Adventures in Marketing
Follow along as we chronicle the journey to help one New England-based business make their marketing matter.
The Savoir Faire-y is Going to Make One Company’s Marketing Dreams Come True
I am proud to announce that Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications is celebrating five years of producing our Points of Interest marketing email by launching our most ambitious and audacious promotion yet: We’re giving one lucky New England-based company a year’s worth of free marketing, valued at $75,000. Read More.Getting the Word Out About Our Free Marketing Services
Jumping in the deep end on an audacious project is scary, no matter how invested or excited you are about it. Such was the case for me when we launched the contest to award one New England-based company a year of free marketing services.I rode out some generic “How dare you?” self-talk. The most terrifying of which was the classic inverse “Field of Dreams” scenario: “What if nobody enters?” So, I pulled a full-on Annie Potts in “Ghostbusters” when the first entry came in: “WE GOT ONE!” Read More.
5 New Hampshire Businesses Vie for $75,000 Prize
Five New Hampshire companies are one step closer to a winning huge prize – and they need your help. On September 5, Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications will award a year of free marketing services – valued at $75,000. The prize will be given to the company with the most votes – and voting begins today, Wednesday, August 15. Read More.Choose Your Winner for Free Marketing Services
When we dreamed up this contest offering free marketing services, we had no idea what kind of traction we’d get and what quality of entrants we’d see. The reality, however, far exceeded what we had imagined. When the team asked me how many entries I was hoping for, I shot for the stars and said 100, secretly hoping that we would get any.When that first entry came in, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought, “At least we have a winner.” When I received the next four, I exhaled again because we had enough to name the five finalists our process called for. Everything on top of that was gravy. And, man, did we get gravy! Read More.
HydroComp, Inc. of Durham, N.H. Makes Waves with $75,000 Prize
After all the votes were tallied, Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications is thrilled to announce HydroComp, Inc. of Durham, New Hampshire, is the winner of one year of free marketing services. The prize is valued at $75,000.This summer, Savoir Faire hosted a contest for New Hampshire for-profit businesses to win a year of marketing services. Representatives of companies submitted entries, which were narrowed to five finalists by Savoir Faire. Then, the public voting took place in August 2018, with HydroComp emerging as the winner. Read More.
Step One: The Discovery Process
It was all handshakes, smiles and warm feels when the Savoir Faire team recently visited Durham, NH, to meet our newest clients, HydroComp, Inc.Our first Discovery meeting is an extremely important part of breaking ground on a marketing project. Savoir Faire approaches complex marketing challenges, such as a reboot of a company’s marketing program, using a three-step process, which begins with Discovery. Read More.
A Successful Marketing Plan Means Keeping the Lines of Communication Open
We began working with our Make Your Marketing Matter contest winner, HydroComp, a few months ago. As part of the agreement we made with the company, all parties acknowledged that we could and should share the experience of a yearlong marketing campaign with a series of blog posts – including warts and all, as they say.When starting out on the journey of a new business relationship, tiny bumps in the road are expected as we get to know our clients — and they get to know us. In the previous post, I talked about the Discovery process, what we consider the essential building block for success. Read More.
How Information Architecture and Wireframes Help Build Marketing Foundation
The Discovery process of working with a new client typically lasts about three months. We are more than 2/3 there with HydroComp Inc., the Make Your Marketing Matter contest winner (the prize was a year of free marketing services from Savoir Faire).
The discovery process lays the foundation for our success in a marketing program by getting to know a client, auditing the client’s existing technology, competitors, and audience and building a plan to move forward. In Discovery, when we’re discussing the business with a client, we’re listening for how were going to assemble a new website. We’re taking what the client says and determining how we’ll organize content on the site so it is best suited to the audience. Read More.
Closing Out The Discovery Phase
As we entered the final stages of the Discovery process with HydroComp Inc., we ran into a couple of issues that slowed us down a little. There have been minor bumps along the way — which is to be anticipated when two companies that have never worked together before come together to collaborate deeply.
Much like moving in with someone after dating for just a short amount of time, there is some accelerated “Getting to know you” and “How do you operate?” kind of learning that takes place. Read More.
Building the Content Marketing Machine
Over the previous several months, we have discovered a lot about HydroComp, Inc., and they have learned quite a bit about how Savoir Faire operates. We’re all ready to take what we’ve learned to begin building a new website. After Discovery, the second step of our process is to Build the Machine.
Machines have engines and engines consume fuel, and we like to think of content as the fuel that keeps your engine running smoothly. Content strategy is an enormous, sprawling portion of the website redevelopment project. Read More.
Let It Go with Content Marketing the Savoir Faire Way
“Let it go” is not just an earworm Disney tune adored — and detested — by millions. It’s also advice for our marketing contest winner as we get further into the website development portion of our campaign without gaining much ground.
As we’ve said before, we anticipate hurdles when two companies come together to collaborate on a big project. One of the hurdles we’re facing in this segment of the project is that the tools we’ve provided to move forward have not always been utilized, despite the Savoir Faire team explaining their importance and demonstrating how to use them. Read More.
Advancing the content development process
We often tell clients, “You know more than you know.” What we mean is, by asking you the right questions, we can extract the information from your brain that you didn’t realize was rattling around in there.
It helps that two members of Savoir Faire’s team are old-school journalists with top-notch interviewing skills. Over the past nine or so months, we’ve chronicled the journey of our contest winner from our “win a year of marketing services” contest. Read More.
Content Authoring with Wireframes as a Guide
Over the course of 2019, we’ve shared the details of Savoir Faire’s “win a year of marketing services” contest with the winner, HydroComp Inc. While the project is running slower than we had hoped, we’re now to the content authoring stage of website development, which utilizes the wireframes we’ve written about in a previous post. Read More.Catch the Little Things with Website Quality Assurance
We’re very close to launching the site for our contest winner, where we arrive at the final step of website quality assurance (QA). Web QA is a big process, especially if you’re a small organization. This is the time to address all the little things on the site pages – from design to functionality. Read More.
Launching the Website and Performance Tuning
The launch of a new website for contest winner, HydroComp, concludes our Adventures in Marketing contest series of blog posts. The launch brought a few performance issues, which you can read about below. Read More.