The advertising services we offer will make a difference for your firm. Our expertise lies in marketing,
design, and computer programming. We are continuously learning to keep our imaginations and knowledge base growing.
Category: Outlier News
We have had the pleasure of working with Keller Galvin at Body of Being. Body of Being is a talented team of practitioners that takes a holistic approach to mental health issues. Outlier designed, and developed the Body of Being website with Keller, and we are very excited for the team over at Body of Being.
Learn more at www.bodyofbeing.com
In other "coming soon" news we have broken ground on a new marketing stategy and branded look for Miles Fiberglass, a long established composite manufacturer with facilities in Portland, and Oregon City, Oregon. Look for their new website and print collateral soon.
At the same time we have started designing a new website for Seattle Refrigeration, a commercial freezer and refrigeration company based out of Seattle, Washington.
Category: Video Production
You hear lots of talk about viral web video marketing and get excited about the possibilities. "What if we can get our target audience sharing videos we produce and self promoting our ideas and products?". It adds a lot of mileage to the return on investment for the initial video production. With viral video marketing the first step is getting your video in front of a wide enough audience to make a dent.
This means adding it to all of the major video communities, and directing customers to the video via PR and announcements. We typically also keep an eye on video search engines to see how complete and quickly updated they are.
One of the most popular video search engines, Blinkx, recently added AdHoc, a new ad program that encourages viewers to share there favorite videos.. This obviously helps spread the word on new video presentations.
Below is a list of video search engines that you may not have heard of yet:
We arleady mentioned Blinkx
Truveo
Fooooo - A leading video search engine from Japan
Dabble - Community driven, includes everything from vlogs, to movies shot on phones, and professionally produced videos
EveryZing - Uses a one of a kind audio translation technology
Pixsy - Images, Audio, Video
It always interesting to see how videos are categorized and how the channels are broken down.....
This means adding it to all of the major video communities, and directing customers to the video via PR and announcements. We typically also keep an eye on video search engines to see how complete and quickly updated they are.
One of the most popular video search engines, Blinkx, recently added AdHoc, a new ad program that encourages viewers to share there favorite videos.. This obviously helps spread the word on new video presentations.
Below is a list of video search engines that you may not have heard of yet:
We arleady mentioned Blinkx
Truveo
Fooooo - A leading video search engine from Japan
Dabble - Community driven, includes everything from vlogs, to movies shot on phones, and professionally produced videos
EveryZing - Uses a one of a kind audio translation technology
Pixsy - Images, Audio, Video
It always interesting to see how videos are categorized and how the channels are broken down.....
Category: Tips and Suggestions
We have recently completed a product demonstration multimedia presentation for Labnet International. They wanted to put together an online sales tool for the new Multigene Thermal Cycler.
Labnet's MultiGene Gradient Thermal Cycler is now launched and they have received positive feedback on the presentation from dealers and customers alike.
These sort of multimedia presentations are very affordable and offer a sophistication that compliments a product's quality. We especially find them to be useful for products of a technical nature such as medical equipment, scientific instruments, and products that require programming and setup.
Labnet's MultiGene Gradient Thermal Cycler is now launched and they have received positive feedback on the presentation from dealers and customers alike.
These sort of multimedia presentations are very affordable and offer a sophistication that compliments a product's quality. We especially find them to be useful for products of a technical nature such as medical equipment, scientific instruments, and products that require programming and setup.
Category: Web Resources
It took us this long but we are now on Technorati.
Technorati Profile.
Our screen name is Outlier, look us up.
Technorati Profile.
Our screen name is Outlier, look us up.
Category: Tips and Suggestions
Recently, I was looking at some promotional materials for Outlier Solutions and I stumbled upon some interesting things that I decided to share. Promotional products can be a fun and effective way to establish or enhance customer relations, with new and existing customers. Promotional items keep your company’s name and contact information out in the open, handy for customers to find and helping to introduce your company to potential customers.
According to the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), promotional products is an 18 billion dollar a year industry. A survey that PPAI conducted with business travelers in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport revealed some other interesting statistics about promotional products and how customers use them. Here are a few of the statistics from PPAI’s survey:
- 55% of people said that they kept their promotional products for more than 1 year
- 76% said they could recall the advertiser’s name on the promotional item they were given in the last 12 months
- 75% said they kept promotional items that were useful
Promotional items can be used as a thank you to your loyal customers. In my own search I keep coming across the saying “everyone likes freebies”. There is truth to this, giving current loyal customers a nice promotional item will help make them feel appreciated by your company.
Epromos.com's blog “Everybody Loves Free Stuff” has compiled a lot of interesting promotional ideas. Some of these ideas are traditional promotional items like plastic bags and coffee mugs that showcase a creative design, and some of the items are more unique, like the laundry detergent kit that includes a piece of fabric that must be washed to reveal the message. Be sure to look at “Everybody Loves Free Stuff” for a lot of creative promotional and guerilla marketing ideas. Look at the Promo No-No page for a laugh as well.
The lesson I have learned, giving away a coffee mug, as typical as it may sound, can be an extremely effective way to build positive relationships with your customers and hopefully to recruit a few new ones.
According to the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), promotional products is an 18 billion dollar a year industry. A survey that PPAI conducted with business travelers in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport revealed some other interesting statistics about promotional products and how customers use them. Here are a few of the statistics from PPAI’s survey:
- 55% of people said that they kept their promotional products for more than 1 year
- 76% said they could recall the advertiser’s name on the promotional item they were given in the last 12 months
- 75% said they kept promotional items that were useful
Promotional items can be used as a thank you to your loyal customers. In my own search I keep coming across the saying “everyone likes freebies”. There is truth to this, giving current loyal customers a nice promotional item will help make them feel appreciated by your company.
Epromos.com's blog “Everybody Loves Free Stuff” has compiled a lot of interesting promotional ideas. Some of these ideas are traditional promotional items like plastic bags and coffee mugs that showcase a creative design, and some of the items are more unique, like the laundry detergent kit that includes a piece of fabric that must be washed to reveal the message. Be sure to look at “Everybody Loves Free Stuff” for a lot of creative promotional and guerilla marketing ideas. Look at the Promo No-No page for a laugh as well.
The lesson I have learned, giving away a coffee mug, as typical as it may sound, can be an extremely effective way to build positive relationships with your customers and hopefully to recruit a few new ones.
Category: Tips and Suggestions
Designing an e-commerce store takes much more planning and execution than launching a standard web site. Understanding this at the outset, just as with any large project, helps to ensure at the time of launch everyone in the organization is in sync (to the extent that this is ever possible).
Usability, functionality, and design should all be woven together at the planning stages. The goal is to give your customers an overall positive experience. While we (the web design firm) could create a very intuitive web design, we can’t help the product get shipped on time or know that the internal MRP system needs to have certain data fields complete without good planning and knowledge sharing.
According to a survey conducted by Internet Retailer 60.3% of web retailers have redesigned their e-commerce site with in the past year. This statistic showcases that Internet retailers are realizing how important the design of a site is to how successful an e-commerce store will be. Our advice is to embrace the web standards but trust in the competence of the user. In other words, if people can navigate virtual worlds they can get through a few wrong turns in the product shopping process.
There are different ways to approach the design of an e-commerce store. Some companies believe that rich media content deserves more emphasis, while others think that simplicity is the answer. A store can be successful using either approach, however there are some important things to focus on.
In the survey by Internet Retailer 68.9% of the companies redesigning their e-commerce store said that better product and page organization was the main focus of the redesign. Customers are not likely to spend much time searching on a site so organization is key. It is the company’s responsibility to make it easy for the customer to find their way around the store. ECmmerce101’s blog gives 4 good tips for organizing your website. They are:
1. Make sure the information on each page is balanced. Not too much, not too little.
2. Be sure the information you include on each page is relevant and in the correct order.
a. Tell the customers who you are
b. Tell them what kind of business you run
c. Tell them what you offer
d. Display the total cost
e. Explain the necessary steps to complete the purchase
3. Have good categorization and trust your categorization. Trust your customers to understand your categorization.
4. Don’t punish your customers for navigation mistakes. Make the store easy to move through, making sure the customers do not feel lost in the store.
Another good idea is to make the store easier to navigate is to include a search feature. This allows customers to search through the products offered based on size, color, functionality, product number, etc. This is also a great marketing tool as we mentioned in an earlier post.
Outlier Solutions
At Outlier Solutions we know it’s important to implement good design in all of our projects, but understand that extra planning is needed when designing an e-commerce store. We believe that designing to meet web standards is important. According to the Web Standards Group, designing to web standards helps to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users. Standards also help to ensure long-term visibility of any document you may publish on the web.
Usability, functionality, and design should all be woven together at the planning stages. The goal is to give your customers an overall positive experience. While we (the web design firm) could create a very intuitive web design, we can’t help the product get shipped on time or know that the internal MRP system needs to have certain data fields complete without good planning and knowledge sharing.
According to a survey conducted by Internet Retailer 60.3% of web retailers have redesigned their e-commerce site with in the past year. This statistic showcases that Internet retailers are realizing how important the design of a site is to how successful an e-commerce store will be. Our advice is to embrace the web standards but trust in the competence of the user. In other words, if people can navigate virtual worlds they can get through a few wrong turns in the product shopping process.
There are different ways to approach the design of an e-commerce store. Some companies believe that rich media content deserves more emphasis, while others think that simplicity is the answer. A store can be successful using either approach, however there are some important things to focus on.
In the survey by Internet Retailer 68.9% of the companies redesigning their e-commerce store said that better product and page organization was the main focus of the redesign. Customers are not likely to spend much time searching on a site so organization is key. It is the company’s responsibility to make it easy for the customer to find their way around the store. ECmmerce101’s blog gives 4 good tips for organizing your website. They are:
1. Make sure the information on each page is balanced. Not too much, not too little.
2. Be sure the information you include on each page is relevant and in the correct order.
a. Tell the customers who you are
b. Tell them what kind of business you run
c. Tell them what you offer
d. Display the total cost
e. Explain the necessary steps to complete the purchase
3. Have good categorization and trust your categorization. Trust your customers to understand your categorization.
4. Don’t punish your customers for navigation mistakes. Make the store easy to move through, making sure the customers do not feel lost in the store.
Another good idea is to make the store easier to navigate is to include a search feature. This allows customers to search through the products offered based on size, color, functionality, product number, etc. This is also a great marketing tool as we mentioned in an earlier post.
Outlier Solutions
At Outlier Solutions we know it’s important to implement good design in all of our projects, but understand that extra planning is needed when designing an e-commerce store. We believe that designing to meet web standards is important. According to the Web Standards Group, designing to web standards helps to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users. Standards also help to ensure long-term visibility of any document you may publish on the web.
07/06: Diversification in Online Marketing is Key to Reaching Customers According to Marketing Managers
Category: Search Engine Marketing
Yet again, the case for diversity in marketing is made thanks to GlobalSpec's Industrial Marketing Trends Survey. Respondents to the survey stated overwhelmingly that online marketing is already becoming a higher priority in 2007 than it was in 2006. The reason? Companies are working to grow their customer base by reaching and appealing to a more tech-savvy market. The question is this: What marketing mix will allow customer-seekers to reach their full potential?
First, lets understand who conducted and who responded to the February, 2007 survey. GlobalSpec is a search engine geared towards professionals in the technical and engineering fields. In summary, GlobalSpec is a gateway through which companies may access a wealth of online catalogs, services, and other technical content. Users surveyed represented companies of all sizes, with 41% describing themselves as holding marketing management positions. In order to better serve their users, GlobalSpec needed to find out what their plans are for 2007. And with this survey they got their answer: Web marketing, with it's ever-expanding definition, is the future.
61% of those surveyed by GlobalSpec plan to spend more on online marketing in 2007 than they did in 2006, and 37% of all survey respondents plan to spend over one third of their marketing budgets online. A lot of time, effort, and money is being invested in reaching out to customers through the internet. But companies must remain active in seeking new, more effective ways to gain and retain customers. Nowadays a beautiful company web site and search engine optimization are not enough.
Along with a well-designed online presence and good search engine placement, companies need to give customers access to what they have to offer. The internet is all about information, so companies must give it efficiently. E-newsletters and email marketing allow providers to communicate directly with high-affinity customers and encourage them to investigate. Searchable on-line directories, product catalogs, and even advertisements placed on search engines give current and potential customers easy, quick access. Banner ads and banner ad networks allow for a broader reach to a more diversified group of seekers. After all, 91% of those responding to GlobalSpec's Survey use the internet to find what they need to run their own businesses.
At the same time, it is important to not get too carried away in expanding one's marketing mix. Though well-publicized and trendy, some forms of online communication are not yet worth heavy investment. For instance, forms of social media such as podcasts and blogs are not showing high returns in the industrial sector yet. The eyes of potential customers have not turned in such directions. Still, social media is worth monitoring and dabbling in for possible use in the future.
What we learn from GlobalSpec's Industrial Marketing Trends Survey is that customers expect to find what they need online. Through a balanced, broad-reaching online marketing strategy companies can make a connection with those customers and provide them with easy access, relevant information, and thus great service. Outlier Solutions can help you define, implement, and measure a complete online marketing strategy.
First, lets understand who conducted and who responded to the February, 2007 survey. GlobalSpec is a search engine geared towards professionals in the technical and engineering fields. In summary, GlobalSpec is a gateway through which companies may access a wealth of online catalogs, services, and other technical content. Users surveyed represented companies of all sizes, with 41% describing themselves as holding marketing management positions. In order to better serve their users, GlobalSpec needed to find out what their plans are for 2007. And with this survey they got their answer: Web marketing, with it's ever-expanding definition, is the future.
61% of those surveyed by GlobalSpec plan to spend more on online marketing in 2007 than they did in 2006, and 37% of all survey respondents plan to spend over one third of their marketing budgets online. A lot of time, effort, and money is being invested in reaching out to customers through the internet. But companies must remain active in seeking new, more effective ways to gain and retain customers. Nowadays a beautiful company web site and search engine optimization are not enough.
Along with a well-designed online presence and good search engine placement, companies need to give customers access to what they have to offer. The internet is all about information, so companies must give it efficiently. E-newsletters and email marketing allow providers to communicate directly with high-affinity customers and encourage them to investigate. Searchable on-line directories, product catalogs, and even advertisements placed on search engines give current and potential customers easy, quick access. Banner ads and banner ad networks allow for a broader reach to a more diversified group of seekers. After all, 91% of those responding to GlobalSpec's Survey use the internet to find what they need to run their own businesses.
At the same time, it is important to not get too carried away in expanding one's marketing mix. Though well-publicized and trendy, some forms of online communication are not yet worth heavy investment. For instance, forms of social media such as podcasts and blogs are not showing high returns in the industrial sector yet. The eyes of potential customers have not turned in such directions. Still, social media is worth monitoring and dabbling in for possible use in the future.
What we learn from GlobalSpec's Industrial Marketing Trends Survey is that customers expect to find what they need online. Through a balanced, broad-reaching online marketing strategy companies can make a connection with those customers and provide them with easy access, relevant information, and thus great service. Outlier Solutions can help you define, implement, and measure a complete online marketing strategy.
Category: Web Resources
A large part of successful graphic design is color selection and combinations. As a visual society we are stimulated, relaxed, and affected by certain colors so in the graphic design industry we are always searching for new ways to find the perfect color to convey the intended meaning of our designs. As technology advances color tools are advancing as well. While surfing the net we at Outlier Solutions have stumbled upon some useful and fun color tools, such as color pickers and color mixers, which we wanted to share with you.
Pantone
We couldn’t list websites dealing with color without including Pantone. Pantone has been the standard in color in graphic design for over 40 years. This website is crammed full of information on color. You can shop through Pantone’s products, ready articles and blogs, ask questions, and do much more.
ColorJack
This website allows you to create custom swatch pallets that can be exported to Illustrator, Photoshop, to your bookmark folder, and a few other places. There is also a color widget that can be downloaded onto your computer for free.
ColourMod
Colourmod.com is a flexible color picker tool that comes in versions ranging from a $25 customizable widget to one that you can download for free onto your computer. Colourmod can do color conversions from your desktop and color picking from the web.
COLOURlovers
Colourlovers.com is an online community full of people who have a love for color. You can create and vote on color themes, but there are also blogs, articles, discussion boards, trends, jobs, and more. This is a comprehensive site that is completely dedicated to color, not just color as it relates to graphic design.
Kuler
This site, created by Adobe, helps the users to create color themes, similar to on COLOURlover's site. The themes are created around several color rules, such as analogous, complementary, and monochromatic. You start by selecting a base color, and then the site mathematically selects colors that are complementary. Once you’ve created the theme you can save it and other members of the community can vote on them. You can also download your theme; as well as other members color themes.
Colorstrology
Colorstrology is similar to astrology in that it gives you a profile about your personality based on the month and day that you were born. However, there’s a twist. It’s not just giving a personality profile, Colorstrology.com tells you what your personal color is, saying that wearing or surrounding yourself with that color can bring out different strengths. There is also a widget that you can download that tells you what the color of the day is.
Working in graphic design in Portland, Oregon we know the importance that color has on good design. These sites are tools that can help expand your ideas about color, and as a result create more interesting, successful designs. We hope you’ll enjoy experimenting with these tools.
Pantone
We couldn’t list websites dealing with color without including Pantone. Pantone has been the standard in color in graphic design for over 40 years. This website is crammed full of information on color. You can shop through Pantone’s products, ready articles and blogs, ask questions, and do much more.
ColorJack
This website allows you to create custom swatch pallets that can be exported to Illustrator, Photoshop, to your bookmark folder, and a few other places. There is also a color widget that can be downloaded onto your computer for free.
ColourMod
Colourmod.com is a flexible color picker tool that comes in versions ranging from a $25 customizable widget to one that you can download for free onto your computer. Colourmod can do color conversions from your desktop and color picking from the web.
COLOURlovers
Colourlovers.com is an online community full of people who have a love for color. You can create and vote on color themes, but there are also blogs, articles, discussion boards, trends, jobs, and more. This is a comprehensive site that is completely dedicated to color, not just color as it relates to graphic design.
Kuler
This site, created by Adobe, helps the users to create color themes, similar to on COLOURlover's site. The themes are created around several color rules, such as analogous, complementary, and monochromatic. You start by selecting a base color, and then the site mathematically selects colors that are complementary. Once you’ve created the theme you can save it and other members of the community can vote on them. You can also download your theme; as well as other members color themes.
Colorstrology
Colorstrology is similar to astrology in that it gives you a profile about your personality based on the month and day that you were born. However, there’s a twist. It’s not just giving a personality profile, Colorstrology.com tells you what your personal color is, saying that wearing or surrounding yourself with that color can bring out different strengths. There is also a widget that you can download that tells you what the color of the day is.
Working in graphic design in Portland, Oregon we know the importance that color has on good design. These sites are tools that can help expand your ideas about color, and as a result create more interesting, successful designs. We hope you’ll enjoy experimenting with these tools.
Category: Search Engine Marketing
A comprehensive report has been released by iProspect on the attitudes of Search Engine users. They found that over 40% of search engine users try a new search if they are not satisfied with the listings they find on the first page and over 80% try a new search after browsing the top three pages. So as far as search engine marketing goes if you are not listed within the top 30 returns you are missing opportunities.
One of the more interesting questions asked "Seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field", showed that 35% of responders agreed with this statment. In seeing this statistic it shows the correlation to customers wanting be catered to with internet marketing and they recognize that trend setting companies would be doing just that.
Using Search Engine Marketing with an effective mix of direct marketing improves your company's exsposure (obviously), but it also demonstrates a forward thinking attitude about marketing. On the flip side that amount of people who disagreed with this statment decresed dramatically from 65% to about 25% (the remainder was neutral).
Another interesting finding was that a majority of search engine users find that “natural” or “organic” results are more relevant to their search over paid search engines. By not investing in “natural” search engine marketing an organization is potentially missing out on over 60% of the audience searching for keywords most relevant to their products or services. That being said, if your company were to focus only on “natural” results, 40% of search engine users would be ignored. This is why we also recommend using pay-per-click advertising and other tools to keep a well rounded internet marketing mix.
Studies, such as the one conducted by iProspect, continue to help us better understand the behaviors of Internet and search engine users. Outlier Solutions is passionate in the belief that internet marketing will provide growing results for both sales generation and brand exposure.
One of the more interesting questions asked "Seeing a company listed among the top results on a search engine makes me think that the company is a top one within its field", showed that 35% of responders agreed with this statment. In seeing this statistic it shows the correlation to customers wanting be catered to with internet marketing and they recognize that trend setting companies would be doing just that.
Using Search Engine Marketing with an effective mix of direct marketing improves your company's exsposure (obviously), but it also demonstrates a forward thinking attitude about marketing. On the flip side that amount of people who disagreed with this statment decresed dramatically from 65% to about 25% (the remainder was neutral).
Another interesting finding was that a majority of search engine users find that “natural” or “organic” results are more relevant to their search over paid search engines. By not investing in “natural” search engine marketing an organization is potentially missing out on over 60% of the audience searching for keywords most relevant to their products or services. That being said, if your company were to focus only on “natural” results, 40% of search engine users would be ignored. This is why we also recommend using pay-per-click advertising and other tools to keep a well rounded internet marketing mix.
Studies, such as the one conducted by iProspect, continue to help us better understand the behaviors of Internet and search engine users. Outlier Solutions is passionate in the belief that internet marketing will provide growing results for both sales generation and brand exposure.
Category: Video Production
A report released by eMarketer.com claims that online advertising revenues will increase to $775 million dollars by the end of 2007. Since the dawn of online video communties such as YouTube and MySpace, you are constantly hearing discussions of the video boom. For example, Businessweek.com released an article today discussing the eMarketer report. As a company that deals in online video production, we find this to be exciting news but have to constantly remind ourselves that online video communities aren't filled with advertisements.
We give a huge amount of credit to the web video communities for constructing a creative, shared environment that is very entertaining and user driven. Video advertising is currently not going this route. Instead, it serves as a precusor to interesting video content. For instance, when you see an interesting headline on Yahoo! but have to watch an ad first to get to the interesting video. That strategy flies in the face of what users like about these video communities. Forced exposure to your message is a turn off.
It is important to recognize that online video presentations can be very dynamic and should be used to engage users. Don't deliver the standard "auto pilot" TV formats. Give options and control of the presentation to the user. Our theory is if your viewer glosses over parts of the presentation / advertisment they aren't interested in because they want to navigate to a section they are interested in you will make a much longer impression. The alternative may be losing their attention and possibly not gaining it back.
We give a huge amount of credit to the web video communities for constructing a creative, shared environment that is very entertaining and user driven. Video advertising is currently not going this route. Instead, it serves as a precusor to interesting video content. For instance, when you see an interesting headline on Yahoo! but have to watch an ad first to get to the interesting video. That strategy flies in the face of what users like about these video communities. Forced exposure to your message is a turn off.
It is important to recognize that online video presentations can be very dynamic and should be used to engage users. Don't deliver the standard "auto pilot" TV formats. Give options and control of the presentation to the user. Our theory is if your viewer glosses over parts of the presentation / advertisment they aren't interested in because they want to navigate to a section they are interested in you will make a much longer impression. The alternative may be losing their attention and possibly not gaining it back.