The F7 Blog
Figureseven, Inc. has been helping businesses maximize their offline and online marketing efforts for over a decade. This blog provides insight, tips and advice from our experts to help you achieve your marketing goals.
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Are Radio Listeners Getting to your Web Site?
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
November 23, 2009 in Usability, Branding, Marketing
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Del.icio.usOn my way into work this morning I heard a radio commercial for a company called Trupanion. I was only half paying attention when I heard a man’s voice say something like, “we had to have our cat put down…it was so sad…but it didn’t cost us anything.” As soon as I heard that you could have a cat put down for nothing, my ears perked up! (Just kidding, Lulu!)
Now that I was interested, I started listening more closely to the commercial. The voice then said, “Visit us online at (spelling out) T-R-U-P-A-N-I-O-N dot com.” Since I hadn’t heard the name of the company (which I assume they said at the beginning of the commercial), I had to really think about what they just spelled. Then the voice repeated it while I was trying to reconstruct the spelling in my head, which I think confused me even more. It wasn’t until the end of the commercial that he repeated the name of the company. Finally it clicked and it made sense.
The Rule of 3
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
November 10, 2009 in Marketing
After viewing a client’s product presentation last week, I was reminded that there are certain basic design and content rules that should be applied to any PowerPoint presentation. One of the most logical yet often least-practiced is what I call “The Rule of 3.” This simply refers to the number of bullet points that you should have on any slide.
Think about what your audience is looking at – if you provide them with more than three supporting elements on a slide, then they will start to get overwhelmed with the amount of information you are asking them to remember (and the layout of the slide will start to look crowded). If you have more than 3 bullets that relate to the topic on the slide, simply break the information up into additional slides. This will help you control the rate at which you feed an audience member information, and, will positively impact their ability to properly process it.
Sometimes Simple Is Better – Avoiding Feature Creep
By Melissa DeLorenzo, VP of Marketing, Figureseven, Inc.
November 9, 2009 in Web Site Design, Information Architecture
Dilbert: "Your requirements call for 4000 features! You realize that no Human would be able to operate a product with this level of complexity?" Scott Adams
Remember how simple coffeemakers used to be? You poured the water into the back, put the coffee grounds in a simple plastic receptacle lined with a simple paper liner, poured in the coffee grounds, closed the receptacle and flipped the on switch. Voilà! Coffee. Those instructions comprised the entire user’s manual. Now take a look at coffeemakers today – there are buttons for setting automatic timers, settings for grinding coffee beans to various levels of fineness or coarseness, buttons for auto-off functionality, buttons for pre-warm settings, self-cleaning, brew strength control. (You may need to take a course to learn how to operate it.) Now I am not saying these features don’t serve a purpose some of the time for some of the people, but what is important is figuring out which bells and whistles are the ones you need. The same goes for your website – what do your clients and potential customers really require?
You Can Teach an Old Blog New Tricks
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
November 3, 2009 in Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design, Web Marketing, Social Media, Branding, Marketing, Email Marketing
I came to a stark realization the other day while watching my two daughters (1 and 3) play together. My oldest was rambling on about something (probably trying to explain nuclear physics) to my 1 year old. I overheard a series of statements ending in “okay?” or “see, Jules?”, no doubt trying to confirm that her messages were properly being conveyed and received. As I listened more closely, I realized that my 3 year old’s imagination was just running wild and was filling my youngest’s head with complete and utter nonsense.
Having an older brother myself, it got me thinking about when I finally realized that everything that an older sibling tells you is not as reliable as you may think. While their intentions may be good and their message sincere, little things like “facts” and the “truth” may get lost along the way. It’s kind of like a really bad game of telephone, but because you trust the source, unlearning the information may be a bit more of a challenge.
A Marketing Strategy That Makes No Sense to Me
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
November 3, 2009 in Branding, Marketing
After watching more than one sporting event on television this past weekend, I can honestly say that I have never understood the fascination that companies have with being: “The Official ____________ (Fill in whatever the product/service being offered is – rug company, furniture store, tire dealer/windshield replacement) for ___________ (Fill in the Name of a Sports Team/Organization Here).”
What is the value of that association (besides cushy season ticket options or the occasional meet-and-greet with the team’s stars)? Do they think that because a company is the official furniture company of the Red Sox that customers will think that they will get a better deal there and therefore are more likely to shop there? Or that because a company is the official tire dealer of the Patriots that customers will believe that the tires available there are better than those of another company’s? The logic behind adopting that approach has always (and will continue) to escape me. If that association with a professional sports team is the determining factor behind a buying decision, then the sponsoring company hasn’t done a good enough job getting the real reason (price/value/service) why someone should be buying their product/service across to the consumer.
