I’m on a roll right now for blog posting after reading this article about blogging frequency by ProBlogger. As some of you may have heard or seen, I’ve been doing lots of research on logo design and usage.

A logo is a key part of the sales process. 90% or more of my traffic comes from natural search engine placements. I’ve realized that if my logo looks like someone just threw it together, it doesn’t instill trust or confidence in what I’m offering. Often times how good the products, services or offer I have may not matter if that first impression isn’t that good.

A logo that looks great will keep the attentiona of new web site visitors long enough (about 5 seconds) for them to look at the rest of your site and the price of your products. A great logo will create that layer of trust between my site and a complete stranger.

5 Tips in Selecting a Quality Logo

1. A logo needs longevity: you better like it enough to stay “married” to it forever. You can only know this by research, getting feedback from friends, family and strangers, and at some point taking the leap.
2. A logo needs to be original: just because my neighbor’s business has a cool looking logo doesn’t mean I need to go out and get one that looks exactly the same. We’re not talking about cars or boats here - originality is an important differentiator.
3. A logo should look professional: as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If I buy my logo at WalMart, I may get the “lowest price - guaranteed” but that doesn’t mean it’s high quality. We recently purchased a small hutch for our dining room from WalMart and I warn everyone to not even look at it the wrong way for fear that it will fall apart. It looks pretty nice but the quality just isn’t there. Be careful when selecting a logo company.
4. A logo should reflect the time and thought gone in to designing it: see tip number 3. Does the logo company you’re working with have a good track record? Do they have testimonials or feedback from other clients? Are they delivering “plus one” service (see the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard). These are important questions to ask.
5. A logo is the starting point of your whole corporate image: see tip 1. You’re going to be “married” to this look and feel for a long time. Sure there may be revisions or changes down the road, but big changes can ruin the branding you’ve spent time and money establishing. Think if Nike all of a sudden changed their swoosh sign.

I’m very pleased with the logo that was designed for my Door County, Wisconsin site. The company worked closely with me to insure that I was satisfied, they have a good track record, and they seem committed to my success. Let me know what you think of the new logo.

Here were the steps the logo company went through to help me:

Step 1: They sent me a consultation to get a feel for what I wanted.

Step 2: They sent these ideas:

 Step 3: I ran them by family, friends, and the boss (my wife).  We decided on one we liked and made some revisions.

Step 4:  They sent the revisions:

 Step 5: The Boss and I talked things over and made a decision:

Here is a link to Logo Discount Code.

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Dang it baseball! I grew up loving this “Great American Pastime”. Every night after school I’d beg my dad to take me out to play catch until the sun went down. Grounders, Pop-Flys, dives in to the seats (or bushes in my case), the hard line drive - Dad had me act out all the possible scenarios except one - the steriod one.

Now baseball seems to be getting some bad PR: from the Barry Bonds binge on the “cream” to Jose Canseco making money by ratting on everyone, many fans like me have a hard time wondering who isn’t on some kind of performance enhancer.

The other day I watched parts of the Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee hearing, which was a waste of time. It made me so mad to know that one of those guys is straight up lying to everyone, including himself. How can this happen? What are these guys thinking? I don’t know enough about the entire story to take a big stand either way, but I really hope for baseball’s sake that Roger is being honest. He’s been a Cy Young Award winner. A World Series star. And now, even if he’s not convicted, people will label him as part of the “Doping Era”.

How does this tie in to what I generally talk about at MollerMarketing? I could take it a few ways: brand management, the power of press releases, or viral marketing strategy. I’ve read quite a few articles lately about brand management and how helpful it can be to build the credibility and long term existence of your business. Wikipedia.org has this to say about brand management:

Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product’s perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity. Marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product…

One thing I’ve learned about brand management is that it’s never too early to start protecting your brand. I’ve also learned that there are multiple ways to do so. Tony Wright mentioned the following six strategies to protect your brand. Let’s see how Roger Clemens meets up (think about these with your new online business as well):

1. Keep your customers happy: “The Rocket” has done this for many years. The question is now, did he do it legitimately or not?
2. Don’t screw ex-employees: BZZZ! Pardon the language here but it doesn’t look too good for Clemens or McNamee on this one. Someone is screwing someone in the Clemens/McNamee trial!
3. Don’t screw partners: Weren’t Clemens and McNamee really close friends at one time? In the world of business and business partnerships, the Golden Rule still applies. If you want someone to take care of you and help your business grow, you better treat them the way you’d like to be treated.
4. Practice good business
5. Practice good customer service
6. Admit your wrongs – through the proper channels: I skipped going in to any detail on the prior two because this one by far takes the cake - one of these guys is completely wrong. It’s time they cut to the chase and just be honest. In online marketing, there are times when we all make mistakes. The best companies acknowledge those mistakes and do the best they can to resolve the problem. By going the extra mile with clients, even if the experience wasn’t a perfect one, you’ll generally leave a positive impression on the people you work with.

Keep these things in mind as you continue to build your prospective businesses. The sooner you start protecting and building your brand, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

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Wow, just got back from a huge UCA West Coast National Cheer and Dance Competition in Hollywood, California at the Kodak Theater. It was a tiring, terribly energy draining, and a great marketing time! I had the chance to interview Lauri “Looie” Harris, the Universal Cheerleaders Association West Coast Regional Manager. We’ve worked with her now for 4 years doing customized videography and action photography.

Since becoming the Marketing Director for Highlight Sports about 2 years ago, it’s been fun to see the progress we’ve made. My partner and friend, Brett Eden, has been great to work with, always keeping the clients best interest in mind.

My role has been to acquire sponsors who not only help carry the costs of DVD and photography production to dance and cheer participants, but also give themselves unbelieveable targeted traffic to their businesses. Below shows the traffic to our website, www.HighlightSports.com, in the last 7 days. The event started on Saturday, March 3 and went through Sunday, March 4th. We handed out over 2,500 flyers and business cards to remind clients to pick up their “Free DVD and Pictures, brought to you in part by Capezio Dancewear, NuSkin, and Catch the Spirit.” Capezio created a great flyer with a 10% off coupon. On the back was a Scene Interactive ad with a tracking code (I’ll be interested to see how that works!). Here’s our current traffic stats:

I’m learning so much about effective and creative advertising:

1. There’s a huge difference between long term branding and short term ROI ad space.
2. If you want to know if advertising is working, you have to create a way to track it’s progress (stat tracking, landing pages, 800 numbers, special email ads, etc.)
3. The two marketing strategies are vitally important to the growth and prosperity of a business.
4. What Highlight Sports does, not only for the cheer and dance participants, but also for advertisers, is really hard to put a price value on - it’s unbelieveable.

Anyway, there’s my two cents! If you’re interested in direct, targeted traffic to a marketing demographic of primarily 12-24 year old girls and their super involved mothers of 30-55, this type of ad space could be for you. Email me at nate@highlightsports.com.

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Talk about Internet Branding - the video below has been viewed over 42 Million times on You Tube! It’s been commented on 22,162 and Favorited 150,885 times. Can you believe that? I’d be interested to know where this video has taken this comedian, Judson Laipply. With that type of traffic, I’m sure he’s had some amazing things happen with his business. All this funny stuff and he’s actually a professional motivational speaker.

Video posts, as we can see here, are another way we can market our products and services. Video advertising have definitely helped this guy get seen. Here’s some of the reason why:

Creativity - Also know as differentiation in the marketing world. As you think about your product, service or idea - are you one of millions trying to market the same thing? What differentiates you?

Wide Target Audience - Everybody likes comedy; everybody has at least danced once in their lifetime; This video was a compilation of different eras of music and dance that we can all relate to.

Hilarious! - Everybody likes good, clean humor. Just like I talked about the other day - word of mouth advertising can have a huge effect on the traffic you get to your website, repeat business, and bottom line income. I’m sure word of mouth advertising played a huge role in over 42 million people viewing and sharing this video. Then it was favorited 150,885 times.

Check it out!

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What do you all think? As I watched the news tonight after the game, the top 10 Super Bowl Commercials came on; only a few of them were really funny to me, but the main question is, “How effective will they be for the companies that invested millions in advertising money to be seen during the Super Bowl?”

I liked the “Things you can do with one finger” by e-Trade. The Budweiser beer commercial were everyone was slapping one another was pretty stupid. What was the point? I liked the “beard comb over”, but was it really that effective for Sierra Mist? What kind of ROI will they get, or was their entire plan to brand themselves more effectively? The Kevin Federline idea by Nationwide was really pretty funny - it had great meaning - “life comes at you fast”, just like it did for Kevin Federline and Brittney Spears. The snickers commercial “accidental kiss” was pretty funny, but how effective was it for Snickers? Was it really worth the $1,000,000+ they probably spent to get on TV during the Super Bowl?

What did you all think? Why do these companies invest so much? What confirms their buying decision? Can they actually track the response of viewers or do they care?

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