BroadBased Receives National Certification from the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).

After a rigorous application process, we are excited to announce our new WBENC (pronounced wee-bank) certification.

The organization’s website states, “The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council is the largest third-party certifier of businesses owned, controlled, and operated by women in the United States. WBENC, a national 501(c)(3) non-profit, partners with 14 Regional Partner Organizations to provide its world class standard of certification to women-owned businesses throughout the country. WBENC is also the nation’s leading advocate of women-owned businesses as suppliers to America’s corporations.”

BroadBased joins an elite group of just 17 WBENC-certified businesses in Jacksonville and is one of only 410 in all of Florida.

What WBENC Certification Means

Major corporations that pay membership fees and have an active supplier diversity program, or will have one within 12 months of membership, are classified as Corporate Members. Corporate Members must also demonstrate a commitment to actively conduct business with WBENC-certified WBEs. Thousands of major corporations and a select group of government entities accept this certification. By including women-owned businesses among their business partners, corporations and government agencies demonstrate their commitment to fostering diversity and the continued development of their supplier and vendor diversity programs.

“We’re proud to have this certification,” said BroadBased CEO Jan Korb, who founded the company in 1996. “It’s something that we worked on for six months. It is immediately helpful to our clients who are already WBENC Corporate Members.”

BroadBased is also certified as a Jacksonville Small Emerging Business (JSEB) for the City of Jacksonville and a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) for the State of Florida.

Posted in BroadBased

Enhanced EmployBridge sites go from design to launch in just nine months.

The BroadBased team recently wrapped up a trio of websites for EmployBridge, a privately owned national leader in branded, industry-specific staffing solutions. Boasting nearly 150 locations throughout the United States, EmployBridge is the fastest-growing national provider of staffing and workforce solutions. Each of its seven divisions offers defined recruiting, testing and placement processes tailored to the specific industries they serve. The websites for ProDrivers, ProLogistix and ResourceMFG were conceptualized and designed by BroadBased and developed by a third party.

The websites, each featuring a common geo-location database strategy crafted by BroadBased CIO Jules Allen, immediately identify visitors by IP and present regional job opportunities on the homepage. Additional customizable job searches are available on the Jobs pages. As each division completes the rollout of its new website, the database will become more robust. The three websites were developed and launched within about nine months.

Posted in Web/Interactive Development

Jon Cummins, CEO of Paramount Performance Marketing, left, and Mitt Romney tour the now defunct printing plant after the presidential campaign learned of the story in a local newspaper.

PR pros often urge clients to become “heroes” in their local communities through strategic communications and media relations. We think business reputations are born on a local level, but in today’s connected world, a local story can receive national attention or interest.

Recently, Paramount Performance Marketing of Jacksonville received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity stemming from a local story. In December, Paramount closed its doors after nearly 100 years in business leaving 25 employees without jobs. Karen Brune-Mathis of the Financial News and Daily Record wrote and ran a story about the closure in early January after she learned of the news. Not only do Daily Record stories run online to a larger audience, Karen reports that stories are occasionally picked up by The New York Times.

In the case of Paramount, however, the staff of the Mitt Romney campaign for president saw the story. The campaign was visiting Jacksonville for the CNN debate and wanted to talk about the reasons the company shut down, most of which were economic and recession related. The “event” went from a meeting with the candidate and a tour of the facility to a press and supporter event and rally the next day in the Paramount parking lot.

“I could never have imagined how bad news could turn into a good PR opportunity for us.”
— Jon Cummins, CEO Paramount Performance Marketing

Paramount CEO Jon Cummins found himself quickly in the national spotlight. He introduced the candidate for a speech about the economy and jobs. The event was carried live nationwide on the national and cable news networks. The BroadBased PR team helped Jon with his speech, his media interviews and ongoing inquiries and media attention. BroadBased PR Director Maria Coppola, APR contributed this report to The Florida-Times Union and Jacksonville.com.

Although the fate of Paramount remains the same, the exposure has resulted in a number of business opportunities for the company. A business interested in purchasing a division of Paramount will capitalize on the SEO opportunities related to the news coverage. And printing companies and equipment dealers from all over the nation have contacted Paramount about purchasing everything from its paper to its assets.

“An equipment dealer in New York has already bought one of our printing presses and is visiting the shop soon to possibly buy most of the rest of the equipment,” said Cummins. “My friends and family from all over the country saw the news and reached out to me to offer support.”

Posted in Public/Media Relations

In a February/March 2012 media sidebar for 904 Magazine, Jan Korb, BroadBased’s CEO, wrote about her experience last fall in which she voluntarily reduced her online Twitter interaction for a month. In the sidebar entitled “My Life With(OUT) Twitter” on page 19, Korb talks about what she did with the extra leisure time (played more Words With Friends) and discussed the impact on daily peer interactions and her Klout score.

Communications Kudos for Florida Coastal Law

Two Florida Coastal School of Law communications initiatives assisted by BroadBased have won recognition for their effectiveness and creativity. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) presented the school’s Marketing and Communications team with two awards for its internal communications programs and use of original illustrations in “Coastal Law Magazine.” The magazine is Coastal Law’s twice-annual publication distributed nationally to alumni, prospective students, and legal community. BroadBased partnered with Coastal Law to develop brand identity and consistency for both initiatives. The Marketing and Communications team accepted the awards at a CASE conference in late February.

Posted in Brand Development, Marketing Planning, Social Media Planning

In November, BroadBased worked with Gate Gas Stations on a quick and successful Facebook sweepstakes campaign to increase its fanbase.

“Gate’s overall goal was to increase interaction with customers by doubling its 432 Facebook fans in three weeks,” says Despina Pappas, BroadBased’s public relations and marketing coordinator.  “We administered a sweepstakes offering in which the winner received two UF vs. FSU football tickets and a $100 Gate Gift Card.”

At the end of the campaign Gate had far surpassed its goal, finishing with 1,921 “Likes.”

To be eligible to win, a sweepstakes entry was required on a custom-designed Facebook landing page. The sweepstakes was promoted in stores, on Gate Station social media and with three weeks of regional Facebook advertising. Social media support by the University of Florida rounded out the awareness strategy.

That’s what we call a winning effort!

Posted in Social Media Planning

In a blog announcement in January, Google announced some changes to the way “organic” search is referred to your website.

The big change is this: When individuals are logged into one of their Google accounts while performing a search query (Google accounts include Gmail, Google Docs, Reader, Calendar, Google+, or even YouTube), the keywords they use to get to your website are stripped out of your website analytics. This results in a keyword “not provided” line item (see above). This change only affects “organic” searches, not paid Google ad campaigns. Paid campaigns continue to receive all keyword data.

While the change is good news for individuals whose searches were increasingly personalized with identifying data that clearly isn’t anonymous, the impact for marketers and business owners is that Google campaigns could be less accurate.

Google’s blog posting on the subject asks us to “keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic,” but in our recent findings we’ve seen up to a third of our clients’ referral data stripped. “These changes undoubtedly make it more difficult for business owners to identify keyword performance or do SEO. Without informed keyword data, it would be hard to figure out what content is driving traffic to your site,” wrote KISSmetrics in a recent blog post.

In general, we applaud Google’s commitment to provide additional security for its users, but this particular change may damage the search giant’s effectiveness for SEO analytics purposes. We hope Google returns us to business as usual in the near future.

For more information, please visit KISSmetrics’ “I Got 99 Problems But Google Ain’t One” blog post.

Posted in Web/Interactive Development

As marketers and public relations pros, we are often asked to develop strategies designed to improve a person’s or a company’s online reputation. Online reputations are important because consumers’ purchasing decisions are very much influenced by online perceptions. And while there are many ways to monitor an online reputation, there are very few ethical ways to increase or impact it.

The communications and marketing teams at BroadBased can create a transparent, ethical program to increase online presence and boost awareness. Here’s a recent example of how we helped First Watch Restaurants increase name awareness, online reviews and traffic to both of its newly opened First Coast locations.

First Watch, a Florida-based breakfast, brunch and lunch café, recently opened two restaurants in Jacksonville. The PR team at Fry Hammond and Barr in Tampa partnered with BroadBased to introduce the concept to our community. One of the many strategic efforts BroadBased recommended and implemented was an invitation-only, after-hours dinner for food bloggers, restaurant reporters and influential social media users.

We selected 50 attendees who had an online presence, were active Tweeters or bloggers, and had a love of food. We also looked for online influencers with a minimum Klout score of 50. The invitations encouraged the participants to use any of their social media profiles during and after the event to share candid impressions of the restaurant, from service to food quality to cleanliness and beyond.

The Results

The evening event welcomed 55 participants who checked in, took photos, shared reviews and later blogged in detail about the evening breakfast event. The results included 230 Tweets (under Hashtag: #firstwatchjax), six blog posts, three Facebook photo albums, 22 check-ins on Foursquare, and two reviews on online rating sites (Yelp! and UrbanSpoon). The Mandarin location benefited from an immediate increase in online buzz that equated to an increase in traffic to the restaurant.

Behind the raw numbers are two powerful benefits of an event like this. First, all of the reviews and feedback were honest and organic; they weren’t “paid for” directly or created by unethical means such as having restaurant employees review locations. Second, they came in a buzz-generating burst, rather than trickling in over time.

The same concept can be applied to VIP “sneak peek” events that engage consumers at a variety of businesses and locations. Sneak peeks are perfect for increasing traffic to retailer locations, special events, event venues, special attractions, and events and weekend or annual festivals. Call Maria at BroadBased to brainstorm ways to increase your company’s online reputation.

Posted in Brand Development, Public/Media Relations

To make the season even sweeter, we’ve compiled some of our favorite holiday recipes for your enjoyment. Please view the online flipbook, or click here to start an immediate PDF download here.

Posted in BroadBased

Make sure to obtain sign-off of the document from everyone in the chain of approval before starting your project.

At a recent meeting of marketing professionals, we were surprised to hear about the number of corporate marketing department staffers who don’t, can’t or aren’t allowed to execute creative briefs with their internal customers. We found that very surprising and thought we would offer up some of the benefits of using a creative brief.

A creative brief is a document used by marketing firms and advertising agencies to detail project goals and other essential details prior to starting a project. At BroadBased, we consider it an essential document that defines guiding principles for each project. The document is shared with all strategists, writers and designers working on a project so everyone has the same understanding and goals in mind. We believe a client-approved creative brief facilitates the smooth execution of a marketing project and greatly helps to limit change in direction mid-way through a project.

Some of the questions on the BroadBased creative brief include:

• What is your marketing/advertising objective?
• Who are your audiences?
• What are the benefits/features to the customers?
• What is your key selling point?
• What action do you want your prospect to take?
• How will we evaluate success?
• Who is the competition?

Creative brief templates are available on the Internet, or you can create your own. Whatever format you choose, be sure to obtain sign-off of the document from everyone in the chain of approval before starting your project.

Posted in Brand Development, Capabilities

BroadBased recently completed the sixth issue of Coastal Law Magazine, the alumni, faculty and student publication for the Florida Coastal School of Law. The magazine, in its third year, has been honored several times since inception with design awards from The Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

A key feature of the magazine is the custom photography and illustration that is heavily featured each issue. Brooks Terry, director of marketing and communications at Coastal Law, takes the lead in selecting artists, using both local and out-of-town talent. “In addition to photography, we’ve featured photo-collage, watercolor, pen and ink and, in this latest issue, we worked with a local screen printer to create a one-of-a-kind piece for the cover story. He incorporated found art from antique text books,” said Terry. “I prefer using illustration because of its creative range and ability to draw the reader’s attention to something innovative and original. Not to mention that you won’t see it anywhere else.”

“Custom illustration is a very effective way to present stories that may be a less ‘tangible’ topic,” said Robert Hedges, BroadBased’s senior art director. “Illustration can capture a concept and be tailored to work perfectly with a headline. Photography is not always as flexible,” he said.

Regardless what your image needs are, remember there is an alternative to the ubiquitous stock image websites, and BroadBased can help you.

Posted in Brand Development, Capabilities