Category: Article

The Importance of Keeping Your WordPress Version, Plugins and Themes etc updated If you have a CMS WordPress based website (the most preferred platform these days), the editor/manager of the CMS content will notice that not only does the version of WordPress need to be updated occasionally, but also your plugins and themes. For both functionality and security reasons, it’s important to stay updated. This in itself, typically once a month, will help protect your website from those pesky hackers who often can attack out of date plug-ins and OS versions. It is also a good idea to install a range of anti virus plug ins, plus make a monthly full back up of the entire website to a local disk. Backups are important for both functionality and security reasons. If you are not doing this, or are not having it done for you (by us for example), then your website is at risk of being hacked, damaged or deleted. It may be costly to have the website ‘cleaned’, fixed, reinstalled or indeed remade, after the fact. ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ comes to mind. Coincidentally, Artefact offers a full website management, tech support and content updating service. We only inform you of the above, in case you are not aware and because a number of businesses get caught out – when they leave it on the long finger! Anyway it makes good sense.   Let us help you TODAY.  Email or call us on 01 832 5683.

Choosing the right Creative Agency Not all agencies or creatives are the same. Whom you decide to entrust your brand or corporate image to is vital, as it can make or break the perception of your business or product. You may also need advice and expertise on how to market and advertise your business/product. Therefore you should always work with the best agency you can afford, rather than going with the cheapest supplier. Top quality graphic design or branding expertise is not a commodity. It varies greatly from supplier to supplier as does the level of customer service and support. Like all things, you generally pay for what you get and your future earnings will rely heavily on how your customers perceive your business or product. It is always worth doing a bit of research into how long the creative agency you are considering have been established for. A combination of tough economic times and a competitive industry means that those companies, like Artefact, who have been around for more than 10 years are likely to offer greater quality, experience and customer service. You can also guage a creative agency by the quality of their portfolio/the prestige of the brands and clients they work with. Not alone should they be able to provide above average design skills, but importantly should also be able to offer excellent consultation in terms of branding, marketing and general business savvy. This expertise can only come with years of experience. Often the cheapest work can cost you the most in the long term. That is why Artefact should be your top choice… always. To help you make that vital decision on who to work with, the following process may be helpful to you: Stage 1: Research the Market Client researches the market to produce a short-list of prospective agencies based on criteria such as agency skillsets, capacity, relevant experience, portfolio work etc. This stage can be completed by desk research on agency websites. Stage 2: Agency credentials The purpose of this stage is for clients to discuss/liaise directly with the agency, to gain an understanding of the thinking behind some of the agency’s processes and get a feel for they operate. This is also the stage to begin addressing any specific requirements around the scope of work. Stage 3: Ability to work together.
 By now, the client will have been able to whittle down the agencies to a final 2 or 3. At this stage the client should have met with the principles and the creatives they feel that they could have a good working relationship with. It can often come down to personality and chemistry. ‘People like working with people they like’. Obviously, the track record, work ethic, client base all have to be top notch. Stage 4: Decision
 By this stage, prospective clients should have enough information to make a decision and will move to contract discussions and negotiations with the preferred agency. Stage 5: Discretionary creative stage However, we understand that some clients will simply be unable to appoint an agency without seeing some bespoke strategic thinking and, possibly, creative work to a brief that they have provided. While that is understandable, we believe that asking for speculative work should not be requested and we ask clients to treat this stage as if it were already a commercial relationship. A strong portfolio, client testimonials and conversations with the principals should be enough to make a decision. From both agency and client point of view, the fewer agencies involved at this stage the better (it is unlikely to be more than two but may be just one agency). This will enable clients to disclose all the information the agency needs, to make time available so that we can understand the client’s working environment better and to allow for the start of a building up of trust. We also ask for a pitch fee. (nobody should be asked to work for free) The pitch fee acknowledges that our time has value and goes a little way towards defraying some of the third party costs we will need to spend. One of the main advantages we find to this approach is having replicated a real working process, the agency-client relationship has already been ‘road-tested’ and, as a result, is a lot more productive much earlier. Much of our best and most effective work and many of our strongest, most successful relationships have followed a similar process. If you would like to discuss you next project with us, please contact Wil Lyons or one of the team at 01 832 5684/ 086 2750662 or Email: info@artefact.ie

What is a brand story? A brand story is more than content and a narrative. The story goes beyond what’s written in the copy on a website, the text in a brochure or the presentation used to pitch to investors or customers. Your story isn’t just what you tell people it’s also what they believe about you based on the signals your brand sends. The story is a complete picture made up of facts, feelings and interpretations, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you. Everything you do, each element of your business or brand, from the colours and texture of your packaging and business cards, to the staff you hire is part of your brand story and every element should reflect the truth about your brand back to your audience. If you want to build a successful, sustainable business and a brand that will garner loyalty, and if you’re lucky become loved you have to start with your story. Why you need a story to tell If you don’t have a story you are just another commodity. A replaceable cog in the consumption machine. You have no way to differentiate your brand or your business. Creating a brand story is not simply about standing out and getting noticed. It’s about building something that people care about and want to buy into. It’s about framing your scarcity and dictating your value. It’s about thinking beyond the utility and functionality of products and services and striving for the creation of loyalty and meaningful bonds with your customers. A brand story is not just a catchy tagline that’s pasted on a billboard to attract attention for a week or two. Your story is the foundation of your brand and a strategy for future growth. How do we begin to tell your brand story? Through years of experience of working with corporate companies, top product brands and entrepreneurs, we have developed the ‘brand story strategy’. This is a brand communication strategy consisting of up to 20 distinct elements, that enables you to tell your brand’s story from the inside out. It’s the foundation upon which you differentiate your brand and make emotional connections with clients and customers. A great brand story strategy will show you how to stand out, increase brand awareness, create customer loyalty and growth. The world’s most successful brands don’t behave like commodities & neither should you. We work with brands at every stage of their development, from startups who are shaping a complete culture to established brands who are realigning their positioning and marketing communications or launching new products. It doesn’t matter if you’re a bank or a city, launching an online platform or baking bread, you have a unique story to tell and we can show you how to tell it. Once upon a brand Your story begins with the connection made when the customer hears your name for the first time, when she sees your logo, visits your website, reads your about page and experiences your interactions on social media. The signals you send about not just what you do and how well you do it, but about what you stand for, build the complete picture of your brand. Marketing often happens when you are not listening and your customer is telling a friend how your product changed her life. It’s your job to give your customers a story to tell. Through consultation with you we explore your brand’s mission and vision. We work with you to identify the attitudes and beliefs that shape your brand’s culture. We evaluate your unique value proposition and emotional selling points and shape the way which you would like to be perceived by customers and clients. Our job is to work on communicating your essence, craft your brand identity through effective design and idea generation to shape perceptions that will reflect all of that. WE WOULD LOVE TO WORK WITH YOU TO CREATE: A COMPELLING BRAND STORY STRATEGY BRAND NAMES, PRODUCT NAMES, ADVERTISING TAGLINES ADN CAMPAIGNS THAT HELP YOU STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD YOUR UNIQUE MARKETING STRATEGY Let us help you TODAY.  Email or call us on 01 832 5683.

Environmental Scanning Environmental scanning refers to taking a look at the broader market in which you plan to operate in order to better inform your strategy. A little environmental scanning is what stops you trying to sell sand to the Arabs. Consider trying to reach your market through the internet. A few years ago you would have been on a loser if you were trying to market products aimed at senior citizens on the web. Now it’s okay. How do you know? The demographic information is there for you. You’re still better off if you have something to sell that appeals to young professional males with a technological bent, but the web is becoming more and more representative of the population as a whole. But you won’t find the young professional males through banner ads placed on sites aimed at senior citizens – so there’s a bit of environmental scanning to be done. On this page Artefact shows you how and where to set about it. Note 1: It will seem to many wishing to operate on a small scale that activities like environmental scanning are a waste of time and a luxury that only large companies can afford. On the contrary, the smaller your business the more important it is that you have a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve and that starts with understanding your potential market Note 2: Beware of paralysis by analysis! You could spend forever trying to get a thorough handle on this and each of the other 33 Marketing Success Factors dealt with in the Artefact Strategic Marketing Model, and never get started on your project. So start, and refer to this resource regularly to help you keep on track, refining your knowledge and techniques as you go. Environmental Scanning on the Net How do I go about systematically scanning my environment? 
How many people are connected to the internet? 
Where do they come from? 
What do they do there? 
How is their demographic profile changing? 
What do they buy? 
Where do I concentrate my efforts on locating the people that matter to my business? All of these questions and many more can be answered for you. You could pay consultants very large sums to advise you on such questions and large companies regularly do so. But many consultants borrow your watch to tell you what time it is and then charge you. Furthermore, pretty much all you need to know is freely available on the web. Spend a bit of time searching. You’ll be surprised at the wealth of materials freely available.

Buyer Psychology Why would anyone want to buy what you have to sell? Because it’s the best? No…Because it’s the cheapest? No…Because it’s the best value? Not necessarily. Sometimes you’ll accept lower quality because you want speed. The fast food industry exists on the insight that people order food because they’re hungry now – not that they are planning to feel hungry an hour from now. Sometimes you’ll pay double for a T-shirt because it has a little alligator on it – a designer alligator! Sometimes you’ll buy because you get a second one free (BOGOFF promotions: buy one get one for free). Much of this we know intuitively. It’s easy to figure why someone might want a pizza, but why must he have an alligator logo? Abraham Maslow — a psychologist who came up with a lot of good stuff – classified human needs as follows: * Physiological needs…………………….. food, drink, shelter, sex etc, * Safety needs……………………………… personal and financial security, stability * Belonging needs………………………… family, clubbing and affiliation etc * Esteem needs……………………………. respect, accomplishments, status * Self-actualisation needs………………. higher needs, total self fulfilment, maximise gifts and talents Why does mainstream advertising push our psychological buttons so successfully? Easy! Professional advertisers think about these things. Football clubs understand the affiliation needs of their fans and sell them club merchandise. You wear the scarf and the kit to the game and you belong! Nike understands that the esteem needs of kids are so strong that if they position their sports shoes (through the manner in which they market them, see positioning) at the high status end of the market, their parents will pay double for shoes with a check mark on! You say that’s just branding? Sure, but branding has to be based on something and it is based on an appreciation of the kind of need you are catering to. Think about these things. What kind of need are you catering to? According to a report from eMarketeer the top five factors that motivate online buying are: convenience, security, customer service, variety and price. You should take all of these into account. Remember this. If your competitor knows all the same things you do and can deliver the same product as you but is not aware of any one important fact (that is known to you) about his customers – there’s your competitive edge! Knowledge is power. Never lose an opportunity to find out more about how your customers feel and about what motivates them to buy

Buyer Behaviour/Decision Process You’ll buy nothing unless first your Attention is drawn to it, and unless it then gains your Interest, and unless you then Desire to have it. Only then will you take Action and reach for your credit card. That’s the basic classical marketing/advertising model of Buyer Behaviour – ‘AIDA’ – attention, interest, desire, action. There are other newer and more complex models around which interpose various other stages but they mainly serve to make people doing a thesis feel clever — we’ve been there so we can say that! So when you are putting your marketing program together remember AIDA. There is no sense in having ads screaming for attention if you can’t capture the interest of your prospects when they come to take a look. And that interest must be strong enough to mature into desire or you’ll get no action. Easier said than done? Yes, unfortunately, it is. Models like AIDA of themselves sell nothing for you. Their importance is in giving you a framework for thinking and action. You still have to do the thinking and take the action. A good model helps you cover all your bases. Implicit in the AIDA model is that the marketer starts the process by grabbing the prospect’s attention. But what about when the need first arises with the consumer and he/she initiates the action. Then the process (for the online buyer) is: * Problem recognition………………………….. I need something * Information search……………………………. Let’s surf! * Evaluation of alternatives………………….. Which deal best suits me? * Decision and action………………………….. I’ll take this one! What’s the biggest new element that has been introduced in this sequence? Alternatives! Competition! There’s a lot of it about and it provides the reason why it is incumbent on the marketer to know his customers better than his competitors do, understand their needs better, understand their behaviour better, imbue the product with a better mix of physical and psychological values at a price high enough to suggest quality but low enough to suggest value. Remember that generally people do not want cheap because cheap is synonymous with low quality – what they usually want is value i.e. the price is very attractive considering what you get!

Artefact’s Introduction to Brand Development ‘O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz My Friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz’ Branding is one of the most crucial aspects of marketing. The importance of effective branding cannot be overstated. Good brands are often the biggest – sometimes the only – differentiator between products. An obvious signature of a brand is a name and /or logo, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies invest huge resources in developing their brands – often more than they put into developing their products. Think of the cola marketing wars, the Nike check mark. Nike does not manufacture running shoes – that’s all contracted out – it brands and markets them. Brand is a big concept. It is about the whole set of attitudes, values and reputation your name conveys. It communicates the essence of the company. It is managed carefully and communicated in a range of ways. Your branding effort is the net effect of promises, statements about yourself, images and impressions you deliberately put out in the market place. It is not the same as the company’s image which can include negative perceptions about things like, say, pollution you are held to be responsible for. Causing is not part of your branding. However, if you are working hard to minimise pollution and are ensuring that everyone knows that you are environmentally friendly, that is part of your branding. A strong brand is a very valuable asset, so much so that in many cases the brand has a financial value attributed to it on some corporate balance sheets. Familiarity leads to feelings of connectedness. People who feel they know you are more likely to deal with you than with someone they don’t know. You walk into a store on a hot day looking for a can of cola. In the cooler there are some cans of Coca Cola side by side with some cans of Bill Hick’s Country Cola. The Coca Cola is more expensive by 10 pence. The storekeeper tells you that there’s really no difference between the two – he’s held blind tastings and no-one can tell the difference! Most often, you’ll pay the extra for the ‘real thing’. You know the product, the dependability, the taste, the reputation, the advertising. You know there’s a big corporation standing behind it. You know that everyone goes for it. There’s only one ‘Coke’! Bill Hick’s Country Cola may be a terrific brew but why risk it when you know the brand you want is there for you? That’s the power of branding. Online brands have rapidly become established to the point where some are household names. Think of Yahoo and Amazon. If I want to buy a book I’ll most likely head straight for Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They may or may not be the best on inventory, price and service – but they certainly have the strongest brands. I feel confident that the item will ship pretty efficiently, that I won’t be the victim of credit card fraud, that I won’t get the wrong item due to incompetence. That’s brand – it’s not just the name but what the name says about the people you will be dealing with, the value, the consistency. Your brand does not have to be a huge mass-market brand. You may have a niche product or service aimed a select market. Have you heard of Kindle? No? Well, if you were in the market for banking system software you would be well aware of that company and you would know it as a top brand in its field. It has built a name for sophistication, expertise, track record, professionalism. Here’s the important point – they didn’t do it by massive advertising but by the quality of their product and their effectiveness at communicating and delivering that product to their chosen market. So there’s more than one way to build a brand. In fact a lot of effort in many different directions goes into building any successful brand. If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk your customers experience what is called ‘cognitive dissonance’ – that’s a psychologist’s way of saying that they’re hearing one thing about your product but their experience of it does not match up – and they don’t like that so they don’t like you and they won’t be back for more! With the technology and knowledge available nowadays it’s relatively easy to replicate a competitor’s successful product in a short space of time. You can match his price too if that’s what it takes. If he gets the jump on you in terms of delivery time or service quality you can take some rapid measures to catch up. BUT – if your competitor is better regarded than you are, if he has a better all around reputation – in short a better brand image, then you’ve got a real mountain to climb. Bill Hick’s Country Cola will have to work very hard and for a very long time to get the sort of market credibility that Coca Cola has spent decades nurturing and building! From the point of view of your business, your brand can identify your product and enable your customer to remember who to come back to for repeat purchases. It can generate loyalty to give you ongoing stable cash flow. If it becomes strong enough your brand can allow you to charge a premium price. The reputation that you build into your brand can enable you to introduce new products which will be perceived to have less risk, so customers will at least give it a try. Customers like brands. It makes it easy for them to distinguish between products, sometimes just for simple functional reasons – you may happen to like one brand of tea better than another and it is by

Advertising Works Advertising is a big subject. The first thing to note is that advertising works. When well executed it works very well. The traditional difficulty in determining the level of sales for which advertising is responsible is summed up in the well worn cliche ‘I know that half my advertising works but I don’t know which half’. This kind of difficulty has often caused admen to get a bad name (Typical advertising joke: Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising – she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse!). On the web, the problems of measuring the effectiveness of advertising are greatly diminished and typically the costs are considerably less than apply in the print media or on TV/radio. Often advertising can be secured free and on this page, Artefact will show you how to do that. First, let’s make a comparison between a typical ad in a newspaper and a banner ad on the web. You are advertising, say, a skin care lotion for women. You might pay $10,000 for an A4 size ad in a typical paper with a circulation of 300,000. The paper will claim a somewhat higher readership as more than one person on average will have a browse through each copy sold. Let’s say the total readership is 600,000. Right, we can now cut down the effective market for that ad to about 300,000 again – the half of the readership that is female. We can cut out an unknown proportion which is not in the least bit interested in using a new skin care lotion. We can cut out a further unknown proportion which will never even see the ad in the middle of a bulky newspaper – after all, how many people look at every page and every corner of every page? Of those who do see the ad and are interested, they will have to remember the details, maybe a telephone number or a web address and remember at a later time take action. How many will you lose between the time they say… ‘Mmm, I must give that a try sometime’ and the time they actually remember to do so? So out of 300,000 how many relevant prospects will actually see the ad and go to the trouble of finding more information? Not so many! Typically, if you buy 300,000 banner impressions on the skin care page of a popular women’s health/beauty site it will cost you a great deal less than $10,000. For that you get 300,000 views of your ad by people who are already demonstrating an active interest in the kind of product you are selling by virtue of the fact that they are looking at the page where your banner is situated. Moreover they cannot help seeing your banner flashing away on their relatively small computer screen. Furthermore they are online at the time they see your ad and are only a click away from your site and detailed information. If your site can take their orders and payment online, hey presto! Now it has to be said that people are getting almost as good at automatically filtering out banner ads on the web as they are at ignoring the ads in papers and magazines. Typically even an attractive banner will generate less than 1% click-throughs although this mark can sometimes be well exceeded. And perhaps only 1% of that 1% will buy! So you need a huge number of banner impressions to make any impression on sales. Artefact can direct you to opportunities to make and to place banner ads cost effectively. However, it has to be said that these are often of limited value mainly because your effort lacks focus. If I am selling prosthetic limbs then ad banners through banner exchange programmes and suchlike, even if they generate some traffic on my site, are not very likely to result in sales. I might be much better advised to pay for some advertising on a specialist site where people in need of prosthetic limbs go! On the other hand if your product or service is something designed to appeal to the mass market, then the more free advertising you can obtain the better and it may well be worth the time and effort of setting it up. But beware of the downside too…there may be no cost in money but there’s usually a quid pro quo in the form of having to litter your site with the banners of others, often totally unrelated to what your site is about and therefore likely to diminish your site in its appearance and appeal.

Content Strategy and Delivery If you don’t give it any thought, it’s easy to diminish the effectiveness of your communications program. You have to consider what kind of message your advertisement, your promotion or your publicity should put across. To simply describe the product would miss an opportunity. To hype it ridiculously with extravagant claims looks amateurish and puts potential buyers right off. So here’s a framework which you can use to consider two things: * What kind of appeal or persuasion do I want to use in this communication? * How do I deliver that message so that it is very visible, impactful and persuasive? Take a minute to consider each of these in turn. First, what kinds of appeal are available to you? The main alternatives are product focused appeals, brand focused appeals and value focused appeals. Note that in describing them as alternatives we are not saying that they are mutually exclusive. They can be and often are used in combination. The important point is to use them as a frame of reference for what your messages are doing – or should be doing. In the first case, having thought about the benefits to the customer, you might conclude that your main selling point is the product itself – it has features or characteristics that set it apart, or functionality that makes it special, or perhaps owning this product makes the customer one of a privileged few. So you build your appeal around that. In the case of brand focused appeals, you have again considered the benefits to the customer and this time might have concluded that, perhaps because there’s nothing much to choose between your product and that of your competitors, you should base your appeal on the reputation of your company, its well known brand, its track record for reliability, service or after sales customer care. Value focused appeals can take many forms and when your product/service offers anything over and above sheer basic utility, there is usually a value proposition which you can communicate. So if your product/service confers psychological values such as status, provides safety, well-being, group membership, or if your price/quantity or quality relationship is attractive compared to competitors, then perhaps one or more of these should be the focus of your appeal. Now let’s move to the second question. Having decided a strategy for the appeal(s) you want to make, how can you best deliver these? By this we do not mean to ask, what kind of media or channels of communication should we choose – that’s the focus of other pages within the Artefact Strategic Marketing Model. The question we are examining now is about how the appeal should be couched, or what approach should be chosen? There are many alternatives to choose from and it would be impossible to cover them comprehensively. Here are some of the most commonly used approaches to delivering the appeal: * Humour. Everyone likes to laugh (well, maybe not loss adjusters or actuaries…) and humour is very often chosen to get attention, particularly in advertising. Paradoxically, you don’t have to be selling something that obviously lends itself to a humorous approach. Even something as intrinsically boring as car tyres can be made more human and attractive by a cartoon Michelin Man. Banks regularly opt for a humorous approach to try and replace a staid and forbidding industry image with a more open and approachable one. * Testimonials. There’s something about blowing your own horn that people react against. If you can get satisfied customers – particularly if they are well known figures who can put the weight of their own credibility behind your product – to speak for you, then you’re onto a winning strategy for delivering your appeal. There is a potential downside (but usually not a sufficiently worrying consideration to put marketers off ) – if your product/service becomes associated too closely with the testimonial of a public figure who subsequently makes the main evening news by being jailed for fraud or beating his wife or whatever, your reputation – too closely bound in with his – can also suffer. So cut the risk by choosing steady, reliable, credible people to be your spokespeople. * Comparisons. Depending on the jurisdiction in which you are operating, it may or may not be allowed to name competitors in comparing your product/service with theirs. If you can do so – and of course if your offering does come well out of a comparison – this can be a very persuasive way to deliver your appeal. But be careful – it’s a confrontational approach and you have to factor in the likelihood that you will provoke a reaction. If you’ve ever read ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli, you may recall that one of the lessons he taught was, and I paraphrase – if you are planning to smite your enemy make sure you smite him good, because if he is able to get up again, he’ll be as mad as hell and then you had better look out! * Factual Presentation. Sometimes it’s best just to give the facts as simply and straightforwardly as possible. This tends to be especially the case when you are dealing with corporate/industrial buyers and are selling high value products. Humour might be seen to trivialise, and stern faced purchasing committees will not be swayed by testimonials from showbiz personalities. They want the facts, they’ll make the comparisons themselves and they’ll make a dispassionate decision. * Stories. Sometimes a story, a fable, a moral tale, a mini soap is used to set the product/service in a context where consumers are seen to be deriving the utility or value that the marketer wants to convey. Now you have used a framework of alternatives to consider the nature of the appeal that is most likely to work for you, and you have used another framework of alternatives to consider how best to deliver that appeal. You may well have found in the process