Take Your Time To Develop Your Brand

Editor's Note: The following is a guest Marketing Mulligans post written by Deborah Shane, an author, entrepreneur, radio host and expert, that first appeared in Small Business Trends. Shane is a well-respected author, entrepreneur, radio host, and marketing expert who writes for several national business, career, and marketing blogs and Websites. In this interesting commentary, Shane asserts that that the branding process...for any company...is a steady one which only gathers momentum and awareness over time. Find out why...
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Does your brand splash around and do cannonballs off the side of the pool, or do you dive straight in and swim with a smooth, steady stroke? Rome wasn’t built in a day and your personal brand, reputation or business brand can’t be, either.

Trying to rush it, bombard people with it and be too much in people’s faces is not going to make them notice you faster or get them to buy more consistently. In fact, think about all the emails and newsletters that you now block, delete and unsubscribe to. People tell me all the time they are only following and getting emails from people and companies that really connect with them and provide them with timely information they want and need.

There are some really great professionals and companies who I like and admire, but I just don’t want daily emails (and sometimes it’s two or three a day). Those relentless reminders, repeated offers, re-framed messages, reminders about offers ending, multiple articles just posted on their sites, and so forth really turn me off. Probably turn you off, too.

What’s the best practice here and does this help or hinder brand development and recognition?

Just when I think I’ve gotten through all of them, another slew of them downloads into my browser. I am really exhausted trying to keep up. Aren’t you?

More and more people I am speaking to are putting new boundaries on emails and email marketing. We know how important and effective email marketing, is but how often and for what reason do we need to be sending email marketing messages?

I am on my social platforms a few times per day; post two to three blog articles weekly; and write for several other business, career and marketing sites. I also try to send a dedicated, purposeful email out to my permission-based email list once per week; about every two months I send out a themed newsletter.

So, how much more do I need to do to be out there to grow my brand and authority?

I believe it’s the consistency of your activity, the length and content of your messages, and finding just the right frequency that develops a brand organically over time. Brands should meander with purpose to where they are being naturally led.

No need to rush it or bombard people with your brand. Let it unfold, be consistent and “go with the flow.”

© Copyright 2003-2011. Small Business Trends LLC. All rights reserved.

The 10 Commandments Of Writing Web Content

Editor's Note: The following is another outstanding guest Marketing Mulligans post written by Mickie Kennedy, founder and president of eReleases, a cost-effective electronic press release distribution service, and a widely-regarded and well-respected PR professional who maintains the company's popular PR Fuel blog. This time around, Kennedy delivers 10 excellent tips for developing Web content, a task which requires a vastly different approach than writing for print.
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Writing content for the Web is completely different from writing content for print consumption. People read differently on a computer screen than they do on a piece of paper. Not only do computer monitors make it difficult to read for long periods of time, but people who use the Web tend to be especially impatient, looking for the information they want as quickly as possible.

With all of this in mind, I’ve come up with a list of 10 commandments for writing Web content. Whether you’re writing a blog post, sales copy for your Website, or a press release for online distribution, you should always keep these rules in mind.

1. Keep your headlines clear and catchy. The headline is often times the only thing a reader will first see from your Web content. Maybe they came across a link to a blog post on their Twitter feed, or maybe they’re viewing your headline in the search engine results. Your headline needs to be clear, memorable, and to the point. Put the most important information at the lead of the headline.

2. Get to the point. Web users typically give a new website eight seconds to capture their attention. If they can’t find what they’re looking for by then, they back out of the site. This means you need to get right to the point in your Web content. No long, meandering intros. Cut to the chase so the reader knows he’s in the right place.

3. Link to resources for further information. It’s always a good idea to include links within your content. This is a good way to help readers get more information on a particular subject, and keeps them moving forward on your website.

4. Keep paragraphs to a few short sentences. Online readers are easily overwhelmed. Whenever they see a huge block of text, they usually get scared away. Keep your paragraphs to just a few short sentences so that it’s easy to scan.

5. Use bullet points and numbered lists. People tend to scan content online rather than read it word for word. By using bulleted or numbered lists, you help to make your content quick and easy to scan. Consider this post. If you wanted to, you could scan over it in maybe 15 seconds and get the key information from it.

6. Include subheads to break things up. Subheads are useful for making your content easier to scan, and they help to keep your copy more organized.

7. Optimize your content for relevant keywords. No matter what type of Web content you’re writing, you need to remember that it’s going to be indexed by the search engines. The more search traffic you can drive to it, the better. So, always optimize your content for the right keywords.

8. Write like you talk. The Web tends to be a more conversational, less formal medium of sharing information than most print communication. With that in mind, it’s important that you write content that has a personality and engages the reader. Simply put, just write like you talk. No need to try to dress your content up or make it more complicated than it needs to be.

9. Double check everything. Whenever you put something online, it’s going to be up there forever. The Internet has a long memory. So before you publish anything, double check the facts, and make sure there aren’t any typos.

10. Encourage feedback. The Internet is all about interaction. Now, readers have just as much of a voice as the authors. And that’s a good thing. Just make sure you’re encouraging your readers to give feedback.

© 1998-2011 eReleases® Press Release Distribution. All Rights Reserved.

Altered States: How Individual States Rank In Twitter Use Per Capita

Here's another interesting look at current Twitter usage statistics, which continue to shift as rapidly as the site's traffic and user base growth rates.

Do you think you're located in one of America's top tweeting states? Well, that's exactly the question that HubSpot sought to answer when analyzing the latest data from its Twitter Grader tool. The following findings were reported yesterday in this post on AllTwitter.com, MediaBistro's unofficial Twitter resource. Take a look at the map below, and see how your state fared against others in the nation.

The infographic attaches a percentage to each state based on how much higher, or lower, its tweet rate is compared to the national average. The top three states, as indicated by the map, are Massachusetts, Washington, and Oregon. All three states used Twitter more than 60% more than the national average, with leader Massachusetts at 69%.

The research also reviewed the top gainers, states that experienced the most growth in Twitter usage from 2009-2010 compared to the national average. Based on this date, the fastest-growing state over the past year was Utah at 66%.

Click on the map to view a larger version of the graphic:

The Link Between Online Advertising And Public Relations

Editor's Note: The following is a guest Marketing Mulligans post written by Jonathan Gardner, director of communications at Vibrant, a worldwide leader in contextual technology and the leading provider of in-text solutions. For several years now, marketers have sat back and watched as digital media has blurred the lines between communications disciplines. With this in mind, Gardner discusses why PR pros should continue to be mindful of developments in the online advertising world and how these impact the public relations domain...for better or for worse. This post first appeared in PRNewser.
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Going into 2011, it is clear that the worlds of online advertising and marketing are being shaped by tremendous forces. But why should anyone outside of advertising care? Because in our experience, none of the disciplines live in isolation: developments in advertising, communications, and PR all resonate with the others in the marketing universe.

In 2011, we think there are phenomena that are of particular relevance to those throughout marketing and communications: the continuing debate over online privacy (“do not track”) and the evolution of content and social media.

Consumers will need to decide what information they want marketers to have in exchange for access to content and advertising that is relevant to their wants and needs. As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg put it, the public is unclear if privacy is still a “social norm.” And while government debate over online privacy continues, the industry is advancing an agenda of self-regulation. There is widespread agreement that there needs to be increased transparency in how marketers engage in behavioral targeting.

Whatever the outcome of the privacy issue, marketers are looking beyond behavioral to contextual technologies, which still allow precise targeting at scale. We see surging interest in a whole slate of new contextual marketing innovations that use banner ads, rich media, and video, along with established in-text advertising. This year will bring “super-relevant” dynamic ads with custom content that changes based on the content of a site’s page.

Smart communicators know the new world of content is defined by opportunities – all the new channels for content and the evolution of consumer product companies as “content producers.” PR professionals are stepping up to put in practice what they preach: using social to grow the network effect of communications content, within and beyond their organizations, in B2B and B2C, in every marketing channel. We’ll see amped-up integration of social-sharing and recommendation tools that bridge content and ads, such as toolbars, which have already made inroads with publishers.

As media and technology converge across devices and platforms, the content and channels are crossing boundaries and borders. And so for advertising and communications, what happens in one area will surely be impacting the other in 2011 more than ever before.

© 2011 WebMediaBrands, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Efficacy Of Alcohol Promotions In The Digital Age

Even in the era of successful, attention-seizing digital marketing and social media campaigns, consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers remain fervent proponents of expensive product sampling programs — by mail, in store, and at special events — because it puts offerings directly in the hands of consumers, increases trial, and creates short-term spikes in sell-through.

Now, we can debate the advantages and disadvantages of product sampling all day long, as I did in my recent blog post concerning WHEATIES® Fuel. However, traditional brand management theory holds that consumers are likely (but not guaranteed) to try a product if given to them at no cost, and almost equally as likely to buy it, particularly if its regular size is offered at a substantial discount (via a coupon). In the end, marketing experts agree, this process usually leads to increased sales of the product, although the size of the increase varies widely. It all makes sense, and it's a tried-and-true technique that's been employed by CPG manufacturers for over 50 years. In fact, sampling programs are practically must-haves for all new consumer product introductions... from peanut butter, to disposable cleaning wipes, to men's deodorant.

But here are two interesting questions: 1.) What if the consumer product is a beer, wine, or spirit, instead of a breakfast cereal or laundry detergent? 2.) Do the same rules, dynamics, and end results apply? Perhaps...but let's explore this further.

I got to thinking about this last night as I attended a monthly mixer, held at a popular local high-end steakhouse, for the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce's Young Professionals Group. Upon entering, I was bombarded by in-restaurant signage, lighted premium items, large table tents, and an attractive bevy of girls wearing solid black, super tight-fitting attire, sporting trays of free shots, and swarming the restaurant's patrons, most of who were over the age of 55 (this restaurant is located adjacent to a retirement community). No, this promotion wasn't for Miller Lite, Jägermeister, Jose Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, or some new trendy, super-premium vodka; it was for Hpnotiq (pronounced "hip-not-ic"), the distinctive blue liqueur which blends vodka, cognac, and fruit juices, and is bottled in the Cognac region of France. It was a successful promotion, at least for me: before I knew it, I had two nice pens that light up (blue, of course), two lighted lapel buttons (also blue), four free shots (valued at $7 each), and two T-shirts. Not a bad haul.

I knew Hpnotiq had been around for some time, but I decided to investigate further. Hpnotiq was the brainchild of Raphael Yakoby, a 26-year-old college dropout from Long Island, New York, who created the spirit in 2001 after seeing a blue perfume bottle at Bloomingdale's. Within one year of its introduction, it became popular in New York's trendsetting nightclub scene. Originally distributed by Great Neck, New York-based Wingard, Inc., Yakoby sold the Hpnotiq trademark and the distribution rights to Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc. in January of 2003 for a reported $50 million. Heaven Hill also distributes dozens of other alcohol brands, most notably the Christian Brothers line of brandy, cognac, and related products. For the record, Yakoby is still in the liquor business. In 2007, he created NUVO, a pink vodka and sparkling wine liqueur packaged in an elegant, tapered square bottle that looks more appropriate for a high-end perfume than booze.

Obviously, alcohol distributors spend millions of dollars annually on guerrilla marketing and sales promotion programs just like Hpnotiq's to drive sales and brand awareness of specific products. But do they actually generate the desired results? In some cases, absolutely, but much of it has to do with consumer behavior, alcohol consumption patterns, and venue and audience dynamics. Consider the following:

• Cordials and liqueurs do not typically exhibit the same consumption characteristics as beer, wine, and select staple spirits, such as vodka, gin, and rum. Cordials and liqueurs are viewed as more appropriate for special occasions, or for sipping a single glass after dinner -- not consumed in multiple servings or mass quantities. In addition, these spirits are just not as popular as they once were years ago, although one can argue that Hpnotiq's initial success defied this convention.
• Not all bars are created equally, and as with any marketing activity, venues must be carefully selected to match the audience of the alcohol brand. In the case of last night's promotion, the venue and audience were all wrong for Hpnotiq, which claims to "make every girls' night out a little more fabulous," and is obviously targeted at women 21-35. Need evidence? Take a look at the brand's official Website and Facebook page, as well as the image above. Outside of my gathering, the steakhouse patrons skew toward senior citizen age (55+) because of its proximity to the retirement community, and therefore, lie well outside of Hpnotiq's core demographic. Definitely not a good fit.
• There must be an incentive to purchase the product in the future, such as a coupon, or a call to action to register consumers online so they may be targeted in the future. Hpnotiq had none of this.
• Most bar promotions for alcohol brands are all about fun, free/cheap booze, free branded stuff, and interacting with hot babes -- not really about "selling" the product. They're great for sampling and trial. Product information is limited. Most of the women I've talked to who've been hired for these gigs know very little about the products themselves; they simply regurgitate whatever they've been told by the promotions company retained by the distributor, and that's very little. Next time you see a Jägerette, ask her about the product; I bet good money she doesn't know much about it other than what it tastes like.
• Historically, alcohol promotions in bars and nightclubs have proven to be EXCELLENT tactics for increasing brand awareness, but additional marketing is required to convert that awareness into sales. Just the way it is.

When it comes to alcohol sales promotions, it's apparent that the same rules and dynamics that apply to CPG product sampling are not in play here, and as a result, they require additional strategies and tactics to generate sales increases. There's no question that Hpnotiq is a unique, highly-differentiated offering with excellent branding and strong marketing assets. But last night's program was at the wrong venue and with the wrong audience: a recipe for disaster.

And when that occurs, no amount of branding or money can save you. As Hpnotiq says in its tagline, it must "Live Louder," and engage in more appropriate target marketing, if it wants to succeed in the long term.

E-Mail and Social Media: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Editor's Note: The following is a useful and highly-educational blog post, which details how to effectively integrate of e-mail and social media communications, written by the outstanding editorial staff at MarketingVOX, an online publication which keeps marketers and media professionals abreast of industry news, trends, and culture.
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When Ben & Jerry’s announced this summer that it would exclusively market its products via social media – discontinuing its e-mail marketing initiatives – eyebrows were raised. While there has been much debate over the advantages of e-mail versus social media, few advocate entirely ditching one for the other. In fact, the best practice gaining traction is to integrate the best of these channels. Unfortunately few firms have done so, leading to siloed e-mail and social media marketing operations.

The benefits of this approach, though, are clear. A study by Emarketer, for example, called "Maximizing the E-Mail/Social Media Connection," found that joining the two approaches provide new avenues for sharing and engaging customers and prospects. "The two channels can help each other, offering the opportunity for marketers to create deeper connections."

12 Tips
To nudge firms along this path, CoTweet and ExactTarget, in their latest report, The Collaborative Future, offer 12 tips to integrate these channels.

1. Promote Facebook games, applications, and competitions in e-mail and on Twitter.
2. Feature winners of Facebook competitions in your e-mail newsletter.
3. Tweet about exclusive content that’s only available to e-mail subscribers.
4. Promote exclusive deals on Facebook and Twitter, but make it only available to e-mail subscribers.
5. Post links to Web versions of your best e-mails on Facebook and Twitter.
6. Include Like and Follow buttons in e-mail newsletters and promotions.
7. Include links to your Twitter and Facebook pages in e-mail newsletters.
8. Collect e-mail addresses at the point of conversion for consumers who link to your site from Facebook and Twitter.
9. Create an e-mail segment containing Twitter followers, and provide them with additional “insider information” through e-mail.
10. Include questions posted on Twitter and Facebook in your e-mails, and then answer them.
11. Encourage e-mail subscribers to post questions on Facebook and/or Twitter.
12. Host videos on your Facebook page. Include links in your e-mails and post links on Twitter.

© 2003-2010 Watershed Publishing. Reprinted courtesy of MarketingVOX, a Watershed Publishing property. All rights reserved.

Social Media: The Movie

Not be confused with Track Down, Code Rush, Babbage, Steal This Film, Pirates Of Silicon Valley, or even Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, but Social Media: The Movie, the latest fact-based docudrama about the high technology sector, is coming very soon to a cineplex near you.

Haven't heard of it? That's O.K., because that's not the real title.

I'm actually talking about The Social Network, a major theatrical film scheduled for release just two months from today on October 1, 2010, and directed by critically-acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher. Written by master screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Malice, Charlies Wilson's War, and NBC's "The West Wing"), and adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 New York Times best-selling book The Accidental Billionaires, The Social Network is a dramatization of the founding of the global social networking phenomenon Facebook. The film's tag line? Check out the official movie poster below:

The dramedy, distributed by Columbia Pictures, features an ensemble cast, including Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Malese Jow, and Joseph Mazzello. Although no one from Facebook's senior management team, including co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were involved with the project, one co-founder, Eduardo Saverin (played by Garfield in the film), was a consultant for Mezrich's book. In the film, Eisenberg, who most recently starred opposite Woody Harrelson in last year's Zombieland, portrays Zuckerberg.

Not enough star power for you? Two-time Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey is the film's executive producer, and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, along with partner Atticus Ross, is providing the musical score. And let's not forget Fincher's own impressive directorial resume, which includes Se7en (1995), The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002), and Zodiac (2007). In addition, he received an Academy Award nomination for best director for his 2008 film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Academy Award-Nominated Director David Fincher

As you would expect, much of the advance hype, and the overall theatrical marketing strategy for the film, have been driven by a plethora of social media and online marketing tactics. The centerpiece of these efforts is a recently-launched Facebook-themed and highly sophisiticated Website, TheSocialNetwork-Movie.com, which opens into a large-form portal with photos, videos and cast information arranged into Facebook-like collage. Naturally, the site maintains the same theme used in the teasers, trailers and TV spots for the film, with words such as “Punk,” “Traitor” and “Genius” displayed either on their own or overlayed over other photographs. Like most online destinations for new films, the site also contains access to cast information, an official synopsis, cast publicity stills, and news stories about the film.

What's interesting about all this, besides the obvious, is how QUICKLY the book has been turned into a completed feature film with major Hollywood talent behind it. If you know Hollywood like I do, it often takes years, sometimes decades, for all the stars to align on a given concept. And the bigger the acting and production names involved, usually the more time it takes, mostly because of existing contracts, previous commitments from the players, and of course, financial support, which is in limited supply these days in The Entertainment Capital of the World.

But the need to move quickly is certainly understandable: worldwide user participation and advertiser and investor interest in Facebook have never been higher, particularly as the company moves toward its highly-anticipated IPO in the next 18 months. As a result, there's no doubt that Columbia Pictures, part of Sony Pictures Studios, wished to leverage all of this interest and activity by purchasing the rights to the book and releasing the film just over one year after the book's release.

And without further adieu, here is the official trailer for the film:

Five Steps To Dealing With The Relentless Pace Of Marketing

Editor's Note: The following is an insightful, well-written essay authored and posted earlier this week by Todd Defren, principal of SHIFT Communications, and one of the world's most highly-respected public relations (PR) bloggers and social media experts. Defren's writings can be found on his blog, PR Squared, which is also required reading on The CMAC blogroll below. I enjoyed and agreed with this commentary so much that I am reprinting it here for all of you, my esteemed readers.
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The advent of social media has not only made the marketer’s role more strategic and complicated, it’s also made it much more BUSY. Our client was waxing nostalgic for the days when “getting ink” was the big mark of success.

Now it’s:

1. Get ink.
2. Track and engage influencers ranging from Scoble to a momblogger to a Facebook group admin.
3. Escalate customer service issues found online before they become a mess on Twitter or Google.
4. Develop fresh, compelling content, every single week (or every single day!) for the social media outposts including the corporate blog, the YouTube Channel, the Facebook Page, the Twitter stream, LinkedIn Answers, Slideshare, etc.
5. Keep tabs on competitive content.

“There are days when I just want to chuck it all,” the marketer said. “The job has become relentless, the requirements for content are voracious. Every day you see someone ELSE post something brilliant and buzzworthy — and you’re jealous and afraid — but then that bit of content is buried under something ELSE even better … So you realize that even the brightest bit of content you create has, at best, a 2–week shelf life, and by then you’d better be thinking about your Next Big Thing …”

Sound familiar? (Tired, yet?)

The cruelest part of this story is that this client contact wasn’t even 30–years-old yet! Despite their youth they were already exhausted.

This is a dilemma for every marketer, every PR agency, everyone. We recently lost a great employee because she had “crisped” from the pace. It’s understandable. I haven’t blogged in almost 2 weeks (due to a brief vacation and a busy schedule), and I’ve literally been in a near-panic about it, as I watch my friends like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, David Armano, Valeria Maltoni, Jason Falls, etc. blog their booties off, with great content all along the way.

What to do?

When faced with overwhelming to-do’s, I find it best to break things down into the smallest parts possible. This doesn’t necessarily make the job easier in the end, but it does help to re-focus the mind on what’s important.

First: decide on your goals. Is your goal to be the coolest & most popular? Is your goal to be known as a thought leader in your industry? Is your goal to boost SEO for search terms related to your space? If you don’t figure this out, you’ll drive yourself nuts because lacking a plan, your ego will take over and drive you mad.

Second: ask for help. The voracious Interwebs should not be faced alone, not forever. For my part, I have initiated a series of casual conversations with friends and colleagues to enlist their aid in planning (and developing) “what’s next,” both for this blog and for SHIFT’s other digital embassies.

Third: set a reasonable pace. There will always be someone smarter, more prolific, and more popular than you or your company. Don’t fall prey to the need to compete on the speed of content creation; instead, set a pace that you know won’t drive you bonkers.

Fourth: “under-promise and over-deliver.” For example, promise youself you’ll write “One good blog post per week” (sounds reasonable), and if you write a second or (gasp!) a third post — you’ve over-exceeded a reasonable goal by 300 percent! Granted, this is related to “pace” but it extends to other areas such as measurement (see below), commenting on external blogs, developing a new series of Facebook quizzes, etc.

Fifth: measure. You’ll probably have to do this for your boss, anyway, but even if you don’t, set some reasonable metrics that you’re sure you can readily and easily track. There are tons of tools, both free (Google Analytics, Facebook Insights) and not-so-free (Sysomos, Radian6) that can give you a grasp on how you’re doing. Write those goals down and track your progress.

I hope this helped you. (It helped me!) Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. A marathon takes training, endurance, and sticktoitiveness. Mostly sticktoitiveness.

I Ain't Sayin' He's A Golddigger...But Kanye Finally Joins Twitter

The Twitterverse pratically came to a grinding halt yesterday when rapper Kanye West finally signed up for an account on the service, and began tweeting the same self-aggrandizing, self-promotional nonsense that has made him one of the most notorious and disliked performers in Hip Hop Land. Check out his first tweet here:

The irony? Just last year, Kanye went OFF in a now infamous online rant which disparages the micro-blogging service, and emphatically states he has no use for it. In case you missed it, here is a snapshot of that blog post which skewers Twitter, and profanely criticizes the number of fake accounts (at least at the time, and many of which have been suspended) purporting to be Kanye:

Apocalypse Now: Internet To Run Out Of IP Addresses In Less Than A Year

Is this for real? Apparently it is.

As reported in this apocalyptic piece by Richard MacManus on ReadWriteWeb.com, the Internet will run out of distinct Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in less than one year. The pressing concerns were first disclosed by John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), and then echoed by Vint Cerf, Google's chief internet evangelist, and regarded as one of the Internet's original architects.

The reason? Check this out:

There's an explosion of data about to happen to the Web - thanks largely to sensor data, smart grids, RFID and other Internet of Things data. Other reasons include the increase in mobile devices connecting to the Internet and the annual growth in user-generated content on the Web.

The solution is to move to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next generation Internet Protocol standard which uses a 128-bit address. IPv6 supports a vastly larger number of unique addresses, enough to give every person on the planet over 4 billion addresses.

ARIN, the non-profit responsible for managing the distribution of Internet addresses in the North American region, explained that of the approximately 4 billion IPv4 addresses available, all but 6% have already been allocated. Curran expects the final 6% to be allocated over the coming year.

So what does this mean for all us? If you haven't grabbed your piece of online real estate, you better do it now, particularly since it is in unclear when the move to IPv6 will be made. This is especially critical for companies which engage in different online marketing activities, ranging from simple Web site development to mobile marketing.