How a Concise Brand Strategy Will Save Your Website Project

You are in charge of Marketing. Your competitor just launched a new site. And it’s good. They have case studies, testimonials, video and interactive diagrams. What’s even more disconcerting is that they are telling a compelling story with a point of view. Their copy is solid, design is modern; They got their branding right.

Your CEO is not happy, wants to see something done about it and wants results fast… but within a budget. How do you get it done?

August 18, 2015/by Garrett Dandreo

How Working on Your Website Improves Your Brand & Business

The other day, I saw a website for an agency that uses the tagline, “We Work on Your Business, Not Just Your Website.” I related to the line’s strategic positioning and have to admit to being disappointed that I hadn’t come up with it myself.

July 22, 2015/by Garrett Dandreo

An Effective Web Design Strategy Starts with Your Brand

We’ve talked about Market Strategy, Brand Strategy and Content Strategy, so why do we need a Web Design Strategy? Because, of all of these strategies, only your Website Design Strategy is externally facing. Let’s put Website Desgn Strategy into context to clarify how these strategies work in tandem.

Strategy_ffunnel2 Using a funnel metaphor, your Market Strategy is your highest level strategic decision, in which you define the markets for your products and/or services and determine whether your market approach is industry specific, solutions or applications-focused or some combination.

Once this is determined, your Brand Strategy encompasses the way you describe what you do, for what audiences with a compettive value statement, which sets you apart from your competition. You socialize this brand internally, and externally at every customer and employee touchpoint.

The power of a relevant Content Strategy — based on sound Market and Brand Strategies — is to create a program to disseminate and exchange your valuable content across all media and over time, which leads us to your Website Design Strategy.

September 29, 2014/by Garrett Dandreo

Why Messaging is so Important for Successful B2B Marketing

Branding is Lead Generation’s best-kept secret. And what is “Messaging” if not the public face of your brand?

When clients and prospects approach us about a lead generation campaign or website, they’re seeking a way to cut through the clutter of similar sounding competitors or the perception of market monotony. Sometimes, they have a target number of leads in mind, or some idea of a marketing campaign to achieve goals, and usually a tight time frame for achieving results.

In these situations, the success or failure of marketing campaigns and websites often comes down to one thing — Messaging —finding the right concept and meaning that will authentically express the value of their brand and engage with customers to make a lead convert.

Here are some compelling reasons for you to focus on your brand messaging before launching a marketing campaign or website:

September 22, 2014/by Garrett Dandreo

5 Reasons Why You Need a Website Content Editor

I’ve seen many clients, who with the best of intentions fall into the same rut year after year. There are certain universal truths about successful websites; one of them is that on website projects that include a quality content editor as part of the dedicated team, the process is smoother, stays on schedule and client satisfaction is high.

August 1, 2013/by Garrett Dandreo

Creating Websites People Love

We create websites people love. Of course I can’t say that officially — although it’s true — as HubSpot has already created a great campaign around “love.”

June 10, 2013/by Garrett Dandreo

Improving User Experience through Digital Storytelling

In a previous post, Three Cases of Websites Using Modern design Techniques, I touched upon some of the exciting new design techniques — that have become available on the web—which are beginning to change the face of the modern website. Digging down a level, these design techniques exist to serve your company’s need to tell your brand story. The speed at which business is being done and the amount of noise you must cut through have elevated the need for distinctive, on-brand digital storytelling.

March 11, 2013/by Garrett Dandreo

Three Cases of Websites Using Modern Design Techniques

As visual storytellers, we are always looking out for exciting new online tools and techniques to build strong digital brands. Up until fairly recently, for the most part, websites have guided users down the navigational path using the “page paradigm.” On a typical site, one is met with a top navigation, and dropdown menus that when clicked transport you to an internal page that has the limited content predefined by the information architecture. This has been fine overall and we’ve built and continue to build many successful websites using this approach.

January 22, 2013/by Garrett Dandreo

Brand Positioning and Messaging Demystified

We do a lot of work for clients in the technology and sciences fields and are continually amazed by the endless acronyms that seem so routine in these fields, but for a relative outsider can sometimes feel daunting. Working with such a client recently on a branding project, I was reminded that the branding work we do is just as full of industry insider terms that can be confusing or seem arcane. This is especially true because even branding experts sometimes play fast and loose with the terminology.

August 8, 2012/by Garrett Dandreo

Why 1/3 of Marketers Are Unhappy With Their Web Site Design

Unhappy Marketers diagram A website redesign is a serious undertaking for any business, and as I discussed in a previous post on the web as an catalyst for better marketing practices, in many instances it forces the client to re-evaluate their brand strategy and marketing.