BrandQuery’s Top Five Interactive Strategy Adds
BrandQuery is now offering interactive services. But what exactly does that mean? Thus far, the interactive strategies and plans we’ve developed include a range of items that will create more visibility for our clients.
When BrandQuery began as BMR Design+Advertising in 1992, the internet was pretty much nonexistent. How times have changed! My graduate studies (Washington State University, MBA ’06) required a laptop, which meant half the students paid full attention and half multitasked by reading news, watching YouTube videos, and monitoring their social network accounts.
For the younger generation like myself, who grew up in the 90s, this is the world that dominates practically everything we do. It’s where we get our news. It’s where we watch our favorite TV shows. It’s where we seek information on what products to buy, read consumer product reviews, and query where to buy the items we desire. These days it’s even moving to our phones, especially if we’re lucky enough to have a 3G phone.
However, it’s not just for younger audiences — all audiences are utilizing the internet for information; they gather, decipher, and even create it. Ensuring your business is up-to-date in today’s marketplace (i.e. the online world) is important in targeting your audience.
Here’s a top five countdown of ways we can assist your company via our interactive strategies:
5. Social Monitoring and Participation
Social Monitoring is perhaps the simplest item on the list; participation, on the other hand, requires a bit more finesse. Monitoring includes the knowledge of who is talking about your business online, and the observation of what they are saying. Participation includes the various reactions you may take or make in response to the online chatter.
4. Microsites
Once thought a tool for only nationwide companies, it’s becoming more and more common for local and regional companies to utilize this form of interactive marketing. Microsites can focus on a specific product or service, showcase a special offer, or simply be an alternate way of targeting a new, desired audience. It’s a way to differentiate your brand, while remaining ingrained in its tradition. For example, companies can use microsites as landing pages for online ads, supplementing their marketing campaigns.
3. Blogging and Microblogging
As you can see, we’ve been implementing an interactive strategy for ourselves. This should be obvious — after all, you’re reading our blog! Creating a blog can be as simple as signing up for a Blogger account, but making your blog visually true to your brand is another matter altogether. We can assist not only in this area, but in the strategy behind the content your blog will feature. 2008 also saw the booming usage of Microblogs, like Twitter and Yammer. Microblogs allow users to post brief messages under 160 characters; similar to text messaging, these blogs can even be updated by phone. They are simply a new way of communicating and, in many ways, may ultimately replace instant messaging. Both these tools can help your business generate followers and reach its target audience(s).
2. Online Display Advertising
These days, advertising online can be made easy and cost-effective through Google AdWords and AdSense. Likewise, there are several tools to assist in finding and reaching your audience, from keyword and categorical targeting to narrowing ad visibility to a specific region by geo-targeting. And, we can also help in the design of your advertising campaign.
1. Search Engine Optimization
This is probably the item least utilized by companies and also the most important. Our recommendations, through an audit of your website, can help boost your placement in searches relevant to your company. Search Engine Optimization can extend beyond company-based websites to include simple items that one might not typically think of doing — for example, enhancing your Google Maps listing.
There it is, five elements of our interactive strategy. But our strategies go far beyond this list; and for the items noted above we can easily go into far greater depth. This is simply an example of how BrandQuery is working to better help our clients to gain greater exposure in the online marketplace.