McIntosh Painting website

Our latest website build and design, completed for McIntosh Painting, has recently launched. McIntosh Painting is a relatively new member of the McIntosh Group, along with McIntosh Builders, McIntosh Commercial Construction and McIntosh Precast Limited. McIntosh Painting Ltd directors, Alastair, John and Leticia McIntosh saw an opportunity to add painting to their construction industry services, as it allowed them to complete the wider service offering available.

We received the brief that the client wanted to build website presence and promotion to establish themselves in the Canterbury market. There were several great photographs of the team and recent work they had completed which we could showcase through large hero images, parallax images and a home page slider. These types of image styles provide more energy, interaction and a positive user experience.

JFM Marketing + Design created a responsive scrolling single page website for enhanced user experience showcasing the businesses various painting services. We designed the website with “responsive design functionality”, to make sure it presented well on tablets, phones and desktop computers.

At JFM Marketing + Design, we pride ourselves on delivering great materials to support the goals of any sized business. If you are looking for a website that will help you to promote your products and services, please call us to arrange a consultation.

Facebook training sessions off to a flying start!

At JFM Marketing + Design, we are always looking for ways to deliver more value to clients. We have regularly had feedback that our clients would like to get training from us from time to time, so we created the “Maximising Your Facebook Business Page” workshop. A lot of hours and hard work went into building a workbook, which was over 40 pages long, and a set of educational slides.

We are aware that Facebook Business Pages are a way that community groups reach their audience but that there is often no budget for training allocated. Jo wanted to offer two free places to community groups and spoke to the local newspapers to encourage applications for the places.

JFM were pleasantly surprised by the response we received from community groups. We are proud to support our community become more confident and informed; therefore we increased the number of winning places. We’ve had an excellent response from our local business community with three sessions taking place over the next 9 days.

Two of the three sessions are sold out but there are two places remaining on the other workshop, scheduled for the 16th of May. For more information about the workshop content, visit this link on our website: https://www.jfm.co.nz/facebook-workshops/. We also have some one-on-one sessions booked in; contact us if you would like to arrange a private training session.

 

Introducing Sarah Jones

Our newest team member, Sarah Jones, joins us from Perth Western Australia. Sarah has relocated here with her husband, who grew up in Ashburton. With a wide range of international marketing and corporate business experience, she will compliment our highly skilled team.

Sarah’s role as Account Manager will see her involved in many of the day-to-day activities for the agency. This includes copywriting, digital marketing, sales and account management, media placement, conducting training sessions and marketing planning. Over the coming weeks Sarah looks forward to meeting you and getting to know what your business requirements are for 2017.

Whilst in Perth, Sarah spent nearly four years working at a large not-for-profit which provides aged care to almost 3,000 clients. The aged care sector has been going through a period of significant growth and change, including a large increase in competitors and legislative change. Her marketing duties included digital marketing, campaigns, events, grant applications, marketing strategy and creating marketing materials. Sarah was also seconded to project manage one of the largest legislative changes into the business, which resulted in her winning the Leadership on Show board award in 2015.

Sarah also has a strong academic record, earning a Master of Marketing from Curtin University in 2014. She was awarded the “Best Graduating student in a Marketing Postgraduate Degree 2014” for getting the top marks out of all students that year and won the Department of Health prize. She loved the academic world so much that she also took the opportunity to tutor undergraduate students at Curtin University after her studies, teaching the Digital Communications module for two semesters.

Sarah also did a 4-year stint in London, working at BBC Worldwide for 3.5 years whilst she was there. This gave her the opportunity to work with brands such as Top Gear, Doctor Who, Dancing with the Stars and BBC Earth. It was whilst working there she discovered her love for the marketing profession and for working with big brands. In 2010 Sarah won a place on the highly contested “Aspire” program, which was a one-year leadership program with dedicated mentoring and training. During her time on the program she got military mind training at Sandhurst Military Academy (where Prince William trained for the air force), pitch her ideas to the Board of the company and wrote a thesis around the Doctor Who program.

Moving to Ashburton has been a plan for Sarah and her husband for the last few years and she is looking forward to becoming part of the Ashburton community. If you would like to contact Sarah, her details are:

Email: sarah@jfm.co.nz
Phone: 03 308 6272 – ext 2

Five ways to maximise Facebook for your business

Social media has become part of daily life, especially Facebook. Even if you aren’t on social media, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t talking about or looking for your business online! Having a Facebook business page is a great idea for any business and here are some tips to maximise your account.

  1. Planning and preparation is key to building engagement

Social media is all about engagement and building rapport with your customers. Creating guidelines and a plan will help you to keep producing quality content for your Facebook account. Guidelines can outline your standards relating to spelling, grammar, content you will use, subjects you will/will not talk about, your tone and how you’ll respond to complaints. Writing social media guidelines can help keep you and other contributors on track to represent your brand consistently. An annual social media calendar should include important events and dates for your company, community and country, as well as post ideas for those occasions. The best social media accounts have a lot of planning involved, it is actually quite challenging to be spontaneous and planning removes the pressure.

  1. Show off your latest work and products in different ways

Facebook has the benefit of allowing video, images and content, allowing you to promote your products how ever you like which prevents the content getting stale. For example you can write a blog post, create a competition, showcase a testimonial, show a video, write an FAQ about a product, talk about something topical within your community or upload a brochure and hopefully get your customers interacting with your posts. Always remember that Facebook is about having an ongoing conversation with your clients rather than the hard sell; keep talking to them and stay in their mind. Have fun with the different options available to you.

  1. Use targeted area advertising to get more customers

If you are happy to pay for Facebook advertising, there are some great benefits including targeted marketing. Facebook takes note of user locations, what pages they like and where they check into. This record of locations and interests is useful when advertising, as you can create an advert and specify criteria for people who should see the advert. This is especially powerful if you have a local business. For example, if you have a bobcat business that only provides services in Mid Canterbury; it doesn’t make much sense to pay to advertise to someone in London. You can also target people manually based on age, interests and behaviours. This means you only spend money advertising to relevant potential clients.

  1. Create generic replies for frequently asked questions

Facebook is making it easier for business pages with regular updates and improvements. One such improvement is the ability to set up automatic acknowledgement responses to messages, helping business owners to quickly respond even if they are busy at the time. People using social media expect a quick response and this helps you to meet their expectations. To set this up, go to your business page, click on settings, select messaging, under response assistant click “Yes” next to “send instant replies to anyone who messages your Page”. To change your instant reply message, click Change, update the message and click save. To turn the message off, simply change the “Yes” back to “No”.

  1. Always separate your personal and professional life

Always remember that social media used for business purposes should be kept professional and polite at all times. You should make sure any personal Facebook accounts are kept private, so you can relax about any photos or posts on your personal page. Facebook has made it easier to access your privacy shortcuts. Look in the top right hand corner of the screen, click on the padlock button, expand the options and make sure “Friends” is ticked for the option “Who can see my stuff” rather than “Public”. There are other security options you can take, accessible in the expanding menus.

Remember, social media is about building engagement and strong relationships, which results in sales over time. Give these Facebook business page options a go and tell us how you went. If you need any help putting any of your social media goals into practice or would like to learn more about social media, give us a call at JFM Marketing and Design.

What is the difference between branding, PR, marketing and advertising?

Many people use the terms branding, PR, marketing and advertising interchangeably but they are not the same. All of these disciplines use different tactics, resulting in different outcomes. They can be used individually or together, depending on an individual business and scaled according to business size. This handy graphic describes these differences very quickly.

Marketing

Marketing is the process of getting a customer interested in and eventually purchasing (which can be called sales) your product or service. This is a core business discipline, which is underpinned by the four P’s: product, price, place and promotion. Marketing is the complex combination of wearing both a business and customer hat, to come up with an offering that satisfies a business requirement for profitability and a customer requirement for a product that they need, want and can justify paying for.

PR

Public Relations, PR or communications focuses on persuasion, reputation and publicity. Have you ever wondered why some newspaper articles about a certain business are glowing or how public figures can always make amazing speeches that deliver a message clearly and leave people feeling good? That is all thanks to the amazing writing of their PR team. A large business can also separate out internal and external communications. Internal communications are important to keep employees engaged and invested, as they are fully aware of what is happening, what the goals are and what behaviour is expected of them within a company.

Advertising

There are many forms of advertising, which you may have seen including TV, radio, newspaper, and outdoor advertising on banners and billboards. Advertising uses short and sharp messaging to improve business visibility or promote a specific offering which can be very effective, especially if it is using a medium seen by the target customer. Advertising often uses strategies such as repetition, bold design, music, images and interesting language to be memorable and lead to a sale. The next time you find yourself singing a tune from an advert, you know why!

Branding

The holy grail of our industry is establishing a strong brand. Branding is how your customer feels about your company and product. When you think of a Ferrari, regardless of knowing whether it has been well built, you just know it’s going to an amazing car. Branding is the process of building assets, imagery, a unique position in the market and creating a customer expectation of what they will get every time they use your company. To establish a strong brand, you need to use all the previous three tactics as well as using strong design and strategy. This is best done in partnership with a strong experienced marketing agency, such as JFM.

Luckily, you don’t need to be an expert on these disciplines or how to execute them. JFM Marketing and Design are specialists in all of these areas and can help you tailor the right solution for your business.

New Zealand Trustee Services

JFM Marketing and Design worked with New Zealand Trustee Services Ltd to create a new brand identity and website last year.  

 The overall feel for the new brand was one of clarity, energy, trustworthiness, professional integrity, and structural accuracy.  Their approachable “New Zealand” character was also represented in the brand work.

The use of blue in depicting an iconic silver fern is a reflection of New Zealand sky and water, and the bright energy going into a new phase of a brand.  

A suit of collateral was created for use across the business; imagery was carefully selected to reinforce the importance of relationships. 

The new website design is clean, minimal but not sterile. Utilising the bright blue as a pop colour through the website allowed the vibrancy to be balanced off with a grey.

The website was created using a sectional scroll with responsive functionality, which allows large amounts of content to be accessed seamlessly and intuitively, on any device.

Want to find out more about how the team at JFM Marketing + Design can refresh your brand or build your new website? Give us a call today on 03 308 6272.

 

Scott Simpson

Scott Simpson Contracting owned by Scott and Lisa Simpson provides high quality agricultural services to the North Otago area.  We were contacted to design a fresh brand identity (logo) and create an effective website to promote the company’s contracting and straw trading services online.  As it was peak season and there was a need to quickly advertise the feed for sale, we were tasked to provide these assets within a short time frame.

Our brief was to creatively design a logo and supporting icon element which would be clear and easy to read on machinery and edgy.  To achieve this, font selection was critical, along with branding colours that complimented the agricultural industry and resonated with their loyal client base.

Like many contractors, their modern fleet of machinery travelling around the local district is one of their most effective forms of marketing to prospective clients.  So for Scott Simpson Contracting, the application of their brand livery on vehicle and signage was of most importance.  Our creative designer Justine Tull kept this core requirement in mind to develop a clear and solid icon, to suit the hard working equipment and quality services provided. We designed an icon that represents a stylised wheat head and also represents tractor tyre marks.

The Scott Simpson Contracting website needed to showcase the extensive range of contracting services they provide and showcase “feed for sale” including quantities and specific product details.  This functionality allows a customer to search of the type of feed they are looking for from anywhere in New Zealand and for an enquiry to be sent through to their Operations Manager, who will discuss their order along with freight options.  With the rural audience varying in age demographic, a sleek, clean and easy to navigate website was designed using the bold colours from the logo, along with the angles of the icon.

Large hero images and a gallery showcasing the up to date equipment used are featured on the website.  As with all our websites, this one has a “responsive design” which ensures the website looks great on a PC, tablet and phone.

At JFM Marketing and Design, we can help businesses of all sizes with their marketing requirements throughout New Zealand.  If you need a logo, website or any marketing collateral to promote your business, give us a call!

Team Update

JFM’s graphic designer, Natasha Moore is excited to announce the safe arrival of Amelia Chelsea Pearl Moore, born mid February this year! Whilst Natasha settles into life with her new bundle of joy, she will be taking a well deserved break. During this time, Justine Tull our Graphic Designer will be receiving Natasha’s emails and will be able to help with any projects you may have had with her.

Looking for an app that only shows content you are interested in?  Try out Flipboard!

Flipboard is an app that helps you to access content specific to your reading tastes.  If you get bored with the news stories that are served up on social media sites or you have very specific interests, Flipboard is for you.

Think of Flipboard as a content curation service that pulls together all the popular stories, images, news and conversations around things that interest you personally.  Once you install it, you can sign up using email or social media and then you select your interests by using the search functionality. 

The app will ask you to be more specific if needed and you can search for additional subjects.  Flipboard has been around for a while but has recently implemented an update, in a world saturated with irrelevant information we recommend trying out this app! 

You can also link your social media feeds into the account by clicking the four boxes in the top corner of the app, then scrolling down to “social networks”, and then signing into your account.  As with all apps, be sure to check out  the privacy settings first before allowing access.

You can read Wired’s article about the recent update here.

Mail Chimp and Facebook Ads, together at last!

Mail Chimp is an online tool to build attractive emails to send to your customers. The system templates allow people to create well-designed eDM’s (electronic direct mail) to send to their email list of customers.

Mail Chimp has now partnered with Facebook for Ad Campaigns. This means, if you already use Mail Chimp and are thinking of using Facebook Advertising, life just got a whole lot easier! You can use the same interface you know and love to build your Facebook Ads.

This relationship is a great idea for small business, as users of Mail Chimp will already have their photos and customer details loaded into the system. The reporting tools of both platforms are integrated, so you get smarter data to give you an idea of return on investment.

For more information on this feature, read the blog post from Mail Chimp here. If you would like to use email or Facebook Advertising as a tool for your business but would prefer we implement it for you, give us a call at JFM Marketing & Design.