Digital Colour Group Secures Segment on SuperBowl Pre-Game Show

SuperBowl is undoubtedly the biggest sporting event of the year. Based on previous viewership, between 100 – 110+ million viewers will watch the game and pre-game shows this year. The cost for that much exposure is worth millions.

Digital Colour Group helped secure a featured segment on ESPN’s Pre-Game Show for our client Crosby Center and The Crosby Sports Treatment. The segment name “Finding A Purpose After Football” discussed the lifelong and devastating affect of concussion on NFL Players.  DCG was instrumental in securing this featured segment for The Crosby Center and their program.

The result of airing was explosive. Hundreds of visits and inquiries before the segment even finished airing to the new site DCG built for this purpose. Supported by high quality photography and video of the players shot by DCG and a new social media presence all created an extraordinarily successful campaign for our client.

To find out how Digital Colour Group can help your business gain the exposure and new business it deserves call Jeff at 914 262-7458 or email at jadise@dcgbusinessmarketing.com

 

Adding Social Media

SEO has become challenging. SEO professionals whose clients have lost rank or can not attain rank, have branched out from SEO and added social media management to their offering as a way to help improve client ranking. One would think that an SEO professional has the perfect skill set to build and maintain a successful social media campaign however, it can be just the opposite.

Some months ago, a high quality hair care product company hired a well seasoned SEO professional to manage their natural search presence. Although this company has excellent name recognition and an SEO professional, they were not well represented in natural search. In an attempt to improve ranking, the SEO manager suggested the company add a social media component to their online presence and he should manage it.   Over the next several months the company saw growth in their social media presence but it then plateaued and yielded little result. It was at this time DCG was asked to provide some insight.

 

SEO

SEO is a tool best used by sites to engage people who are actively searching a product or product category.  However, the nature of search has changed drastically away from keyword searches to the search engines trying to determine intent… to “think” more like a human. And many sites whose SEO was maintained by serving the search engine rather than the end-user have lost ranking. In the case of the hair care company, they had poor natural ranking. I have seen well intentioned SEO’s attempt to salvage an account by adding social media as a means to improve poor search performance.

 

Preaching to the Choir vs Initiating New Congregants

Engaging people who are actively searching is very different than exposing a brand to people who are not actively searching. SEO professionals are engrained to reach people who are searching for a product or service. This does not qualify them to know how to expose a product, service or brand to people who are not actively searching. It is fundamental difference that defines SEO professionals from social media professionals.

In the example of the hair care company, the Social Media campaign was implemented by an SEO professional with the wrong skills, for the wrong purpose: as a basis to improve poor natural search results (SEO) rather than for the true reach and power of the viral nature of Social Media.

 

Choosing a Social Media Manager

While there are SEO professionals who are skilled Social Media managers,  SEO pros are not automatically qualified to manage a social media campaign.  Evaluate the previous social campaigns of the person you seek to manage your social media. Did that manager engage their audience to take action? or did they simply post for the sake of posting. …And if your manager focuses on how much social will improve natural ranking, this should be cause for concern that they may not be the right candidate to run your social campaign.

 

Google recently announced that it would encrypt ALL keyword data. The encryption of all keyword data makes it much more difficult for website owners to see which search terms were used to generate visits.  This latest change disproportionately affects small to mid-sized business owners who do not have the knowledge to circumnavigate this challenge or the budget to hire professionals or initiate a paid search campaign.

 

KEYWORD DATA REMOVED FOR YOUR PRIVACY?
Google started encrypting search data two years ago for all those who were signed into Google accounts. By blocking search data information, Google claims it is protecting your “privacy” however, search data can still be obtained via Google’s paid search. Google seems willing to forego your privacy when they can profit from the sale of it.

Under the Prism Spying Program the NSA collects stored internet communications such as search data. Last June Google was accused of cooperating with the NSA to provide instant access to its search data. It is unclear if Google’s “Not Provided” is a marketing gimmick as they can now claim they are more “secure” than other search engines. However, search data is still collected by Google and even though it may not be as readily available to the average consumer, at the very least, it can still be subpoenaed. The veil of “privacy” is shear. Call it privacy or call it profitability, it will be more difficult and more expensive to gather actionable marketing data.

 

WHAT CAN BE DONE

• Initiate a small Adwords Campaign – This will show your search data
• Start a Webmaster Tools account for Google & Bing and install into your existing website
• Use other stats packages that provide compiled real time data which makes it easier to evaluate
• Look much deeper at your existing stats for trends
• Compare Adwords campaign data against Google Analytics or other stats package data
• Do not make any decisions on one data point, check your theories
• Monitor your site stats much more closely
• Collect, warehouse & analyze data at all points within the lead generation and sales process
• Integrate data collection practices on site, pre and post sale

 

It is no longer possible to be a “surface dweller” when it comes to website statistics. Obtaining actionable data from website statistics will be more challenging and costly but not impossible for the small and mid-sized business that rely on the internet for sales or referrals. Website owners will have to become more strategic within their entire process for other opportunities to gather marketing intelligence. Companies will have to embrace and integrate CRM systems to warehouse, sort and mine all the data collected. Google’s decision to block all search data will force companies to employ strategies that will make them less reliant and therefore less dependent on Google.

 

About the author

Jeff Adise is the president of Digital Colour Group llc, a multi-disciplined marketing, website and business development company. He is the trusted marketing professional to scores of Mid-sized, Small business and Entrepreneurial start-ups since 1990.

Perception is everything in marketing.

People buy based on perception, perception of value, perception of integrity, perception of quality. The entire US economy practically runs on the stuff but what is perception? It is defined as, our interpretation of what we take in through our senses.

As part of my career as a marketer I have put what I tell my clients to do to the test and developed, manufactured and sold my own products. These were high end bedding products with a cute marketing story. The items required a bit of explanation however they were sold to catalogs, through brick and mortar and via e-commerce.

Since DCG produces marketing materials from concept and design to photography and production, we control the entire process. This allows us to produce very high quality marketing materials for ourselves and our clients very cost effectively. DCG specializes in producing very high quality marketing materials for our clients at a fraction of the price of other marketing companies that give the buyer the perception of integrity, quality and value of products that may still even be in the prototype stage. This often means photographing a product and then retouching it to look like what the final product should look like.

 

Case in point

DCG created a brochure for the high quality bedding product we manufactured. We developed a 5.5″ x 8.5″, 8 page brochure which is essentially to 8.5″ x 11″ sheets cut in half and stapled together. A room shot was set-up and we captured beautiful and interesting digital images of the bedding products, designed a very clean brochure, wrote the content and had it printed. We then took the brochure and sent it out to many potential sales channels. We received interest from one of the most upscale catalog companies in the US. They requested that we visit their office to discuss including our bedding products in their catalog for a 6 month stint in the catalog, starting with a full page display. Our pricing structure was competitive but not inexpensive  however, the printed material was beautiful. During our meeting with the catalog company, I asked the client what was his deciding factor to ask us to be part of this very prestigious catalog. The buyer pulled out our printed material, pointed at the pictures and the design of the pages and said the product looked soft and luxurious and the company appeared to be the high quality company that they always look for.

The customer perceived all the positive attributes of the product and the company from a piece of printed material. The bedding product could have been stuffed with broken glass and razor blades but the case in point is that the client perceived quality, value and integrity of a bedding product from nothing more than the printed marketing material. It was the clients perception that led him to draw a number of conclusions based on perception and not fact.. In fact, while the bedding product did exist, the client had never touched the product . He had a pre-conceived notion of quality.

DCG has developed many such campaigns for clients with similar results. Products that do not exist and companies that are working out of their garages are presented  in the best possible light. This is the least expensive, most effective way to launch a new product and / or test the viability of a product concept.

I am positive many fantastic products died on the vine because they were not presented with integrity. Clients are assured to hear me make one statement over and over again, “never put out any marketing material that is not as good as or better than the product or service your offer as these materials only serve to diminish your brand and the clients perception”. By presenting anything to the client that serves to diminish their perception of the product or the company you set yourself up for an up-hill battle where you must first overcome negative perception before the sales process can even begin.

Effective marketing is not necessarily expensive but it does take planning and great attention to detail. Begin with the end in mind and reverse engineer where to begin your marketing campaign.

 

About the author

Jeff Adise is the president of Digital Colour Group llc, a multi-disciplined marketing, website and business development company. He is the trusted marketing professional to scores of Mid-sized, Small business and Entrepreneurial start-ups since 1990.