To celebrate our newest Designer Website, Coriander, we've designed a FREE bundle for your internet marketing campaign! We've included files for your Facebook profile, a background for Twitter, and a header for your blog.
All templates are layered Photoshop files. While sample data is included, you'll need to insert your logo and images. A basic knowledge of Photoshop and working with layers is recommended. Although Marathon cannot provide support for modifying these files, each PSD file should give you a great start!
The background from this bundle is now available to use with any of our 2009-2010 Designer Websites! To see how it looks on a real site, we've put together this sample with our "Coriander" design:
Instructions:
Within the downloaded ZIP file, you will find files marked for use on Facebook, Twitter, and Blog. Please open the PSD file that matches the social networking site you are working with.
Select the layer of the image placeholder you wish to drop your first photo in to. Open the new photo you want to use to replace it, then drag or paste your photo directly over the image placeholder. Right click your photo and select "Create Clipping Mask". From here you can resize, rotate or drag your photo into it's desired position using the move tool. Continue repeating this process until all image placeholders are filled.
Hide the logo layer and drop in your own logo. Feel free to add any additional design elements you want such as your tagline, address and/or phone number. Once you achieved your desired look, save as a .jpg file and upload to either Facebook or Twitter.
For help with Twitter, log in and go to "Design." Which is found under Settings.
If you need help updating your Facebook picture, try reading the documentation in the Facebook Help Center.
If you have a question about the Designer Websites these templates are based on, please visit our website or contact a websites and services representative by calling 800/228.0629.
unable to open the zip file. have tried on 2 different computers. no success. I open zip files all the time for some reason yours doesn't work.
Thanks for any help.
Vicki
Marathon Websites & Services
commented on
June 14th, 2010
That's odd. I can't find anything wrong with the file and I've tested on several computers here. We'll email you the file directly and if you still have issues, please let us know!
We’re thrilled to announce the arrival of
Social Sharing for your email campaigns.
Our latest feature makes it easy for your audience members to share your emails with their friends and followers on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It's an excellent opportunity to be exposed to a larger group and possibly new prospects.
Here’s how it works:
You click the Add Social Sharing Options button as you’re creating your campaign and select which social network icons you want to appear on your emails.
After they receive your email, your recipients click an icon (or more than one) and share a link to your email with their friends and followers.
You may then review your results on your Response page and view which audience members are sharing your email (by clicking on the Shares tab), and which networks are generating the most traffic to your campaign.
Adding social media icons to your email campaigns takes just a few seconds, but it can increase your reach and help you identify your most avid followers. Who knew all of that could be as simple as pushing a couple of buttons?
If you’re new to this whole social networking thing — or if you know your way around Twitter and Facebook but just aren’t sure whether you want to try the Social Sharing feature — take a look at these reasons we think it’s worth doing. (And, of course, this new feature is free with your Email Marketing account.)
To harness the reach of social media. A single share can be really powerful because of the number of followers that one email recipient can reach. How powerful could this be, you ask? Well, Facebook claims that the average user has 130 friends, so every 1,000 email subscribers represents a potential audience of 130,000 people! (Actually it’s exponentially more than that because shared content can be shared further once it’s in the network.)
To share the idea of, well, sharing. You may have readers who are already active on social networks and just haven’t considered how their followers and friends could benefit from your content. It’s a simple idea, but adding the icons to your emails helps connect those dots for your audience members who just haven’t thought to share your campaigns with their contacts.
To grow your email list. This may seem obvious, but when your content is shared on social networks, it’s typically being shared with a group of people who share common interests, so it’s already likely relevant. With that in mind, we’ve made it easy for them to sign up from the landing page if they’re interested in getting future emails from you. So not only might your email get shared … but you might also gain new subscribers.
To pave a road that’s already being traveled. Even if you haven’t seen it, your recipients might already be sharing your content. The new Social Sharing icons simply give them a shortcut to doing it easily.
To pinpoint your most loyal fans. Having your audience share your content is quite an honor, of course, so you may want to provide something special for folks who regularly share or help you spread an important message. With the enhanced reporting feature for Social Sharing, we’ve made creating that list of loyal fans simple for you.
Need Help Driving Business to Your Studio This Summer?
It takes more than wishful thinking to fill up summertime sessions; it takes consistent and compelling marketing — something that doesn’t happen without a plan. The marketing pros at Marathon know that it’s difficult for studio owners to break away from their busy schedules to take care of important marketing chores, so here’s some great news:
Your Summer Marketing Campaign: Marathon has done the work for you!
Marathon has taken the hard work out of creating a comprehensive campaign that covers EVERYTHING you need to complete a summer-long marketing campaign for one or more promotions.
It’s literally as easy as 1-2-3:
1. Pick your primary marketing product. Choose three 6" x 9" marketing cards and/or select a new three-panel foldout card created especially for this promotional campaign.
2. Select your promotion. Marathon has made this easy by providing you with four appealing summer promotions to choose from, along with all the necessary marketing-support materials.
3. Use the support materials. What makes this marketing campaign a complete solution for your summer marketing needs are the additional marketing support resources that you receive at no charge. These include: professionally written back copy, a webpage using the same graphics that match your marketing pieces, a coordinating blog header and e-newsletter header — with content provided for both — as well as social media posts and coordinating graphics to complete your marketing effort with continuity and style.
The most exciting aspect of this value-packed summer campaign is that it is easy and affordable, so you'll have no excuses for procrastinating: Marathon has done what it takes to make things happen in your studio this summer!
3-panel Promotional Foldout $397 you design | $697 we design
Announce one or more summer promotions. Mail to clients and prospects, hand out to marketing partners or use at displays.
(16½" x 4¼" flat / 5½"x 4¼" folded)
1000 3-panel foldouts (1 design)
additional quantities available
3 different coordinating
6x9 Marketing Cards $775 you design | $1075 we design
You choose: Mail once for each of 3 different promotions OR 3 times for a single promotion.
Use as a series of three mailings alone or following the 3-panel Foldout.
3000 cards (1000 each design)
additional quantities available
Combo price for both
marketing products
$1052 you design | $1397 we design
Family and children’s
promotions:
Children’s Theme Photography
(your favorite set design)
Dog Days of Summer
(pet portrait promotion)
Best Friends
(kids with their pets, friends, favorite toys or pastimes)
Help Us Make A Masterpiece
(charitable marketing promotion)
Animoto for Photography is loaded with features designed to support the unique needs of businesses. In addition to Animoto's regular features, you can remove Animoto branding, create unlimited dvd-quality videos, add a custom call to action button at the end of videos and access over 500 free-to-use songs.
Special Animoto Offer:
Signup for an annual subscription and receive 2 additional free months or signup for 90 days and receive 1 month free.
Enter promo code MPannual for the $249 annual subscription or promo code MPtrial to redeem your 90-day Animoto Pro subscription for $99. If you are not completely satisfied with Animoto Pro, there is a 10-day risk-free money back guarantee.
Already using Animoto Pro? You can still redeem the promotional code to add additional time to your existing Animoto Pro account.
Give your studio a competitive advantage
Give prospective clients another reason to choose your studio over the competition by offering gorgeous video that your clients can easily share with their friends and family.
Sell DVDs to your clients
With unlimited downloads, you can easily produce DVDs that play in beautiful widescreen format on your clients' TVs. Animoto is so fast and easy to use that you can create videos for every single shoot. And, by sharing web-friendly videos with your clients via email, you can give them a tantilizing preview of the DVD they can order.
Create a new revenue stream
Do you currently sell web-friendly videos that your clients can post to their social networking site, carry on their iPhone or email to their friends and family? Animoto automatically produces each video in a web-friendly format that can be resold to clients, or used as an incentive to encourage your clients to purchase your more expensive photo packages.
Help your clients share your photography
Provide your clients with vidoes they can easily email to friends and family, post to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, carry on their iPhone or iPod, upload to YouTube or post to their blog or website. Each video that your clients share is a terrific brand building tool for you, and a traffic generating vehicle that can drive potential clients straight to your site!
Kick off proof sessions with video
A powerful way to launch into a proof session, generating excitement before the proof session begins and get your clients ready to order lots of prints.
Enhance your blog Marathon's Blog allows you to easily embed your Animoto videos. Make your blog even more compelling with videos that reflect holiday, seasonal, or back-to-school specials, or simply to show-off especially fantastic sessions to prospective clients.
Create marketing videos to increase business
Email Animoto videos to existing clients to remind them to schedule a holiday photo shoot, portrait sitting, pet shoot, etc.
Video of the month
Post a video of the week/month/season to your blog or website and inspire prospective clients to schedule appointments and current clients to schedule more photography sessions.
Create promotional videos for your booth
Make sure you've got the most compelling booth at your next event, bridal show or mall display by showcasing your photography as show-stopping video.
Upload promotional videos to YouTube
Increase your visibility with traffic generating "commercials" on YouTube.
Enter promo code MPannual for the $249 annual subscription or promo code MPtrial to redeem your 90-day Animoto Pro subscription for $99.
The purpose of a Unique Selling Proposition is to sum up why consumers should purchase from you rather than others. Written in sentence form, it should be brief, succinct, and compelling enough to persuade consumers to give you a try. Much of the content of your USP is likely to be derived from your Mission Statement and Sustainable Competitive Advantage; but this statement must contain strong marketing content. In today’s competitive environment, your business will thrive only if your marketing succeeds in cutting through the clutter and noise that bombards consumers daily, so that you can position your studio as the best choice . . . the only choice. This is where your USP comes in. Compelling ads put forward a simple proposition to the consumer that says: “Buy this product and you will receive these specific benefits.” Your marketing will be more effective if you develop a clearly articulated USP for each product line you promote—one that sums up the benefits that consumers can get from you. This summation should be set within a context that stresses:
Uniqueness: When your benefits are not easily obtained from other providers in your market, then your USP will position you as the most logical choice.
Selling: Your benefits should be stated in a way that persuades consumers that your products and services are highly desirable.
Proposition: Remember that your USP is a proposal for clients to use your services.
The following steps will help you to create a compelling USP:
Step 1
List every possible advantage the consumer can receive from your overall business or individual product line.
Step 2
Narrow down this list by applying the following questions to each benefit:
Will my prospects perceive this benefit as a true advantage?
Is this benefit strongly differentiated from what my competitors are offering?
Have I adequately described the benefit in terms of its value?
Does this benefit solve a problem for the consumer or fill a “performance gap” in the market?
Will my prospects believe in the validity of this benefit?
Will my description of this benefit create a desire on the part of my prospects to actually purchase from me?
Step 3
Narrow your list again to the three strongest benefits of owning your products—especially those that from the consumer’s point of view will solve a problem, fill a need, or represent emotional or financial value. Each benefit should be stated in terms compelling enough that it could be used as an advertising headline. Remember to look at these benefits from the consumer’s point of view so they perceive your products as “must-have” items—especially as compared to what is sold by your competitor! If you have trouble determining what consumers value or what makes them buy from you instead of a competitor, turn to your best source of information: your clients! They will provide you with priceless information if you just ask.
Step 4
When possible, create a sense of urgency in your USP and relieve the natural skepticism of consumers by offering proof of satisfaction or offering a satisfaction guarantee as part of your statement.
Step 5
Write your USP as a short paragraph that includes your three strongest benefits and any other brief, compelling statements that might persuade prospects to give your business a try. Ruthlessly edit out any jargon or generalities. Use unambiguous, crisp nouns and adjectives and expressive verbs to create statements that will hold meaning for the prospective clients you are targeting.
Step 6
Condense your USP into a single compelling sentence. This will be hard to do, but the exercise is likely to help you determine what words and thoughts are most useful in creating a tag line or slogan for your product line or studio identity.
Step 7
Make sure you can deliver on any promises made in your USP!
Step 8
Integrate your USP into all levels of your marketing . . . from printed materials and Internet text to conversations with clients and promotional campaigns.
Step 9
Review the list of benefits identified in steps 2 and 3, as these might be useful as the basis for future marketing campaigns.
Following is an example of a Unique Selling Proposition for Persnickety Pet Portraits:
Unique Selling Proposition
Through our unmistakable expertise in photography, our comprehensive knowledge
of pet behavior, and our proven ability to earn the respect of our clients, it is our
pleasure to honor the compelling bond between pets and the people who love them
by creating personalized decorative artworks designed to touch the heart and warm
the home.
Distinctive Scrollable Homepage Image Viewer with Multiple Music Track Support.
Scrollable Gallery Pages.
Customizable Background image and website colors.
HTML Package Website is $495 and comes with 6 Gallery pages, 2 Information pages, and More!
Designer Websites
Designer Websites are the perfect solution for photographers whose goal is to create an impressive web presence with only a small investment of time and money. Designer Websites feature a variety of Flash and HTML designs created with the professional photographer in mind. Simply choose your favorite template, then provide Marathon with your images and text, and your website will be up and running in about two weeks! All development is managed by Marathon’s team of professional web designers, so you can be assured of a great-looking, well-functioning, attention-getting website. Learn more about Marathon's Designer Websites or Contact a Marathon Websites & Services Representative today at 800/228.0629.
It’s not surprising that today’s consumers are skeptical: Every day they are bombarded with sales pitches and relentless marketing hype. That’s the underlying reason why client testimonials can be so valuable as a marketing tool. Testimonials are often referred to as the 800-pound gorilla of promotional copywriting because they pack so much promotional wallop. So it pays to recognize that if you have a great product and enjoy a good reputation, you have an almost inexhaustible source of great copy—practically free—written by your own clients. Enthusiastic clients will come up with selling phrases that are straight from the heart that no copywriter, no matter how brilliant, would ever write for you.
What testimonials can do for your business:
Testimonials combat consumer skepticism. Consumers expect businesses to tout their own products and services; however, today’s jaded consumers are likely to receive your marketing messages with a dose of disbelief. Testimonials help to break down barriers of fear and distrust and replace them with confidence by infusing your marketing messages with believability, credibility and a sense of security.
Testimonials help to stretch your marketing budget. Any techniques that you use to make your marketing more effective will help to make your marketing budget go farther. Testimonials tend to be more memorable than straight advertising copy when they embody emotion that is unique to the individual. This form of marketing helps to create community buzz, which also helps to stretch your marketing dollar.
Testimonials facilitate sales. Learning about the satisfaction of the clients who have already purchased from you helps to remove sales barriers between you and clients who are about to purchase from you.
Testimonials facilitate customer loyalty. The simple act of putting into words the positive attributes of your products or services helps clients to remember your business favorably over time and to increase the likelihood that they will refer your business to others.
How to use testimonials:
Testimonials are appropriate for both printed marketing materials and Internet marketing. Furthermore, the explosion in popularity of social media allows testimonials to “go viral” when you include them on your blog and on networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Easy ways to collect client testimonials:
Just ask! When clients say nice things about your business, thank them sincerely then ask if they would be willing to let you use their words in your marketing. If they agree, tell them you will draft their testimonial in an e-mail and send it to them for approval. Many photographers say that they find it hard to come up with the right words to use when asking for testimonials, so try saying this: What a wonderful thing to say! I wonder if you would consider letting me use what you just said in an ad that I am preparing? I know I could never write anything as good as your beautiful words!
Create a customer satisfaction survey. Create a fold-over note card with a few short questions concerning your clients’ experience with you. When the client comes to pick up the finished work, tell her the following: Mary, I want you to know that we are always looking for ways to improve the quality of our product and service, so I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to complete this brief survey and drop it in the mail.
Present the card with a stamped envelope addressed to your studio. Make the questions easy to answer by use of check boxes, asking clients to rate key questions on issues that are important to consumers such as these:
Was your initial contact with the studio satisfactory?
Was the studio’s assistance in helping you to prepare for this sitting helpful?
Was the image-selection process efficient?
Did the photography meet your expectations?
Were you pleased with the presentation and delivery of your photographs?
Was everyone at the studio pleasant and courteous when helping you?
Be sure to add a space for comments on your satisfaction survey card to encourage testimonials. Not every client will make comments, however, this is an easy way to collect testimonials over time, and in the process you will get important client feedback. Remember to ask permission before using any client comments as a testimonial.
Make testimonials fun! An easy way to get testimonials from high school seniors is to set up an old computer with a word processing program, and simply ask seniors to write what they liked best about their senior portrait session and the portraits they ordered.
Take clients to lunch. If you are about to create and important new marketing campaign or publication, ask a few key clients if they would be willing to help you come up with promotional ideas. Take them to lunch either in a group or individually. Ask them what they like best about your photography and service as well as any suggestions they might have for improvements. It will be easy to turn their positive comments into testimonials. Also use the opportunity to solicit suggestions for creating buzz about your business. If you are comfortable doing so, enlist their help in mailing or emailing information about special events or new offerings to friends who might be interested, assuring your clients that you will not exploit the privilege.
Use Internet Technologies. Comment-enabled blogs or electronic surveys make it easy for clients to provide you with testimonial feedback. Learn how Marathon can help you create client surveys by clicking here.
How to leverage the power of testimonials
Make your last client contact memorable. If you have a client whose testimonial might be particularly useful, consider delivering and personally installing the portraits. This extra bit of service will not go unnoticed, and the rapport your personal attention creates is likely to help facilitate that valuable testimonial.
Don’t hesitate to ask your most loyal customers for testimonials. Have the confidence to ask valued clients to provide testimonials. Remember that it is to their advantage to help your business to succeed, and most repeat clients will be flattered if you asked them to say a few words on your behalf.
Avoid vague testimonials. Stick with testimonials that deal with specific reasons why clients benefited from your business. Avoid vague testimonials such as “It was great doing business with you!” or “Love your portraits!” Readers need a concrete reason to care about what your clients have to say.
Use testimonials to prove that you keep your advertising promises. Your advertising copy will be more effective when your selling features are interspersed with testimonials that prove to readers that you can backup your claims with real customer experience. Just don’t overdo testimonials to the point that your ads appear to be contrived.
Carefully edit your testimonials. The most effective testimonials are brief, pithy and believable, composed of key words that capture a sense of the real emotion and excitement expressed by the individual. This means you will have to edit most testimonials that you receive, so be sure to ask clients for permission to use their words as you have edited them.
Determine how you will use identities. Anonymous testimonials are not as believable as those in which identities of the speakers are disclosed, but not everyone is comfortable when their full identities are used. A good compromise is to use first names followed by the towns or locales in which the speakers live.
Vary your testimonials. Don’t use the same testimonials over and over again as prospective clients will wonder if these are the only clients you have ever pleased.
Don’t overdue testimonials! Sometimes too much of a good thing can actually harm your advertising message. When testimonials take up too much space or are overused, they can lose some or all of their value. Use testimonials tastefully and artfully so that they are not perceived as being just another advertising gimmick.
Stay on top of your game. Don’t expect clients to rave about you if you are not delivering top-quality products and outstanding personal service on a day-to-day basis.
produces marketing solutions for professional photographers through promotional printing, Internet marketing, and educational resources. Marathon is prepared to help in building a business that allows you to follow your passion and create long-term professional success.
Vicki Tomatis commented on June 13th, 2010
unable to open the zip file. have tried on 2 different computers. no success. I open zip files all the time for some reason yours doesn't work. Thanks for any help. Vicki