Having just completed a website redesign of my own site, I fully understand the time and effort it takes to find just the right images to represent who you are, what you do and the message you want to send.

In fact, having a range of photos on hand – especially if you sell products online – is always valuable. Whether you’re putting together an email blast, a new brochure, a website or an ad, you can’t go wrong with high-quality photos.
But how do you choose the right photos? Where do you get them and how much will they cost?

First, remember that photos for any marketing purpose should fit with your culture, positioning and topic. Consider the message you’re sending and who’s going to receive it. What’s the goal? What do you want the recipient or viewer to feel or do when he or she sees it? A photo should reflect the purpose and intent of your overall message, so keep this in mind when choosing images.

Ideally, your business will create a photo library – probably a mix of shots taken by various team members, photos taken by marketing staff and some taken by professional photographers.

To add to your library, take your smartphone with you everywhere and shoot pictures of things that look interesting to use in your blogs and website.  Your own shots will be personal and you can make sure they fit with your culture and message.

Remember: Protect yourself. Always make sure you have the proper license (more on this below) or a signed release to use any photo, especially if it includes people. Create an in-house release form and get it signed by the subject(s) if the photo will be used anywhere in print or online.

Stock images

Sometimes an in-house photo just won’t do. A glossy brochure or smart website filled with amateur smartphone shots isn’t going to cut it with your customers.

You may need to buy stock images from an online site to give your material the ‘wow’ factor. There are many sites available, and the quality and pricing of photos varies a great deal depending on the photographer, subject, license and size.

Some popular sites for high-quality photos include iStock (by Getty Images), Shutterstock, Dreamstime and Depositphotos. All of these sites offer royalty-free photos, illustrations and video clips for sale (meaning you can purchase and use them in your marketing without having to pay royalties or license fees for each use or each sale).

A few things to keep in mind when purchasing stock photos:

• Size and resolution – Make sure you buy the right size photo for your needs. For online use, a small, 72 dpi photo is usually fine, but if you need to make it larger or use it in print, you’ll need something bigger. Check with your designer to find out the dimensions you need before buying an image.

• Cost/budget – Stock photos get expensive quickly. Depending on the number of photos you need, it may be cheaper to buy a subscription than to purchase individual images or credits (different sites have different purchase options, so check the rules and prices carefully). Start with your budget in mind and figure out what works best for you.Hint: Sometimes different photo sites have the same images available at different prices. If you find a shot you want that’s out of your price range, do a quick search on other sites or by using Google Image Search to see if you can find the same one somewhere else.

• Licensing – Stock photo sites offer different licenses for different needs. Most of the time, a standard license will be fine. However, if you’re going to use a photo on a product that will be available for sale, or if you need to use the image in a print run of over 500,000 items, you’ll probably need an extended license, which is more expensive.

• Subject and message — Avoid the tired, clichéd shots of business people looking thoughtfully out of the window. These have had their day. Pictures of people are great, but look for creative ways to share your message.

Still have questions about finding the right photos for your message and marketing? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

Have you been working on improving your website for mobile users? Fantastic. Now, what about improving your user experience across all devices and platforms?

Today’s consumers are on the go, they do their homework online (probably on multiple devices) and with the help of technology, they’re pushing marketing in new directions. With that in mind, let’s take a look at omni-channel marketing and the message you’re sending your customers.
What is omni-channel marketing?

Omni-channel marketing has to do with the change that’s taking place as consumers connect with your brand across an increasingly wide range of devices and marketing channels.

For instance, customers can visit your website, see your posts on Facebook, view an email on their tablet, call you to ask questions and then stop by your store. In all of these instances – and all devices – your marketing message and brand should be consistent.

If you have an e-commerce site, you want your customers to be able to see and order your products easily from any device. And if someone creates an account, places an item in their shopping cart from their phone and then leaves your site, you’ll want them to be able to jump back in later – even from a different device – and complete their transaction. (Ideally, you’d even send them an email reminder after 24 hours if they still have items waiting in their cart.)

The ultimate goal is to make visiting and purchasing from your company as easy and pleasurable as possible. The easier you make it to buy, the more likely customers are to make a purchase and come back in the future to do it again.

Tips for improving your omni-channel marketing

• Reach out in a variety of different ways – Customers will take different paths on their “journey” to buy your products and services. They may start by visiting your website from a phone, take a more in-depth look from a desktop computer, and then come by your store to take advantage of a discount you send them through email.  Think of all the different ways your customers can see what you offer and find ways to connect them.
• Track your results – Watch your Google Analytics (or other analytics) carefully and see how people are using your website, especially by device. Are they purchasing from their phone/tablet/desktop most of the time? Are they visiting your site by phone, getting a coupon and coming into your store? Are coupons sent via email campaigns more successful than those on your Facebook page? It’s critical to track what’s working and what’s not and make changes accordingly.
• Do an overall analysis – How does your site look and work from a phone and a tablet? Is it easy to see and buy the products? Have you mentioned your sale offers to your most loyal customers (i.e., the ones who like you on Facebook and are on your email list)? Do you offer live chat services, or is your phone number front and centre so customers can call if they have questions?Have someone – preferably a marketing professional, but definitely someone outside your organisation – walk through your site with you on multiple devices and various browsers, and take a look at how these compare with all your marketing messages and campaigns.  If there are questions or improvements to be made, this is a good place to get started.

Need help creating a consistent message?

Struggling to get a grasp on omni-channel marketing? Need to send a consistent message across different channels? We can help. Contact Breathe Marketing today to discuss your options.

Your website can be your most powerful sales and marketing tool if you understand what’s working and what’s not. But how do you get this information? The good news is, there are many tools available to help you analyse your website performance, and many of them are free. One of the most important free tools available is Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics and what does it do?

Google Analytics is a service (provided by Google, of course) that generates detailed information about your website traffic. With Analytics, you can get all kinds of data about how many visitors you’re getting, where they come from, how long they stay, how many pages they visit and which pages they’re most likely to view when they get there.

Not only that, but you can see your website performance over time and get a sense of your visitors’ behaviour.  Are you getting more or fewer visitors than you used to? Are some pages much more popular than others? Are visitors spending less time on certain pages than you want? Once you have this data, you can start looking at ways to improve your overall site performance.

Google also provides information about which browsers and operating systems your visitors are using, as well as whether they’re viewing the site from a desktop/laptop computer or a mobile device. Since more and more visitors are now using mobile devices, this information provides solid clues about whether mobile viewers are able to access and use your site.

How do you get Analytics?

To get Analytics running on your site, there are two basic things you need to do: 1) Use (or open) a Gmail account with Google to sign up for the service, and 2) Get a snippet of html code – which Google will provide for you – installed on the pages of your website. Usually, your marketing consultant or web developer can assist you in getting and installing this code so you can start tracking data.

How to use this information to help you

Having statistics about your site is nice – and these alone may help give you some ideas about what to improve – but Google Analytics can also help you measure campaigns, conversions and sales.

For instance, if you’re sending out an email campaign that’s connected to a designated landing page on your website, Analytics can help you track campaign results by showing you exactly how many visitors came to that page and whether or not they took the action you wanted them to (such as filling out a contact form, taking advantage of a special offer, etc.). You can use this information to determine how successful your efforts are.

You can also set up Goals in Analytics to see how many people are taking a specific action. For example, let’s say you have one primary goal when people come to your site: You want them to sign up for your newsletter so that you capture their email addresses. With Analytics, you can set up a Goal to track how many visitors are doing what you want them to. Once you know this, you can try making adjustments to your content, layout, buttons, etc., to see if performance improves.

Have more questions about Google Analytics and how to use it? Need help setting up goals? Contact us – and stay tuned for more on Google Analytics!

Having a mobile-friendly website is now vital for businesses – and in Australia, it’s probably even more important. Why? According to a recent report by Business Insider, Australians “have adopted smartphones and tablets into everyday culture faster than consumers in many other developed economies.” The country’s geography is part of the reason for this change, but Australian carriers have also expanded networks and data infrastructure in major urban areas, creating demand for more mobile devices.  Smartphone penetration has reached 72% of all mobile phone users in Australia (up from 36% in 2010), and 71% of smartphone users said they accessed the Internet using their phones on a daily basis (up from 56% in 2012).

The bottom line: If your visitors can’t access your site, find your contact information or call you from their phones, you’re missing out on a big part of the market.

Be aware also that there’s a difference between your website being mobile friendly and mobile responsive.  Mobile friendly is merely when your website resizes to fit on a mobile screen.  Mobile responsive is one step further where the design of your site changes according to the size of the screen the website is being accessed from.  This can mean you redesign your navigation bar, or place wording in different places on the screen.  If you’re redeveloping your website and choose a design theme (there are thousands available in WordPress), mobile responsiveness may already be built into the theme – but check to be sure.

Here are some questions to ask and some suggestions to make sure your website is accessible for as many viewers as possible:

• First, take a good look at your site using different types of smartphones, tablets and laptops. (Here’s an extra tip: Sit down with someone from outside your organisation to get an outsider’s perspective about the site, too.) Make sure you view it on PCs and Macs, iPhones, iPads, Androids, etc as well as in different browsers such as Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Does your site look the way you want it to in all cases? Does it look good in one format but not others? Take notes and see where improvements need to be made, and then talk with your web developer.
• How easy is it to find your contact information? How quickly can a viewer find your phone number and call you? Do you have a click-to-call feature? If you’re a local business that relies on local customers, do you have a map that viewers can access if they’re in their car and driving to your premises? Ideally, contact information should be front and center on your home page so that if nothing else, a visitor can call you for more information.
• Keep in mind that a mobile user doesn’t have a mouse for navigation; everything is done with fingers and thumbs. Give your site the ‘fat finger’ test: Are the buttons easy to push? Is it easy to zoom, navigate and click? Does the viewer have quick access to key points or does it require a lot of scrolling? When in doubt, simplify your text and get key information across early.

Have more questions about how to get your site in shape for mobile users? Contact us!

What is a search engine?

An internet search engine is a database of websites, videos, images and other content. Search engines determine what to include in their database based on many things (such as content quality, level of authority, etc). Once a website is included in a search engine, it’s considered to be “indexed.”

Note: If a website is not indexed, it won’t show up when people search for it, even if they type in a specific domain name such as www.yourbusiness.com.

There are many Internet search engines, including Yahoo!, Bing, MSN, Ask.com and AOL, but Google is arguably the most powerful and well-known.

Google and other search engines include a search tool which people use to find information, products or services on the web. (You probably use Google all the time yourself.) When you type in words for a search – like “picture frames,” for instance – Google immediately searches from millions of existing websites to find the best matches for those words, and then displays all the known websites that match in the order it thinks best and most relevant.

How does that work?

Search engines use software tools called spiders to help ‘crawl’ content, looking for information to bring back the the database about sites they visit. The information gets stored, which helps you get your search results more quickly.

When spiders visit web pages, they’re looking for a number of things, but two of the main things Google spiders look for are:

1) What words are used on a page, and
2) Where those words are found on a page.

If a spider comes across a website that is not in the search engine’s database already – and if it determines that the site is good – it will include the information in the database.

So how does knowing all this help you?

When you sell products or services on the web, you want people to find your website easily – not only that, but you want your website to be on the first page of results when people use search terms that match what you sell.

By knowing what spiders are looking for and building your website content to match, you make it easier for search engines and customers to find your site and purchase your products and services.

Have questions about this? Let us know – and stay tuned for future posts on optimising your site for search engines!