Memphis Marketing and Advertising

Since the dawn of the digital age, photographers and others who handle digital images on a regular basis have struggled with keeping track of the spread of their images. Because digital images are easily copied, a photograph published online could end up easily on a thousand websites. Just as the music and film industries have been forever changed by illegal downloading, the imaging industry faces similar challenges when it comes to tracking, copyrighting, and protecting their digital media. In the age of Google and Yahoo Images, many people feel that they have a right to download, copy, and distribute any of the images that they find. It seems that the world will never grasp the concept that the internet is still bound by the same laws that outlaw copyright infringement and theft. Most people accept that they cannot walk out of a store without paying for their groceries, yet willingly copy and paste images off websites or online photo galleries. Google Images easily becomes the Napster of digital images.

So how do we combat this as people who work with and publish digital images? Well, for starters, EXIF meta data is now embedded into almost every file created from a digital camera. This data tells us when the photo was taken, by what camera, and all of the information about how the photo was captured. We can tell what film speed, aperture settings, and shutter speed the camera was set for when the image was taken. Many photo editing softwares now allow us to embed additional copyright information into the meta data. Now, these photos are easily tagged with a digital fingerprint that can reveal the ownership of any published image.

Jeffrey Friedl has created a great online tool for checking the EXIF information of any image, even if the image is on your computer and not published on the web.  I have posted the link under photography links at the bottom left of this page. There are also links to great resources for more information on EXIF meta data and copyright laws for digital imaging. As an advertising and web design company, we have a great responsibility in how we license and manipulate images. Stock Imaging companies require strict licensing procedures and hired photographers usually do as well. Since I consider myself a semi-professional photographer, this subject is very important to me. As with any art, a photograph is the intellectual property of the one who takes the picture and their wishes as to it’s use should be strictly followed.

xhtml requires that all tags must be completely lowercase to be validated by the WC3. You must also have the correct closing tag. Here is the correct way to display the tags.

<title>Website Title</title>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”insert keywords here” />

<meta name=”description” content=”place description here” />

<meta name=”Expires” content=”never” />

<meta name=”DC.Title” content=”title” />

<meta name=”DC.Subject” content=”subject” />

<meta name=”DC.Description” content=”place description here” />

Of course many of these tags are useless for search engine optimization. The DC tags are sometimes used in intranet or library site search functions. They were created by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

According to their website they are:

“…an organization dedicated to promoting the widespread adoption of interoperable metadata standards and developing specialized metadata vocabularies for describing resources that enable more intelligent information discovery systems.”

While no search engines that we know of currently use these tags, this group is working to increase use of meta data for search functions. Check out their site for more information.Dublin Core Website

Bounce rate is a fancy term to describe for how long it takes for someone to leave a particular page of your site once they visit it. There is good evidence that suggests that as Google’s algorithm’s improve, things like bounce rate are beginning to surface as influences on a web page’s PageRank. Google Analytics lets you see not only who is coming to your site, but where they came from, what they searched for, how long they stayed, and when they left. Once again, the search engine marketer runs into another problem. How do I increase the amount of time spent on a certain page of a site?

Well, the easiest and most logical way is with great content. Here again, the adage of build your site for the searcher not for the search engine comes into play. Google wants to place the best content in front of their patrons. So, it is our job to provide our clients with that content. If you want to decrease bounce rates, increase the amount of information. Give your visitor a reason for staying.
Bounce Rate Information

This Memphis Hardwood Flooring Company is beginning an extensive branding campaign to grow into a larger market. Formally called Best Foot Forward Hardwood Flooring, they have hired Herrington Marketing to create a professional looking brand that will match the services they provide. Here is an outline of how we are accomplishing this goal:

Shortening the name -  To compete on a large level, simplicity almost always prevails. You create a simple name that is memorable and catchy. With this company we decided to take hardwood out of the name because of the ability to expand easily into other flooring areas in the future.

Simple Colorful Logo - A logo should embody what it represents. For a flooring company, many people are going to see the logo on the side of vehicles, shirts, and signage. We needed a simple logo with great contrast and bright colors. The use of bold, boxy text was by design since it is representing a construction oriented company.

Development of Sales Materials - Since this is a relatively unknown company in the Memphis area, we are developing print materials that will cover the full gamut of services this company provides. The brochures and other materials will use product specific photos of actual work by the company to display their abilities. We are also developing clothing promotional items that will double as uniforms.

Development of a Sales Strategy - Forward Flooring has always prided itself on building relationships with their clients through personalized customer service. Because of this, they have received the majority of their business through word-of-mouth. We will develop a referral service to reward past clients for referring Forward Flooring to new customers.

Web Development - A new website will be launched where customers can view online portfolios, receive quotes, and find answers to frequently asked questions about their flooring needs.

Signage Development - We will develop yard signs and vehicle signage that will feature a cohesive look that mirrors the look of the company’s logo and print material. These signs will increase visibility of the company and add a professional look to the overall product.

With this strategy, we are developing a growth forecast over the next couple of years that will hopefully propel this company into the leading flooring company in the Memphis area.

Test Your Web Design in Multiple Browsers.

Check out this handy tool for web designers. You can put in your url and then see how your site is displayed in many of the major browsers. As browsers all display content somewhat differently, this can be an easy way to make sure that your site is optimized for all browsers. If you’ve ever had text links move around on you, then you definitely need this tool. As Google, Yahoo, and MSN want us to be more organic in what we display and how we display it, it gets tougher to manage the appearance of our sites. Web pages are now utilizing more text and less images. Back in the day, you just embedded your text into an image to create a link button or static html display. Now we strive to use as much real text as possible. Take it from us. The easiest way to keep your website in check is to check it out in all the major browsers. Of course, this can be a very monotonous and time-consuming process. BrowserShots solves that problem with this extraordinarily easy to use interface. Best if all, it’s free!

The post below outlines common terms or phrases used on search engine optimization. I’ll try and show how these terms relate further by using real world examples.

Google is a search engine. When you type a word or phrase into the search bar, you are typing a Keyword or Key Phrase. The results of your search are displayed on the Search Engine Results Page.  If you want your website to show up on the first page of these results, you would hire Search Engine Marketers to do Search Engine Optimization on your site. They would rebuild your site with relevant content, text links, and Keyword rich Meta Tags to display in your search results. The Title Tag would then be the title of your site as well as the Title in the search engine results page. They would then begin a process of Link Building to add Inbound  Links from other sites to your website. They would focus on getting links from highly relevant sources to increase the Quality Score of their links to your site. These would result in a higher PageRank which is Google’s Quality Score. Google’s Spiders, or software robots, create these scores as they read and index the entire web.

If all of this didn’t accomplish your goals for search engine marketing, then your SEO company might resort to using an Advertising Network to  drive more traffic to your site. Google’s Adwords and Adsense accounts are examples of advertising networks. They use both Contextual and Geo Specific Advertising to target ads placed on other sites to drive more traffic to your website. The sites that these ads are placed on are called the Content Network. They are paid every time someone clicks on you ad. This is called Pay-Per-Click Advertising. If you want them to only be paid per 1,000 views of your ad, then you could set up a CPM or Cost per 1,000 impressions payment plan. Most banner ads on websites are set up this way.

To take it a step further, your search engine marketing company might begin using Web 2.0 to effectively target more consumers. They could place editorial content on Social Media sites to promote more links to your site. This is called Link Baiting. The goal is that if enough people find your content useful, they will link to it, thereby creating more links to your site. You also show more consumers that you are an authority on your subject. All of this with the goal that you can receive more ROI or Return on Investment by driving more people to your website and to your product or service.

advertising network: Revenue sharing where ads are bought through a single company and then displayed on other sites that recieve a percentage of the revenue.

algorithm: Search Engine technology for displaying results.

click through rate (CTR): Measures the amount of clicks on an ad as a percentage of clicks to impressions.

content network: Websites that display the ads in an advertising network. They receive a percentage of the revenue though pay per click.

contextual advertising: Focused advertising where content driven sites display ads with similar content.

cost per action (CPA): The process by which payment for advertising is contingent upon an action by the consumer, whether it be a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or signing up for membership.

cost per click (CPC): Also called pay per click, it is the idea that an advertiser is paid everytime a visitor clicks on the link. Advertisers can set the cost for evey click.

cost per thousand (CPM): Process by which advertisers are paid by impressions. They receive revenue per 1,000 impressions.

geo-targeting: Targeting consumers with ads that are displayed in their geographic location.

inbound link: A hyper-link from an outside website linking to your website.

keyword: Words or phrases that are picked to receive search results for a particular subject.

link bait: Editorial content usually submitted to social networking sites to drive more traffic to websites.

link building: The process of getting outside websites to link to your sites, in an effort to increase your traffic.

meta tags: Placed in the header of a website, these are tags which can be read by search engines to give them more info about your site. The content description tag and the title tag are shown in search results.

pay per click (PPC): See Cost per Click (CPC).

quality score: search engine spiders use this as the process of ranking ads and links to determine the importance of websites.

return on investment (ROI): Amount of money an investor receives as apposed to how much is paid.

search engine marketing (SEM): Building and marketing a site so that it will achieve higher search results and more traffic.

search engine optimization (SEO): The search engine marketing process of optimizing a site so that it will show up as high as possible in the search results. Search Engine Marketers use this term to describe the majority of their services for websites.

search engine results pages (SERPs): The results page that search engines show after someone has searched for a particular keyword or phrase.

social media: Websites based on user generated content. These include but aren’t limited to social networking like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, and social news sites like Digg or Reddit.

spider: Also known as a “crawler” or a “bot.,” this term refers to the software developed by search engine companies to search and index the web for their search results.

title tag: The html tag that is displayed on the top of a browser as the title of the site. Search engine Marketers use the title tag to display relevant keywords for the site to aid in search results.

universal search: Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories.

Web 2.0: This is considered the second generation of web with social media and social networking sites. Sites like Wikipedia that involve user created content are considered Web 2.0.

Herrington Marketing is ringing in the new year with a new office space at 59 Monroe. We are sharing space occupied by Signs First Downtown. I believe that the added visibility of this downtown office will help solidify our brand as a downtown Memphis ad agency. As for the new year, we are expanding our content creation services with the creation of the Content Providers Union. This is our handy tool to help clients create dynamic content on their websites to aid in their search engine standings. It will also help add useful information for the consumer on their websites. As Google re-indexes sites with dynamic content more frequently, you are getting more chances of higher search standings. Look for a website update within the month to further explain this new endeavor.

Also in 2008, NYGADI will finally get off the ground. Rumor has it that NYGADI will be split into for-profit and nonprofit sections. Discussions are in the works for music festivals, a fashion show, and several art showings. 2008 stands to be an exciting year for this fledging organization. Stay tuned for the new logo unveiling within the next month. For now, secrets must be kept so the details will have to be tucked away.

Happy New Years.