Blog Articles from Fawkes Digital Marketing

Supporting small businesses is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to uplift your local community — and it doesn't always require spending a lot of money. Whether it's a neighborhood bakery, a family-owned repair shop, or a new boutique down the street, small businesses depend on the support of everyday customers like you to survive and thrive. Here's how you can show your support, build community pride, and help ensure these essential businesses remain part of your town for years to come.

As I sit at a Starbucks a distance from home, a person named Phil is sitting next to me eating a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich. He starts up a conversation while he is eating, stating he is traveling through the area and owns a paving business in Lombard, Illinois. He's on the road actively looking for bad consumer driveways to make money.

We know that sometimes dishing up thousands for a new website is not an option, especially when you are starting your business. You want your business to be found and you want it to be custom made to promote your business. What you don't want is to pay for a website that will put you out of business. You want your website to generate business and help you grow without nickel and diming you around every corner.

I grew up in the small historic town of Chesterton Indiana. I have been fortunate to see great communities all around the world. Every move I have ever made has shown me a vast array of great communities. Some are struggling and some are vibrant and growing. What I find is the communities that are truly growing all have one thing in common. They have a strong community and even with the big box stores, they buy from local businesses that support their community. I now live in Valparaiso Indiana with my wife and family but get to Chesterton often as it's just a short drive. I know deep down it's this support of choosing a local small business before a big box store that makes these communities great and I truly feel good about it.

Although I am calling this small business growth hurdles it actually applies to any business small or large. It is about keeping to your core strengths and not letting them go. This is something every business needs to stay aware of. Being I have never run a large business my knowledge there doesn't apply beyond working at some of the best large companies in the world. My focus here is on common mistakes business owners make and that can cripple, if not kill, your business. I am going to cover six of the items that I have not only come across but done myself in the past five years. I have overcome each of these and each has taught me several valuable lessons and made us stronger.

We are hearing this more and more from companies talking with us. They ranked high once and now they are dropping and their competitors are ranking higher. These can be local or national companies organically (e.g. free) ranking higher than they and they think it's because these corporations are outranking them because they are spending money. The answer is yes but not in the way they are thinking. They are ranking not because they are paying the search engines to rank to get those organic listings. They could be paying for ads but that doesn't measure into the organic listings. They are paying their employees or a digital marketing company to make them rank that way. Let's take a look and see what a business owner can do to fix this problem.

Our company is going through the biggest change of any growing business. I know there are many ways of phrasing it but I am calling it the "Business Owner Role Transition" and to me, it is the pivotal point for any small business owner that is growing. Many will feel caught in a trap right before or during this part. Many will sell their business when the end reward is just in front of them. They aren't quitters but quit anyway as they don't feel they can do it and they really can with that extra needed "push". Many will not talk to others in the same spot and lock themselves into silos rather than reaching out and talking with those people – not friends, other businesses that you may consider competitors. I also see it as the hardest point in my 30 years of working.

Organizations know they need someone in a role that communicates with clients, they know it will improve customer satisfaction, but never want to invest (e.g. it eats into their profits) in such a role. Often an organization will allocate a small part of a person's (or multiple employees) time to it. This causes a system that actually can be even more inefficient. This is why as an organization we added Lorissa to our team with just one job duty of communicating with our clients. This dedicated position will make certain customer communication happens. We even have set parameters that we will add another person in this position when we reach certain thresholds so that we don't run into a situation where our coordinator is overworked and create failure in communication. Our project coordinator position, which we call the Time Keeper, has the sole responsibility to communicate with the customer, put in tasks for the team, double-check the tasks that the team did, and get back with the client that the changes are done. This role has no other functions and how it will stay.

In all of our lives we have transformations that are key to our personal existence, keys to the success of our company's growth (for business owners), and the success of the customer's that we assist. This week for JM2 of Valparaiso Indiana was truly no exception. We have changed our web design and marketing from being what I would classify as a commodity that any individual could due to a strategic marketing machine. That is a very bold statement and one I think you will agree. In this article you will see how we transformed our brand, our customer service, and our internal processes to become something no other web design company in Northwest Indiana has ever done.