Toolbox: 5 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression With Your PR Images

By Bob Decker

All too often in the product launch process, creating a photograph of the product comes as an afterthought. Sometimes marketing people question whether a product image is even necessary. “Everyone knows what this type of product looks like,” they reason. “Why should I go to the expense of having it photographed?”

In the past 10 years, PR images have become simpler. But they're still an opportunity to make a statement about your company and the quality of its products. 

The collage on this page shows some examples of semiconductor product PR images from 2022. Compared with how PR images used to be done, the main difference is what's missing: internal captions are kept to a minimum and limited to what will fit on a picture of the chip; "application" images are rare; no attempt is made to have the PR image serve as an "ad."

One thing hasn't changed: a PR image still need to reflect your brand, and that means having clear guidelines for how you do product photography and implementing them consistently. 

I've put together a few simple guidelines to help you make your PR images more effective. You can download them here. And if you're reading this because you're working on a product launch and would like some help with it, please drop me a line — I'd love to hear what you're working on and see if there's any way we can help.

Agenda: December 2022

1. Find as many opportunities as possible in Zoom meetings to use the phrase "Team work makes the dream work."

2. Discuss with clients and anyone else who's just come back from electronica 2022 about following up on leads. We highly recommend the lead follow-up campaigns from Kokoro Marketing. Since electronica seems always to be scheduled for the week just before Thanksgiving, nobody's going to want to think about this until December anyway. That said, if you were already working with Cindy and her team, your follow-up campaign for electronica would have been all planned out a while ago and ready to roll now.

3. Finish reading The Joy of Search, the December book for the DHG Writers Book Club. I'm really looking forward to finding out what I don't know about searching for things on Google, which must be a lot given that MIT Press has published this 323-page book on the topic.

4. Attend A Day of Silents at the Castro Theater all day on December 3. Particularly looking forward to watching the earliest surviving feature displaying the two-color Technicolor process, The Toll of the Sea. I've watched plenty of early 1930s two-color Technicolor shorts but had no idea it was around as early as 1922. 

5. When next in Barcelona, have a cocktail at Dr Stravinsky, recommended by Caryn Cohen and Joseph Lesieutre.

A fleeting glance from the 38R Geary bus of San Francisco's Union Square

Craft: Stealth typos

Beware the ones that spellcheck will never catch.

From Associated Press

From Atlas Obscura

From TikTok

Book Club: Building A StoryBrand by Donald Miller

By Bob Decker

Once every couple of months, several of us at Dundee Hills Group, the parent company of Redpines, gather to discuss a marketing communications related book or topic that we've read or thought about. I always take a lot of notes, copying down those passages that I want to be able to tell people about later or that I simply thought were well written. Here are my top 5 favorite passages from Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller, ©2017 by Donald Miller. 

[A website with too much noise:] . . . It was as though he was answering a hundred questions his customers had never asked.

[Apple became successful] . . . by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers' challenge (that people didn't recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones).

[A website needs to answer these 3 questions in an obvious way:] 1. What do you offer? 2. How will it make my life better? 3. What do I need to do to buy it?

. . . the customer is the hero of the story, not your brand. When we position our customer as the hero and ourselves as the guide, we will be recognized as a trusted resource to help them overcome their challenges.

The goal of our branding should be that every potential customer knows exactly where we want to take them: a luxury resort where they can get some rest, to become the leader everybody loves, or to save money and live better.

Toolbox: Another Pair of Eyes for Your Website SEO

By Bob Decker

Sometimes improving your website's SEO is as simple

as bringing in another pair of eyes.

Do you ever feel like you're so close to your business that you're no longer able to visualize how other people might see it?

You know who your customers are. You know what problem you're solving for them. 

Can anybody spend a few seconds looking at your website and figure that out as well? 

This is a key part of the thought process that the Redpines team guides you through when we conduct a basic SEO audit. It's like providing you with a second pair of eyes — mainly for your website, but also for your company messaging in general.

How can you tell if you need a basic SEO audit?

Here's one way: Off the top of your head (no fair copying from your website) write down what your company does and who it’s for in 25 words or less. Then delete any mention of your company name. Paste what remains into a Google search query. Where does your company come up in the results?

If your company website is popping up on the first page of results, congratulations. You're doing great. 

Not showing up on the first, second, or third page of results? We can help you fix this.

Agenda: November 2022

1. Fly direct from San Francisco to Munich on UA 194 or LH 459

2. Upon arrival at the Maritim, go for a swim

3. Spend 15th through 18th at electronica 2022, catching up with so many people whom one hasn't seen since at least 2020

4. Make a special point of checking out the interesting demos at the Vishay Intertechnology booth

5. Hear the latest on what's happening with DRAMs, SRAMs, and flash from David Bagby at Alliance Memory

6. Somehow manage to slip away to spend some quality time at Dallmayr delicatessen, which one so fondly remembers visiting with Elisabeth Feder of Electronique. Open until 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and until 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Repeat as often as possible.

7. Check out who's playing at the Tonhalle, Backstage, Milla, Muffathalle, and Strom.

8. Before leaving town, get some perspective on everything new that one saw at electronica 2022 by checking out what's old at the Glyptothek.

Toolbox: Final Destination Part 2022: The New Google Adwords Requirements

By Bob Decker

Since the Redpines paid search webinar on October 12 with Teresa Hardy, I've received several questions about the new Destination Requirements from Google Adwords going into effect this month. As a matter of fact, this new update was one of the things that prompted me and Teresa to schedule our event.

If you have a website you want to get traffic to, it's worthwhile to be familiar with Adwords destination requirements even if you have no intention of engaging in paid search. This is because what's good for Adwords is good for SEO in general. And, conversely, what they tell you to avoid for purposes of Adwords you should avoid like the plague if you want your website to come up high in search results. Stated positively, the good things Google's looking for are:

• Easy navigation
• Rich in original content
• Fast (CWV)
• Crawlable
• Transparent page behavior
• Verified local phone number consisting of digits only
• Properly listed in all directories

Otherwise put: don't be hard to navigate, slim on content, slow, uncrawlable, or deliver "abusive experiences." Google hates that whether you're an Adwords advertiser or not.

Wondering whether your site is running afoul of Google without your knowing about it? We can help with a basic SEO audit.

Event: How to Win the SEO Game Without Paying for Ads

By Bob Decker

Have you tried paid search and it wasn’t successful? Do you know why?

Are you considering paid search and wondering whether it’s right for you?

Last week, Teresa Hardy (New Media-Designs) and I met up on LIVE! to talk about 3 main topics: 

• Is your website is ready for paid search?
• Is paid search right for your business at all?
• What else can you do to be more successful on line?

We walked through a lot of information you can use to win the SEO game without turning to expensive paid search services.

On the replay (approx 20 min) you’ll find out how to:

• Grow your organic search first
• Increase brand visibility for the long-run
• Evaluate if your business is a paid search candidate
• Optimize website with effective content
• Make better investments instead of paid search

Watch the replay.

Look into our $299 basic SEO audit. 

Toolbox: Is Your Business Paid Search Ready? A Redpines Checklist

Do you ever wonder if you’re missing out on customers by not trying paid search?

It’s easy to think so, when so many companies seem to have enormous success using paid search for new customer acquisition and lead generation. It makes you want to dive into the pool when it’s full of splashing swimmers.

But over the years, we’ve seen paid search turn into an insatiable money pit and endless time suck for too many companies

If you’re considering paid search as part of your marketing strategy, you want to avoid the common pitfalls that companies fall into easily.

That’s why we’ve created a free checklist: Is your business paid search ready?

In this 3-page checklist, you’ll find out how to know if and when it’s the right time to use paid search as part of your marketing strategy, and get a better return on your investment.

You’ll also discover:

• The 5 factors that make or break paid search success
• Which elements search engines are looking for right now
• 3 types of messaging that must be in alignment to win with paid search
• The often-misunderstood timing of paid search vs. organic SEO traffic
• 2 things many companies get wrong when they first try paid search & how to avoid them

Download your copy here.