FAQs
- What should the customer know about your pricing (e.g., discounts, fees)?
It varies by department, and usually scope a blended rate.
- What is your typical process for working with a new customer?
It begins with Discovery. We ask simple questions. Ones only you know the answers to. These are the beginning workings of your Interactive Marketing Playbook that help us establish the strategy and objectives. Your dedicated account team will meet with you to first discuss, analyze, and assess your business objectives. We establish benchmarks through a set of questions in order to establish a guide moving forward. What defines your success? What are your core messages and differentiators? Can we identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as: Average ticket sale or average revenue per customer or user Gross profit per sale or unit Cost per click Customer acquisition cost Lifetime value of a customer Number of inbound calls What results are you looking for? What problem are you trying to solve? Planning is an essential part of your success, and we take the time upfront to discuss your goals and metrics so that we can establish clear deliverables and expectations. This information is then constructed into the Editorial Calendar that will serve as our guide for monthly communications via your website, social media, and email campaigns. Road to Development Like the traditional development of large scale projects, the process of web site development is divided into different life cycle steps. Your dedicated Signet team will begin to breakdown the strategy development, research, communications planning, education and training, and critical testing. This allows us to provide maximum focus of the team's resources effectively while the standards and procedures are then adopted to achieve maximum quality. Each phase of the process requires input from our client which results in output deliverables for the team. We begin with the creation of the Interactive Marketing Playbook and the Editorial Calendar to be used as a guide through this process. Those two documents are constantly evolving throughout our engagement with the Client to allow for changes in strategy, brand message, and business requirements. Analysis: We start with interviews with the Client to begin gathering documentation, business requirements, competitor information, glossary of key terms, and core messages that will later become part of the Interactive Marketing Plan. We identify target customers and impact or influential triggers that we can leverage in the content development and promotion stages. We conduct a competitive analysis that includes other companies, products, and services which, at later stages, will be input for the construction of a Gap Analysis of your messaging versus your competitors. We will identify your product, service, and brand differentiators in order for us to communicate effectively with the online market place and better understand the channels, and content for those channels, that would provide relevancy for your business. Marketing Requirements: In this step, we identify the vision of the Client and begin to capture the "wants" and "needs" into a concise document that will later be used by the development team. This is a collaborative process. We distinguish requirements such as color palette, form submissions, interactivity, user participation, navigation, social engagement, themes, log-ins, and visual direction. Upon completion, review, and approval of the Marketing Requirements Document, we have a written confirmation of the scope of the project including responsibilities, timelines, and deliverables. Design and Development: Once we have the marketing requirements, the work begins on authoring the Functional Requirements by the development team. Simply put, this is the process of determining how to make the marketing requirements a reality. Larger projects will require further levels of consultation to assess additional business and technical requirements. Throughout the design phase, we also develop test plans and procedures for quality assurance with the client. At the conclusion of this phase and depending on the scope of work, we have wire frames, templates, editorial calendars, content samples, database structures, and imagery developed for client review. In collaboration with the Client, we then develop the prototype which will be the stepping stone for final stage development. Content Writing: This phase encompasses all of the channels through which the client has chosen to communicate with the market, their prospects, and their customers. In the early stages, we identify the core messages and the "voice" of the business that we apply to each message we create on our clients' behalf - right down to the posts and tweets. We have a stringent QA (Quality Assurance) process which involves both client and internal review protocols. Coding and Testing: Using the Marketing and Functional Requirements Documents as the guide, our development and design teams begin to build what will become the final product. On projects that are applications or mobile sites, our developers know the interface and code should not disturb the look and feel of the site or application. At this stage, the database driven functionality is constructed, forms and responders created, page layouts finalized and navigation put into place. When necessary, the development team generates the necessary testing plans as well as technical documentation. After internal testing on the staging servers is complete, a live testing is necessary for web sites and web based applications which would include functionality and links testing. Go Live and Promotion: For a website, promotion requires the preparation of meta-tags, keyword analysis, and URL submission to the search engines and directories. This is an ongoing process to maximize the website's visibility. The Client may also use Pay-Per-Click or Display Advertising to promote the site and Client Services can provide guidance and cost for such a program. For social media campaigns, we will begin to promote the landing pages, promotions, or content through various online networks, our client's current customer/prospects email lists, and other means identified in the Interactive Marketing Playbook. Maintenance and Updates: Websites that are not updated at a minimum of once per month will lose organic rank in the search engines over time. The purpose of the Editorial Calendar and the Interactive Marketing Playbook is to strategically focus the monthly tactical communications across all online and offline channels so that your company is "saying it best, saying it often, and saying it consistently." Once your web site is operational, ongoing promotion, technical maintenance, content management and updates, site visit activity reports, staff training, and mentoring is conducted by your dedicated Client Services Representative - a real, live person who knows your business and knows you.
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
The team has a range of education. From successful independent design shops, to NYC design majors.