SparkFire Branding LLC

This Is a PWA PSA

Posted on October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by Kelly Smith

Web Apps deserve your consideration for good reasons.

You can build a unique, thoughtful, authentic place, but you’ll be well-served to provide a delightful experience for your buyers. Welcome centers, websites, touchscreens, overview videos, and various marketing collateral are all valuable touch points for educating customers. Some large developments even offer community mobile applications and platforms offering residents valuable capabilities. Beyond those, the decision to offer a traditional mobile application tends to be a more debated element, and for good reason.

Our most valued and visited content is on our phones’ home screens, providing fast, one-touch access 24/7. More than 50% of your customers will use a mobile device to visit you on the web. But some studies indicate that “App Fatigue” is real, and on average, people now download less than one new app a month, and 50% of those are abandoned quickly. It’s no wonder that from a marketing perspective, a mobile user’s home screen is becoming the most valuable “digital real estate.”

If you’ve gone down this path, you’ve surely discovered apps are costly and take time to develop and maintain. With this in mind, does it make sense to add an app to your marketing toolkit?

Now, you can offer a rich mobile app experience without the headaches!

Fortunately, your decision is no longer a binary one. Now, you can have the best of both worlds: your website and a mobile app without all the headaches, costs, and maintenance.

Modern web apps (Progressive Web Apps or PWAs) can utilize your current website to provide a thoughtfully designed, functionally rich app without the limitations of a browser window. When visiting your website on their mobile device, users can easily add your web app to their home screens: no app store, no download, and no app updates.

This is a blog, not a thesis, so we’ll simply give you the ten most powerful considerations for web apps versus traditional mobile apps you may have encountered in the past.

Home screen icons facilitate easy and quick repeat visits without the browser
With a modern website, your web app is ready in weeks, not months
No need to manage, maintain, or update two platforms
Installation is as easy as saving, sharing, or bookmarking a favorite site
Security levels are inherited from your website; personal information isn’t stored
Push notifications and alerts can be enabled, prompted, and targeted
Analytics provide measurement and insight into visitor behavior and interest
Offline use with most content cached in the device memory
Content is always fresh with web apps refreshing from your website content
Customize the design to highlight the most significant information

Ultimately, it’s about engaging your visitors in a way that they’ll appreciate. At SparkFire, we can help you deliver a modern web app that puts your logo on that valuable customer real estate, their home screen.

To learn more, view our one-minute video or try it by visiting sparkfirebranding.com or our demo at sparkfirelanding.com from your mobile device.

A Year in Review

Posted on January 12, 2022June 7, 2022 by Kelly Smith

2021 was a big year for SparkFire—not only for our team but also for the people and communities we get to call our clients. Thank you for making our favorite moments possible.

Let’s take a look back at some of the highlights from last year. In 2021 we…

Came back to the office! We implemented a hybrid workweek mid-year and it’s felt great for the team to meet face-to-face for brainstorming and review sessions (and some pretty drool-worthy snack breaks).
Refocused energy on our own social media presence. #SparkFireBranding
Jaimee was invited to join the leadership team of the ULI Community Development Council (Gold Flight).
Wrote, designed, coded, and launched three new websites for clients. Check the websites for TerraBella Village, Vineyards at Chatham Park and Waterside Place at Lakewood Ranch.
Two new team members joined our team. In January, Connor came on board as an Interactive Developer and in April, Kelly joined us as a Copywriter/Creative Associate, who had previously been on the Willowsford marketing team.

Celebrated with Hartland for winning ‘best website’ at the Great American Living Awards.
Got to see the design of Hartland’s Greeting House come to fruition.
Built out two new touchscreen experiences for the opening of new community information centers for both Hartland and Chatham Park.
Celebrated with Lakewood Ranch for becoming the ‘best-selling master-planned community in the country.’ And later in the fall, for winning Silver National awards for ‘best lifestyle program’ and ‘best lifestyle director’ – teeing them up to win Gold next year!
Designed and opened the Chatham Park sales center in their mixed-use Mosaic neighborhood.
Produced 102 new collateral pieces. From business cards, postcards, rack cards, tri-folds, brochures, and magazines to maps, fliers, banners, a-frames, window clings, invitations, influencer boxes, and fence wraps. If you can think of it—we’ll get it done!

Jaimee and Kim traveled to Southwest Florida to see the team at Lakewood Ranch and finally see Waterside Place completed, which we had so much fun marketing all year long!
Flew in Connor, our interactive developer, from Chicago for a surprise team dinner.
Celebrated with Hartland for winning ‘best website’ at the Great American Living Awards.
And finally, to end the year, we celebrated the holidays together as a team at one of our favorite restaurants…that just so happens to specialize in cooking with chocolate.

As we look forward to the coming year, we’d like to thank all of our amazing clients who allow us the room to do what we do best. And of course, none of it could happen without our talented team!

HAPPY 2022, LET’S MAKE IT A GREAT ONE

A Heartfelt Farewell

Posted on June 24, 2021June 21, 2022 by Kelly Smith

Just a few short months ago, we watched with pride as one of our first clients, Willowsford, achieved its final close-out.

Willowsford was the first agri-hood in the Capital Region and the best-selling, single-family community in the area for many years. We’d like to think their marketing had something to do with their success but, truly, they made it easy with the beauty of Willowsford Farm and Conservancy, the quality of their amenities and the joy and connection their lifestyle programming facilitated.

SparkFire became Willowsford’s agency in 2016, about five years into their project. Our challenge was to build on the foundation of the brand and keep what people loved about it, but refresh it in a significant enough way that it attracted new prospects and reengaged existing prospects.

To achieve this, Willowsford engaged in our 4-step creative process:

STEP 1: Collaborate — The Brand Workshop

We start by listening. Our process has been refined over 20 years of working with builders, developers, planners and architects. We’re skilled at getting the very best thinking from your team members to uncover the key elements of your community’s identity. It works as well for small companies and communities as it does for small towns.

STEP 2: Clarify — The Brand Positioning

With the understanding we take from our initial input sessions and research as our foundation, we articulate the market positioning for your community and define a platform and personality that will resonate most deeply with your intended target audiences, whether they are residents, retailers or office tenants.

STEP 3: Create — Expressioneering

Now it’s time to turn ideas into designs. In our experience, most people can’t describe the design they’re looking for, but they know it when they see it. By presenting up to 10 concepts (unlike the typical 2 to 3), we invite team critique and true collaboration that results in everyone’s confidence in the final campaign.

STEP 4: Communicate — Marketing & Media Strategy

With a strategic position and a memorable campaign, you’re ready to go to market. We’ll tailor a marketing strategy and a media plan to your lead-generation goals and budget, then continually optimize your messaging and media to maximize performance.

Our 4-step creative process gives our clients confidence in their creative direction and marketing strategy from pre-sales through close-out. For Willowsford, it helped increase on-site traffic to their Information Centers, accelerate sales, and gain regional market share.

We’re so honored to have been a part of Willowsford and we are grateful to the team behind this community for trusting us with their brand. Although we hate to say goodbye, we love that every home holds a family. Our job is done.

A Look Back

When we think back on our years working with Willowsford, so many fun projects come to mind. Take a peek at some of the branding, marketing and collateral pieces we created for them over the years.