Month: January 2016

If you’re a local business owner, you know every customer counts. You do whatever you can to make your business accessible and desirable to as many people as possible. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep our business simultaneously in tune with the needs of our customers and one step ahead of the competition—and we know you have, too! That’s why, when Reveal Salon came to us looking to update their business cards, we knew how important it was to really nail the new look they were going for. Reveal Salon was looking to update their business cards with a modern, unisex look that still contained all the relevant information that needs to fit on a business card. Their old business cards had a more feminine look to them, and they wanted the new cards to appear more neutral so they would appeal to a wider array of potential customers. They asked us to create something visually appealing that doesn’t immediately make you think of a salon when you see it. You can see the finished product above. We think we really hit it out of the park with this one and the owner truly loved what we created for the salon as well. The Skynet Solutions design team worked hard to ensure we met all the technical and artistic specifications set out by our friends at Reveal Salon while still having some fun and getting creative with the design. Our design team was able to do a great job of matching the feel of the business cards to the theme of the company website—even though it was not designed by Skynet Solutions. We know how important continuity of design is in marketing and branding. Everything about your business, whether it’s your website, your Facebook page or your business cards, needs to remind the customer of who you are and what you can do for them. We wanted to continue the modern, professional message of the Reveal Salon website onto their business cards to ensure their company branding is consistent and recognizable to new customers and regulars alike. Make sure to take a good look at the business cards we designed for Reveal Salon and then think about your own. Are they sending the right message? If you or your company needs fresh business cards to start the new year off on the right foot, give the professionals at Skynet Solutions a call. We can tackle this, or any other important job that calls for an expert design team. You can find our contact information on our website, or you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Recently, one of our largest and longest-term clients came to us and said they wanted to rebrand. Even though this was a big, somewhat daunting task, the entire Skynet Solutions team was excited to meet it head-on. We rallied together to brainstorm new, creative and innovative ideas and were able to present our client, Muscle Research, with new logo and website designs that they loved. Our design team excels at website and logo design and, having worked so closely with Muscle Research for so long, were able to do a great job of incorporating the company’s personality into the logo and throughout the website. The Skynet Solutions design team started by tossing out the old, outdated logo and crafting a new one with a more modern and flat look, which you can see on the Muscle Research website, social media networks and other marketing materials. The new logo is much trendier and sleeker than the old one, but still has the hardcore look Muscle Research customers know so well. Our design team carefully selected the logo typography to retain that hardcore feel, while also including the lighter, more modern elements Muscle Research wanted in their new logo. While the website changes are still underway, they are also going to be reflective of the lighter, modern shift seen in the logo. The color palette will be significantly brightened up—much less black and dark grey—while, like the logo, still retaining that hardcore feel that Muscle Research customers know and love so much. As part of the company rebranding, we also created new labels for Muscle Research products to match the redesigned logo and website. These labels, which will have more white space to reflect the sleeker, flatter look of the new Muscle Research, will be available soon. Once again, we called on our highly skilled development team to ensure all the technical aspects of the website were state-of-the-art and fully optimized for mobile. This is especially important for a company like Muscle Research, which does virtually all of its interaction with customers online. As e-commerce becomes a bigger sector of the economy—particularly mobile e-commerce—it is essential that the online shopping experience is made easy and enjoyable for consumers. Because of this, they need the best possible back-end so that every interaction between Muscle Research and their customers is quick and hassle-free for both parties. At Skynet Solutions, we want to make sure that everything we design and develop works not just for our customers, but for our customers’ customers, too. Make sure you check out all the hard work our designers and developers have put into the Muscle Research website! And if you have an important job that calls for an expert team, contact Skynet Solutions. You can find our contact information on our website, or you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

There is nothing the Skynet Solutions team loves more than the opportunity to help a small, local business launch itself and hit the ground running. We recently had the opportunity to do this with Tulsa-area roofing service Midwest Roofing. As the Midwest Roofing team prepared to launch a successful roofing business, they wanted to launch a successful website along with it to make sure potential customers could find them quickly and easily online. More than half of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results. The majority of those searchers are seeking information about business hours, directions and addresses, so it’s extremely important to make all that information easily accessible on your website. So, Midwest Roofing came to the Skynet Solutions team to help them get started with this crucial part of launching their business. As part of the launch, we created their website, the logo you see on their website and other materials as well as business cards. As we’ve said in previous blogs, jobs like these are the bread and butter of our design team. Our talented designers have years of website and logo design behind them and it definitely showed through on this project! We consider this to be one of our best looking one-page sites. Since Midwest Roofing was a new business, our designers knew the visual identity designs would be key to getting the business up and running and to creating the building blocks of company branding that would be used for years to come. Everything was carefully chosen, from the font to the background colors. The design team used different shades of blue to help visually associate the business with the construction industry in the customer’s mind. It reminds the customer of blueprints, blue construction tarps and other terms or materials commonly associated with the construction industry. The font and text colors are attractive but not distracting; you don’t want to lose potential customers because you got too fancy with your fonts and they couldn’t read anything. We wanted to ensure that this website was functional and would meet all the needs of the company. But even more than that, we wanted to ensure that this website would be easy for their customers to use and be the first step in a positive experience between the customer and Midwest Roofing. The whole Skynet Solutions team worked together to produce a great website with content and graphics that would reflect a new and exciting local business. Our development team worked hard to ensure that the technical aspects of the website make it easy to use for everyone involved, company and customer. One important aspect of this is making sure the site is mobile-friendly. Well over 60 percent of businesses have created a mobile site or have optimized their existing site for mobile. Google says that more searches now happen on mobile devices than desktops or laptops and almost 30 percent of consumers say they will leave a site immediately if it is not mobile-optimized. That a lot of potential business you could be losing if your site doesn’t work on mobile. Make sure to check out all the hard work our designers and developers put into the Midwest Roofing website! And if you have an important job that calls for an expert team, contact Skynet Solutions. You can find our contact information on our website or you can find us on Facebook , Twitter and Google+.

The New Year is here and it’s time to get going on that marketing resolution to “be more active.” In our last newsletter blog, we mentioned the importance of kicking off 2016 by focusing marketing strategies on trends for this year. To set the stage for your business’s continued success we highly recommend that you spend some time getting more information about your audience. But what exactly does that entail, you ask? Well here’s our breakdown of a few strategies with an in-depth look into acquiring more knowledge about your customers.   Email Marketing is Alive and Thriving with the Right Approach Yes, email has been around for a long time, and guess what? It’s not going anywhere. According to fairly recent research from Marketing Sherpa, 91% of Americans do in fact want to receive promotional emails. Email marketing remains the number one way to connect with your audience, to get them to take action. Be sure to make an email marketing plan for 2016 because it will continue to play a huge role this year. However, the times they are still a-changin’. People are on their smartphones now more than ever and you can bet they’re checking emails from their devices. So, when leveraging the awesome power of email, you must make sure that your efforts are also mobile-friendly. The most important part of having a successful emailing marketing strategy is the actual email list itself. You actually own your email list. So, if all of your social media sites were to disappear tomorrow, you would still have your email list and you would still be able to contact your customers. Don’t Let an Email List Stagnate  Having a cycle of new customers, clients, and prospects continually opting in to receive information from your business is crucial for improving and growing your email list. An effective growth strategy includes covering all of the places where people interact with your business where you could be collecting email addresses and then making it easy for people to join your list. Here are several ways you can cast a wide net that will deliver the new contacts that you need to grow your audience. Have a signup sheet at your place of business Make sure the signup form on your website is accessible from every page Add a signup form link to your social media sites like Facebook and Twitter Have an automated signup tool like Text-to-Join or Scan-to-Join Promote your email list in all printed materials Collect email addresses when people register to attend any events that you host Be sure to collect information from people when they redeem a deal that you’re offering Get Smart About How You Collect Email Contacts Take an inventory of your current email collecting efforts and ask yourself these questions: What’s working? What’s not? Where can you make improvements? Make changes where they’re needed to bring your efforts into the marketing landscape of the new year and then add any new efforts from the above list. Then re-evaluate at least every quarter to ensure that your list is growing and that your efforts aren’t being wasted. You’ll make smarter decisions and extend the reach of your emails when you’re able to identify your list building strengths and weaknesses Engage with Your Audience Across Multiple Outlets In today’s marketing world, an email strategy is just one piece of the whole pie. In order to gain as much information as you can about customers, you must connect with them across many different avenues. This includes being active on as many social media sites that you’re able to maintain and that are relevant to your business. It also means getting to know people face to face and through phone conversations. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of your customers that may help you make vital decisions down the road. Keep good notes! Study Your Customer Analytics Companies have spent tons of money doing market research and surely your business isn’t the exception. With technology that constantly changes consumer behavior and research methods, you need to keep up with the pace. Customers are now armed with more information, given more choices than ever, while becoming more demanding and less loyal. Given the current shift in how consumers shop, it is crucial to keep up with how we research their wants and needs. Thankfully, today’s technology is even better at enabling companies to employ powerful analytical tools. So, take the time to research and review your customer analytics to better understand and engage customers’ needs today and anticipate their priorities tomorrow.