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Creative group of leaders joined us at the Social Impact Lab in Boca for our Discover & Ideate launch. Exciting things to come! #entrepreneurship #designthinking #digitalmarketing #sales #customersatisfaction #innovation https://www.instagram.com/p/BzL6-u-g_6N/?igshid=1i36dkbazad67

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Do you sell products in other countries? Take the time to research how your buyers consume media from one market to the next. The US tops the list! #DidYouKnow #data #media #emarketer

Do you know your audience? Understanding the trends for different audiences can help you implement the right strategies. Consider that Millennials are using Voice Assistants at more than twice the rate of Baby Boomers. #DidYouKnow #contentmarketing #designthinking #tech

Facebook Marketing Do's & Don'ts! #socialmediamarketing #facebook #digitalmarketing

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Join us for Digital Fest on October 15th. #digitalfest #technology #digitalmarketing https://www.instagram.com/p/By-0H4CAWid/?igshid=ajuwpsnpyffy

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Are you looking to up your SEO & SEM game? Then consider attending SMX (Search Marketing Expo). It's being held in New York City on November 13-14, 2019. Lean more here http://j.mp/2WRHTxC #digitalmarketing #customerexperience #SEO #SEM #SMX

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According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 33.6% of all the websites on the Internet. Did you know that these brands are powered by Wordpress? New York Observer, New York Post, TED, USA Today, CNN, National Post, Spotify, TechCrunch, CBS Local, NBC & more. #Wordpress #Stats #CMS

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How Much Should Small Businesses Invest On Their Website and Digital Marketing? http://j.mp/2IUwV5t #technology #ideate #discover #digitalmarketing #conversion

How Much Should Small Businesses Invest On Their Website and Digital Marketing?

There are a number of variables to consider before a business can determine what they should invest (not spend) in a website and digital marketing. There’s also the question of whether you should hire an in-house person, a freelancer, a design shop, a marketing agency or a combination of all these. Owning a business and making these types of major decisions can be one of the most exhilarating things in life. On the other hard it can be challenging at times. This is especially true for Small Businesses where the owner/operator is wearing multiple hats as they should. The small business owner starts their day thinking about their Customers, from there they move on to Finances, Sales, Marketing, Employees (HR), Product, Logistics, Technology, Contracts (Legal), Purchasing and the list goes on and on. Love it or hate it that’s the reality for most small business owners. The good news for small businesses is that if they’re paying attention and implementing procedures and strategies within each department the job will get easier over time. I think owning a small business means different things to different people. Some enter the world of entrepreneurship as a means of an investment, others are looking for freedom, some just want the opportunity to be the driver, but whatever the reason I applaud the millions of small business owners who wake up every day, actually sometimes they don’t get much sleep at all- and give it their all to make their business succeed. In this blog I’ll briefly covers the following areas to help you navigate through the difficult world of web design and digital marketing.

Questions you should ask yourself

Chart to show you what you should budget for a good website

Features To Include In Your Website Design

Trends To Consider

Questions To Ask a Web Designer or Web Design Shop

Questions To Ask a Digital Marketer or Marketing Agency

Technologies To Consider

There are tons of technologies available for small business owners to make their business run more efficient. The one technology that is often overlooked or just seen as a Marketing and Sales tool is their Website. So the question is, how much should a small business invest on their website and digital marketing? First and foremost, the majority of businesses need to view their website as the most important tool to communicate with their customers, vendors, employees and the community.

Side note: if you have a brick and mortar operation fewer and fewer people are coming into to buy products. Now if you’re a business like a Dry Cleaner, Restaurant, Gym, Medical Practice, Salon and Auto Repair Shop to name a few then people have to come in to consume your product and service. But it doesn’t mean they have to come to your business. It use to be that if you had great customer service, a decent product, a convenient location and fair prices it was enough to build a lifelong relationship with the customer. That is definitely not the case anymore and nowhere is that more evident than metro markets. It’s not just the Millennial generation.

Ok, back to websites and digital marketing. So let’s start with the most important factor for small businesses. Price/Cost! Then I’ll move on to features that may help you run your business more efficiently and help you increase awareness of your brand. How much does it cost to build a great website and maintain it? Well that depends on a number of variables and what direction you want to go into with doing it in-house or hiring a company to design your website.

Questions you should ask yourself

Will I be selling products on my website?

Do I want to generate leads on my website?

Is being an expert in my field a priority?

Are my competitor’s ahead of the curve?

How many pages do I need?

Who will create the content?

What is my time frame to complete the project?

Once you answer some of these questions you’ll be ready to determine whether you should have the project completed in house or outsourced. In the case of companies who already have an up-to-date website it’s a matter of who will maintain it. By up-to-date I mean your website is responsive or mobile optimized. After all the majority of searches are coming from mobile devices. You can easily spend $10k,20k,50k on a website if you don’t really know what you want and what your objective is for your business as it pertains to the internet. It pays to consult with a Marketer or Digital Marketing agency who understands how to pull all the pieces together. While a Web Design shop may be a good choice for designing the website they may not understand your business model or your goals from a Marketing perspective. My advice for small businesses in pricing the design of websites is to look at their overall expense budget and create a line item called Digital Marketing. Once you’ve done your research and consulted with a Marketer to determine how much more business you’re expected to earn through your new or improved website then you can determine your budget. The truth is it will take time to get a return on investment.

Below I’ve created a simple chart to give you an idea for how much you should invest in your website. The investment is based on company revenue. There’s a good reason I did it this way. That reason is based on a growth strategy and 15+ years of experience budgeting for marketing campaigns that would generate leads and satisfy a company’s objective and help their sales team acquire more clients. Ultimately, I know that some small businesses will only invest what they can, but my advice is to seek experienced designers and marketers who understand your business goals. I can’t count the number of times that my team and I had to tell a business interested in our services that we would not be able to accomplish their goals based on their budget.

Chart to show you what you should budget for a good website

Revenue up to $250k per year – Budget for $7500

Revenue up to $500k per year – Budget for $10k

Revenue up to $1 million per year – Budget for $25k

Revenue up to $2 million per year – Budget for $50k

Revenue up to $5 million per year – Budget for $100k

As for the ongoing Digital Marketing budget you should budget the same amount you invested to build the website for your digital marketing spend. It truly depends on your goals and how aggressive you want to be in building a lead generation campaign. You have to consider other factors that will impact the cost in a big way. Content creation, SEO, PPC, Social Media and Email Marketing should definitely be included in the Digital Marketing plan and strategy.

7 Features To Include In Your Website Design

The features of any website truly depend on your business model and on the needs of your clients. In this section I listed 7, but there are hundreds of features depending on what your clients desire and what your competitors are offering them. For example your target audience may expect to have a member portal to login to a dashboard.

Smart forms integrated into your CRM

Marketing automation to set up email drip campaigns

Appointment setting

Payment processing

FAQ page or Knowledgebase page

Install an SSL Certificate

Automatic Backups

10 Trends To Consider In Web Design

When it comes to web design trends you’ll find that you’re limited in what you can implement. As new features pop up it does not mean you should try to incorporate them into your website just so you can look like you embrace the trends. When it comes to trends I’m mostly referring to redesign or new design. However, in the case of video and storytelling this is a trend you can incorporate into your current website by adding a new page. Maybe you can add a plugin that will display your videos in a creative layout and give you the opportunity to tell your story in an interesting way.

Color with Vintage Quality

Menu Buttons that standout

Custom Scrolling

Blending Tactile with Digital

Subtle animation and micro-interaction

Cinematic experiences

Immersive Storytelling

Grid Layouts

AI chatbots like Messenger

Less Stock photos and more Authentic photos

12 Questions To Ask a Web Designer or Web Design Shop

If you don’t already know there’s a difference between web design and web development. I don’t believe in unicorns or jack of all trades, but I do believe that you can find a good designer and a good developer who may or may not be on the same team and work well together on your project. It’s important to understand what the designer and developer which may be working in 1 agency will be charging you for discovery and revisions. If your budget is set than you’ll want to start by creating a map of your website and the designer will be able to build a wireframe. Every agency, design shop and design approaches this from a different angle. They may use mockup tools like Balsamiq, Invisionapp, Mockingbird, UXPin, Visio and others to get you a prototype. You should expect to pay for this service. Think of it like building a house. You pay the architect to create the basic design. If you choose to hire them to create the blueprint then you’ll have to pay for the plans too. If the architect happens to work with the builder, you may or may not choose that builder to build the house. I would say that the biggest complaint I hear from businesses is that the web designer or agency hired to design/develop their website took twice as long as what they agreed to complete the website. Make sure that the designer or agency you hire can give you clear timelines.

Can you send me a list of sites you designed?

Do you charge hourly or by project?

Do you have a project manager or 1 contact for the entire project?

How many revisions am I allowed?

What are the payment terms?

What CMS will you build it in?

What support do you offer once the site is live?

Do you work using templates/themes or build custom sites?

Will the website be responsive?

Who will write the content?

What services do you provide?

What kind of results can I expect?

8 Questions To Ask a Digital Marketer or Marketing Agency

I could add 100 questions to this section, but I chose to go small and really focus on giving solid advice. I’ve been a Digital Marketer for over 10 years. In that time I’ve attended hundreds of conferences, taken dozens of classes, tested thousands of campaigns

Have you created a campaign in my vertical?

How will you measure your efforts?

How do you stay up-to-date with the latest techniques?

What kind of tools do you use?

What kind of reporting will you deliver?

How long will it take to see results?

How much will it cost?

Who will be working with you on my campaign?

Technology Tools To Consider Using

When it comes to software and technology tools it can be overwhelming to find the right one for your company. Below is a short list of the companies, ideas and tools you can use for designing your website and managing your digital marketing presence.

Simple Web Design: Wix, Squarred Space

Semi-Custom Web Design: Creative Market, ThemeForest

Advanced Web Design: Hire Agency, Web Developer, Marketing Consultant

Freelance: Thumbtack, Associations, Colleges, LinkedIn, Upwork, Fiverr

Marketing Automation: Hubspot, Marketo, Pardot

Social Media Management: Buffer, Hootesuite, Sprout, Klout

Email: Constant Contact, MailChimp, Emma, AWeber

CMS: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Sitecore

Develop: Code.org, Gitbub, Bluemix

Data: Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Google My Business, Google Search Console , Lucky Orange

PPC: Google Adwords, Bing, Wordstream

SEO: Moz, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Spyfu

Social Media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Pinterest,Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Vimeo

CRM: Salesforce, InfusionSoft, Insightly, Zoho

Communication: Basecamp, DaPulse, Percolate, WP Plugins, Slack

Design: Canva, Stencil, PicMonkey, Pablo

Content: Buzzsumo, Mention, Epicbeat, Right Relevance

Content is still a very important element of Digital Marketing. If you're looking for a conference to help you master this discipline you should consider Content Marketing World. It's held in Cleveland, OH on September 3-6, 2019. Find out more here http://j.mp/2WXeT7W #socialmediamarketing #technology #digitalmarketing #contentmarketing #customerexperience

If you've ever wondered which Digital Ad platform has the most advanced targeting options here it is. No surprise that Google has the most effective audience targeting capabilities. #digitalmarketing #digitalads #paidads

Our new Podcast "Discover & Ideate" is coming soon! We're excited to share our ideas and proven strategies with the world. #podcast #technology #digitalmarketing #ideate #discover

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