MARKETING BLOG

MARKETING • TECHNOLOGY • RESULTS

Short answer: yes. Starting a blog is really quite simple. In fact, it is so simple you can literally have one up and running in a matter 5 minutes or less! Well, sort of. If you don’t care about branding and you don’t care about a private domain, 5 minutes may actually be about 4 minutes too long. Don’t believe it? A quick visit to blogger and you’ll see the proclamation: It’s easy, and only takes a minute!

So, why start a blog? Here’s a pretty good list of reason’s for starters: Top 10 Reasons to Start a Blog. For our technology clients, I recommend a blog as a great way to express thought leadership. And while whitepapers and case studies are great vehicles as well, blogs provide a lot more latitude in expressing onself as they can be a lot less formal, and they are bi-directional.

I do find it odd however that the article above fails to point out the importance of blogs to one’s SEO strategy. Blogs enable you to attract search engines with content and topicality that may not exactly fit on your corporate web site, yet deliver link juice through contextually relevant links. For example; imagine for a moment that you run a marketing agency that is located in the Philadelphia area. You can easily provide a link from your blog entries back to your Philadelphia marketing agency web site.

So, if you are serious about starting your blog, what are some of the key considerations you should be aware of?

1. Choosing a platform - In a just a few minute of search, you will find hundreds of options. Yikes! Just what you need when you are just getting started right? My recommendation… stick with the more reputable and proven platforms. Here’s a good article that reviews 10 of the more popular (installs) blog engines.
2. Hosting - do you have the wherewithall (or desire) to install and host a blog platform? You’ll need access to a server and the technical abilities to setup and install the neccessary software. Free hosted plaforms such as Wordpress.com and Blogger.com take all of the hastle out of setting up a blog. Your only real challenge here is grafting your visual identity onto the blog, which will require the services of someone skilled in design, CSS and HTML. Keep in mind, should you choose one of the free hosted solutions, you may run into issues down the road should you decide to move to another platform. Porting blog entries, while possible is riddled with challenges.
3. Capabilities - blogging may not be all you want to do; more mature blog platforms offer additional plugins for advanced functionality ranging from polling, forms, stock tickers and you name it. If you are like most, your primary interest is simply blogging and to that extent any of the more popular engines will more than suffice.

But when you really get down to it, starting a blog and choosing a good platform will ultimately be the easiest part for most companies. Updating it and maintaining it is by far the bigger challenge. While I haven’t been the most diligent at doing that here, I have plenty of ideas on how to make the process more manageable for our clients. It takes time and commitment but the benefits are numerous… it’s like the gift that keeps on giving.

I’m often asked the question, what’s the difference between an advertising agency and a marketing agency. Clearly we have opted to position Vovéo Marketing Group as the latter so what better way to kick off our corporate blog than with a discussion of the topic.

A simple place to begin is Webster’s definition of the terms advertising and marketing. Advertising is defined as the action of calling something to the attention of the public, especially by paid announcements. Marketing is defined as the act or process of promoting, selling and distributing a product or service. From this simple description, one can quickly surmise that advertising , presuming the ultimate goal of gaining one’s attention is to sell something, is a single component of a broader range of strategies and tactics that comprise the marketing process.

From the above description, one might conclude that advertising agencies are very narrowly focused, whereas a marketing agency like Vovéo might offer a much broader range of services. While the latter is true in our case, it is not necessarily an assumption that you should make - and I’m sure it is one that most advertising agencies would take exception to. In fact, frequently agencies will use the term “full service” in describing their offerings. In Vovéo’s case, full-service means everything from branding and web design & development , to collateral and lead generation. With the exception of the lead generation, which very few ad agencies offer, marketing agencies and advertising agencies tend to offer a lot of the same range of services.

Ok, so I know what you are thinking. The premise of this article is to answer the question, “what’s the difference between an advertising agency and a marketing agency” and I’ve led you to conclude… nothing. Well, not exactly. My 25 years of marketing experience have taught me that the differences are less tactical and largely philosophical.

During my years in the corporate world, working in director roles at SAP, Sun, and HP, I had the opportunity to work very closely with sales executives and their staffs. I also had the opportunity and sometimes misfortune of working with a number of outside firms including some of the most prestigious multi-national ad agencies. It was then that the differences became crystal clear to me. While my advertising agencies were focused largely on developing award-winning creative, my sales execs needed something that would immediately translate into results for the next quarter. I often found myself frustrated that my advertising agencies cared very little about the sales process, offered little or no help around strategic messaging, and would refer me to third party telemarketers any time the topic of lead generation popped up.

When I finally left corporate America in 1995 to start my own agency, I was bound and determined to offer my clients an improved agency experience. I began with a simple philosophy; that as an agency, we would work toward a single common goal – results. Having now walked in my clients’ shoes, I recognize that a sensitivity to the needs of sales people is critical to delivering value. Oh yeah, and as for my agency… I chose the name “Vovéo” – meaning a commitment, vow, or to promise to God, and of course, “Marketing Group”. Need I say more?