Behind The Scenes Wednesday: Joe Ehrmann!

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Joe Ehrmann is a former NFL defensive lineman for the 1973 Baltimore Colts! Local legend? I think so! Get ready to smile ear-to-ear.

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While at an Accelerent networking event, our president Max was able to strike up a conversation and snap a photo with Joe Ehrmann. Super cool guy, and nothing but nice!

Besides a Colts football helmet, Joe’s worn many hats. He’s been an educator, author, activist, pastor and coach spanning longer than than 25 years.

Joe played football at Syracuse University, lettered in lacrosse and was selected to the Syracuse All-Century Football Team. After being drafted, he played pro football for 13 years, and was named the Colts “Man of the Year”. He was also named NFL’s first Ed Block Courage Award winner. Parade Magazine even featured Joe on its cover, with the title, “The Most Important Coach in America”. Additionally, he’s been named one of the “Most Influential Sport Educators in America” by the Institute for International Sport.

Ehrmann is co-founder of Baltimore’s Ronald McDonald House and was chosen by the Baltimore Business Journal as the “Renaissance Person of the Decade” for his work in bettering our city. He co-founded The Door, a community-based organization that deals with issues pertaining to poverty, systemic racism and social justice. But his awesomeness doesn’t end there.

He’s been named National Fatherhood Initiative’s “Man of the Year” and awarded the Frederick Douglas National Man of the Year award for empowering youth to prevent forms of male violence.

His newly released book: InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives highlights much of his life’s work. Joe is the subject of the New York Times Best Seller, Season of Life A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood.

With all those amazing accomplishments mentioned, he believes his greatest has been his 30 plus years marriage to Paula and his four children Ali, Esther, Barney and Joey.

Pick up those books! This is a great coach, and a great man. 

-The MOS Creative Team

 

Throwback Thursday: North Point Builders!

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Hello everyone! This Throwback Thursday, we want to show you a site we’ve created for North Point Builders.

We’ve come up with a slanted theme that’s prevalent throughout each page of the site.

Every aspect falls into this style.

Not only were we focused on keeping the same feel, but we also had fun with it. The navigation bar shows this.

Even the dropdown menus followed this slanted style

Notice how the Portfolio page keeps this up

We even implemented a map to show locations that this company has done work.

Like what you see? We here at MOS Creative can create an awesome site for you too. Ya’know, just ask!

-The MOS Creative Team

PS: check out our Tumblr!

Adwords for Local Businesses: How to use Extensions and the new Google Maps for better conversion rates.

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Google Adwords has a couple of functions we are highlighting called Local Extensions as well as the new Adwords for Google Maps which are going to be great for local businesses looking to cut through.

As the Google ad says, “Who is looking for a mechanic in your town? Someone Googling for a mechanic in your town.” (Or something to that effect.).

This sets the premise for how Adwords can help a local business. With somewhere between 80% and 90% of searches for products starting online, it’s important for small businesses to be where their customers are looking.

The days of direct mailers, Val-Pak and Yellow Pages advertising are fast fading and local businesses are moving online where their customers are looking for them.

The basics of Adwords are pretty simple, if you are in Columbia, Maryland and someone searches “Columbia Pest Control” in Google an ad of yours will show up with people’s results. One nice thing, unlike most other forms of advertising is that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad It’s a very measurable form of advertising which only hits people who are looking for you.

With that basic understanding, there are a couple of important functions which can really push traffic and conversions (Sales!) which are worth taking a closer look at.

Local Extensions::

If you take a look at a search in your field you will probably notice a lot of national companies and people you may not have heard of. Your customers will see that too. Now what you can do to set yourself apart is set up something called a local extension. It looks like this:

Local Extensions example!

Local Extensions show searchers where you are.

Basically what it does is for someone who is near you and searching, it will display you businesses contact info to show them that you are local and nearby, therefore letting you cut through some of the noise and get them to call in or come to your location with minimal clicking around and effort.

Google Maps:

An exciting new feature coming to Google maps is that Adwords will soon be able to be displayed on Google Maps.
To clarify, one of the ways people search is that they go to Google Maps and type in “Sushi Restaurant” and see what locations pop up on the map around them.
It would look something like this:

Current Gmaps.

Current Google maps, a bit cluttered, no ads.

Now, the news here is that Google just announced some changes that will take the results from that, to this:

Good news for Adwords!

Much cleaner, with prominent Adwords.

As you can see, the new interface is much cleaner with a lot less information. What is visible, most importantly to this post is that Adword ad for Sakura Sushi.

So now when your customers are looking for a Sushi place through their maps, you can once again cut through the noise and get your message in front of them so that you are the place they call to make a reservation, or to come in for a meal.

There are many ways to take advantage of the power of Adwords, these are just a few of our favorites for local business.

If you are a local business trying to get a leg up in your area, give us a call, we’d love to help out. Leave a comment below with any questions or comments and we’ll respond as quickly as possible.

You can check out our website at www.MOSCreative.com.

Joel

Rule 40: Not in Favor of Olympic Athletes

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Summer Olympics 2012 As the summer 2012 Olympics quickly approaches, an estimated 4 billion people will tune in to watch their country’s top athletes compete (NPR). This is an enormous opportunity for any company to drive marketing efforts and reach a massive audience, however, due to Rule 40 it is an opportunity that only official sponsors of the London games can truly take advantage of. Continue reading →

What it takes to be Steve Jobs

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“Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?” Wiser words never uttered by a man more influential and responsible for single-handedly transforming the computing and mobile landscape.

Steve Jobs told us to be crazy. He told us he wanted to put a ding in the universe. He didn’t put a ding, but he sure left an Apple.

A single glance at the non-stop media coverage, and you’d think America’s greatest superhero finally befell to his kryptonite. #SteveJobs, #iSad and #ThankYouSteve rotate Twitter’s trending topics, and pictures of our generation’s Thomas Edison continue to flood Facebook’s news feeds.

But in no jest, he was a hero to millions, probably billions, of people he never met. He changed the way we think about and interact with the world. Every time you have to ask your kid a computer question, remember, he’s the reason.

Continue reading →

Meet Shawn: Baltimore’s #1 Business Man

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Shawn H.

Almost two months into his stint at MOS Creative, and Shawn’s hanging with the big dogs as our  VP of Business Development, capturing the attention of some major clients!

First thing he does in the AM: Make coffee! This caffeine  addict can smell a good pot before it even touches his lips.

Guiltiest pleasure: How I met Your Mother - he’s definitely a Ted.
Continue reading →

Back to Basics: What is your Marketing Objective?

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When it comes to this whole marketing thing, do you sometimes feel like you’re in over your head? Maybe you’re new to the “branding” concept? You hear so much talk about “engaging your audience” via Facebook and social media, but are you completely lost in where to even start?

I’m not surprised. Go ahead, just try Googling “marketing ideas.” You’ll get 40,200,000 search results.

Talk about information overload. No wonder most business owners don’t even want to think about their marketing, so they put it off for as long as possible. I’m thinking you need a little direction. Am I right?

I’m gonna level with you – doing it right is not as easy as it looks. That’s why there are millions of professional marketing firms out there. And for the most part, the professionals will do a good job for you. But whether you’re coming up with the creative ideas, or you’re paying someone else to do it for you, you should NEVER go into your own marketing strategy blindly. It’s EXTREMELY important that you get involved. After all, who knows your clients, your product and your company’s needs and goals better than you do?

So before you delve into the details of how often to Tweet and which keywords to base your SEO around, let’s start with the basics. I just want to get your feet wet and get you thinking. Always start by figuring out what your marketing OBJECTIVE is. Everything else will come from there.

What’s your Objective?

1. Awareness – Potential customers must know of, or be reminded of your existence, your location, your product, your price range, and what makes you stand out from the competition

2. Build Contact List – Your mailing list is like gold. It’s what you rely on for promoting any campaign, and it takes a lot of nurturing to build and keep.

3. Get Involved – Your business is not soul-less. Companies are made up of people, and people like to patronize companies that they know go out of their way to help other people. Your company’s positive image reinforces the perception that you are genuinely caring and sharing.

4. Staff Incentives – A cared for and happy team makes for a harmonious, smooth operation. Customers can tell when your employees don’t want to be there. Think about the grouchy, frowning cashier at the supermarket. Make sure your employees feel appreciated!

5. Excitement – This is the kind of energy and excitement that makes you stand out from the competition. This is when you need to turn on your thinking cap and come up with some really creative promotions.

6. Frequency – When you’re trying to be “the place to go.” This is a brand loyalty thing, and keeping them coming as frequently as possible.

7. Publicity – For this one you’ve got to be interesting and newsworthy. Maybe you’re doing BIG things for the community, or you’re doing something so completely out of the box that it’s a story too good to pass up.

8. Generate Traffic - Simply getting people in the door or on the website is your goal here. Contests are great for this! You want to get potential customers to complete some sort of action, whether it’s entering the contest or downloading a form.

9. Branding – Image is everything. Period. If you don’t define your company and your brand, the market will define it for you. And that’s never what you want!

10. Increase Sales – a.k.a. Up-selling – This is every CEO’s favorite! From the sneaky but ingenious psychological tactics (a la putting candy, gum and magazines in the grocery checkout line) to having an in-depth understanding of how your industry works, there are really unlimited opportunities to do this one.

11. Creating Activity - Most industries have their “slow” periods during the year, but that’s not set in stone. This is where you will get creative to make the slow season profitable.

12. Trial Offer – Who’s gonna turn down a free sample? Come on, you’ll love it. This is when you really want to get those potential customers who are living on the edge to finally make the plunge – but without any of the risk.

(Great list compiled by Tom Feltenstein – And if you’re looking for a good book on the basics, try Tom’s “Encyclopedia of 401 Proven Killer Promotional Tactics”)