Tag: Communications

Spinning 3 Websites in 6 Months

Posted on by SGA SGA

Good web design is like a spider web: what appears to be simple, functional, and delicate should also be intricate, elegant, and strong. And like an excited spider who’s just caught an unlucky fly, web design is one of those things that gets our team really fired up.

It requires the perfect mix of left and right brain — from planning the overall architecture of a site, to considerations about user experience and design, to coding and the final, fine-toothed top to bottom review. Over the last 6 months, 3 sites that we designed from the ground-up have gone live. These websites have ranged in complexity, breadth, and purpose. Keep reading to find out why we spun them!

1) RethinkWaste

RethinkWaste represents and manages the waste from 12 member cities in San Mateo County. SGA was brought on to redesign its website to improve usability and meet the communication needs of its service area community. After designing this new website from the ground up, here’s what Rethink had to say about us:

[box] “SGA, specifically the amazing Suzi, helped us not only meet our needs with an aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate website on the front and back end, but they also created a custom section to house our important meeting agendas and staff reports. This has helped us improve our transparency as a public agency. Our new and improved website communicates, educates and engages with our community better than ever before.” — Julia Au, Outreach & Communications Manager, Rethink Waste[/box]

2) Lincoln Stormwater

The City of Lincoln’s Stormwater program used to be hosted on a small subsection of the City’s website. SGA was brought in to create a dynamic hub for stormwater-related information, resources, and content relevant to the city residents. In addition to the new website, which we designed to deliver simple, easy-to-understand messaging about stormwater management, we designed a new logo to cement the program’s credibility and integrity.

3) Bayfront Canal & Atherton Channel Flood Management and Restoration Project

The last site SGA recently worked on is a microsite for a flood management project occurring within several diverse communities that are subjected to annual flooding. The purpose of the site was to establish an official, designated area where the County of San Mateo could post project updates, and where residents could visit for up-to-date and reliable information. The site needed to be designed in a user-friendly way that remained intuitive across diverse audiences, clearly communicated the problem and proposed solution, and reduced the potential for uncertainty. You can view our work here.

Like our sites? Want to know more about their structure, our process, or availability to design your dream site? We’re listening! Email us at info@sga-inc.net.

Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Posted on by SGA Staff

Many of our clients use email marketing to get their message out to prospects and customers. It’s a great tool. Email allows for segmentation so you are able to target your message to those who will most want to read it. In fact, 13 percent of all leads come from email marketing and customers are six times more likely to click-through from an email than from a Tweet.

Before committing yourself to email marketing, here are some tips to help you prevent common mistakes.

Understanding what permission is and is not

Not following the CAN-SPAM Act can get you into legal trouble. If a form on your website doesn’t specify that those who supply their address will be contacted by you or if you upload a list of addresses you gathered somewhere else, it means permission is not granted. Spamming recipients is a surefire way to wreck your email marketing efforts.

Not confusing the recipient

Email marketing never should stand on its own. Your branding, colors, fonts and logos, should be part of your email campaign. Make sure links within the email go to your website. If this is not done, it confuses the recipient.

Short and to the point

Keeping in mind the way your emails are received are important. Remember we live in mobile society; 41 percent of email is opened on a device. You have approximately three seconds or less to engage a reader. Give them a picture, paragraph and a point of action. Make your message clear and concise.

Is it about you or the audience?

Not every email is an automatic conversion. Be relevant. Make sure your email messages are not about you and your needs (read: no hard sells). Every one of your emails should focus on your target audience and doing your best to fulfill their needs. If you forget about them, you will lose them.

Not monitoring, measuring, or managing

Possibly more important than creating your email marketing campaign and targeting the right audience is taking a look at the results. If you do not, your future campaigns will suffer.

The data you collect in the email metrics can be a gold mine. Examine open rates and days and times that the email was opened. By doing this, you can find the appropriate time to send future emails.

Find out what was more popular and what links received low (or no) click-throughs.

After three or six months, remove inactive subscribers if they have not opened nor clicked-through. Remember, you want to send to a target audience. If these subscribers are not engaged with your mailings, they are not part of the target audience.

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Use of Infographics in Content Marketing

Posted on by SGA Staff

Every person takes in information and learns differently. Thus, you have to have different tactics to reach everyone in your audience.

At SGA, we know that some people remember what they read rather than what they hear; others learn when they see things in writing. Then there’s the 65 percent of us who are visual learners and process information based on what they see. That’s why infographics are so popular and a great addition to your content marketing.

What are they?

Infographics make use of a mix of text and a variety of visual images in order to tell a story and convey statics and other information. Such visuals include charts, diagrams, graphic designs, maps, drawings, and colors. A good infographic is visually engaging, fits into your content marketing strategy, and supports your marketing goals. Bad infographics distract, are confusing, and muddle the message.

Using them

Always keep your target audience in mind. Infographics can be an incredibly valuable tool if used correctly, but it must be compelling and relevant to your audience. If it is not, it becomes just a novelty. Remember, if your customer is not going to care your content, it will not matter what it looks like visually.

Keep it simple. The goal of an infographic is to create quick bites of information that can be quickly digested. As well as visually appealing, it must convey accurate information. If the graphics look great, but the content is correct, this will have negative effects on your brand.

Having too much accurate information all over the design weighs heavily on the overall visual appeal. Too much text makes it just as difficult for someone to digest as a lengthy written article.

Make them shareable

Most infographics are created for online publishing: websites, blogs, social media. When you decide to incorporate infographics into your content marketing strategy, make sure they are engaging and appealing enough that consumers will want to share them. Creating evergreen infographics allows for republishing of materials.

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The Poop on Poop

Posted on by SGA Staff

Dog waste isn’t a topic most people talk about on a daily basis, but this “business” should be discussed. Pet owners who don’t have their dog’s droppings top of mind likely aren’t aware of how harmful it is to our environment when the poop isn’t scooped.

So, I’m out to start and share the conversation. You see, it’s been pretty commonplace in my family. My mother-in-law is English. Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, she embodies many English ways of thinking, including a love for dogs I believe can only be topped by Queen Elizabeth’s love for her corgis.

When you’ve got a dog lover like this for a relative, you hear everything about dogs: what goes in and what comes out. Over the years, I’ve heard more than I ever intended to hear about dog waste. I didn’t think it was a topic to share beyond the family. Who speaks of poop in polite company?

Well, when I joined SGA, I discovered that everyone in the office talks about dog waste because we know the problems it causes. And now, I want to get you talking about it with your family and other pet-loving friends, too.

Dog waste isn’t fertilizer. It doesn’t help the environment; it hurts it. Dog poop contains unhealthy bacteria. In fact, the EPA estimates that if there was a spot with just two or three days of dog waste from 100 dogs, that would equate to enough bacteria to close all watersheds within 20 miles of such a location. That’s because dog waste that is not picked up washes into these waterways. That bacteria? It can lead to a variety of harmful viruses that can cause intestinal illnesses and kidney disorders in humans. In the book, “The Truth About Dogs,” author Stephan Budiansky states that there are 65 diseases that can be transmitted to humans from dog feces. Some will give you skin rashes, but others can be more harmful and may turn deadly.

So get the conversation going. Let others know the poop on poop. Picking up after your pooch isn’t simply the right thing to do, scooping the poop and disposing it in the trash or toilet keeps it from washing into waterways. This, in turn, keeps our rivers and ocean cleaner for all of us.

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Good Marketing is a Like a Ramen Shop

Posted on by SGA Staff

Every business is good at something. There are some businesses that try to be good at everything. However, sometimes it’s best to focus on what you know best and let others do what they do best. It can be a win-win for everyone.

Let me explain. During a December trip to Pasadena, CA, we waited in line for more than an hour to dine at a ramen restaurant. Ramen restaurants aren’t typically fancy; here, the menu featured only six dishes to choose from.

With Santa Ana winds whipping, the temperature (if you can imagine it now) was in the 40s in the shade. Yet there were more than 70 people who weren’t dressed properly for the weather standing in a line that wrapped around the corner of the building and into the alley.

Most Americans know about ramen. Even supermarkets that don’t specialize in ethnic foods have a number of varieties on the grocery shelves. They are often a staple for college students and people on a budget because, even when they aren’t on sale, you can get ramen for less than 50 cents a serving. Additionally, it’s pretty filling for such an inexpensive dish. Cooking ramen at home isn’t complicated either. Boil some water, let the noodles steep and add the flavorings.

With a dish that is so simple to find and make, why would anyone seek out a restaurant and wait in line for it? For an hour? Especially in the cold and wind.

Ramen Tatsunoya started in 1999 in Kurume City, Fukuoka, Japan, a city with numerous ramen shops that have very loyal followings. Taking a chance there was a huge step. To differentiate themselves from others, founder Ryuta Kajiwara says he and the staff dedicated themselves to “perfecting the ultimate bowl of ramen” and providing kando, a Japanese word that means “a feeling of awe-inspiring.” They dedicated themselves to give more than customers expected.

Like ramen, marketing and social media isn’t necessarily all that complicated and most people probably know at least one 12-year old wunderkind who somehow manages to attract hundreds of fans on Facebook. An organization seeking to gain exposure might have in-house staff develop content and manage its social media presence. Having staff take on one more duty is cost effective and, in all fairness, it’ll get the job done just like whipping up some ramen at home.

But there’s a reason people are willing to stand in the cold for good ramen. It’s because while they may seem the same at first glance, an expert brings a depth to their craft that makes it better and gives that feeling of awe-inspiring. For marketing and social media, that means a broader reach with deeper engagement across your audience. It means that your ad budget goes farther and your messaging improves as you learn what best resonates with your residents.

Just like an expert ramen shop, SGA brings a depth of experience that helps the organizations we support in marketing and social media do more. When SGA works on a program, it isn’t one more duty assigned to an already overworked staff member; it’s a full team that carefully crafts content and researches why something worked (or, often more interesting, why it failed). The result is a marketing and social media presence that, while superficially the same as any organization that “has Facebook,” better reaches residents and inspires awe. We strive to bring kando to all parts of SGA and are grateful when we get to bring it to our clients.

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The Question is as Important as the Answer: Thomas Kim

Posted on by SGA Staff


(This biographical piece is part of our series to introduce you to the SGA staff.)

Psychology is fascinating. I dug deep into this during my time at UC Berkeley where I was part of a research team at Haas School of Business and the Department of Cognitive Science. My research focused on cognitive biases and decision making.

Today, I bring this expertise to SGA where I work with a team to conduct market research to gather data on the people we serve. You can’t do marketing in a vacuum; it’s important to understand people so you can effectively reach them.

People have busy minds. We create associations where there are none. We see implications and work to appease a derived social norm. In other words, conducting market research is not just a matter of using the appropriate statistical tools or getting the right answers. It is about seemingly trivial details and asking the right questions.

For example, when you create a survey, some things you have to consider include:

  • Does the order of the questions influence participation?
  • Are the questions independent of each other or does a question change the meaning of the next question?
  • Are you giving a range of answers that are too big or too small?
  • Does the medium of the answer (Likert scale, multiple choice) influence the result?

Likewise, the way you frame or word a question can make a big difference. For example, asking a participant, “Do you believe milk with only 5 percent fat is good for you?” results in very different answers when compared with answers obtained by asking, “Do you believe milk that is 95 percent fat free is good for you?” Although mathematically the same question, one highlights the health concern whereas the other highlights the health benefit.

We gather information in a number of different ways, including:

  • Intercept surveys (going into the field and approaching people)
  • Surveys via mail and email
  • Telephone interviews
  • Focus groups

The method of obtaining the answer is also an important consideration and will depend on what you’re seeking. Conducting a survey of hundreds of people will provide you with a solid data representative of the population. On the other hand, having a focus group with a small group of people in a room allows for a deeper and dynamic dive into the subject.

With the research we do at SGA, we are able to understand our targets and create a more effective message and approach to better tackle our client’s specific needs.

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4 Simple Ideas to Improve Outreach

Posted on by SGA Staff

It’s difficult to imagine a time before randomized trials and data. But as an article in the December 12 issue of the Economist points out, before the 20th century, “The sick were wise to stay away from doctors. Medical treatments were often worthless and sometimes dangerous.”
Then in the 1920s, English statistician Ronald Fisher used randomized controlled experiments to test the effectiveness of fertilizer on farms, and quality and production escalated. The medical field soon picked up the method. More than any single discovery, controlled experimentation contributed to the 20th century’s miraculous increase in lifespan.

In the realm of public policy and outreach, this technique can be tricky. Changing behavior is often hard to observe and quantify. What’s more, local government programs don’t have the budgets for lengthy experimentation and controls.

But things are changing. Online media provides the ability to conduct small and inexpensive controlled experiments that allow us to determine if people are taking the initial steps towards behavior change. For example, we can test degree of awareness, intent to change, influence of social norms and more.

In 2015, SGA began testing out how online experiments can help build better, more reliable outreach programs. Here are four simple, but important, lessons we’ve learned:

  1. Reach beyond likes and unique visitors. The biggest problem using social media likes and website visits as a proxy for success is that you don’t know why people took the action. They could have been searching for your content and found it engaging. Or they might have randomly clicked on your website during a Google search and quickly jumped off, never to return again. You just don’t know. While building a strong foundation of fans is important, it’s just the beginning. To build a community, you need to test how engaged your fans are through controlled messaging experiments.
  1. Embrace A/B testing. If you really want to understand the value of your likes, you need to see if they are repeatable.  The key is to run two sets of posts—an A version and a B version. (You can also run multi-variant tests if you want to move more aggressively.) Then see how each performs with your community over time. You can set these up on social media, websites and e-newsletters. For e-newsletters, send the two variations to a random subset of your subscriber list a few days before you intend to send out the newsletter. Then send the one that does best to the rest of your list.
  1. Turn data into insights. Once you have some data to work with, you can look at the demographics of the people who engaged with your content as well as the content that got the best response. Facebook and Twitter insights and Google Analytics can tell you loads about your followers. Understanding the type of content that resonates with them will help you understand how to inspire them with behavior change messaging. This data allows you to paint a more robust picture of your audience, which you can incorporate into outreach both offline and online.
  1. Create a call to action. Find the route to engagement by asking your fans to do something. When determining your call to action, be sure it is something you can measure and start small. Ask fans to opt in to receive emails or post their own content showing actions they have taken. One of our projects for the Orange County Stormwater Program asked people to post photos of how they were saving water in their yards. By having residents show their actions, it verifies the behaviors taken and starts to build a social norm for the action—and engagement in general.

In 2016, we will see more and more emphasis on data as online marketing’s balance of art and science continues to demand more of the science. Business and commercial marketing has already shown this. With simple experiments, you can better understand your audience, their motivations and whether they’re buying your program’s message or merely window shopping.

A Surprising Obstacle to Recycling Paint

Posted on by SGA Staff

The questions were simple:

  • Do you know you can recycle paint?
  • Do you do it?
  • Why or why not?

But when we asked Leo, a middle-aged man who had just finished painting his house, the answers were more complicated.

Leo had heard he could recycle paint. He wasn’t doing it, though, because he had also heard that he would need to show identification and pay a fee — two things in short supply. So he stacked all the paint in his garage and stopped thinking about it.

Recently our friends at PaintCare, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing paint recycling, asked us to conduct a survey to figure out what Latinos thought about properly disposing of their unused paint. We sent a team of surveyors out to Latino communities in Santa Ana, Los Angeles, Riverside, Ontario, Chino, Riverside, San Francisco, San Jose and Westminster in California as well as Denver and Thornton in Colorado.

What we found surprised us. A whopping 77% of Latinos surveyed kept their leftover paint in storage. An even larger 79% were unaware of the many locations that accept unused paint. (Check out PaintCare’s location finder and see for yourself.) And nearly every person surveyed was just like Leo. They believed that an ID and fee would be required to recycle paint. For the record, dropping off unused paint at one of the PaintCare locations is both free and anonymous.

Armed with data on the attitudes and beliefs of the Latino community, we’re ready for action. Our next step? To create a pilot program to educate and inspire Latinos to get that paint out of their garages. Stay tuned…

Naming our Data: Bringing Data to Life through Characterization

Posted on by SGA Staff

It often began with the question, “Have you heard about IPM?”

You yourself may be wondering, What is IPM?

For the past year, we worked under a CalRecycle grant to promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to the City of Thousand Oaks and the neighboring cities of Camarillo and Moorpark. We got to work and surveyed a number of local residents to gauge their understanding of IPM, where they struggle in the IPM process, and to assess their willingness to try IPM practices.

***

A few months ago, we mentioned that data on its own doesn’t mean a whole lot. Often times, due to an overwhelming amount of data collected, not much is done with that data. We decided to take the extra step with our findings, and identified how our data might prove useful for the City of Thousand Oaks in improving its strategy.

Meet Diane, Wendy, Frank, and Oscar:

Don’t be fooled, these aren’t actually real people—they’re personas. Using our data, we constructed these personas to help us create an effective outreach strategy for Thousand Oaks.

Just as we did in the case of Downtown Long Beach, we segmented our collective of data and transformed our findings into an actionable strategy for IPM outreach. By transforming data into character profiles, we were able to see how it applied to different segments of the community’s population.

With Diane, Wendy, Frank, and Oscar as our guides, SGA and the City of Thousand Oaks were able to create strategies and decisions based upon which persona our audience was most comparable to:

For the Wendy Willings, we focused on simply asking them to try IPM.

For the Diane Do-Gooders, we created a way for them to share their positive experiences. We gave these Dianes the opportunity to be champions of IPM amongst their neighbors.

For the Franks On-the-Fence, we recruited the Wendy Willings and the Diane Do-Gooders to influence Frank to give IPM a try.

For the Oscar the Outsourcers, we made them aware that toxic pesticides can cause serious harm to the community’s water resources and health, and encouraged them to pursue less toxic pest control services.

Thanks to these characters, we were able to use our data to simplify our target community in a simple, concrete, and memorable way.

The Growing Experience

Posted on by SGA Staff

What do two SGAers do when they have time on their hands? They start a nonprofit using community-based social marketing (CBSM). Say hello to Appleseed!

Philip Kao, Adam Quinn and pediatrician Ruth Chiang Kao founded Appleseed, a nonprofit with SGA roots that aims to inspire the choices and actions that matter most for the future of our children and planet. They’re doing this through projects that improve nutrition and agricultural sustainability.

Their first project brought them to The Growing Experience farm in the Carmelitos housing development. Once an abandoned field of sod, The Growing Experience is now an urban farm operated by Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles. The farm was facing a particular problem: minimal participation in their fresh fruit and vegetable programs from the surrounding community.

Appleseed saw the potential of this farm, along with its untapped benefits for the community, and suggested a solution: CBSM! Using the tried-and-true methods of CBSM, Appleseed gained insights from residents of the housing development and quickly realized that residents felt that the garden wasn’t theirs. Not only that, but the concept of sustainable food felt foreign to them. Learning this, the Appleseed crew immediately set out to bridge these gaps by planning and organizing an event that would A) give residents a chance to connect with their local farm and its farmers, Jimmy and Holly and B) signify to residents in this community that this garden was open—for them!

The very first annual Community Cook-Off event was held at The Growing Experience and was a great success. Six residents participated in a cook-off competition, where they prepared delicious dishes using fresh vegetables from the garden. An amazing turnout of over 60 guests and kids came to visit the garden for the first time, where they tasted and voted for their personal favorites in the competition. An awesome community member, Purpose, volunteered to MC and DJ the entire event. Did we mention there was a talent show for the kids?

With stomachs full and new relationships formed, the event came to a close with an air of excitement for next year’s cook-off. And just recently, Appleseed received word from farmer Holly that a number of the cook-off guests had begun stopping by the garden to pick up their fruits and vegetables! If success was a picture, I think it would look something like this:

For an inside look into the event, check out:

Bravo, Appleseed! To follow Appleseed’s progress and hear about their upcoming project in Guatemala, subscribe to their monthly newsletter at www.appleseedimpact.org.