I’m excited to announce that Adam Lee Design has won two ADDY Awards from the Inland Empire Ad Club. The awards were announced at the Ad Club Gala celebration on the 12th. We won a Silver award for our annual report design for Loma Linda University Medical Center. I posted a short blog post on this design a few weeks ago. We also won a Bronze award for a brochure design that we did for San Gabriel Valley Medical Center. This piece isn’t in our portfolio yet but I will try to post a few images later.

This was my first time attending the Gala and I left feeling very inspired. There is a lot of great work coming out of the Inland Empire. Congrats to all of the other winners.

I recently experienced a great example of customer service on Twitter. It started when I complained about my web-hosting company (Earthlink) and mentioned that I was switching to Bluehost.

@basketsbybonnie responded to this post saying that she had been having problems with Earthlink as well and that she was considering moving her hosting to Network Solutions. Within a couple of hours both Bluehost and Network Solutions had responded to our discussion. Bluehost dropped in to say hi and Network Solutions also offered help if it was needed.

This story has been covered by many already so I won’t go into great detail about it but I do want to mention it. Basically Les Otten, who is running for Governor of Maine, has put up a new website. The problem is that it looks shockingly like the website for President Obama (I also think his logo looks suspiciously like Obama’s).

Now, it’s understandable that someone would want to emulate Barack Obama’s website. Design experts agree that the Obama site has a fantastic design and the interactive aspects probably helped him win the election. The problem is that Otten and his design team didn’t just draw inspiration from the site, they completely ripped it off. From the layout to the color choices, the sites are a match. To see side-by-side images and further analysis check out this blog.

Of course politicians on both sides have begun turning this into a political issue. To me the issue is stealing a design. I’d be equally upset about a Democrat stealing from a Republican or one business stealing from another. Designers work hard to come up with a design. Yes, we sometimes draw inspiration from others, but a blatant rip-off like this is disappointing to see.

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

There was a really interesting post by Nicholas Carr on his blog a few days ago. The post was about the influence of Google, particularly as it relates to the news media. He basically points out that Google is a “very, very large middleman” that stands between us and the information or product we’re searching for.

This got me thinking about how this relates to the rest of the online world, particularly commercial sites that sell a product or service. As Carr points out, the Internet was originally billed as an equalizer, something that put everyone on the same level. Living in a capitalistic society, I’m not sure that was ever a real possibility but it was a great promise. Now that the Internet has pervaded our everyday life (generally for the good) it’s clear that it doesn’t place everyone on a level field. Sure anyone can start up a website and start selling their wares, but without cooperating with the search engines that website will have a tough time drawing traffic.

I’m certainly not suggesting that the search engines are evil, they provide a very valuable service. There are millions of websites out there and we obviously can’t sort through them all ourselves. However, I think we often forget that they are businesses and exist to make money. Often the best way for them to make money is to provide the most valuable search tools but that isn’t what is necessarily driving them.

So what’s the point of all this? Awareness. We should be aware that search engines are not as unbiased as we may think. We should be aware that just as in the physical world it’s all to easy for the big guys to overwhelm the little ones. And, just as in the physical world, this often hurts the consumers.

Blog — Everyone has a blog these days and the last thing the world wide web needs is another blog that no one reads. However, if you’ve got something to say then a blog can be a great way to keep in touch and start to build a community amongst your customers. Hopefully after some work you’ll have customers posting responses to your blog and contributing content of their own.

Adding a blog to an existing website is generally a fairly quick and inexpensive process. Existing blog software can be installed on your website then it’s just a matter of setting it up to fit in with the look of your website. Popular software includes Movable Type and WordPress.(we use Wordpress)

Forums — Providing an area for discussion on your website can be seen as a great community service and will keep people coming back to your site. As mentioned in my previous post, an active community can provide support to your users, provide feedback on your company and help gain repeat customers.

There are many forum software options out there such as phpBB that allow you to quickly and easily set up a forum on your website. Again it’s important to “skin” the forum to make it fit with the design of your website but that should be a relatively simple process for your web design firm.

Peer to Peer (P2P) User support — Providing a place for peers to discuss your company and your products can save you valuable time and money. By creating a community of loyal followers, others can often play the role of tech support for your company. If someone comes to your site with a question or problem, chances are good that an active community has already encountered this problem and come up with a solution. Allowing those users to help each other out can free up valuable resources within your company.

Repeat Customers — Users that participate in UGC are 50% more likely to be repeat customers. By creating a community with attachment to your product, you’re much more likely to gain repeat business.

Feedback — An online community can be a great place to get feedback on your company and its products. Members won’t hold back on criticism and and will let you know what you’re doing right.

I look forward to learning more about how to utilize user generated content both for smaller businesses like mine as well as for the larger businesses of some of my clients. I’ll be sure to post about the sessions I’ve attended after each day of the conference and I look forward to discussing this information with you when I return.

To be successful we need to be open to changing course mid year or possibly even mid campaign. We often look back on the past year and make changes for the next where we see opportunities, but are you watching out for those opportunities throughout the year? How much more successful would we be if we were constantly evaluating our marketing?

Is your direct mail bringing in more customers than your print ads? Why not shift additional focus to your direct mail efforts. Maybe your website is really starting to take off and is converting more sales then ever. Now may be the time to really start adding content to your site and working on your search engine optimization

The ability to adapt will become even more important this year as the economy continues to struggle. It will become more important to closely monitor the ROI for your marketing and make changes to continue to get the most from your money. Make it a goal to evaluate your marketing processes and goals today. Then do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day and the next. Look for opportunities everyday and act immediately.

So what does it take to start an email campaign? A simple campaign is actually surprisingly easy to launch. The four basic tips outlined below will make the process smooth and even more effective.

1. Assemble a list of contacts that want to hear from your company. This doesn’t mean buying lists of email addresses online. Your list of contacts will serve you best if it is made up of people you do business with on a regular basis or people who have asked to be on your email list. Anything beyond these two groups of people may be getting into the spam arena, and I’m guessing you feel the same way I do about spam: negatively.

2. Have a well-defined reason to contact the people in your list. It doesn’t benefit you to send out emails just for the sake of keeping in touch. If the people receiving your emails don’t find anything of value in your emails, it’s likely your contacts will be clicking the unsubscribe button quicker than you can add new contacts. (Yes, you must have an unsubscribe button, which I’ll talk about in a later post.)

To make sure your message is worth your subscribers time, be sure to evaluate what you want to send off. What will interest your subscribers? Do you have a sale going on that they may be interested in? Maybe you’ve been getting a particular question a lot. Answering that question in an e-newsletter could be a great way of showing people what an expert you are. (And it doesn’t hurt that you may be cutting back on the number of times you have to answer repeat questions.) Whatever your reason for sending an email, you have to provide something your subscribers will find valuable, or you could end up losing your subscribers and risk needlessly pestering customers.

3. Creating an email format that fits in with your other marketing material is vital. When a customer opens your email, they should instantly be able to recognize that it’s coming from you. Keeping your colors, graphics and logos consistent with your website and printed material will lend credibility to the email and further solidify your brand in the minds of your customers.

4. Finally, you’ll need a method of sending your emails, and there are lots of email services out there to chose from. We use Constant Contact, but other services will work as well. Some people ask, “Why can’t I send emails from my computer and business email account?” You could, but services like Constant Contact are cheap, easy to use and can tell you a lot about what happens to your emails after you send them, which helps you maximize the effort. For instance, a good email service will tell you if and when your emails were opened, which links were clicked and who has asked to be unsubscribed from your list. They’ll also help make sure you are conforming with the CAN SPAM Act. All this goes toward increasing the effectiveness of your marketing-driven email.

If you think it’s time to jump into email marketing let us know and we’ll help you get started. If done well the benefits are many and the cost is relatively low.

Much of this expert advice focuses on the benefits of maintaining—or even increasing—marketing spending during a recession. This advice must be taken with a grain of salt, however, as it often comes from people who make their living off of marketing services. Still, this doesn’t entirely discount the assertion that a push in marketing at a time like this could be a good strategy.

“Should I cut my marketing budget during a recession?” is a question a lot of folks are asking. The answer, frustrating as it may be, is: “It depends.”

A 2005 report in the International Journal for Research in Marketing says that if a company is properly positioned with some existing resources and market presence a recession can be the perfect time for a marketing push. The report compares it to a strong runner increasing his/her pace on a hill, which presents an extra challenge to less-well-conditioned competitors.

A well-positioned business should sense an opportunity in their market and go for it by challenging their competitors at a time when they may not be able to keep pace. An example of this kind of business maneuver was Proctor & Gamble deciding to market Ivory soap in the midst of the Great Depression. For a smaller company this may not mean spending more money on marketing at all but rather researching the competition and offering a service they lack. Going the extra mile in the race for customers means even more in tough times.

But what if your company isn’t ready for an all-out assault on the competition? When the economy is down, it’s a perfect time to take a closer look at your current marketing efforts. How have they been performing? Are you getting the return on investment (ROI) that you should from your advertising, website and email communications? Now may be the time to cut back on a component that isn’t working and devote more resources to those that are.

As I mentioned before, you should always keep an eye on your competitors, and this is important even if you aren’t planning to directly challenge them. If you notice that your competitor has been focusing heavily on mass email marketing, this may be the perfect time for you to launch a direct mail campaign. On the other hand, if your competitors are inundating the market with printed pieces that are clogging up mailboxes, it may be advantageous to send that quick email reminding customers you’re just a click away.

Whatever route ends up being best for your company, it’s always a good idea to keep close track of where you put your marketing dollars and what sort of return you’re getting on that investment. This kind of close tracking of—and adjusting to—your market can provide justification for your marketing spending during lean times.