After refining a working logo and tagline, I’ve spent a few hours today putting together the PSD mock and what we plan to hang the Wordpress MU front end on.

I’ve placed a few of the mockups here:

I struggled for a good hour on whether the two characters with the ladder should be walking in frame or out. Usually in print we like eyes, faces and general motion to bring the reader back in. But for some reason I struggled between having their motion point us toward the action (the buttons) or point us out of the frame.

Lately, in web, I am often driving the viewers eye right, particularly on home pages. I find myself trying to get the user to feel as though they should turn the page. Countering years of print ad design logic. But getting the user to “turn the page” usually means a click not a click off. They’ll want to go inside. And frankly that’s all I really want, all my interior pages should reinforce the same basic message the home page had.

More to come.

I started Scrappy Upstarts for like-minded entrepreneurs starting up in a down time.

Tom Maduri posted that quote on his blog, and I had to post it on one of mine.

2009 is two days old and the majority of tweets and posts I am seeing are the middle band looking to push through the noise and find out how its really done.

Its great to aspire to the likes of a Guy Kawasaki or the other bloggerati - but in this economic time - I think we need clear tactical solutions as much as, if not more than pontification and discussion.

Unearthing nuggets of tactical wisdom like those offered over at ProBlogger and CopyBlogger are an incredible start. They are not speculating or just sending out links - they are writing blueprints to success.

There is certainly a spectrum of web entrepreneurs - I am going to dedicate 2009 to finding and helping those slightly above me on the online status scale but more importantly those below me.

Will you?

Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of images and messages every day, which means reaching them and moving them to action is harder than ever. That’s why it is also more important than ever to not only design effectively but write great advertising copy.

First, you need a powerful competitive advantage you can tout. Skip advantages such as “providing the best customer service” or offering “the widest selection.” These phrases have been used so much they are meaningless. When is the last time you reacted to an ad because of these types of phrases? It’s probably been a long time, if ever. Instead, find a specific benefit you offer that your competitors do not.

If you have the lowest prices, your work here may be done. Your best approach may be to highlight your products and prices in your ad. But if you don’t have the lowest prices or don’t want to emphasize pricing for image reasons, you need to dig deeper to find a powerful point to persuade consumers. For example, if you sell big-screen televisions, you could promise free delivery and installation the same day a customer buys the set. Or if you sell supplies to contractors, let them call in orders that you promise to deliver for free within a half hour.

Another approach is to find out what brought your customers to your business. Don’t guess. Spend several weeks and ask each of your customers what attracted them to your business. Don’t settle for their first answer. Gently prod them so you can be sure you are getting an honest answer. The top reasons might not be what you expect. For example, when companies began selling high-speed Internet they were sure consumers would sign up because of the blazing connection speed. But their research soon found that consumers actually purchased the service because it was always connected, and they didn’t have to waste time dialing. These Internet providers wasted no time emphasizing in their advertising that their service “was always on.”

Once you’ve identified key selling points, highlight them as headlines in your ads. If you find you are unable to identify key selling points, enlist the help of business or marketing students at a local college. Ask them to survey your customers, analyze the data and present ideas for selling points. Design an ad campaign that will test different points, so you can determine which are the strongest. Remember that the more powerful ad copy you develop, the more your sales will increase.

Last week Business Pundit posted The 50 best Business Blogs of 2008 It’s a great collection across some great categories for any small business or entrepreneur a few of my favorites include:

• The Toilet paper entrepreneur
• StartupAddict
• Endless Innovation
• Duct Tape Marketing
• Copyblogger
• Seth Godin’s blog

Anyway, I was speaking about direct and online marketing for small business. Aside from touching on what went into writing an effective direct campaign (Make a good offer, state it in the first paragraph and repeat it four times) I also touched on some of the products and services we use over at VAdA to market ourselves. You can read about those here.

Email marketing:
Currently we’re working with Constant Contact. But there are several great options, all of them have significant  feature-sets and are relatively inexpensive. Some interfaces are better than others and you’ll want to poke around.

• Constant Contact
• MailChimp
• iContact

Some quick email tips -  Test each email message before you send it. Remember that in the subject line the first 50 characters are the most important.  Include a forward-to-a-friend link in all your messages. If you include images, use alt tags and support text around them so that readers who block images by default can see your message, regardless.

Direct Mail:
We’ve purchased a few lists from directmail.com - they’re often easy to implement into excel or a word for labeling. In terms of conversion…eh, I need more time to really say whether they’re good leads.

InfoUSA is beta testing a great new mapping system that allows you to call up a map of a particular area and draw boundary lines of where you’d like leads from. You can literally designate which side of the street you want your leads to come from. Great for targeted geographic mailings.

A few direct mail tips - The more times you mail, the better your response rate. Try to follow up your mailing with a personal phone call or a second mailer within two weeks. A 1-3% response rate is about standard.

Thats it for now.

After writing the Virtual Ad Agency blog for just a little over a month - I have to agree with this point wholeheartedly:

Without proper planning, oversight and passion for the topic, blogs implemented purely for SEO objectives are doomed to fail. Additionally, social media referrals and recommendations are becoming a notable competitor to search traffic which can place SEO as a secondary promotional effort in some situations.

Madison Avenue talent to Main Street businesses.

We continue to service small business clients with marketing collateral and web development with highly competitive package pricing that includes design, printing, shipping and an exclusive client portal.

I’ve designed a lot of custom features into the VAdA web site, including:

A wordpress blog area built-in -

A  robust custom checkout system, that includes a Creative Brief and then ties into a large back-end project management system -

Clients can review their work and make comments as well as make payments, and chat with agency staff.

Agency partners (designers, account executives, etc.) can log-in and review their client assignments, message clients, review their calendar, get paid, etc.

See the entire site in action - http://www.virtualadagency.com

Sparked by a vlog post by Digg founder, Kevin Rose, I created ScrappyUpstarts.com in an attempt to offer small businesses a place to share information and resources.

Complete with a full-featured forum, blog and submission system - Scrappy is a recent Wordpress creation I am proud of.

Some of the best companies were founded during an economic downturn - it just took the tenacity of scrappy upstart entrepreneurs. This site is a resource for those striking out now, in this economy.

Most companies will succeed or fail in any economy but those with true, dedicated upstarts at the helm have a much better chance of survival. Its my hope Scrappy will serve as a place for these Upstarts to come together.

Besides a blog offering advice to fellow Upstarts - There are a few other helpful features:

A forum where Upstarts can exchange ideas and services -

At the core of ScrappyUpstarts.com is the ability for fellow Upstarts to post their business on the site, discussing the challenges or benefits they face in a down economy-

Visit ScrappyUpstarts.com

From full-blown site builds to print ad concepts and flash banner ads we continue to make tremendous progress in the digital space, and I am proud of the work my team and I continue to provide to promote the Incisive Media corporate brand in North America.

We’re creating everything from print promotional materials to stand alone digital applications, to web sites and corporate intranets.

Some of the work includes:

A proof of concept showing how sponsorships of our video content could work -

Web site design for a new digital press room -

Two examples of the many print ad campaigns we are also creating -

View the entire portfolio here.