I wanted to point all my readers to an interview of Gil Gerretson of Biztrek.  I mentioned Gil and his company briefly in another post I made this morning. Gil is a marketing mentor who has years of marketing experience and teaching.  The interview was done by a Greenville,SC business newspaper called GSA Business.  The interview can be found under March 17th on their podcast page  of the GSA Business web site or you can click here for a direct link to the file.

A good part of the interview is about Gil’s company and his vision to take it nationwide. Later in the interview he mentions quite a few things about the need for web site to be dynamic and provide ways to interact with the reader. Gil also mentioned the value of social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook and linkedin.

Does your business have a marketing plan? Planning is programming or rather mapping out the steps needed in the program.  In addition to computer programs you often hear special events or a method of doing something called “a program.” The marketing aspect of a business is where a lot of businesses fail and the reason is they don’t have a plan that is suited to their business.  of course the same can be said about any aspect of business but a business succeeds by making sales and thus generating income and that can’t be done without getting the word out to those who will buy a product or service.

A large business may have the resources to dedicate to a marketing department or even a bigger budget to try out different marketing methods but they also have a marketing plan because more than likely that wouldn’t have gotten to be a “larger business”  It’s crucial that a small business develop one early on to save a lot of heartache and/or lost money because of trying things out in hopes of getting a return.

In a previous article I mentioned how apparently simple projects like a basic web site or logo can take a long time and become complicated if proper planning is not taken into consideration. I would rather work with a client who has a maketing plan instead of reacting to the latest fads or what their competition is doing.  While a new technology or method the competition is using may work their is not guarantee it will be the best course of action for your business. An article at
entrepreneur.com  about marketing plans compared a business venture without a plan to a sailing vessel without a course charted.

In the series ahead I will talk about various forms of marketing. Some of them may be appropriate to your business situation but all are worth learning. SpinningSilk Multimedia is here to help you turn a marketing plan into a reality through various forms of media with compelling content that engages customers and generates sales.  Want to learn more about marketing plans?  A couple of good online resources are the Marketing Plan entry at Wikipedia.com and the How Marketing Plans Work article at Howstuffworks.com.  You also may want to invest your time and resources with a marketing mentor.  A fellow business person and marketing expert in Greenville, SC is Gil Gerretsen who runs Biztrek. A company that trains small business super stars.  I attended one of his 12 Triggers seminars yesterday and the advice and education was wonderful. I advise any small business owner to look into opportunities to connect, network and buy into the services of an expert in the field of marketing.

If we are meeting you as a potential client for the first time we can’t stress enough the value of spending time at the beginning of the process to discuss your goals, why you want to use our services and products and  how that fits in with your overall marketing plan.

This past year has been great for SpinningSilk Multimedia as we have honed in on niches, worked with some fantastic clients, risen in search engine results as well as getting our name out in the local community. However if their is one thing that we need to work better on it is communicate who we are and what we do to people “right under our noses.”

It’s very strange that the people we know very well often don’t know the current state of our services. In business networking groups and on the Internet or any new contacts have a good understanding of who we are and our mission but it’s all too easy to assume those in your close circles like friends, family and even current customers you have been involved with long term know what your current status is.  The ironic thing is these people can be your best and most dedicated customers.

It’s very important to send frequent correspondence via e-mail, blogs or even print materials like newsletters and brochures. However never underestimate to power of personal visits, taking people out to lunch, etc.  Conversely others may be aware of new things but I find it more of a challenge to tell people what I’m “not” doing anymore.  We are often remembered for what we have done in the past.  We currently and will continue to focus on intergated marketing communications which involves web design, print and portable media solutions for small businesses and organizations but I still get calls to ask if I will trouble shoot a computer that is not working or a program like Microsoft Word that is “acting strange.”  Those were jobs I did a long time ago either when just starting out on my own or just being known as a “computer guy.”  I’ll still help friends and family out with such matters but I’m making a big point to tell them not to tell anyone I do that because I am focusing my work and expertise in other things.

Do you often find yourself confused and frustrated when those closest to you who don’t call on you but rather others for what your area of expertise is because they didn’t know you provided such a service? Do you often assume people just know what you are doing or do you have a strategy of updating the status of your services and products to them?

I get the feeling that when I tell people our company provides “web design” services they are thinking we may only be creating several pages with some links, a contact form, etc. It’s true that a lot of companies only ask or are aware of the basic services it’s important to know we can provide many more solutions that take advantage of technologies hosted on the web. Some of these include;

• Business Blogging
• Product photography optimized for the web
• Podcasting (audio or video)
• Business blogging
• Community building/Social Networking Features
• File hosting
• Secured Sites
• Virtual office solutions
• Calendaring and Event Planning
• E-commerce
• E-mail filtering
• Backups
• Video and Audio Conferencing
• RSS enabled news feeds

A lot of these features can be incorporated into a companies web site under their own domain but what you may not know is we can also work with you to develop your companies presence on other sites optimized for things like video, social networking and virtual offices. We are knowledgeable about a lot of these solutions and can provide our clients with innovative ways to have an optimized web presence.  What other services or products can companies that are known for basic web design provide that are innovative and makes you more productive?

According to the American Marketing Association, Integrated Marketing Communications is

A planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.

This is the work of SpinningSilk Multimedia. We provide services and products with consistent branding using web, print, audio, video and other communications. Our core customer bases are small businesses and organizations and in particular churches, agencies and other organizations in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church* denomination. We have also done work with some fine local organizations in the Greenville, SC area. The for profit businesses that we have experiences with are construction contractor companies, business coaches and small business e-commerce stores.
Why is Integrated Marketing Communications so important to us and why should it be important to you? I don’t know about you but I hate having to run all over the place to get work done when it’s much better to have a central point of contact where you can be on the same page.

It’s incredibly easy to go the “free route” on so many things from restricted or ad supported free web services, do it yourself business cards or brochures,etc.  Some of these solutions are just fine for certain situations and I have nothing against someone printing their own business cards on an ink jet printer when they need an emergency run but for the long term you need to think long term and develop a relationship with a company experienced in the skills of communications, branding and marketing.

If a business or organization is serious about meeting long-term sales or donor goals, having a consistent brand and a central resource of experts is crucial. Can you do the work of Integrated Marketing yourself?  Maybe. Are you an expert in that area and how much time will it take away from what you are an expert in?  Marketing and sales don’t have to be overly expensive but you don’t want to do it on the cheap either. You’re business or organization needs a consistent branding program. Here is a checklist of things to consider and ask when seeking out and Integrated Marketing, graphic design, web design, print shop, etc.;

1. Does the company have graphic designers who know the difference between optimizing your images for the web and print?
2. Does the company know how to craft your content in such a way to make it compelling and search engine friendly?
3. Is it evident the company is paying attention to the latest trends in technology and marketing?
4. Even if the company is specializing on one aspect of marketing communications do they partner easy with other companies to get the work done?
5. Are they about showing themselves off or showing you off?
6. If you would like to do some things for yourself does the company give you the tools  like an easy web site content management system or files for printing short runs of business cards, etc?
7. Does the company practice what they preach? Do they have their own blog, professional business cards, etc?

Yes, I’m trying to “sell my companies services” in this post.  This post describes what we do as a business and we would love to meet with you to talk about your communication and branding needs.

*We didn’t design the web site for the main denomination web site. That one is done in-house but we have developed sites and helped with other issues for several of the denominations agencies.