ion Leap

Web Content Writing Services Assessment

IonLeap — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:04:50 +0000

Recently, we’ve been blogging about an important change Google made to its algorithm. Over the years they have made thousands of changes. However, this time they focused on increasing the importance of high-value content writing. The standards have risen, so your web content writing service must also rise to the challenge.

Three ways to assess your web content writing service

Judge the content you’re receiving the way that your target audience will judge it.
In some consumer categories, the target audience is young and moving fast. They probably won’t be terribly critical of your content writing. If you are in a business-to-business category, and your target market is engineers, then your content writing will be a far greater challenge.

Is your Web content writing service able to adjust to the different demands of your business? Can they alter their writing style to match your prospects reading demands? Even in a demanding business category, can they still show up occasionally with humor? After all, everyone can use a little levity.
Does your web content writing service run like a group of artists? Or does it run like a business?
Good writers are not always known for their punctuality. At ion Leap, we take that into account. Sometimes a writer may need an extra day. But in the end, they had better deliver great content very close to or directly on deadline every single week.

One of the main reasons writers run late from time to time is because of a lack of inspiration on the subject. After all, typically we are writing about the same subjects twice a week, week after week after week. Ion Leap has found very creative ways to help writers find new inspiration.
Not all web content writing services understand all the details of successful SEO.
At ion Leap, we believe that every piece of content that goes onto your website ought to support your SEO goals. It costs money to put content onto your website no matter who writes it. So we think that you deserve to get the highest ROI possible.

However, every now and then you may want to do more human-interest approach, just to help clarify your corporate culture. You can bet that the writers at ion Leap will always find a way to weave at least one key phrase into that blog too.

Content Writing Wins Again

IonLeap — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:25:54 +0000

A couple weeks ago, Google gave a lot of SEO companies a major spanking. They were using content spamming companies to create junk postings with little value. Google keeps the way it judges content writing very secret, but they do drop hints. Here’s what we know:

They spanked users of content spamming services
They might have de-valued the practice of embedded links
They de-indexed a bunch of websites, wiping out their search ranking
As of this writing, Yahoo has made no such changes

The websites that remain indexed and highly ranked on a Google results page are the ones who appear to have dedicated themselves to writing good solid content.

There are many other techniques out there for cheating your way to the top of the Google search result page. Eventually, they too will be discovered and summarily spanked. But those who aren’t also writing great content and dedicating themselves to particular key phrases will not be spanked.

Do links pointing at your website still matter?

No one really knows precisely how the Google algorithm assesses websites. You can bet that some outside links are still given very high value by Google; probably too much value. But the links that point in to your website will have to be honest friends of your company, and it will help more than ever if they’re in the same business; writing about the same things.

What else is Google using to assess websites?

From what we’re seeing, the only thing that trumps your content is your website’s age and URL. You can see it on the video above that shows our ranking for the phrase “Search Marketing Solutions.” We’re #2, right behind a website called SearchMarketingSolutions (dot) com

But the main thing Google is using to assess websites is good, old-fashioned content writing. If you’ve got it, and you’re dedicated to a keyphrase, and others like your ideas enough to point links at you, then you’ll get ranked.

Learn more about how ion Leap creates lasting brands with valued content. Click here to contact us.

NJ Ad Agency Report

IonLeap — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:55:46 +0000

The NJ ad agency environment has gone through extreme changes in the last ten years. But that’s nothing new for businesses who locate west of the Hudson River, so close to New York City.

The Internet Bust

While web companies were concentrated in Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley, they were also located in lots of smaller regions. One ad agency opened for business in New Jersey December 20, 1999. At the time, they thought their only worry was the Y2K issue. Little did they know that a much larger crisis loomed on the near horizon.

The agency mentioned above had four Internet-related clients and 2 others who were more traditional. By 2001, they were already feeling the loss of 2 of their 4 Internet companies. But the attacks of 9/11 affected even one of their largest traditional clients, who was forced to freeze their marketing budget for nearly 6 months to assess the damage.

While the Dot-Com bust affected this NJ ad agency’s Internet clients the most – all 4 were out of business by 2002 – other more traditional clients were affected as well. One client was a telecom capacity exchange. A large part of their business was web companies. When the web died, lots of companies who were servicing Internet businesses died too.

One report stated that New York ad agencies had laid off approximately 20% of their staff by 2002. NJ ad agencies had similar results.

The Recession of 2008

Being outside of New York City, NJ ad agencies look for business that’s “off the beaten path.” We typically don’t get clients like the big package goods brands. Those are more comfortable spending their marketing money with New York agencies. New York is very close by after all. Typically, these agencies go after home builders, regional banks, small manufacturers, hospitals and service companies.

There are lots of smaller manufacturing industries in New Jersey that prefer a NJ-based ad agency. Plumbing supply manufacturers, building material companies, and others have found New Jersey to be a good place to do business. But you can imagine what happened to these companies when the Great Recession began. They got hit hard and subsequently had to lay off some of their staff.

In the advertising agency world, New Jersey is known as a great place to get into pharmaceutical marketing. There are tons of pharmaceutical companies within easy driving distance from Summit, New Jersey (sort of the middle of the north Jersey area). The recession of 2008 also put the squeeze on these pharmaceutical companies. Direct to consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising had already been thrown under the bus years before; but now the whole industry is suffering from commodity status. Once again, this was led by New York ad agencies who saw a way to help their bleeding bottom lines. They raised their right hands and pronounced themselves pharmaceutical marketing experts; leaving the New Jersey ad agencies to look for business elsewhere.

NJ Ad Agencies Remain Nimble

Being smaller than their New York counterparts, NJ ad agencies are able to be more flexible; probably because costs are a little lower. They certainly can pay their employees less thanks to the much more agreeable commute. This is a major advantage to agencies in New Jersey. And there are others:

Varied client categories
Less cut-throat environment
More relaxed leadership
More loyalty from agency owners

Because of the above advantages, New Jersey ad agencies enjoy more loyalty from their employees. Once someone has switched to New Jersey from New York and stopped that hideous commute, they never want to go back. And, once they’re working in a less cut-throat environment, they won’t easily be talked back into the New York ad agency scene.

In a perverse way, the bad economy in the first decade of this century may very well be helping every NJ ad agency who’s survived the downturn. Now they’re more nimble; they’ve cut costs to their critical levels; and they’ve focused on what they do best. We think the next decade looks very promising.

Low Budget Commercials with Big Results

IonLeap — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:11:53 +0000

Lovecraft is an unusual retail store in a very nice neighborhood of Toronto. I approached them because they were running expensive 2-color print ads in the leading Toronto newspaper and I knew we could get better results from a unique, low-cost use of Television.

We produced three “hidden-camera” commercials for less than $10,000.

The Results

Leading up to Valentine’s Day, we ran the spots on local cable for 2 weeks in Toronto. Lovecraft had so many sales that one of the partners was angry with me. She said they should have installed 3 extra cash registers to keep up with demand. That’s a good problem to have.

At ion Leap, we don’t believe you need to spend a lot to expect great results. We’re a NJ ad agency that’s build for mid-size companies in difficult economic times.

NJ Ad Agency Helps You Capture YouTube Viewers

IonLeap — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:42:53 +0000

If you’ve managed to get a customer prospect to look at one of your YouTube videos, then annotations are the best way to keep them watching more of your content. Here’s why:

Having lots of visible content makes you look like more of an expert
Annotations cross-sell a luke-warm prospect with other content
When done well, they’re still a fresh technique for viewers
The alternative is a blank screen at the end, or having YouTube select the next videos they see

Doing annotations and lots of video content requires careful planning. This NJ Ad Agency can help. Click to contact us >>

Mapping out an entire set of videos and getting them inner-linked is a lot of fun, but you have to plan it out carefully. If you have multiple product lines, we’ll consider the best cross-selling opportunities; and then link those videos together. We always lead with your best offering for each target set. That way, if a video isn’t appealing to a viewer, they’ll have other options that might be.

The steps to making this work:

The videos must all be created and loaded to YouTube before you can inner-link them. We recommend adding an additional graphic on the end to make the links look more professional. Allow at least 6 seconds for the viewer to click.
Then you go into your YouTube “channel” and edit the annotations.
Finally, drive viewers to the right one for them to begin watching. If you’ve got multiple product lines, you’ll have to consider the target audiences individually.

Getting help from an expert

At ion Leap, we take a holistic view with all your content – video, blog writing, audio interviews, print, radio, etc. When it comes to doing low-cost, yet entertaining videos, no one beats ion Leap. We’ve done award-winning commercials for less than $5,000. We’ve done YouTube videos, like the one you see above, for less than $1,000. Beyond just price, we’ve created TV and films for some of the largest brands in North America. We bring a sensibility to these videos that most agencies our size can’t touch.

Click here to contact our NJ Ad Agency for a complete TV and video sample reel.

We’d love to help you keep your YouTube viewers glued to your brand.

NJ Ad Agency in a World Without Encyclopedia Britannica

IonLeap — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:15:51 +0000

Today, on the CNN Money website, an article was posted announcing that Encyclopedia Britannica plans to stop printing in book form.
(Click for article)

You might not think much of that, but to me it’s an historic moment. I grew up on encyclopedias, spending hours in the library combing through science, history, geography, etc. There was something about the design of the information, interspersed with small photos, which made the information inviting to read and easy to understand. I loved well-crafted print ads and powerfully simple billboards.

As a NJ ad agency owner, I look back fondly to the days I was cutting my teeth on retail print advertising, nearly a decade before Al Gore invented the Internet. Print media had a wonderful permanence to it.

Far from being troubling, this kind of change is exciting

Already I see my younger employees ignoring printed media. They get what little they read from the Internet. Almost everyone in this younger generation claim they don’t read at all.

Our grand-children will have a very different experience with information. While there is a reduction in print media, access to information has never been greater. It’s “always on” and always being updated and clarified. For a ad agency who embraces this kind of relevant access into consumers’ lives, this will truly be an exciting time.

What it means for leading ad agencies, both in NJ and worldwide, is completely and utterly letting go of the past. It’s time to embrace digital now, before the train completely leaves the station. I know a lot of folks in the business who are still fighting this trend. They’re missing out on one of the most epic changes our business has ever experienced.

NJ Ad Agency Creates Wildly Successful Print Ads

IonLeap — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:45:42 +0000

When the Internet came along, marketing directors fell in love with the metrics; and who could blame them. Finally there was a place where every dollar invested could be tracked to a sale. But there are still many marketers who get results from print.
We’re the NJ ad agency who can help you get even higher ROI on your print spending:

First and most important, make it attention-getting
Stop trying to close the deal in print
Push the conversation to a better place – A landing page

The video on the right shows a few samples of print that had HUGE ROI

Creativity can still be the thing that gets your ad more attention. Hire an agency that can come up with great messaging that stands out but also SELLS.

If you’re trying to close the deal in your print ad, then you’re doing too much. Most customers do some research on the Internet before buying. And even if they don’t, you can build a relationship if you push them to something compelling on the Internet.

We treat almost all media as a fishing net to pull prospects into an Internet relationship. And the message isn’t “buy our product.” It’s “come to this very cool URL to see something amazingly interesting.” The hook is CONTENT.

Click here to contact a more creative NJ Ad Agency

NJ Ad Agency that’s Wildly Effective

IonLeap — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:49:14 +0000

As a New Jersey ad agency with a different background, we’ve found that competing here is quite interesting.

The NJ ad agency with a difference

My earliest experience with NJ ad agencies came when my wife wanted to get back into the industry after a 5 year hiatus with our 2 kids. She joined a small group in Morristown. That was quite a wake up call. NJ ad agencies are very different than what we were used to. At the time, I was still commuting into NYC as creative director of a mid-size (150 people) agency, working on Omnipoint, Waterford Crystal, Popeyes Chicken, and Riggs Bank. Before that, I had been at Chiat/Day in Toronto working on Labatts Beer, Nissan, and Canadian Airlines.

Being a CD in NYC was a lot of fun. But while I was jetting off to LA to produce $800,000 commercials, and editing with the very best New York City had to offer, my wife was having a very different kind of experience. Her agency was entirely focused on SALES. It was all about the income. There was no such thing as account service. Their AEs were sales-people. Their creative approach was also very NJ-centric. Not a lot of room for break-through ideas. I never quite figured out why.

At ion Leap, we find inventive ways to get huge ROI out of any campaign we’re running for our clients.

We’re local, but our methods aren’t

As you watch this section of our website grow, you’ll quickly see ion Leap rise to page 1 on a Google search for the phrase “NJ Ad Agency.” This is only one arrow in our marketing quiver. You’ll quickly pick up on the others. They include:

Highly effective creative
Inventive social media tactics
Web content writing that pulls in customers
TV, Radio, Print, Collateral, Outdoor; all invented and produced on-budget

Our background in the country’s top ad agencies makes us different. We have processes that guarantee a better result, rapid delivery, and a uniquely ambitious approach.

Learn more about the NJ ad agency with a real difference.

Contact us to learn more about ion Leap’s unique position in the NJ ad agency environment.

Watch a brief video on how one NJ ad agency approaches social media differently

Convergence Marketing is the Future

IonLeap — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:34:58 +0000

This video by Corning Glass really paints the picture well of how the future will be all about interaction between devices. Convergence Marketing will be critical, and it will have to be seamlessly woven into our prospects’ lives.

Marketers must stay on top of all the changes as they happen. Ongoing migration of your content to fit new delivery methods is a must.

Learn more about convergence marketing by following this blog.

Social Media for Businesses Driven by Strategy

IonLeap — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:50:12 +0000

As a business owner, you’ve probably felt the pressure to connect with your customers through social media. Internet marketing experts and consulting firms hail social media as an essential tool for any business that wants to succeed in today’s market. However, despite the hype surrounding social media for business, it might not be the right solution for your company. That’s why ion Leap uses a diverse set of marketing tools for each of our clients. We take an agnostic approach to marketing because we don’t know which strategy will best suit your company until we understand your goals.

Our Unique Approach to Social Media for Your Business

At ion Leap, we take a unique approach to social media by focusing on quality over quantity. Before blindly recommending social media for your business, we’ll get to know your company and your customers. Social media enables you to build relationships with clients, so you’ll see the best results if your audience members are already using social networking websites. If places like Facebook and Twitter are the best spots to find your customers, we’ll connect with them through quality content and targeted messaging. Our goal is to craft content that resonates with your customers, so we’ll make sure that each message is in the spirit of your company’s brand.

The Marketing Strategy You Need

We believe in creativity at ion Leap, so we’ll only recommend social media for your business if we think you’ll see results. If social media isn’t the right strategy for your business, we have plenty of other arrows in our marketing quiver. Whether your company will benefit from traditional media like television, radio and magazines or new forms of marketing like search engine optimization and quality web content, we’re confident that we can hit the target for your customers. A multi-faceted marketing approach allows you to connect with a wider base of new clients and to foster relationships with faithful customers.

Measurable Results and a Return on Your Investment

When you need a creative solution with measurable results, ion Leap has the answers. Your satisfaction is a measure of our success, so we’ll work to create a finely-tuned marketing strategy that reflects your company’s brand. As we focus on delivering your message and connecting with your customers, you’ll see a real return on your investment. At ion Leap, marketing is about more than advertising and publicity. Marketing is about building relationships that serve you and your customers.

Key Points –

Social media isn’t right for every business