Tomorrow’s the big day!

We’re so excited to be able to host the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters tomorrow morning and unveil the marketing makeover we’ve been working on for Matt’s Entertainment.  Come join the party!  Matt will be there with Friday morning ‘get up and go’ music, and Kurt Spingath will be serving his amazing Belgian Sugar Waffles.

There’s a lot to do yet, so I need to get back to work.  We hope to see you there!

Special thanks go out to Signworks of Oregon and Cherie Renae Studios for their contribution to the project.

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Tim Fahndrich is the president of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

(This is part of a series of updates leading up to April 9th, 2010, when we will be hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters at the Northern Lights Theater Pub and unveiling the “Marketing Makeover” for Matt’s Entertainment)

The last couple of days we’ve been working on the following main areas;

1.  Branded social media setup;   One of THE most important things that businesses should be doing in today’s marketplace is building a social media marketing strategy.  We believe in taking an integrated and branded approach for our clients, so we’ve been setting up new social media channels for Matt including Twitter and Youtube that will connect his brand with his audience, both prospect and clients, and allow him to continue building the all important “Know, like, and trust” factor.

2. Local search;  As part of his makeover, we’ve done some important research to find local keywords that people are using in Matt’s industry.  A local search keyword is the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ that somebody might be using to find his company.  A good example would be ‘Salem Oregon wedding dj’.

Did you know that over 40% of all online searches have local intent?  That means that people are using the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ to find local businesses to connect with.  With this in mind, we are working on several ways to get Matt listed on the front page of Google for these local search keywords.  This can take some time, but we’re hoping to have a listing or two on the front page by Friday.

3. Radio show; One of the ‘out of the box’ ideas we’ve brought to the table for Matt is to have is own wedding radio show.  We want to position him as an expert in his industry (which he is) and provide a lead generation tool.  When we presented Matt with the idea of having his own show , his first thought was “What am I going to talk about?”.   Content creation is always a concern, but here’s how we’re approaching it with Matt.  Instead of feeling like he has to provide all the content, he is going to be inviting local wedding vendors, such as videographers, photographers, caterers, etc. to be guests on his show.  He will simply do the interviewing, but the cool thing is that his name and his brand will always be in front of the listening audience.  His listeners will gain valuable ideas, best practices, and more about how to have a great wedding, and Matt will get new leads.  With the show, people will be able to tune in live and also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.  Pretty cool, huh!

Well, we still have a lot to do by Friday morning … but this has been fun so far!  Hope to see you Friday!

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Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

(This is part of a series of updates leading up to April 9th, 2010, when we will be hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters at the Northern Lights Theater Pub and unveiling the “Marketing Makeover” for Matt’s Entertainment)

Today we are working on two main areas;

1.  Video Creation;   One of the most effective ways to engage with your online audience and to create better search engine rankings is with the use of video.  Today we’re working on a short marketing video for Matt that focuses on his wedding clients and their guests having a great time at the wedding.  We’ll be able to post this video on Matt’s new web site, YouTube, and other sites.

Here’s some interesting statistics about online video ads according to a recent study:

• 80% of web users have seen an online video ad
• 52% took action after viewing the ad
• 31% visited the advertisers web site
• 22% searched for additional info about the product or service
• 15% visited the advertisers store or place of business
• 12% made a purchase
• PLUS, 16% talked to friends and family about the product / service
• 9% forwarded it or shared it with their friends and family

Powerful?  Definitely!

2. Final design decisions;  Over the weekend we took the layout that we had decided on last week and created some mockup designs of the new web site and what it would look like with Matt’s new branding and color styles.  This allows him to visually see it all in place before we actually start the final design process for the web site code.  Together we selected the best look and now we’re off to final coding.

Oh … the photo session was today; We’re really excited to see the new publicity photos from Cherie Renae of Cherie Renae Studios.  They got together today for a photo shoot.  Thanks Cherie!

Whew!  It’s starting to really come together … stay tuned for more… and mark your calendars for Greeters, April 9th, at the Northern Lights Theater Pub, 8:30am for the unveiling.

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Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

(This is part of a series of updates leading up to April 9th, 2010, when we will be hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters at the Northern Lights Theater Pub and unveiling the “Marketing Makeover” for Matt’s Entertainment)

Today we are working on three main areas;

1.  Layout;   One of the main things people think about when doing a new web site is the design.  What is it going to look like?  What will the layout be?  Here are some of the questions we typically ask our clients when doing a full-blown web site;

1. • What are some of your favorite web sites?  Why?
   • Do you have a particular style or theme you are looking for?
   • What types of information do you want to include on the site?
   • Do you have a preference for the layout of the header or logo, menu, body of the page, etc?
   • Would you like a sidebar column?
   • What do you want in the background?

However, as important as these layout-related questions are … we believe that they pale in comparison to this important question – “What do you want the web site to do?“  You see at the end of the day, it’s not really about the web site design at all.  Yes, we all want it to look good, and we make sure that it does … but it is more important that the web site serves a marketing purpose and causes the customer to take action.

We have seen so many people get caught up in the exact details of what a web site looks like … when in fact we should be spending our energy in the marketing aspects of getting visitors to the site, and then turning those visitors into leads (or connections), leads into buyers, buyers into repeat buyers, and repeat buyers into raving fans … that go on to tell a lot of other people about your business.

Today as we began thinking about Matt’s needs, his re-branding efforts, and what he wants to accomplish with his site, we did some searching for some website ‘themes’ that would work for his needs.  We found a great option and sent it off to Matt to get his feedback.  He and his wife Kim reviewed it and both of them loved it.  So, what we’ll be doing from here is to begin customizing it with Matt’s new branding, colors, and specific needs for his site.

2.  Content;  One of the things we’ve asked Matt to come up with is the top questions his prospects and clients ask.  So, Matt has been busy coming up with the questions and the answers.  We’re going to be using those in a variety of ways on his site.  We also began the discussion today about pictures and videos … what does he have in his media library right now that could be used on the site?

For our clients that don’t have access to good media files of their own, there are a ton of great resources online.  Our favorite photo resource is iStockPhoto.com.  For audio, we like either iStockPhoto.com or AudioMicro.com.

3. Photo Shoot; We were excited to be able to schedule Matt for his publicity photo shoot with Cherie Renae of Cherie Renae Studios.  Cherie takes wonderful photos and we can’t wait to see how they turn out!  We’ll be using his new publicity photo on Matt’s new web site, his marketing materials, social media profiles, and more.  Thanks Cherie!

Ok, that’s it for now.  More to come …

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Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

(This is part of a series of updates leading up to April 9th, 2010, when we will be hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters at the Northern Lights Theater Pub and unveiling the “Marketing Makeover” for Matt’s Entertainment)

Today we are working on three main areas;

1. Finalizing the branding;   We have new branding!  The design team at Signworks of Oregon, John and Jeff, did a great job working with Matt to finalize the branding including a new logo and color style for Matt’s Entertainment.  It was important to Matt to convey a fun, contemporary brand that utilized modern colors, look and feel, and a clear sense of what he provides … and we are all very excited with what we ended up with. (Can’t wait to share)
2. Homework for Matt;  Yes, we do give out homework when we begin a marketing project. Why? Because we feel like it is important to get inside our client’s minds and that they know their business much better than we do … so we try to bring out some key concepts and guidelines for content that will be used on the web site.  So yes, Matt has been busy!
3. Domain setup;  Yesterday we purchased a keyword-based domain name, and today we set it up with a hosting account.  A domain name is your online address (ie yourname.com), and a hosting account is where your web site files (pages, pictures, forms, etc) are located.  Setting up the domain with a hosting account makes the web site accessible to the world.  BUT, we can’t tell you where it is yet … you’ll have to wait until April 9th.

Stay tuned to this channel…

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Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

(This is part of a series of updates leading up to April 9th, 2010, when we will be hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters at the Northern Lights Theater Pub and unveiling the “Marketing Makeover”)

Today is day one of the Extreme Marketing Makeover project that we are doing for Matt’s Entertainment, an Oregon wedding entertainment company. We notified Matt yesterday that he had won, and to say that he was excited is, well, an understatement.

Today we are working on three main areas;

1. Discovery;   We like to get to know our clients and their business before we start the project.  Going through a set of marketing interview questions, we discover key services/products, strengths, and opportunities that a business has.  This is the foundation of what we’re doing and helps us formulate a marketing plan that will have the most impact for the client.
2. Research;  We took the information that Matt gave us above and did some keyword analysis and research.  Keywords are the search words and phrases that people use to do a search on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.  The analysis involves looking at the volume of searches, the number of search results, and the makeup of the search results.  What we end up looking for is a “buying” keyword that also has a domain name available.  The more defined a keyword is, the more qualified the search is.    We selected a domain for Matt’s Entertainment and will announce it on April 9th.
3. Branding; Actually, we began the branding discussion yesterday almost immediately after we announced the winner.  Moving forward on the marketing web site that we will be building hinges on having the logo and color style in place, so we got on a conference call with Matt as well as John over at SignWorks of Oregon and began mapping out what we wanted the new look to be like.  In Matt’s case, he has recently gone through a personal “image makeover”, working with an image consultant.  So now it is perfect timing for this “Marketing Makeover”.  We set goals of creating new branding that is modern, contemporary, and hip to fit into this new image.  We expect to have the new logo and colors in place by the end of today.

That’s what we’re doing for day one.  We’re really excited about this project and the impact it will have on Matt’s business.  We’ll be keeping you posted … so stay tuned.

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Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.