Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Standardizing a Fragmented Market

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

When you think “I want a website” who do you call? Really? There is no major presence in the web development world. Sure, there are companies that offer great web products and/or software as a service (SaaS), but where do you go if you just want a simple, customized website? One with some basic features like a blog or an about page or how about a simple store or commerce?

Why even think about this? Competition is good right? Well, look at every other major industry and you’ll see a few major leaders… The car industry, electronics, even computers… but why not web development?

We think it’s coming and we want to be one of the companies that people think of when they think of building a website. So, how are we going to do it? We’re going to start with some research. While we’re not going to be able to be the solution for everything web related, we can certainly find our niche.

So, the question is: Who do we want to be, Ford or Ferrari? Do we want to what the average person thinks of or the wealthy person? It’s actually not too difficult to find out and over the next few weeks, that is what we’re going to be doing. We will be reaching out to local businesses and agencies around the Denver area to see what’s in demand. From that, we’ll have a decent idea of where we’re going to go.

Stay tuned for our findings!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo! Buzz

How to make a killer commercial for under 1k

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Not too shabby, yeah? Ok, so the one thing we maybe shouldn’t have skimped on was a makeup artist, but being that this was our first commercial and we wanted to do it on a budget, it’ll have to do! In all honestly, this commercial came out WAAAAY better than we had ever hoped (especially on our budget) and below is how we got it done. Keep in mind this guide assumes you are doing all the leg work yoruself, you’re renting the equpiment, and you live in or around Denver (for rental locations, but you should be able to find something comparible near you). Now it’s time to suck it up and make some commercial magic!

 

canon5d

Canon 5D Mark II$200 plus tax

Amazing, simply amazing. This still camera is capable of filming at an astounding 1920×1080 resolution resulting in some of the nicest video I’ve ever seen! We shot some test shots before heading to the studio and needless to say I was blown away! Unfortunately I don’t have those test shots, but trust me, they were amazing.

studio

Studio Space – 6 hours for $200 plus tax

We were quite pleased with North Denver Photographers. The facility was great and the staff was nice and helpful. They had tons of lights (similar to the ones in the little photo) just lying around so we were able to light thing fairly well. The studio we went to was meant for photo shoots so the lighting wasn’t exactly perfect, but with a little color correction in Final Cut Express we were able to make it look right for most of the shots.

color-correction-before-and-after
balloons

Water Balloons – $4.99 plus tax

We bought our balloons from our local Walmart. Now, let me tell you a little bit about how water balloons have changed over the years. Remember when water balloons used to explode when they hit something? Remember how fun it was getting everything really wet? Yeah, well, that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Apparently the water balloon people decided they needed to design every balloon tough enough to be shot from a cannon or sling shot which made it practically impossible to break it by throwing it. I think you’ll see what I mean when you watch this next video.

express

Final Cut Express – $199 plus tax

This piece really saved us when it came to making this commercial look really polished. It was all in the color correction. Turns out all you have to do is apply a "Color Balance" filter and play with some settings. Now, it’s not quite that easy, but you’ll get an idea about how to do it below. Note that there is more than one way to get the image to look how you want, but this is my quick and lazy approach. One thing I forgot to do before sending it to our media buyer (the guy who buys our commercial spots from the networks and such) was run the "Broadcast Safe" filter. Doing this ensures that the color in the video doesn’t make the TV freak out.

final-cut-color-correction
voice123_logo

Voice123 – ~$300 (name your price)

Imagine crowd sourcing (ie 99 Designs) but for voice talent. This site is amazing! All you do is upload your script and within 1 day you will have 10, 20, or more (you decide the limit) "auditions" for the part. You can even browse their database of talent, listen to a sample, and invite that person to speak your script. What is really helpful is they have a pricing guide to help you get started. You can’t beat that! Once you get your audio, simply drop it into Final Cut and you’re ready to rock and roll. I wonder if these people just have recording booths setup at their houses, the audio sounds so rediculously good.

   

Well, that’s all I really have for this round. Maybe next go I’ll talk a bit about what it costs to run a commercial in the Denver area. Guess how much it costs to run a 30 second spon on ESPN! One hint… lower.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo! Buzz

Does Your Website Sit At The Cool Kids’ Table?

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Think about it: the first page of Google search results is like the popular kids’ table in the cafeteria. It’s the 10 select seats that have everyone’s attention, and all the websites are just dying to get a spot among the most highly-regarded sites. It’s hard to grab a spot with “in” crowd, and if you’re lucky enough to have one, you’d sell your own mother just to keep it.

So what do you do to try to try to hang with the big boys? Often times, you’ll try mimicking the other websites that are already popular, desperately hoping you can replicate that ‘je ne sais quoi’ of a successful, popular website. Sometimes you’ll say things to grab attention, but they always come across as awkward or non-trustworthy. You may even resort to blackhat methods such as keyword stuffing or link farming, but this eventually has the opposite affect, making you a pariah once you’re exposed by the webcrawler narcs (and you will be exposed!)

How can you avoid having your website treated like the smelly kid in class that no one wants to interact with? Enter your new mentors in website popularity: LiquidFire and Number1Ranking.net. We’re here to give you an SEO makeover, guaranteed to get your site on the first page of Google search engine result pages (SERP’s). We’ll work with your website from header to footer to ensure that it’s got what both human beings and web crawlers are looking for.

Best of all, Number1Ranking.net promises to deliver page one search rankings, or they work for free!

Just drop us a line through our contact page and we’ll hook you up big time– slick web design, user-friendly features, top-ten SERP rankings, maybe even a date for the dance!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo! Buzz

Ready for your Closeup?

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Think you need a big budget to get commercials on cable TV? Think again.

We’ve partnered up with award-winning media buyer company “The Cable Girl” MIACO Media Inc. (miacomedia.com) to bring you everything you need to advertise your business: websites, search engine marketing and optimization, and now TV placements!

Our forces combined will help you reach your audience through major cable network advertising for a fraction of what the other guys charge, as The Cable Girl has long-standing relationships with vendors and little overhead. This means your company can enjoy ‘big time’ television exposure without the ‘big time’ price tag.

You can even measure the effectiveness of your TV ad when you let LiquidFire create a custom landing page for you!

So hurry– go tell your boss that you’ve found a way to increase your marketing ROI and become the office hero you’ve always dreamed of becoming. You can even tell him it was your idea– we don’t mind.

Think you need a big budget to get commercials on cable TV? Think again.
We’ve partnered up with award-winning media buyer company “The Cable Girl” MIACO Media Inc. (miacomedia.com) to bring you everything you need to advertise your business: websites, search engine marketing and optimization, and now TV placements!
Our forces combined will help you reach your audience through major cable network advertising for a fraction of what the other guys charge, as The Cable Girl has long-standing relationships with vendors and little overhead. This means your company can enjoy ‘big time’ television exposure without the ‘big time’ price tag.
You can even measure the effectiveness of your TV ad when you let LiquidFire create a custom landing page for you!
So hurry– go tell your boss that you’ve found a way to increase your marketing ROI and become the office hero you’ve always dreamed of becoming. You can even tell him it was your idea– we don’t mind.
Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo! Buzz