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Parallax responsive websites increase user experience
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Parallax responsive websites increase user experience

Parallax scrolling is an incredible tool used to ramp-up your mobile application’s user experience (UX). Keeping the user engaged and focused is part of developing a quality experience that will bring the user back to your app time and again.

Parallax scrolling is a computer graphics technique which creates a 3-D environment using 2-D elements. By establishing a differential between the display of foreground elements and background elements, a sense of depth (parallax) is created. In the end, it’s visually entertaining. The visual applications are endless.

Here are 2 websites that entertain us using this technique. They demonstrate the incredible power of parallax scrolling. Look at this example that takes you under the sea, and here we see an infographic of your brain!

The amount of displayed parallax often differs between platforms. A website viewed on a desktop may show a tremendous amount of the scrolling differential between visual elements. That same site, viewed on smaller platforms, will probably reduce the amount of displayed parallax. What you see on a desktop probably will be a much richer and fuller UX than what is presented on a smartphone. This is the nature of responsive website elements. The use of this tool is currently a strong growth trend for both responsive websites and mobile apps.

Regardless of the size of your company, creating a responsive mobile website and mobile app is a smart way to market your service or brand. Today over 50 percent of American adults own a smartphone, and 80 percent of Internet users use a smartphone. These statistics show how mobile applications have become a necessity rather than a luxury. In order to stay relevant with today’s online marketplace, quality engagement is key.

Due to an abundance of mobile applications, deciding how to differentiate yourself can be a challenge. Tools like parallax scrolling can help overcome those challenges. Parallax scrolling creates depth and movement of images that add to the application design and sophistication.

Developing an application that grabs user’s attention is the key. The developer’s goal is to engage the individual. The experience itself is meant to impress the onlooker, tell a story, but also to clearly state the benefits of that service or company. This tool is designed to make your web and mobile applications stand out as a ‘one-of-a-kind’, one to be remembered.

Parallax scrolling provides a new fun way to experience a mobile app. It is a tool that developers use to provide depth and texture to their content. By carefully structuring content, users may not mind spending time exploring your app or your business. When you are ready to explore the graphical world created by your next mobile application, contact Colure’s project management team.

Keep your brand relevant
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Keep your brand relevant

Manipulating a corporate brand to be a part of the news cycle and not the “background clutter” requires timing, social acuity, and the ability to read the pulse of the public. This is known as “agile marketing”. This marketing technique is the opposite of crafting a large project. This requires being aware of current events, trends, and having the ability to act on them swiftly to appeal to your audience and/or to the masses.

Six years ago, the infamous Oreo Cookie Dunk in the Dark tweet went viral, taking the 2013 Super Bowl Blackout headline. A single marketing team used that event to their brand’s advantage. Here, Oreo saw an opportunity to comment on trending news. Since then Kit Kat has taken the agile marketing spotlight with its tweet and trending hashtag #bendgate, which referenced the past iphone6 bending fiasco.

“In today’s fast-paced, multichannel world, marketers no longer have the luxury to spend months crafting large projects; they must innovate and produce on the fly and respond immediately to market disruptions.” – Forbes staff writer Jennifer Rooney

No matter if your company is large or small, relating your brand or service to noteworthy information can draw attention to your company. Agile marketing demands your business be able to adapt and to be flexible to the outside noise-makers.

Many of these agile marketing examples can be seen utilizing Twitter and Facebook to express their one-liners. However, agile marketing is still a fairly new marketing tool. In 2019, we are sure to see more brands use this technique. Recently, during the ESPY’s, a television advertisement by Airbnb grabbed viewers’ attention. Airbnb is known for its home sharing service decided to use the theme of “trans kind” in their advertisement during the awards show. This ad smartly aligned with the ESPY’s choice to award Caitlyn Jenner for her contribution to sports and her relationship with the transgendered community.

With company demands to be relevant, so are the needs of flexibility and speed. These needs make agile marketing a necessity today. Because of the “always-on and always-connected” individuals, agile marketing may one day become the norm.

Marketing is an interactive process that brings together the breadth of both the advertiser and the public. Being able to read the pulse of both parties is critical. Once more, being able to appreciate the space they both occupy marks the difference success and nothingness.

Marketing shift from globalization to personalization
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Marketing shift from globalization to personalization

The latest marketing trend consists of shifting from globalization to personalized interaction. Personalization means getting closer to your audience, getting to know them and touching their hearts. Personalization is the current path to success. Personalizing is transporting your consumer to another place, giving him something to think about, making them crave better engagement. Personalization means engaging and embracing your customer.

Today’s business world has automated much of the process of communication. It is mission critical to make the consumer feel genuinely needed and desired. When a company creates a personalized experience with the audience, the trust level between the consumer and the company usually increases. This is the User Experience (UX). This relationship will be the mechanism by which a company may very well sink or swim.

Know your audience

To personalize, the marketer must know their audience on a personal level (names, gender, age and more). What’s more, they must engage that audience on a meaningful level. This means engagement in a way that is meaningful by the consumer’s standards – not the business’ standards.

Personalizing means looking for something that will have an impact upon the client at a personal level. This calls for constant creativity, as the marketer has to predict the wants and needs of the consumers. Clearly, this is a critical challenge for corporations of all sizes.

Personalization affects every company these days. Because it has become so popular, companies that do not practice it may very well lose their audience share. As personalization has revolutionized communication, each communicator must take an active role in order to keep their audience alive.

Colure Media is a New York based advertising and marketing agency. We can help your corporation gain exposure and increase revenue. If you are interested in exploring various marketing possibilities for your corporation, Contact us now.

How to calculate an advertising budget
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How to calculate an advertising budget

Every company must stake its own space in the marketplace to survive. In order to successfully interact with your customers, each business must decide on the best course of communication. This function is facilitated by your company’s marketing budget.

Each business owner is an expert in their given area of practice. Everyone needs customers, yet often, stakeholders haven’t been provided with a game-plan of how to reach those customers through advertising.

We’re providing a roadmap for your future marketing budget. The purpose is to help the business owners focus their resources for the best ROI on their investment. If you begin with a focused process, your odds of success greatly increase.

Dollars and sense

When deciding on a typical marketing budget, there is no definitive answer on the dollar amount a business should spend. How much you plan to allocate depends on a number of variables including the industry you are in, the size of your business, its growth stage, your annual revenue goals, your projected sales, your cost per acquisition, whether you are willing to spend on websites, mobile apps or some other long term project.

It may be helpful to examine some methods of determining marketing budgets and average percentages that companies use in their calculations. You need to determine your marketing budget wisely and not depend on what is left over after your business expenses are covered. We are here to give you some guidelines that you can use to determine your marketing budget.

As a general rule of thumb, Colure Media suggests that the marketing and advertising budget should be on an average 10% of the company’s overall revenue. This budget should be split between brand development costs including the channels you use for marketing and the costs of promoting your business (campaign, events, and advertising etc.). The percentage of revenue calculation should account for possible additional factors such as new product launch, new market entries, and mergers/acquisitions.

Calculate your CPA

For companies who are unsure of their revenue goals or don’t know their exact overall revenue, we suggest calculating their marketing budgets using cost per acquisition (or CPA). Using a CPA, we help companies reverse engineer their budgets by understanding their sales goals. For example, if a company wants to sell 10000 units of something and if they know their CPA, they can calculate their marketing budget by multiplying their sales goals of 10000 by CPA.

It is very important to re-examine your CPA, as this is a number that you want to optimize. Your goal is to make it lower since you want to receive a higher rate of return on every dollar you spend on marketing. Continually look around for new and more effective methods of reaching out to your target market. The use of new and improved technology can help you optimize your cost per acquisition.

If you are seeking out the development of projects like mobile applications, website development, and mobile marketing (or some other long term project), our advice is that you pull that project out of your total budget and calculate its own budget as a separate line item. The reason being is that these long-term (5 to 7 years) marketing tactics require an initial heavy investment and small investments later on. You are better off doing an initial investment of around 8 to 10% on these large projects and then 2% of your annual revenue toward web development for the next 3 years. After that, you need to put money only for updates and maintenance for the next couple for years.

These values are not set in stone

Once you have set your marketing budget, remember that it is not a fixed value. There might be times when you will be throwing in another unplanned event or campaign. The main thing is to know whether your spending is giving you your required ROI.

One of the biggest issues facing new and existing businesses is that they may not know what their marketing and advertising budget should be. Often, businesses don’t understand the process of media planning. Many times budgets are set blindly, with a number just being thrown into the air and hoping that it lands on the success outlined in their business plan (if they have created one).

There are three components to every business:

     1. Unique product/service

     2. Profit

     3. Marketing/Advertising/Sales

At the end of the day, a business with unlimited funds can spend plenty of money and time running test after test, but they may sacrifice market share to competitors (who may have inferior products/services) who are knowledgeable and have navigated these seas time and time again. Blindly throwing money at your advertisements is not the answer. Define your goals. Examine your numbers. Start with a solid plan that can be modified, with purpose, as time passes. We hope that this will help your gain a better perspective on your marketing efforts.

Colure Media is an advertising and marketing company in New York. We have advertising and marketing experts to help set up your goal with a budget, target your audience, and improve leads. If you want to discuss your advertising needs and budget, then contact us Now.

A key to corporate communications
Ken Bodine

A key to corporate communications

The marketplace is placing new demands on how corporations interact with their clientele. At the core of many consumer’s concerns is the ability to resolve an issue without any unneeded hassle.

The solution begins with anticipating the needs of your audience. Does your staff have the skills to identify the nature of an issue, the tools to correct the problem, and the latitude to engage a working solution?

As a consumer, how many times have you spoken to someone in a customer service department who clearly does not understand what you are describing, cannot access the information that is needed, nor do they possess the authority to resolve your issue?

Empower your staff

By anticipating the needs of your customers, providing proper staff training, and empowering your employees to resolve an issue, you position the company to respond intelligently to an inquiry of any caliber. The process starts with you.

Communications is a proactive and interactive relationship. The key is listening and responding intelligently to what your customer has to say. After you hear what they tell you, provide some type of proactive response that advances the situation toward a proper resolution.

Two critical needs for successful communications are:

  • An established path of open communications – Is that path flexible to meet the changing needs of the consumer and your corporation?
  • Trained “brand ambassadors” who understand your brand and your corporation. They must understand the needs of your clients. Do you have people who can effectively communicate with your customers? Do they merely read text off of a computer screen or do they actively process the requests when the public contact them?

The way we interact and the manner in which we prepare for that interaction are mission critical to the success of your brand. If a customer’s requests get lost in a web of inefficiency, the potential PR damage is probably more significant than the event that generated the initial query. No one likes to have their concerns dismissed, lost, or just ignored.

Be sure that your customer service team has a flexible, interactive pathway established before you “open the front door.” If your staff doesn’t have an answer, at least have the ability to ‘vamp.’ Be able to acknowledge, record intelligently, and pass along the genuine concerns of your clients to someone who can correct the situation.

Your corporate brand is not an image on a bumper sticker. It is the lifeline to your customer. Be sure that you understand the process of communication.

Simplify the corporate image
The internal workings of almost any corporation are complex. Structure, hierarchies, and procedures are mission critical to keeping an organization well oiled and operational. However, when a customer calls in, they don’t care about your corporate needs – they want a simple answer to their problem.

This challenge faces every corporate communications office. How do you merge these two necessities? The problems that most corporations face are being able to listen successfully and answer intelligently.

Calvin Sun wrote a great piece on corporate communications for TechRepublic. Being able to communicate successfully involves active participation. Be ready to listen. Be prepared to change for the needs of your customer, your industry, and your brand.

If you want to develop a working strategy for your customer’s needs, contact our project managers to help you get your brand to those who matter most.