Posts Tagged ‘Reno’

Our Industry Partners: Strategic Essentials

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

Our partner, Strategic Essentials, provides comprehensive organizational development training and consulting through the unique Leadership Management International, Inc. (LMI) Strategic Development Process ™. This is training that has really led to our success and continues to add value to our bottom line.

No One Succeeds Alone

In our many years in the marketing business in and around the Reno area, we have learned that success comes easiest when you surround yourself with like minded business partners /alliances which strengthen all parties involved.

Our Partner – Strategic Essentials

We have several local businesses that we partner with to help us continue to grow; they keep our wits sharp and our skills up to date. Learning is an ongoing and ever productive part of life and business. As marketing professionals and designers, our expertise may not have always been in managing and running the business side of things. We learned some hard lessons, before we realized that if someone else excels at these things, why not learn from them? That’s where Valerie Cardenas, owner of Strategic Essentials, came in and improved the way we were running our business, ultimately helping us to define our success.

If you are finding that some of your entrepreneurial hats fit better than others, call Strategic Essentials to discuss “What Matters Most” for your organizations development. They will custom tailor your plan with measurable goals and a timeline for improvement. Ensure that employees (and yourself) are successful in navigating all areas of your organization with this award winning development program.

Since partnering with Strategic Essentials, our business has benefited from improved sales procedures, productivity across the team, clarity of business goals, team morale, cash flow, and an increase in billable hours. We have also been able to streamline our invoicing and estimating processes. Learn how you can make your team more efficient and productive while creating a results-based, goal-oriented culture focused on “What Matters Most” for your organization.

Tags: blog, Inspiration, life, Marketing, pivotal points, Reno, reno marketing, Reno Networking
Posted in Company News, Inspiration | 73 Comments »

Pinterest: the New Social Network

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections and/or ‘like’ photos. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting” via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing. It is one of the “fastest growing social services in the world.”

Make your Content Visual

The brilliance behind this new social network is that it only works with visual posts or content– photos and videos. We often fail to realize that we have the ability to change our content into visual posts by using word art, pictures to say the same thing, or creating an image that includes the words we want to convey.

Why would we want visual content rather than just plain text?

Because we are human beings – we want things to be pretty and interesting, we want to be surprised and engaged, we crave something new to share with the world (or our part of it) and most of all – we want to express ourselves; this new social network is just one more way to do this. Sharing (or pinning as Pinterest calls it) allows us to show the world things we find interesting and connect with others who share the same opinions and interests. Visual posts on social media sites go viral more often, last longer, and have more shares than plain text or links – period. Pictures and videos are the mediums we crave; they frequently move us and inspire sharing visual posts with our friends, especially on this new social network, Pinterest.

How can I get on Pinterest?

This new social network has made their site an invitation only affair. This may at first make you think they are trying to limit the number of people adopting their social network – but it is very similar to “friending” someone on Facebook. You just need an in with someone who is already on Pinterest (chances are, one of your current Facebook friends is already on this new social platform and excited to extend you an invite – just ask).

If you are interested in more about this new social network, or visual posts on other networks, drop us a line at 775-322-3663 and we can chat about it or send you an invite to join in the pinning fun. Go, be social; share what moves and inspires you.

Tags: blog, internet marketing, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing, Reno Social Media, Social Media
Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Email Marketing – Strategies for Success

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Successful Strategies for Email Marketing

If you don’t have a plan, then how will you know that you are getting the results you really want from your email marketing? You need to know where you are heading and how you are going to get there in order to set up targets to aim for with each email marketing campaign. A roadmap to your email marketing will help you to decide what needs to be changed in order to make your efforts more effective.

7 considerations while you are setting up your strategy:

You are only as good as your list.(see our 3 ways to increase the quality of your email database, below)
Mobile devices are on the rise and more and more people are using their mobile devices to view their emails – including yours. So make it easy for them to see, read, click, and integrated for quick and easy social media sharing to be ahead of the pack.
Keep your call to action ABOVE THE FOLD – or up to 70% of your audience may never see it.
Mix up your email marketing with a direct mailing campaign to increase your response rate to the overall campaign.
Promotions that are limited in time or availability always increase response rates.
Link your email broadcasts to online interactions or call to actions – even if it is just a landing page where they can get more information (make sure your website works in mobile too if you are going to do this).
Incentive focused subject lines are a great way to increase open rates as well – just remember not to use words like “free” since they often trigger the spam filter in email accounts.

3 Ways to Increase the Quality of your Email database

Reward your opt-ins with a bonus or freebie (by AR) of something YOU can offer for signing up with you (this helps you make sure the things you offer are things your database are interested in receiving).
Measure the activity of your list over time and send out updates or special AR’s for those who have been inactive to keep your database filled with real contacts that are interested in your services or products.
Integrate your opt-in with social media so that it is easy to share to others and your offerings get more awareness and notice across platforms and the holy ‘share’ to others who may be interested in signing up with you.

These tips and best practices can change your email marketing efforts into ordered, cohesive campaigns. Metrics and tracking will define adjustments needed to your methods and drive continuous improvement on successive campaigns until you are effectively utilizing email marketing to further your business.

Call us today if you’d like help with your specific email marketing needs – we can help! 775-322-3663

Tags: blog, internet marketing, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

Use Video Marketing to Grab Your Customers Attention

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

Almost everyone in America knows what YouTube is and that you can find almost anything on it to entertain yourself. What you may not know is that it is becoming the new search tool of the Millennials (Generation Z); rather than words, they want video answers to their questions.

Why Video Marketing?

If we think about our past, it isn’t surprising that we are drawn to the visual relay of information – a picture paints 1000 words, right? So a video must communicate a million, easy. It is one of the fastest ways to share and ingest pieces of information between human beings. It’s why commercials cost more than other forms of advertising. Technology has allowed each of us to share our own personal cave wall art with everyone in the world who has access to the internet. What IS surprising is that although this powerful medium has become advanced enough that you can make a video from your phone and post it online in mere minutes; there are few businesses that have truly committed to using it to its full potential.

It’s Easy to Use

It is an amazing time to be a business – especially a tech-savvy one! If you have a marketing department or an advertising agency that is already creating fantastic commercial quality videos for your company, feel free to repurpose them and upload them to a company YouTube channel or a Vimeo account, which both offer easy sharing options to social media platforms. If you don’t have access to commercially produced video footage, there are dozens of options for video recorders that are relatively inexpensive, simple to use, and a breeze to upload.

How do I make it Effective?

If you are making the video, or you have the ability to give direction to those who are, remember that online there are many distractions and it is important to grab your audience’s attention immediately and then keep them watching your ad. Recent research, by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Thales S. Teixeira, shows that the best attention capture is achieved when there is:

… a quick element of surprise at the beginning of an ad, followed by a longer period of joy…

Now that you know the formula, you can get busy making surprising, joyful videos that capture the attention of your audience. Just remember it is always important to be authentic and real about your product or service, even while you make viewers feel good.

If you would like some help in your video marketing endeavors, feel free to call us at 775-322-3663 today.

Tags: blog, Branding, http www youtube, internet marketing, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing, Reno Social Media, Social Media
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

Social Media – In or Out?

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

You have probably heard before, how important it is to brand your company and build authority through social media. However, some businesses are not ready or able to commit the kind of time and personnel it takes to manage a full-force online marketing campaign for their brand. There are also some barriers to internally managing these platforms; according to Towers Watson research, the main factors which prevent organizations from being able to implement needed solutions are:

Limited Knowledge of Social Media
Lack of IT Support or Technical Capability
Limited Staff/Resources to Implement
Restrictions imposed by The Company’s Legal Department
Lack of CEO or Senior Management Support
Lack of Metrics to Measure Impact

This is where out sourcing can help your brand reach its online marketing goals. At Integris Marketing, we are external experts with expertise in managing social media for business purposes. We know how powerful these platforms can be, but we also know that they must be customized to work well for your brand.

Our extensive social media knowledge and technical experience will ensure that we are able to advise you on the platform that will work best for you and your brand. Our resources are very flexible, which allows us to reallocate resources to projects as needed. We start every project off by looking at the current data for your brand, then crafting a plan that we can implement with your full support.

Some of the areas of social media that we can assist you with, include: Blogging (enhances all website content and drives internet search traffic by improving SEO); Social Bookmarking and News (can also dramatically increase website traffic by improving SEO); Social Networking (i.e. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn); Visual and Audio Social Networking (i.e. YouTube, podcasts, and photo-sharing); or even Building your own Social Network. Any posts we create for your brand will be subject to your approval in order to avoid any issues with legality and to maintain the tone that makes your brand unique.

To get started with your brand’s social media presence using a data-driven professional process, call us at (775) 322-3663 or (800) 233-0239, or contact us with your inquiry.

Tags: Branding, http www youtube, internet marketing, Local SEO, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing, Reno SEO Expert, Reno Social Media, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Local SEO, Online Advertising In Reno, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

What Marketing Efforts are Wasting Your Money?

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

With the plethora of choices in today’s marketing arena, our clients often ask us, “what works?” We have a straightforward answer. It depends. Return on Investment (ROI) in the various marketing venues depends on your business and more specifically, on your customer.

You’ll find when you work with us that one of the first things we’ll do is gather data. We want to know what’s working now, and what’s proving to be a waste of money. We will use this data to find the path ahead and to provide the most relevant and accurate suggestions for your hard earned dollar.

We also pinpoint your potential customer. You’ll hear us talking again and again about who your customer is. We’ll be marketing directly to those customers, both current and potential. Your customers determine the venues we choose to market your company. Your customer, in fact, is king and queen of almost all of the decisions we make – even down to the color of your logo.

The most important thing for you to know about marketing your product in the many available venues is that the whole is greater than the parts. The aggregate solution for you is almost guaranteed to be a highly custom mix of marketing venues.

When we build your brand, we build it like no other.

You’ll find that when we build your brand, it is uniquely yours in look, feel, voice and in choice of venues.

So if you are looking for a cookie-cutter type website, we may not be the choice for you – but if you want to stand out above your competitors, and get the customers you know you can impress – then we are looking to help you build your brand. Call us today at 775.322.3663, or fill out our request form for more information. We look forward to hearing about your brand and your customers.

Tags: brand building, Branding, internet marketing, logo design, Marketing, Reno, reno marketing, Reno Social Media, search engine optimization, Social Media, web design
Posted in In-Bound Links, Online Advertising In Reno, Online Marketing, Social Media, web design | No Comments »

Marketing for Women by Women

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Women are in charge of the money more now than ever before – so it’s no surprise that marketers are targeting them specifically. Many sources (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) purport the differences between the sexes, and the approach from a marketing standpoint has been to speak to the heart of a woman.

Society has repeatedly stereotyped women as the emotional sex and men as the logical sex, but in real life things are never so succinctly divided. However, much research has gone into finding messages that reach women in particular and how to tap into their emotions in order to make the sale. Studies show that women will be engaged more by how a product/service will support their family & relationships (whereas men will connect more with how a product/service gets to a desired end result, and how well it does that), so stories/anecdotes will be more engaging for women (rather than performance stats). Also, how a product/service will help a woman be a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, etc., will speak to women more than men (again, the “relationship” piece). This is a gross generalization, of course, but there’s a lot out there that’s been expanded since brain research has shown some clear gender differences. For instance, look at this excerpt from a blog we enjoy(One Woman Marketing):

Women make up just half the population, but they make over 80% of all household purchases. And they’re not just shopping for stereotypically feminine products such as clothing and cosmetics. Women also make:

65% of new car purchases

91% of travel purchases

57% of electronics purchases

63% of all purchases made online

Despite their consumer power, most women feel that marketers and advertisers just don’t get them. (91% of women, according to one recent study.)

Angela Shupe’s blog post discusses how consultants Sandie Glass and Laura Wolfram head up a consultants group run by women in order to provide solutions to marketers looking to reach their female audience.

What do you think? Do you have to be a woman in order to reach a woman? Share your comments with us below!

Tags: internet marketing, Marketing, Reno
Posted in Reno Marketing Meanderings | No Comments »

Your Blog is in Trouble!!

Friday, July 8th, 2011

What Makes a Great Blog?

Several things have to come together to truly wow an audience. According to some gurus in Cindy King’s blog post today “21 Dangerous Blogging Mistakes (and how to fix them)”, there are quite a few things that can make or break your blog.

Blogging Mistakes

We all make them at one time or another. Maybe we were in a hurry and our quality slipped, maybe we were too busy and our frequency dropped. As long as these things we call life happen only once in a while, that is fine. When it becomes par for the course – your blog is in trouble.

Balancing Quality and Quantity

According to Jay Baer (@jaybaer), “balancing the need to be consistently publishing and the need for consistent quality is the key to successful long-term blogging.” We would add that it is important that both your quality and your frequency of posting matches the target audience you have. If you have a company that is in the fast track industry of trading or finances – especially in these times – you might need to post more frequently than someone in a lagging industry field.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

We hear it all the time, but the truth is keywords get you found. You cannot have a successful blog when no one is reading it. This is the point that Rich Brooks (@therichbrooks) makes in his contribution to Cindy King’s article. A good blogger understands the “need to write keyword-rich posts with persuasive, compelling titles that will be read, linked to and shared on social media sites”, which increases the idea of being found. It isn’t just about keywords, but also about grabbing attention with a title, AND sharing and linking to social media sites. In this case, you need the whole package – sole focus on one area will leave a gap that cannot be bridged.

Planning

Don’t underestimate the need to schedule yourself the time and focus to really generate an interesting, engaging and informative blog post. As Dag Holmboe (@dagh) states himself, “A good, in-depth blog post takes time to research, write and edit.” What more can we say? This is not a five minute post – you must craft the message and the way it will be delivered.

Cater to Your Audience

It is extremely important, as we discussed earlier, to know your target audience. It is only through knowing them, that you can effectively tailor your content, style, medium, and media to their needs. As Jim Lodico (@jlcommunication) explains, “if it isn’t of value to your audience, your audience won’t read it”. Well put!

Build Community

True engagement is not built overnight – like a community it has to be formed and tended through multiple interactions that consistently reinforce the needs of the community. We completely agree with Carla Dewing (@CarlaDewing), “The fastest way to build a community online is to share information”!! Community is created by giving help (sharing) when those in your community (your target audience) are in need and you have the information (content) that can help them.

For more information and tips on blogging, check out Social Media Examiner online! They have fantastic articles that we use ourselves all the time.

Tags: blog, Reno, reno marketing, Reno SEO Expert, WordPress
Posted in Blog Design, Inspiration, Social Media, WordPress | No Comments »

Branding for Your Small Business

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Your company brand tells your story. Your design, colors, and media display your style and your voice in the industry. Your website is often the face of your company – especially in today’s multi-dimensional market; branding requires more than just a logo. Design and functionality are extremely important, but you also need an experienced, caring company to get your brand noticed by the world.

Integris Marketing strives to exceed all your web needs. We specialize in more than just web design, we have the largest selection of services for the small business community, and we understand the journey a small business takes.

We will be blogging with tips and helpful information, weekly, that you can actually use in your daily business life. We are here to help – building success for your business is our business.

If you are interested: more on our Marketing Services.

Tags: graphic design, Local Reno PR, Marketing, Reno
Posted in Online Marketing | 24 Comments »

In-Bound Link Building Tips to Help Local (Reno) SEO

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

The Basics for In-Bound Link-Building

Easy enough. It just takes time & planning to manage your approach.

In-Bound Link Building is Important for SEO Success. Whether Your Business is Local (Reno), Regional or International, search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing use this seemingly simple search engine ranking parameter as an indication your website’s relative popularity. This in turn influences the search engines decision in rating your relevance for search queries and ultimately affects your search engine ranking or opportunities for first page display.

In-Bound Link Bottom Line: If you don’t have inbound links and your competitors do, then to put it bluntly, you will not rank as well as them. (Want to learn about the top Search Engine Ranking Factors… t hen go here >)

Here Are 2 Things To NOT Do For Building In-Bound Links

It all makes sense if you think about it or understand the industry and the sophistication of Search Engine ranking algorhythms (Here is a link to an older March 2007 article but the thrust is a solid foundational concept for this).

It really boils down to 2 things of what not to do for inbound link building:

Don’t Use Link Farms (See This Wikipedia Page for more information about Link Farms). According to Google, “a site that participates in a link farm may have its search rankings penalized”, and “Links from related sites carry more weight than those from irrelevant sites”.
Try not to use Off-Topic Links (Relevant On-Topic Links build credibility in the eyes of Search Engines… And yes, they do know.)

Six Basic Strategies for In-Bound Link Building

Anyone and everyone with a website should make some effort to include these 6 Link Building strategies if you are serious about top performance for Search Engine Ranking.

Make More Content! – Search Engines need content in order to deliver relevant and current results to search queries. Better results from search engines mean more people will use them. This in turn makes them a better platform for advertising dollars (This is America after all). The bottom line is search engines need the new content just as much as you need to generate it, distribute it and have it link back to you. The solution is to write articles, publish them online (on a relevant blog site or an ezine or article website – There are tons of them out there such as articlebase.com).
Social Media – Serious about in-bound links? Then get serious about social media. There are lots of ways to leverage this. If you don’t know how, take a class, talk to some social media guru, or just dive in. Be conscious of the appropriate linking patterns and partners out there and be careful you don’t spend too much time doing this. It can be a real time sink. Think of it as something to adopt over time and that you will keep up with. It is better to do a little dribble consistently then do a lot and then burn out and drop off the map… especially as far as Search Engines are concerned.
Relevant Online Directories – Online Directories are a great place for links. That’s what they are for… listing websites. Some are free and some are pay. Do what you can to get in them and have a budget (time and $$$) that makes sense for you. Here are the biggies: DMOZ (can take a while to get listed), Yahoo (Expensive). Some other well known online directories include: Business.com, BestOfTheWeb.com, GoGuides.com and MassiveLinks.com. There are many others that have narrow niche appeal. The best approach is to identify the best ranked ones and then submit your listing to them. Rinse and repeat.
Online Video – First a quick question… Do you know what the worlds second most used search engine is? If you guessed YouTube you guessed right. So Videos can get you inbound links, visibility and some brand or service awareness. If you get it right it can even go “viral”! There are tons of video sites out there (YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo to name a few). If you do video then distribute them to different sources and watch and compare results and see which ones work best for you. And be sure to have some fun along the way. (Note: Professional Video production can be quite costly. You need to balance quality and budget to get the most bang for your video buck. And don’t forget, there is always the webcam on your local computer approach if you are on a shoestring.)
Online Classifieds – Yep, this often overlooked little gem will get you inbound links. Think CraigsList.org or any of the other online classifieds (some are free and some are pay). And who knows.. besides the link you get, maybe someone will buy what you are selling!
Online Press Releases – Huh? That’s right.. you can distribute your own online press releases. (But I recommend hitting your local news outlets first so they can get the “scoop” before it hits the big ol’ web. It’s a professional courtesy thing.) This is a great way to get in-bound links. You can use the paid versions such as as PRweb.com or go for the free ones such as PRlog.com. As with all things online there are lots of options so be sure to compare apples to apples when it comes to getting your press release sent out online.

Hope that helps! This is the basic approach that we offer clients as starting points for their in-bound link building campaign. And if you want to share a reciprocal link with us, just send us a note or give us a call, and we will see what we can do!

Tags: classified advertising, google search, inbound link, internet marketing, internet search engines, link building, link farm, Local SEO, Marketing, Reno, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engines, SEO, web search engine
Posted in In-Bound Links, Local SEO, Online Marketing, PR, Reno Marketing Meanderings, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized, Website Copywriting | 24 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘Reno’

Our Industry Partners: Strategic Essentials

No One Succeeds Alone

Our Partner – Strategic Essentials

Email Marketing – Strategies for Success

Successful Strategies for Email Marketing

7 considerations while you are setting up your strategy:

3 Ways to Increase the Quality of your Email database

Marketing for Women by Women

Branding for Your Small Business

Web Support Services

Online Marketing

Graphic Design Services

Strategic Marketing Services

Recent Blog Posts

Connect With Us