Myth 1 – Every Business Needs A Website

Posted by on Nov 10, 2010 in Featured, Marketing | 2 comments

You’ve heard it for some time now that you need to have a website if you are in business.  There’s a ton of myths like this one out there that are damaging for business owners.  These myths about websites, seo and social media make business owners stress out about having to keep up and put stuff out there that some times they are not even proud of.  They end up spending money on a website so they can slap it on their business card but never really think about what it is.  We meet with a lot of business owners and they all know that they can get business on the internet but no one explained to them that the website has nothing to do with it.

Let me say it again, Your Website Does NOTHING for your business!

See it’s not your website that does anything for your business.  I guess, technically, you could say it’s like an online brochure.  However, just like a brochure, a website is useless without the correct message.  If you don’t know what you are selling and who you are selling it to, then it makes no difference whether you have a website or not.

In fact, that’s why we don’t build websites, we build marketing strategies around the business owner’s passion.  The whole goal of most business owners is to do what they love (and make money).  If your website doesn’t communicate your passion and knowledge of your industry, product or service and doesn’t try to communicate to your customers, then it’s pretty pointless.

In fact, there’s a proven method that we use to help business owners.

  1. Discover your motivation
  2. Tap into your Passion
  3. Tune into your customer (WIIFM)
  4. Create what they want (Content)
  5. Deliver Value
  6. Convert the Customer into a Client (Turn it into a relationship)
  7. Build on that relationship (for referrals)

Interestingly enough, every one of these steps is amplified on the internet!

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Complicated Sucks

Posted by on Sep 10, 2010 in blog, Featured | 0 comments

Used to be that Complicated was pretty cool.  Think about the early releases of Adobe Photoshop.  Learning all the layers of complexity in just, … well, the layers was something to write home to Mom about.  Perhaps you remember the first real CRM you used outside of Outlook.  The little bells and whistles were not immediately obvious. In fact, a CRM like Goldmine required the help of a programmer to get it tuned to your niche’.

Now, complicated sucks.  Piknik can do for free and for fast most of the photo editing that the people want to do.  Leave Photoshop to the professionals.  Why teenagers or hobbyists have this program in the first place is a bit suspect.

Complicated is the first C, in CRM.  It should be.  Look at 37Signals – their CRMS are not complicated, they are simple.  Simple is beautiful.  Simple is useful.  Do their version of CRMS do anything truly unique or amazing? Yes and no.  You won’t find a branching tree of autoresponding madness complete with triggers and shopping cart functionality (although if they did that I would be first in line).  Nope, you’ll just find the tools they way they were intended.  Sometimes you just need a hammer for a nail, you don’t need the pnuematic nail gun with 137 features.

More on this later…

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