Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
What’s the point to Advertising?
I mean we all have great customers spreading the word for us, sales are doing okay, we are in business of course. So, what’s the point to advertising?
Well there isn’t one. If you think that your sales are great and you have enough customers, then enjoy the ride. Keep doing what you’re doing, making customers happy.
Now if you want new people to visit you that don’t know about you or your customers, or if you want your current customers to come visit you more often, there might be a point to advertising.
But let’s be straight for a moment, you can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and get nothing out of it. There are hundreds of avenues to spend your marketing dollars so which ones make sense?
There is an old saying, “Half of all advertising doesn’t work, the trouble is we don’t know which half.”
In today’s day and age however, this is becoming more and more untrue. Now, this is great for you, the business that is adverting. The kicker here is working with advertising companies that want to help you with that.
At the end of the day, advertising is about getting you noticed. The challenge is getting you noticed by the right people.
At Intrigue Media, we believe our clients deserved to get noticed, and that is exactly what we do. Give us a shout and learn how we can get the right people in your community to notice you.
Sincerely, the Team at Intrigue Media
Intrigue Media, be seen in your community.
Is your email newsletter working?
In the age of smart phones, tablets, and ever-shrinking portable computers, there are more mediums for sending rich messages about your brand to your database. Text messages, in-app advertising, ppc advertising, banner ads, and email are just some of the new mediums that have emerged in the last decade.
In this article, we'll be focusing on one of the veterans of this group: email marketing.
Sometimes referred to as email newsletters, e-blasts, or inbox marketing, email marketing has been around almost as long as email has.
Maybe you've started marketing to your business's database of contacts through email. If so, good work! You've may have realized that some of the many benefits that email has over snail mail marketing, including cheaper costs and less work.
Have you taken your email marketing to the next level?
If you're not sure what the "next level" is, here are a couple of questions that can help you figure this out:
- Can you tell who reads the email messages you send (and who doesn't)?
- Can you tell who is interested in certain information in your email messages?
- Can you gauge how many people on Facebook or Twitter are talking about your email messages?
- Are you able to tell how many sales you have made from email messages?
If you answered no to those questions, then you might want to learn more about best-practice email marketing. We've written a 10-page eBook that will teach you:
- The type of content that works well for email
- email call-to-actions
- Designs and layouts that get people to click on your content
- How to optimize your email links and call-to-actions
- How to analyze the success of your email marketing
- How to go about tweaking your layouts to increase effectiveness
Learn More About Email Marketing By Downloading Our Article
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
How to know if your business's website is performing
In today's web-driven universe, there are a million people with a million different opinions about what makes a good website.
Picture this- a businessman buys a beautiful storefront location in the downtown area of his city. The location is great, lots of potential customers walk by every day, and the way his store is setup fits his products and services perfectly.
This setup seems to work well for the first year. However, after a couple years of the same setup and products, with diminishing sales and lessening in-store traffic, dust begins to collect on the display shelves. The businessman arrives one morning to find that someone has thrown a rock through the big window at the front of the store.
Another year goes by, and the window still hasn't been repaired. Because of the broken window, garbage has blown into your store. Barely anyone even stops to glance into the store, and vistors have dwindled to less than ten a month. While the businessman still keeps the store open, he hasn't made a sale from it in months.
You're probably wondering why the businessman let his store go to waste, or why he even keeps it open.
This story is really about what many businesses have done with their websites. The website is the face of a business and brand online - an online "storefont", if you will.
While it seems ridiculous that someone would leave their storefront window broken for a year, this is often what happens online. Many businesses' homepages have broken links, missing images, or dated design. While these are large contributors to why these websites don't generate sales, the main reason is that these websites were never designed to make sales in the first place.
At Intrigue Media Online, we focus on helping businesses make sales through their websites. At the end of the day, the bottom line for gauging a website's value is whether or not it is generating sales for a business.
Learn about the online marketing funnel or contact us to see if we can help you make money through your website.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Stumped with #SocialMedia, #Web stuff or #Technology? Check out @Mashable!
Over the past 7 years, Mashable.com has established itself as one of the top social media, business, and technology resources. If you're looking for the latest rumours about the iPad 3, trying to get a Pinterest invitation, or interested in learning more about the latest and greatest ways to optimize your website for Google, Mashable has it all.
Friday, February 10, 2012
How do family counsellors help families?
Read how family counsellors, family therapists, and family psychologists work with the entire family.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Creating Visibility in Your Community
At Intrigue Media, we believe local businesses deserved to get noticed. But in today’s world it is tough to stand out of the crowd and get noticed in your community.
This article is about how to get noticed in your community. First of all, we should distinguish the three forms of getting noticed.
- Promotional Advertising – This includes print, radio, video advertising (that’s us!), billboards, or anything that is being placed in front of people.
- Search Advertising – This includes Google search rankings, paid search rankings, Yellow Pages, or anything else that shows up when people are looking for something to purchase.
- Word of Mouth – this includes friends telling friends about you, people writing recommendations about you, or people sharing your content online through social media.
The key to successful marketing is finding an effective and affordable mix of these three types of advertising. The first method, promotional, is necessary to let people know you exist. If no one knows about you, how can they buy from you? Finding media sources that can offer repetitive impressions on the same viewer is critical in order to build familiarity (Click here to read more about creating familiarity in your marketplace). Here is a breakdown of the investment that can be associated with different promotional advertising media:
| Ad Type | Ad Price | Duration | Impact |
| Newspaper – 1/8 Page | $300 | One Day | Up to 40,000 impressions |
| Radio | $120 | 30 Seconds | Up to 60,000 listeners |
| Intrigue TV’s | $300 | Entire Month | Up to 120,000 viewers |
The second method, search, is critical in order to be found when someone is ready to buy and they do not know where to buy from. Knowing where to be is easy, just ask your customers. If 9 out of 10 use Google to find local businesses, and 1 out of 10 use Yellow Pages, 411, or Goldbook, then make sure your budget reflects this. This typically requires shifting dollars from print or directories to Search Engine Optimization (We can help!) or Paid Search (Yep, we can also help with that!) rather than growing your current marketing budget. So, ask yourself, have you asked your customers how they find information and have you shifted your budget to match their response?
The third method, word of mouth, is a major part of any successful business and needs to be looked at today differently than even 5 years ago. Doing a great job and satisfying your customers is the easiest way to spread the word about your business. They like the experience, then tell their friends, and their friends come to your business, and so on. The difference today is that we can encourage this type of behaviour through different channels. Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+ give consumers a chance to spread the word to hundreds, even thousands of people instantly. By using these tools and giving people a chance to connect with you through these channels, you give them a chance to spread your message effortlessly through their social and professional networks. Using customer oriented contests like photo contests, video submission contests, or trivia contests, to name a few, you can increase engagement with your customers and their friends, helping you spread the word to new people.
In the end, we all need to be proactive in order to create visibility and engagement with our existing and potential customers so that we can increase loyalty and sales in our business. Whether you use promotional, search, or word of mouth advertising, the idea is the same- grow your bottom line. So, what are you doing differently this year versus last year to create visibility for your business?
At Intrigue Media, we believe local businesses deserve to get noticed. Visit Intrigue Media's Facebook Page, check out the Intrigue Media Blog, follow Intrigue Media on Twitter and visit the new Intrigue Media website and watch our videos to see what we are doing to make this happen. If you like what you experience, give us a call so we can begin the conversation to see how we can help you get noticed!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Gratitude
Last night I dreamed that I had to move from my small but cute basement apartment into a dank, dirty little place...my window had a view of a brick wall...and any guests would have to pass through the bathroom on their way in...
But then, somewhere in the throes of my unconsciousness, I realized that I was dreaming. I didn't have to move out of my cute little apartment.Waking up with this kind of gratitude was a fabulous start to the day!Apparently, taking time to be grateful can also make you more productive, as illustrated in this TED talk. It's also a great defense against depression.So I challenge all of you to recount 3 things that you are grateful for, right now.What are you grateful for?Thursday, February 2, 2012
How do psychologists and counsellors help with depression?
Read how Toronto psychologists, Toronto therapists, and Toronto counsellors help you or a loved one cope with depression.
Spring in Guelph?
The trees are starting to come back to life again!
Is spring on it's way for real this time?
Friday, January 27, 2012
How do psychologists help people?
How do psychologists help people? Read how psychologists, therapists, and counsellors help through psychotherapy.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Do you think #SocialMedia is important for your #business?
We think so.
Social media is a crucial component of marketing strategies for small businesses. Nick Stamoulis hit the nail on the head in his article about why social media is great for inbound marketing.
One of the best points Nick makes about social media is that it is a great tool to target people who are already looking for the services your business offers. This is much more effective than interupting masses of people as they go about their day to day lives, as the old school of marketing thought would dictate.
In addition to using social media to target a captivated audience, there are many other great benefits of having a social media presence.
Social media can:
- Be used to funnel leads to your website
- Let customers have a direct line to the heart of your business
- Establish you as an industry expert by allowing you to share your knowledge
- Create a means to connect with your customers on a personal level
These are just a few of the benefits of having a social media presence online, however, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Interested in learning more?
Visit our website to learn about how social media can help your business.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Enjoying the #warm #winter in #Guelph? (And #WRAwesome/#KWAwesome #Cbridge)
Where's the cold?
Image courtesy of Maunger
It's been an unseasonably warm Winter so far in Canada, and we haven't seen much of the snow, ice, and bone-chilling temperatures that we're accustomed to seeing at this time of year.
While this is positive (EG: less snow shoveling) and negative (EG: less snowboarding) for many different people, we'd love to know how this warm weather is affecting you.
How is this warm winter affecting you?
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Great #MarriageAdvice from Dr. Dan Daulton
Is working on your marriage your new years resolution? Here is some great marriage advice from Dr. Dan Daulton, who offers psychological services in southern Ontario.
http://www.daltonassociates.ca/index.cfm?page=art_counselToronto
