CharlieMoger.com

Marketing and advertising advice for owner-operated businesses

Words matter

Bulletrifle221aA bullet doesn’t discriminate; it goes where it’s sent and does what it was made to do. Choosing words are like loading the right bullets; choose the right ones and they’ll deliver regardless of where you aim them.

Good web copy is good radio copy is good tv copy. Words are agnostic beasts, carrying their meanings without regard to placement. When you string the right ones together, the result is killer creative that punches through no matter how or where you aim it.

Testing creative to determine optimal click-through, VideoInsider reports an advertiser discovered that repurposed broadcast spots out performed web-only video by 25%. Similarly, they reported standard JPEG and GIF ads outperformed rich media placement.

It’s not the media, it’s the message. Messaging is everything. Delivering salient, relatable meaning  attracts attention; attention leads to action.

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Supermarket Hostages

Shopping_cart
Being handcuffed to a shopping cart isn’t the best way to build trust. But, that’s how customers feel about so-called supermarket loyal shopper cards. That’s because the premise of the cards violates a basic principal of attraction marketing.

Two-thirds of a typical supermarket’s business is done by 20% of its customers, according to the Food Marketing Institute. In the years since loyalty cards first premiered in 1979, that ratio has stayed about the same. Retailers’ intention of building more volume from more customers has resulted in just getting roughly the same volume from the same customers at a discount–to the retailer.Continue Reading

Stronger than dirt

3485364Cresting the peak of Mt. Madison, part of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, I discovered a timeless truth: climbing one mountain reveals  the next one. This truth applies equally to web development: mastering one technology reveals the next to be learned.

Ajax is the next mountain in web development. Remember the internet before Flash? Quicktime? Ajax promises another leap forward, delivering a more dynamic web experience. When that promise is fulfilled, what we see today will seem as clunky as your first 300 baud modem.Continue Reading

Wider Web Watching

Photoproduce
My 13 year-old son burst from boy’s sizes to men’s in one summer. In the blink of an eye he sprout like  prize-winning produce at the county fair. Online video consumption experienced that kind of growth spurt in the last year. The kind of video being consumed is provides a clue on how you can tap the power in this trend.

Eighty-four percent of consumers surveyed recently by Advertising.com said their viewing of online video in the last year either increased or stayed the same. The survey reported the most viewed category was news clips (49%) followed by music videos (47%) and movie trailers (33%). TV programming and user-generated video accounted for 26% and 21% respectively.

Before you can influence consumers, you have to get their attention. Attracting that attention boils down to saying something interesting to THEM. News clips were the top viewed category because we feel connected to news. Meanwhile, network television programs ported to the web only edged out user-generated video by 5%.

Get the point?

Your customers want it real and it better really relate to them. Lucky for you, getting video online is easier than ever. With a meager investment, you can establish relationship with customers face-to-face.
Yes, production values are a factor–but not the most important factor.

Good now beats perfect later.

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