»  Charlotte Web Design

Why create an account on a random website when you can click a single button to join? That is the power of Facebook Connect, which allows websites, software, and even mobile devices to integrate with Facebook and send information both ways.

The last few months have been very busy ones for developers as they furiously integrated their websites with Facebook Connect. But a few implementations have stood out against the rest. Check out this showcase at Mashable of 10 UK websites notable for a seamlessness of integration and a high level of consumer-friendly utility.

To learn more about how our Charlotte advertising and marketing agency can help you create a measurable, unified online brand, please visit birdsong gregory or contact me at 704-332-2299.

As a Charlotte NC ad agency, we’re increasingly finding the need to strengthen and evolve our clients’ online brands. A strong online brand means more than a well-designed website. Whether you’re trying to reach a retail audience, or your company needs to strengthen its B2B marketing channels, there are a whole host of online branding opportunities for Charlotte, NC companies, including social networks like Facebook, video/photo sharing sites like YouTube, and microblog tools like Twitter.

Having said that, smart, engaging web design is still critical since a large function of online marketing is to drive traffic to more robust branded environments (like your corporate website or an e-commerce engine). Here is a fun look at a few forecasted website design trends for 2009.

Please take a look, and if you would like to find out more about ways you can enhance your online presence to take full advantage of the relationship building power of Web 2.0 – or if you’d like learn more about the branding, marketing, advertising, and design services our agency offers – please visit birdsong gregory online, contact Jim Cusson at 704-332-2299, or stop by the next time you’re in downtown Charlotte.

There’s no question that “Mommy Bloggers” are an interesting demographic, and recent statistics show there are more than 36 million of them online. Because having children means you have to go shopping (for clothes, toys, car seats, etc.), these online Moms definitely wield influence in purchasing power – which is why many companies (and Charlotte advertising agencies) think this community is particularly open to a word-of-mouth campaign.

A few key facts about Mommy Bloggers:

• Of the 36.2 million women actively participating in the blogosphere (either as publishers or readers), 46% – or just over 16.5 million – have children at home.
• 67% of Moms online look for help making a purchasing decision.
• Overall, full-time working Moms use technology at the highest rates.
• The mobile phone is the technology used most often by Moms to communicate with their kids, and 80% say it is the direct line to their child and babysitter.

But at birdsong gregory, a Charlotte branding and marketing agency, we think the notion of a homogenous Mommy (or Daddy) blogger block is a little shortsighted. In fact, Moms online are just as diverse as the rest of us. And while it’s tempting to think these mouse-clicking Mommas do things in lock-step, there are many different niches and interests the well-aimed marketing efforts of a Charlotte company can explore. Lifestyle, safety, green, frugality, parenting, sports and family issues are just a small set of the segments you can speak directly via online marketing channels. And aside from the blogs, the above chart breaks down the top 10 activities of Moms online.

Looking at the points of transaction, it opens up an opportunity for conversation and engagement with Moms on other sites and platforms as it relates to those activities. To learn more about the branding, marketing, advertising, and design services our agency offers, please visit birdsong gregory online, call me at 704-332-2299, or stop by the next time you’re in downtown Charlotte, NC.

Here at birdsong gregory, our Charlotte NC ad agency has done a lot of conventional advertising and marketing for clients over the years, and we’ve provided the same model that global agencies provide to Fortune 100 brands, i.e., a company has a new product or new message it wants to sell, and so it pays an ad agency to come up with creative ways to reduce complex ideas and brand ideals into a short, single, overarching message.

Think “We bring good things to life” or  “Just do it.”

Now, of course, it’s getting harder and harder to grow market share through yesterday’s advertising and marketing strategy. Charlotte, NC companies are increasingly looking to connect with consumers online in deeper, more authentic ways than a few blinking banner ads. But going online and talking about oneself can be risky – not to mention difficult.

Even in the digital age from a brand and marketing perspective many companies (and many Charlotte graphic design firms) are used to and most comfortable with the messaging and branding tactics of broadcast.

But online brand representation is not really an exercise in message reduction; interesting complicated thoughts don’t need to be condensed into a singular message. Brands now have to tell stories and plan activities along parallel pathways. They might even need to tell different stories at the same time and have their audiences filter them out, trusting that they’ll find what they like and ignore what they don’t like.

Let’s use Nike and Blendtec as examples of two extremes of online brands. Nike is a huge company with a lot of products. Its marketing-led brand image is a big part of the value of their products, so they need to do innovative online marketing. There are many brands operating like this, e.g., fashion, car companies, spirits, where marketing is a key component of the brand value.

At the other extreme is Blendtec. You would never have considered buying its $600 industrial blender for your home until you saw a charming guy in a white lab coat asking you, “Will it blend?” This is the more significant extreme: a brand that probably didn’t do any significant marketing until the Internet showed up. Then someone somewhere realized that there is a low-cost medium where you can just be funny or clever and gain a huge audience. Blendtec used the Internet to transform itself from a B2B to a B2C company in barely a year.

What we’re seeing here in Charlotte, however, are thousands of small to middle market companies that have a static website but are slowly waking up to the fact that the Web 2.0 has become much more than a place to park your information and hope potential customers stumble across it somehow. You have to be active for anyone to notice. You have to tell rich stories with a believable, informed, friendly voice. You have to have to take the time to build a conversation with the market – not just throw clever slogans at it. And above all, you have to begin building an effective, believable online brand sooner rather than later. The Internet isn’t going away, and companies that figure out to use content-rich social media to deepen consumer relationships will gain a whole host of cost-effective benefits. If you’d like to know more, please visit birdsong gregory online or give Jim Cusson a call at 704-332-2299.
 

AT&T announced on Tuesday that customers in Atlanta could get a type of compact PC called a netbook for just $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan — an offer the phone company may introduce elsewhere after a test period. This year, at least one wireless phone company in the United States will probably offer netbooks free with paid data plans, copying similar programs in Japan, according to industry experts.

But this revolution is not just about falling prices. Personal computers — and the companies that make their crucial components — are about to go through their biggest upheaval since the rise of the laptop. By the end of the year, account executives at Charlotte advertising agencies and other professionals who often compute on the road or on the fly are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge, use Linux instead of Windows, are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards, and cost under $100. Read more about it.

This animated short film sums it up. Back in the day, an advertising agency in Charlotte, NC could simply buy some air on a local television channel or radio station, and people had no choice but to watch or listen. There wasn’t the internet, social media, satellite radio, or an army of global competitors selling the exact same thing. Today, the men and women who work in marketing in Charlotte have to contend with a fractured audience with less time, more choices, and a hunger for authentic, relevant brands. We think Charlotte advertising will never be the same.

Today, it’s not enough to have a well-designed website or a secure e-commerce presence. You need people to actually go there and interact with your online brand. And if you are a member of the branding Charlotte or marketing Charlotte, NC communities, you know you have to pay to play.

Pay per click search engine marketing is a form of online advertising where the advertiser pays to be listed in the sponsored link section of the search engines. When you launch a PPC advertising campaign, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Of course PPC ads, also called sponsored links, are related to the searches made by the users. You have to buy keywords using an auction feature that determines the Cost Per Click (CPC) of a given keyword, this bid also has an influence on your position among the other ads on the page.

You then set a maximum budget for your campaign. That means that if you set a $500 budget for a $1 keyword your ad will virtually be printed on search pages until five hundred users have clicked your ad and landed on one of your website’s pages.

Charlotte, NC advertising agencies please take note: PPC advertising is one of the most effective marketing methods used on the Internet. According to some experts, online marketers will spend more than 5 billion dollars on PPC campaigns by 2010. Consequently the competition for keywords is likely to get tougher and tougher as time goes by, making the optimization of that process ever more necessary for North Carolina advertising agencies, from Charlotte to Raleigh.

Ah, the Apple App Store. Since July 2008, the month when Apple opened its wildly popular library of applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the world has been treated to more than 20,000 Apps, with some 500 million downloaded as of February 2009. So Charlotte, NC communications and marketing agencies take note: consumers rely on their smartphones more than ever, and the advertising and branding possibilities for companies in the Carolinas are endless.

For anyone living in a cave the last two years, the iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a flush multi-touch screen and a minimal hardware interface. What sets this device apart from other smartphones, however, is the proliferation of the programs or “Apps” designed to run on the iPhone and enhance the user’s life in some way. Programs run the gamut from necessary, useful and a ton of fun all the way through to “none of the above.” So while you may find it laughable that someone would pay for an App that simulates a glass of beer being drained or a game of miniature pool (remember the screen is only inches across), Apple and its CEO Steve Jobs stand to make a bundle.

Piper Jaffray Apple analyst Gene Munster puts a dollar value on Apple’s new iPhone/iPod touch software market: up to $1.2 billion in retail next year. How does he get there? Munster estimates a total market size of 85 million iPhone and iPod touch owners by the end of 2009.

In his “neutral” case, he assumes 91% of those 85 million people will use the App Store, and that they’ll spend an average of $10 per year on software — basically, that they’re buying an App or two per year. That’s a $777 million market; Apple’s 30% cut is $233 million. At a 60% operating margin, that’s $163 million in operating income — a 2% addition to his estimate for Apple’s calendar 2009 operating income.

In his “aggressive” case, he thinks 95% of iPhone/iPod touch owners will use the App Store, spending an average $15 each. That’s a $1.21 billion market; Apple’s 30% cut is $363 million. At a 60% operating margin, that’s $254 million in operating income — or a 3% bump for Apple.

Sometimes actually seeing viral marketing examples helps explain this exciting new marketing technique. Viral marketing is a marketing method by which content is passed by word of mouth from one person to the other. The content may support the company’s brand, or simply generate the coveted buzz or excitement among customers. Viral marketing is spread much in the same way viruses and germs are, passed along from user to user. The Internet makes this method of engaging customers very easy, but it also makes competition fierce.

The best part?  According to Leslie Kraemer, Creative Director at birdsong gregory, a Charlotte, NC advertising, marketing, and branding agency, viral marketing is virtually free advertising for any company. “After the initial cost in time and effort invested in the campaign itself,” Leslie points out,  “the actual sharing of the message is free for the company who originated the message. But getting customers to engage in the content and share it among friends, family and coworkers can be tough.”

Here are 3 great examples:

The Manquarium
Subservient Chicken
What Are Your Chances of Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse?

Since the 1950s, Topps has sold baseball trading cards filled with photos and stats, bringing the game to life. Now the company is bringing its cards to life. Beginning Monday, collectors who hold a special Topps 3D Live baseball card in front of a webcam will see a three-dimensional avatar of the player on the computer screen. Rotate the card, and the figure rotates in full perspective. It’s called “augmented reality,” a combination of a real image with a virtual one.

Topps needs to augment reality because baseball cards are struggling in the Internet age. Today’s collectors, most of whom are still boys, can just as easily and less expensively find the sports facts they want online.

While once a $1 billion business, the market for sports trading cards has shrunk to $200 million in yearly revenue today. At birdsong gregory, a Charlotte graphic design firm, we’re keeping an eye on this new technology 

While Charlotte, NC has a number of graphic design studios (where anyone can go to commission a logo or a business card), until recently you were out of luck if you wanted to design your own fabric. That has now changed with the arrival of spoonflower.com.

Anyone with a dream and access to the Internet can upload an image, decide how it should be arranged (repeated, centered, tiled, etc.) and have it printed on combed cotton. Although do-it-yourselfers and professional textile designers are flocking to the site — printers at the company’s headquarters in North Carolina are churning out 40 to 60 yards of fabric a day — Stephen Fraser, who founded the site, said Spoonflower would be in beta, or test, mode until there were more fabric options.