Microsites and Landing Pages: A Primer

Just about every business has a website – or at least should. But a website is not the only venue through which you can market your business on the web. The rise of online marketing and its various tactics have given birth to new forms of web engagement – including the microsite and landing page. Generally, both are an addendum to – or an extension of – an existing website, but each serve a particular function in guiding people along the buyer journey. Let’s take a look at the basics:

The Microsite:

What is it? A microsite is a lot like it sounds – a small, bare bones version of a traditional website. Comprised of no more than a few pages, microsites are built around a singular message (i.e., a new campaign, product or service offering).

What is its purpose? Microsites help to develop brand awareness around a particular product or service. By focusing on a simple and clear message, microsites cut through the clutter of a traditional website and allow potential customers to learn about a product or service in a quick, painless and easy to digest manner.

The Landing Page:

What is it? A simple, single page or form – usually hosted on an existing website – intended to drive a specific action.

What is its purpose? The landing page is singularly focused and intended to spur action (i.e. – download information, sign up for a free trial, subscribe to newsletter, etc.) and move a potential customer from awareness to consideration and eventually, purchase.

The Bottom Line:

Microsites and Landing Pages are great vehicles to enhance your marketing efforts and help drive sales. In some cases, they can even be utilized in place of a traditional website. Microsites and landing pages offer similar benefits, and determining the right solution for your efforts is entirely dependent on your needs.

Benefits of microsites and landing pages include:

• Quick deployment (3-4 weeks vs. 3-4 months for a traditional site)

• Can be used as a short-term solution for specific goals and programs

• Promotes a specific call to action (CTA)

• Build brand awareness organically

• Easy to measure campaign engagement

• Simple navigation

• Allows for direct interaction with a specific promotion or campaign

• Great medium to tell a brand story

Want more info on this topic? Fill out the form to the right and let’s chat!

Digital Advertising in San Diego by Jacob Tyler

5 Themes from Interactive Day San Diego, 2015

Ah, Interactive Day. The one day a year when Southern California’s best, brightest and most innovative digital marketers convene to remind each other just how behind the curve they are. It is a day of inspiration and excitement and anxiety and terror: how do I institute this philosophy at my agency…how do I make these trends tangible enough to sell to my clients…when does happy hour start?

The Jacob Tyler team attended several insightful sessions throughout the day and identified a short list of the most prevalent themes discussed by leaders in the industry. Below are key takeaways, implications and points of inspiration from each theme.

1. Millennials (2015 is the peak year for marketing to millennials)

THE SCOOP:

  • This coming-of-age generation, now 18-34 years old, is the largest generation in the workforce.
  • Well educated and socially mindful, expect a growing annual spending power and influence among peers
  • A stronger connection to brands provides trust and relevance

PRO TIP:

  • Don’t be afraid to evolve with this audience and use a dynamic marketing approach. Be where they are, use their preferred media platforms, you won’t reach them otherwise. (Next Up: Gen Z)

INSPIRATION:

  • Lowe’s Fix In Six (#lowesfixinsix) campaign uses Vine to provide low-budget, clever improvements to make life at home a little easier. https://vine.co/Lowes

2. Personalized Content (Your content – whether text, images, or video – should be personalized and relevant for the audience)

THE SCOOP:

  • Ensure your campaign matches the data behind what your audience cares about.
  • Engaging experiences are made through personalization and relevance to the platform being used.
  • Content should be the start of a two-way conversation (talk to them, not at them).

PRO TIP:

  • Include descriptive and informative messaging that is helpful for the audience. It’s not only about the visuals.

INSPIRATION:

  • Top performing pins on Pinterest provide instructions and tips as well as a beautiful image — brands recognize that pins are about planning and information, not just aesthetics. https://www.pinterest.com/categories/popular/

3. Augmented Reality (Creating a near-real experience with a brand in a connected world)

 THE SCOOP:

  • Consumers today have made their purchase decisions well ahead of an in-store visit.
  • Augmented reality transports the consumer to a branded environment for a fully immersive experience. It can live anywhere your consumer lives, and become interactive through a variety of devices (smartphone, wearables or anywhere in between).

PRO TIP:

  • Start simple: how can my prospects see themselves using my product? Build a simple experience reflecting that, then test, and grow, and test, and grow.

INSPIRATION:

  • Always ahead of its own curve, the IKEA catalogue took augmented reality to an innovative (and still approachable) space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDNzTasuYEw

4. The Internet of Things (So much more than using Nest to create a connected home)

 THE SCOOP:

  • Speaking of wearables…the next generation of personalization and automation provides efficiency to living and working lifestyles.
  • Let technology learn more about you to improve day-to-day tasks and challenges through data.

PRO TIP:

  • Focus on how your brand and the information it gathers can simplify your consumers’ lives, and invest in the technology to build that connection.

INSPIRATION:

5. Live Interactions (Streaming video can be used to create a real-time, shared experience)

THE SCOOP:

  • Consumers crave real-time access to events as they unfold.
  • Live, user-influenced content creates an immediacy and shareability to brand experiences.

PRO TIP:

  • Listen to and know your audience, then build events and stories that invite them in as a live participant.

INSPIRATION:

  • Watch Gisele fight back to negative comments as the new face of Under Armour. http://gisele.underarmour.com/

How do these trends come to life, and how to they apply to your brand (or your clients’ brands)? What success stories have you seen, and what pitfalls should brands avoid?

Jacob Tyler | Branding Agency in San Diego

5 Easy Tactics to Reach Brand Enthusiasts

Do you own a gadget that you can’t wait to tell all of your friends about? Are you quick to recommend your favorite restaurant or a film you enjoyed to anyone who will listen? If so – to paraphrase the late Jeff Foxworthy – you might be a brand enthusiast. Brand enthusiasts are more than a fan of a certain product or brand – they champion brands, spreading word far and wide, without expectation of compensation. And they’re more common than you might think. According to a recent study, more than 25 percent of consumers are considered brand enthusiasts. That number doubles among Millenials, whose social media prowess makes them the most powerful and effective purveyors of enthusiasm – not to mention a powerhouse purchasing demographic.

Marketing to brand enthusiasts is a no-brainer, and the reasons are largely self-evident. Brand enthusiasts are trust worthier than advertising or marketing campaigns – and they don’t charge. They personify your brand from a deeply personal place, relaying their experience to a willing audience. Quite simply, brand enthusiasts are the most powerful arrows in your marketing quiver.

But reaching these magical marketing creatures – and convincing them to evangelize for your brand – is no easy task. There’s no magic formula, and if there were, there’s no way to guarantee enthusiasm for your particular brand. Aside from offering a great product or service, there are strategies you can employ to help you win brand enthusiasts to your cause. Start with these five:

Show Up: Don’t wait for brand enthusiasts to knock on your door asking to sample the goods. Go to where they are. With a little research, you should be able to find out where the conversations around your particular market are taking place – social media channels, chat rooms, etc. Be where the conversation is, and add to it.

Start a Conversation: Want to know what people think about your brand? Ask them. You will learn more about the perception of your brand from a conversation than you ever will from your assumptions. You’ll you gain a solid understanding of the way people feel about your brand, and learn how you can improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

Gather Information: Brand enthusiasts are generally more willing to offer personal and contact information than more skeptical consumers. By collecting contact information and staying in touch with them, you can move from conversation to relationship.

Make Sure Your Technology is up to Snuff: Brand enthusiasts are known as some of the most tech-savvy consumers on the planet. As such, they research and engage with brands overwhelmingly through mobile devices. Make sure your website is easily accessible though mobile devices and operating systems.

Feed the Hungry: Brand enthusiasts devour content. After all, one can’t truly be considered an enthusiast if he or she isn’t an expert on the subject. Provide timely, targeted and useful information to your audience. If your brand enthusiasts like what you have to say, they’ll share it with the world.

Want to learn more about how you can generate enthusiasm for your brand? Fill out the form to the right and lets chat!

San Diego’s Best Branding Agency | Jacob Tyler

Are You Ready for Mobilegeddon?

In April, Google officially rolled out its “mobile-friendly” search ranking update. In short, this means that Google will now boost the rankings of what it considers to be “mobile-friendly” pages – and penalize pages that it does not – on its mobile search. The update is intended to reflect the rise of Internet access through mobile devices, which now constitute more than half of all Google searches. The update is expected to negatively affect many websites – popular industry blog TechCrunch found that 44 percent of Fortune 500 companies failed Google’s mobile-friendly test – and could impact revenues for those websites who do not meet the new mobile-friendly standards.

Let’s take a look at the basics of the new search update and what it means for your website.

What will change?

  • The mobile-friendly update will impact web page search rankings based on accessibility and usability on mobile devices.
  • The change affects only search ranking on mobile devices.
  • The update applies to individual pages, not entire websites.

What makes a website mobile-friendly?

According to Google’s blog, the following basic criteria will be used to determine “mobile friendliness” in search results:

  • Websites that avoid software that is not common on mobile devices – like Flash.
  • Websites that use text that is readable without zooming.
  • Websites that size content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom.
  • Websites that place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped.

Is my website mobile-friendly?

If your website features responsive design or adaptive design, or has been configured specifically for use on mobile devices, it may not be affected by the new search algorithm. Older, more “static” websites, however, will likely suffer a loss of ranking under the new search rules.

To determine if your website is mobile-friendly, simply paste your URL into Google’s quick and easy mobile-friendly test.

How can I optimize my website for mobile?

Google recommends responsive web design as the best way to ensure sites remain relevant across all platforms. According to Google’s blog, responsive design:

  • Makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL.
  • Helps Google’s algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages.
  • Requires less engineering time to maintain multiple pages for the same content.
  • Reduces the possibility of the common mistakes that affect mobile sites.
  • Requires no redirection for users to have a device-optimized view, which reduces load time.
  • Saves resources when Googlebot crawls your site.

In a nutshell –

The new mobile search ranking is an undeniable shakeup of the status quo, but should eventually optimize the search experience for both consumers and businesses. If your website lost rank status on April 21, it can regain that status once it is optimized and becomes mobile-friendly, as Google will reclassify the newly updated site.

If you would like to learn more about how to optimize your website for mobile, fill out the form to the right and let’s chat!

Jacob Tyler | San Diego’s Best Web Design Agency

Jacob Tyler Has a New Home – And it Might be Haunted

After a few months of “camping out” with our good friends at Solekai Systems while waiting for our new office to be built out, I’m happy to announce we’re finally home. Actually, we’ve been in our new space for a month or so – but hey, we wanted to decorate before we invited anyone over! Our new office, located at 6863 Friars Road in Mission Valley, retains much of the style of our former office downtown – open spaces, exposed ceilings, lots of red – and of course my love of Howard Stern memorabilia. But we now have more space to work, play (pinball anyone?) and most importantly – create.

At Jacob Tyler, we’re always looking forward – we look for what’s “next” in branding. We look for emerging technologies that will help connect our clients with their customers. We look for innovations in marketing, and look to create our own. We anticipate changes that will affect our clients, and adjust accordingly.

As I walk around our new spaces, however, I feel myself looking back as well. There’s an air of history in this building. The ghosts of advertising past, you might call it. This building was once home to one of San Diego’s oldest and most respected advertising agencies, Phillips Ramsey. Founded in 1928, the agency’s clients included the San Diego Zoo, First National Bank, WD-40 and others. In Advertising’s heyday in the 1950s and 60s – the era so deftly and unflinchingly portrayed in AMC’s Mad Men – Phillips Ramsey was the epicenter of creative thought.

The era of smoke-filled offices, three-piece suits and lunchtime martinis is long gone. But the creative energy that flowed through this building during that era remains today. Maybe it’s my imagination running wild, but sometimes I feel like those ghosts of advertising past are looking over our shoulders, and nodding approvingly.

Whether you’re a friend, client (past present or future) or partner, our doors are always open. Drop by and see our new home anytime, and together we’ll create some history of our own!

Digital Marketing in San Diego

Designing Our Life Experiences

Have you ever really thought about how design influences your everyday actions? Most of the time, we’re unaware of the subtle visual queues that guide our daily lives. Whether it’s strategically placed road signs on the freeway, color-coded packaging or the product flow of a supermarket, design is all around us, influencing our thoughts and behaviors. In many cases, a simple design can make a huge logistical difference. Take, for instance, University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale, Arizona – host of this year’s Super Bowl. The stadium has five main sections of seating around the perimeter. Instead of using three-digit numbers like most stadiums, University of Phoenix Stadium uses the numbers 1-5. Outside of each section, a 30-foot high corresponding number directs visitors to their section. Once inside, visitors are guided to their seats in a similarly linear fashion. It’s an easy design that that dramatically improves game day logistics.

Package design influences behavior too – like the nutrition labels on our food. As any aspiring dieter knows, the standard US nutrition label can be more than a bit confusing. As people become increasingly aware of their food choices, nutrition labels have become a point of contention for many nutritionists and doctors. But according to psychologists Peter Helfer and Thomas Shultz of McGill University in Montreal, there may be a better way to label our food.  In a recent issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, they argue that a simple one-number label called “NuVal” might be a better way to go. In their study, the pair compared the traditional nutrition label with two alternatives: a “traffic light” style design and the new, single-summary “NuVal” design. Both the traffic light and NuVal designs outperformed traditional labeling. The study, which you can read more about here, is an interesting look into the way design influences our choices.

As we move further into the digital age, the concentration on intuitive, behavior-altering design has moved to the forefront. Mobile devices are a prime example of design in action. Steve Jobs famously believed that simple, gorgeous design was the basis of success for Apple’s products. He insisted that the inside of the iPhone – which the consumer would never see – be as visually effective as the outside, believing that whole design would drive ingenuity. Today, the design of that first iPhone – a short seven years ago – has not only influenced our behavior (who knew what a “swipe” was a decade ago?) but has bled into all of our digital designs, including responsive website design. As we increasingly blend our digital experience with our organic experience, digital design will be at the vanguard of creating designs that influence, simplify and guide our actions and decisions. For brands, design will guide how consumers interact with – and make decisions about – their products and services. Whether it’s a website, packaging or a brand’s physical location, design has an enormous impact on the success of its operation. Think about how your brand utilizes design. Are you guiding customers along their journey from prospect to evangelist? Fill out the form to the right, let’s talk.

Web Design by Jacob Tyler in San Diego