Scan our fancy QR code for a special message.  We are working on a little marketing push for next month and are adding it to a few pieces of our collateral.

We have designed a new logo for our upcoming branding overhaul.  We will follow with a shiny new website and corporate ID!

I found a great article at the Mills Communications Group blog about the importance of listening when engaging in marketing through social media.  I agree that this is a very important task that should take place daily, weekly and monthly.  Before you just go blabbing and shamelessly promoting yourself have a listen.

Read the article titled-  Listening: The First Step To Social Networking Success

I just read a great article at the Neuroscience Marketing Blog about how bad websites increase stress levels.  Take a look at the article it’s a great read:  http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/web-stress.htm

This really brings home the fact that you want a website that is going to simplify your potential client’s life, not complicate it.  Your business was established to provide a solution.  If you are creating more problems with your client through your bad website the client will be less likely to contact you for your services.

I just read a Great Article at Problogger.net about 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media For Small Business.  The article reiterates a lot of the advice that I personally give to small business owners.  Especially the advice about blogging and focusing on the outlets that will be the most powerful for your business.

Our focus is mostly on development and design but we often integrate social media into websites.  People want to know what works and what doesn’t.  It really depends on what your goals are.  Determine your goals before you start your social networking and online marketing. This will save you a lot of time.  Unless you have a larger team, you can’t participate fully in every single one.  It’s better to just pick 1 and build on that.  Don’t participate in another until you think you can handle it.

Here’s the goods:

CLICK TO ENLARGE or go to CMO.com to download a PDF

You can find me here:

Or Creative Director Jason Rampe here:

You need a comprehensive marketing strategy, just like in the real world.

The world of online marketing, networking, SEO and promotion can often seem like some form of “dark art”.  A web strategy consultant can guide you down the most effective path and break down all of the possibilities in plain English.

So what are the overall benefits?

1.  You will spend less money and time by only utilizing the most effective tools and strategies that are tailored to your goals and budget.

2. You will have a set of realistic goals that can be built upon within the short and long term.

3.  More people will visit your website and know about your business.

4.  You will have a strategy tailored specifically to your business, industry and target audience.

5.  Your business will streak ahead of the competition by taking advantage of insider knowledge and proven strategies.

You may want to know, “How do I take that first step?”.

All you need to do is CONTACT US and we can talk to you and learn about your goals and ambitions online.  We will then research your industry, target audience and competition.  After sufficient research has been completed, we can create a report containing a strategy on how to accomplish your goals and increase your online exposure.  We will layout each avenue and it’s cost, pros, cons, and prospective reach.  We will formulate a combination of various advertising, networking, promotional and SEO strategies among other outlets.

Online Business Solutions

You’ve gone through all the steps and now you’re business officially has a web presence.  How do you take the next step?

Web Strategy Consulting

An Efficient and Comprehensive web strategy is the most important aspect of making you business thrive online.  Our outlook on the current state of the web is that websites are no longer just online brochures. They are freestanding business machines that interact with potential customers, sell products, establish your credibility and expand your network.
We will get to know your business, discover your goals online and explore the best ways to fulfill them.  Creation-1 can provide competitive analysis, third party technology research, content analysis, information/site architecture, open source strategy development, market research, and overall business strategy implementation.

SEO

The best and least labor intensive strategy in gaining traffic and search engine rank.  We can modify the code in your website to get it more recognition from major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  We will use multiple techniques and coding languages to help your business be seen by more people.

Advertising

Advertising works!  You know it…We know it.  So what are you waiting for?  Get your business out there! Creation-1 will manage your campaign using a  combination of powerful advertising outlets. With plans to match any budget, we deliver new customers right to your “doorstep.”

Networking

Networking is an essential tool for any business.  Creation-1 will get more people linking to your business and talking about your products in online publications.  By establishing your site firmly in the online community you will gain more inbound links and increase overall traffic to your website.  Reach your target market by aligning yourself with the websites that matter most to them.

Let’s Create Business!

So Now what?  Sit around and wait for the customers to come through the door?  Of course not.  Like any business, if a website is to succeed it must be easily found, properly promoted and enjoy a network of professionals all working toward similar goals. These are just general descriptions of the solutions we offer.  After a consultation we can create a detailed plan of action along with an estimate coinciding with your budget.

Contact us now and we can help you plan for a successful marketing campaign!

We are always asked by clients about what applications we recommend to use for email marketing and sending bulk newsletters.  We broke down our three favorites and discussed some of the pros and cons.  Overall, Genus is the most affordable, comprehensive and feature rich application because it is fully integrated with your website.  So here is the Comparison of Mailchimp vs. Constant Contact vs. Genus:

MailChimp [http://mailchimp.com]

Pros:
Subscriber based system allows for unlimited emails to be sent.
Free account: limits 100 subscribers, 6 mail-outs each month, branded with MailChimp badge.
Good for high volume/frequency marketing campaigns.

Cons:
Subscriber based system ultimately limits target specific marketing capabilities.  In reality, you will not be sending marketing campaigns to all of your subscribers each month.  You will be conducting a much more targeted campaign that will utilize only a portion of your total subscribers.
More work to integrate customer database into marketing campaign.  With Genus, you are able to easily segment your customers by creating reports based on products purchased, total purchase amount, etc. Otherwise, you will have to export all of your order information, segment it manually via Excel and then import into MailChimp.
Customers must Opt-In which requires customers to re-subscribe to a newsletter they have already subscribed to.  This is especially important when importing existing databases.

Summary:
MailChimp is a superior marketing service if the client needs more than 10,000 emails each month; however, this service can get quite expensive depending on the number of new subscribers each month.  Unlimited emails is appealing but for smaller companies who do not require high volume marketing campaigns Genus is a much more cost effective service that will cover the majority of their marketing needs: templates, database segmentation, reports, etc.  The integration with existing and new customer database and the ability to segment that information based on specific customer interactions makes Genus a much more viable marketing service.

Constant Contact [http://constantcontact.com]

Pros:
Unlimited emails to a selected number of subscribers.
Online survey functionality for an additional fee.
The same overall features as Genus

Cons:
Not integrated with your website like genus is.
Expensive.
You will have re- import your subscriber list from your website into constant contact and vice versa.

Summary:
Constant Contact is recommended for clients who wish to distribute surveys and receive in depth analytics regarding the results.  The email marketing service offered by Mailchimp is better; if not the same as Constant Contact.  With genus, the email marketing is included in your package as long as you have under 10,000 emails a month.

Genus [http://TryGenus.com]

Pros:
Unlimited Subscribers.
Fully Integrated with your Website.
No opt in required for your primary list upload.
10,000 emails a month FREE.
Setup loyalty campaigns ex. Send birthday messages with coupons etc.
Create email lists based on your eCommerce sales. ex: A list of all people who spent x amount of money or bought x product.

Cons:
Additional fee for over 10,000 emails per month ($0.01/email, charged in 1,000 increments)— This is unlikely for most businesses.

Summary:
Genus is ideal for the business who is looking for a fully integrated solution.  With Genus you wont have to navigate through multiple websites and applications to send newsletters or campaigns.  There are over 200 templates that you can customize with your logo, company name and color scheme.  Once you are setup there is no migrating between different programs.  Everything you need to manage your online business is inside Genus.  Each of the 6 aspects of Genus are able to communicate with each other and read information from the other.  No other email marketing system can create a list based on customer actions such as store sales or specific product purchases without the knowledge of code.

We were asked by World- Class Photographer Blessing Marie to help her be #1 in Google and also to improve her Google Pagerank.  We used several whitehat SEO Techniques to accomplish these goals.  Take a look at her amazing work!  http://BlessingMarie.com

We are proud to announce the release of a revolutionary new product that will make the lives of business owners a lot more simple!  Genus is a system that runs online business.  Genus allows business owners to add and edit content to their websites and execute online email marketing at the click of a button!  Learn more at TryGenus.com and try for your self with a free 30 day trial. No obligations….WHY NOT?

Screenshot of trygenus.com