If you’re thinking about designing new marketing materials it’s important to remember some of the most basic tenants of design. The most basic of these tenants is Keep It Simple. Keeping things simple is the best way to keep your guests happy. It makes a website or any marketing material look sleek, reducing navigation confusion and helping to achieve desired goals and results. After all, the goal is to get more sign ups, subscribers and sales. If you can do this with less content, why work harder than you have to?

Well, this is all fine and good to say but inevitably simplifying things always gets complicated. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make it look like Apple. So what do you need to do the get to that cardinal point? Fret not, there are 3 basic points you can use to simplify any design.

1. Focus On Your Essential Elements

This first step probably seems forehead-slapping obvious: of course I should put the focus on the essential elements in my material, what am I, an idiot? But a surprising number of marketing attempts fail to achieve this and the result is a big mess of important and unimportant elements spewed onto a page. It’s hard to be objective and prioritize what’s important because everything seems essential. If you want your design to be simpler, identify what needs to be the focus just like with any good visual design or piece of art. And that means putting the focus entirely on the essential elements.

2. Use the 80-20 Rule

It’s important to let 20% of what’s on a page give 80% of the value and content that people read it for. This is often an overlooked but critical rule because people will only read 10% to 20% of whats on a page. It could be the copy, some social proof (review snippets, testimonials, media badges), and a signup form or call-to-action statement, for example. That’s the 20% right there. In your material, as well as on the web, focus on displaying only the 20% of your elements that are delivering 80% of that value.

3. Get More Content Above The Fold

Studies have shown that a majority of people spend most of their time above the fold on marketing material. This means that the first thing they see is likely to be what they’ll base any buying decisions on. Usually, this is the front page of a book or folder and, for a website, what shows up on the screen without scrolling down. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your website or marketing materials, have the main content and call-to-action elements above the fold.

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I’ve been using Gmail for year but decided to get a webmail account when I began to focus on my new brand. Don’t get me wrong, there nothing terrible about web mail, but it offers very minimal options and it’s more difficult to access and use. Still, I suffered through the experience knowing that an email containing my brand name is much more professional. Recently, I’ve discovered a way to make having a webmail account a little more painless. I found that, while you need a webmail account on your server, you don’t actually have to use it. All thanks to the fine folks at Gmail and their mail forwarding system. No you can have an email like john@johnswebsite.com and still use Gmail.

This is actually very simple to do, assuming you have a registered domain name. Here’s how its done:

1. Log into your domain registered control panel and create an email account in the add email interface (for example john@johnswebsite.com). Most hosts like Godady and Site5 offer email as a free service with your account. If you already have on you can skip this.

2. Go to the forwarders link under mail in your cPanel and set up a forwarder from your branded email (example john@johnswebsite.com) to your Gamil account. This will forward any email sent to your branded address to your Gmail account.

3. Now log in to Gamil.

4. Click on Settings (It will be in the top right corner).

5. Click on Accounts

6. Add your new brand address: John@johnswebsite.com

7. Click on the Next Step button.

8. Click on the Send Verification button. Google will now send an email to your branded account to make sure you own it. If you’ve done everything right up to this point, you’ll eminently get an email in your Gmail account asking for a confirmation. This is why we set up the forwarding first.

9. Open the verification email and click on the link.

10. By default, your Google account will automatically reply from your john@jonswebsite.com email to any email that were to that address. It will use your normal Gamil address for everything else. (If you would like to make it reply to all messages using your branded address, you can go back into settings, (see steps 4 and 5) set your account to default and select “always reply form my default address”.

11. That’s it. Your Done, and all the emails sent to your branded email account will automatically be sent right to your Gmail. You can also reply without anyone ever knowing the difference.

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Each month I like to select a website that represents what we do here at LIME. This month, I’ve chosen Summit Chiropractic’s new page. Dr. David Dalgardno is fantastic at what he dose and as an aspiring young Chiropractor, he knows his stuff. You can request appointments right form his site and even get some helpful healthy living tips from his blog.

Take a look >

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Social media marketing has at its core the foundation of valuable, shareable content in all the various forms of rich media whether that be text, video or images. People watch YouTube videos because they are entertaining, educational or just plain funny.

Viewers turn up to your Slideshare account and take the time to view a presentation because the content is compelling. LinkedIn works well for personal branding because you are providing answers to your peers to questions in the Q&A section and providing updates that answers problems, informs and educates.

Twitter allows you to click on links that are engaging blog posts or news that is topical and timely. The knowledge economy is all about the content. Facebook is where your audience is online so content needs to be posted and updated.

So here are 5 of the best social media marketing tips and tactics to market your content and ideas and help them to spread to a global audience. Apply some of these tips and you maybe surprised in the journey that unfolds as you and your company are discovered and shared and your goods and services are purchased because you were ‘found’.

The secret sauce behind these tips is to allow you to create a ‘social media synergy’ that totals a sum far greater than the individual parts. This approach is to guide you to go beyond being just ‘Facebook Centric’ and provide substance, endurance and longevity to your on-line presence and digital assets. These tips are also about assisting you in optimizing and integrating the multiple social media platforms listed below.

1. Provide content and links on your Facebook page that will make them want to share and like your updates
2. Respond to all comments on your Facebook page in a timely fashion
3. Engage and develop Twitter followers within your niche using Tweepi (Tweepi.com makes it easy to follow followers of influential bloggers on Twitter) or Twellow.com (Twellow provides a tool that enables you to find powerful Twitter follower lists in your niche) – this is the quality part of the Twitter equation.
4. Include your website/blog link in your profile
5. Pose questions in the Q&A section of LinkedIn with links to your possible answer as a post link

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Branding is the art and science of building authenticity around an organization to purposefully align with an audience. Brand goes beyond the core tangible goods or services a company may offer and connotes the total experience that happens when one chooses to associates with a given company – it’s how it talks, looks, acts and makes them feel. An individual only chooses to patronize a brand because of the assumed experience they believe is associated with it. This assumed experience comes as much from the quality of the offering as it does from the way an organization communicates and controls its brand.

Brands are living experiences that connote a unique culture. Whether this is tactfully planned or not, brands embody both a company’s baseline offerings as well as the entire experience surrounding it. This experience should be consistent and well-thought, aligning with core beliefs, values and positioning strategies. When a brand experience is stewarded effectively, an organization stands to create strong and lasting connections with its audience as it identifies with their values, beliefs, needs, wants and lifestyle. When the brand experience is not planned or controlled, it can create an inconsistent experiences that lacks definition, memorability and in some cases even alienate the customer.

Establishing and maintaining emotional alignment must be done from first contact and maintained all throughout the relationship. Communications must extend from a central branding strategy and actively speak to a defined experience. The first impression a potential audience member will have with a company is most likely going to involve limited exposure to marketing, advertising or sales materials, making it crucial to have these speak from the heart of the brand with a definitive message. Audience-facing materials must err of authenticity and align with the central brand values from logo to website. Finally, the brand strategy must extend into the infrastructure of the company from the way business is conducted to how employees interact with each other.

If an audience touchpoint is misaligned with a company’s brand promise, it will create a negative disconnect between the organization and its audience – This alone isn’t always enough to bring down a brand, but without applied focus, brands cannot excel. People more than ever are seeking companies they can connect with on a level beyond simply fulfilling a need and the brand experience is what sets companies apart.

So why should a company take their brand seriously? Because it is the first hand-shake with a potential customer that can begin a relationship with honesty and intent. It is the image and voice of a company when no one is around to speak for it. Because, branding allows many parts of a company to speak with one voice. Most importantly, brand gives control over the customers’ perception of a company so they know exactly what they are getting, and defines the very experience therein.

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