out loud creative blog

100 Marketing Ideas

posted: Wednesday March 22, 2006

I came across this website the other day. It lists 100+ marketing ideas that businesses or organizations can use. It’s a great list to read through when you’re feeling stuck with your marketing efforts.

http://www.sba.gov/managing/marketing/100ideas.html

Remember, the best thing to do is to try an idea (or several) and see what works and what doesn’t. Keep doing what works, and don’t do what doesn’t work – pretty simple.

 

New website launched for the United Way of Wells County

posted: Thursday September 15, 2005

We just launched a new website for the United Way of Wells County.

You can read more about it all here.

 

Get your website visitors off your website

posted: Wednesday August 24, 2005

The goal of any website is to attract visitors. That’s all most people talk about, in terms of website traffic. Don’t get me wrong, this is essential, but there’s something else that’s just as important.

That would be getting visitors off your website. Get them to leave quickly.

You’re probably wondering why in the world I would say that. Isn’t that completely opposite of what we want to do? The answer: not really.

Think about this. Let’s say you need a gallon of milk from the grocery. You jump in your car and head to the grocery store. When you get there someone who works at the grocery comes up to you and wants you to look at all the peanut butter and jelly varieties they have. They keep showing you all the different brands and telling you what each one tastes like. You get tired of all this nonsense and leave without buying any milk.

Often times people want their website to be the same way. Rather than guiding a visitor to the information he or she wants, people will often use a website to show their visitors everything else. This just frustrates a visitor.

In order to make a happy customer on your website, give people the information they want as quickly as possible and help them get off your website. Remember, happy customers usually become repeat customers.

 

What is a website, really?

posted: Thursday May 26, 2005

I’ve been thinking about this recently. A lot of people would say that a website is a collection of text and pictures. People look at these pictures and read the text, clicking from one page to the next. Okay, but why does a person visit that website in the first place?

Read the rest

 

My trip to the ACD Museum

posted: Monday May 2, 2005

A few months back my wife and I went to the Auburn Cord Deusenburg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. I was working on an illustration project at school and needed pictures of an old Cord or Deusenburg. I took along a digital camera and snapped some pics of the cars they have on display there. It’s pretty neat to see all the history there. The building is actually the original building where some of the cars were manufactured back in the early 1900’s.

If you’d like, you can browse my photo gallery here. It’s through Flickr (a photo sharing service, which is pretty cool itself).

As for the illustration that resulted from our trip –

 

A New Report on Blogs

posted: Monday January 3, 2005

Pew / Internet just released an interesting report about the state of blogs on the internet.

You can check it out at: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp. It’s interesting to note that only 38% of internet users know what a blog is. On the other hand, an encouraging fact for blog writers is that blog readership jumped 58% in 2004. I’m guessing that it will jump just as much or more in 2005.

If you have a website that you’re looking to promote, this would be an excellent time to start a blog. It can be a great way to bring more visitors to your website and keep them coming back.

 

Brilliant Marketing

posted: Wednesday November 24, 2004

Well, Thanksgiving is almost here. There is another big day coming as well, though. That would be the day after on Friday…

As everyone knows, Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Most stores open very early with wonderful sales for the early bird shoppers. Retailers know that the earlier shoppers come out to shop, the more time they will have to make purchases.

The only question is, how do you make sure that millions of people come to your store?

Well, Target decided to call everyone. They’re offering free wakeup calls when you signup on their website at http://www.target.com/wakeupcall. The “callers” range from a rooster to darth vader. It’s a great example of using creative, but common sense marketing to attract more customers to their store. I’ll venture to guess that Target will see some pretty good results from this campaign.

Now the question is, what great marketing idea can you come up with to market your business?

Happy Thanksgiving and remember to eat plenty of turkey!

 

Is your domain name in danger?

posted: Friday November 12, 2004

Effective today, November 12, 2004, a change has been made in the way that domain names (which is the address of your website) are transferred. It used to be that if someone wanted to transfer a domain name from one registrar, or a company that registers domain names, to another they had to get confirmation from the current owner of the domain name. If the current owner didn’t respond or didn’t give their permission, then the domain couldn’t be transferred.

With today’s change in policy however, domain owners now have five days to respond to a transfer request to disallow the transfer. If the domain owner doesn’t reply within the five days, the domain will automatically be transferred. Since transfer requests are sent via email, it could be easy to miss this transfer request for a domain resulting in your domain name being transferred to someone else. Now, you could probably get the name back by disputing the transfer, but that would mean costly downtime for your website.

So, what can you do?

Contact the company that is hosting your website and ask them to “lock” your domain name. It should be a free service, although some companies may charge for it. Tell them you want a lock placed on your domain name so that it can’t be transferred.

You can read more about the official policy change here: http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm

 

What do your website and a billboard have in common?

posted: Friday November 5, 2004

Hello, I hope you’re doing well!

One of the things that many people don’t realize is the way in which people look at a website. Most of us assume that visitors to our websites will open the page and very carefully look everything over. Once they determine the absolute best link that will give them the information they want, they click on the link. Visitors must look at a website in much the same way they read a good book, right?

Wrong.

Actually people will look at a website more like a billboard going by at 55 mph. As soon as the web page shows up, most people will quickly scan the page for any information that looks like what they want. Then they’ll click the first link that looks somewhat correct. If that link doesn’t work, they’ll click the back button and try again. The fact is almost everyone is in a hurry. When someone visits a website, they’re looking for something specific. They generally don’t have time to read every single word.

So, the question is, does your website read like a book or a billboard?

 

What is this blog thing anyway?

posted: Monday October 25, 2004

You might be wondering what a “blog” or weblog is. It’s actually kind of like a journal on a website. Generally people update a blog by writing a couple paragraphs or more about a topic they’re interested in. There are blogs for nearly every topic known to man. You can even start your own blog for free at http://www.blogger.com

More recently companies have even started using blogs to keep emplyees and customers informed of the latest news or events. It can also be a great way to bring people back to your website again and again.

I’ll be using this blog to share information about ways to make your website better, industry trends, thoughts about websites, and basically anything else that I think people might find interesting. If you have any questions about something you’d like to see on this blog, send me an email to tyler@outloudcreative.com.

Also, have a look around our site if you’d like. I’ll be updating it with lots of free information about ways to make your website better.

Thanks for reading

 

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