Evanston Bike Race Speeds into Town July 19th
By Kim | June 25, 2009
Pro cycling with a full-on family festival fills Downtown Evanston, Illinois, as it hosts the NorthShore University HealthSystem Grand Prix (the bike race formerly known as the “ENH Grand Prix of Cycling”). Mark your calendars for Sunday, July 19, 2009. A circuit through the main streets of town will be closed to cars as elite amateur and Olympic-level pro cyclists zip around the course at 30+ mph. Women’s and men’s pro races start at 4:00 pm, but there’s thrills, dining, shopping, music and more all day.
The Grotto gang partnered with title sponsor NorthShore University HealthSystem and Turin Bicycle to deliver a press conference announcing the race and all its features just last week. Newly minted Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl lent her support: “Evanston is a world class city. It is events like this one that help define Evanston as a lively, engaging, and fun place to live, work, study, dine, shop, and play.”
Come out and join us for a really great day. With more than 70 restaurants to choose from within mere blocks of the race (half of which are RIGHT ON THE COURSE), you can enjoy tastes and beverages from around the world. Bring the kids (BYO-bike!) so they can race right on the course at 3:15 pm. And scope out deals and free stuff in the Festival Area and shops around town. We love promoting the NorthShore Grand Prix and invite everyone to come down and see what all the excitement is all about.
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BirthLink.com Welcomes New Arrival
By Kim | April 18, 2009
Redesigning the web site for Chicago’s premier birth and wellness resource provider, BirthLink.com, actually took…wait for it… nine months. Grotto partnered with founder Jo Anne Lindberg to rethink how the site was structured and design a robust new portal with easy access to the provider directory and birthing and health info, as well as Jo Anne’s own health-related business, Life Seasons Wellness/Five Element Shiatsu.
Secondary navigation access replaced the confusing frames-based format of the old site and gave us flexibility in guiding two unique audience groups — parents and practitioners — to the info they would find most useful. For example, within the Find a Provider section each specialty area is just one click away.
Response from members has been positive and we look forward to watching traffic reports to see how the site is growing up.
Topics: Grotto Clients, Marketing, Our Company | No Comments »
Sometimes You Just Need to Ask for Help
By Kim | April 13, 2009
By nature, small business owners have a real DIY attitude. You have to when you wear that many hats: ceo, marketing director, receptionist, coffee maker/fetcher/cleaner-upper. It’s a great, and probably necessary trait. But successful entrepreneurs also need to know when they need help.
Maybe it is high time you hired an intern for some marketing assistance or a bookkeeper to handle invoicing, etc. Our bookkeeper Linda not only takes care of AP and AR at Grotto, she offers ideas that have streamlined our processes and improved the bottom line. (She’s with us just part-time so holler if you want her number. She’s great!)
Asking for help doesn’t always mean adding staff or expanding your list of vendors. Remember to ask colleagues, friends and even clients for advice when you are puzzled by something. The whole online social networking phenomenon has some degree of call-and-response built in where the most interactive hubs depend on a give and take of information.
Think nobody wants to help? Especially “in these times”? Think again.
Check out tweenbots. Proof positive that people—even NYC busy people—are always willing to help. Just ask.
Thanks for the link, Charley.
Topics: Communicating, Our Company, Running a Business | No Comments »
Does Your Web Site Need a Check-up?
By Kim | March 21, 2009
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Do you find yourself apologizing for your web site when you send someone to it? (“Just ignore the pictures/flashy thing/out-of-date stuff.”)
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Do you feel like the site could actually motivate more people to call or buy?
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Does it just seem like the site feels a little dated or out-of-step with what you see on the Internet these days? Or, it doesn’t even mention your current services or product lines?
Whether you update content on your web site frequently or just every so often, a regular—perhaps deeper—review could improve search engine results (which means bringing new eyeballs to your info) and make sure the site is technically up to snuff.
You don’t necessarily have to scrap the whole site to get some added benefits. Even a few tweaks can bring real results. For instructor Arlene Faulk, we improved her page rank in Google and delivered more inquiries and students simply by changing the words “t’ai ch” with an apostrophe to “tai chi” (without) on her site along with some other minor copy updates. Renaming page files with search friendly words, converting image-based navigation terms to HTML text or rewriting content on key landing pages just might give your business the bump it needs.
Your web site check-up might point to some of these action steps (depending in part on when the site was built and the techy chops of your web designer/developer):
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Streamline the underlying code to make sure the site functions well on all popular browsers.
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Update copy and images to tell people exactly how your products or services will help them.
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Experiment with new keyword phrases in the copy, page titles and file names to match what real people are typing into search engines.
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Rethink (and probably remove) flash-based opening pages.
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Add alt tags* and restructure content to meet standards for the disabled and for mobile devices.
Of course, a full redesign may be necessary at some point. Web standards (including the explosion of Internet access on mobile devices) are continually being refined to help us deliver information more efficiently. Don’t let your web site stagnate!
*alt tag = A bit of code that says what an element or image is even when it isn’t being displayed. For example, a visually-impaired person using a screen reader would hear the text of the alt tag in place of seeing the image.
Topics: Communicating, Marketing, Running a Business | No Comments »
For Small Biz: Marketing Seminar is Exactly Your Size
By Kim | March 5, 2009
Have you ever hesitated before trashing yet another unsolicited email about improving your marketing efforts? Wondering if this one is the one that might really work? Honestly, most of those direct mail tactics are aimed at getting cash away from the desperate. And while many more business owners may be edging toward that scary edge these days, it really is better to look for tangible help from your own community.
Our philosophy here at Grotto Communications is to provide meaningful marketing communications help to our fellow entrepreneurs. Clients and networking buddies alike should come away from interactions with us with a realistic way to apply an idea to get a better response from prospective buyers and connect with the people they want to reach.
That’s why I’m confident and delighted to help promote an upcoming seminar led by my partner Jim Marsh and our colleague, business coach David J.P. Fisher of RockStar Consulting. Check out “Making the Most of Your Marketing: The Tools You Need to Grow Your Business NOW!” The session takes place on Friday, March 27, at the Rotary Building in Evanston. This unique event gives you the opportunity to learn from a marketing expert and a business coach at the same time. Integrate your marketing materials with your sales process to attract new clients, customers or patients. Have fun and let us know how it goes!
Register now >>
Topics: Marketing, Our Company, Running a Business | No Comments »
Connecting Cultures: Brand, Web Site Links Evanston to Tibet
By Kim | February 27, 2009
What does Evanston, Illinois, have in common with Tibet? How do you represent the relationship not only between cultures, but between different aspects of a new organization? We recently set out to translate the mission of Tsogyaling Meditation Center of Evanston into a new brand identity and web site.
Founders Asang and Nancy Floy decided to open a school for nomad girls in Tibet about a year or so ago. In a matter of months, they raised more than the $6,000 needed to start classes for ten young women in the fall of 2008. Donations from a weekly meditation class at Heartwood Center — as well as other fundraisers — provided the foundation needed to establish Tsogyaling and they asked Grotto to help them create a web site and logo.
Asang and Nancy provided dozens of photographs of thangkas (painted Tibetan scrolls), the school’s spiritual director Lopon Konchog Dechen, and the girls currently attending Tibet Girls School. They taught me that Tsogyaling refers to “place of Tsogyal” and that the legendary teacher Yeshe Tsogyal’s name means “Victorious Lake of Wisdom”. Nancy even braved a bracing January morning to get a shot of Lake Michigan and our ideas for the identity system began to gel.
An energetic blue wave evokes the lakes of Tibet and Evanston’s Lake Michigan shore in the logo. Rather than relegate the girls school into a subcategory of the brand, Tibet Girls School takes its place equally with the meditation center. And the web site further unites them with the added visual depth of photographs, artwork and textiles that celebrate the colorful cultural elements of that faraway Asian culture and of the center that nourishes it here in the U.S.
We are delighted to be part of this important endeavor and look forward to celebrating the center and the school at Losar, the Tibet New Year Festival, Friday, February 27, 2009. For more information about this benefit — to be held at Wild Tree Café in Evanston — check out the Celebrate Losar invitation. See you there!
Topics: Grotto Clients, Marketing | No Comments »
Mind Your Copyrights: Is Facebook Getting Grabby?
By Kim | February 18, 2009
Whether or not you have taken the plunge and started exploring the possibilities for smart business marketing among the social networking sites, this news bears watching. This week, a story broke that Facebook recently – and quietly — changed its copyright policies which made it rather unclear as to whether or not they would own whatever users post on the popular communications site.
Their Powers That Be have responded that the changes weren’t meant/don’t mean what you think they mean. In a cnet news report (Facebook: Relax, we won’t sell your photos), spokesman Barry Schnitt’s statement indicated that, “[t]he new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. …That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend).”
Still, cnet warns: “Things are a little bit murky for sure, though. Unlike the Yahoo-owned Flickr, Facebook does not have extensive copyright preferences, meaning that a professional photographer might want to choose a media-sharing site where there’s less of a gray area as to what can actually happen down the road.”
This development shouldn’t stop entrepreneurs and freelancers from using such sites to promote their services. But we should all be mindful of what value our information has in this digi-age while proceeding cautiously.
All in all, it seems a boneheaded move by FB. Either the terms should have be edited more carefully to state what they claim they mean or they might have followed the collaborative approach the site seems to encourage by posting a draft and creating a bit of dialogue around it. Lawyers may shudder at such a notion, but as a marketer, I say if you don’t talk to your audience directly, you will simply lose them.
More selfishly, I worry that I won’t be able to enjoy the random postings of pals like Bob Huff’s lovely photos. Let’s hope not.
Topics: Communicating, Marketing | No Comments »
Grotto Communications Celebrates 10 Years!
By Kim | February 12, 2009
Jim and I are delighted to commemorate 10 years of providing our brand of marketing communications services to SMBs (small- to medium-sized businesses). The path has been sometimes up and sometimes down (and sometimes it was hard to tell which was which!). But reaching this milestone is a testament to the success of our methods and to the quality of our clients’ services.
Back in 1999, I had a vision of offering a menu of sophisticated marketing techniques to companies looking for help. I even imagined Jim as becoming active in community groups and here he is Evanston Chamber President this year! Our first projects included bringing style consistency to a massive association web site gone wild and designing a monthly newsletter for Intervention Instruction, before helping them evolve into a totally online entity. We just finished up another project with Intervention Instruction in the fall and our connection with clients like them is truly gratifying.
Many thanks to all of our clients, friends, vendors, family and fellow entrepreneurs who have been a real joy to work with and a solid support network with us all these years. Take the tour of samples from over the years on the Grotto marketing web site. Stay tuned for the next decade of compelling new brands, results-oriented marketing materials, impressive events and clear, communicative web sites.
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ARTbody Gets in Shape: New Logo, Web Site from Grotto Communications
By Kim | February 3, 2009
Angela Renee — creator of ARTbody: Angela Renee Technique, a unique approach to body sculpting — came to us looking to create a brand identity to represent her unique fitness program. Inspired by some sketches of the human form by Angela (she’s an artist as well), the Grotto team crafted a round mark with a curvacious flow. Modern, feminine fonts spell out the program’s name and tagline (”Every body is a work of art”) while conveying both the stability and elegant motion inherent in her technique.
The raspberry shade makes a vibrant statement onscreen in the new web site: www.theartbody.com. Integrating glowing testimonials with details about classes and Angela’s rock-solid credentials resulted in a site that feels in sync with the supportive nature of the program and the experience of the founder/instructor. Already a hit with her students, the web site we built is poised to support the rise of Angela Renee and ARTbody as the next wave in health and fitness.
ARTbody web site
Topics: Grotto Clients, Marketing | No Comments »
Generating New Ideas to Keep Small Biz Healthy (or Afloat!)
By Kim | January 24, 2009
Andrew Field, CEO of PrintingForLess.com, has flung an interesting idea up the flagpole. He worries that the stimulus packages and attention to all the big business meltdowns in recent months miss a critical aspect of the problem. Scads of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are struggling and if they begin to shutter, the impact on unemployment, etc., will be far more than a ripple.
Field suggests a plan to make new loans available to these businesses based on their number of employees. As described in his commentary at Forbes.com, your business would have access to $20,000 in unsecured loans for each full-time employee. Essentially, staff is considered an asset (go figure!). Companies that take advantage of the loan and then let employees go would find that amount of the loan payable immediately. The idea is to open up lines of credit that have otherwise dried up even for steady businesses that have been around for ages.
Sure, the plan likely has some soft spots and needs deeper consideration. But way to think through the problem and speak up! Feeling inspired? Don’t keep those notions to yourself. Share. Discuss. American entrepreneurs are prized for their innovation and “let’s-put-on-a-show” enthusiasm. Puzzle out some ideas with your staff, vendors, fellow biz buds throughout your network and see if we can’t turn this recesssion boat around.
PS: If you haven’t used PrintingForLess.com, they quite simply rock. Test drive their great service, excellent results and green solutions. Want a discount? Use our promo code: RP1E46B3L. Enjoy!
Topics: Running a Business | No Comments »