How does your logo stand up to the competition? Even more importantly, is your logo doing it’s job? You logo is more then just some image to put on your letterhead; it is your identity, your face, your first impression to the market.

Many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on a logo. Nike or Macintosh have huge budgets just for marketing their logo. What can you possible do to maximize you logos’ impression, without spending the kind of money IBM does?

OneVision, a British marketing company gives this advice:

Developing a quality logo is not a simple task. Imagine trying to boil down all of your personality traits, interests, hobbies, and activities into one sentence that describes who you are as a person. It would require a good bit of soul searching, introspection, and prioritizing, wouldn’t it?

Well, the same is required of your company when you create a logo. Your agency can make the process run smoothly by asking the right questions, but be prepared to commit the time and resources necessary to produce a quality result. Work with your agency to figure out what makes sense for your budget and your situation, but just to give a ballpark, allocating 5 – 10% of your overall marcom budget to corporate identity is not uncommon.

A good logo is going to to give your company a clean, professional look. The cleaner and more stylish your logo, the better your chances are of standing out amongst the others in the industry. Don’t forget, it is important to keep your logo fresh as times change. It is normal for a company that has been in business for many years, or decades to change it’s logo from time to time. Maybe it is time to update yours?

In the past month, the most common objection I am hearing from wholesale prospects is “this is my busiest part of the year, I don’t need to advertise.” Because it is your busiest part of the year is the exact reasons why you should be advertising.

Most companies report their highest margins during the holiday season. This is the time that you do have the little bit of extra income it takes to bring in new customers. Retail stores, boutiques, flea marketers, and more, are always looking for new items to help increase their revenues during this time. If you have a product that is hot during the holidays, don’t you want the opportunity to show this fast selling item to more retail outlets?

Since this is your busiest part of the year, you already know that this is the time for you to increase your customer base. Companies like JP Communications can help bring you those new customers. Once we bring you that new customer, it’s your job to keep them. With that little bit of information in mind, let JP Communications help bring you the new customers so that you can have a happy holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving.
Jonathan

The Off-Price New York Market, held October 8 – 10, 2006 at New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania. The regional Off-Price Markets was designed as a no-frills, cost-effective order-writing event where retail buyers could find quality apparel at prices well below established wholesale averages.

“We were extremely pleased with the turnout and buying activity at our October event,” says Show Director David Lapidos. “The Markets are great complements to our national Off-Price Specialist Shows held three times a year in Las Vegas. These are order-writing events where retailers can get immediate delivery on goods to fill in gaps in their inventory, which is always critical around the holiday season.”

Another similar event will be held in January. The New York Off-Price Market will return to the Hotel Pennsylvania on January 7 – 9, 2007. Held during New York’s first market week of the year, Off-Price management is expecting a good turnout and for a fast paced feel of old school buying you just can’t beat New York wholesale apparel events.

The Hotel Pennsylvania won’t be the only hotel crawling with purchasers. “A lot of buyers will be in town for Market Week,” says Lapidos. “In addition, four apparel shows will be running at the Javit’s Center on the exact same dates, which makes it a great week to be in New York for retailers.” Retailers hoping to attend better start looking for hotel rooms soon.

The Javit’s Center apparel shows include the Fame Show, Children’s Club, Accessories the Show, and MODA Manhattan. For more information about the Off-Price Markets, visit their website.

February 2007 Off-Price in Las Vegas Changes Venue

Fate has taken a hand to move The Off-Price Specialist Show from its usual digs at the Sands Expo. Due to one-time scheduling conflicts with the Sands Expo, the February Show will be held in the luxurious Grand Ballrooms of the Venetian Hotel and Casino. A curious press release on the move touts the new convention site’s carpeting and “elegant restroom facilities’. All important qualities for an event fueled by coffee and commerce but I’m sure the hotel has other appealing qualities as well.

“We’re very excited about the February Show,” says Dell Holden, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Shopping a trade show is tough work. The days can be long and exhausting, so anything we can do to make our buyers and exhibitors’ jobs easier benefits everyone. The Grand Ballrooms are truly elegant. We’ve got all the pieces in place to make the February Show a memorable one.”

The four-day February show will open on Sunday, February 11 and close on Wednesday, February 14. The show will showcase new and expanded product offerings, including the newly co-located Home & Gift Show, an expanded jewelry pavilion, access to the new Off-Price Absolute Auctions.

The Off-Price New York Market, held October 8 – 10, 2006 at New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania. The regional Off-Price Markets was designed as a no-frills, cost-effective order-writing event where retail buyers could find quality apparel at prices well below established wholesale averages.

“We were extremely pleased with the turnout and buying activity at our October event,” says Show Director David Lapidos. “The Markets are great complements to our national Off-Price Specialist Shows held three times a year in Las Vegas. These are order-writing events where retailers can get immediate delivery on goods to fill in gaps in their inventory, which is always critical around the holiday season.”

Another similar event will be held in January. The New York Off-Price Market will return to the Hotel Pennsylvania on January 7 – 9, 2007. Held during New York’s first market week of the year, Off-Price management is expecting a good turnout and for a fast paced feel of old school buying you just can’t beat New York wholesale apparel events.

The Hotel Pennsylvania won’t be the only hotel crawling with purchasers. “A lot of buyers will be in town for Market Week,” says Lapidos. “In addition, four apparel shows will be running at the Javit’s Center on the exact same dates, which makes it a great week to be in New York for retailers.” Retailers hoping to attend better start looking for hotel rooms soon.

The Javit’s Center apparel shows include the Fame Show, Children’s Club, Accessories the Show, and MODA Manhattan. For more information about the Off-Price Markets, visit their website.

February 2007 Off-Price in Las Vegas Changes Venue

Fate has taken a hand to move The Off-Price Specialist Show from its usual digs at the Sands Expo. Due to one-time scheduling conflicts with the Sands Expo, the February Show will be held in the luxurious Grand Ballrooms of the Venetian Hotel and Casino. A curious press release on the move touts the new convention site’s carpeting and “elegant restroom facilities’. All important qualities for an event fueled by coffee and commerce but I’m sure the hotel has other appealing qualities as well.

“We’re very excited about the February Show,” says Dell Holden, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Shopping a trade show is tough work. The days can be long and exhausting, so anything we can do to make our buyers and exhibitors’ jobs easier benefits everyone. The Grand Ballrooms are truly elegant. We’ve got all the pieces in place to make the February Show a memorable one.”

The four-day February Show, which will open on Sunday, February 11 and close on Wednesday, February 14, will showcase new and expanded product offerings, including the newly co-located Home & Gift Show, an expanded jewelry pavilion, and access to the new Off-Price Absolute Auctions.

I’ve been reading a book called “Search Engine Advertising” written by Catherine Seda. I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to run a successful marketing campaign online: because a lot of us are too busy, or too lazy to pick up a book, I thought it would be nice to share with all of you what I am reading. Here is what I have learned so far:

There are millions of prospects online. Advertisers pay millions of dollars to reach these millions of prospects. Unfortunately, all of these millions of prospects are not interested in your product. Because search engines let the buyer tell them exactly what they want, you need to know your customer. By knowing your customer, you’ll have a better idea of what they are looking for online and where you should be spending your money.

Optimization v. Advertising

Companies spend a lot of money on optimizing their sites for the major search engines like google and yahoo. In short, optimization focuses on designing your pages within to attract spiders. To organically optimize your site, it is necessary to pay an inclusion fee to a majority of top search engines if you want specific pages indexed. While paying this fee, you are not guaranteed of what pages will be indexed by these search engines and you are not guaranteed high rankings on the results pages. If anyone guarantees you placement, run!!!!

When you decide to advertise on a search engine, you are in complete control of everything. You have control of where your company is found on the results pages. You have control of the landing page the prospects find. This means that you have instant visibility of what you want the buyers to see.
You, as an advertiser, have 24/7 control of your campaign. As we all know, you know your business best and you have 24/7 access to change any ad and experiment what is working best for you before you go out and spend the thousands of dollars on trying to optimize your site for the major search engines.

The key ingredient to any successful company is to have a marketing strategy. In you marketing strategy, you should identify the message you want your prospects to know. You should know who your target audience is. You should always define your goals.

More to come in the upcoming weeks:
Jonathan Prescott

With all the talk recently about SEO I thought I would throw in my 2 cents. I did a search for SEO in Wikipedia and something caught my attention. They talked about the different types of SEO efforts and they narrowed it down to two categories: On Page Factors and Off Page Factors. I found this a very easy way to look at SEO. The On Page Factors refer to efforts that would be made directly on the website we are trying to optimize. This would include changing source code, adding meta tags etc. For most of us web development rookies this is something we will need some serious help with. Then I read on and found Off Page Factors. These are efforts that can require a novice web education. Participating in PPC and Paid Inclusion are 2 major parts of Off Page SEO efforts. These tools will create back links to your website making it easier for an organic search engine to find it. So what I took from this is that I don’t have to put on my programmer hat to participate in SEO efforts. So if you are looking for Search Engine Optimization for your website then PPC to your hearts content, not only will you find buyers but the web will find you!

Brian Werner

Keywords are a very important part of optimizing your Web site for SEO. Keywords are words or phrases that people enter into their favorite search engine in order to find what ever it is they are looking for. If your site is relevant to their search, and you have wisely chosen your keywords, you have an advantage over the Web site that didn’t.

Keywords need to be found in various parts of your site, including:
Page title
Page content
Meta tags (These are in the source code for your site.)

You need to understand what people are searching for before you get started. Here are some steps to get you on your way:
1) Make a list of every word or phrase you think people would use to find you.
2) Think of common misspellings for your words and include those on your list.
3) Think about variations of words, for instance, if the may be hyphenated or have spaces.
4) You may want to ask someone who isn’t an expert in your field to give you some words they would use in a search for your products or services.

Your list may be getting long now, but don’t worry, we are going to thin it out in a moment.

You should now look through your list and decide what words are the best for your site. There are also tools you can use to help you with this.

Wordtracker – http://www.wordtracker.com/ is very popular. Starting at $8.00*/day – it is really a great value

KeywordDiscovery –
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ – offers software to help you manage a myriad of your SEO efforts. This software is reasonably priced at around $300.00*.

You can always search your favorite search engine for “Keyword Suggestion Tool” or something to that affect.

Now that you have narrowed your keywords it is time to write or re-write your site content. You want to use these choice keywords as often as possible on your site, as long as they are relevant and not repetitive. This will help your keyword density. Keyword density is the number of keywords used on your page divided by total words on the page. As a general rule, high keyword density is good for SEO.

Once you have good relevant keywords and good keyword density, you are well on your way to strengthening the SEO efforts for your site. This will lead to better organic searches and in combination with other SEO efforts, you can soon find yourself on the first page of many search engines.

Wikipedia defines search engine optimization as a subset of search engine marketing that deals with improving the number and/or quality of visitors to a web site from “natural” (aka “organic” or “algorithmic” search engine) listings. The term SEO can also refer to “search engine optimizers”, an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.

Um…ok. Thanks wikipedia, but let’s put that in laymen terms. There are three methods of search engine marketing (SEM) that will increase the visibility of your web site in search engine results pages (SERPs). The three subsets are:

1. Search engine optimization – the goal here is to improve rankings for your important keywords in search results by improving a web site’s structure and content. The search engine sends out little spiders that scan all the important data on the whole site and store it in the search engines’ data base. The search engines will display the most relevant results first. There’s a lot more involved than just the spiders, but this is a good start. Because search engine optimization takes a very long time and is quite costly, most sites make use of pay per click advertising so they can start seeing results instantaneously. A combination of SEO and PPC will provide more exposure and results than either strategy alone.

2. Pay per Click (PPC) advertising – also known as sponsored search and search engine advertising, the advertiser is only charged when a user clicks on the ad. The ads can be text ads, banner ads, video ads, or even audio ads. Pay per click advertising allows advertisers to target specific users with certain interests.

3. Paid inclusion – this is different from pay per click advertising because it guarantees inclusion but not placement. Paid inclusion ensures your ad is going to be viewed when a user does a search for your keywords or phrases. You usually pay by month, 6 months, or year and now your listing is included for relevant searches. There is no way to be #1 in the search results unless the marketing company has exclusive positions available which will be not be included in the costs of the basic inclusion.

Let’s face it. Everyone would love to be among the first companies displayed in the search engines’ results page. Not everyone has the time or money to invest to keep up with the continuous changing algorithms the search engines use to decide which ads to show first. That’s why, especially in a competitive industry, a combination of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and paid inclusion is going to get you the best bang for your buck.

Justin Prescott

Although many people seem not to be aware of it Google launch a payment provider. The payment service, called “Checkout,” was meant to serve as an electronic wallet that enables consumers to buy products and services from online merchants without repeatedly entering the same personal and financial information at each store, not unlike Paypal.

Nearly every venture that Google has released in recent years have been immediate successes. However it appears that the search giant’s new venture needs a little more promotion to get the ball rolling. Google said Wednesday that it would be waiving the merchant processing fees for its 4-month-old payment service through Dec. 31, hoping the offer will spur more retailers to check it out.

Merchants can already dodge a fair amount of the fees based on how much they spend on Adwords advertisements distributed by Google. For merchants without an Adsense account Google will charge 2% of the total transaction plus $.20. Paypal’s fees average about 2.3% and have an additional fee of $.30. So Google Checkout will save any merchant a little compared to eBay’s provider in any case.

However, merchants with Adsense accounts are able to process $10 worth of transaction for free for every dollar they spend on Adsense. This makes payment processing essentially free for a great many online retailers and wholesalers.

The holiday season offer is also available to merchants who don’t advertise through the Mountain View-based company.

There are so many things involved in getting your site optimized for search engines. How can you stay on top of all the rules for being SEO’ed? Here are a few resources I would suggest:

What is SEO?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Other resources:
http://www.seochat.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://www.selfseo.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/

The most important thing about running a website and keeping it up-to-date is staying current with new web standards and following through with all your SEO tasks.

Don’t forget the importance of having links to your site from as many relevant websites that you can. Advertising on those sites or offering link exchanges will help your Google rating as well. Ever wonder what a Google Page Rank is, and how it works? Here is some great information on that topic:

http://www.google.com/technology/
http://www.google-pagerank.net/

Good luck!

Kevin