Latest Posts

Make social currency part of your loyalty program

The modern loyalty rewards program improves on punch cards — although they’re still nice in an analog kind of way — by linking brand loyalty with social media. In fact, in some cases, social media is part of the reward.

For example, if your business is retail, invite consumers to connect their scan rewards card with their Twitter account. Every time they earn points, their social media status will be updated with a message like “Bob Jones is 10 points away from a free T-shirt at XYZ Clothing.” Just for having his card connected to Twitter, Bob will earn extra points with every purchase, and all of Bob Jones’ followers will know he likes your store.

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Leverage trade shows with mobile marketing, social media and email

If you’ve ever been to a trade show, you’ve noticed that the booths can run the gamut from a table with pamphlets to sleek Euro styling to a full multimedia experience. However, unless those booths are taking advantage of a few e-marketing methods, once an attendee walks by, he or she may be gone forever.

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Buy your Competitors’ Branded Keywords

Level the playing field on Yahoo!, Google and other search engines by buying the branded keywords of your competitors. Recently, we turned you on to the importance of buying your own branded keywords. By buying your competitor’s branded keywords, you would ensure that whenever someone searches for the name of their business, your company’s name would also pop up in the paid search results. This is a common tool, and one you can use with a clear conscience. While most people think this is something the search engines don’t allow, they do, but with some restrictions. For instance, you shouldn’t pretend to be your competitor or even use their brand-name in your ad. As long as you represent who you truly are, you should be good to go. But you might want to check with each of the search engines you are advertising on to ensure you are not breaking their terms of service.

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Mobile tags unlock a world of connections with consumers

Mobile tags (also called snap tags and scan tags) are little icons with a lot of potential. When consumers “snap” the tag with the camera of their smartphone, they are instantly linked to online information such as a website, contest, video or beyond. Bearing a close resemblance to bar codes, mobile tags allow you to put a little Internet in your print advertising and a little print advertising in your Internet, two great mediums that work great together.

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Use negative comments to accentuate the positive

When you position your brand or company on Facebook, Twitter and the like, you’ll be opening yourself up to positive feedback – as well as negative feedback. And that’s okay. Really. It may seem counter-intuitive that negative feedback can actually boost your image, but it’s true.

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50 Winning eTips Open House in Celebration, FL

Photos from the 50 Winning eTip open house in our new larger Celebration office, near Orlando, FL.

E-newsletters are still a great way to captivate customers

In the new world of marketing technology email, is seen as an old staple, and companies seem to be using them less and less, but there is definitely an audience for e-newsletters that are relevant and engaging. Let me repeat that: relevant and engaging. Which means not exclusively to selling or trumpeting your company.

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Tag and social bookmark your blog

You’ve probably seen their little icons at the bottom of many websites and blogs. I’m talking about digg, del.icio.us, reddit and countless others. These are all social bookmarking sites, and they are a great tool to supplement your social SEO practices.

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Interactive Reel

Keep Port Everglades Shipshape

On Saturday morning, Karen Deryk, Creative Services Manager of Starmark, her son, and Lisa Hoffman, Group Account Director of Starmark, joined 100 other participants in the “Keep Port Everglades Shipshape” drum painting event, held at Port Everglades, one of the agency’s AOR clients. In fact, Lisa did more than participate in this worthwhile project. Her painting of an underwater coral reef scene won first prize in the adult category. This community service project transformed recycled petroleum drums into beautiful trash and recycling bins to be used throughout the Port. The event was such a success that Port Director Phil Allen plans to make it annual event.

Bring Your Kids to Work Day

The children who participated in Starmark’s Bring Your Kids To Work Day experienced first hand what its like to work in an integrated communications agency. Starmark put them to work as junior account coordinators (tiny, really) for a popular toy company. The kids had to do the following:

  1. Understanding: Explore the company’s website and describe what they liked about it.
  2. Research: Find ‘fan’ videos for the company on You Tube and document what they liked
  3. First-hand Experience: Play with the product
  4. Concepting: Make an Ad for the product.

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