Blog Articles from Fawkes Digital Marketing

Press releases can produce major benefits to a business for marketing even when they do not reach major media outlets. You will find both free and paid press release outlets that can help promote your press release. Utilizing both is a key that we always use to gain the largest buzz for our clients. With paid advertising you can feel more confident your PR will reach more people and appear in leading publications. Getting your good word out to news organizations is never an easy business and getting a journalist to write about you is never easy. Without a press release they certainly will not know and with one you stand a better chance of being heard.

I am a software developer and a marketer. These are two totally different sides of a mind to use. Thankfully I have multiple voices in my head that allow me to accomplish both successfully and break out of the norm. Being a software developer means I am a nerd, analytical, agile thinking, and an introvert. Being a marketer it means I need to think differently, look at everything, and agile thinking. Everything says "think out of the box." I say "what box?"

It’s a new month and the month that kicks off for many business owners the holiday marketing season. Marketing is never-ending. Marketing does routinely pick up at certain times. It is also time we started to think about the end of the year which means shopping, snow, colder weather, and people talking nice and pushing us out of the way for that most valuable holiday find. We don’t like the thought of the cold, but we are all in the service business.

I truly love how in tune the JM2 team is when it comes to marketing and helping companies grow on social media. Yesterday afternoon when I got back into the office late Kyle was wanted to talk about some concerns he has not only with our clients but with social media/digital marketing. At first, it was related to all things in Northwest Indiana but turned to nationally and then internationally. This is what you call a progressive team player that is thinking not only how to help and assist others in being successful. His concern was about how people are completely screwing up their social media which goes well beyond social media. This is social media, digital marketing, and websites altogether. With what he talked about I know he will be writing several articles on it, but I started thinking of several items that can help your brand achieve success when doing social media.

We feel it is great that companies in Northwest Indiana and really all over the United States are looking to streamline and save money. The question comes to where do you automate and have truly in-personal communication and where do you have that personal touch we all enjoy? Technology has a place to help cut costs. No longer do you need to pay $500-$1,000+ for social media digital marketing management. Technology can help keep costs low and increase your brands reach. Let the computer do the heavy lifting that used to take hours to gather information so that you can focus on what matters; the customer. Let’s look at where technology can (and should) be used, where it can (and shouldn’t be), and where you need to still use that 100% personal touch.

Back before 2010, and even today some people have too much social media. One might wonder how you can have too much social as social is getting out there, talking, and getting your good word out to the masses. Well, it can happen to everyone, including you. You can have too much social and when you do you will actually set your social media back. Social media is as important to have a website with great content and optimized for not only your readers but the search engines.

At one time we have all procrastinated and waited until that very last moment to try and get something done. We are normally not happy with the results and the results tend to show that we rushed, didn’t think everything through, and almost certainly didn’t get the results we were expecting. We have seen this a lot and even with ourselves in years past where we only marketed our company when things were slowing down. We went into a panic mode saying we need to add a customer or we’re doomed (well not that bad but I think you understand).

Marketing like everything isn’t hard but a time-consuming process that requires diligence and a strive for excellence. There is a service marketing standard called the 7 P’s of marketing. There’s also an 8th P which we will also cover which extends the 7 P’s to include one more (go figure). By being patient, studying your market, and taking care of your customer’s needs marketing is something that can propel your business to a new level.

As software developers, we understand the importance of change and being agile. After all, software development is all about being agile. Technology changes at a pace that quickly overwhelms traditional marketing methods and why there has been a shift to being agile. No longer does traditional marketing work.

This past week I have had four emails for my latest articles that have been shared on LinkedIn. This is actually good news as on Twitter we get an email every blue moon (less than monthly). They saw I also posted on our company page the same article. Each person inquired why I wasn't including some "sales pitch" for our companies' services? This question took me back that it was from four different people who don't directly know each other according to LinkedIn. One of the people we had some emails back and forth and then an hour-long phone call about the subject of not having a sales pitch. In the end we both realized that not having a sales pitch of "buy my stuff" or "use our services" at the end was actually more of a sales pitch then just stating so and the person said by not doing so actually made me sound like more of an industry insider and expert. Yeah! That is what we have been shooting for with all of our 200+ articles over the past three years.

Part of any good marketing plan is to create a positive buzz in the industry that you are. When people talk about your marketing after days or months have past you know you've created something substantial. An agile company needs to quickly adapt to change. Our own marketing efforts need to change as when you target big publicly traded companies that seems to have endless supplies of cash you need to be creative in everything you do. Recently we have been adding clients from these large publicly traded companies and learning a lot from these clients. Each new client we bring on we always ask what made you switch and choose us over X, Y, and Z. We always ask what is their definition of success and failure as everyone has a different opinion on each. This knowledge helps us in giving recommendations for other companies that we have aligned with to further help drive traffic and increase their business.

Consistency is the foundation for success in all aspects of life. The constantly repeating, almost instantaneous execution of a perfect golf swing or a piano master performing a near-perfect rendition of Chopin's piano concerto comes from years of repeated practice until perfection.

We are JM2 (JM Squared) Webdesigners & Marketing from Valparaiso Indiana but that is not what we are talking about today. We are going to talk about the power of two great digital marketing products that separate are good but together can be great. We hear many social media marketers say you need social media and a website is a waste of your dollars and marketing time. We hear the opposite from those that do websites but not social media in that you only need a website and social media is a waste. Both thought processes are the furthest from the truth. Quality marketing requires you to use both and use both effectively! They should work together, complement each other, and help drive traffic to each other. Why you need both we will describe in this article and this will certainly not be a complete list, but it surely will show you why you need both.

Saturday, I sat under the eaves of a friend’s garage roof and watched it rain. His daughter was running across the freshly mowed lawn in the rain. Once she got too much grass on her legs and feet she would leap into her turquoise and white inflatable pool. My friend’s dad, Eddie, sat to my right wearing his paint marked work boots. Eddie is an interior and exterior painter with over 30 years of experience.

You have one or more social media pages to have a social online experience. This social information reaches dozens, hundreds, and maybe even thousands of people. This reach on social media can be organically (free) or through paid advertising/boosting your posts to achieve a specific marketing goal. If you are lucky your Facebook page will even show on the search engine result pages (SERPs). You keep your social media sites updated weekly, you monitor and respond to questions and inquiries daily, hourly, and more. Is that enough for your digital online experience? If you want to control your name and brand on the internet it regretfully is not. Whether you are on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook or another site you do not control the look-and-feel, information, or how many times the information shows. You often have to pay for the placement you want on the platform. What you can do is establish yourself as an expert in your field by having a professional website with quality content, a blog that allows you to showcase your expertise, and make certain all your good information gets out. Additionally, with a website you can further market your business beyond just listing your products and services by showcasing your company colors, your logo, and none of your competitors information will show. To achieve this you need a website and not just any website. You need one that is designed to "Convert" your visitors into customers. To achieve this you need a Call to Action or CTA. Let's take a look and see what an effective call of action is and how it can benefit your business online.

You have either started or have had your small business running in towns like Valparaiso, Chesterton, Merrillville, Hobart, Portage, or (insert your small town here). You compete with great customer service, quality products, and that local small town flare. But how are you able to compete against big corporations that seem to have endless marketing budgets at their disposal? Today we are going to dig into some of the "tricks of the SEO trade" that we have used time-and-time again to help small businesses grow. Are you ready and willing to get more business and grow? If so, continue to read on and learn some of our proven techniques on growing your small business.

We find that companies that are customer focused, wanting to change their brand image, and are looking for results faster (can you say typically lower costs???) will utilize agile marketing as part of their marketing efforts.

Agile marketing is focused on the customer, uses validated learning, works in short and adaptive iterations, and encourages cross-functional collaboration between departments. Whereas Traditional marketing will focus on spin, controlling the message, and owning the brand. In this article, we are going to cover some of the core basis points to start showing how being agile can produce more results and better engage your customer.

With great growth, a company needs to take a step back and look at everything it does to further provide value. We are focused not just on the local small and medium sized businesses but those across the entire country and around the world. We continually look at the paper purchased, the way our solutions work for our clients, and to the services that are offered. Each item has an impact to the bottom line of the company and if done incorrectly can truly cost the company and ultimately our customers. Keeping our budget tuned, living within our modest means, and checked constantly we can keep prices down while continually providing more value and grow each month. In just four years we've moved from a home office in Michigan City Indiana to a 2,000+ square foot office in downtown Valparaiso Indiana. We encourage everyone to read through this article on what makes JM2 Webdesigners unique and capable of meeting your businesses growing needs.

We previously talked about how text marketing is an effective tool when it comes to marketing your business and how business owners have a form of promotion that comes with a high open and utilization rate. It's this unexpected versatility and reach that turns text marketing into an effective machine. Now that we know just how useful it is, the two questions that remain are who can use it and how can they use it?

We all can't have the most exciting of company brands or huge budgets to make it exciting. You may provide one of the services that truly isn't super exciting to talk about but necessary to everyone in one way or another. You provide products and services that are used either daily or occasionally. Big business is known for their exciting and ever engaging social media marketing campaigns due to the huge budgets that they can get overly creative and take boring into exciting. This doesn't mean if you are a bank, credit union, funeral home, pawn shop, dry cleaner, lawyer, restaurant, etc. without a big budget that you can't have an engaging social media strategy that people will enjoy. In fact, there are ways you can start to engage your audience to make your brand more fun. Let's look at some ways you can go from boring to engaging using social media.

Text messaging is more than sending messages to friends and family. It has quietly become an incredibly effective marketing tool for businesses to send promotions, information, and sales pitches to their clients. While it's easy to assume that text messages wouldn't be an effective way to reach clients and customers due to the unfortunate tendency for people to become annoyed with an overabundance of texts, research and experience have produced surprisingly contrary results and shown to be an incredibly effective form of reaching out and making sales.

For many people and businesses, 2017 is a year to start fresh and work on new possibilities and functions designed to help your company grow. At JM2. we're also excited to start 2017 on the right foot as we are always looking at new ways to bring more to our clients and work on new ways to help them and their business grow.For me, 2017 presents an opportunity to engage with our clients even more as we help them achieve their goals for the year. As someone who's job is to speak with clients both old and new, this direction is something that fills me with endless possibilities of what we can do together. Out of all the things we are doing in 2017, here is what I'm most excited about.

In November, a long-lost friend (not really lost) started talking over email. We had been emailing back and forth for a week about his frustrations in getting his website to convert from visitors to customers. I will start out this person is not a customer as he is happy with his current provider and is also a close friend of his. He wanted to be heard about his struggles, what he is currently doing, and think of ways to improve his situation in the upcoming months.

As we talk to more people about taking advantage of generating leads from their website into opportunities we move to the talk of branding and marketing. We find that many people believe they are the same thing rather than two distinct items. Branding and marketing are not the same and each has a very important role that is used collaboratively together in your organization. Using marketing and branding together you can achieve a set of goals. In this article, we will define clearly what branding and marketing is and how each one used collaboratively can be used to grow your business.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to be part of a Chamber Networking Night, a night put on by a city chamber that brings together local businesses to set up flashy booths, give away free goodies and interact with other visitors, clients, and businesses.

Coming off of Labor Day weekend we thought we would talk and discuss maintenance plans. Maintenance plans are specific tools for getting the job done in a timely and efficient manner. A form of labor that JM2 Webdesigners from Valparaiso Indiana does to help your business grow. Your employees are dedicated to helping your business grow in the real-world. We become employees for you in the virtual world and help them come to the real-world to learn about your products and services for a lot less than you think. In this article we go over everything in our "Web and Social Media Package". If you only want search engine optimization (SEO) take the social media away and that's that package. These are designed to be simple and complete to meet every need your business has when doing digital marketing.

A crucial aspect to any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is to know where your users are coming from. This article will help you streamline your marketing efforts and know where they are coming from. We will be talking about UTM codes and how you can use them to to quantify your marketing efforts and show the business owner where money has been spent and that it is being spent for the right reason.

When the public started using the Internet back in 1995 online marketing was truly born. As each person came onto the Internet online marketing became more important. Today you will hear of many ways and solutions for what online marketing is. Who is right and what is the right way to do online marketing? We will cover what the top six items are and what the "real answer" truly is.