Archive for 2012

Web Marketing: Integrated or Specialized?

Posted by Jeb
Feb
22
2012

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Marketing Pay Per Click Search Engine Optimization SEM SEO SmallBox

Companies face a hard choice- should they hire an agency that focuses on doing just one thing really well (specialized) or one that offers a suite of services (integrated)? Also, agencies struggle with the same question- do we kill off stuff we aren’t the best at and only do one thing really, really well? I can’t claim I have all the answers, since these are somewhat eternal questions, but I did want to share my thinking on the subject.

First let’s look at each type of agency:

A specialized agency can go deep, providing best-in-class expertise on their subject. Some great examples are our friends at Slingshot SEO, Hanapin or iGoDigital. Slingshot is arguably the best SEO company in the US. Hanapin is one of the best at managed Pay Per Click services. iGoDigital provides highly effective product recommendation software that integrates into some of the world’s largest e-commerce sites including Amazon. These guys all do one or two things really well. Their clients are mostly national, sometimes international, and many rank in the Fortune 500.

An integrated web agency offers a suite of integrated services. This often means web design and marketing including SEO, email marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), etc. Some even dabble in traditional media as well. SmallBox is an integrated web marketing agency. We can make and market. Do research, make recommendations, build the solution, market it, test it, create content, etc. What some would call “soup to nuts”.

So what’s the right fit for your business? Should you piece together a suite of specialized services from companies that are the best at what they do or go with an integrated agency that may not be best-in-class at every service they offer? I think the answer depends on your in-house team, what results you need, the size of your company and, sometimes, your industry. Here’s my take:

Startup: on a tight budget? Find a freelancer who is a competent generalist and, hopefully, willing to help with marketing in exchange for some equity and/or a fixed fee. This usually results in the freelancer working almost as hard as a founder which has obvious benefits. Downside: most freelancers are pretty weak in some key areas- maybe a great designer who can’t do SEO, etc- so that creates significant risk. If you can afford it, especially if this startup isn’t your first rodeo, then an integrated agency scaled to your needs makes even more sense.

Small Biz: two good options; hire that freelancer fulltime until they max out which leads to option two, a local integrated marketing agency. Local is important in this case since you may need some hand holding which is hard to do via GoToMeeting.com.

Mid Market: this company probably has a small team of marketing people on staff, a solid marketing plan and good growth. At this point the choice is between an experienced integrated marketing team and several specialized teams- email marketing, PPC, SEO, etc. This is when the industry starts to matter. A business that is heavily reliant on e-commerce might want to work with the best e-commerce team they can find, regardless of location, for the website and then another for PPC, etc. On the other hand a business that is service based and needs a more holistic marketing approach would probably be best served by an integrated agency that can handle numerous web presences and may have experience in their industry.

Enterprise: these are the big dogs, publicly traded companies often doing international business. At this level most have robust internal teams. There may be cases where they go with a large integrated agency but in many cases they are best served by working with a number of specialized agencies to round out their internal efforts. Often an external agency manages a stable of specialized agencies as subcontractors. This can work, we’ve had good and bad experiences as that sub-contractor, but too often efforts are duplicated and too much money is spent on overhead and not on work getting done.

What about non-profits? For the most part they follow this model above- the larger they get the more they move across the freelancer-internal-integrated-specialized spectrum. Often they benefit from an agency that has extensive experience working with non-profits. Most non-profits have a different decision making process than businesses- more stakeholders. So an agency that may do great work with businesses may stumble when working with a non-profit. We have learned to work in both worlds but it has taken time, and many mistakes, to learn the respective ropes.

Why did SmallBox go with integrated and not specialized? That’s a good question and to be honest it was something we struggled with for years. We have seen many companies experience impressive growth by focusing on a specialty service. But when we considered the pros and cons- including the increased risk that comes with a business model which is much more vulnerable to disruptive changes in an incredibly disruptive industry- as well as our culture which we felt couldn’t be sustained with rapid growth we decided we wanted to build a suite of services and focus on ideas, problem solving and tools to create web marketing solutions for the right clients. As a result SmallBox has become something of an idea factory- for ourselves and clients. Our hope is that ideas that come out of SmallBox will become their own businesses and reach their own potential. My vision is to have by-product businesses that surpass SmallBox’s size and revenue. They may also not have the same shelf-life as the mothership which we are building to last. But each business must follow its own star.

Marketing is critical for growth and profitability. Doing it right is more important than ever since marketing gets more complicated and diverse everyday. If you need help making a choice feel free to contact us. Even if we aren’t the right home we can help you find it.

Hopefully this post is helpful in your decision making. I would love to have your input since my thinking is always evolving on this topic.

Factory Week Update: Testimonial Videos

Posted by Justin Shimp
Feb
17
2012

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Filed Under: Marketing SmallBox Video

I am always happy to hear our clients express excitement about their new website. As Client Success Manager, I am the team member who trains each client on how to use Boxer CMS, then remain their contact as questions and support needs arise. Because of that relationship, I get to hear many testimonials, things like how a new site has positively impacted the client’s business and or how the client loved working with everyone on our team.

Up until now, we have obtained written testimonials, but reading a testimonial just isn’t the same as seeing the expressions and excitement straight from the client. We decided it was time to capture some of their feedback on film. Through this medium, we would also add a very important video component to our digital brand ecosystem.

Prior to Factory Week, we worked with 2355 productions to film and edit the testimonials. We had the video files in hand, but needed to upload the files to our youtube channel and optimize them for search engines.

This simple task was put on hold as our pre-Factory Week schedule was jam-packed. As Jeb always says, it’s good to schedule a few “quick win” projects alongside some of the more intense goals like building a video game in one week. This was one of those quick wins.

Throughout the process of creating these video testimonials I realized how close I had become to our clients, and I’m honored that Rita from Noble and Todd from Dr. Todd’s enthusiastically agreed to endorse us on video. But don’t take my word for it watch the videos below!

Quick and Dirty UX: Navigation Sorting

Posted by lydia
Feb
13
2012

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Filed Under: Design

This is the first in a series of posts about simple UX techniques you can use in your own site planning and preparation.

When creating site maps and crafting a site’s navigation scheme, sometimes we run into questions about whether a certain page should fit under one category or another in the site’s structure. It’s easy to get into an internal debate on the merits of one choice over another, but what often works really well for us is to do some quick and dirty testing. It usually takes 5-10 minutes and requires nothing more than a pen, paper (we use index cards — they’re portable and easy to adapt to different types of sorting) and the ability to walk up to someone (coworkers and strangers alike) and ask a question.

How it works
Get your pen, paper and the dilemma you’re trying to solve. In our first example, we want to know where users would click to find more information about jobs. So I created a list of the top-level navigation:

Next, find some users to test. For this exercise, I polled five of my workmates who weren’t familiar with the project (and therefore had no preconceived notions about the dilemma). Then, I separately presented each person the card with the list and gave them a scenario: “You want to know more information about getting a job with this company. This is their website navigation, where would you click to find out this information?”

My original guess was that the majority would go for About Us, but what I found during this quick and dirty sort was that a resounding majority chose Contact Us. So, that’s where we started with our site map.

Notice I said that’s where we started with the site map. This method is not meant to get us the end-all, be-all answer. Rather, it helps to answer questions we have during the planning process and make more educated choices (if even just slightly) rather than just purely guessing.

Another example
To take this exercise further, we can start to dive deeper into the navigation. In this next example, we wanted to know where users would most likely click to find a garbage can that also has a cigarette tray on top. So we start with the main navigation choices:

This one is a bit trickier, as both Ash Urns and Trash Receptacles could get you to the right place. In this test, we found that most users started their search under Trash Receptacles and expected to narrow their search from there. Choosing Trash Receptacles finds us at its second level navigation.

This example is meant to illustrate that you can take this exercise to as many navigation levels as you’d like. I could create a third card that breaks down the receptacles even further, if that was a structure we wanted to explore for this website. The key thing to remember is that this exercise is a helpful way to answer initial questions and provide a starting point for your site’s structure. It’s not a substitute for working and testing with actual users (unless those users happen to be your workmates or whomever you poll) or dealing with more intricate problems along the way. This process is iterative, so I highly recommend checking in at various points of the project to see how decisions affect users and their paths through your site.

Expanding on the sort
While the previous examples address specific questions for mostly-mapped out site navigation, the other side of this method helps to bring clarity and focus when you have a wide set of pages (or products or anything else that needs grouping) to sort out. Instead of listing an entire navigation level on one card, we give each page (or product/element) its own card, and start with a pile of cards like this:

This is a simple site for a company with products and services and a few supplementary information pages about the company. From the pile, we can start to rearrange the cards to create columns of pages that are related.

In shuffling these around, we moved the main ideas to the top (Home, Services, Products, About Us, Contact Us) and filed appropriate pages underneath each. To take this even further, we can take a closer look at the Products column. Is there a way to further break down Notepads, Paper, Pens, and Pencils if we wanted to?

Why yes, yes there is. To take this exercise to the next level, we can put the cards in front of users, ask them to arrange the cards in a way that makes sense to them and notice what differences arise in their arrangements and our arrangements.

While this is a very basic example of how card sorting works in terms of site structure, this method can also be used to help tackle other grouping issues, such as determining which products to add to a set of categories or deciding what those high-level categories should be called.

This quick and dirty UX technique can help you get started thinking about your site’s structure (or even things like product categorization structure). It’s a fairly easy tool to implement and as I mentioned, can help answer preliminary questions and identify trends and patterns in user paths.

For further information and a deeper dive into card sorting, check out card sorting information on Usabillity.gov and UsabilityNet.

 

Ready to Rumble: Introducing the Boxer CMS!

Posted by sara
Feb
9
2012

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Filed Under: Design Development Marketing SmallBox

One of the keystones of any SmallBox web design and development project is our content management system (CMS). Despite it’s huge impact on most of the projects we take on, we previously had not branded or promoted it in any targeted way. But that’s all about to change.

Behold, the Boxer CMS.
As part of Factory Week, Boxer was one of 18 projects tackled by team SmallBox.


Boxer CMS

The first hurdle of the project was finishing up design and development for two websites – the marketing site (shown above) to promote the product, as well as a demo site our potential clients can dig around in to see how all of the various parts work from the back end.

Neil created designs that are fresh and playful and fit oh-so-well with our culture. Tyler went to work on messaging and content, while Shimp and Jeb put together the screencast to show off Boxer’s main features.

Why Build a CMS?
We get asked all the time what we build our sites on – perfectly reputable firms use WordPress, Sitefinity, Expression Engine or any other of the existing systems. The best way to answer why we built our own CMS is to think about the client experience with other solutions. Boxer is very much an “owner friendly” CMS. If you’ve used any other CMS before you may have run into one of the following issues:

  • you’ve given up on adding content to your site because you found it costs an arm and a leg to make changes you intuitively feel should be simple,
  • the CMS dashboard is so full of widgets and what-nots your company doesn’t need and will never use, you can’t find the one thing that needs updating,
  • some of your content disappeared after software updates within the content management system caused unexpected bugs,
  • your copyright symbol still says 2009 because you’d rather gouge your eyes out with hot pokers than try to update your site…

Drama aside, most content management systems are created with coders in mind, not site owners. Our CTO Joe Downey developed the original SmallBox CMS from the ground up, starting in 2006. More recently Jordan has taken the reins and is now working on a responsive front end. Boxer was created with three goals in mind: easy to use, easy to update and easy to find in search engines. If there is any piece of feedback that we hear echoed from our clients again and again it’s that we 100% deliver on those three things.

Part of why our CMS works so seamlessly is because when we build you a website, the back end is tailored by our team for your specific needs. There’s no templates to choose from – each client gets a custom web solution. Before we begin our work, Boxer has 11 core features that many clients need, including fully integrated form builder and an “active” FAQ that allows site visitors to submit questions. But each of these modules doesn’t have to look a certain way or fit into a certain place. Each piece is crafted to fit your brand and your web marketing needs. We also often create custom modules- extranets, events, resource library… the list goes on and on. The fact that we built Boxer in-house from the ground up gives us incredible flexibility when customizing it for clients.

Think you might want to put your website in the ring with Boxer? Request a demo!

 

Dating SmallBox: How We Start Client Relationships

Posted by Jeb
Feb
1
2012

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Filed Under: How We Work SmallBox

I often compare business relationships to marriage. Many of the same dynamics apply- communication, trust, honesty, shared goals, etc. Just as a marriage starts with courtship we often talk about “dating before marriage” when talking with a potential SmallBox client. We know, from years of experience, that a good fit is needed on both sides. We aren’t interested in dragging anyone to the altar, telling them whatever they need to hear to sign up. It doesn’t work out, we’ve tried it.

90% of the leads that come into to SmallBox aren’t the right fit for us. One of the reasons we started Springboard Marketing was to have a home for some of these leads. Usually these are smaller projects, often new businesses, that need a “starter home” not a “dream home”. SmallBox is focused on the latter, Springboard on the former. So Springboard is the perfect solution for many of the leads we field. We also recommend other local businesses and freelancers when appropriate. We believe in helping anyone that comes our way even if there’s no monetary upside for us.

For the 10% that appear to be a good fit we have a “sales” process that we’ve fine tuned over time. We don’t actually have a sales team at SmallBox so I feel reluctant to even use that dirty word “sales”, but let’s face it, we do need to sell ourselves when we have a desirable prospect. First we set up a meeting. Our preference is to have someone from our team, usually myself or Dan Fahrner our Marketing Director, come out to visit with the prospect. We feel it’s important to have a face-to-face conversation, see the office, meet some of the team and get an overall feel for the company, its products/services and its culture. During this meeting we will talk about the company’s needs, past efforts and most likely walk through some examples of work we have done. We will also talk money and timeline to make sure we are in the general ballpark.

If that first “date” goes well then we usually schedule a second meeting at the SmallBox offices. This time we bring in some of the SmallBox team that would be working with the prospect. We also do some whiteboarding and get into specifics around what an engagement would look like- what features a website will need, what ongoing marketing services are needed, what underlying problem needs to be solved, etc.

After this second session, assuming both sides agree to continue, we draft a Statement Of Work and send it over for consideration. Our policy is to “quote as far as we can see”. Sometimes this means we can quote a new website and marketing plan- soup to nuts, sometimes we can only see as far as a planning engagement. If rough ranges are needed beyond what we can confidently quote we also provide these ranges. These ranges don’t include the same level of detail since we need to complete the first phase of the project before we have clarity on the remaining work. This also limits risk for the client who can, if needed, work with another partner for the remainder of the work. This is a rare occurrence but we appreciate that it can sometimes be the best outcome for all parties.

Once we have a finalized Statement Of Work we schedule a kick off meeting. On larger projects with a number of stakeholders we often bring in lunch to the client’s office. We feel this is a good, informal way to get the two teams together. It used to be that most business was done while “breaking bread” and we feel this is a good tradition to revive. In smaller engagements we may get straight to work. It just depends on what’s right for the project. Once the project is rolling we have a process that kicks in for each kind of engagement- websites, audits, consulting, marketing. Look for another post, or two, on that topic in the near future.

Here’s some questions you might have with my best attempt at answers:

What about out of town clients? We are even more selective about working with clients that we can’t easily visit with in person. Since we feel it is so important to have face-to-face communication on a project, a little ironic I realize since we are a web company, we need to be 100% confident we have a great match when working with a distant client. For larger projects we are happy to travel.

How much do we charge? It can really depend on the client and project but here’s some basic info. Our websites start at $15k and most are $25-75k with some well over $100k. Our marketing engagements start at $2500 a month and most are around $5k a month, not including third party spends (AdWords, Facebook, etc). We also offer site audits and other smaller consulting engagements that usually fall under the $10k mark.

How do you determine a good fit? There are a number of factors- scope of work, budget, timeline, location and, most importantly, culture. If the leadership of your organization doesn’t believe in the web and is only signing off on an agreement because they feel they have to, then we aren’t the right fit. We do our best work when we work with other believers.

Want to talk? Even if you aren’t sure if we are the right fit for your needs we are always happy to talk and help you find the right home. Call us at 317-924-0923 or use our contact form.

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