Five years ago today, a bunch of ‘April Fools’ picked up their belongings and started a new chapter at Charcoal Marketing. It was a Monday, when Brian, Ben and Riley wandered into our new digs at Oxford & Cork (I missed the weekend move in the rain, as I was out of town at a conference, and boy did I hear about it!).

When you work in the marketing, branding and design business, you tend to take notice of signage. Lately, due to COVID-19, there’s been an increased reliance on signs for open hours, way-finding, new rules and new services.

I was recently able to sit in on an interesting webinar, hosted by Family Business Association Atlantic, about getting your business online (quickly) during the Coronavirus pandemic. As you might imagine, some of the lessons learned can be transposed across different times and scenarios (not only COVID-19) and shall still offer a benefit to you and your business. Going online didn’t start with the pandemic - it simply became vital to the existence of a whole lot of businesses during it.

What a week that was! Everyday, we are reacting to the plethora of changes that COVID-19 brings in the environment, and recalibrating our business posture to meet the challenges. We’re still more than busy with work, and still coming up with new ideas every day.

With the important caveat that we are staying safe, observing best practices recommended by the government health authorities and trying to forge ahead, this is what we’ve been up to…

Five reasons why COVID-19 shouldn’t affect our business

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, our blog draft said, "why COVID-19 won't affect our business"! And, who wants to atone for that someday. We're pretty busy working this week, but no one can predict the future. So for the present time, here we go…

We’ve all heard the rationale about the economic impact of startups. They create jobs. They employ new grads. They create exports. They distribute wealth (all of this assumes, of course, that they are successful startups!).

The Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI) had long been an extension of Dalhousie’s website. There, the scope of the organization’s fascinating research and formidable branding was, at the time, competing with one of Atlantic Canada’s foremost universities by sharing the (digital) space. Naturally, approaching the topic of transitioning OFI to a site of their own meant considering a new portfolio of web design, photography, and inbound marketing!

Once upon a time…

Great stories are told all around us. A story can find you just about anywhere, because storytellers have been using everything from word of mouth and cave walls, to books, billboards, and airwaves for over 35 millennia.

In April 2016 Charcoal landed on the corner of Oxford and Cork, and had a chance to burn brightly in an open-space concept, with rentable work stations, that was quite unlike the Hydrostone offices we had stepped away from.

A couple months ago I had the opportunity to help with event organization and marketing for KLONDIKE Lubricants, who were setting up a booth at the Atlantic Truck Show at the Moncton Coliseum. Naturally, I wanted to make sure we had the best booth there.

Or more importantly, why do businesses struggle to wrap their heads around the concept of exporting, creating a perceived barrier to entry?

With an exceptional team, we built market share at home, launched the brand across Canada as a ‘premium domestic’, created the annual Alexander Keith Birthday celebration event, and re-built the original Keith’s Brewery on Lower Water Street in Halifax.

Charcoal’s inbound marketing formula is a four part series, breaking down the components that come together to make your website more than a glorified business listing, floating in the dead sea. In part three, we looked at the invaluable advantage an online brand will bring to your website, and the components that construct it.

Charcoal’s inbound marketing formula is a four part series, breaking down the components that come together to make your website more than a glorified business listing, floating in the dead sea. In part two, we explored how using a modern site development, paired with Google Analytics and local hosting will optimize your website to encourage online visitors to keep returning.

Charcoal’s inbound marketing formula is a four part series, breaking down the components that come together to make your website more than a glorified business listing, floating in the dead sea. In part one, we dug deeper into how content distributed through your social community and digital advertising efforts will contribute when it comes to driving traffic, and value, to your website.

To best explain what we mean by ‘fuel’ and why we believe it’s the product of inbound marketing, let's consider the idea lined up against its literal counterpart: gasoline for your vehicle. Consider having just designed your own car. It’s the product of your dreams and speaks to your taste. You weren’t afraid to invest, because it’s a statement piece that not only makes the roads accessible to you - it broadcasts your image to the drivers around you.

Google reviews are a fantastic thing. They empower good businesses with an opportunity to level the field when big advertising budgets dominate the market and aren’t always practical for small and medium-sized players. In short, this is because Google reviews are comparable to to recurring content and expensive marketing campaigns when it comes to value, online.

You might have noticed, that modern websites are now home to much more unique monikers than .com, .ca, or .net. Top Level Domains, or TLDs, allow companies to differentiate from their competition, add an additional layer of branding and more directly express to new and potential customers what their area of expertise is. It’s for this reason that we chose charcoal.marketing!