Marketing by Design is a full-service creative and marketing agency that specializes in developing, maintaining and evolving small business marketing strategies. We strive to communicate the value of our client’s products or services. We recognize the importance of engaging new prospects while retaining existing customers… all within an affordable budget.
It’s What We Do…
Explore our many design, marketing and advertising services.
Website Design
In today’s digital world, a professionally designed website is the most effective way to be found, advertise, and communicate with customers and prospects. Your website may be the first interaction they have with your business. Make your first impression a great one.
Deep Dive
Process: Your new website will be taken from concept to completion. We’ll set up meetings, transfer files, provide design briefs, provide milestones for review and approval and finally publish your site so you can connect with customers, clients and prospects.
Domain and Hosting: Once you choose an available domain, it will be privately registered, a hosting server will be contracted and a security certificate applied to provide your customers and visitors a safe browsing environment. You’ll have a “Coming Soon” page to anchor your domain and a hidden development site to review progress.
Design: We work with our clients to learn about their expectations and preferences for site design. Often reviewing examples from competitor’s sites and others to determine style and content. From there we can offer several choices for a starting point and then revise and adjust to get the perfect result.
Production: We build exclusively with WordPress, the internet’s most widely used content platform. WordPress is modern, scalable, responsive and it being developed as an open-platform system which stays up-to-date with all the new web standards. MBD designs using a premiere building platform with themes that supply the power to create spectacular designs that are up-to-date and responsive so they are optimized for computers, smart phones and tablets.
MBD will work with your image files and stock photography to retouch, optimize and output for the best web appearance. We will work with your client copy drafts or even do the copywriting based on information you provide. Behind the scenes — forms, links and metatags for SEO best practices will be implemented.
File Ownership: All files used to create and populate your website are yours. This is important because it means that should you need any creative used within your website they can be transferred to you easily.
Site Management / Analytics
Congratulations! It’s no small feat to have a business website designed and up and running. But make no mistake — the web thrives on fresh, new content, mobile-optimized sites, fast load times, and easy navigation. Leave it up to us.
Deep Dive
Updates: Your website has many elements that provide functionality, a responsive appearance across all devices and compliance with ever-changing internet and browser standards. They need to be monitored and updated continually to ensure that your site looks great and works perfectly.
Security: A website that is neglected and not maintained regularly is susceptible to malware, brute-force attacks or hackers who can highjack a site, often without it being apparent at first. Your website requir updates and security patches that are provided by developers to stay ahead of these threats.
Back-Ups: Backing up your website is critical to your maintenance strategy. There is nothing worse than discovering your website is down, or worse, is gone! It is not common but it can happen. If something were to go wrong or you were hacked, you could lose everything! We provide regularly scheduled back-ups, and notifications to alert us of any issues, and your site can be restored quickly and safely.
Reports and Analytics: Monthly reports are generated to give you confirmation of backups, uptime monitoring, database optimization and updates performed. You’ll also be able to see comparative traffic analysis of current month compared to previous month to gauge your site’s performance.
Digital Marketing
Online marketing can provide a gateway to a new audience and to grow your customer base, all the while ensuring converting customers into sales and services. Now is the time to gain momentum and continue growing your business.
Deep Dive
SEO, SEP, SERP, CPM, CPC, CPA — online marketing can quickly devolve into a daunting alphabet soup of terms. The incredible convenience and accessibility of the internet for consumers is one of the biggest advantages of online marketing. Website design and development is a core part of this strategy. And, online marketing can provide a gateway to a new audience and to grow your customer base, all the while ensuring converting customers into sales and services.
SEO/SEP/SERP: Optimizing your website’s search ranking can seem daunting and it is highly technical. Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Promotion, and Search Engine Results Pages — simply put they all are used to get your website found and rank as high as possible against your competition. Many underlying best practices accomplish the former while targeted promotions and analytical evaluation will boost the latter. Search traffic is already interested in your products and services but to be found and ranked effectively is the goal. Every business should invest in search engine marketing. Optimizing your website’s content maximizes organic traffic from search engines.
Online Advertising: Competition for the best ranking on Search Engine Results Page (SERP) can be tough and every small business wants to be ranked as high up on that first Search Engine Results page. Google Adwords can accomplish that while your site is gaining traction organically. Additionally, is getting noticed on Facebook and Instagram with affordable and targeted ads. MBD can make sense of your campaigns and coordinate the best strategy to get you noticed online.
Email Marketing: Most consumers check their email every day and it’s the perfect opportunity to connect with them. It’s important to develop a strong email marketing strategy for your campaign. If your business is not using email marketing, you may be missing out on a powerful tool for generating revenue.
Social Media Engagement
If your small business isn’t on social media, you could be missing out on significant value, including new customers, insights into your brand, and audience and engagement opportunities with customers and competitors alike. Social media can be a highly cost-effective way of connecting with your customer base for retention.
Deep Dive
Social engagement is a substantial part of every marketing strategy, and the benefits of this cost-effective resource can be a phenomenal marketing opportunity. It should be a crucial element of your overall digital marketing strategy.
Business Pages: You can use Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to share everything from photos to important company updates. With a business account, you have access to powerful advertising tools and in-depth analytics. Business pages also have a lot of customization options. You can use Facebook to highlight information such as your contact information, hours of operation, and the products and services you offer.
Powerful Benefits: Billions of people across the world use social media every day, and it makes sense to put your business where the customers are. Roughly 60% of Instagram users said they find new products using the platform, making it well worth your while. It’s becoming more important than ever for businesses to have a distinct voice and engage with customers on a human level. Social media provides an easy avenue for this, allowing you to develop an identity and a voice to showcase your brand values and engage with followers. f your followers like your social media content, they become interested in you and go to your website to learn more about your business, which means higher website traffic and potentially more sales for you.
Publication Advertising
Traditional advertising is an excellent way to establish your brand. Print consistently offer readers high-quality, reliable content that offers unmatched credibility for advertisers. Print ads can help you reach your target audience, whether it be a niche market or the general public.
Deep Dive
Credibility: Print publications consistently offer readers high-quality and reliable content. Known as the “halo effect,” brands who place ads in respected print publications receive the same positive feelings from readers that are associated with the publication itself. This means your ads can be seen as completely trustworthy, which makes generating leads and sales much easier.
Awareness: The digital age has pretty much killed the human attention span. We’re simply not as receptive to all of the digital advertising happening around us. Print readers, on the other hand, don’t typically multitask when they read a magazine or newspaper, making them far more receptive to the ads within the publication.
Design: We will endeavor to work with our client to learn about their expectations and preferences for ad design. Often reviewing examples from competitor’s ad to determine style and content. From there we can offer several choices for a starting point and then revise and adjust to get the perfect result.
Target: Print ads allow you to target your audience. You can choose to run ads in specialty magazines, choose exactly which section, deliver to specific geographic and have your ads run on a specific day, month or edition.Choose and ad to fit your budget by offering quarter-page, half-page and full-page ads. And finally, advertising in print publications mean you’ll actually work with a human being when buying your ad space as opposed to relying on an online algorithm to decide where your ads should live.
Results: The Nielson Global Trust reported that 65% of print readers typically take some form of action. Successful ad campaigns reach targeted markets, effectively communicate a message, and drive action. By embracing the many advantages of print advertising and adding it to their marketing mix, advertisers can leverage the power of both print and digital to create the most awareness and revenue possible.
Print and Collateral Marketing
Print is still one of the most powerful communication tools in marketing. Paper, texture, color and layout all come together to help your brand stand above the rest. A strategic campaign of print advertising leverages your marketing communications while expanding your audience.
Deep Dive
Print and Collateral Marketing: Forbes magazine characterizes “print as primal.” Paper is ingrained in human experience, dating back to the earliest civilizations. Seeing a brochure or other printed piece on a screen doesn’t deliver the same tactile fulfillment as holding it in your hand. Print collateral builds and strengthens relationships and as “leave-behind” will extend your presence. A variety of marketing materials such as brochures, leaflets, flyers, door hangers, posters etc can help to accomplish that for your business and leverage your other marketing strategies.
Display and Outdoor Marketing: Whether you are just starting a small business or are an established company that has been around for years, there is no denying the fact that display advertising plays an important role by making a strong visual impact upon your prospective customers. From billboards to point-of-sale displays, they remain a valuable type of advertising that often leads to more sales. They are yet again another method to establish brand, elevate your perceived value relative to competition and to message a new audience or cement an existing audience.
Direct Mail and Postcards: Mail is tangible. The format is familiar. And can be personalized. Each direct mail campaign can be tailored for a specific audience, from long-time customers to new prospects sourced from easily purchased mailing lists. Recipients are presented with offers or information that meet their individual needs or buying habits. And perhaps the biggest advantage of direct-mail advertising is that it is highly targeted and measurable with of potential customers. And, it is typically run in conjunction with an online marketing campaign.
Promotional Merchandising: Personalize your brand with merchandise that your clients can display at their business or in their home. This is a proven and effective marketing method that will capture people’s attention and help draw in potential customers over time. Promotional products give a unique and creative flair to your business advertising campaigns. And because they are unique, promotional products help your company stand out from your competitors. For a modest investment, a small business can obtain the type of exposure normally reserved for large companies with significant advertising budgets.
Our Process
There are no shortcuts to success.
Meetings
Strategy
Design
Development
Testing
Deploy
It’s Our Work that Stands Out
See the projects that have earned our reputation with clients.
Project Spotlight
Projects always present challenges — whether it’s their deadlines, budget, media placement, or any number of design constraints. But that is precisely how superior solutions come to define our agency and its results for our clients.
We hope you take the time to review and appreciate some of the projects we’ve been tasked with over the years. It’s always a pleasure to establish a relationship with a client and realize their goals and expectations with well-designed solutions.
See our complete portfolio and learn more about MBD.
Great Clients… Great Relationships.
Our work represents the value it offers our clients
Meyer Gallery
Susan Meyer – Owner
“Robert Franssen is a consummate professional. Working with Marketing by Design helps my art gallery projects move forward smoothly and make them more successful. I don’t know what we would do without him!”
Indigo & Sage
Catherine Horrigan – Owner
Marketing by Design is my go-to for marketing and website design. They are extremely knowledgeable and highly creative. I am so grateful for the fabulous work done in creating the Indigo & Sage website for my new business – it brought my dream to life.
Gillian Arnold
Director
“Robert came to the rescue as I needed logo and business cards to promote myself as a director and actor’s coach for new work and clients in my new home — the United States.”
RAAM Corporation
Joseph Duerr – CEO
Danco Metals Inc.
Joshua Lohman – Vice President
Westside Bonds
Chris Bailey – Owner
SoundTonics Inc.
Dan Selene – Owner
Terzian Galleries
Candy Baron – Gallery Manager
“Robert was a joy to work with through an update of Terzian Galleries website. He was always available to answer questions and understood right away what our goals were. We will use him again in the future!”
Nye's Pies
Alex Nye – Proprietor
Robert, the creative director at Marketing by Design, is excellent at what he does! I started a small pie business, Nye’s Pies, and very quickly he had 3 logo samples for me to choose from as well as other marketing materials. I was off and running almost immediately since he knew exactly what I wanted and needed! Easy and friendly to work with, don’t hesitate to work with Marketing by Design on your next project.
Our Successful Collaborations
