Kirk Communications

Marketing Strategy Turned Upside Down

2010-07-09T12:38:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, like in the post-War era depicted by the Mad Men TV series, clever people in marketing departments or an elegant advertising agency spent their time dreaming up catchy ways to lure consumers to their products.

They created demand for things people never knew they wanted, they sliced up the market and pored over their research data as they sought new ways to differentiate their products from competitors, often creating irrelevant and artificial distinctions. Does it really matter which cola you drink?

But that era is long gone as the one-way media funnel has been inverted and brand recognition has changed, well, beyond recognition.

It was easy to tell people what they wanted when they couldn’t respond or could only absorb the bombardment of messages on television screens and newspaper advertisements.

Now, through the two-way communications of blogs and social media, consumers can decide what they want and demand products that are tailored specifically for them.

Consumers will also make sure they inform their friends when their satisfied and they’ll make absolutely certain to tell everyone when they’re not happy – what else are all those status updates about?

There may still be smoke-filled boardroom plotting the behaviour of millions, but the emergence of a conversation, means only those engaged in a social networking dialogue will succeed.

Now, it’s the era of social marketing, where only the arrogant would think the boardroom is where a successful brand strategy can be created. It’s on the internet in the comment section of a blog or the response to a friend’s twitter.

Think of your social media strategy as a way to be part of the real chat and make sure you listen when your potential consumers tell you what they need, it’s the way to create your own cyber smoke-filled boardroom.

Tags: Advertising Agency, Brand Recognition, Brand Strategy, Marketing Strategy, social marketing, Social Media, social media strategy, social networking

PPC and Brand

2010-06-29T13:23:00.000-04:00

In Google, search the term “Oil Spill” and many other similar phrases and in the top PPC section you will find a link to a BP landing page titled Gulf Of Mexico Response.

Where many companies use PPC search terms as a way to gain new clients and leads, BP is utilizing a PPC campaign to attempt to rebuild its public image. The oil company is receiving a very negative response to their recently launched PPC campaign with many people saying it’s unethical to use PPC to lessen the effect the Gulf Oil spill has had on their brand’s reputation.

With this said it seems BP is not the only company to purchase PPC terms around the words Oil Spill: Bloomberg, several charities, and even political campaigns are purchasing the terms Oil Spills. However where charities such as The Nature Conservancy and Dawn are using PPC to raise money for this horrible disaster BP is using PPC to rebuild it’s public image

Don’t Treat Facebook Fans like kids

2010-05-12T08:52:00.001-04:00

Although Facebook started as a place for college students and younger, it has grown up a lot in the last few years and is now a network for everybody. In 2009 the fastest growing demographic on facebook was aged 55 and over, growing by 922%. The largest overall demographic was ages 35-54 which makes up 29% of all users.

Keep this is mind and write for all audiences not just Teenagers. Many companies make the mistake of assuming that the only people on Facebook are college age and younger. Branding toward only this younger demographic could easily turn away a large amount of users

Google's New SearchWiki

2010-05-03T13:59:00.000-04:00

The introduction of Google’s New SearchWiki now allows you to customize your search by ranking content, anyone signed into a Google account automatically has use of this feature. What this all means is that Google now allows users to edit the results they see in a search engine results page by adding a star to an item. When searching a term or phrase Google presents the results and places a star directly to the right of each listing. By clicking the star you are ranking this result. If you search a phrase or term and the results show a useful link at position 5 and you click the star this link will automatically appear at the top of your results next time you do the same or similar search.

The only question is what will this do to SEO? There has been massive amount of writing both negative and positive about SearchWiki. How it will effect SEO is truly unknown, one thing is for certain though. SearchWiki is making first impressions more important than ever! Once someone adds a star to your competitor that listing is automatically placed in the number 1 search results position for that individual. With this said it also means that your company could very easily move from position 6to position 1 for certain individuals.

YouTube - The Second Biggest Search Engine

2010-03-23T12:36:00.001-04:00

Did you know that YouTube is currently the 2nd largest search engine behind Google, with more than 3.5 billion queries a month. What that means is that there are more search queries on YouTube than on Yahoo! YouTube and other video sites can be a great vehicle to reach audiences who might not find you otherwise. Plus, you can create a branded YouTube channel and host your videos without incurring any costs.

This is of course not the only benefit of utilizing YouTube. The use of video can greatly affect your SEO ranking for several reasons. Search engines now display more and more videos in their results and weigh them more heavily. This gives you a great opportunity to increase your relevance in search results, and potentially achieve first page ranking of Google. In fact a video is 50 times more likely than plain text to appear at the top of search rankings.

Facebook Stats

2010-02-25T12:34:00.001-05:00

It’s fair to say that facebook and social media in general have become a part of most people’s daily lives. The popularity of these social networking sites especially facebook is growing daily. With the number of users on facebook reaching over 400 million more than half of them use it on a daily basis. This is unlikely to decline, the creation of applications allowing users to log in from cell phone, has 100 million individuals logging in even when they aren’t at a computer. Lets take a look how long it took other forms of media to reach 50 million users:

Radio -38 year
TV – 13 years
Internet – 4 years
Ipod – 3 years
Facebook – added over 100 million users in less than 9 months

These statistics are no doubt impressive, but does facebook really help businesses gain exposure? This social networking site offers a means to easily connect to individuals outside the use, because more than 70% of facebook users are international. With that said it’s also important to know that more than 20 million users become fans of pages on facebook each year. With facebook becoming a regular part of most peoples lives the social networking site can be a great way to reach out to customers, and promote new products. Driving customers to your facebook site is now easier than ever. In December 2008 facebook implemented Facebook Connect, and since than over 80,000 websites have used it. Now that you have people at your facebook page why not customize it to look more like a website. Here are some companies that have done that well:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Treeno-Software/373560250513?ref=search&sid=1811962.3337906625..1

http://www.facebook.com/WhatsUpGold?ref=search&sid=1811962.83676371..1

Text Versus Links

2009-11-01T18:47:00.002-05:00

We often get asked the question, how many links should I have on my website? Quality links are an important factor in getting your website ranked higher, but just adding random links can actually be detrimental to search. Links should be relevant to your content. If you are a technology company, linking to a car review site is probably not going to do much to elevate your search ranking. However, creating relevant links from your content to other content that adds to the user experience can increase your company's organic rankings. In general we like to see 90 percent content on a page and 10 percent links. This seems to be an optimal mix for the search engines.

Social Media News Rooms

2009-08-20T15:13:00.002-04:00

As companies continue to put more resources into developing social media, tracking all fo those tweets, blog postings, videos and photos can be difficult. As a solution, we have been working on developing a number of social media news rooms. These "News rooms" give clients the ability to keep all of their social media in one central location. This keeps users on the site. In addition, all of this traffic staying on the site, helps your organic SEO by increasing traffic and keeping traffic longer on your site. A good example of a recent Social Media news room can be found at: http://www.pegasystems.com/blog/

Why are links important?

2009-06-30T07:55:00.002-04:00

Linking to relevant sites is extremely important to your overall SEO ranking. If you are a maker fly rods and you have other relevant pages that link to the term fly rods linking to you then this is a good link. Search engines will confirm that "Fly rods" are in fact in the title, description and body content of your page and reward the page with rankability.

Guaranteed SEO

2009-06-28T08:11:00.004-04:00

When talking with comapanies, I often hear that "Your competitors will guarantee 1# placement of my web site." In many cases this is true. What companies will do is focus on hyper specific keywords such as "Medical Manufacturer in Plastow, New Hampshire". By putting in hyper specific geographies into a search querry, SEO companies have eliminated the competition, thus making it very easy to rank a company 1# for that search term. The problem is that the general public does not search for services or products with that level of specificity. So, before you sign up for that guaranteed placement, it is important to understand the methodology. When we work with companies we spend a great deal of time on key word research, focusing on important words and phrases for that client that have low competition and high search volume. By doing this we are able to gain good placement for relevent word and phrases that actually drive traffic to their site.

Managing your Pay Per Click Campaign is a Full time Job.

2009-03-20T14:03:00.004-04:00

Running PPC (pay per click) campaigns used to be relatively simple. There were only a few variables that the user had control of; price, copy, and where the user would be directed when they clicked on an ad. Today, effectively managing pay-per-click campaigns is a full time job requiring a great deal of skill and tenacity on the part of the account holder. One of the biggest mistakes that we see in existing accounts is the complete lack of key words and phrases for a specific add group. It is important to expand your key words and phrases so that you can catch a potentially larger audience. Over time, the trick is to pause those words that are not converting into bonafied leads, while adding to those that do. By expanding your key word and phrases you will ultimitely find those that give you the best results for the lowest cost.

Changing Landscape of SEO

2008-12-04T10:50:00.002-05:00

In the last few months we have been busy continually evoloving our SEM and SEO marketing techniques. Google and other search engines constantly evolve their ranking techniques. But their criteria will always be based on delivering relevant results to their clients. What this means to you is that to increase your ranking, you have to match relevant content to keywords that you can afford to invest in. The first key to success is to understand how Google defines relevance. Here are some tips…

Keywords must accurately describe your products and services. Overuse of keywords in content that is irrelevant is penalized

Additional relevant assets that support keywords are important, such as maps, videos, presentations

Back-linking to irrelevant or little-used sites is no longer effective
The second key to successful seo optimization and pay per click advertising is to select relevant keywords you can afford to invest in. With the goal of identifying keywords that you can “own” over time, our proprietary system correlates the number of daily searches to the number of competitors. The results are analyzed and ranked for relevance. Once chosen, keyword performance is tracked over time and changes made as necessary.

It isn’t easy to produce relevant content that is integrated throughout your website, PR, blog, e-collateral, demand generation campaigns, and newsletter, or published to forums and other websites. It’s not easy to evaluate keywords on an ongoing basis to determine effectiveness. Yet, when you commit to a long-term seo optimization and pay per click program and outsource its execution, it is far and away the most affordable demand generation tool you can use.

Maximize Your Website Investment with an Evolving Keyword Strategy

2008-07-23T17:42:00.000-04:00

Maximize Your Website Investment with an Evolving Keyword Strategy

Are you getting the best return on your website investment? The answer is no if you’re not employing a keyword strategy that evolves as search engine search criteria evolve.
For keyword research, many SEO agencies use both the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and Google Keyword Analysis. But for effective optimization you have to do more.
Traditionally, to obtain higher rankings you'll use the best keywords you’ve researched in the title, in the meta-tags and in the body text of your web pages. Five years ago keywords were more about meta-tags and language within the site. Today those things are still important, but back end linking, where quality web sites link back to your website, is of increasing importance.
Now, search engines like Google constantly change their criteria for high ranking sites, which means your site needs to be continually optimized. Since you never know directly what changes a search engine has made, many agencies have trouble keeping on top of developments. It’s like playing chess where you don’t see the moves of your opponent, only the results of his actions.
When asked about what aspects of keyword research have changed in 2008, our development director Anoop Rohera says, ‘I think the high competition and awareness of SEO benefits have made keyword research even more prominent in the overall SEO process. People spend more time researching keywords and trying to get a niche market by bidding on low competitive keywords and attempting to get a search engine place in a short time.’
So what techniques help you gather the data you need to keep up with search engine changes and maximize your ranking? Rohera says, ‘You can search manually for a number of popular keywords; reviewing the website title bar, the code and content to see what keywords are being targeted, and then analyze those keywords to see how many people are searching for them on a daily basis.’
Rohera continues, ‘Google and other big search engines always change their search criteria, or randomly change them so no method is overused. By using proprietary analytics to continuously evaluate your search results, we help solve this problem.’
I believe that having a competent and professional SEO firm looking after your site is critical. Many SEO companies ‘chew and screw’. What I mean by this is that they make some quick changes and move on to the next client. Good SEO is an on-going process that evolves over time and takes input from others.
So, what are the biggest changes that are going to affect the world of SEO over the next year? Rohera says, ‘Traditionally, most people stuff keywords in the content to get higher rankings. Search engines will penalize you for this nowadays. Link exchange techniques are obsolete too; search engines are giving increased weight to one-way links from quality websites, directories or forums. I think this will grow in the coming year as well. Other than this Google has also started rolling out universal search which means a search query will not just get links, but also images, news, videos and maps.’

- Nate Tennant, Kirk Communications

Marketing Throughout the Organization

2008-04-21T13:51:00.002-04:00

This past weekend my brother and I took our annual pilgrimage to Bangor, Maine to watch the Kenduskeag canoe race. http://www.kenduskeagstreamcanoerace.com/. As you enter the State of Maine you are greeted with the slogan "Maine, the Way Life Should Be". One thinks, this must be an idyllic place to live and work. Having grown up just outside of Bangor, Maine, I can tell you that it once was. The quality of life was terrific, no crime, beautiful scenery, relative low cost of living, and a fair amount of decent paying jobs. Back then, there was alot going on in Bangor, Maine. The paper industry was humming and even companies in the traditional manufacturing industries were doing well. Even Bangor International Airport had dozens of large jets, 727s, MD80s full of paying business travelers. Unfortunately since the late 80s, the State has continued to decline in per capita income and continues to loose its best educated young people. There just are not any jobs. Perhaps the state believes that "the way life should be" is living in abject poverty. If that is there definition of living the good life, then the state is doing a fantastic job of creating the reality they are promoting. Eventually tourist will be turned away by Maine's increasingly high taxes and costs which are passed on to tourists. Tourist driving the back roads of Maine will be greeted by dilapidated homes and failing farms. No matter how you look at it, this is depressing.

Driving through mid-central Maine today is depressing. Towns like Clinton, Unity and others are as bad as the poverty stricken areas of the Appalachian mountains in the south. One hundred years ago these areas were considered some of the best, most productive farming communities in the entire U.S. Along the coast towns such as Belfast and Camden look good, but certainly pail in comparison to the grandeur and wealth that these towns created in the past. Maine used to be one of the strongest, most robust economies in the nation. The state needs to do more in the way of radical tax reform to boost business and investment in new technology. Only then might the State be able to lay claim to the slogan "Maine, The Way Life Should be", ensuring that what they promote is in fact the reality on the ground.

Pipeline Wireless on the Move

2008-03-27T14:00:00.002-04:00

We have been working with a new company, Pipeline Wireless. They came to us from one of our trusted friends. They are a medium sized start-up focused on local wireless access. A few months ago, we started a full public relations program for them that includes writting press releases, searching out editorial opportunities and aggressively pursing those opportunties for stories. In addition, our interactive team is also making changes to their website. We love clients like Pipeline Wireless because they have a great story to tell. Our senior Public Relations manager Jennifer Macpherson is heading up the account.

Another American Corporation doing Well

2008-03-27T13:54:00.002-04:00

Today we launched another website "Andover Corporation". The site was designed by the in house staff and they did a phenomenal job in PHP. However, the website design was dated and required Kirk Communications to do a complete redesign. Working with their internal team, we came up with a new website design, and then after it was approved we coded the site. Because of their SEO rankings we chose to keep their PHP extensions as we didn't want to risk their SEO position. It was over 800 pages of content but we were able to stay within budget. We also added some features that allow for quicker updates to the webpages. The website can be viewed at www.andovercorp.com

Website Design

2008-03-24T14:03:00.002-04:00

Well we added another website design client today to our roster. The client is in stealth mode, so we can't mention the name of the client here. Kirk Communications is working with the client to develop their entire identity package including their corporate brand logo, collateral and their website.

Kirk Communications is developing an innovative website for the client and optimizing the site for SEO. Kirk Communications is also doing some interface design for the client. We are excited to be working with new and innovative clients that appreciate the leading technology that we can bring to the table.

Arlington, Texas

2008-03-22T20:22:00.002-04:00

I got a call the other day from our friends in Arlington, Texas http://www.arlington.org/, Fun Central. They, like many of our clients found us through Google. This next week they are attending a large tourism summit in New York City and they asked Kirk Communications to produce an interactive press kit in under a week! It is a tight request, but luckily our team of interactive developers were able to drop some tasks and work on this digital press kit.

Key Word Buys

2007-11-24T13:36:00.001-05:00

“Key Word Buys”

Last month we talked about the importance of Google in helping prospects find your company. In addition to the optimization of certain key words, you may also want to augment this with paid key word ads. These ads appear on the right hand column of most search engines when a phrase or word is searched for. Until a few years ago, getting first page placement of a paid key word ad was easy. However, today there is fierce competition for most key words and with limited advertising space getting top placement is difficult. To increase your paid key word ranking here are a few tips to lower your cost while increasing your ranking.

Make Each Word Count
Ads are generally limited to 1024 characters so you need to make every character count. Use contractions and symbols. For example use the symbol “&” instead of spelling “and.”

Use Key Words in the Ad
If you use keywords that closely match your company’s product or service your click-through rate will increase. For example, if you are bidding on the term “automobile” and your ad contains that same term, your response will be higher than without the key word.

Create an Active or Action-Oriented Ad
When creating ads, don’t use passive language, instead use action words like “Buy today.”

Use Specifics in Your Ad
Particularly if you are in a consumer business, offer specific benefits of your service such as “Offer ends this month”

"Google it"

2007-10-15T17:23:00.001-04:00

“Google it”

We have all heard the term, “Just Google it.” It is how most people research the things they need, whether it be vacation accommodations or a service for their business. And, it is those businesses and services that appear on the first page of our search that customers are most likely to investigate further.

Businesses can show up in two ways on the first page of an internet search, organically or paid. Organic searches show results based on the relevancy of the search word or search phrase. Search engine algorithms are continually changing, but as a business, there are three easy steps you can take to help rank your business higher on organic searches.

Link Your Site
Establishing links from your web site to that of your partners and vice versa will increase the number of places that your content appears on the web, thus increasing your rankings.

Public Relations (PR)
PR can be an effective way to get your company’s name recognized, but one of it’s most important functions today is that by issuing a press release your company’s content will populate thousands of news sites, increasing your relevancy and ranking.

Blogs
Blogs, if integrated into your site can serve as a valuable portal for relevant content. By having more industry specific content on your site, you have a great chance of ranking higher on organic searches.
But, before making any of these changes to a company’s website, benchmarks should be established on current site traffic, time spent on the site and number of direct inquiries. Using metrics will allow your organization to effectively measure how each change positively or negatively affects the website traffic and search placement.

Include marketing in your strategic plan

2007-10-01T21:13:00.000-04:00

Include Marketing in Your Strategic Plan

For many New Hampshire companies, the third and fourth quarters of the fiscal year are often the busiest. This is also the time that many companies start to increase their marketing spend. For most, it represents a list of tasks; a tradeshow or seminar to attend, or a website update. And, although these may be important tactical items, they are often not connected to a company’s strategic plan.

A company’s strategic plan should be the play book for the entire organization including marketing. We recently did some strategy work for a company that was planning to be sold. After some initial interviews, it was clear that the finance and legal teams were busy preparing to sell the company, yet marketing, the one piece of the organization that can impact valuation was not in sync.

By working with the marketing team, we refocused efforts away from traditional marketing tasks and realigned seventy percent of their efforts on positioning the company as an industry leader. This included, ramping up online and lead generation activities to increase the sales pipeline. The company website was revamped and a full court public relations offensive was launched which subsequently landed the company in several national publications. These combined efforts resulted in a higher valuation and a quicker sale. By refocusing your company’s marketing efforts to be synchronized with a strategic plan, you too can realize your goals quicker and more profitably.

Keeping your site fresh

2007-07-31T13:18:00.000-04:00

I met with one of my established clients today and the subject of keeping the website fresh, new and interesting came up again. Unlike many companies, this client is concerned about not only keeping their site up to date but also refreshing and interesting. Fortunately, the company has an industry expert who spends a lot of time in the office. So, we are in the process of creating an interactive blog that will focus on one a key industry issue every month. This gives the client a chance to lead the industry on the issues. It also will in turn help drive traffic to the site, make it more interesting for visitors and help the company in their organic searches. For most companies your website is the first impression they get of your company so make it fresh, new and interesting whenever possible.