Strategy....
"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there...."
Yogi Berra
It's not uncommon for a prospective client to say to us "we don't even know where to start!" Lots of small business owners know their craft, be that running a restaurant or providing financial services, repairing cars or boats or plumbing or manufacturing a product. Now the technical and marketing stuff, that's often a different matter.
We don’t build web sites, we build integrated marketing systems. So just what is an integrated marketing system? To answer that question, here's a little context. Many of our clients are small business owners who focus 110% of their business day on running their business. The marketing and technology “stuff”, especially all the changes in the web and internet world, is not only a little scary to the average business owner, they simply don’t have the time to invest in this area. There’s just too much to learn, too many changes ushered in with the advent of smart phones and tablet devices and social media. How is a business owner supposed to know what to do and keep up with all these changes?
That’s were we come in. We’re a small business ourselves, we know exactly what you are facing. The difference is we live and breathe the marketing and technology “stuff” every day, and we’ve learned what works, what doesn’t, what really drives SEO, and what gives us and our clients the most bang for the buck. We know time is often your most scarce resource, so we create systems that are tightly integrated, easy to use, and make the best possible use of your time.
Let’s take social media for example. Many of our clients (ok, in fairness, we’d have to say most of our clients) simply didn’t understand why they needed to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. We talked about that in some detail in one of our recent musings. So even with the marketing visibility and SEO benefits of social media, many of our clients simply didn’t have the time to spend posting info on all of these different social media platforms.
With our Integrated Marketing Systems, we make time much less of a constraint.
Let’s say you are announcing a special event or a sale, and you want to maximize visibility across all your “sites”, be that your core web site or your Facebook page, Twitter site, etc. You would log on to the admin panel of your CMS, enter the news module, create a title for your announcement and enter the specifics, indicate that this news item is to be “pushed” out to social media, and that’s it! In less than 5 minutes, you’ve created an announcement that appears on your web site, on your Facebook page and your Twitter site, even in your LinkedIn profile. These posts not only convey your message on a stand alone basis, they include links back to the original announcement on your core web site. In one simple action, you create visibility for your event across multiple sites and platforms, all of which gets indexed by the search engines. This boosts your SEO and thus the likelihood that your business and event is going to be found in a Google, Bing or Yahoo search.
Wow, that's powerful, and there's so much more we can help you do to promote your business.
Below you'll find a snapshot of the services we offer. If don't see what you're looking for or if this all looks Greek to you, that's ok! Just contact us for help.
Business web sites that are dynamic, easy to update, and easy to browse!
- Custom designed to match your existing business identity or designed from scratch in conjunction with a new, customized business identity
- Fully responsive websites, which means your sites are optimized for the device being used for browsing. No more "pinch to zoom"
- Embedded photo galleries which you can update yourself via Flickr and iPhoto and/or Picasa from Google.
- If you are a photographer, interior designer, gallery owner, or are in any business where presenting great photos or images is critical to your success - we can make it easy for you to present your images in a highly interactive, high quality manner. You can update your image library at any time without any programming skills - if you can use a web browser, you can update your site
- Embedded Google maps/directions for brick & mortar retail and service businesses or any physical store front where walk-in business is your core business - these maps are fully mobile aware which add extra capabilities for site visitors using smart phones and other enhanced devices
Monitor, update and control your site any time, from any where you have internet access
- New sites are powered by a Content Management System (CMS) by Adobe Business Catalyst
- Your web site is administered by logging into your admin panel or "dashboard", which provides you with real-time access to administer your web site
- Update your web site content via your browser
- Track any interaction with your site, contact us forms, more information requests, even customer feedback forms
- Integrated reporting and analytics to track visitors to your site, search terms used to find your site, search engine statistics, even stats by browser type, geographic location, and so much more
- Integrated blogs to boost site relevancy and search engine awareness
- Search-able FAQ modules
- Literature/documentation downloads, ideal for restaurant menus and special events, financial or technical documents, your custom designs or proposals, etc.
- Documents can be uploaded and maintained by you via the dashboard, meaning you can update these materials as often as you wish
- Embedded calendars and an event manager to keep your customers up to date on your latest events
- Secure content areas for returning visitors or customers
Fully Integrated CRM & a comprehensive E-Mail Marketing System
- Fully integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which captures and tracks all information provided by site visitors who register or request additional information on your site or purchase your products or services
- Customized e-mail marketing campaigns and tracking tools leveraging your client/prospect database
- Create and track e-mail campaigns, monitor interaction with e-mails you have sent, track subscriptions, bounces even un-subscriptions
Web Store, Storefront, E-Commerce, you know, selling stuff and accepting credit cards on your site....
- Full e-commerce capabilities including integration with many leading payment gateways and shipping companies
- Product prices, descriptions, photos, taxes, shipping costs and everything necessary to keep your inventory current is maintained by you in your product database via the "dashboard"
- You can change or add products, delete products, update product photos, even change pricing without making changes to the web site structure. You can update your product database as often as you wish without incurring additional development charges
- Your returning e-commerce customers can see their past and current orders, request more information and see other current information about their account
Social media and viral marketing has become an incredibly powerful force, put this to work in your marketing
- Account set-up on the leading social media networks, including customized Facebook, Google+ and Twitter landing pages
- Fully integrated Facebook business pages including a portal back to your main website - your fans can browse your site without ever leaving Facebook if that's their preference
- Designated content from your website is "pushed" automatically - each time you add an event, news item or announcement, even a blog post to your website, that content is "pushed" to your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile and to Twitter
- Key elements of your site such as blog posts, calendar events, news items, even blog posts are "sharable" on any of the leading social networking platforms and "likable" on Facebook
We're here to help you formulate a strategy to drive your business forward.
- Comprehensive marketing campaigns, both traditional and internet/web enabled
- Social media integration - leveraging Facebook, Twitter and for professional service providers, Linkedin in conjunction with your business web site
Common questions we can help you with include:
Click here to contact us or request more information....
In reality, the website doesn't really know exactly what type of device you are using, but in our designs, it does know the width of the display. Based upon the width of the display, the site can decide how it should display content. For small windows, say smart phones in portrait mode like the iPhone, the site will put the menu at the top of the page to save valuable screen real estate. Content will be re-ordered such that is "stacks" into the smart phone browser window, rather than having you "pinch to zoom".
Social media and viral marketing has become an incredibly powerful force, put this to work in your marketing