I recently wrapped up a 6 stop tour of Indiana with the SBA (Small Business Administration). I was part of a half day seminar put together by the SBA and sponsored by the Indiana Chamber and NFIB. My portion was an hour long presentation on marketing with an emphasis on Search Engines and Social Media. Afterwards I would talk to the attendees, mostly business owners, and hear all kinds of stories, some of them horror stories involving a marketing or Web company that cost a lot of money, didn’t finish the job and never explained their process. It was fascinating to hear from all types of businesses knowing they needed to use the Web to grow (or survive) but with little idea of how to go about doing it.
One of the points of my presentation was to encourage these company owners to ask the “dumb” questions when talking with Web companies (like us). I see some in my industry essentially intimidating their clients with strange acronyms- SEO, CMS, PHP, etc. Then they proceed to lead these trusting business owners towards the wrong solutions- Flash websites that are invisible to search engines, Websites with no content management so they charge the business for every update, designs that look cool but aren’t user friendly, on and on. So I would often pull up their website and give them my feedback, which is usually not good news, then they would often say- “yeah, I was wondering about that, seemed strange to me too.”
Web technology is changing quickly. There is no way a typical business owner has time to keep up with everything nor should they. If they take the time to become Web marketing experts then chances are their business will suffer as result. Same reason we outsource HR work here at Small Box. We aren’t experts in HR and not big enough to have a full time HR manager. So I ask a lot of “dumb” questions to our HR company and they very nicely answer them all.
So if you are one of those companies that knows you need to start using the Web to grow your business but don’t know where to start, it’s ok. Just start with the “dumbest” questions you can think of cause there are really no dumb questions when it comes to the Web. We will listen, meet you where you are and put together some ideas. We will also show you results we have gotten for other businesses and organizations. If we feel that our services are the right match for your business needs, and that may be the case, then we can recommend another company that meets your needs/budget and does quality work.
Our goal is to help anyone that comes our way find the right solution, even if it isn’t us.
You’re right, Jeb. New media aren’t new anymore, but that doesn’t mean people understand them very well. We all need to have honest conversations about what’s best for our clients–and clients need to be honest about where they need help.
And–let’s face it–Web companies could use some shaking out, too.