Capacity/Capability Development One-Pagers

Small Business Marketing

So, you run a small business marketing… And you’ve probably thought about doing some marketing to improve sales. But, you‘ve got no time to study all the boring stuff… No worries; it is our job to take complete care of you!

Introducing SoLoMo – a comprehensive marketing solution for local businesses.

SoLoMo stands for social, local, mobile.

The following example says it all:

This is John. He runs a small, but cozy pizza place.

The first thing we’ve done for John’s business is a website primarily optimized for smartphones. Why? ‘Cause searching and browsing the Internet is done primarily on mobile devices nowadays. A desktop version is still important, but going mobile first is crucial if you don’t want to lose any potential clients.

We have also optimized the site for local searches – a.k.a. local SEO. Thanks to GPS and other positioning technologies, if anyone with a smartphone searches for “pizza” somewhere near John’s place, his site will appear in the top results. Together with a map, distance and exact address.

Finally, we’ve set up accounts on multiple social networks. People can now share statuses, pictures, reviews and tag John’s Pizzeria in ‘em. So, customers themselves naturally create content and spread awareness of John’s business with no additional costs involved. Social media also provides a great source of feedback and serves as a valuable communication platform. All these factors are reflected by search engines increasing the search rank even more.

So, there you have it – Social, Local, Mobile – it’s all interconnected in a basic, affordable, but very effective strategy for local businesses.

With our help, you can easily make it yours. Contact us today!

Web Hosting

So, you probably already know that whatever field you’re in, you need a website, right? But have you thought about the technical side of having one? You know, to enable your website to be accessible to your prospective customers, it needs to be HOSTED somewhere. This means that there must be a computer constantly connected to the Internet – a SERVER – which will do the job.

Now, you’ve basically got 3 options.

The first one is setting up your own computer as a server. Although this may look like the easiest way, it’s probably the worst and most expensive choice. First of all, remember that your computer would need to be powered 24/7 and that any Internet instability or slowdown would cause your website to become unavailable. Secondly, setting up a server can get pretty tricky… Do you really want to deal with all the IP addresses, DNS records or SQL databases? No, trust me, you don’t.

Option number 2 is to use a free hosting service. But, as with anything else in life, “FREE” rarely means anything good. Usually with such service, your site is hosted at some strange address, which always raises concerns about your credibility – not only for the website visitors, but also for search engines. Also, these hosting services usually only offer limited space for your content, can be very unreliable and lack quality human support (if there’s any at all).

The last and best option is to simply go with us!

These are the top 5 reasons to join our happy customers in using our hosting services:

• You can easily choose a credible, easy-to-remember website address. Plus get as many e-mail accounts as you want.
• Our installation process is fast and easy, so your website is only a few clicks away…
• …and in case of any problems, our professionally trained support is always here for you!
• Our servers support all major software, so whatever you need, we got you covered!
• Oh, and of course – your website reliability and data security are our top priorities. And in the case of a disaster, all your data is regularly backed up.

With all that said, our hosting plans start at very, VERY reasonable prices!

So if you’re looking for a safe home for your website, look no further. Contact us today!

Online Video Marketing

Online video – should you have one or not? Well, clearly and concisely: YES, you definitely should! And it really doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer, small business or multinational corporation. And let me tell you why. In a nutshell: ’cause PEOPLE LOVE THEM!

Now, let me explain this. Basically, there are just two major steps in every business:

Attraction and Conversion – You need to ATTRACT a visitor and CONVERT them into a paying customer. That’s it! …and videos can SIGNIFICANTLY help with both steps.

Let’s start with Attraction.

Imagine that an online visitor comes across your site. There’s plenty of text and images explaining what you do and how great your products or services are… But that’s really NOT the way to grab the visitor’s attention. After reading for 1 or 2 minutes, they will simply leave the site bored and you’ve lost the potential customer forever.

Now let’s assume that instead of the boring text you’ve got a 1 or 2-minute video explaining all the important stuff in a short but memorable format that viewers can actually enjoy. Studies have shown that videos are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. So you can really give your visitors a lot of information in just a short while, which is exactly the way to earn attraction.

People are also 39 percent more likely to share your content if it’s delivered via video. This means that visitors will spread your story through social media and attract more people to visit your site. In other words: this is how you increase traffic, which is then reflected by search engines through an improved SEO rank. See? You’re getting more and more attractive!

Now, once you’ve got the attraction, let me tell you how videos help with conversion.

70% of marketers report that video converts better than other content types. Why? ‘Cause your prospects can now really SEE what you do or sell. Getting more detailed information leads them to make confident purchase decisions. Also, video enables you to really stand out from the crowd and strengthen your brand trustworthiness.

But let me repeat the most important message here: PEOPLE…LOVE…VIDEOS! And you’re a proof! You just watched one, right?

So let us help you! We can suggest the best video strategy for your business and produce it for you from start to finish.

Contact us today and watch your business skyrocket!

Website Design

Maybe you’re thinking about having your first one made …or maybe, you just need a new, better one.

In any case, you should know at least some of the basics about web design.

…and no worries, it will only take 3 minutes.

First of all, let’s face it: a Website is the core of your online marketing activities. If you look at all the marketing channels and techniques, what they actually do is bring visitors to your website. And the main purpose of a website is turning these visitors into customers – in marketing terms, this is called CONVERSION. A bad website will basically cause you to waste money on other marketing methods. Because you don’t need more VISITORS if can’t turn them into CUSTOMERS.

So the better your website is, the more visitors are CONVERTED into your customers…and it doesn’t really matter whether you sell consumer products online, provide local services or build houses.

Many people in the industry call themselves web designers, but they really are just a bunch of geeks with some basic coding knowledge. Of course, without much planning, they will pretty quickly create a website for you – with lots of information, photos, contacts… But the question is: “Is that the way to turn the visitors into your customers? …Is that what you need?” And the answer is simple: “NO!”

What you have to do is to look for someone SERIOUS about web design.

Well, that’s where we come in!

This is how WE make websites – by following this 7-phase web design process:

Phase 1: ANALYSIS

The first step is always about information gathering – identifying things like the website purpose, goals and target audience

Phase 2: PLANNING

A plan includes a definition of the site-map, structure, and technologies that we’re about to use.

Phase 3: DESIGN

Not only we focus on wireframe models and the visual style in this stage, but also on the usability of the user interface for the best possible user experience.

Phase 4: CONTENT

A very important part of the process is choosing the right texts, photos or videos – all optimized not only for your visitors but also for search engines.

Phase 5: DEVELOPMENT

Here we actually CREATE the website using the HyperText Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets with some help from databases and other technologies as well. If needed, our websites can be made accessible to mobile devices too.

Phase 6: TESTING

We test all the technical features, like code and scripts, compatibility with major browsers, but also we ask ourselves if the website really fulfills its purpose.

Phase 7: DEPLOYMENT

After we launch the site, our job is definitely not done yet! We always monitor what’s happening after the start, enabling us to fix any possible deficiencies. And if you want, we can also manage the future maintenance and updates for you.

As you have just seen, web design is a very complex process, but we believe this is how websites should be done. And our customers agree!

And if YOU share our passion for high-quality websites, let’s get in touch! We’ll be happy to help you with what we do best!

Responsive Design or Responsive Web Design

So, right now you’re probably wondering… what is responsive design?

Well, in today’s world, the Internet is one of the most important forms of media.

And the Internet is mostly consumed using desktop computers, right?

But wait! How about mobile devices – smartphones and tablets!?

The share of Internet usage on these devices is growing every day!

In 2011 mobile browsing took a share of about 11%.

In 2013 it was near to 25% and 2014 was the first year mobile exceeded desktop.

Internet usage…

So what does all this mean to you?

Well, it means that if you don’t want to lose any potential clients, then you need a great looking website which is also optimized for mobile browsing.

Because the problem of many current websites is, that the user experience on mobile devices is…well, how do I put it…?……TERRIBLE! And that’s a mission for responsive design!

Responsive website RESPONDS to the screen size of the device you are viewing it on.

So instead of creating different websites for different devices, your responsive website re-arranges the elements to fit any screen.

So you’ll get more happy visitors which also leads to more happy customers!

Interested in responsive design? Want one of those responsive websites for your business?

Well, that’s something we can definitely help you with!

Contact us today!

Remarketing and Retargeting

Remarketing…also called retargeting. Are these just new buzzwords, or is it something that actually works? Well, let’s see…

Imagine a prospective customer browsing your online store. Unfortunately, the majority of these visitors are not converted to customers – they leave your site before checking out. The reasons can be:

• It’s their first visit and they’re not sure about your store’s credibility
• They get distracted and simply don’t finish the purchase
• They don’t quite find what they’re looking for
• …or maybe they just decide to do their shopping later, and they end up forgetting about your site completely

This is where remarketing kicks in. Thanks to cookies…not these…but THESE…every time a visitor gets to any of your product pages, this information is stored in their device – computer, tablet, phone…doesn’t really matter. Later on, advertisement systems can pull this information out even though the prospects already went to a completely different site.

Searching the web, reading through various sites, browsing social networks, watching videos… no matter what they do the next day, you can now reach them with highly targeted ads, like: “Hey, still looking for this phone?” or “You were interested in this blue umbrella, so how about this yellow one?” The purpose is to remind them about your online store and bringing them back so they finish their purchase.

See the potential? These campaigns are highly successful since you know exactly who to target with what offer. You can also suggest alternative products and, as a side effect, your credibility grows too.

The only problem is that setting a remarketing campaign can get very complicated. All the different marketing platforms, setting the cookies, scheduling, budgeting… So how about leaving the tricky stuff to us? We will gladly take over the hard part and design a campaign tailored to your business.

Contact us today, lay back and watch the sales grow!

Search Engine Optimization

Let’s talk about S.E.O. a bit. A lot of people think it’s some kind of magic… but that’s not the case. Just take a look at it from your perspective: What do YOU do when you want to find something on the Internet? You search for it, right? And then you click on one of the links on the first page of the search results. In fact, more than 90% visitors will behave exactly the same way…

Ever wonder how those web pages at the top of your search results got there? It’s because they were Search Engine Optimized.

Exactly how search engines work is a closely guarded secret, but the main principles are known. They’re based on two main factors: Keywords and links.

Let’s focus on keywords first.

Your chances for a better ranking grow when your website contains the same words that are being searched. Keywords are especially effective when they’re found in a website title, address or headings. But careful! Quality over quantity should be your rule of thumb! Some so-called SEO experts try to fool the search engines with some ridiculous keyword occurrence instead of focusing on quality content first.

And how about the links?

Websites that link to yours basically tell search engines that you have some good stuff there. But again: Quality over quantity! Links from irrelevant sites won’t help you get a better rank.

Now, what we’ve just talked about provides a basic introduction to SEO. In reality, it’s not a simple task, and you’ll definitely need someone to help you with it. Someone like us! We’ll develop a custom SEO strategy specifically for your business: -identify the right keywords, write friendly site code, and figure out the best linking tactics. But most importantly, we’ll help you find ways to provide high-quality content for your visitors and search engines as well.

So do not hesitate …and contact us today!

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click.

First, let me just very briefly describe what it is. You probably already know how search engines work and how SEO can help your website get a better ranking, right? Well, sometimes even the best SEO strategy is just not enough. The keyword you want to optimize for could be facing some really tough competition and you are simply unable to make it to the top results. Oooor…you can just use Pay Per Click or PPC!

Basically, even if your SEO is not strong enough, your link can appear on the search results page thanks to PPC Ads. And because you only PAY_ PER_ CLICK, this form of advertisement is VERY effective. When you think about it: Only people interested in your offer will click on the ad. And you only pay for these RELEVANT visitors. Now compare this to traditional advertising: Do you also just pay for people who have ACTUALLY READ your newspaper ad…? Notice the difference?

Now you can say: “That’s pretty cool. I can manage this PPC thing and get more customers!” But here comes the tricky part: Do you really know what keywords you should optimize the campaign for? When to start it and when to stop? Do you know how much money to invest to actually get results?

So, here we come to help you!

Our PPC strategies not only involve keyword research, scheduling, and budgeting, but we can also help with the right Ad text, landing pages and the overall settings. Another reason for hiring us is that we constantly track, analyze and evaluate all active campaigns to refine and improve the results.

Honestly, would you have time for all this? Isn’t it better to simply entrust this to someone with a long history of experience?

So get in touch and start your first PPC campaign today!

Social Media Marketing

Social media – there’s absolutely no way you haven’t heard of it yet. Over the last few years social media has completely changed the Internet—actually, it has changed the whole world! And also the world of marketing! So what are the reasons for your business to start utilizing these new forms of communication as soon as possible? These are the 7 most important ones:

No.1: Showcase your brand

Social Media offers another marketing channel for creating brand awareness, relationship building or driving new sales. So why not use it? …especially when it’s FREE, right!?    

No.2: Develop a loyal community

People enjoy being part of a business that is proactively building a lively community. Such an online community can help you establish an emotional connection between your company and your prospects, which is essential for your long-term success.

No.3: Improve customer service

Social media is a great feedback source. Enabling your prospects to communicate with your company and each other can greatly improve your customer service and increase brand trustworthiness.

No.4: Increase digital exposure

Interacting in social networks can significantly increase your online presence. Social media leads to massive exposure due to its worldwide access, sharing capabilities, and huge amount of daily users.

No.5: Boost traffic and search engine rating

Social media is a major lead generator, and it constantly brings high volume traffic to your website. They can also help with SEO since search engines significantly reflect your social media content.

No.6: Expand sales and reach a new audience

Listening to your prospects on social networks can help you respond to their specific needs. This will most likely cause an increase in sales, but also expand your customer base.

No.7: Cut marketing costs

Compared to traditional channels like print or advertising, social media marketing is affordable for any business. Remember that the channel itself is free!

Managing social media – taking care of all the content, tweets or feedback can get pretty time-consuming, and you need to focus primarily on your business. So how about leaving the social stuff to us?! No worries, we have plenty of experience to take complete responsibility of your social presence.

So get in touch with us—we’re ready to start today!

Online Marketing 201

So… how exactly can WE help YOU with online marketing?

Well, let’s see… first of all, we will analyze your current website from the marketing perspective to find answers to the questions like…:

• …how many visitors come to your site?…
• …From what sources and devices did they come from?…
• …What is the real goal of your website?…

This will allow us to optimize your website to fulfill its real purpose.

Secondly, Search Engine Optimization will definitely follow. So we will take a look at…:

• …what keywords are tied to your business…
• …what links point to your site…
• …and most importantly: what can we do with the actual website content.

That should get you better position on search engines’ results page.

Pay-per-click campaigns are another way how we can help boost your business:

• These paid online campaigns can help you get more attention in search results even on competitive keywords…
• …can be easily tracked and measured…
• …and are also really flexible – we can start them today and, if you want, stop them tomorrow.

Another great way how to make you more visible to the outer world is to start being active on social media:

• We will choose just the networks suitable for your business…
• …develop custom strategy to reach your fans…
• …and monitor and maintain a good reputation of your company.

Finally we can also consider other marketing channels and techniques like…:

• …E-mail marketing…
• …Mobile marketing…
• …Or “traditional” offline channels.

Still got questions to ask? Or just wanna know how exactly can our strategies help your specific business requirements? Just contact us, we help companies and individuals like you every day!

Online Marketing 101

What is online marketing? And what is the best way to do it?

Despite the fact that online marketing has been around for like 15 years now, it’s still pretty hard to find proper answers to those questions, isn’t it?

Some people will tell you, that online marketing is just about having a nice website. And these days such websites also need to be responsive…in other words: optimized for mobile devices.

Other people will claim that what you really need is S.E.O. – Search engine optimization – a set of techniques that can help your website to get better results in major search engines.

“Go PPC” you will also hear – advising you to invest in Pay-Per-Click campaigns to support the search results.

And who hasn’t heard about social media yet? There is an opinion that the only marketing you need is your online presence and content creation on the major social networks.

So who’s actually right? Well, in fact, none of those statements are entirely correct since what you REALLY need is a STRATEGY – an essential document which defines how to interconnect all the marketing channels to work together in a perfect synergy.

Because that’s the only way how to reach your goals, improve your business effectively and save your money.

And who can help you with that? Well, WE can!

We will analyze your current business state, carefully prepare a custom marketing strategy exactly for your needs and finally help you manage all the channels of your marketing mix.

So stop wasting your money on bad decisions. Contact us and let us help you today!

E-Commerce Explained

Have you ever thought about how cool would it be to have your own online store? Selling products or services to people all over the country, or even whole world? E-Commerce can seem like a crowded market, but it’s still a growing field with an increasing share in global shopping every year. So no worries, it’s never too late to hop in!

Starting your online business is actually much easier than going the old “offline” way. Remember that the Internet doesn’t limit you in terms of location. For example, let’s say you live in a wine-producing region and you want to sell your delicious wine. Selling it traditionally, through a local store, would be pretty challenging because of the tough regional competition. But having your own e-commerce site would be a game-changer, enabling you to sell wherever you want. And that’s a HUGE difference! Suddenly, your business has got MANY other advantages… like online marketing tools, social media, personalized deals and offers, never-ending open hours, discretion and privacy, a broader customer base and much more!

However, no matter what you intend to sell, one thing is really crucial here. And that is the online store itself. But no worries, since that’s where WE come into play!

A successful online store has to be better than the competition. And the reason why we believe our stores are better is that all of them respect these 7 key elements:

No.1 – Deep Analysis

Every successful project needs to start by answering a few questions. About the target group, its specifics and how to reach it.

No.2 – Good Design 

Too many designers focus just on the homepage. Yes…the homepage is important, but most customers will enter a store through search engines directly to some of the products. That’s why our focus is also strongly oriented to product description pages, call-to-action buttons, and easy navigation through the site.

No.3 – Search Engine Optimization

Content is king. In the e-Commerce business, this is true more than anywhere else. However, you can only exploit the full potential of your site’s content if it’s properly Search Engine Optimized. No problem there… leave the SEO magic to us!

No.4 – Social Media integration

Just one example to give you an idea: Give your customers the opportunity to share their purchases with friends on social networks and watch the number of sales and new customers grow.

No.5 – Reliable Search engine

The worst thing is when a customer searches for something you actually sell but can’t find it. No worries, this will never happen in our stores, since we’ve put a lot of attention to the search engine functionality.

No.6 – Mobile version

The number of goods sold through mobile devices is growing rapidly every year. So you bet our stores are mobile friendly!

No.7 – Security

It is one of our highest priorities to treat sensitive personal data the right way. Secure storage of such information is essential for your store’s trustworthiness. That’s why all our e-commerce sites use state of the art security technologies.

Online business doesn’t have to be difficult if you put it in the hands of professionals. And obviously, by that, I mean our hands.

So take the first step to create your new online store and get in touch with us today!

Corporate Design Explained

Corporate Design…or…Visual Identity…or…Graphics Branding: All these fancy titles basically mean the same thing: establishing a VISUAL BOND between your business and the people connected to it: employees, contractors, partners… but most importantly: your customers.

Why is this important? Well, “company”, “business” or “brand”…these are just abstract terms, right? Until you give them some visual form that will represent them to the outside world. ‘Cause that’s the way to get people to remember you and differentiate from the competition! And this is not just about a logo. The search for a perfect visual identity needs to start from much deeper grounds by defining the corporate colors, fonts, and basic shapes. Based on these core elements, a logo is created. And, of course, an IT Security company will probably use a different set than a nonprofit environmental organization.

Now, any additional materials, prints or merchandise must be created on the basis of the new graphics fundamentals. So… letterheads, envelopes, business cards, mugs, T-shirts or even cars… all these should respect the defined styling. This is how you build coherence and consistency across visible components of your business, which strongly increases your trustworthiness and brand credibility.

Long story short – you’ve come to the right place since we do exactly what has been just described.

Together with your help, we will find the right core elements for your branding, design a visually appealing logo appropriate for your business field, and also produce any of the additional materials. And by “producing” I also mean that we can manage all the printing for you and deliver just the final outputs.

So what you’re waiting for? Contact us today and give your business a new face!

Content and Inbound Marketing

Content…or Inbound Marketing. Before telling you more about this modern approach, you must truly understand how traditional Outbound Marketing works.

In this older concept, the center of the process is the marketing message you want to spread out to your potential customers. And you can use various ways to do that: cold calls, TV or radio advertising, direct mail or newspaper ads. I’m not telling you these methods don’t work. They do, but they have soooo many disadvantages.

First, you need to spend a RIDICULOUS amount of money to get your marketing message to people. Second, not all of these people are actually your target audience, so only a part of them will react. Last but not least, some people will probably get angry since outbound marketing is sometimes perceived as aggressive advertising.

Content, or Inbound Marketing, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.

The center of the process is…guess what…CONTENT. It’s all about creating something interesting, helpful, …enjoyable. An Article, Blog, Video, Infographics – something that your prospects might be naturally attracted to when browsing the web or social networks. It’s a lot cheaper, more effective and nonaggressive.

To be honest, you’re watching a content marketing right now.

So, how can we help you more?

• We will find the right types of content for your business,
• optimize it for search engines to get you ranked higher,
• promote your content on social media and other channels,
• and finally…improve the conversion rates to turn even more visitors into customers.

Wait no more! Contact us today!

Email Marketing for Business

Why should your business use email marketing for business? Email marketing is a tool that almost everyone uses today. It’s a great way to contact your current and potential clients and promote your business by sending out newsletters. You can send this newsletter out monthly, weekly, or whatever frequency you team deems appropriate. But the important part is consistency! Not only do need to be consistent with your newsletter but need to give your customers a reason to want to receive your newsletters. One of the easiest ways to make your customers want to subscribe to your newsletters is by including coupon codes and other offers. Offers give an incentive to your customers and also encroaches them to purchase more of your products or services.

Email marketing is an excellent form of marketing and a remarkable way to keep in contact with your customers. It can, however, be very time consuming to stand up an email marketing solution. Those small businesses that do, generally never take full advantage of what an email platform can do because they rarely have the internal resources and know-how.

Email Marketing

You’re probably here to learn how email marketing can elevate your business. But, before we start, let me tell you a short story about email itself. The history of electronic mail stretches far back, all the way to the 1960s, so it’s actually older than the Internet! So yeah, it’s been with us a veeeeery long time. But still, I wouldn’t call it old. Rather, I’d call it traditional.

So how does this long-established communication method compare to the newbies like social media? Well, first off, many people simply don’t like social networks – they’re not active on them or haven’t even set up an account. But everybody’s got email address, right?

Secondly, most of the other marketing tools out there, like PPC, are great for bringing in new customers, but they’re poorly applicable when it comes to maintaining relationships with them. On the other hand, email marketing can be used for both.

Let’s see how.

Imagine that a small gift, a discount or let’s say free shipping, is offered to your prospect if he subscribes to your email newsletter. From there you send him the first email with the promised benefit and, BOOM, you got a new customer.

But email marketing really excels at maintaining the relationship with your customer. The moment you have his/her email address, you can remind them any time you need – send him new products you sell, what’s on sale for the week, what’s trending… Moreover, you can send him/her tailor-made offers based on his/her preferences or prior purchases. This way you can really encourage customers to get back to you and…you know…do some more business with you, right?

So now you know what email marketing is good for, so what’s OUR role in this?

• Do you know how to effectively build up your mailing list?
• …how often you should send newsletters?
• …how to catch attention with your emails instead of spamming your customers?
• …how to set up a system that will automate the mailing process?

Well, those are questions we’ll be happy to answer!

So, make the most out of email marketing for your business and contact us today!