What does your business do better than anyone else in your market? I hope you can answer that question. If you don’t, you’ll be forced to differentiate on price (and you will need to get comfortable with the idea of slashing your profit margins – not fun).

Businesses that fail to differentiate are doomed to compete on price. Do 1 or 2 things better than anyone else, or you will struggle to be profitable.

One more thing: you won’t be able to do 1 or 2 things better than anyone else if you try to be all things to all people. Don’t do that. Stay focused.

Don’t Differentiate On Price is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

I just read a thought-provoking article at the New York Times. It begins by noting the recent eulogies given to Google + by such sources as Slate and Forbes. To be entirely transparent, if you would have asked me before reading this article, I’d agree. I simply haven’t (yet) seen what differentiates Google + from Facebook, and I didn’t see people moving their entire social network to a new platform.

And maybe that is true. But, as the NY Times article points out, that won’t necessarily matter. As the article points out, Google doesn’t view + as separate product. To them, it is the product, and the product is search. The NY Times article refers to + as

“a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company’s flagship product: search”

Well said. With the debut of Google + pages for businesses, the day will come when not having a presence on Google + will hurt a businesses effort to rank highly in a particular local search market. It won’t be long before companies like 417 Marketing will be asking business owners if they have a page on Google +. Not because we are new+shiny product pushers or because it’s the cute thing to do, but because having this presence will be required to be on the top-third of the first page.

Who cares if this is a good thing or not? Maybe it is…maybe it isn’t. The point is that Google is in the drivers’ seat, and if they decide to place weight on whether or not you have a Google + page or not, we’ll all be rushing to comply. Maybe we should save ourselves the trouble and just get one set up now.

So that’s what I’m advising you to do. Soon, I’ll act on my own advice.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions.

How SEO Will Keep Google + Alive is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

I think it’s important to adjust our expectations every now and then.

Take a company website, for example. What do you expect out of having a website built? Here are common expectations I come across:

I just want something simple.

Question: why would you ever tell a Web design company that? All this says is that you don’t care about your Web presence. Think of it this way: when you were a child, did you ever think to yourself that you want to grow up to do everything at a mediocre level? No? I didn’t either. That’s why you don’t want to ask for a simple website. When you do this, you attract mediocrity. Websites aren’t simple. Not if they are done correctly. They can look simple (actually, simple is good when it comes to design), but for it to work as a cash register, simple just won’t cut it.

I want something really great, but I don’t want to pay for it.

Good look with that!

I want something really great, and I am willing to pay for it.

Good for you. My advice? Be really, really picky about who you write the check to. Talk to multiple companies. Listen intently to each. Look for key differences. And don’t do business with companies that spend half their time with you badmouthing competitors. Look, I’m not immune to telling people the truth. If you ask me about one of my competitors and they are terrible at what they do, I’ll let you know. If you ask me about a competitor and they are awesome at what they do, I’ll tell you that too. I’m just advising you avoid doing business with the types of companies that are more interested in pointing out what is wrong with a company than what they can do for you. It should be obvious.

Here’s the bottom line: No Web/SEO company is capable of miracles. But the right Web design and/or SEO firm for your business can come pretty close. Choose wisely. And adjust your expectations. If you are wise in your decision, you’ll be amazed at what a strong online marketing strategy built into a website and SEO campaign can do to grow your business.

*** Let me add this ***

Pick a Web design company to build your website. This should also be obvious. Be wary of companies that are all things to all people – they are typically companies that do everything decently. Pick a company that does a couple things but does those things extremely well. Think about it. Do you go to IHOP for the great coffee? No, you go there for pancakes. If you want great coffee, try Hebrews or The Coffee Ethic. They don’t just “do coffee.” They dominate those beans.

*** End edit ***

Go Cardinals!

Adjust Your Expectations is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

I’ll be teaching a course offered by the Urban District Alliance Tuesday, May 17th at 6pm at OTC. The course is titled “Web Strategies for Small Business.” Best of all, the course is free. Some come on down and learn something!

Click here to read the press release.

Come Learn Something For Free is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

Some call it “giving back.” I prefer “doing good.”

417 Marketing has exceeded my expectations as a business. It has given me so much. Liberty. Confidence. A part of my purpose. A way to provide for my growing family. It has been a huge blessing. When I reflect on these blessings, I feel motivated to use the business as a platform for doing good.

***

Sometimes you have to listen to your customers. When 417 Marketing began, our purpose was to give small businesses the opportunity to hire a team to serve a mini-marketing department. It wasn’t a terrible idea. But it had its faults. So we adjusted. Today, we keep things simple. Hosting. Web Design. SEO. That’s what we do. It wasn’t a hard decision to move in the direction we did, and we haven’t looked back. If we hadn’t listened to our customers we may not be here. But we are still here, and we are stronger than ever. It turns out listening to your customers actually works. Imagine that.

***

Sometimes you have to listen to what is inside. When my wife and I took a tour of Harmony House in the absolute worst part of snow-mageddon 2010-2011 (there was a foot of snow on the ground), it hit us hard. We still talk about that visit – frequently. The stories of abused and battered women that find a new start there. The kids that are pulled from their beds in the middle of the night to go there. The small rooms. The humble quarters.

Women frequently find themselves trapped. Trapped in abusive relationships with (what seems like) no hope. Without places like Harmony House, where would some of these women go? Too often, they are forced with a choice of:

1. Continue to be physically and/or verbally abused
2. Become homeless

That’s not acceptable.

***

I’m in a BNI group here in Springfield, and they’ve been asking me to give a seminar over the past couple of months. Not demanding it or anything, but asking. Honestly, I was having a hard time getting inspired about the idea, mostly because we’ve been really busy and I’m about to welcome my first child into the world. Frankly, other things have been pressing.

But when I realized I could satisfy their request for another seminar AND turn it into a fund-raising event for Harmony House? Let’s just say when I get inspired I move quickly.

***

Here’s where we are know:

This is an opportunity to raise $2000-$3000 (maybe more) for the Harmony House. This money will help them better fit the needs of the people they serve: abused women. I’m selling tickets (limited to 50 due to space restrictions) to this seminar, and all proceeds are going to them (roughly 75-85% of all revenues will go directly to them as expenses for the event are low). 417 Marketing will not take one dime. Nor will I. Once the food is paid for and eventbrite.com take their small percentage, the rest is for Harmony House.

Added bonus: I will teach you to market yourself or your business using the Internet. I know that sounds vague, but I’m trying to keep the idea simple here. Want a more complex explanation? Here is what I’ll be addressing:

1. Why most people view their website the wrong way (and how to change your mindset)
2. Social media, unreasonable expectations, and the failed strategies behind the predictable disappointment
3. Using search engines to build brand exposure and increase sales

That’s the event in a nutshell. But I reserve the right to change the outline. Here’s what I can promise though: you will learn something. If you don’t, tell me and I’ll give you your money back and donate your ticket price to Harmony House myself.

Will you join me in this effort?

Click here for more information or to register for the event.

If listening to what’s inside works half as well as listening to our customers, this event will be a success. But it can’t be done without you.

Doing Good is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

Comic from theoatmeal.com

I have a theory. If you are in business, your email address can say a lot about you. That may not be something you’ve thought about before, but I think there is something to this idea, and I personally think there is a big difference in perception between yourcompanyname@aol.com and info@yourcompanyname.com.

To test this idea, I decided to ask people on Facebook what they thought, and I tried to make sure I didn’t ask a leading question. I got some great answers, and I hope that the answers I got will provide some insight.

Here is what I asked:

“When you see a business email address that doesn’t end in (nameofbusiness.com or .net, or .whatever), what goes through your mind?”

I was pretty pleased to receive several answers. If you do business without a professional email address, listen up.

Todd (small business owner and technical professional)

“If you want to look professional while conversing with someone through email, the first step is to get a legitimate and respectable email address. If [somebody] email[s] you from businessname@gmail.com, that shows that [they] perhaps do not own businessname.com.

Tyler (works in marketing department of a Fortune 100 company)

“looks amateur and less reliable”

Layla (advertising sales professional with over 10 years experience in the industry)

“It ranks right up there with a company not having a website. Not a fan.”

Kristin (entrepreneur and business owner)

“I would assume its a personal email. I would view it as less legitimate, although I realize I shouldn’t.”

Kristin #2 (I had 2 different Kristin’s reply)

“If it doesn’t end in @company I usually assume it’s someone not big enough to have a storefront and they work from home.”

Tom (CEO of a company in Florida)

“Knowing how easy and cheap it is to set up a domain name AND being in the technical industry, I would not consider them as a viable vendor.”

Russell (business consultant for a Fortune 500 company)

“When I see @hotmail or @yahoo, or @somethingelseold, I perceive the business as being behind the times.”

Glenn (serial entrepreneur and overall bright guy)

“Illegitimate and possibly a scam.”

I think these responses speak for themselves. If you own a business and don’t have a professional email address (an email address ending in yourcompanyname.com), I think you might be surprised at the impression this leaves potential buyers.

With services such as Google Apps (free for organizations of 10 employees or less and reasonable for bigger companies) and domain registration services starting at around $10/year, who can blame the people above for how they feel about this? Ask yourself this question: what is holding you back from taking this step? It sure isn’t money.

What Your Email Address Says About Your Business is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

I’m a huge WordPress fan and advocate. In fact, I recently convinced a fellow Web Designer to start using WordPress as a platform. Why do I love WordPress so much?

1. It’s open source, which means all kinds of people that are smarter than I am are developing extremely useful plugins and themes
2. The Content Management System (CMS) is simple, easy-to-use, and powerful.
3. From an Search Engine Optimization standpoint, it sings. Google loves it.
4. The robust blogging platform makes content creation and publishing simple.

Those are just a few reasons I love WordPress off the top of my head. I could go on and on.

But that isn’t what I want to write about today. If I haven’t convinced you to use WordPress to develop your next site, fine. Your loss. But if I have convinced you to use WordPress, today I want to help you learn how to pick an awesome WordPress theme.

What is a WordPress Theme? A theme basically dictates the design and functionality of the site you are about to build.

Here are 5 steps to picking an awesome WordPress Theme:

1. Be willing to spend a little money. While there are free themes available, many are full of coding errors, design flaws, and even viruses and trojan horses. Yikes! I advise you to avoid free themes. Especially when you consider that there are many great themes out there for around $35. So don’t be a cheapskate here, it’ll burn you.
2. Check out themeforest.net to begin browsing options.
3. Quickly narrow down the field from around 1000 theme options to about 20 by choosing the WordPress theme category and then sorting by feedback. I only recommend looking at themes with a 5-star feedback rating and a decent number of sales.
4. Pick themes with great documentation. When you are buying a theme, this is a big part of what you are paying for. What is documentation? Documentation includes tools to make your job of customizing a theme easier. It can include video tutorials and written tutorials. There are a lot of themes out there with mediocre documentation. Your job is to pick one with great documentation.
5. Check out the comment section of a theme. Does the theme creator respond to questions in a timely manner? If not, move along.

Before I go, I want to pass along an endorsement. For my money, Jason Bobich of Theme Blvd. is the best WordPress theme developer out there. He combines awesome design, expert coding, and superb documentation that adds up to the best themes I’ve ever worked with. And I’ve worked with quite a few.

Hope this helps!

How to pick a WordPress Theme is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

Congratulations! You’ve decided to build a website. Now where do you start? How do you find a quality website designer?

Know Your Keyword Strategy

You should be building your website with the goal of being easy for your potential customers to find. I realize this sounds obvious, but few people take this approach.

People with money to burn and things to buy use Google to search for what they want. They search using keywords. For example, if I want a cup of coffee I’ll go to Google and search “coffee springfield mo.” “Coffee springfield mo” is the keyword phrase. It’s what I entered into Google’s search engine. Make sense? Good. Let’s move on.

So before you register a domain, secure hosting, or hire a designer, you should know your keyword strategy. What keyword will you optimize your site for? To decide, consider what keyword or keyword phrase your buyers use to find what you sell, how many people are searching this keyword, and how easy or hard will it be for you to show up near the top of page one on Google for this keyword or keyword phrase.

Fortunately, Google offers a research tool called the Google Adwords Keyword Tool that offers the answers to these questions. This free tool gives you an estimate of monthly keyword search volume. This tool can be found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Visit the link if you’d like – it’s fun and easy to use.

If you own a business, it doesn’t take long to find your online search market using this free tool. For example, if you owned a coffee shop in Springfield, Missouri, you’d quickly notice that 1,000 people per month search “coffee springfield mo” using Google. So the online search market for such a business is 1,000 people per month. Pretty neat, huh?

So now you have a keyword strategy. How can you find a website designer that will help you help you put your strategy to work and get you in front of people looking to buy what you sell?

Find a Quality Website Designer

Too often, consumers are laser-focused on how their website looks. Looks are important. But they aren’t as important as whether or not your potential customers can find you. If you aren’t showing up near the top of the first page of Google for your keyword or keyword phrase, nobody will care about how pretty your site looks.

You can spend thousands of dollars paying your Web designer to make sure your site looks like a piece of art. Just understand that your competitor might be focusing on getting all the Web traffic and online leads while you do so.

So what should you be focused on? How about keeping it simple? Focus on whether or not the people that want what you make can find you on Google.

How do you find a website designer that can do what is necessary to place your business near the top of Google’s search engine returns? Ask them the following questions:

1. What do you think our keyword strategy should be? What keyword should we optimize for? Can you help me research this?
2. What will you do for me to optimize the site for this keyword?
3. What steps will you take to ensure quality on-page search engine optimization?
4. Will you validate the code used to write this website with using the W3C validator tools?
5. Do you know what SEO stands for? (I’m only half-joking. But if they don’t…run…seriously.)

If they can’t answer the above questions, keep looking…

…or you could just hire us.

Thanks for reading.

Read This Before Building Your Next Website is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

Last week on our Facebook page we asked if our friends could sum up their feelings or attitudes towards marketing in one word. We were in the mood for a little word association. The results were equal parts revealing, witty, and enlightening. You can learn a lot by listening.

Here’s what marketing is to those that responded:

Exciting!

We couldn’t agree more, Sheila!. After all, the rules of marketing have completely changed…for the better. 15 years ago, messaging was controlled by the powers that were at TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers. You had to pay to play. Today, anybody with passion for what they do can reach a sizable audience on the Internet. It all comes down to how much you are willing to adapt. It’s an exciting time to be a marketer or business owner selling a product or service!

Scary!

Yes it can be, Todd. Change is hard. With all the changes taking place in the industry, it is easy to see why it can be scary. Even if you are willing to embrace the change, capitalizing on the new rules of marketing can be challenging. To do so, one much become familiar with concepts such as search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, keyword strategy, content creation, inbound marketing, and social media (and that’s just for starters). It’s a lot of new information. And that can be scary. But it can also be incredibly rewarding.

Dry

My friend Valerie has a point! To many, this can be a dry and boring subject. When I took an undergraduate marketing class, I was bored to tears. I wanted to bang my head against the wall. Let me let you in on a little secret: most academics are at least 15-20 years behind the times. Sorry. It’s true. University marketing classes need to stop teaching the 5 P’s and start teaching things like search engine optimization, inbound marketing, content creation, and social media. Will it ever happen? Sure. Maybe 10 years from now. You know, when the next marketing revolution occurs. College classes are (for the most part) history courses in this area. The truth hurts. If you want to learn the new rules of marketing, I hope you are ready to teach yourself.

The difference between failure and success

Luther Piper of BlakTraks Mobile Oil Change broke the rule here (he used more than one word)…but he was right! Do I really need to add anything to what he said? Nope! Moving on…

Fun!

Tony Taylor of Tony Taylor Insurance says it is fun! Again, who are we to argue? We think it’s fun too. The great thing about marketing today is that it is so measurable. What could be more fun than coming up with a strategy and measuring its success? It hasn’t always been this way. 15 years ago, you couldn’t come up with a new content creation strategy and sit back and watch website traffic explode (along with sales). You had to throw your line out into the ocean of advertising and pray that a big tuna took a bite. Not anymore!

Sales

My friend Diana gave us this one. Thanks Diana! Marketing and sales are often thought to be one in the same. But they can be very different disciplines. Marketers are charged with creating awareness. Salespeople are charged with creating relationships. I saw a saying one time that I liked. I wish I could remember the source. It said “sales is marketing, but marketing is not sales.” I thought it was well-said.

Employment

Gary Bennett of DL Media gave us this nugget. We agree. If you can learn valuable and modern skills such as search engine optimization (SEO), inbound marketing, content creation, and social media, you will make yourself very valuable in the modern economy. Businesses have to sell things. To sell things, awareness must be created. The Internet is (and will be) the ideal medium to create awareness for this decade.

Thank you so much to our Facebook friends for their responses!

What is marketing to you? If you missed out on the Facebook conversation, let us know what it means to you in one word. You can use the comment section below.

Thank you for reading…

Marketing is… is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.

Before getting into the best WordPress plugins out there, let’s cover a couple of definitions for the uninitiated among us.

WordPress is the world’s most widely-used open source Content Management System (CMS). While it is often used as a blog, WordPress is powerful enough to run entire websites. So it isn’t just a blogging platform. WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, and has exciting features such as templates and plugins that make building great websites relatively easy. WordPress is used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites in the world, no small feat considering the breadth of options available.

Plugins are simply applications that enhance the capabilities of WordPress and make it easier to work with. Most plugins are free.

Today, we’d like to share with you the 5-best and most essential WordPress plugins out there. Our opinions are highly subjective, but these are plugins we want you to know about.

#1: All-in-One SEO Pack

The All-in-One SEO Pack makes on-page search engine optimization easy. For this reason, it’s our top pick. With this plugin, adding Meta tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords has never been easier. This is a good thing, as too many websites are missing these important elements (and missing out on online lead generation and/or online sales as a result).

#2: Askimet

Askimet allows you to stop moderating comments. It automatically checks comments left on your website against the Askimet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If it’s spam, they toss the comment out. To keep the service honest, you can review the spam it catches to make sure the plugin is doing its job correctly. Here’s the thing: it does. We’ve been using it for months, and it just works. Period. There are two things that make using this plugin essential. One, your readers will never have to type in a CAPTCHA again. Two, your readers will never have to wait for their comment to be moderated again (this drives us nuts when we visit other blogs!).

#3: Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog. If that sentence makes your head hurt, just know this: it makes it easier for Google to read your website. That’s a good thing. If Google can’t or doesn’t read your website, that’s bad. You want them to read it so they can share your website with people that use the Internet and have money burning a hole in their pocket. Consider this an essential WordPress plugin if you prefer to trade your labor and/or skills for money.

#4 Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

Consider this one a cherry on the top of your delicious WordPress sundae. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded will change the way people use your blog. Without it, people just stop in, leave a comment, and never return. With this plugin, your readers can click a box saying they wish to be notified of follow-up comments via email. This email notification will (in some cases) cause the reader to return and leave a comment. This will give you more Web traffic, more comments, and it will make your blog more conversational. That’s what we all want right? I hope so! Curious how it works? Leave a comment to this post and then click the box to subscribe to follow up comments!

#5: TweetMeme

Guy Kawasaki once called this the most important button on the Internet. It probably isn’t at that level today, but it is certainly still highly effective when it comes to getting your message to the masses. Twitter has proven to be a highly effective viral marketing tool. If you have something important or interesting to say, odds are Twitter will go a long way in getting your voice heard. Within the Twitter-sphere, there is nothing more valuable than a ReTweet. A ReTweet occurs when someone that reads your content re-broadcasts it to all of their followers. When this happens, viral marketing magic happens. TweetMeme makes it easy for your blogs’ readers to ReTweet your content, which will bring you more traffic, more comments, and (hopefully) more business.

That’s our list. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Did we leave something off of our list? Would you like to suggest a plugin that should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments! And as always, thanks for reading.

Best WordPress Plugins is a post from: 417 Marketing

Copyright 417 Marketing, a Web Design Springfield MO firm. All rights reserved.