White is the most vanilla of colors. But, like vanilla ice cream, it has its variations.
White is a tool to set off and show colors to their best advantage. Designers speak of the importance of "white space", the unused blank space that surrounds and helps give value to your featured design elements.
A Picasso on a blank wall is more noticed than a Picasso on a wall with 20 other paintings.
But let's speak of variations. Here are just a few names for shades of "off-white", those pale tones that are distinguishable often only in contrast to one another or to plain white. Yet these shades add flavor and emotion to the overall design. And this is without even getting into all the slightly darker shades, such as variations of beige or light gray!
Cream
Oyster
Pearl
Ivory
Alabaster
Skimmed-Milk
Bone
Eggshell
(Fascinating how most of these are biological in origin.)
White is mostly something we don't see. How about for a change looking at it? There's a depth and richness to be found there.
If you are going to plan your marketing or buy some marketing services, it would be wise to fit this within your overall business goals and strategy.
I was reminded of this when meeting with a businessman who was interested in an effective national Internet Marketing campaign for one of his product lines. It was a very realistic ambition, and he had the budget to do it.
What he didn't have was a realistic way of dealing with the influx of business that was going to result.
I've seen this more than once when a prospective client gets close to signing onto one of our programs, and is suddenly confronted with the thought: "What if this works?"
It's easy simply to have vague ambitions of building a billion dollar business or a million dollar retirement fund.
If you're serious about it, you need to take it to the nuts and bolts.
How big do you want to get? And how fast? is the nature of the first questions to ask.
Then, if you're really serious about it, you have to work out how realistically to get there from where you are.
Again, you can't base it on some vague dream of an investor with enough money to get it done.
I guess what I'm trying to say is pretty simple: "Folks, Get Real!"
Let's say you need to do something about your marketing. You don't have much of a budget. And you need to do something NOW.
That rules out formal surveys which are expensive and can take months to develop all needed data. It also means you really can't afford to have your marketing efforts fail, fail and fail again. It would be REALLY good if your first try was successful.
The thing is, if you have a going concern, you probably already have all the survey you need in what you can get from Sales.
If advertising is salesmanship in print, then take what works in your sales operation. Turn that into advertising and chances are it'll work.
If little old widowed ladies are your main customers, advertise in a way that reaches that demographic.
If no one comes to your office from more than 10 miles away, don't advertise beyond that radius.
If people tell you they keep coming back because your staff are so friendly, feature that prominently in your advertising copy and testimonial quotes. Use photos of your smiling staff.
This is not rocket science. But you do have to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customers, clients or patients. There's no better way to do that then a good inspection of what works for you in Sales.
I'm struck time and time again by the fact that nearly all marketing books and advice assume you have many tens of thousands to spend on marketing.
If you're just getting a business started, or have a struggling part-time business you want to take to the next level, that isn't always an option.
Of course well-funded startups with a few million dollars, it's a different story.
But for most people with a dream, talent, an idea and determination, some time - and little cash - it reminds me of the old advice about how to make a million dollars. "First, take a million dollars."
THIS is where most businesses falter. They never make it because they never get successful marketing going.
In trying times, many past successful businesses fail. They depended on word of mouth or the One Big Client. Or they had some kind of advertising that was working well enough for a booming economy.
They are in that same situation. Market or Die.
Is it hopeless? Far from it. But there are approaches doomed to failure:
1. "Hunker down and hope to ride it out." Cut back on expenses and pray the economy will upturn before you run out of money and credit.
2. "A lick and a promise." Decide to do something about it, but don't do the homework and often hard work necessary to develop a winning campaign, one that will work fast enough and on a budget you can manage.
These are shark infested waters. There are a zillion sharp dealers out there ready to promise the world, who sound great and will be happy to take your money. Likewise everyone has a brother-in-law or a friend of a friend who can build you a website for $300.
You CAN make it. You CAN get a successful marketing program going, one you can ride on up to prosperity and a cushy retirement. Just don't count on it being easy.
Once a visitor has satisfied themselves you sell what they are looking for, the inevitable next question is:
Will they sell to me and in a way I'm comfortable purchasing?
The fact that you sell women's clothes does not answer:
1. Do you sell retail (or wholesale or are you a manufacturer, if that is what they are looking for)
2. Do you sell in their geographical area.
3. Can they purchase online, or where are stores located, or how do I purchase?
If you think about it, a visitor is not going to bother checking on your pricing, features or selection, let alone your testimonials, unique selling proposition, etc., if they aren't going to be able to purchase from you.
So get this information up front and communicated in the first few seconds a visitor is on your site - whether by words or images or both. THEN you can get down to business: Showing and telling your visitor what you got and why they should buy from you.
Let's go further into the subject of website headlines which I introduced yesterday.
The first thing people look for is "what are you selling?" because people know that search engine listings can be deceiving. So they are poised and ready to hit their back button - like a nervous cat. Ready to bolt on anything scary, or merely a lack of reassurance.
So sublety is not an option. Just flat out tell people in your home page headline:
Natural Facial Care Products at Wholesale Prices
Family and Cosmetic Dentistry in Sarasota Florida
Rug and Art Tent Sales Coming To Your Area Soon
A second benefit, it also tells the search engines what you are about.
There is a lot of skill to writing an ad headline. And there is a great deal known about it - there are whole books on the subject.
Your website has headlines too.
What are the first, largest words on your home page, if not a headline? The same is true, to a lesser degree, on interior pages, where they function more like sub-heads in most cases.
BUT there is one huge difference between headlines in an ad, and headlines on a website.
The headline in an ad has to be a stopper, as it is the first clue to what you are selling.
Whereas a website headline is never the first stop on the marketing chain. The person already knows you exist, either because they heard of you offline, or they clicked on a link in a search or from another website.
By the time someone reaches your website, they are thinking you MAY be what they are looking for.
What then must a website headline do? The VERY first thing a website home page must do is to CONFIRM that you are what they are looking for. That means you must in the fewest, most common words, tell them:
1. What you sell.
2. Who you sell it to.
3. In what geographical area you sell.
If this isn't immediately clear, the average visitor is not going to read on to find out. They are likely to figure they made a mistake, hit their back button and try another site.
You do have more than the headline words to work with. Your main image, and any prominent navigation buttons, will help. But you MUST accomplish 1-2-3 above, in about 2 seconds flat, and without the visitor having to scroll down to try and figure it out.
Otherwise all your efforts to get someone to your website are a waste.
I am often asked if there is any point in doing Search Engine Optimization or other Internet Marketing for companies that sell to other businesses.
People wonder, do people actually search online for business services and products? Even ones that are high-end, highly specialized?
The answer is an emphatic "YES!"
Here's an example. Our client, Crystal Lake Beverage, is a beverage consultant. I bet you didn't even know such a thing existed. Let's say you're Coca-Cola and you want to come up with a new flavor. Crystal Lake will design the flavor for you, including ingredients and manufacturing process.
Now is that specialized or what.
And he is getting almost a lead a week from his website.
So I don't care if you are selling bandaids to banks or advice to airlines, people are searching online for what you sell or do.
If you don't have a great website and a superb Internet Presence, you're missing out.
A year ago I wrote a post about the hottest Content Management System that everyone was using to build websites, WordPress.
I could take that article and change "WordPress" to "Joomla" and it would be 99% accurate, today. For Joomla is the CMS du Jour - the Content Management System of the Day.
Probably in another year it'll be something else.
Anyway, at the risk of incurring the wrath of people who are in love with their Joomla, you should know the facts:
Joomla, with the addition of a plug-in, sh404SEF, can be SEO'd. It takes twice as long to do everything, but you can do it.
It has the liabilities of other CMS systems: it is hard to make your site look really good and layout issues are common. You can easily change things you shouldn't really be changing all the time (like the menu). You have a dynamically generated site, meaning, you are making the server work a lot harder.
Yes, I have seen really good, professionally done Joomla sites, though they are rare. I have seen a Joomla site with decent SEO. One.
In an earlier writeup on website hosting, I said we recommended Unix hosting but didn't say why.
The biggest reason is security. Unix servers are inherently more secure against hacking, than Windows servers. We've had exactly one instance of a website being hacked in the years we've been offering hosting services. It is also the only website that we hosted on a Windows server. No coincidence. We no longer offer Windows hosting.
The other reason is that some things are just easier to do on a Unix server, in the typical setup called "LAMP" for Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP. Linux is a version of Unix. Apache is the widely used web server software. MySQL is the type of data base and PHP is a programming language. All of these are very widely used and there are lots of people who know how to do things with them. Furthermore, they are free and open-source (open to development and additions by anyone who wants to help).
So they aren't subject to the kinds of changes that Microsoft products are - where the pressure to develop new salable products leads to jumps from one version to another.
To give one example, when we are redesigning a website, and the client hosts on Windows, there are four different versions of the code possible for generating emails from the website (as when someone fills out a contact form). Usually there is no way to find out which will work on their server other than by trial and error.
In the case of Unix hosting, there is only one version, and it always works.
It's no news that TRUST is a huge factor in all marketing and sales.
It's important to realize that trust is not just a matter of YOUR name and brand, since you may not have a reputation at all with most potential buyers. They've never heard of you.
So you start out with a level of trust based on association. What is the trust level of your industry? or of the medium in which you are advertising?
People assume a used car salesman, or a congressman, can't be trusted.
On the other hand, if you start a bank, you are going to start out with a considerable amount of trust. People assume their money is going to be safe there even if they've never heard of you.
But don't try and promote a bank by email.
Email marketing to people who never heard of you is probably going to be a failure, even if you can get a legitimate list. The trust level is terrible, people know it is almost certainly some kind of scam.
One of the critical questions that has to be answered before you can do intelligent marketing, is who are you trying to reach?
This is called "target markets" "market segments" or "publics" and can include factors (in consumer marketing) such as age, gender, income level, location, etc.
One important point is that who you are trying to reach may not be the person who makes the decisions or is actually going to make the purchase.
This applies to both consumer marketing and business-to-business.
In the consumer world, you market toys to the kids, who then go to Mom demanding or asking for their very own (fill in the blank).
In business-to-business marketing, it may be the CEO or Purchasing Agent making the decision, signing the purchase order or writing the check. In many cases the decision is influenced, the purchase is initiated by, or virtually or actually decided by someone else.
Computer systems decisions are almost always strongly influenced by the IT Department.
You can often get a lot farther by marketing to the decision influencer than the decision maker. Sometimes you have to market to both.
Many businessmen, with no training or experience in marketing, are convinced they can handle their own marketing.
There are, I'm convinced, two big reasons for this:
1. Nearly everyone doing marketing as professionals, has no real training in marketing. Maybe they are artists, or programmers, or technically proficient in video editing or something. But they've never really studied marketing.
2. Most businessmen have been burned many times, purchasing what sounded good from people who claimed to be professionals and charged high prices.
Why then shouldn't people just decide to do it themselves?
And yet, marketing is a subject. There are things to know. There is no single text that has all the answers, and few that are 100% reliable, but there is a LOT of valuable info out there. Of course, sorting out what's true from what's not, and getting enough experience to gain a real command of the subject, can be rather expensive.
The only way you become a real expert is by actually doing things and seeing how it works out. And that's expensive both in time and money.
The Creator designed this galaxy for perfect viewing from Earth. Great proportions, boundless beauty, it oozes style, has a wonderful color scheme and a tasty minimalist backdrop. As good as it gets:
