I just got off the phone with one of our advertising vendors and it prompted me to write. He was very excited the other day when he called because they are launching a website in support of their magazine. He knew my role on the team involves our internet presence so he asked me to go to the site and check it out and give him feedback. I'm happy to help out a vendor, especially one that "owes me one" and the more I can do for him the less it will cost our team to advertise with him in the future. So, I went to the site. He had warned me that it was still "in progress" so some things would improve so I wasn't too critical. However, I encountered a few things that I think we all need to look out for when we allow others to publish our image whether it's in print or on the web.
On our team, we have a Marketing Director in Sharon's daughter Tami, who has owned her own graphic design business. Everything we put in print has to be up to her standards and we often won't advertise in a publication if we fee the quality of the publication will not convey our image as we intend. Other times we may modify our design if it's something we want to support, like a program for a charity event. On the web we try to maintain the same standard. If I have a site on which I can upload my listings, we always pay attention to how to best present our properties, optimal file sizes and resolutions etc. It's our brand and no one is going to protect it for us. We are trying to create an image in the mind of the consumer (and our colleagues for that matter) that we are professionals who pay attention to the details. If we do that in our marketing it's a logical step to think that we'd do that with our clients and their transactions.
So, I went to my vendors new site and he had a good start but I could see right away that the web design team was either by choice or by lack of supply from my vendor, using inferior images for the site. Though the layout is ideal, essentialy the magazine page for page, there were some navigation challenges that I noted. For my vendor, the website is just another opportunity to showcase his advertisers, traffic to the website might be of assistance when selling ad space. As a result, the advertiser's index is prominant which links to whatever page you find the ad on. What I encountered was to me the biggest problem. It was clear that someone had taken the high quality pdf and simply done a "save as" to .jpg then resized it to fit the appropriate space on the site. The image of our ad was bad, the faces actually looked a little scary and much of the text was blurry. Certainly, not the image we are trying to project by any stretch of the imagation. We were not alone however, as I looked at all the advertisements, they appeared to have suffered our same fate. So that was the feedback I gave him. It's not just about slapping it up there if it's not the image you want to create. I gave him some tips and he was so grateful for my honest feedback that he gave me a free dinner at a local restaurant. He asked me if I could be on a conference call with his website vendor to give my feedback direct to them because he is a self confessed "web dummy." I of course accepted if it will help to insure that our branding, or image, is presented in the best possible way.
We often get the feedback from local clients who say "you advertise everywhere." We don't, but those statements tell us that we are advertising where people are looking. They notice our ads whether online or in print. And if our clients notice the people who are not yet are clients probably notice too and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
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