Straight to the Point

Volume 5, Issue 1

This Issue's Contents:

Words, Words and More Words
With individuals being constantly barraged by verbiage, is it possible to make YOUR company’s marketing content stand out? Here's our strategy to make that happen.

Case Study (Bytown Lumber )
When Bytown Lumber approached Kaszas, it expressed a common concern: its website was out of date and did not reflect the company’s current business or desired image. Moreover, the website was not being found on relevant web searches.

Getting I.T. On Side
In our experience as marketing communications managers, we have encountered not-uncommon tension between the Marketing and I.T. departments related to corporate websites.

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Marketing Communications Smarts from Kaszas Communications

Winter 2010

Words, Words and More Words

– by Maria Ford

A recent study from the University of California San Diego estimates that the speed of modern life can be calculated at 2.3 words per second. That’s nearly 10,000 words consumed per day.

With individuals being constantly barraged by verbiage, is it possible to make YOUR company’s marketing content stand out? At Kaszas, we believe it is. The answer isn’t to make your content louder, larger or extremely controversial. While those tactics may well create immediate interest, they aren’t likely to get the real job done.

To develop marketing and corporate communications content that sticks – and which causes your audiences to act – it’s got to be timely, relevant, and delivered to individuals when and how they need it most. As marketing content experts, we do more than write – we also consult with clients on the best means of delivering the information and messages that they wish to convey. This includes:

• Messaging strategy. We blend equal parts marketing expertise with writing talent, so we are able to help many of our clients align the information they want to convey with how the target audience will receive the messages.
• Tactical advice. Clients often turn to us for advice on the best vehicles or channels to deliver information. With so many choices today – from print-based collateral to websites, ‘blogs, social media channels, e-newsletters, RSS and more – we are able to provide an objective and knowledgeable viewpoint and suggest an optimal tactical mix.
• Search optimization. We believe that no online content should be produced today without optimization for web searches. We provide content optimization strategies that consider search habits and usability.

Compelling content is usually the end result of a larger exercise – one that has properly identified the information, messages and delivery methods that will best resonate with the intended audience.

If you are looking to turn your words into content that sticks, Kaszas can help. Contact Us!

 

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Case Study

Bytown Lumber

With a rich history providing lumber and building supplies to the Ottawa/Gatineau region, Bytown Lumber is known for its array of building materials and professional building services. When the company approached Kaszas, it expressed a common concern: its website was out of date and did not reflect the company’s current business or desired image. Moreover, the website was not being found on relevant web searches.

Rebuilding the Website

Although Bytown Lumber is a large and established retailer, it prides itself on offering “small town” service to both homeowners and contractors. This local feel was not conveyed by the previous website’s design or content. The language and imagery was not homeowner-friendly and did not speak to the do-it-yourself crowd that Bytown was looking to attract and serve.

The website also lacked important product information. Bytown Lumber offers branded fencing, window & door, and estimating services that were not properly highlighted on the homepage or in the site's navigation. This made the site difficult to browse for both contractors and homeowners alike.

With proper messaging, a more sophisticated web design, and search-optimized content, we believed that Bytown Lumber could better attract and serve its web visitors.

To improve the site, Kaszas used a three-pronged approach:

• We performed search term research to identify how Bytown Lumber’s current search performance compared to the most popular search terms used online for lumber and building supply products. We also developed and prioritized a list of relevant keywords that web users are actually searching for.
• We helped to re-design the website and develop a new content architecture to make the site more robust and useful for all Bytown audiences – and to ensure that each of the key search terms would have strong representation on the new website. The new homepage offers prominent, visual links to Bytown’s products and the navigation bar uses logical, optimized headings.
• We developed new content for each page of the website and optimized it for search using the keyword research. This new content was written with both contractors and homeowners in mind and used a consistent voice on all pages. Individual pages for each physical Bytown Lumber location now feature imagery and information specific to each location, thereby conveying the local “feel” of each store along with local contact information.

A Solid Foundation

Today, Bytown Lumber is benefitting from a revised, re-designed and search engine optimized website that better reflects Bytown Lumber’s offerings and status as a helpful and trusted supplier of lumber and building supplies.

To check out the new Bytown Lumber website for yourself, visit: www.bytownlumber.com.

 

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Lesson Learned

Getting I.T. On Side

In our experience as marketing communications managers, we have encountered not-uncommon tension between the Marketing and I.T. departments related to corporate websites. It often seems like the two groups don’t speak the same language even though both are working with the website’s and company’s best interests in mind. This can result in online marketing challenges as well as ineffective websites.

When , as a marketer, you need to work with an I.T. department to get something done one a website, effective internal communication is key.

Often, in the course of implementing changes to a website or launching a pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine optimization (SEO) campaign you may need to interface with an I.T. department. You may want to add functionality (like lead forms and downloads) for sales and marketing purposes, or implement conversion-tracking code to measure the results of your online marketing activities. While these are no-brainers for marketers, I.T. departments may see them differently.

Think Like Your Audience

Rather than react to a negative response to your requests, and rather than escalating the problem by having a company executive step in, we suggest that you first try to explain the advantages of  what you want to accomplish in terms that would matter to the I.T. department. For example, in our own experience, we have addressed some of the I.T. realm’s key objections to common web-related requests from marketing (security of the site, the time involved in making the changes, and the belief that one web tool engine is enough).

These are some examples of how each of those website implementations above could be positioned to an I.T. department:

• Conversion code snippets are inert rather than functional
• The resulting statistics will be very specific to one particular type of website traffic and will prevent the I.T. team from having to generate traffic reports for the marketing team
• You would provide the code snippets or SEO updates in a form that is easy to copy and paste into the site’s HMTL, Or, the I.T. department could implement a tool like Adobe Contribute to enable YOUR team to make updates to the site tht would not affect its functionality or structure.
• The use of an external analytical tool can help the I.T. team benchmark its existing software and provide leverage when negotiating with its software vendors.

An approach like this should help to neutralize objections and engage in a productive – not reactive – conversation. There may also be someone in the I.T. department who is very knowledgeable about new web trends and eager to become involved in helping to implement some valuable features – the only way to find out is to begin to form a positive relationship with the I.T. professionals at your organization.

 

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