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WEB160 » Marketing Your Website & Services

Having a website is pointless unless there are reasons for your audience to visit.

New and updated information is the most logical reason that your audience will continue to come back to your website.

Marketing Copy

With your internet enabled company, with its train of suppliers, partners and internal conflicts, the online marketing copy writer needs to consider all of the influences when writing online marketing copy for the company.

On the web, marketing fluff doesn’t sound quite as sentimental as it does on paper. If the online copy writer chooses to use too much fluffy praise the online reader will become more impatient than they would receiving a printed brochure.

The language you use needs to sound more practical, straight-forward, useful and relevant over the web:

1. Listen to real consumers: study the tapes of focus groups, go to trade shows and read their emails
2. Write about your consumers: show that you understand their situation and its challenges
3. Look for what moves people: what emotions can you tap into regarding your story
4. Cut the marketing babble: B.S. is B.S.

News Letters & Press Releases

The web has changed public relations by giving the audience greater control over what writers must produce and when they should produce it.

As an online public relations writer you are driven to respond to breaking news within hours instead of days or weeks.

You will also keep discovering new audiences and new ways of keeping them informed

Internet news releases usually go out as emails, not paper sheets, so you must remember that you are writing for the screen – which means you need to adapt your prose for electronic delivery.

Where marketing tries to build a story that will attract customers, you need to adapt your story for an audience that might be better informed and much more cynical.  These online customers generally care about what works well, saves them time and costs less.

To make your case, present the components of the press release to answer the readers questions:

1. Headline: what’s new here?
2. Date: when did this happen?
3. Organization: who is this from?
4. Opening: what’s the gist of the story?
5. Follow Up: what are the details?
6. Quote(s): who said what?
7. About: background of the company or organization?
8. Contact: how can I reach you?

When your email newsletter or press release appears in the subscriber’s in-box, it brings your subscribers back to your website. This reminds people that you exist, that you take a position on what matters to them and that you want to reach out to them because they are important.

Sally Bjornsen’s New Website Has Launched

July 15th, 2007

Sally Bjornsen has come to Premium Design Works  to produce and develop a new website for Sally Bjornsen Represents, her photography representative agency.

Sally’s Problem

Sally’s old website was no longer working for her in several ways.

First, the website was completely produced in Flash. This prevented the user from being able to see the sample photos in a timely fashion.

Second, the photos were hard to see because of their small size.

Third, was the fact that Sally could not update the website herself. Therefore, she continually had to spend more money each and every time she wanted to add a new photo to her site.

The Premium Design Works Solution

In terms of how to present larger photographs in a timely manner, the solution was simple. Create an interface to be light on imagery so the photographs would not have competition for display time. Then, use Flash for spotlight animation purposes only.

Premium Design Works authored an XHTML markup structure that was clean while CSS did the heavy lifting of presentation. The navigation items were created as text links that utilized JavaScript to animate the opening and closing of sub menu items. This gave the website the Flash-like appearance that Sally was attracted to.

Because Sally wanted to be able to update the website herself how and when she wanted, Premium Design Works created a custom Content Management System built on a PHP & MySQL platform.

A private administration section for the Sally Bjornsen Represents website was created where Sally could login with a username and password to manage the website’s content.

Sally is now able to:

1. Create new and or edit current portfolio sections
2. Edit the photographer’s biographies
3. Choose which photographs are to be displayed
4. Set the order in which the photographs are seen
5. Choose whether a photograph is active or not
6. Edit and update her own biography

“Premium Design Works was a pleasure to work with. They gave me innovative solutions for my unique business challenges and spoke to me in a language I could understand. I would definitely recommend Premium Design Works!”

— Sally Bjornsen, President and Owner of Sally Bjornsen Represents

Now, Sally Bjornsen has a website that she has found easy to use and that satisfies her need to edit content when she needs to… not when someone else gets paid to get to it.

About Premium Design Works

Premium Design Works is a small design and development group based in Seattle, Washington specializing in handling the visual communication needs of your business, organization or artistic endeavor.

Our mission is to present your brand to a wide range of clientele via: logos, collateral, advertisements and websites.

For more information: visit www.premiumdw.com, send an email to msinkula@premiumdw.com or call us at 206-851-7636.

Let your subscribers choose you – if you send out spam you are likely to turn them off and be deleted before you can even reach them.