So I fell off the blogging wagon. Only a 3.5 month lapse. Whoops. Oh well, it happens to the best of us. Moving forward.

So chapter 4 is a monster chapter. This book gets harder the deeper you get into it (if you are in fact working the book like you’re supposed to). Everytime I read a few pages I end up spending at least 20 minutes sorting out what the new info means to my company. That said it’s time well spent! I’m watching my business grow before my eyes and it’s great stuff! More importantly it definitely feels like I’m setting down a firm foundation and putting tools in place to really make things happen. It’s exciting to tell the truth. And more to the point, I wish I had read this before I started my business just over three years ago. Could’ve saved me from learning a lot of stuff the hard way.

So here we go:

Chapter 4 is all about molding how people perceive you. There is a huge list in John’s book of ways folks interact with your company, but the ones I singled out to work on are my e-mail signature (which currently implements some of the things he talks about but looks horribly cluttered), setting up a monthly newsletter which eventually I hope to move to being biweekly, our company motto, and the doosey – creationdepot.com.

First up -my Email Signature

My email signature is an easy one to mold because I design for a living. I can figure out how to make it look less cluttery and concise.

Current:

There’s nothing exactly wrong with the way it looks now, except that it’s really long and not a good reflection of a design company. Not to mention it’d be great to get folks to sign up for our newsletter through a link on here, as well as access a VCard for future reference. (It’s amazing to me that these are things I/we do for our customers regularly, but never turn the lens on ourselves. What a difference this is going to make!)

The Dreaded Newsletter

Newsletters are hands down a fantastic way for companies to regularly reach out to their customer database without spending tons of money. I do make sure to send out newsletters about general announcements – namely vacations, holiday closings, or an upcoming wedding – ah hem, but I’ve never been consistent about it. Before reading this chapter I had started a manilla folder in my file cabinet called “Weekly Working Folder”, and little things here and there that I want to tweet, Facebook, or include in a newsletter have been piling up in there. So now I have no excuse. I can writeup and ship out a newsletter in under an hour using my Constant Contact account. And to make sure that I make time for it, it has been added to a Friday afternoon task list.

Motto

Speaking of the logo, John talks about making sure both the logo and the motto reflect your target audience, and while I dare say our “motto” of “web and graphic design” couldn’t get more straight forward it doesn’t showcase the customers. (And yes I toyed with the idea of changing the company name but it’s just not realistic, at least for now.) So I came up with “The Small Business Design Company,” which actually sums up our customer base pretty accurately. We are a design company that specializes in small firms adn sole proprietorships, and that new motto alerts everyone who comes to the site that we won’t blow them off if they aren’t a Fortune 500 company.

Finally, this website

I sell WordPress websites like they’re going out of style, however this blog is the only thing on CreationDepot that is based in WordPress. I have felt for awhile now that I need to walk the walk and get behind the product more, and stop sending mixed messages. I think it’s such a great product, but I hardly use it for my own company. That’s a hard sell, and a not so easy way to change that is to make myself my own customer. I say “not so easy” not because it’s all that hard to do, but because as  a designer the opportunity to go nuts on a project like this is far too alluring. I haven’t changed the look of this site in over a year because it took months to put it together and be happy with it. I also haven’t changed the logo in years and years for the same reason. But it’s time to do something about it. My deadline for this new goal is March 31st – wish me luck!

And that pretty much sums up Chapter 4 for CreationDepot. This is one chapter you’ll want to spend a lot of time with. There’s a lot of information within a few pages, but there’s no doubt about how it’ll improve how customers see us.

’til Chapter 5!

- Wendy

P.S. If you’re interested in buying the book, please use this link.
(As of this post, Amazon has it for $11.43 and free shipping!)

How they operate is they pull your information from a site like whois.sc that show your registration information. Anyone can see not only who a domain name is registered to, but also their address, phone number, and when the domain name expires. Everything they need to be able to send you a renewal notice (that looks like a bill). Now those registration viewing sites have their purposes – for example finding out hosting information for customers who forgot who their hosting companies were. Here’s the problem, if you pay Domain Registry of America to renew your domain name will be renewed in your name for one year or two, but what’s happening is you’re giving them permission to transfer the domain name from your original company over to Domain Registry of America, and that can create a whole host of problems from making sure the transfer goes smoothly, to just making sure they still point to wherever your website is hosted after the transfer is completed. 

If you actually read the letter it is readily apparent that they are not the people you originally registered through, and it does say “This notice is not a bill” on the letter – but you still have to have to catch it. This is the same notice that has a tear-out payment stub at the bottom and reads “Domain Name Expiration Notice” at the top right. It’s extremely easy to mistake this for a bill. Don’t even get me started on the size 6 font used on the reverse side to outline the registration agreement that says they are not responsible for any suspension or loss of services, and if something goes wonky with a credit card (what happens if you have an card that expires after you use it and they go to renew?), you are subjected to a $200 reinstatement fee for them to reactivate your domain name for nonpayment. Essentially it reads like they’re going to hold you hostage until you cough up the $200. Now maybe they’re not that strict, but that’s what they have in writing.

Everything about this company screams shady to me, and it’s not because we sell domain names. It’s because once they’ve got your account, they’ve really GOT your account. I have customers call me all the time to ask about “this bill they’ve gotten in the mail,” and “didn’t they register their domain names through us?” I just wanted to set the record straight that if you get one of these “billings” in the mail, just be sure you read it all the way through and research the company before you hand over your information.

- Wendy

Part of what I really enjoy about designing is the challenge of getting creative while staying within a given set of rules, and all of Chapter 3 was exactly that type of challenge.

This is a juicy chapter folks. This is where you learn how to figure out the basis for all your marketing materials. You pound out three things this chapter: a marketing purpose statement, a talking logo (which is really powerful), and a simple core message, and I can’t wait to share mine with you.

In Chapter 2 we figured out who our ideal client was – a non-industry specific small business that has no internal marketing department, 1 – 30 employees, and is located in Northern Virginia. Now we take that one step further and figure out what we are accomplishing for that small business. Here’s what I came up with:

Marketing Purpose Statement

We are graphic and website designers that deliver proofed, quality-driven products on-time and on-budget. We will put out nothing that we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting into our online portfolio.* We provide top-notch customer service with lightning quick response times, are not afraid to give frank and honest answers. We provide end products that customers will not only be proud of, they will want to show them off.

* In fact we might just start putting ALL of our work online just to back that up.

Talking Logo

A talking logo refers to that exchange when someone asks you what you do for a living. Here you work through how to create an answer that not only gets the conversation going, but ensures the person you’re addressing actually remembers you:

What do you do for a living?

I show small business owners how to increase their cash flow on a predictable, stacking, and recurring basis.

How do you do that?

I sit down with the decision makers of that business, learn how their business runs, what they are currently doing, and what goals they have. Then for phase one I set them up with a tailored marketing plan that attracts their most valuable customers, improving both customer base and their cash flow. Then for phase two we take those happy clients and convert them into referring (and in most cases recurring) customers.

Simple Core Message

This is for all intensive purposes your core message is similar to your company jingle or motto. It’s part of what helps folks remember you. For years now our “motto” has simply been what we do for a living – “web and graphic design” – which while extremely descriptive, isn’t catchy. This part of the exercise took me a long time to figure out, mostly because I wanted to say too much, and the purpose of this message is to be short and sweet. So here’s what I came up with:

The Small Business’ Marketing Department

Simple and to the point right? It took me forever to get to that, and a lot of scribbling and crossing out. I think my legal pad just quit on me. I’ll also say that if it wasn’t for the sea of examples in the book, I doubt that core message would ever have happened. Others I came up with and tossed: “Your Marketing Support System,” “We Get Small Businesses Online and in Print,” “No Nonsense Marketing,” and many, many more that were okay, but either didn’t cover everything we do or were just plain bad.

What ultimately got me to this message was remembering what makes us unique – that we have a tenancy to become the silent art department of all the small businesses we serve. We get all kinds of questions asking what we think about running a certain campaign, or should we put money into pay-per-click advertising, etc. We also get calls from clients who just want to share that they’re excited about their growing business, a new product they want to launch, or they’ve have had some major success or setback. It’s like we’re a part of their business, because we are, and that has a lot to do with how our business runs.

So yeah, a long post but like I said there’s a lot of good step-by-step info in this chapter. As for Chapter 4, to tell you the truth I’m not really sure what we’re in for. The title is “Wake Up the Senses with an Image to Match Your Message,” but I have no idea what that actually means. Not sure if we’ll be revamping graphics, dressing more professionally, or trying out aromatherapy, but I’ll let you know in the next post!

Post questions or comments below, and thanks for reading!

- Wendy

P.S. If you’re interested in buying the book, please use this link.
(As of this post, Amazon has it for $11.31 and free shipping!)

As the title suggests, Chapter 2 is all about figuring out who your ideal client is. For those of us who have been in business for awhile this is a bit of a frustrating exercise because most of us know who the “always pays, pays on time, gives good projects, is a pleasure to work with” clients are. I was still surprised by a few things in this chapter though because even as a marketer myself it made me look at my clients with a new eye and I discovered a few things.

First, my clients are not typical. I printed out a list of all our clients and divided them into categories as I worked through each section of the chapter, and I noticed that I don’t really have one dominate industry. There are leanings of course, such as arts/music, construction, and professional services (i.e. attorneys), but when I looked at the company sizes, they are predominately a sole proprietorship, or small businesses (LLCs to S Corps) with up to roughly 30 employees, with only a handful of companies larger than that.

Now the neat part, most of my referrals came from art or music-based sites, automobile-based sites, and technology-based sites. So go figure – those are industries that have nothing to do with each other, so why are they generating the most referrals? Well one thing I noticed was that the referrals we were getting weren’t generally referrals to the same industry, instead they were usually to friends and family who were either starting out on their own or were having a very hard time with their current webmaster. The folks who were referring us had such a good experience with us that when they came across someone complaining about their site, they were happy to mention us.

So we definitely have a niche – small businesses, although Mr. Jantsch would prefer we narrow that down a bit to say “arts and music websites for small business owners” I have to say I do like being diverse. It helps to keep the creativity juices flowing, otherwise I fear it would become monotonous.

So what is our “Ideal Prospect Profile?” Here’s what I came up with:

Our ideal prospect is a product or service-based small business owner with 1-30 employees, and no internal marketing department who is located in the Northern Virginia area. They typically have been in business for several years, and have been successful but could do much better with proper marketing.

The biggest problem our ideal prospect faces is that they know how to perform their service or produce their product extremely well, but marketing it is a completely foreign concept. As a result they stay in business, but they don’t dominate their industry.

The best way to reach these ideal prospects is through online media, referrals, email blasts, and education about products and services we have available and how they can be used to bring in more customers or sell more products.

The most common frustration our clients seem to have is that because they don’t understand marketing, except that it can be expensive, is that they just don’t want to deal with it. They have so many other demands on their time that learning a whole new industry is both daunting and seemingly impossible. They get upset when they don’t hear back from their marketing techies – webmasters, printers, etc. – and when turnaround times are much, much longer than expected.

So I’ll conclude with the first question Jantsch asks: “What’s the problem?”

He’s really asking what it is that you are solving for your customers, and in our case it’s the problem of creating regular customer flow (getting folks in the door of business, or interested in buying a product). They know they need to get products and their services in front of customers, but what they really want is for customers to come to them (not the other way around), and our mission is to create that customer flow for our clients so they can focus on just running the business.

Until Chapter 3!

- Wendy

P.S. If you’re interested in buying the book, please hit up this link. Helps me monetize these posts. Thanks!

Like most marketing books, the first chapter in Duct Tape Marketing is centered around easing you into the idea of what a strategy is versus a marketing tactic, which frankly any small business owner needs to know. For example, creating a plan of attack versus the actual attack.

So far Duct Tape’s Marketing Strategy isn’t that different than most, so I’m guessing the acclaimed award winning material is further into the book (and after flipping through I can vouch that appears to be true!).

Here’s the overview:

1. Decide Who Matters
2. Be Different
3. Connect the Dots

Author John Jantsch spends substantial time talking about the old answer to why customers should choose you over your competition – “Because we’re different!” – which also happens to be what everyone says. He rips that answer apart, with good reason, giving insight for the reader into how their customers actually view a business. Essentially he says that everyone always think they’re the best, so why then doesn’t everyone prosper?

Here’s how I answered the “What Makes Us Different?” question:

1. We are easily accessible. We’re online, on social media, publicize our address and phone numbers in many different places, and we pick up the phone!
2. We become a part of the customer’s team. We often become the invisible marketing department at many small businesses. Becoming apart of brain storming meetings, and being budget conscious with our ideas has helped us to carve out a niche.
3. We’re not afraid to say “no.” We do get customers who come to us with an idea in mind and we have to politely but firmly tell them that’s a bad idea.  It doesn’t always go over very well, but once explained it’s still a let down but usually a more solid plan is devised.
4. Our clients stick around. We still have most of our first clients, which I think says a lot. We’ve been able to hold onto them for many, many years now just because we’re reliable and true to both them and ourselves. People want to deal with real people, not big promise makers.

That’s it for now! Onto Chapter Two!

- Wendy

P.S. If you’re interested in buying the book, please hit up this link. Helps me monetize these posts. Thanks!

Most of our customers are small to medium-size businesses, as well as entrepreneurs and even designers who are just starting out. How cool would it be to take popular books on marketing and apply their tactics and ideas to CreationDepot? The results of which could be reported on our blog, and then folks could judge for themselves on the quality of the books and if their tactics would be of help to other small businesses – we are after all small ourselves. And what better guinea pig for marketing skills then at a marketing company?

But wait… we’re a graphics design company. Right, but like the cobbler’s children who have no shoes often times we actually quite often forget to market ourselves; equating being busy with being successful. Starting today and with Chapter 1, I’ll be going through this book page by page and applying ideas and taking notes and reporting back here with the progress made with each chapter.

I’d love to hear from you all if there are any books to suggest for Round 2 – 200 of this “Marketing Books in Action” series! Shoot me a comment below or an e-mail and I’ll start gathering a list of newbie strategy books.

’til the end of Chapter One!

- Wendy

(Also need to be able to edit it yourself on the fly, without the help of a web guru?)

WordPress websites from CreationDepot are the way to go. They include a blog, a content management system, a domain name, and up to 5 email addresses.

For $460 customers get:

• a domain name of their choice (provided it’s available)
  i.e. www.yourdomainname.com
  
• hosting for 6 months with up to 5 email addresses
  i.e. wendy@yourdomainname.com
  
• and the latest version of WordPress installed (with database)

Sites go online within 48 hours after receiving payment – often the same day if payment is received before 2 p.m. Sites also do not include themes, although if you have them we’re happy to install them for $25 each.

Want to keep the site hosted with us after 6 months?
Great! It’s just $10/mo thereafter, and that includes hosting your e-mail addresses.

Please note that this offer does not include extensive training on how to use WordPress, however that said there is a plethora of information on YouTube.com (just search for the keywords “WordPress Tutorials”). It does include our quick run thru of the admin panel!

Interested? Just give us a shout via the phone at (703) 531-8669 or via our online contact form. Thanks and talk to you soon!

Front - Click to enlarge

Back - Click to enlarge

Keep an eye out for our next contest or promotion on our Facebook page!

http://www.facebook.com/CreationDepot

Easy solutions for Search Engine Optimization

Okay so you’ve managed to get a website up and running for your company, and you know you should do some search engine optimization (SEO) but you don’t know where to start. Truthfully there is a football field wide of things you COULD do for search engine optimization, but we’re going to focus on what you can do that’s low-tech and still effective. The goal here is to enable small business owners to empower their websites by marketing effectively using the appropriate keywords and content for their target audience.

Step 1. Content is King

When you write your content for your pages, write for your audience and for your product. That sounds obvious but let me explain. First, write for your audience meaning mention them in  your words. For example if your audience is teenagers, use “teens,” “teenagers,” “youth” etcetera throughout your page. Secondly when writing for your product, use all the different ways you can refer to that product. For example if you have a pencil as your product, you would use words like “writing utensil,” “eraser,” “graphite,” all in addition to “pencil” or “pencils.” The idea here is to catch traffic from every way someone could possibly search for your product.

Step 2. Pictures are worth a thousands words

Images used on websites have the option to have behind the scenes “tags” attached to them which you can manipulate to add keywords to – much like you did above in Step 1 with your text content. If you use WordPress for example, when you go to add in an image, you’ll see “title,” “alt text,” “caption,” and “description.” These all go a long way to adding keywords to your page without affecting reading quality or cluttering up the page. Still make these readable however, as a lot of handicap software reads this content to the user. To utilize these, just fill them all in with your keyword phrases for the content you are specifically writing about – not what your website is about. Remember, Google indexes pages and everyone doesn’t necessarily come through your homepage first so you want the searcher to find you relevant.

Step 3. Put the important stuff in big letters

Finally, the last thing a low-tech small business owner has control over without going into coding or more advanced SEO options, is the size of the text. Websites have these things called “header tags,” and they are created via numbers. For example, the largest header tag is “H1,” the second largest, “H2″ and so on. If you’re using a content editor, you probably will never see the numbered versions. Instead you’ll see something like “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” and so on. In WordPress this can be found by clicking on that double row of dots (see the photo below) to get the second line of icons to show up. Then click on the drop down box where it says “Paragraph,” and finally choose your heading size.

WordPress Icons with "Kitchen Sink" icon enabled to show the second row of icons (last icon on the top row - far right)

Make sure your headings are keyword friendly. Google gives more SEO weight to the text in higher heading tags, so you want to be sure the most relevant keywords are going into your headings and subheadings.

And that’s it. Honestly this goes a LONG way towards helping to optimize a website, so if you’re trying to do SEO on a budget, start here with your content. Later on when you’re site’s generating revenue, bring in the hired hands to take the site to the next level. And not going to lie, this is time consuming, but if you do a little each day or each week you’ll be surprised how fast it goes.

That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions by commenting below!

- Wendy

BBB Winter Newsletter Final – DC