Archive for category Uncategorized
Happy 4th of July from the Marion Group!
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 30th, 2010
In honor of the upcoming July 4th holiday, we would like to showcase our president and CEO, Aaron Ellisor as he plays some patriotic music to help kick-start the festivities.
Promotional Products are in the Bag
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 3rd, 2010
We mentioned previously that Marion offers a wide array of promotional products to help your company that can be found on the Marion promotion products website.
Recently, we created were paper tote bags for Byrd Interior Construction (BIC). They used these bags to send samples of the materials used in their projects to clients. Marion started the project by sending samples and worked with BIC to get the final product. The bags were made in two sizes in the same style with identical art, the company’s logo and text.
BIC ordered 250 bags of each size, 18”x7”x19” and 13”x7”x7” and were made with white paper with printing on both sides. They also had twisted paper handles, serrated cut top, bottom and side gussets
Other custom promotional products created by Marion include hats and t-shirts tailored to the company’s specific needs.
Whether your company wants custom tote bags or other custom items, Marion is here to help! Please email info2@marion.com or call 713-623-6444.
Marion Has the Products with Promotional Pizzazz
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on June 2nd, 2010
You see these items all the time – pens, caps, cups, t-shirts, and other goodies with a company’s name on it. You get them from various businesses and may use them around your house or office. Have you wondered where you can get them to help promote your own company? One answer is The Marion Group, of course!
The Marion promotional products website provides a vast assortment of items your company can use to help increase brand awareness. Items in our catalog help to:
- Improve traffic at trade shows
- Motivate staff
- Thank a customer
- Increase safety awareness
Available items range from mouse pads and pens to more exotic offerings like massagers and retractable earphones. The site divides the catalog into three areas: ‘Featured Items’, ‘New and Trendy’, and the ‘Gift Book’.
Browse our Promotional Products Catalog and find the perfect giveaway item for your company.
If you need help with promotional products or giveaways, email us at info2@marion.com or call 713-623-6444.
Building Your Mobile Presence
Posted by admin in Mobile Marketing, Uncategorized on March 19th, 2010
Like with any marketing “endeavor”, before you can begin “construction” on your mobile presence, you should first build a solid foundation with a mobile strategy. Determine your target audience, the best ways to target them and what type of experience you want them to have. But, remember, the “experience” and information that your target audience seeks will be different from when they are sitting at a computer.
Smartphone Demographics:
BlackBerry: The typical user is a “salt-and-pepper” businessman who uses the phone primarily for email and messaging. He doesn’t surf the web much and doesn’t use many apps, save a few utility programs.
iPhone: Tech-obsessed, wealthy (highest percentage of users rake in more than $100,000), less likely to have kids (62% don’t) and are an active bunch.
Android: It’s growing fast, so these stats can change, but for now, it’s a phone for geeks – 73% of its users are male and 33% are single.
Palm: Most popular with older users who advertisers assume were fans of the old Palm Pilot – but there are fewer and fewer of them. Its smartphone market fell from 8.3% to 6.1% from September to December 2009.
Smartphone technology is continuing to expand by the day, so it’s important to develop and implement your mobile strategy to reach your target audience, but remain flexible to meet the ever-changing technology.
Mobile Web Design
Every company should have a mobile website. People are beginning to expect information to be instantly at their fingertips, and having a mobile website can give your audience the information they want and help you gain the leading edge over your competition.
The Marion Group can provide your company with custom mobile web design that allows your new mobile website to have the same look and feel of your “regular” site. However, in certain ways, your new mobile website should be different than your regular website.
The most obvious difference between your regular site and your mobile site is that your mobile site should be “skinny” – minimal images, only necessary content, the quickest and easiest way to contact you and maybe a map of your location, if it will benefit the user. By keeping your mobile site “skinny” and pared down, you can decrease the load time of your site on the user’s mobile device, creating faster access to your information, and making the information easier to locate on a teeny-tiny screen.
Advantages to having a mobile website:*
- Mobile websites can work on 100% of mobile devices that have browsers, allowing you to reach a broader audience
- The user experience can be optimized to highlight your common denominator
- You can publish content when you want – no approval is needed from the manufacturer app store
- It doesn’t require your customer to download a new version every time you update the site (like a mobile app does)
- It can be cheaper to develop because you don’t need to port it across different operating systems
- Marion can gather metrics regarding visitors to your mobile site and determine your return on investment (ROI) on your mobile efforts
Mobile App Development
Mobile apps aren’t for every company, but under the right circumstances, a mobile app can be an excellent supplemental effort to your mobile strategy. A mobile app can give your customer a richer experience than your mobile web site could ever provide.
And that brings up an important fact: your mobile app should not be a repeat of your mobile site, but, again, it should have the same “look and feel” as your other marketing efforts.
Advantages to having a mobile app:*
- Mobile apps allow you to build a richer experience for your customer without affecting data speeds
- Mobile apps can take advantage of your phone’s features like GPS, camera and voice
- When self-contained, mobile apps can work offline when the user is not connected to the mobile Web
- Mobile apps are relatively inexpensive to build and maintain, given only one operating system is involved
- Mobile apps can become an extension of your brand
For more information on how The Marion Group can assist your company in developing a mobile marketing strategy, building a mobile website or creating a mobile app, give us a call at 713.623.6444 or email us at info2@marion.com.
* MobileMarketer.com and Lenati.com
What’s the difference: Web vs. Internet
Posted by admin in Internet marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Web Design on February 3rd, 2010
Ever used the terms “Web” and “Internet” interchangeably? Like “Surf the Web” or “Browse the internet”? Most of us have. But the truth is that the Web and Internet are different.
The Internet is a huge network of networks- it connects computers together, so that they can communicate and trade information. If a computer is connected to the Internet, it can exchange information with any other computers that are also connected.
The Web (aka World Wide Web) is just one way of accessing the Internet. The Web is an information-sharing application that is built on top of the Internet. The Web cannot work unless the Internet is connected. Simply put, the Web runs on top of the Internet the way a train runs on tracks.
When you are shopping on Amazon or watching videos on YouTube, you are using the Web. However, when you send an email, you are using the Internet, not the Web. The Web is by far the largest and most widely used subnetwork of the internet.
Here, at Marion, we provide a wide range of Internet and Web marketing services. For the Web, we can increase traffic to your page through our Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. For the Internet, Marion can create and broadcast e-newsletters, so that you can stay in constant contact with your customers. Check out our full range of online marketing services or contact us today at (713)-623-6444.
Marion appears in the Houston Chronicle
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on January 18th, 2010
The Marion Group is excited to announce that our CEO Aaron Ellisor has been interviewed by the Houston Chronicle. The article appeared in the Sunday Edition of the Chronicle in the Small Business section and highlights Marion’s creative and unique trade show displays.
A two-story trade booth Marion designed for Forum Oilfield Technologies
Merry Christmas from The Marion Group!
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on December 23rd, 2009
As 2009 ends, Marion sends our blessings and good cheer to our clients, family and friends. We give thanks to you for your continued loyalty to our company and look forward to the new opportunities that 2010 may bring.
Merry Christmas and enjoy our animated greeting card. Click to view card.
The Marion Group Completes Foodservice Distributor Site
Posted by admin in Brand Building, Brand Positioning, Uncategorized, Web Design on December 8th, 2009
Marion has completed the newly-redesigned corporate website for Jake’s Finer Foods at jakesfinerfoods.com. Marion was responsible for brand positioning, content development and custom web design. The site features a distinctive look for the Jake’s brand and an appealing, easy-to-navigate structural design that encourages new visitors to learn more about Jake’s diverse service offerings and provides a wealth of information and services to Jake’s existing customers.
In development for most of 2009, the new site highlights the varied benefits that Jake’s provides to its customers. The diversity of Jake’s customer base is reflected in four distinct business segment buttons, drawing retail customers to information that is most pertinent to them, while doing the same for multi-unit, independent and international customers as well.
According to Kevin Ullrich, vice-president of Sales and Marketing for Jake’s, “The site is designed to tie together all of our marketing efforts in other mediums and present it to our customers as a unified resource for servicing their restaurant operation or retail foodservice organization. We feature an online ordering interface, cross-promotion with our social media platforms such as our Facebook page, and links to valuable market information through our buying co-operative, UniPro. Our intention is to give operators a single source for product and industry information, bringing much more value than the typical foodservice distributor offers.” Additionally, the home page showcases a “feature button” directly in the center of the home page that attracts web visitors to the latest news and events at Jake’s.
Ullrich continues, “The addition of the feature button was a key distinguishing factor for our new home page. The button will be used to promote special offers and events, such as our annual Food Show. These are things we don’t want our customers to miss.”
Future enhancements to the site are planned to include a “Request a Culinary Specialist” form for private meetings with Jake’s on-staff culinary experts, the addition of an online Point-of-Sale collateral archive and an RSS feed that will link to real-time market updates and critical information for restaurant operators.
About Jake’s Finer Foods
Since 1946, Jake’s Finer Foods has been a family owned, full-line foodservice distributor and restaurant supply company delivering quality food, great value and exceptional service to foodservice providers and restaurants in Texas and western Louisiana.
For more information on how The Marion Group can help your company with custom web design, call us at 713-623-6444 ir email us at info2@marion.com.
What is the difference?
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on November 2nd, 2009
Trademark symbols protect your various product names, titles, logo design, brochure designs, custom web design and other graphic design elements that are used to identify your company as the source of a product. In this way, trademarks help your company to maintain a distinct identity in the marketplace.
Once you put a trademark on a product in the marketplace, it provides legal protection. However, they do not prevent other companies from producing the same products with a clearly different mark - you cannot trademark an idea but you can trademark the expression of an idea.
Although trademarks protect, they must also be protected by registering with the US Patent and Trademark Office. A Registered Trademark costs anywhere from $325 and up, and often takes a year and even up to several years to process, since there is more research involved in issuing it. Once registered, you can change the ™ to ®.
Companies must constantly monitor their trademarks so that they don’t slip into generic use; if they do, they can lose them. For example, Kleenex must constantly remind the public that Kleenex is their product, and not the universal synonym for tissue.
The Service Mark protects a service as opposed to a physical product and affords the same protection as a Trademark.
A trademark must be renewed every ten years and trademark laws vary significantly from country to country.
A Copyright protects original artistic, dramatic, literary, musical and intellectual work that is fixed in any tangible medium such as a book, song, computer program or the content of a website as a whole.
The work can be published or unpublished. As with Trademarks, you cannot copyright an idea only the unique expression of an idea.
A copyright entitles the holder to exclusive rights to:
– Reproduce the work
– Publically distribute copies
– Create derivative works
– Publically perform and/or display the work
These five rights kick in from the moment the work is written, illustrated, or constructed, even without registering. However, the safest thing to do is to officially register your work.
Copyrights are registered with the US Copyright Office and they are generally easier to register than trademarks. A copyright registration currently costs approximately $30 and takes approximately 4 to 5 months to process.
A copyright remains in effect for seventy years after the creator’s death and no renewal is necessary. Unlike a trademark, the holder is under no pressure to keep tabs on it constantly.
Copyright law is fairly consistent country to country.
Thanks to the little book What’s the Difference? How to Tell Things Apart That are Confusingly Close for inspiring this article.
Reliance on Google PageRank – A Thing of the Past?
Posted by admin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Web Design on October 27th, 2009
Search Engine Optimizers have always relied on Google PageRank to determine the strength of websites on search engines; however, Google is trying to wean us off its use. To do this, Google removed the PageRank values from the Crawl stats section of Google Webmaster Tools.
Google PageRank stats range from (Lowest) 1 – 10 (Highest).
Google Toolbar PageRank
Google has always implied that PageRank is not the end all be all but no one seemed to listen. Now that it’s no longer there, Google is hoping the temptation to utilize these figures dissipates.
Still, the PageRank value is not completely obsolete. The Google toolbar and other third party applications currently provide access to this information, so technically this only affects those that utilize Google Webmaster Tools to closely monitor their sites.
It seems the moral of this Google update is, when analyzing the value of your website do not rely on only one metric.
Remember, when SEO has you confused, contact Marion to get you headed in the right direction.
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