BLOG

about-us

Be Different

So you’re offering a fabulous Real Estate Service!

>But what will that matter if no one knows about it?

>Building brand awareness means getting exposure for your brand and making sure it is widely recognizable among your target audience.

>Likewise, it means engaging your target market to ensure that people not only know about your brand but are also interested in it.

>Where should you start? Here are five must-do steps for building brand awareness:

 

1. Have a great web site and use it everywhere. All of your marketing and advertising efforts flow back to your web site so make sure your web makes a great impression. You will loose referrals since the first thing a person does with a referral is check you out via your web site. Make sure your web site stimulates the right thoughts and feelings about your company. If you want to convey knowledge, trustworthiness and reliability, for example, an image that seems to say playful and fun will be all wrong. Use a tagline with your image to drive your point home.

2. Develop an effective brand message and use it in all of your campaigns, on your website, in your marketing materials and on everything you share with customers and prospects. Have you ever heard how important it is to tell them, tell them and tell them again? Such is the case with your brand message. Using a clear and consistent brand message helps build trust while conflicting messages confuse consumers and make them reluctant to give your products or services a try. Keep your message consistent whether you are writing a press release, creating an email signature, crafting an ad or designing a sign.

3. Be different. No matter what business you are in, you will most likely have competitors after the same customers you seek. Why should they buy from you instead of another company? Because you’ve figured out what your target audience values, found a way to provide it and positioned yourself as different from your competitors. You can differentiate your brand in terms of ads and promotions, website presence, social media tactics, products, services and packaging. Use every consumer interaction, whether it happens online, in person or by phone, to differentiate your brand from your competitors’.

4. Keep your promises. Too many brands promise consumers the world but fail to meet expectations. To build your brand, carefully research what your audience values the most and promise to give it to them. Then, make good on your promises each and every time. If you fail in your efforts, don’t just chalk it all up to experience. Learn from it and fix the problem, ensuring that you will deliver on your promise next time. And be sure to make things right with your customer. Going above and beyond in your efforts to regain your customer’s trust will not only help you keep that customer but may also translate into brand awareness building word-of-mouth referrals. Additionally, update your research frequently. Your audience’s values may evolve, and you need to keep up with the changes.

5. Get your brand out there. Are you buying ads and marketing your website? That’s probably not enough. To build brand awareness, you want to get your brand as much exposure as possible. There are many other ways to gain exposure for your brand, including:

Contact us to get to the head of the pack a & make sure your web site is
ready for PRIME TIME!!!

How are you going to grow your business and get to the head of the pack?

Growing Your Business

A great way is to sell more to your existing customer base! That is not always possible.

  • Will your customers refer you?
  • Are you reaching new potential customers?
  • Can you re-active past clients into action?

You have to reach out, advertise, promote & let everyone know what you do
and why they benefit from doing business with you!


It starts with your web site!

 Is your web site:

  • making a great first impression?

  • selling from the home page?

  • have a strong call to action?

  • contains easy to find social media links?

  • displays your phone number prominently on the top of the home page?

  • have a compelling conversion strategy?

  • effectively uses video

Then we use all avenues to build awareness & drive your business forward
looking for the best ROI.

  • Email

  • Social Media

  • SEO

  • Google Ads

  • Facebook Ads

  • Event Marketing

  • Every Door Direct

  • CRM

Contact us today & get to the head of the pack ASAP!

Make sure your web site is ready for PRIME TIME!!!

 

Are You Making These 4 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes?

 

Mistake 1: Not promoting your site. If you don’t promote your site, your site won’t show up as you won’t be able to compete with 100,000 to million of other sites in your niche.
 
Mistake 2: Not optimizing your site. Search engine optimization will give you better search engine ranking and  free traffic.
 

Mistake 3: Give up too soon. Internet marketing takes time. You may not see results for several weeks or months from SEO or other marketing strategies. So, don’t give up too soon. Be patient, and if you do the right things, you’ll start to see the results.
 
Mistake 4: Not seeking professional help or not outsourcing time-consuming tasks. You may be able to do some promotions yourself, but you’re probably not an expert in every facet of internet marketing. So, hire a professional to do the job right for you. You’ll get more traffic,  you’ll get better results and you can use your time for other important business tasks.
 
Implement the Internet marketing strategies I recommend here to promote your website or lets meet and I can provide recommendations to maximize your digital potential.  

If you have a WordPress site we can provide a new custom home page for $450 and revised or additional back pages based on the new design for $85 each!

Make sure your web site is ready for PRIME TIME!!!

5 Key Rules For Building Your Business With Social Media

1. Don’t Be Boring: Yes, this should be obvious … unfortunately too many organizations slip into jargon mode in their communications. Talk to your customers/clients/potential new contacts like real people: keep it to the point and interesting.

2. Don’t Come on Too Strong: Don’t overwhelm with too many updates or too much information. The idea is to build awareness and interest first. Selling should be a secondary consideration. Most people view social media for entertainment and information purposes not to shop.

cats and social media

3. Be a Good Listener: Conversations are two-way communications. Don’t just give your audience a way to talk back: truly listen to what your audience is saying, and be sure to respond.

4. It’s Not All about You: It’s true that everyone loves to talk about themselves – that includes your customers. Showcase them as a part of your story, share the impact their stories and experiences and invite them to chime in with their ideas and testimonials.

5. Be Yourself: Your company, (especially if you are using your personal page should have a unique personality and point of view. Express this in your posts and enable your contacts/customer get to know you better, form a connection and that sets you apart from other organizations.

The purpose of social media is to create more awareness of your company and by raising awareness generate more conversations/sales on and off line.

Time and resources permitting you should have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest & LinkedIn.

SAS Digital provides advice on how to use social, set up pages and provide daily posting/monitoring. Contact us to discuss how you can maximize your social media opportunities.

Why You Should Pay Attention To Your Web Design

The natural sequence for reading involves a very specific order. First we look at the image, if there is one. Then we scan the headline. Then we read the body copy (if the headline is interesting enough).

An image at the top of the page is a common practice, to catch people’s attention and draw them into the article. But if you’re doing this, you’d better be sure it’s above your headline.

David Ogilvy, (a pioneering advertising giant), found that, on average, headlines placed below an image are read by 10% more people than headlines above. Since reading the headline is a prerequisite of reading the body copy, you’re losing a potential 10% of your audience if you’re distracting them with an image in the wrong place. If you have a large audience—say 145,000 people—then putting your image below your headline could be costing you nearly fifteen thousand potential readers! As Ogilvy sardonically said, that’s not to be sneezed at.

Captions get read more than body copy—four times more

An image placed somewhere in the middle of text draws the reader’s attention more than the text itself. It might even draw him out of the copy (see the next point). For that reason, it’s extremely important to have a caption under every image—to press your main point home, and hopefully to get him back intothe copy.

Captions under images are read on average 300% more than the body copy itself, so not using them, or not using them correctly, means missing out on an opportunity to engage a huge number of potential readers. (For images above a headline, the headline itself can serve as a caption.)

In copy that aims to sell something, your caption should include your brand name and your promise. That way, you have another chance to get your reader interested and to push him back into the copy—or even directly to the call to action. You have to make the most of his brief attention.

For other kinds of content, figure out the central purpose of the page itself, and encapsulate that in your caption. It is wise to craft your captions as you would craft your headlines—because they are similar lengths, with similar purposes.

Images without clear relevance are a waste of space

If the images you’re using are not clearly tied to your value proposition, or to the central theme of your page, then they will only confuse your readers. At best, they’ll be pointless distractions. At worst, they’ll give the wrong impression and lead readers to feel tricked or disappointed.

It’s actually pretty easy to avoid irrelevant images just by using captions. If you can’t come up with a good caption for an image, it’s probably because the image has no place on the page.

The best kinds of images fall into just two categories:

1. Images with story appeal

2. Images which demonstrate

An image with story appeal is best for putting above your headline. It evokes a strong sense of curiosity in your reader. He wants to know what’s going on in it—so he reads your copy to find out.

homepage image with some serious story appeal

Although brewshop.co.nz doesn’t do everything right, its homepage image has some serious story appeal.

But these kinds of images are not very easy to come up with. Most of the images I see at the beginning of web pages are obviously taken straight from some stock photography site, and have at best a tenuous connection to the content on their pages. Not only do they have little story appeal, but when I see them, I immediately suspect the story they’re telling is not the same as the story in the copy.

An image which demonstrates is exactly as it sounds. It demonstrates something you’ve said in the copy.

It’s hard to go wrong with this sort of image—the only caveat is that it needs to convey your value proposition or central theme with more force than copy alone could. Product photos, before-and-after shots, charts or graphs showing comparisons and so on all fit the bill nicely. And the higher quality the better—if it needs to be downsized to fit into a fairly narrow column of text (and it probably will), then make it clickable, so readers can see a larger version in a lightbox.

Images that turn readers off

Here are some kinds of images to avoid like the plague. They will distract your readers with their visual dominance, without the benefit of interesting your readers with their content. And very often they will convey the impression that you are incompetent, thoughtless about your page content, or just unable to come up with anything of real quality.

  • Stock photographs that are obviously stock photographs—their generic dullness and lack of imagination rubs off on you. Just because a stock photo is attractive doesn’t mean it will be effective.
  • Poor quality images of any kind—better to not show anything than to show something pixelated, over-compressed, badly resized, of a low resolution, or otherwise shoddy-looking.
  • Crowd shots. Try to use photos that have a single main subject—people find crowd shots boring because there’s no one to focus on.
  • Bigger than life-size images of faces. According to Ogilvy, readers avoid them because they seem slightly grotesque.
  • Historical subjects—unless you’re catering to an audience of history enthusiasts, it’s a safe bet your readers will find historical shots boring.

Every image must be worth its page weight in gold

Lastly, while you’re mulling over whatever fancy graphic your web designer wants to sex your page up with, mull over this: page load times are still the number one criterion for maximizing readership. For example, a few months back Google discovered that a loading time increase from 0.4 seconds to 0.9 seconds decreased traffic by 20%. In fact, we created a handy infographic showing how more and more readers abandon a page as load time increases. Needless to say, images increase page load time.

So take a look at your latest graphically-endowed content. Is that extra weight really helping? Is each image demonstrating your value proposition forcibly, or teasing your reader into your copy with story appeal? Is it positioned correctly and captioned enticingly? Is it worth its weight in gold? If you’re not sure, it’s time to start testing, measuring—and perhaps culling.

images with no value for homepage

How not to design your home page!

Are You Doing Facebook Right?

Social Media is a great way to build awareness about your business, (i.e. YOU), but don’t restrict your posts to business & service announcements. Provide interesting articles and your take on places to go, movies to see, where to shop & any thing that makes you, you!

For Realtors here is a great article, it highlights Miami Beach which builds a case for buying real estate, but is very interesting. You want to associate your name, business, brand, service with interesting things people want to read. This will build your brand image and sales.

New Spots in South Beach

Video, always try and place video in your posts. Nothing beats video for generating, holding attention and creating a viral buzz! Use your iPhone camera, while some may decry that iPhone videos are not professional, they are AUTHENTIC!

Most small businesses, (mine included), cannot acquire a lot of “Likes” for their page organically.

The best practices and I endorse them 125% are 2:

>Use your Personal page

>Create a Group page

If you want to segregate your personal life from your business that is a valid argument but honestly if you are putting up very personal items perhaps they shouldn’t be posted. Those personal touches are the special sauce that Facebook provides that make you, you, builds your brand and binds your contacts and customers to you!

We can help you set up your page, start a group, do you daily postings, monitor your pages and post responses!

WHY WOULDN’T YOU WANT TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS OR SERVICE ON THE WEBSITE WHERE MORE PEOPLE VISIT AND SPEND MORE TIME THEN ANY OTHER WEB SITE?

 

 

The Must Have Marketing Strategies For Realtors In 2013

Real estate is changing, rapidly becoming a digital industry. To succeed Realtors must build awareness digitally and take advantage of the digital marketing avenues available.

Here are some of the most important programs Realtors must embrace to succeed in 2013!

>Social Media – How do you use Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest to create awareness , garner new clients & sales?

>What is the key element in building your brand and what you should be promoting!

>How do people search online for condos/homes and how do you set up your web site to maximize your the searches being conducted and digital opportunities.

>Email is the best avenue to get your message out and keep the level of awareness of your services high! How do you design emails that generate responses, build your brand & sales!

>How to use Every Door Direct mailings to take your business to new heights.

 

Today, I quote five laws on branding from my talk with Raphael Bemporad of BBMG.

We’ve found that most successful organizations follow five laws of branding.

1. First is the law of the word. Own a word in the mind of your audience that differentiates your organization from all others. It must be a clear, simple word that no one else owns.

2. Second is the law of focus. The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.

Identify the one thing you do better than anyone else, and focus your brand on that unique value proposition.

3. Third is the law of leadership. Successful organizations are perceived as being the leaders at what they do. How can your organization be the first to develop a unique approach or service? What is the category in which you can uniquely claim leadership?

4. Fourth is the law of authenticity. Does your brand truly reflect who you are and what you do? Is it relevant to your clients and the community they you serve? Do you walk your talk? Authenticity is the proof behind your promise.

5. Fifth is the law of consistency. Trends come and go, but brands should stay the same. A brand cannot get into the mind of your audience unless it is communicated clearly and consistently over time.

Lets get together and apply them for your business/organization so call me “maybe”!

 

How To Maximize Your Fund Raising!

SAS Digital specializes in helping nonprofits find and fix problems for their online donors ahead of giving season. Having been the Database Manager for Food For the Poor I have actual experience generating more donations.

Here are some key points to act on:

1 A third of total online giving happens in December alone, so now is the time to improve online appeals and the digital donation experience.

2 In addition, the top reason donors cite for ceasing their giving to a charity is how they were treated by the organization. Donors are frustrated by difficult donation forms, lack of receipts and a dearth of information on the impact of their gifts. It’s the most important time of year to remedy these kinds of mistakes.

3 Before you send your next appeal, before you drive donors to your website and before you launch your year-end plans, you absolutely must set aside time to put yourself in your donor’s shoes to guarantee that your digital fundraising strategy will inspire them to give more. SAS can provide a no charge review of your web site architecture and advise you on email and social media strategy.

 

 

SAS Digital Develops & Launches The Miami Dolphin Touchdown Club Web Site!

When the Miami Dolphins Touchdown Club needed a web site I was pleased they chose SAS Digital to develop it. We launched it today and as live long Jet fan I am proud of my work! Please check it out!

We also provide daily posting for their Twitter & Facebook pages and create/broadcast their emails!!!