For six years, Team and a Dream has been honored to work with entrepreneurs who started companies like Crederity, Yodle (when it was still Natpal.com), Teleosis Insitute, Healthy Humans and Herb Magee. During that time, we completed hundreds of projects like market assessments, competitive intelligence, web strategy, web-based marketing, buzz-building, social media and more.
Today's economic environment is a crushing challenge for small businesses. They are aggressively seeking ways to grow their footprint, extend their reach and fill the pipeline with more qualified customers. They need visibility to profitability. They need to navigate the marketing options and find the ones that fit them best, cost effectively. They need a firm that can deliver on all of the options and maintain a closed loop marketing approach ... showing whats working and what isn't ... on a weekly basis.
Against that backdrop, we are extending our services to work with small businesses under $100 million. These firms have many of the same challenges as technology startups and they are increasingly challenged to create credible and effective Internet Marketing campaigns. Firms that were getting away with a decent web site can no longer ignore the power of Internet Marketing.
The landscape has grown progressively more complex since we started in 2002. As we navigate the landscape with our clients, it has become clear that we needed to have a comprehensive view of Internet Marketing. Marketing service providers need to be focused on creating revenue for their clients. Small firms competing today need Visibility to Profitability. In fact, the days of the targeted agency, design firm or SEO firm may be numbered. Consider this quote from Inbound Marketing Guru Peter Caputa in his Predictions for 2009.
"Most One-Trick-Pony Agencies will Die The website design business - as a standalone business - will die. So will the traditional PR agency and the traditional ad agency. There are far too many 10-30 person agencies who do just one thing. In the past few years, mid sized businesses have moved more and more of their budget to agencies that can do interactive marketing work: demand and lead generation. This year, those agencies will start adding some traditional agency services to their offerings. Then, they'll just take away all of the business. They won't just take it from traditional agencies either. Web site development companies have just as much to worry about. This is the year for marketing and web development agencies to adapt or die. They MUST develop services that generate demand for their clients. They must turn themselves into inbound marketing agencies. It's more about delivering an ROI. Not just billable hours. "
We've been working with a few early adopters on a metrics-driven, results-oriented approach that utilizes a weekly metrics dashboard. Combining stats from Google Analtyics, Hubspot and proprietary internal systems, we report on performance of campaigns relative to the client's specific goals and objectives. This has led to powerful conversations about the marketplace, the unique selling proposition and the messages that work. Using these techniques, we've been able to deliver client results such as month over month traffic growth of 275%, revenue growth of 300% and inbound link growth of over 400%.
In fairness, many of these online businesses were very young... but that isn't unlike what we see with many small businesses. They just don't have any web presence to speak of.
Moving forward, our blog and web site will continue to provide resources and guidance around the most cost effective tools and powerful strategies for Internet Marketing. We will be adding in the context of understanding the big picture and creating measurable results. Its the only way to compete and survive in this dynamically changing environment.
How has your company taken a comprehensive look at marketing? What kind of closed loop marketing approaches have been successful for you?
