Where in the world did Namaro go for $55 a month?

No, your GPS isn’t broken. Namaro’s still here. We’ve spent the last year exploring ways to use the internet to help our business grow and decided to go virtual. Technology is at the point where this is not only possible, but can actually help you make your professional & personal lives more efficient.

If you’re considering going virtual, here are a few things to consider for just about $55 a month.

How do you handle business calls with more than one office location?
We settled on Skype.com.We opened a business account for about $20 a month for international calls and set up phone numbers for each virtual office location ($30 a year per phone number). We purchased a Skype phone an option for Nadine (who’s on the phone all the time) to talk to clients when the computers are off.

So what do you get for this mere pittance?
- Free unlimited calls to other Skype numbers (skype-in)
- Unlimited international calls to non-Skypers (skype-out)
- Video calls or conferences
- Private and public chat
- Phone conference
- File and call transfers
- Voice-mail
- Call forwarding

It’s all a breeze. The sound quality is great. The savings are unbelievable. Give us a call at our new number 845 228 8858 (replaces 845-876-3009). Or, if your already on Skype, try us at namaroskype.

What if I need to send or receive a fax?
Set up an account with trustfax.com. We use the $29.95 a year package and you get 150 received pages and 50 Send pages. You can set up an account and receive a fax number in minutes. They notify you by email when a fax comes in, then you can download the file as you would any other email attachment. When you need to send a fax, log in to their site, enter the number, upload a file, and you’re done. Our new virtual fax number is 914 652-2470.

How do I share files with my colleagues?
Since we use Time Warner Cable for our internet access, we set up a dedicated IP address on one main computer for $10 a year. All job files are located on that main computer. He set us all up with Timbuktu software that allows us to access the main computer. It’s highly secure. No one else can access the computer without the precise IP address and password information.

How can we keep track of projects so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing?
There are several sites dedicated to online project tracking. We use BaseCamp.com. It costs about $20 a month. You can map out project milestones, assign tasks, create to do lists, send and store files, chat, create online presentations and post messages to all parties involved with the project. You get emails to keep you up-to-date on changes and check on the status of all ongoing projects anywhere you have an internet connection. And the best part about it is that your clients don’t have to pay for it.

Rules of the Road: Love Your Clients

In these hard times, you want to do everything possible to hold onto your best clients.

GIFTS Everybody loves to open presents whatever the occasion. You don’t have to break the bank either. Treat your top 3 clients to a Valentine’s Day gift of those candy hearts with the sayings on them. Send a packet of seeds to celebrate the first day of spring. Mail a birthday card.

DISCOUNTS Money talks. Offer a discount on your products or services. Remember to add an expiration date. We’re currently offering to print 250 business cards or 250 post cards for free when you hire us to design them.

SHARE NETWORK CONTACTS Chances are that business is slow for your clients, too. Offer to assist by sharing contacts in your network, or forwarding information about your clients’ businesses to the people in your network.

GUEST BLOG Blogging benefits everyone in subtle ways. Search engines rank your web site higher the more you broadcast yourself on the internet. Invite your best clients to write guest blog posts for your blog as a way of building higher SEO ranking.

Local Local newspapers: The Printed Blog

Blog driven publishing is born. The Printed Blog is the world's first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user generated content. The Printed Blog seeks to change the way people share and interact with news from the world around them. They hope to play a pivotal role in reversing the fortunes of the sinking newspaper industry with this new media project.

We like the possibilities to potentially create local, local, local newspapers that inform, promote and celebrate what happens in our physical community or business environments.

How to get your name out there: New Facebook Page

At Namaro, we have dedicated ourselves to learning and applying social media. There are many ways to get your business or non-profit, or graphic design studio :), out there for all to see cost effectively. As an example, check out our new page on Facebook. Comment or contact us if you want to see more samples of social media communications that are applicable to you.

GET SET? Get Free business cards from Namaro

Get ready to take on the marketing challenges of 2009 by redefining your company’s personality. Send a confident message to your customers that you are ready for business by refreshing your existing logo or designing a new one.

Our process for logo design begins with careful consideration of what your company does, how you’d like your company to be perceived by your customers and how to differentiate your company from the competition. Armed with this key information, we will create several sketch designs, review your feedback and refine one sketch into your beautiful new logo.

Hire us to design or update a logo and we’ll print 250 business cards for you for FREE! Call 845-876-3009 or email us (Subject line: Free cards) at nrobbins@namaro.com

READY? Get a free 1 hour marketing consultation from Namaro

Go ahead and take your business in a new direction. In the face of these challenging economic times, it’s hard to know how to create an effective marketing campaign. At Namaro, we can give you a new set of directions.

Benefit from our experience. Set up an appointment with us, bring an overview of your current marketing communications and a set of your most important questions and we will help you develop a new road map for your business.

Take advantage of our offer for a FREE 1-hour marketing consultation. Call 845-876-3009 or email us (Subject line: Free 1 hour) at nrobbins@namaro.com

GO FOR IT. Get Free printed postcards from Namaro

Get set to send your message out there in more ways than one. You cannot limit your marketing to the internet. Your customers will respond positively to an eye-catching postcard. It will lead them to your online presence and it will also give you something to hand out, other than a business card, when you are networking.

Hire us to design a postcard and we’ll print 250 standard (4-1/4” x 6”) postcards for you for FREE! Call 845-876-3009 or email us (Subject line: Free postcards) at nrobbins@namaro.com

Logos that didn't make it. Rate it. Buy it.

With over 20 awards for logo development under our belt, Namaro has established itself as the place to go to get a logo designed. It's one of our favorite projects to work on.

So what happens to the logos that didn't make it? The ones the client didn't pick. They sit on our server hoping one day to be brought back out into the world. Inspired by these orphans' plight, we developed this new section to show creative logos to the world. You can rate them, adopt them, or just comment on them.

If you do want to adopt one, they are available for a very reasonable fee and are adaptable to suit your business. Give us a call and give them a home ;)

Brand repositioning 101: Free outline

Recently I developed this outline to help someone better communicate how to go about repositioning a brand. I hope it's helpful to you and please pass it on. And hey, if you need a new brand, think of Namaro ;)

Simply, brand positioning creates a specific place in the market for your brand and product offerings. It reaches a certain type of consumer or customer and delivers benefits that meet the needs of key target groups. The brand positioning of a company seeks to further distance itself from competitors based on a host of items.

1—Determining the Current Status of the Brand:
• Understand the company and brand
• Explore key issues, opportunities, and challenges
• What differentiates your company and brand from the competition?
• What are the equity drivers of the company and brand?
• What are the historical ways to communicate the company and brand equity to consumers and customers alike?
• Who is the current target customer base?
• What is his/her profile?
• What are the reasons for being a customer?

2—What Does the Brand Stand for Today?
• Understand current consumer perceptions and needs of your brand.
• Determine how far to move your brand without alienating customers and loyalty base.
• Identify how to position your brand to attract new users and ultimately convert them into loyal customers.
• Direct-to-consumer interviews "Why do they select your brand?" and "What was the key decision-making element?"
• Identify needs, both unmet and met in industry, determine the delights and dissatisfiers of your brand.

3—Developing the Brand Position Platform: Where Can We Take It Tomorrow to Grow the Brand?
• How far to grow, expand, and stretch the brand?
• Who do we want our brand to be?
• What is its personality?
• How do we want consumers to think and feel about your brand?
• What benefits will it deliver to the consumer?
• How will we promote the brand?
• Carefully review brand to ensure that it maintains the core values and essence of your brand.
• The new brand positioning will be:

1. Ownable: Unique to the brand
2. Leverageable: Important and relevant to the target
3. Sustainable: To other categories in the future
4. Extendable: Partnership marketing and other marketing programs

• 2 components:

1. Strategic: Developing the brand vision: Today, tomorrow and for the future
2. Creative: Review consumer insights with the goal taking your brand where it should go

• Determine four to five key benefits and potential platforms that are agreed upon by the entire group.
• Go back to key consumers and customers with the purpose of checking back with them to validate the new brand positioning.

4—Refining The Brand Positioning and Management Presentation
• Review and refine the new brand positioning and communicate to all function departments in order to align efforts.
• Incorporate all feedback from consumers, customers, vendors and agencies, to ensure achievable positioning vs. aspirational positioning.
• Present new brand positioning to senior management.
• Endorse the new brand positioning.
• Create brand identity manual which provides a clear direction on the new brand positioning to anyone in the company.
• Bring the new brand positioning to life and apply to marketing, and communications.
• Ensure consistent communication of the brand equity across any medium and by any partner.

5 —Design and Deployment:
• Use four to five key benefits and brand position manual to develop concepts for logo creation.
• Engage senior management in concept development.
• Refine logo concepts to 3 choices and apply to sample marketing vehicles.
• Attain feedback from consumers.
• Present 3 logos and feedback to senior management.
• Refine logo concepts to 2 choices.
• Attain feedback from consumers.
• Present 2 logos and feedback to senior management.
• Refine one logo.
• Apply logo to sample marketing vehicles to present to senior management.
• Endorsement from senior management.
• Incorporate logo into brand identity manual.
• Create database of copywriting, photography, etc.
• Create templates for marketing vehicles.
• Layout, production and deployment of brand.

Graphic Traffic: Why a new blog name?

Graphic Traffic better represents what our blog is and what it will be. The new name conveys the concept of information coming together at an intersection and the reader can read (go) wherever they want to.

At this moment in time, business is at a crossroads and stuck in traffic. Graphic Traffic intends on “green lighting” or “red lighting” roads (new information), get you around the jam (solutions) and on to your destination (results).

The next issue of our blog will further develop the concept. If you have an opinion about this, feel free to comment below. We would love to hear from you.

FREE shameless self-promotion

Like everyone else in the country, we’re looking at each other and wondering how our company will weather the growing financial crisis. The best way to handle this, we decided, is to be proactive. So we’re out campaigning for work!

What can we do for you?

• Develop creative ways to get your customers active again.

• Design a brand that people will remember with a logo that will last.

• Cut through the hype of internet marketing.

• Reduce printing costs by using multi-channel strategies.

• Work as an off-site extension of your company.

• Set up an e-mail campaign newsletter template.

• Create a template system for all your marketing needs and you can manage it yourself.

• Create a flash animation to jazz up your Web site or presentation.

• Update the look of your Web site not re-create it.

• Product and location photography.

• Help you review your marketing budget and make it more efficient, effective and last longer.

FREE marketing and business ideas

These days marketing should be more transparent and cross-promotional. In order for everyone to prosper, helping each other do business in new ways is essential. It’s where it’s at baby!

• Cross-promote with businesses that share the same client base.

• Write engaging press releases about your employees (e.g., the personal achievement of an employee like being the first in their family to graduate from college or climb Mt. Everest)

• Start a blog and engage only your clients. What do they want from you? What can you do better? Maybe they could post a picture of your product in use at their house? Answer their questions? Reward your clients when they offer a great idea? Satisfy them when they aren’t happy and let everyone see how you made them happy again?

• Help your clients get business. Be transparent, help them, they will help you.

• Read our blog ;)

• Don’t pay rent. Rent a van. Create a business model that’s on the road. Sell or distribute anything from the trunk. Make-up, clothing, vacations, anything that someone wouldn’t expect.

• The right place at the right time business. Your business moves from one location to another as the market demands and uses vacant storefronts for a month or 2 at a time.

• Put 2 businesses together that you wouldn’t expect. Maybe a bar and a wide screen TV in a department store so your husband can sit-down and have a drink while you're shopping. Think of it, he would be happy to come and you could shop through the Superbowl.

• Create a new business model that caters to the “convenient” factor. Like a ½ hour babysitter service when you have to make that quick run to the store or the bank.

A check list of marketing tools

• Creativity: If you don’t have it, then you can’t stand out from your competition.
• Print/Web advertising: The right mix will help you succeed.
• eNewsletters: Target a small subscribed list like your existing contacts and new ones from networking.
• Publicity: Distribute a press release about anything happening at your company.
• Word-of-mouth: Clients are the best leads for more work.
• Viral marketing: If done right, it's one of the best ways to reach a huge audience.
• Corporate blog: Sounds scary to lawyers, but if your CEO or sales people each have one, your customers feel personally connected.
• Incentives, Discounts and Give-aways: Is a discount on what you're selling creating the right image to gain new customers? Incentives work better than giving it away and keep your bottom line up.
• SEO: We can't stress it enough, if you're selling products.
• Off-site, storefront and trade shows displays: Being creative will capture your audience quickly.
• Networking and sponsorships: Getting out there is the best way to increase sales, lists, press, word-of-mouth, etc…
• Hi-tech: youtube.com and secondlife.com come to mind.
• Or create your own networking site: check out ning.com.