The end result *could* have been an ad that completely portrayed innovative and advanced curriculums offered by this technology-based school. The copy, visuals, and music all working in harmony would bring about a much larger response, and would also reinforce brand this institution has worked so hard to create.

When you create advertising pieces for your company, look for branding aspects of each, individual element. As you work through process, ask yourself these questions:

·What identity am I attempting to portray? ·Do graphics reinforce that identity? ·Does music support my brand? ·Is copy descriptive of aspects related to brand? ·Do colors fall in line with how I want to be viewed? ·Is medium itself appropriate to my brand?

When final product (whether it be a piece for TV, radio, Web, or print) is completed, show it to several people who are unfamiliar with your organization. Ask them to describe “essence” of your business based on this one piece. If your combination is put together right, they’ll be able to do just that.

When you pay close attention to each element you’ll have a powerful end result. When everything works in concert, you will have a much more beneficial campaign that works to contribute to your branding efforts rather than destroy them.

KARON: Good point! What else can you tell us about your “magic formula?”

MARNIE: Well, both sites have *LOTS* of pages people can visit. As you know, more pages = more doors for visitors to enter = more listings in search engines = more traffic!

KARON: Keep going… I’m all ears.

MARNIE: The masthead I told you about earlier helps drive traffic from my heavy-hitter sites to my newer sites. Among other things, it features articles and tips from site contributors. Then, in my newsletters, I encourage people to go to site to read further. In other words, everything's not there in email, they have to go to site to get some of content. KARON: Well, you just have all kinds of tricks up your sleeve, don’t you? Anything else?

MARNIE: Yes, actually : ) IdeaMarketers is also a "newsworthy" site that is used as a resource for many people. It tends to get a lot of mentions in articles simply because of its nature. And because of quality of site, IdeaMarketers has been recommended in a lot of high-traffic ezines.

KARON: So combination of all these elements creates a Web site that people WANT to visit time and again, right? Marketing sites such as these is left more to visitors than to your efforts, huh?

MARNIE: In a way. The visitors most certainly are reason for my success. As I said before, search engines are not to be ignored, and I’m a firm believer in ezine advertising, but when you build a site designed around visitor interaction, traffic usually comes without a struggle.

KARON: Thanks so much, Marnie. This gives us some serious issues to think about.

MARNIE: My pleasure!

The two sites of Marnie’s we mentioned in this interview are her article promotion site http://www.ideamarketers.com, and her women’s spiritual growth site http://www.shelovesgod.com. Visit them today to see Marnie’s traffic pulling designs in action.