Articles

Welcome to our Knowledge Centre Articles. The marketing team at our Ottawa marketing firm have put these articles together to help you take your business' marketing plans to the next level. You'll find knowledge gained from our experience providing services in marketing and advertising, search engine optimization, web marketing, and employer branding.

Visit this page again soon, because we're constantly updating our resources and adding more articles.

Web Marketing and Seach Engine Optimization

Social Media Builds Awareness for Preston Street BIA

• During the summer of 2008, Ottawa's Little Italy was subjected to the first phase of a two-part revitalization project that forced portions of Preston Street to be dug up and closed to traffic. This caused ongoing headaches for most of the 200 businesses on the street who saw a substantial decline in business during the street construction.

6 More Tips for Improving the Copy on Your Website

• Creating rich, effective search engine optimized website copy can be a challenge. Getting people to actually read that copy? An entirely different challenge altogether. Here are a few easy-to-implement tips to make sure people actually read the web content you've posted online.

How to Keep Your Legitimate Direct Mail From Getting Snatched Up by Spam Filters

• You spend hours working on a piece of direct e-mail, sweating over the tiniest details, making sure it tells your customer or prospect exactly what they need to know in exactly the right way. When you're finished your tenth or eleventh draft, you click the send button...

How Good is Your Website? Take the "MB Test" and Find Out!

• Think your website is a top-of-the-line, best-in-class example of web marketing? Complete our quick and easy website evaluation to find out the strengths and weaknesses of your company's site ... the results might surprise you.

Useful Search Engine Optimization Terms and Definitions

• It's no secret -- for any business to thrive, regardless of how big it is, a solid presence on the Internet is a must. This means making your company's website as visible as possible to Google, MSN, Yahoo and all the other search engines across the Web.

Social Media Optimization -- Revolutionizing Web Advertising and Viral Marketing

• The Internet has revolutionized the way businesses go about attracting new clients and customers, with new techniques and strategies such as viral marketing and search engine optimization. However, in recent months, a new phenomena has swept across the web.

How To Search Engine Optimize Your Website

• Is your business launching a new Internet site? Have you fallen off the Google map? Perhaps, you are in the backwoods of blacklisting, having followed an ill-advised SEO strategy. Whatever your challenge, these practical tips will set you on the proper SEO track.

7 Easy Ways to Improve the User Experience in Your Website

• A better website means better business. Maximizing the usability of your website means creating a site that is easy to learn and remember, efficient, sensually pleasing, and fun to use. Does your website satisfy all these demands?

How to Turn Your Home Page into a Lead Generating Machine

• So you have a home page. It looks great and says exactly what your potential customers want to hear. But it doesn't mean that the phone is ringing off the hook. You need leads. Luckily, your home page is an ideal platform to convince people to give you what you need.

10 Ways to Ensure Your Site Does NOT Get Indexed on Search Engines

• Search engines have come a long way since the web's beginnings. Back in the old days it seemed like anything you typed in would ultimately show at least one or more pornographic web site. Well, luckily those days have passed us and getting indexed on search engines has become a business necessity.

7 Secrets To Writing Compelling Copy For The Internet

• Good writing is the key to a successful website. A recent Canadian usability study found that prospective customers make up their minds about your site in under 50 milliseconds. Why Take Chances With Bad Copy? Here are the seven secrets to writing compelling copy.

Turning Your Website Into A Moneymaking Webstore

• Once in a blue moon, they phone or send an email. Sometimes, late at night when they're looking for information or help, they'll drop by for a quick visit. No, they're not your grown-up kids. They are your web guests. Trouble is, in most cases, you won't even know they've visited.

The Internet: Bigger Than You Think And More Business Potential Than You Realize

• If improved productivity and competitiveness are major priorities for yourorganization, adopting an inventive web marketing plan will be the key to your success. A modern, easy-to-use and informative website has now become not only an essential marketing strategy, but also a resource clients expect.

General Marketing and Advertising

Converting Web Visitors into Customers: The Lucrative Power of Online Video

• Online video is reeling in record viewers. In the past year, Canadians spent 1.2 billon more minutes viewing online multimedia than the year before. And in June 2008, a whopping 81.96% of Canadian web users viewed online videos.

The Decline of Print Advertising Leads to Opportunities for Savvy Marketing

• As more and more of us turn online for our daily dose of headlines, newspaper readership and revenues are declining. And fast.whopping 81.96% of Canadian web users viewed online videos.

The New Benefits of Video

• As the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." In today's media-savvy world, nothing temps and tantalizes a potential client like a well-crafted promotional video. A promotional video is perhaps the most important investment a company can make to "seal the deal" and increase its bottom line.

Five Tips on Successfully Advertising to Gen-Y

• Generation Y (also known as Millennials or Echo-Boomers) are the children of the baby-boomer generation. Born between 1981 and 1994, they are now 8.3 million strong, accounting for 26% of the Canadian population.

Great Ads: The Secret Formula

• There's a secret formula to great advertising, a process by which an ad isconceived and comes to life. We all know that a great ad can bring dozens of new customers and thousands of dollars in new revenue to a business, but how do you breathe life into your advertising?

How To Turn Your Business Card Into A Power Marketing Tool

• First impressions are everything when it comes to image and brand Marketing. Take a moment to consider the message your business card is sending to potential clients. Does it make a silent pitch for your company's products or services? Does it create a lasting memory in the minds of your potential clients?

Ten Tips for Getting Your Story in the Headlines

• Front page of the Ottawa Citizen? Lead story on Newsworld? Top feature on Global National? What's your dream news hit? While nothing invokes more fear in PR pros than media relations, it doesn't have to be foreboding territory to navigate. Remember these 10 tips and you'll soon have your story in the headlines!

Branding and Image

How Well Are You Managing Your Branding? Take the "MB Test"!

• Is your corporate brand growing in value? Is it unique and distinctive? Find out whether you have a powerhouse brand or one that needs improvement by taking our quick branding questionnaire.

Employer Branding - The Secret to Attracting Job Applicants

• It's the key to finding and retaining employees in today's hotly contested labour market. IBM uses it. So does L'Oreal, Deloitte, American Express, Starbucks, Research in Motion and Intel. Quite simply, people want to work for them. But why? What is their secret?

Using Photography to Market and Enhance the Image of Your Practice

• A picture is worth a thousand words - so why not make those thousand words work for you? Who you are and what you stand for can be expressed in the blink on an eye, in an instant impression far more unforgettable than the printed or spoken word.

Marketing for Financial Advisors

The 10 Secrets to Designing a Money-Making Website for Financial Advisors

• The web is a new and very different medium. It's not a TV ad... so why does your homepage play like a commercial? It's not a print ad or a brochure... so why does your site seem like a very long direct sales letter?

Networking Tips for Financial Professionals

• Businesses are built on relationships -- it's all about "who you know". The apprehension associated with professional networking, even for the most accomplished professional, doesn't negate the fact that it is an essential strategy for growing your business.

Marketing for Dental Practices

Overcoming Dental Phobia: A Marketer's Perspective

• It's like pulling teeth! While most people suffer from some level of anxiety about visiting the dentist, there is a very high percentage of people who suffer from a fear so intense they would rather lose their teeth than walk through your door.

Marketing Plans and Marketing Planning

How You Can Attract Customers And Beat The Competition With A Winning Marketing Plan

• It's no great secret that planning is the first key to success in any business venture. A sound marketing plan helps you define who you are and how you differ from the competition. It outlines both the benefits your product offers and exactly how you will better your competitors.

Secrets To Designing Winning New Business Proposals

• When it comes to securing a prospective client, putting your best foot forward begins with a winning proposal. By following a tried and proven formula for creating proposals, you can avoid wasting your time discussing topics that are of little use or interest to your potential clients.

 

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