Hello all, I’m MK and welcome again to Friday! I always start my morning off the same way, checking out all the tech blogs, websites and twitter to see what’s trending.
There’s one particular article I found very interesting- all about non-Google site statistics- and it was posted today on Mashable. The article shares the top 1,000 sites (according to Google’s AdPlanner) of the right-now. It’s no surprise Facebook came in at number one. What I found (more…)
I was driving through Hollywood this past weekend, picking up some office furniture for the studio (we’re growing!), and came across a billboard from Chase Bank. The gist of the billboard was “There’s No Such Thing As Saver’s Remorse”. That’s wrong.
I’m not saying saving is always bad. If you’re talking about saving up for something in particular- a new home, a car, an awesome vacation- that’s great! It’s important to have goals and work towards them.
But I didn’t detect that vibe in the billboard. The way the billboard read was “Hey, we know you’re scared. So, pull back and put your money in our bank instead of getting out there and making your dreams come true”. In other words, play it safe. I read that billboard as a self-serving message of fear, and that’s exactly the wrong message to put out into the world.
In the past couple of years, a lot of companies have (more…)
This is the companion piece to our recent Superhero Series post, in which Patrick pontificates upon the secret to everlasting joy and big bank account balances, if you’re a website design company. Enjoy!
OK, show of hands- how many of you think of your company as a “website design company”? This article is for those of you who raised your hands. You need to evolve. It won’t be easy, it’ll cost time and money and mean you’ll have to start looking at your business completely differently. But if you don’t evolve, you’ll die.
Here’s the thing: website design is a commodity. That means you’ll find yourself chasing smaller and smaller projects for clients who often rightfully see your company as an easily replaced cog in their marketing machine. Sure, you can point to how your websites look better than the competition, and defend your business to the ends of the earth, but it won’t do you any good. Nobody cares.
Depressed? Don’t be. I’m here to help you evolve how you look at your website design business. Here’s a few tips (more…)
Here’s Episode 3 of our vlog, a discussion about MODx with Ryan Thrash and Jeff Whitfield in Dallas, Texas. MODx is a Content Management Platform, and we use it as the CMS (Content Management System) for most of our client’s websites. Sure, this episode’s a bit more geeky than usual, but we love how MODx makes our website design work sing, and our clients love how easy it is for them to update and maintain their own websites. Yay MODx!
As usual, this episode was shot, edited, and posted on an iPhone 3Gs. ‘Cause we can.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with digital and interactive agencies about how it’s important to provide superhero quality service to your clients. After all, clients are the lifeblood of any agency. Now it’s time to talk about protecting that precious lifeblood of your agency from the time sucking vampires out there. That’s right, it’s time for a new series of articles. This one’s called Survive and Thrive, and it’s dedicated to all our brother and sister digital and interactive agencies out there. Onward!
One thing every biz dev, sales, or agency exec needs to learn early on is that you only have a certain amount of time available every day. Your time is precious, so you have to prequalify and screen every lead you get. Your time is best spent working with clients who can afford, and intend, to pay you a fair price. You need to know what your prospective client has budgeted for the project.
That’s right: you need to figure out what the budget is, upfront, before you do anything for them. If someone balks at giving you at least a budget range, it means they don’t have a budget, they’re not serious, and they’ll suck all the blood they can get out of you. Don’t play the nice guy, don’t figure that once they know you they’ll be more likely to pay you a fair price for your services. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, and don’t spend a second thinking about their project unless you know, upfront, that they have a reasonable budget for their project. I know, it sounds extreme and a little pushy, but in 17 years in business I’ve never seen a situation work out if you’re not clear on the budget from the beginning. So get some steel in your spine, and demand (more…)
