Category Archives: Buzz Eblasts

Break Through The Clutter

The Team has been a-buzz doing research for email effectiveness, and having a brand that stands out from your competition is definitely a must! With all the online template services out there, brands have blended into one a big stew of redundant flavor…all vanilla! So while marketing budgets have shrunken, creativity and establishing a cohesive “look and feel” for your business has suffered greatly in the landscape of an online presence.

How do we bring back style and creativity without busting the budget with expensive ad agencies that charge $250 to $300 per hour?

Good question! Buzz-e-blasts is a product we’ve developed for the small business professional that wants to break through the clutter and express their own unique online personality. Forget paying expensive monthly retainers or spending hours uploading files and typing words on a template just to see the same design from someone else land in your own inbox. Get serious about who you are and how you’re different from everyone else!

We’ll help you establish your own brand through color, type styles and imagery that is carried out in your email campaigns and landing pages. Why landing pages you ask? It’s a proven strategy! We’ve found that by letting imagery and fewer words drive the main message, you can spell out the details after you entice someone to click through. More benefits to a click through is improved analytic reports and obtaining more information in a simple contact form.

If you really want to jump into digitally integrated marketing campaigns, we can develop animated banner ads, social media platforms and websites with home galleries and virtual tours. Let’s not forget that we offer federally compliant database management to tie all the pieces together into one lovely package so your brand is able to be TOP OF MIND with clients, affiliates and colleagues.

Not sure what to do next? Buzz-e-blast offers an email outreach service for tapping other real estate brokers’ shoulder or locating qualified prospective buyers and sellers directly based on location, income, age range and several other criteria.

Customized email designs begin as low as $250, so give us a call and together we can develop an action plan to suit your needs.

Should You Outsource Or Do Your Own Digital Marketing?

Businesses outsource web hosting and development, accounting, and even customer service. Why not digital marketing? Where do you draw the line?

If your industry is highly regulated, the decision is often very clear cut. Regulatory restrictions and very specific use of language can make it difficult for an outside firm to create marketing content – let alone marketing campaigns — unless they have deep roots in the industry. Mining is a good example of a highly-regulated industry. Every press release is examined, every tweet and post scrutinized to make sure the content doesn’t violate standards for disclosure.

For many companies however, the decision is not so straightforward. There are pros and cons for handling your digital marketing in-house, and the same can be said for using an outside marketing agency. Here are some of the essential considerations:

Benefits of In-House Digital Marketing

  • Less time to bring up to speed: Your own team has a better understanding of your company, products, services, and customers than any outsider.
  • Better business intelligence: This is related to domain knowledge. When your own marketing team performs analytics, they have more context when it comes to interpreting your data.
  • Respond quickly to situations: Whether it’s via team meetings or water cooler chit-chat, your own team is up-to-the-minute in tune with what’s going on in your business. They can respond faster to new situations and market conditions, and understand right away which areas of your business are affected. An outside agency can be very responsive, but they only know as much as you tell them – or remember to tell them.
  • Achieve tighter integration: For best results, a marketing program should have offline tactics that support digital campaigns and vice versa. It requires close coordination to get your message out via social media, forums, blogs, print, and advertising. Not all agencies and businesses manage to achieve such close collaboration.

Benefits of Outsourced Digital Marketing

  • More cost-effective: Salaries often represent the biggest percentage of a marketing budget. Digital marketing skills are in high demand and small businesses may not be able to afford a full-time team. Tap into specialized expertise and save on recruiting, training, salaries and benefits – not to mention the cost of tools and setting up systems. An outside agency will have a working environment already set up.
  • More skills: You get experienced talent and a range of skills that would be impossible to hire in-house. A digital marketing agency has experts on board whose job it is to stay on top of the latest in trends and technologies.
  • Better campaign ROI: Part of an agency’s job is to prove they bring value into the process. One of the major challenges for in-house teams is expertise in data-driven marketing and analytics. An agency will set up the metrics and analytics, monitor them closely, and tweak the campaign so that you achieve the best possible ROI.
  • Guaranteed timely delivery: When an agency takes on a project, it dedicates resources to meet your deadlines. If anything happens to team members, it’s their responsibility to plug the gap. When other priorities pop up, an in-house team can get distracted, which puts campaign schedules at risk.
  • Stay focused on core business focus: When it comes to business success, focus is essential. If your core business is not digital marketing, trying to manage campaigns will take a lot out of your valuable time. Agencies with core competencies in digital market can achieve more for you in less time.

There are pros and cons to each approach. It comes down to comfort level, budget, skills, and time. It’s common to see a hybrid model where a client uses outside agencies to fill temporary gaps or work on a specific project. Some of the most common reasons a business will outsource are:

  • Fast deployment: Rebranding, launching a new product, or going to an industry event? When an urgent project adds work on top of existing priorities, it’s faster and easier to work with a ready-made team. A digital consulting agency will do the time-consuming but unavoidable legwork of finding the right channels for reaching a target audience, conduct keyword research for optimizing web content, and manage PPC campaigns.
  • Lack of bandwidth or skills: When a marketing team is already 100% utilized it’s tough finding the resources to run ongoing programs such as a pay-per-click campaign. A digital consulting agency can monitor, analyze, and manage costs to achieve campaign ROI. From creative brief to final execution, an agency gives the marketing manager full visibility into the project — without the project management headaches.
  • Need to develop in-house skills: On-the-job training is a great way to upgrade a team’s skills. Put your own team members on a project where they can collaborate with an agency on a digital marketing campaign. Make learning one of the goals and a good agency will take the time to explain things along the way. Nothing teaches more effectively than seeing how things work in a real-world scenario.

Final word of advice: if you believe an ongoing, long-term relationship with a digital marketing agency would be the best use of your budget and resources, begin with a small project. Use it as an opportunity to find out whether it’s a good fit.

If your marketing plans are slowing down because you lack the skills or bandwidth, do a quick assessment of the issues and decide whether you should bring talent in-house, outsource it, or contact out on a project-by-project basis.

by Ray Wang, February 29, 2016

Groundhog Day 2016

Our clients in the automotive and boating industries were standing by cautiously last week to see if Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. GOOD NEWS! He did NOT, so prepare yourself for an early spring!

In celebration, Create-a-Buzz Marketing is offering 10% off of an order of 250 or more 30mil plastic wash cards! Cards include customization with one-hour of graphic design, too. Here’s the 2016 price list, not including applicable shipping and taxes:
2016 30mil PRICES

Call or email us with any questions and plan on starting the Spring Wash Season with a brand new promotional campaign to increase your units per day by increasing customer loyalty!

‘Tis The Season…

There are two seasons that are big in the yachting community, Spring for Opening Day and Winter for Change of Command. For those not familiar, Opening Day is when a yacht club officially determines that the harbor is free of ice and is ready to open for the upcoming yachting season. Being in California, this is more of a tradition since we enjoy year-round boating.

Change of Command is just as one would guess, when the outgoing commodore hands off the watch to the new incoming commodore and all other flag officers move up in ranks, as it is with most yacht clubs and organizations. For most, the event that marks that time is a “Commodore’s Ball” or “Installation Dinner.” Every organization has it’s traditions to follow and it’s usually centered around introductions, speeches, recognizing last year’s achievements and honoring awards during a dinner followed by a big party.

Southern California Yachting Association retained Create-a-Buzz Marketing to design the 2016 Installation Dinner and the incoming commodore is a school teacher with an appetite for for history, cigars and jazz flavor. To compliment his personality, we designed a retro-look with a “Rat Pack” flavor to set the tone for his soirée. This vibe will be carried-out throughout the event in social media, emails, tablescapes, entryway and any other presentation or collateral.

Needless to say, the Commodore is pleased and now very excited for his special day!

Realtor Marketing Programs

Create-a-Buzz Marketing has relaunched a refreshed and updated service for the Real Estate Professional looking to identify their target market, develop a plan to attract that buyer and speed the sales process through a robust interactive marketing campaign.

These packages can be customized to meet the needs of the property and can include:

  • Professional Imagery – Please don’t make us look at your photos and videos taken with a smart phone!
  • Home Staging – Make it pretty…clean it up, unclutter and depersonalize!
  • Branded Designs – Set yourself apart from the competition by branding YOU and not your brokerage office!
  • Digital Media – Let technology be your friend!
  • Get a Social Life – Expand into a viral marketplace and integrate your brand with relevant content
  • Targeted Lists – Yes, tap the shoulder of both consumers and brokers to increase the property’s exposure!
  • Hosted Events – Woo brokers, neighbors and prospective buyers with champagne receptions
  • Self-Guided Tours – Don’t make them guess! Tell them what’s so special about the property even when you’re not demonstrating the home!

Best part is that these services can be paid at the close of escrow, so in most cases you can greatly reduce your front-end marketing expenses…SWEET!

Give us a call and let’s talk about how to get that house sold!

Beatles are Coming to America Event!

This is an example of an event eblast announcement on the 4th of July weekend. What a fun kick-off to America’s birthday celebration! Let us know if we can help you send your events announcement, find the right entertainment for your event…or coordinate everything from soup to nuts. TBT

Ocean Festival’s Fiesta Evite

Here’s an example of a fun and digitally interactive invitational evite, meaning it has several links programmed for a quick and convenient response. While the example images aren’t programmed with links, you can see how the original HTML communications could motivate a timely reservation response immensely, not to mention give the event coordinator an easy tool for organizing responses with a programmed subject line in the email responses.

Further convenience is a directions link so you don’t have to clutter the messaging with directions and maps. Another feature is adding a link to drive traffic to the website for more information on the organization, list of sponsors or any other additional information.

Let us help you organize your next event and/or event communications with a Buzz Eblast campaign!

TBT