Glossary

Advertising – A paid form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase their particular product or service over their competition. Advertising is a marketing tool that may be used in combinations with other marketing tools such a promotions and publicity. Mediums include print, broadcast or other electronic mediums such as the web.

Banner Advertising – A form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. Ads are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These ads are usually placed on web pages that have similar demographics as those of the advertiser’s customers to hopefully entice the reader to visit the web site.

Blog – Short for weblog. A blog is similar to a diary online. More and more companies are blogging to keep their customers informed on the latest developments or newest products and releases. Blogs are one of the new public relations mediums companies are using today. Search engines love them so they can be a great way to increase traffic to your web site.

Brand Identity – Your brand identity is not your logo or your product.  Your brand is a person’s gut feeling about your product, service or company. Brands are defined by individuals not companies or markets. It is not what you say about your company or product, it is what others feel about you.

Camera-Ready Artwork – Refers to final, completed artwork that is ready to go to the printer to be printed. The term pre-dates computers when the elements that make up the piece to be printed where glued to a board and then shoot by a camera to make a film negative from which a printing plate was made. Today that artwork is all electronic and usually saved as a PDF file and electronically delivered to the printer.  

E-Mail Marketing – Sending an e-Flyer (custom HTML electronic flyer) that will convey your message via email to your database of customers to inform them of new products or recent developments. HTML flyers are a cost effective email marketing tool. They can be customized with personal information from your database such as names and addresses. Bob Burch Design has the capabilities to design, manage and distribute custom e-Flyers to your customer database.

Flickr – A photo sharing website and online community platform. Flickr is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Bob Burch Design keeps an online portfolio at Filckr, screen name bobburchdesign.

Full Color Printing vs. 4-Color Printing (4c) – These are basically the same thing. To reproduce full color images printers use four process ink colors which they mix in different percentages to create all the various colors we see. CMYK is the initials of the four process colors. These initials stand for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. K is used for black to not confuse people into thinking blue.

Google AdSense – Matches ads to your site’s content, and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them. AdSense automatically delivers text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content—ads that are well-matched. With AdSense you earn more ad revenue with minimal effort—and no additional cost.

Graphic Design - The process and art of combining text and graphics together to effectively communicate a message. This can be done in the form of ads, logos, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, and any other type of visual communication. Today’s graphic designers often use desktop publishing software to achieve their goals.

Marketing – An integrated, communications-based process through which individuals discover the existing products and services that satisfy customers needs. There are  four elements in the marketing mix: Product, Pricing, Placement and Promotion. Bob Burch Design specializes in the fourth “P” which is Promotion. This includes such things as Advertising, Promotion, Publicity and Sales. These four elements are used to craft a marketing plan.

Pay Per Click Advertising – An advertising technique used on websites and search engines. Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market would type in a search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic search results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

PDF – Short for Portable Document Format. Developed by Adobe.

Public Relations (PR) – Traditionally PR uses the news or business press to carry positive stories to the public about your company or product. Because public relations exposure is in creditable third-party outlets, it offers legitimacy that advertising does not have. Like most things, PR is merging with technology and the use of the Internet through web sites with RSS feeds and Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines “organic” or the natural, non-paid search results. Because effective SEO changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design so it is important to use a experience designer and marketing company like Bob Burch Design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web design, menus and content that are easy for the search engines to crawl and index. Current search engines also use off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis when determining web site relevance. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. SEO techniques can be classified into two categories: white hat or black hat SEO. Black hat SEO attempts to improve ranking in ways that are disapproved of by search engines or involve deception. White hat SEO conforms to search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hat results tend to be temporary until the search engine discovers what they are doing and then reduced their ranking or eliminates their listing from their database.

Viral Marketing – Based on natural human behavior and refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increase in brand awareness. Much of the “Buzz” can be word-of-mouth. Viral promotions may take the form of funny video clips, games, e-mails, images, live stunts or even SMS text messages.

Web Design – More than just coding a web site, Web Design involves integrating your marketing plan and uses good SEO techniques.