In a rapidly evolving industry, marketers sometimes have a hard time remembering that while fun and exciting, the “shiny new thing” is never a silver bullet. Yes, QR codes, remarketing and Twitter are all interesting topics, but in and of themselves they’re not going to help us make our numbers next year.

We’re not here to backwards-engineer strategies from tactics. Strategic marketing requires us to develop resonant messages and useful content first. We then make it available to the market through multiple channels. This gives our most valuable target audiences the ability to interact with our offering on their own terms. This is how we become a useful part of their educational process, build trust, become a consideration in their purchase decision and eventually convert sales.

Regardless of how many years we’ve been in the business, none of us know exactly what messages, content, channels or tactics will work. Markets shift. The behavior of decision makers and influencers is dynamic. Blink and the competition has gained share.

What we can do is always start at the beginning – develop informed hypotheses by asking the right questions, assimilate what others are doing and saying about our industry, and eventually confirm or deny our assumptions through performance.

SQUARE ONE

As we approach the close of another year, we at Signal find ourselves querying executive teams about goals for 2012, asking product managers about innovation initiatives and coursing through online research. We’re implementing surveys and speaking with customers, non-customers, and media. It’s only once we have conducted some version of these exercises (see our scalable process illustrated below) that we are able to craft messaging and develop content that resonates with our customers.

Signal's three-step process to developing a strategic marketing plan.

NOW FOR THE FUN STUFF

It’s now time to develop a tactical plan informed by our strategy. And how will we deliver our messages and content in an effective way? Modern marketing communication programs are definitively web-centric because of the ease of web publishing and the ability to track the activity of users. This analytical ability is what allows us to test our hypotheses and optimize our marketing mixes, but getting relevant traffic to our websites is the trick.

Taking what we would typically consider a business-to-business strategy, designed to generate thought leadership and sales leads, let’s look at an integrated tactical model.

With the website in the middle to provide a platform for easy content publishing and analytics, we turn to the tactical drivers and channels that we consider in our marketing mix. There are an infinite number of ways in which these individual tactics might work together but the results of this process can be staggering:

Example #1
A B2B services organization needed a quick boost at year-end. It turned a $25,000 investment in content development, media relations and advertising into over $1M in potential contracts. This led to a decision to implement the company’s first-ever integrated marketing program.

Example #2
A premier travel and tourism destination needed to maintain rentals and sales in a 32%-down market. An integrated program including content development, web marketing, mobile marketing and social media provided a sales contract volume growth of over 100% from the previous year.

Example #3
A pharmaceutical services company needed to differentiate to survive in an overly commoditized market. By investing roughly $600K in a comprehensive rebranding, the company earned approximately $17M in projected revenue, directly attributable to leads and awareness programs.

While every organization is different, we all benefit from a systematic approach to uncovering and leveraging market opportunities. As we move into a new year, let’s not get dazzled by new, highly publicized tactics. Let’s challenge ourselves to start at square one. All tactics are worth considering but without a sound strategy, we have no basis from which we can form hypotheses or develop effective marketing mixes. We sometimes get lucky but more times than not, jumping to a tactical conclusion and then trying to backwards-engineer a strategy is nothing more than shooting in the dark.

While working on a white paper about hospital and physician marketing, this analogy popped into my head. Now, I’m not trying to play to anyone’s ego here, but this comparison really does lend some insight to positioning your facility in a competitive market.

Living here in Raleigh, North Carolina, there is rarely a day that I don’t drive past the RBC Center. For those of you who are not familiar with it, let me share a few facts:

• It has called Raleigh home since 1999
• It houses over 770,000 square feet of entertainment and sports space
• It seats up to 19,500 fans and has 66 luxury suites
• It has 8,000 parking spaces and is easily accessible from any direction
• It can transform from hardwood court to ice rink in under 6 hours
• It has hosted numerous events from Rodeo to Rock and Roll
• It is home to both the NC State Men’s Basketball team & the Carolina Hurricanes

These are just a few of the things that make the RBC Center a great venue. Unfortunately, none of these things are remotely of interest to the majority of people who descend upon this location each and every week. Well, with the exception of the last two.

It’s not the features of the RBC Center that bring in the crowds. It’s the rock stars, the rodeo riders, the on-ice excitement, and the buzzer beating three point shots that pack this stadium. People come for the events and they come to engage with their idols. They want to be part of the very best doing what they do best. Hmmm…sounds a little bit like the expectations of selecting a hospital.

As healthcare consumers we appreciate convenient locations and ample parking. We appreciate the beautiful façade of the building. We appreciate all the life improving technology that is housed inside. But, what really draws us there is the need to see our own type of rock star, the highly skilled medical provider that is going to make whatever ailment we have better. We are here to engage with a physician.

Keep this most important fact top of mind when developing your presence. Align the strengths of your facility with the skills of your physicians. Make them both inseparable to your community. Insure when someone is searching for either a facility or a physician in your area, both of those searches lead to your front door with a unified message.

While we do appreciate all the features you have to offer, what will really bring us in is the talent. Specialties are great, but we connect with the specialist. If you want your “venue” to stand out from all the others, focus on the connection between the physicians and your facility. Promote the talent within!

I would love to hear your feedback on this.

To add an extra twist, copy director Donald Trull secretly chose the overall phrase and distributed the words randomly to eight teams. No one else knew the complete phrase they were assembling, which is now revealed to be a relevant quotation from Pablo Picasso on the artistic transfiguration of the commonplace.

We’ve edited together the photos into a short video showing the complete phrase. Take a look at how cool it turned out and let us know what you think!

As a designer, you find that every job presents a unique challenge and goal. There is always an opportunity to exercise creativity and bring something new to the table. Then in those cases when you have a personal connection to a job, that takes things to another level.

This past year Signal was asked to design a new athletic logo system for my former high school, Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, NC. My eyes lit up at the chance to work on this project as a Gibbons alumnus. Along with a team of fellow designers from Signal, I went to work brainstorming, sketching and collaborating with the staff at Gibbons.

After the new Gibbons Crusaders logo was complete, it was quickly implemented all over the school and on athletic uniforms to roll out for the 2011 seasons. The identity system was equally embraced by both students and faculty.

Last month I had the opportunity to take part in a career day at Gibbons and talk to students about Signal and what it was like to be a designer. Armed with sketchbooks, a laptop and printed samples, I walked into the gymnasium and found our new logo everywhere I looked. I can’t express how rewarding it felt to see that huge logo painted on the gymnasium wall, on shirts and sweatshirts worn by students, and even the chairs we sat in for the event carried the mark.

I left the school 15 years ago as a teenager entering a world of uncertainty, and revisited the school to be warmly welcomed by both teachers and students in appreciation of my new contribution. What a great experience it is to leave your mark on a meaningful part of your past.

Signal is happy to be taking part in this great networking event for the local design community. Local design students, professional designers, commercial photographers, videographers, copywriters, creative directors, printer reps, paper reps, web developers, illustrators, businessowners, marketing directors, and all friends of Signal are invited to join in the fun.

While Signal’s Brier Creek location may seem a bit out of the way compared to the cluster of “inside the Beltline” agencies participating, please bear in mind that we’ll make a convenient first stop or last stop for those coming from Durham or Chapel Hill. And we’re just a quick hop down I-540 from all the Six Forks Road firms. So don’t be shy, stop by for some light hors d’oeuvres, grab some beer or wine, and enjoy a friendly round of ping pong here at the House of Creative Power.

Visit the Studio Open House Eventbrite page to register and see a full list of participating agencies and a Google Map of their locations, plus carpoolinginfo and an attendee list of all the cool folks coming. We hope to see you Thursday!

Signal won in the following categories:

Gold Award in Out-of-Home Campaign for our redesign of the Durham Bulls Ballpark stadium signage

Silver Award in E-Mails/E-Cards for Performance Circle e-blast

Bronze Award in Site, Interior Static for Performance Circle environmental banners/signage

The ADDY Awards Competition is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition for creative excellence. Signal is honored to have our work selected among all the outstanding local creative talent on display in this year’s awards.

This marks Signal’s second year as a sponsor of the fundraiser, and we have updated the promotional poster and event graphics we designed last year for the event.

The Full Belly Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to design and distribute income-generating agricultural devices to improve life in developing countries. The Full Belly Feast is a globally inspired evening of exotic cuisine, live music and auctions to benefit The Full Belly Project’s charitable efforts. Founder Jock Brandis was recently interviewed on North Carolina Public Radio’s The State of Things program.

To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit The Full Belly Project.

The Full Belly Feast
Coastline Convention Center
501 Nutt Street, Wilmington, NC
Saturday, February 26, 2011
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

While apps play an important role in mobile, it’s worth remembering that the web itself remains accessible for the majority of mobile Internet devices. Even without having a mobile app, your company can build an excellent mobile presence through your site. The problem is that most web sites haven’t yet been optimized to be mobile-friendly.


Mobile Browsing Breakdowns

If you’ve browsed the web on a mobile device, you’ve probably found how it can be a frustrating experience. Text and navigation buttons are often too small, and your fingertips are too imprecise to hit your intended targets. You can zoom in and pan around to find what you need, but the screen resizes when you go to the next page. Flash animation and script coding may not work at all, and the concept of a hovering cursor and rollover effects does not exist in the touchscreen world.

On the other hand, you may have encountered some web sites that work great on your mobile device. Text and navigation buttons are at a usable size, and the overall user experience feels more like a mobile app instead of a squashed-down web site. These sites have been properly optimized for mobile.

Short Cuts to Optimization

One good thing about optimizing your site for mobile is that you don’t have to rebuild your existing site from scratch. Your standard site and mobile site can live side by side in the same place. A common best practice is establishing a sub-domain of your current site, such as mobile.yoursite.com or m.yoursite.com. Code inserted in your pages identifies when a visitor is browsing on a mobile device and automatically forwards them to the mobile-optimized version hosted in the sub-domain.

Simpler sites might be successfully optimized just by mirroring the main site’s pages using a different CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file customized for mobile devices. This quick and easy solution cuts down the work involved with the prospect of building a whole new site, but many sites have complex features and usability considerations that will require more tinkering and refinement.

It’s a good idea to check for existing mobile plugins. The software that runs your site may already have mobile plugins or options available for developers. These kinds of features may satisfy your needs without requiring custom programming.

Rules of Thumb (and Forefinger)

As a general rule, buttons and links should be large enough for users to select with accuracy and avoid the “fat finger syndrome.” Images and graphics should be reduced to the bare essentials in the mobile version of your site. Copy also should be kept as brief as possible to avoid scrolling and keep messages clear at a glance. Unless a core function of your site for mobile users is viewing photos or accessing lengthy articles, cut down the images and words as much as possible.

Another important mobile consideration is making phone numbers linkable so that smartphones can place a call at a touch. It’s also a good practice to include the option to toggle between the mobile site and the standard site, in case your standard site has advanced features that a mobile user may be willing to trade ease of use in order to access.

While there may be numerous other factors involved in optimizing your particular web site for mobile, these are the basic considerations to keep in mind. It really doesn’t have to require a terrible effort to make your site easy and convenient for mobile users to access. But sooner rather than later, doing so will become an absolute necessity.

At the awards reception held November 12 in Anchorage, the Best in Show Award went to Jontue Hollingsworth of Headron Collider for a poster on the BP oil spill disaster entitled MADNESS! Winners were selected from a total of 66 entries which were received from 20 different parties including agencies, small firms, independent designers and photographers.

Robin gave her vote to the Jontue Hollingsworth poster as the Best in Show, though she says the decision was tough to make. “Alaska had some really great work in the promotion design category,” Robin noted. “A few super outstanding designs were in that mix competing for best of show.” She cited the Anchorage International Film Festival poster, the Go-Go’s tour art, the Screamin’ Yeti Designs logo and the Alaska Distillery Smoked Salmon Vodka campaign as particular standouts.

“Overall the work of the competition had a thread running through,” Robin said. “It was distinctly reflecting back all things Alaska — which is pretty neat.”

SPARKcon is a showcase of creativity, talent and ideas in the Triangle area, encompassing the creative fields of art, music, dance, film, fashion and more. The event has grown larger and more prestigious in each consecutive year since being independently founded in 2006. SPARKcon is now a program of Visual Art Exchange, a Raleigh non-profit whose mission is to support emerging artists and connect the community to the arts.

Signal has earned SPARKcon inclusion for our redesign of the stadium signage at the famous Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The project included upgrades to all permanent signs for seating sections, party decks and concessions. We also created new gate entry and archway signs, window banners, suite murals, and a series of hanging championship banners.

The winning pieces will be presented to the public at the Raleigh City Museum on the September 3 opening, and then exhibited for the duration of SPARKcon on the weekend of September 17-19. All friends of Signal are invited to attend the festivities at the Museum and throughout the public spaces of Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street to enjoy the celebration of local creative excellence.

Our thanks to the designSPARK organizing committee for making Signal an official part of it!