Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house
Hiring a marketing agency vs. marketing in-house – which is better for your business? We at O2 believe that hiring a professional marketing agency can benefit your business in a number of ways. Here are just a few:
Time: Ah, precious time. This can be a premium for many businesses. Marketing takes time too, from devising strategies to coordinating campaigns to creating ads and promotions to…you get the idea. Hiring an agency means the agency will worry about marketing for you, which saves your business precious time.
Expenses. Hiring an in-house marketer can expend a lot of money (salary, benefits) and expend time too (recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training). Hiring an agency can often be less expensive than marketing in-house, especially when you consider that O2 specializes in working with small businesses – we’re a small business too! We can create marketing packages that will fit your needs as well as your budget.
Experience. At O2, we have over 30 combined years of marketing experience, and we’re undertaking new marketing endeavors every day. We can provide you with expert direction if you aren’t sure how to market your business. Our experience also contributes to our next point…
Efficiency. Since we’re extensively experienced, we can quickly and efficiently identify the best marketing initiatives for you. We do this stuff every day! We’ll help you create the right message for the right business at the right time.
Perspective. Small business owners must often keep a narrow focus on their business. While this can be necessary for the sake of the business, it can also make it difficult to step back and think about your business in the big picture of marketing. Hiring an agency can provide a much broader perspective on marketing and other matters. Let us handle your marketing so you can focus on the operations of your business.
Resources. We’re a comprehensive professional agency with a large variety of services to offer. In addition to marketing and advertising services, we can also provide graphic design, web design, promotional products, printing services, and more.
Fun. Okay, why does this matter? Well, we really think you’ll enjoy working with us at O2. In addition to being experienced professionals, we’re actually friendly fun folks too. For instance, even though we’re in the office working hard on Halloween, we still took the time to have a little holiday fun. To prove it, here’s Brad dressed up like Joe Dirt, and Sophie dressed up like a ladybug:
Happy Halloween!
To contact us at O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]
Click here for our last blog: Dolls for Daughters
Professional Communication
At O2, we work with all sorts of clients in a wide variety of markets, industries, and locations. One of the biggest factors in successfully working with such a variety of clients is successfully communicating with each client. We think professional communication is important for every business, so we thought we’d share some tips and tactics that have helped us become better communicators in our business:
Meet regularly. This is perhaps the best way to communicate. In-person, face-to-face meetings help us to get on the same page with the client and really get the creative ball rolling. You’re always welcome to stop by the O2 office, and we’re also happy to come meet you at your business. Or, if you’d like to get even more casual, we’ll gladly meet with you over a drink somewhere around town.
Communicate across multiple mediums. In addition to in-person meetings, we’ll regularly talk to our clients over the phone, via email, Skype, or even on social media. Each of these mediums can be convenient and effective ways to communicate, and can even offer their own unique advantages.
Address issues immediately. If there is ever any confusion or misunderstanding, we try to clarify the issue ASAP. Multiple mediums of communication come into play here too: for instance, if we’re not sure about something in an email, we’ll contact clients by phone to seek quick clarification.
Be timely. Communication should always be timely! This is especially important when keeping a campaign or other project on track. When we fall behind in communication, we fall behind in the campaign.
As a creative agency we genuinely care about the success of our clients. We want each of our clients to be as successful as possible in their respective market, and the success of a project is directly related to the quality of professional communication. This is why we put so much effort into communicating, and encourage our clients to effectively communicate with us as well. If you don’t communicate with us, we can’t work as hard for you.
So whether you’re a current client, or you’re just curious about working with us, please communicate! We’d be pleased to discuss all the opportunities we might have to create a more successful business together.
To communicate with O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected]. Or contact us on Facebook or Twitter. If you’re in our area, just stop by our office at 345 Zerex Street in downtown Fraser, CO. You can also mail us at PO Box 1349, Winter Park, CO 80482. Or, feel free to Skype us too!
Click here for our last blog: Facebook insights
Winter marketing
Summer is gone, September is here, and the seasons are changing yet again in the Colorado Rockies. (Labor Day really just came and went?? How’d that already happen!) We even had a dusting of snow along the Continental Divide this morning.
With the summer tourist traffic winding down and shoulder season just around the corner, now is the time to think ahead to winter in Grand County. The snowy months mean skiing, snowboarding, and lots of other cold weather fun. They also mean some of the heaviest traffic of the year, which means the busiest time of the year for many local companies.
To be prepared for the winter season’s business boom, your business needs to begin planning its winter marketing today! Getting your marketing and advertising initiatives in place means you can be fully prepared to capitalize on the snowy season’s tourist traffic.
Good marketing takes time. There’s plenty of planning, research, and coordination that can go into a campaign, not to mention graphic design, production and printing that may be involved. Starting early also means you’ll have time to fine-tune your campaign; to get your marketing message just right. This will not only help you attract more customers once they start arriving this winter, it can also make your customers aware of your business before they even get here.
Want to attract new customers with some posters and flyers, or a social media campaign? Want to increase your brand awareness with promotional products? Want to improve your online presence with blogging and search engine optimization? To have these and other marketing initiatives ready for the winter season, start preparing today.
We at O2 are about to launch a little marketing campaign of our own: we’ll be sending out direct mailer postcards to our clients and leads.
These postcards are a friendly reminder to get your marketing lined up in time to make the most of the upcoming ski season. When you see them, remember to contact us so we can get started soon!
Whether you have something specific in mind, or you just need help creating some effecting marketing initiatives, we can help. Contact us at O2 to start planning your winter marketing today!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: a year in the new office!
Writing tips from O2
At O2, we write a lot. We write blogs for clients, write content for websites, write copy for advertisements, even write creatively in our free time. We recently discussed a few practical tips and tricks that have helped us become better writers, and we decided to post a few of the writing tips from O2 in this week’s blog:
Create an outline. Determine how you want to begin your written piece, how you want to present the main points, and how you want to conclude your work.
Take notes. If you come across a creative thought, write it down. You may have a great idea right now, but unless you make a note of it, you may not even remember it by the time you sit down later to write.
Use the fewest words possible. Try to keep your writing economical and to the point.
Let your imagination take over. Don’t hesitate to let a creative impulse take your work in an unexpected direction, especially in the initial draft stages.
Write a first draft. Your first draft is the most important, since this draft determines the ultimate direction of your writing. With that said…
Don’t sweat the first draft. Your first draft will never be your best, so don’t get upset if it just isn’t where you want it to be. Allow yourself time to revise your writing.
Sleep on it. After writing your draft, don’t be afraid to leave it be until tomorrow. Many of your best revisions are the ones you’ll make the next morning with a fresh mind.
Use a thesaurus. Sometimes finding the right word can make the difference between good writing and superlative writing. (Yup, we checked the thesaurus for that one.)
Proofread, over and over again! In addition to proofing your own work, have someone else proofread as well. It’s important to get a second set of eyes on a piece of writing.
Think about your audience. Consider who will be reading your work, and try to write in a voice that will communicate with them. Sometimes it even helps to imagine you are writing to a familiar friend.
Read it out loud. Hearing each word out loud will help you really understand the voice of your writing. This also helps you proof your work, since you can often catch those hidden errors when you hear the writing out loud.
Don’t get frustrated. If you’re experiencing the dreaded “writer’s block,” don’t try to force it. Just step away for a moment. Work on something else, go grab a fresh cup of coffee, or just take a walk to clear your mind.
Have fun with it, most importantly of all! Think of writing not as a homework assignment, but as a fun way to express yourself. Once you can really enjoy the writing process, you’ll become increasingly comfortable as a wordsmith, and your creative voice will really start to shine in your work.
These are just a few quick writing tips we discussed. There are certainly plenty of other tips, but this post is already getting a little lengthy. If you have any other tips you’d like to share, please do!
To contact O2 Creative, call 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].
Click here for our last blog: D&M’s promotional products mix