Adobe carries on the good work in a fast-changing digital world

Thursday, March 08, 2012

The digital world is changing incredibly fast. Take Pinterest, which was until recently a relatively obscure social network. In the last few weeks it's grown by 4000 percent, making it the planet's fastest ever growing website. Blimey! 

When you run a business, you want your website to sit on a platform created by a company that is properly set up to deal with the future, whatever the future might bring. So it's good to see Adobe, the creators of the all-singing, all-dancing content management platform Adobe Business Catalyst (ABC), taking the digital marketing world by the scruff of its neck and giving it a good shake. 

What's going on? Adobe is about to re-launch itself, via a massive re-branding campaign, as a leading provider of digital marketing and media services, dedicated to helping marketers create, measure, monetise and optimise their digital marketing efforts. 

Most of us have hear of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and so on. But we'll soon be looking at the company with fresh eyes as it aims for a market-leading position in full service digital marketing and media solutions, rivalling current giants Google and IBM. In Adobe's words, their aim is "changing the world through digital experiences".

Why is this good news for the Lucid Synergy team? Chris spent several months carefully researching the best possible business website content management and customer relationship platform, finally choosing ABC. It's a platform that's constantly evolving and changing, regularly bringing on board new innovations and improved back-end functionality. The news that Adobe is taking an aggressive market stance and dedicating itself to the future of digital marketing and communications means ABC will benefit in kind. 

Chris uses ABC to create websites for all our small and medium sized business customers. It's a beauty, easy to understand and a pleasure to drive. And it looks as though it has a brighter future than ever. If you want your online business to sit on a platform that's rock solid, future proof and determined to remain that way, you can't go far wrong with Adobe Business Catalyst. Why not call Chris for a quick chat and find out more? 

What is direct marketing? And is it relevant online?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The internet is a fascinating commercial landscape to operate in. Search engines test numerous new variations of their search algorithms every day. Online businesses rise and fall. Social networks spring up then die back. New technologies, tools, platforms and widgets pop up and take us by surprise. It's a proper moveable feast. 

Luckily, whatever the marketing medium, us humans behave in much the same way when we're buying stuff. Which means direct marketing is just as relevant online as it is offline. 

So what is direct marketing? 

Direct marketing drives attributable sales. The words and design push readers towards a buying decision. You provide at least one response mechanism in your campaign. You include strong calls to action. People buy as a direct result of seeing your advert or email, auto-responder message or web page. And you can track them back to their origin, establishing what return on investment you have or haven't made on a campaign by campaign basis.  

Brand advertising is about creating brand, service and product awareness and nurturing desire, in the hope that you'll eventually fall in love with a brand and buy what's being advertised. TV adverts are usually about brand building, as are posh ads in glossy magazines. If there's no 'ask', it isn't direct marketing. Car, cosmetic, retailer, food and fast moving consumer goods adverts don't usually end with an appeal for the viewer to 'call this number and buy now'.

When you think about it, every business website is a miniature exercise in direct marketing. Most online businesses want people to respond directly to the site's content by either phoning, emailing or buying instantly. Very few business websites these days are simply 'brochure sites' with no purpose beyond passive brand support.     

One of the best things about today's best content and customer management platforms is the way they take direct marketing principles and practices into account up front. You don't need to set up a separate account elsewhere to run email campaigns and set up a suite of auto-responder messages. There are facilities for data capture and manipulation. You get a load of integral stats so you can track exactly what's happening, when and why. All in one place. Which goes a long way towards getting your business in good direct marketing shape. 

Ask Chris about Adobe Business Catalyst. When your business sits on ABC, it's as easy as one, two three!  

The OneZeroSquared experiment - Talking the talk AND walking the walk!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

As a general rule it's wise to put your money where your mouth is. That way you can rely on the courage of your convictions for real. How many more cliches can I come up with in one paragraph? Just watch me...!

Chris waxes lyrical about Adobe Business catalyst. He spent months and months researching every detail of a wide variety of CMS before deciding on ABC as the best platform for business websites. And now he's set up a genuine ecommerce venture so he can experience the ABC ecommerce platform from an end user, business owner perspective too. 

Instead of spending weeks on end working up the perfect e-commerce site from scratch, writing the code as you go, Chris has used ABC's unbeatable intuitive design tools to build a site that looks great - funky and contemporary - as well as working absolutely beautifully. 

Most content creation and management systems are built with a technical focus. Adobe goes several steps further by building the potential for great design into their model too. Having brought Photoshop and InDesign to a grateful creative sector, they're perfectly qualified to create a system that delivers considerable eye candy as well as full functionality. 

Anyway, I digress. The point is that Chris's new site is built on the ABS platform so it's rock solid and works like a dream as well as being great to look at. His design skills shine through, as does his sense of humour, in a collection of unique and occasionally contentious T-shirts, designed to deliver belly laughs and wry grins all round (he'll be blushing now - gotcha Chris!) and he hints at adding hand-made screen prints and more artistic delights soon.  

As a suck-it-and-see type of gal, I've just made a diary note to purchase a T-shirt or two with the festive season in mind. A man can't have too many t-shirts and mine is a case in point. Great fun!

 Here's a link: www.onezerosquared.com