure to step up your game with star quality!
Red Hot Topic #11: Will Twitter Brand Pages Take Off?
Posted by Chris Buckelew | Filed under Advertising, Red Hot Topics, Social Media, Trends
Sure, Twitter attracts Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga fans in hordes (16+ and 17+ million followers respectively), as well as last-minute deal hunters (think JetBlue Cheeps). But can the micro-blogging site compete with other social media platforms in building brand awareness?
In December, Twitter announced a redesign of its website and apps, making the start of 2012 the ideal time to rethink Twitter’s role in your marketing plan. Dana investigated and found four features of Twitter’s redesign worth noting.
- Easier to use: The redesign attempts to move the growing interest in Twitter to actual engagement—especially for social media beginners. A big change is demystifying those Twitter symbols; for example, replacing “@” and “#” with “connect” and “discover.” “Connect” lets you see who is followed, mentioned or re-tweeted, while “discover” offers follow suggestions based on your interests and location.
- More brand-friendly: The addition of business profile pages allows Twitter to compete with other social networks (read: Facebook). These brand pages (now available to a select group of companies like American Express, Dell and JetBlue) will make a bigger impression through more prominent logos, customized headers, embedded media and the ability to keep a specific tweet at the top of the timeline. Currently, customizing your company’s Twitter page is limited to the background, which is usually covered up by the timeline.
- Beyond the 140 characters: Twitter’s Promoted Ad Tweets let you extend your message with embedded video, images and more. Basically, the 140-character tweet becomes your caption.
- Better filters: Twitter now separates @ replies from mentions. The new filtering feature will allow brands (especially large ones with a lot of activity) to monitor messaging.
So what’s the takeaway on the Twitter redesign (in 140 characters or less)? Contact Dana for information and insights about using these new features to keep your brand on top—and follow us at twitter.com/danacomm!
Logo Lingo
Posted by Lynn Kaniper | Filed under Advertising, Design, Media, Red Hot Topics
The time and space you have to market yourself becomes smaller and smaller with each passing day. Faster technology, shorter attention spans, growing competition—all of these contribute to the cacophony that exists in the marketplace.
That is why your logo plays a very important role in your brand strategy. It’s the single most valuable element to distinguish your brand amid the marketing clutter—and the quickest way to be recognized by your audience.
Have you tapped into the fullest potential of your logo design? Does it possess enduring value? Does it transcend language and cultural barriers? Derive its meaning from the quality of the brand it symbolizes? Represent a compelling brand story?
If not, it might be time to reevaluate. We’ve compiled some valuable tips for ensuring that your logo design is both effective and memorable.
Develop the brand first.
A brand promise and tagline are important to defining your brand. And since your logo is a visual representation of your brand, you’ll want to develop these elements before diving into design. But keep in mind that while a brand promise and tagline are critical to development, they do not have to be anchored to the logo.Use distinctive features.
Your logo generally receives only a quick glance. Which is why it must be easy to see and recognize instantly. If you choose to have a graphic element or icon in your logo, create something unexpected to get noticed. Also, make sure it can be identified at any size.Choose your font carefully.
Especially if your logo does not contain a graphic, a unique font is vital to your logo design. Present the font in an uncommon, unexpected way (hint: the most accessible fonts that come with your computer system are not the ones to use). You can go to http://new.myfonts.com/ for inexpensive, yet unique options.Be considerate of color.
Create a logo that works in black and white first, then version it to color. A one- or two-color design is best. Although a variety of colors may do well on the Web, it could cause major problems and expenses when used in print. Your logo colors should reflect who you are and what your brand stands for. They need to resonate with your audience as well. It’s a good idea to make sample color palettes and organize a focus group to test them.Create graphic standards for consistency.
Once you know how you will utilize your logo, create a standards manual or documentation that can be followed easily by others. Ensure these rules are followed carefully and not altered, as doing so will affect the consistency and success of your branding.
Dana specializes in logo design that creates long-lasting and unique brand recognition. After all, it is only after a logo becomes familiar to its audience that it can function properly. For more information about bringing your logo to life, email lkaniper@danacommunications.com.
Top Tips for a Fruitful Agency Partnership
Posted by Bethany Diddle | Filed under Advertising
Happy Holidays!
The end of the year is upon us, and well, 2011 was…not too shabby. I really wish I could say that every business is booming, jobs are abundant and the sky is the limit for growth. But while there are positive signs, not everyone is there just yet…
Things are different after these past three tumultuous years. We’re smarter, leaner and swimming in shallow water (heck, I might even go as far as to say we’re synchronized swimming in shallow water!). Point being, we all do more with less.
As such, and as an account service professional with almost 15 years of experience in an agency environment, I wanted to share some thoughts on how to get the absolute most out of your agency.
View agency as partner. Be an open book.
Sharing information and keeping your account service team up to date ensures that your agency is offering ideas and recommendations that best align with your strategies—and that you are getting the full value from your marketing advisors.
Draft the blueprint.
Establish a clear picture of what you want to achieve. If the objectives aren’t identifiable, account service will not be able to accurately direct the creative team and will likely waste time and money getting to the right solution. Help your agency help you by giving good direction. Ten minutes of quality time could save hours of shots in the dark.
Give your agency time.
Creativity is a process. When possible, give your agency the time they need to provide you with a well thought out execution that embodies the best thinking and planning. My father (the basketball coach) has always said it best…Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. It’s true on and off the court!
Get to know your creative team.
Being the man behind the curtain was effective in The Wizard of Oz…in the real world, not so much. Share your vision, connect with your team, communicate. Your direct influence on their work will often spark something spectacular!
Lay the cards on the table.
Identify the budget up front. This helps your agency determine how to maximize your dollars and get the most out of each line item. Time is all too often wasted working on ideas and suggestions that simply aren’t feasible.
Sleep on it.
Fortunately, your agency partners have a mind of their own. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t need them. Agencies are a great way to channel creative thinking, so if they bring something to the table that you weren’t expecting, sleep on it. It may seem crazy at first, but it could be transformational.
Putting these thoughts into practice for 2012 will help your agency run at its prime, generating more bang for your marketing buck.
Dana Communications Wins Four Magellan Awards For Excellence in Travel Marketing
Posted by Lynn Kaniper | Filed under Advertising, Awards, Dana News
Hopewell, New Jersey. The Travel Weekly Magellan Awards honor the best in travel and salute the outstanding travel professionals behind it all. Dana Communications proudly received four awards for 2011, including two Gold and two Silver Magellan Awards:
A Gold Magellan Award in the Travel Agent/Agency Category for “Wrap Yourself in Westin.” This Advertising/Marketing Campaign motivated travel professionals to experience and sell Westin Hotels & Resorts. The one-week campaign engaged 8,401 travel professionals, added 4,000 new registrants and reached nearly 15% of the entire travel professional market in North America, far exceeding the stated goal of our client.
A Gold Magellan Award in the Hotels and Resorts Category for the Turtle Bay Resort “Wedding Wars” Campaign. This Advertising/Marketing Campaign partnered with Wedding Wars, the entertaining VH1 reality show, to promote this Hawaii resort as a dream wedding destination. Dana’s campaign drove viewers to a landing page to vote for their favorite couple and link to the resort for information and reservations. The results included impressive returns in room reservations and revenues, plus requests for the exact wedding ceremony featured on the TV show.
A Silver Magellan Award in the Hotels and Resorts Category for Kiawah Island Golf Resort’s 2012 PGA Play Promotion. This Print Advertising Campaign promoted a one-week opportunity to play The Ocean Course, host of the 2012 PGA Championship, under major championship conditions. Dana’s campaign leveraged the prestige of the PGA event, generated valuable revenue, promoted year-round packages and positioned our client as the East Coast’s premier golf destination.
A Silver Magellan Award in the Hotels and Resorts Category for the Turning Stone Golf Resort & Spa “Turn Around” Campaign. This Advertising/Marketing Campaign for a well-known casino destination in Verona, NY, promoted the resort’s lesser-known resort offerings. Banners, direct mail, email, web, print and television advertised attractive value packages to increase business for the resort’s award-winning golf courses, spa and Lodge. The email component was especially powerful, outperforming industry averages by as much as 50%.
“Dana submitted four entries and is extremely proud to have received a prestigious award for each entry,” said Lynn Kaniper, Dana’s Creative Director and COO. “This competition attracts outstanding work from top travel agencies worldwide, so winning four Magellan Awards demonstrates Dana’s creativity and the results we achieve for our clients in the travel industry.”
A leading lifestyle marketing agency, Dana has offices in New York City, Hopewell, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Los Angeles, California. Dana’s clients include some of the most impressive brands in travel and hospitality. For additional information about Dana Communications, visit http://www.danacommunications.com or contact Jeff Gurtman at jgurtman@danacommunications.com or 609.466.9187 x136.
Social media creates brand champions
Posted by Pam Ruymen | Filed under Advertising, Social Media, Technology
Social media has fostered a new twist on creating brand champions for various companies and products. By allowing for the development of a more cost-effective and current campaign, social media has enabled customers and businesses to forge a more direct relationship.
Customers like having control, and they want to know that they are important. So, for instance, when Starbucks introduced My Starbucks Idea , they empowered their customers to take an active role. On the site, users can submit suggestions that are then voted on by other Starbucks customers. In this way, Starbucks has gained greater insight into their customers’ needs and desires, while customers have gained a greater sense of control.
Another example is Graco. Using the photo-sharing program Flikr, in combination with a blog platform, Graco built a community around its baby products. The submitted photos showcased real people, thereby humanizing and promoting their brand. It boils down to this: people crave attention. Give them an opportunity to get their two seconds of fame, and they will promote the brand.
Successful marketing stems from the idea that you have to give a little to gain a little. In the case of Burger King’s “Sacrifice Ten Friends” Facebook application, customers could give a little and gain a lot! Every person who sacrificed 10 of their friends by deleting them from their Facebook account received a free whopper. And let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want a free burger? The unique campaign, however strange it may have seemed, promoted Burger King through customers’ interaction with the brand on Facebook.
Overall, brands that have successfully integrated social media into their marketing campaigns have done so by allowing their customers to be involved. When you have a campaign that is as interactive as social media, there is a world of opportunities for capturing information and forming a strong relationship with your customers.
Dana Goes to Charm City
Posted by Bob Prewitt | Filed under Advertising, Hospitality News, Travel
Dana headed to Baltimore recently to check out the AIBTM trade show, catch up with industry friends and meet our clients from IMEX, who flew in from the UK. Here’s a quick take on our time in this great town:
The AIBTM trade show was buzzing with activity, giving us a mini-preview of the IMEX America show that the IMEX team will launch in Las Vegas in October. IMEX America will be a much larger show, bringing together unprecedented numbers of industry professionals from around the country and across the globe. Dana is excited to be working on marketing strategy and materials to help IMEX bring this groundbreaking event to America.
Good to see our friends and clients on the show floor! Eric Whitson (from The National Conference Center in Leesburg, VA) and Jim Bressler (from the Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club in Durham, NC) did a super job hosting the IACC booth, where new Dana-designed trade show screens were on display:
We also caught up with an old friend and former Dana associate, John Hawley, who is now DOSM at the Baltimore Hilton. John and his team impressed us all with their abilities to host AIBTM attendees in style. Just one of many events was the CIC Hall of Leaders Gala Dinner, an elegant black-tie affair where Dana President Bob Prewitt was a guest at the IMEX America table. Dana does the marketing for the Baltimore Hilton and gives its ads a hometown spin.
Does “The Crab Cake Capital of the World” deliver on its reputation? We wanted to find out and take in the harbor views on a beautiful evening. So we headed to Phillips Seafood Restaurant, a popular spot with tourists and locals. And pretty good crab cakes too. If you want to try a traditional taste of the city, the restaurant generously shares its original recipe (from 1956) that they’re still making today. Enjoy them with a local Baltimore brew, Heavy Seas Small Craft Warning, like we did.
Search Marketing: Should I Bid on Competitors’ Brands?
Posted by Mark D’Amico | Filed under Advertising, Interactive, SEM
For our clients, search engine marketing continues to be one of the most reliable, affordable sources of site traffic—with the potential to produce quality visits from new visitors. But the strategy behind it can be complex. One question that seems to be asked of our search pros regularly is, “Should I be bidding on my competitors’ brands to steal market share from them?
To answer this question, we should revisit the subject of bidding on your own brand keywords and how Google promotes relevance. When determining the cost of a click, Google considers the keyword’s relevance to ad copy and landing pages. In Google-speak, relevance is “quality.” Relevant ad copy captures interest and creates click-through (CTR). And in Google’s eyes, quality and CTR are tightly correlated.
Because of this system, your brand keywords have more relevance to your website than any other site, so their quality and CTR are high. Dana recommends bidding on your own brand because:
- It’s the least expensive, above-the-fold advertising you can buy on Google.
- It provides tight copy and landing page control and flexibility. (You can respond nimbly with offers that are paid off on targeted landing pages.)
- Cost-per-click is low, and total spend is low, while clicks, CTR and site visitor interest are high. And even if you discount some percentage of conversions, ROI is high.
So how does this thinking apply to bidding on competitor brands?
Google makes it hard to serve up relevant ads on competitor’s brands. You can’t use other brand names in your ads without permission.* And Dana doesn’t recommend building landing pages optimized for competitors’ brands.
(*Note: this doesn’t apply the same way to distribution channels such as online travel agents or a retailer like Amazon.com. If Expedia is selling your hotel, it CAN serve an ad with your brand in it, and it CAN drive PPC traffic to a landing page about your property.)
If, however, you choose to go ahead with bidding on a competitor’s brand, you can expect:
- High cost per click
- Low click-through ratio
- High bounce traffic
Google does seem to give competitor campaigns a shot. Google may start you off with a mediocre quality score and then lower your score and impressions if you don’t produce quickly. But there’s also the possibility that your competitors will start bidding against your brand. Which could raise the cost of your own brand search. Furthermore, it may actually lower the quality of all your campaigns—there are varied opinions on the idea that one low-quality campaign can drag down others.
So for clients who insist that we pursue competitors, we do. But invariably, those campaigns exhibit poor “quality” as defined by Google (a.k.a. low CTR). We have seen a few campaigns produce, if measured purely on a cost-per-conversion basis. In these cases, impressions, clicks and total cost are low, but the occasional conversion nets a low cost-per-conversion. These situations most often occur when the competitive set is somewhat interchangeable. When customers are buying a commodity, they are more likely to be persuaded to change their buying decisions based on product comparisons and reviews.
At Dana, we feel the greatest opportunities lie in serving ads to prospects that are looking for what you have to offer. Ad copy and landing pages specifically designed to pay off each individual search query will provide the best results for the effort invested.
Still feel like your head’s search engine is spinning? For additional questions or information, contact mdamico@danacommunications.com.
Does Your Google Advertising Need a Boost?
Posted by Emily McDonough | Filed under Advertising, Media, Social Media, Technology
Google has recently announced an end to its trial implementation of Google Tags, an advertising service that allowed businesses to show little yellow “tags” next to their listings on Google.com and Google Maps in order to call out and highlight their offerings. The announcement came on the heels of Google’s launch of Boost, a local ad platform allowing the same local businesses to actually create their own contextual search ads from their Google Places account.
In response to this new development, many hospitality businesses are questioning whether they should be getting in line to jump on the Google Boost wagon. In truth, Google Boost does make sense for some businesses, but it may not be the best option for hospitality and destination marketing.
The advantage of Google Boost is its ability to display an ad to local searchers on Google Maps (“local” as defined by 15-20 miles from the property). However, by using the Google AdWords interface instead, a business can advertise on Google Maps without local restrictions—and with greater control over the campaign, the cost per click and the ad copy.
Google AdWords provides more advertising options and finer controls. With AdWords, you can control keyword selection and bids, target both locally and nationally, get advanced reporting, take advantage of different ad formats (such as video), display on thousands of partner sites and more.
It is also important to note that visitors who click on an ad through the AdWords interface can be directed straight to the business’s website, as opposed to Google Boost, which sends users to the business’s Google Places listing first, thereby putting more steps between the visitor and the booking engine. As the connection from an ad to a business’s booking page should be as quick and smooth as possible, sending visitors to an in-between stage is unlikely to be beneficial to hospitality and destination marketing efforts.
Search advertising is an important component to any marketing campaign—although it is often overlooked or misunderstood by businesses that are not well informed on the medium. If you’d like more information about discovering the best options to “boost” your efforts in this area, contact our PPC Specialist at emcdonough@danacommunications.com.
