Adam Williams

Advice for marketers and small business owners

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Marketing

10 Crucial questions to guide you in creating a successful app

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This is a guest post from Jared Johnson of Ultera Digital. Learn more about him and his agency at the end of the post.

Mobile apps continue to be an essential part of the digital marketing ecosystem in 2015, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to create them successfully. Thankfully, we are long past the days of marketers everywhere clamoring, “I need an app!” without understanding how or why. Remember that, circa 2008?

We have learned a lot about mobile behaviors since then. For instance, U.S. smartphone owners use an average of 24 non-native apps per month but spend 84% of their time on just five apps – Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Weather and YouTube. It’s easy to see why. Those apps are powerful, useful and convenient. They help us make connections. They serve a specific purpose. Above all, they make life easier.

So what about the millions of other apps out there? Why are so few considered successful?

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Advertisements Marketing

JCPenney asks shoppers to come back but what will it really take?

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Tis the season for come backs. Or at least attempts at one. First Kmart released Ship Your Pants and now JCPenney, or just JCP these days, has come out in a new ad titled It’s No Secret saying, “We’ve made some mistakes, but we’ve also listened to you. Please come back. Pretty please.”

But is this commercial going to be enough? Or where does Penney’s need to go from here?

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Marketing

How to use social disruptions to propel your brand’s relevance

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Brands that identify large-scale social disruptions and then position themselves within the disruption as the brand of choice reap great financial rewards.

For example, brands such as Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Apple and Ben & Jerry’s have all exploited some disruption.

I will spend the next few minutes outlining several current disruptions and then how you might approach them.

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Advertisements Marketing

Apple Genius Ads: It’s not often Apple makes a mistake

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You may recall a few months ago that Apple pulled its new Genius ad campaign. I will briefly use this campaign as an example of a company who momentarily forgot who they are.

One of the core messages that Apple has used in its advertising is just how simple a Mac is to use. The below commercial, titled Choose a Vista, exemplifies the Apple is easy message.

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Customer Service

What Netflix and GoDaddy don’t understand about customer service

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Did you ditch Netflix after it announced price increases late summer 2011 or when it announced Quikster? Or did you leave GoDaddy after it supported SOPA or had massive downtime in September 2012?

I did.

In fact, a lot of people did.

But why? Both services had a large user base. So why did people jump ship when there was a bump in the road instead of giving them a chance to recover?

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Marketing

Obama vs Romney: A lesson in framing your competition

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First, let me explain how we use frames to view the world.

The last time you watched an ad on TV or read an ad in a magazine, did you notice that how you responded to the perceived message was influenced by your past experiences and/or current views?

Probably not. Yet, you carry around with you your assumptions, paradigms and beliefs – collectively your frame of reference – and they shape how you see things.

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Marketing

How a child views big brand logos

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Graphic Designer Adam Ladd recorded his five-year old daughter looking at various national brands’ logos. I’m surprised by how well branded some companies are, even with young children. Though, Ladd’s daughter may just be reflecting his buying habits.

It’s easy when creating a logo to get lost in making something creative and memorable, but for art’s sake. A good logo designer considers the message being communicated.

The message can be literal, figurative or emotional.

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