Recent achievements powering this recognition include:

• Generating an additional 1,300 leads and $60,000 of value, with no corresponding incremental program expense, through collaborative strategies including definitive conversion testing for a company in the auto lending industry.
• Working with more than 50 agencies to create and implement a content governance model and overall website experience for visitors and admins, and launch a new website for Colorado’s third-largest county.
• Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) visibility by 812% and improving organic traffic value by $92,000 per year over 4 years for a leader in the horticultural industry.

Leading and Innovating in Digital Marketing

Founded in Denver as a digital marketing agency in 1994, Webolutions was among the first in the world to successfully leverage Pay Per Click advertising and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Today, we are a full-spectrum business consulting and strategic implementation company. We empower businesses everywhere to scale faster, smarter, and easier.

We launched our first website within 90 days of the creation of the Internet. We have led innovations in digital marketing and website strategy since before website and email were common vernacular, and through the evolution of the Internet as it became the starting point for almost every information search.

When we started, the act of entering credit card information into a web form was considered strange and unsafe. In 2022, over 56% of Americans prefer to purchase online rather than in person. This represents a 10% increase over 2 years, and the trend continues in that direction.¹ Currently, 6 in 10 people start their buying decision process with a web search. Entire generations cannot fathom considering buying anything without consulting Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Throughout this evolution, when people conduct these searches, Webolutions clients get found.

Communicating Your Relevancy in Today’s World

Today, as the world and everyone in it continues to change, we help our clients create relevant, emotional connections with internal and external audiences. Through our Intrinsic Multiplier™ Approach, we help you evolve your mindset to truly be a visionary organization and stand out from others who sell what you sell. We help you measure everything from Return on Ad Spend to employee engagement. We help you clarify and “culturalize” your unique Purpose, Values, and Mission, and pull specific strengths through in your message. We help you find your story and bring it to life.

Exclusive strategies designed to elevate your success include:

• We actively guide creation of your unique Market Positioning Action Plan™. This discovery journey evolves the mindsets of your leadership team, prompting you to see yourselves through a series of new lenses. This advances your message from focusing on what you sell to the real emotionally and tangibly rewarding transformations you create.
• Market Positioning is frequently coupled with the creation of your Brand Platform™. This exclusive set of defined standards drives your marketplace differentiation, more effective communications, and more connected buyer journeys throughout all communications channels.
• Our Websites Right Methodology™ ensures your Webolutions website outperforms your competitors through business and bottom-line focused keyword optimization planning, SEO optimized information architecture, and competitive analysis of your marketplace.
• Our exclusive, custom-configured Enhanced WordPress Platform™ and the enhancements we have made to WordPress maximize the functionality and effectiveness of the world’s most popular Content Management System.
• Our Real-Time Performance Intelligence™ Dashboards provide thoughtful and organized real-time graphical performance models giving you at-a-glance tangibility to critical information and trends.
• Our Results Driven Communications™ approach to the tactical creation of all content ensures all communications, across all media, are specifically crafted to appeal to a specific defined audience, in a specific medium, to create a specifically defined result.
• Our Collaborative ROI Projection Model maximizes utilization of your marketing resources. For greater focus and prioritization, this model allows for the calculated planning and evaluation of the real ROI a potential marketing strategy or tactic may yield prior to costly implementation. We work with you to create a business model for proof of concept while creating tracking funnels to identify critical areas of focus for greater success as the strategy is implemented. This illuminates exactly which levers to pull and when to pull them, while keeping you in control.

Driving Exceptional Digital Marketing Results

Throughout our growth to serving a global array of industries and clients, we have remained a Denver top digital marketing company. We have grown from a single chair in a basement in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, to more than 20 Webolutians. Your Webolutions team members each bring more than 10 years of expertise in their functional areas to you. Those areas include:

• Digital Advertising – We are a Google Partner, managing millions of dollars in ad spend each year on Google Ads, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more platforms.
• SEO – We are an Internet Marketing Association SEO Leader, twice recognized as Top SEO Firm in the US.
• Content Marketing – Through our exclusive tactical content strategy and tactical content creation systems, we work with you to create forward-looking, results-driven content calendars and implementation strategies. Data driving your strategy may come from your highest traffic website pages, designated search engine champion pages, conversions against industry standards, SEO positions, on-page calls to action, overall website visitor journeys, etc. And of course, your strategy includes defined roles, responsibilities, deliverables, dates, and how the content you create is most effectively multi-purposed and leveraged across multiple channels.

Winning Together

We are pleased and proud to have been recognized for decades by the Denver Business Journal as a top digital marketing company. Denver and Colorado are home to some of the most sustained firms in the digital marketing industry. Our unique longevity and continued success in this extremely competitive environment are reflections of our commitment to continuously improve, our business-minded approach, our bottom-line results and mostly, our long-term relationships with you.

If you or anyone in your network, in Denver or elsewhere, seeks a business partner with digital marketing expertise and a sustained track record of transparency and success, let’s talk.

¹ Source: FitSmallBusiness

The post Webolutions Again Recognized as Denver Top Digital Marketing Company appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Problem

Someone clicks on your pay-per-click ad and goes to your website. They leave without completing the form or calling you. But they continue researching, and you keep coming up. Eventually visitors will quietly read your blog articles, like your Facebook posts, read your reviews and subscribe to your e-newsletter. And when time is right for them, they Google your business name, arrive on your website, contact you and get entered into your Keap / Infusionsoft system.

How do you attribute the lead?

The ad generated the initial awareness and engagement. Your analytics present that interaction as another anonymous click and a non-conversion. Same for when the first click comes through social media, affiliate links, links in marketing emails, your Google My Business listing, etc…

You are frustrated because you need to be able to measure how each marketing channel affects your bottom line. You need to understand how each channel to which you commit money and time reinforces the others. Where in the buyer’s journey are your highest impact opportunities to improve results? You have all this information and none of it is reliably actionable.

Action

Get the answers you need with Webolutions exclusive True Attribution Measurement System – from first click all the way into your Keap / Infusionsoft system. Your window into the buyer’s journey will be illuminated for anyone entering your pipeline. You will know, for any individual opportunity and in the aggregate:

• Which channels effectively drive initial engagement.
• What specific link — advertisement, social media post, email — generates quality clicks.
• What subsequent visits visitors make it to your website.
• How visitors consume your information.
• What parts of your conversion funnel require the most immediate attention to improve your marketing effectiveness.

Our system uses proven, industry-standard tracking code and web software. It is available to all enrolled in our Keap / Infusionsoft Implementation and Enhancement Program. It provides line-item ROI accountability for:

• Pay-per-click advertising, e.g. Google Ads, Bing Ads
• Social media advertising, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
• Social media posts
• Affiliate marketing
• Business and industry directories, e.g. your local Chamber of Commerce, BBB
• Local online directories, e.g. Google My Business, Yelp
• Text marketing
• Email marketing
• Any channel in which you have control over setting the links.

Webolutions is a Google Partner. Our Denver-based digital marketing experts manage millions of dollars in annual advertising spend. Your experience in creating and launching this system will include working with Webolutions’ in-house team of digital advertising experts and Keap / Infusionsoft Certified Professionals.

We will work with you to:

• Create your custom strategy, including a collaborative inventory and documentation of your current programs and opportunities.
• Audit and potentially augment your website and related systems to ensure the program will work for you.
• Configure, install and test the system end-to-end.
• Ensure your lead activity is automatically attributed and tracked all the way into your Keap / Infusionsoft sales pipeline.
• Instruct and train your team on how to interpret and use the information the system provides.
• Review the system regularly (usually quarterly) to ensure integrity and accuracy.

Result

Using this system and partnering with Webolutions for your Keap / Infusionsoft, digital marketing and website gives you:

• Improved ROI
  • From all digital marketing channels.
  • From your Keap / Infusionsoft system.
• Greater visibility
  • To your marketing channel effectiveness.
  • To how and where they can and should improve.
• Professionals who know you and care about your success.
  • All Webolutions in-house experts have 10+ years’ experience in their fields.
  • Your program includes dedicated time with specific individuals who know your name and work directly with you on an ongoing basis to achieve your goals.
• Complete control and program flexibility.
  • All Webolutions programs are month to month.
  • All programs include monthly calls to review performance and augment strategy to improve your ROI.
  • We make data-driven recommendations; you make decisions. You remain 100% in control of your budget.

Are you ready to:

• Get a clear understanding of your digital marketing performance?
• Get more ROI from your Keap / Infusionsoft system?
• Confidently make actionable decisions to improve your results and achieve your goals?

Let’s talk. Call us today at 303-300-2640 or schedule an appointment.

The post Measure Your Digital Marketing Effectiveness with Webolutions’ Exclusive True Attribution™ appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

At a high level, your custom website design experience should include:

• You present ideas on the website. All ideas are good. Bring ’em.
• Your partner guides you through the decisions. Example: Yes, that can be done. Here is the impact to your cost and timeline. Let’s talk about if adding this to your scope will produce positive returns.
• Your partner making recommendations. These should never be rooted in, “Here’s some really cool stuff we know how to do.” Rather, they should always be rooted in, “From our experience, based on the goals you’ve communicated to us, we recommend you consider…” Conversely, understand it’s the Internet, and it’s all code, and anything is possible. You should not experience any limitations because the platform can’t support them or your partner has no experience. The only questions are Is this the best investment for you? Will it help you achieve your goals?
• You challenge each other’s assumptions. It is critical to juxtapose your strategic goals and business acumen with your custom website’s role in helping you achieve them.

This should be a challenging but rewarding experience.

Reasons to Develop a Custom Website

• Avoiding the inherent limitations of a themed website.
• You understand the notion of Opportunity Costs, i.e. that going cheap is expensive.
• You require custom functionality or third-party integrations a theme cannot support or to which a theme cannot scale.
• You need to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Here are the most common ways web development companies mess this up:

They don’t have a system linking their work to your business goals.

You are likely investing in a website to generate positive returns. This may be an increase in inbound sales leads, increased engagement with your community, or a stronger position from which to establish thought leadership in your industry or subject matter.

Web companies who lack a business-minded approach think your goal is to make a website. They don’t ask about what returns you expect from it because they don’t have a way to guide you there. Or they infer or insist that the answer is in design or UX (User Experience), or whichever part of the equation they do understand. Be careful here. Persist on ROI-focused questioning. Make sure your partner has proven systems that establish their accountability, tying the creation of your custom website to the achievement of the results you need to generate.

When presenting your custom website designs, they first ask, “Do you like it?”

A custom website is customized primarily for your website visitor.

Yes, it is important that you “like” your website. It is infinitely more important that your prospective client “like” your website. That decision gets made, subconsciously, in a few seconds. Only by first clearly defining your target personas, their needs, their decision process, their mindset when they arrive on your website, and what information they need, can your website be designed to convert those visitors into leads or sales.

If our designers like your website, and you like your website, and your CEO likes your website, but your prospective client does not, everybody loses. Your partner should deliver data-driven recommendations matching their User Experience and design with your overall business goals.

“Show me 3 of your competitors’ websites and 3 custom websites you like.”

This is your web designer fitting you into a box. This makes it easier and faster for them to do their work because it prevents them from having to think creatively.

This also provides a ready-made excuse. When you get a website that looks exactly like any of the 6 you provided, your designer has a rationale that includes, “You provided this as an example.”

Websites you like should foster a discussion. What about it do you like? Will this help you stand apart from your competitors? Will it increase conversions, engagement? Budgets are limited and websites scale—is this the best investment at this time?

“Because a competitor is doing it,” is not in and of itself a design or development factor for your website. Competitor websites should be analyzed so you can understand your market opportunity, create a data-driven strategy, and make decisions based thereupon—for your website and your ongoing marketing program(s).

Now that your custom website is finished, let’s talk about SEO.

First: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not for everyone. If you are talking to a company whose profitability is significantly dependent on its ability to sell SEO services, you might never learn this.

Up-front data analysis is required to advise if and how your website can rank high enough on search engine results to deliver relevant, quality inbound traffic. You may have terms in mind which are already saturated by bigger and more established competitors with deeper pockets. Or, the terms for which you can score may not have the search volume to generate positive returns on your investment. You should know this before investing in SEO.

If you read Google’s best practices and assertions over the past few years, you will find they have implied they are trying to de-emphasize keywords in the URL (Universal Record Locator, i.e. your web page’s address) for search rank. If you test this theory, you will find that they will never actually be able to do this.

The world (and your business) is loaded with examples of how things don’t play out in real life like they do on paper. This is one of those.

Foregoing keyword and competitive analysis prior to designing and developing your custom website decreases your upfront cost and timeline. It also limits your website’s marketability and performance every day after you make that decision. Your SEO strategy, and its prominence and priority in your overall marketing program, should be established before your website is launched. To maximize your website’s organic search performance, the moment your new custom website is indexed by search engines, your website’s URL structure is keyword optimized. Those keywords are strategically chosen in a dialogue among your digital marketing partner and you. This dialogue must include your business goals and acumen. Our ability to score for a term does not necessarily equate to moving your needle.

If data indicates positive return is available through SEO, and if your custom website is not built around a custom, keyword-optimized URL plan that considers your competitive landscape, your website is not truly custom.

Why doesn’t everyone do it this way?

• Experience. They just might not know. Is your website partner book smart or street smart? Do you compete on paper or on the street?
• It decreases your up-front time and investment in creating the website—while costing you opportunities every day after that.
• They see their job as to make you a website—rather than to help you be successful in the long term.

They own your “custom” website.

Especially with WordPress, many companies provide “custom” websites which are actually templates that are “owned” by the website provider. This means that you may own your content, but you will not be able to pick up your files and move them to a different partner or hosting platform.

Characteristics of this include:

• No- to low-upfront investment, an ongoing fee of a few hundred bucks, and an agreement locking you into their services for 6 months to 2 years. If this is your situation, you don’t own your website; you are just renting it. And it is likely not, truly, a custom website.
• No training on the system.
• They do not provide a login to your website’s Content Management System (CMS), forcing all content updates to come through them.
• Inbound inquiries get filtered by them instead of coming directly through you. The “pitch” on this is that they’ll filter spam, and well they might. What else might they filter? Are they also sophisticated enough to determine and prioritize what a qualified lead looks like for your sales team? Studies say 78% of all inbound inquiries choose to do business with the first-responder. Does this filter help or inhibit your ability to be first?

Here are some questions to ask when considering a custom website partner.

To avoid all these potential pitfalls and make your custom website experience a triumphant one, make sure you are comfortable with your partner’s responses to questions like these:

• What are your company’s values? – Know that your partner is one with whom you can work constructively through issues.
• How many years of custom website development experience does your company have? – And the follow-up question: How do you use your experience to continuously improve your systems and the results you generate for your clients?
• What are your systems for ensuring my custom website is developed on time, on budget, and with minimal revisions? How do you ensure my custom website helps me achieve my business goals?
• Will you train us on how to use our website?
• Will we own the website and all files and assets related thereto? Will we have access to all the parts of the website we need, such as to add blog articles and make content changes?
• What happens after my website gets launched? – Do you have systems for ongoing website security, backups, scalability? Do you offer custom, data-driven marketing programs? What is my required commitment?

Not all custom website providers are created equal. For insights on how your custom website can deliver positive ROI, get a free consultation with a web development expert today.

The post Custom Web Design & Development Tips appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Key takeaways from Adobe’s announcement include:

• This affects all Adobe Business Catalyst Websites, without exception.
• After March 26, 2021, absolutely no data will be available to website owners. Adobe will delete all customer information. All Adobe Business Catalyst websites — and all files and content on them — will be deleted.
• Adobe is strongly encouraging all Business Catalyst website owners to take prompt action, i.e. to migrate their content to a different platform as soon as possible.
• Adobe Business Catalyst’s email marketing features will also be discontinued.

Why Should I Start Adobe Business Catalyst Website Migration Now?

• As with anything, the more time you give yourself between right now and your deadline, the broader and more attractive your options.
• On average, every one of us conducts 3-4 Google searches per day.
• In 2000, there were 18 million Google searches per day. In 2018, there were more than 5 Billion. Google receives more than 70,000 searches every second.
• Purchase of a product or service is preceded by a Google search more than 60% of the time.
• Almost every purchase or partnership decision involves your website at some level.
• At least 40% of all purchase decisions are directly influenced by information generated on an Internet search.
• 66% of those search queries generate at least one, and usually more, clicks through to a website.
• More than 60% of those clicks on desktop searches are on organic results (SEO).
• On average, outbound lead sources such as cold calling and direct mail generate a close rate below 2%. Inbound leads from search engines convert at nearly 15%.
• Websites that download slowly, usually due to poor maintenance or a lack of training, increase website exits by 50% and lower conversion rates by 12% per second.
• Even if your prospective customer, client or partner is recommended or referred to you, they are more likely than not to visit your website before contacting you, and virtually certain to do so before agreeing to do business with you.
• At minimum, the first impression made on your prospect is likely made by your website.
• Migrating a website to a new platform is much more intricate and involved than moving files from one server to another. Intention, care and planning are necessary to protect your investment and the results you have worked so hard to achieve.
• Your website is too important to put at risk.

What Should I Do To Migrate My Adobe Business Catalyst Website?

You should:

• Create a database of your full universe of relevant keywords.
• Document your current Google ranking for those keywords.
• Research, analyze and understand, possibly using Google Analytics, how visitors are currently consuming the content on your website.
• Document any information flows that are successful in providing visitors the information they need and driving website conversions or sales for your business.
• Document any breaks in the information flow, i.e. ascertain if website visitors are having to work too hard to find the information they seek, or (more likely), leaving your website because they figure your competitor’s website will be easier.
• Create a complete inventory of your inbound link profile, including the pages on your website to which the links point.
• Inventory your website’s internal links.
• Document your current sitemap.
• Create a complete inventory of all your website pages, including and especially all of them that have been indexed by Google.
• Identify any content that does not need to be migrated and can be discarded. Be certain this content is not influencing your current search rankings.
• About a hundred other things, each with a jungle’s abundance of decision trees.

Alternatively, you can:

• Choose an expert web design company you can trust.
• Work collaboratively with them to maximize the opportunity this development presents for your business.

Does Adobe Business Catalyst End of Life Present Opportunities for My Business?

Yes. Your options are:

• Do nothing. The opportunity here is either to fold up shop or change your business model to one that does not require an Internet presence.
• Move your content onto another platform as it is and hope you get at least the results you’ve always gotten.
• Review your current website’s effectiveness and consider creating a new website that accelerates the achievement of your goals.

Let’s dive deeper into number 3.

What is an “effective” website?

An effective website is one that produces positive return on your investment. Because of your website’s critical importance and central position in your marketing and sales systems, going cheap can cost you a lot of heartache and money.

A business-minded approach to effective website creation includes:

• Clearly defining your target personas, reverse-engineering the need generating their search for information and their decision-making process, and identifying a differentiated market position that you can own.
• Expert analysis of digital data and insight about your competitors combined with your business acumen with a focus on improving your results.
• Establishing standards for your messaging, communications, and imagery.
• Mining your website analytics for information.
• Building your website upon this foundation.
• Also building your content marketing strategy, your email marketing strategy, your digital advertising strategy, your traditional advertising strategy, the way you answer the phone, and all points in between on this foundation.

Why should I migrate to WordPress?

To be certain, other platforms are available. We recommend WordPress because:

• One of the conveniences you’ve enjoyed with Adobe Business Catalyst is its CMS functionality. These include the ability to create and edit your own website content, from wherever you are in the world, at any time.
• WordPress is by far the most active and popular CMS platform, and its popularity is increasing. Metrics at the end of 2016 showed WordPress powering 27% of all websites. At this writing, WordPress’s overall market share is 34% — yes, more than one-third of all websites use WordPress.
• More website designers and developers work in WordPress than any other CMS platform. This maximizes your flexibility and options while providing built-in redundancy.
• WordPress has exponentially more pre-made Plugins providing more key website functionality than any other platform; and they are more reliably supported and expanded upon in general.
• WordPress’ popularity is borne of its ease of use and its native SEO-friendliness.

Should I migrate my Adobe Business Catalyst website to a WordPress “theme?”

Probably not. Themes assume you fit into a box. You don’t maximize your profitability by being just like everyone else. You don’t establish a clear, differentiated market position by fitting into a box.

Effective, business-minded website development is about imagining possibilities, gauging their fit to your vision and goals, and making decisions based on ROI opportunity. It is not about what a theme can or cannot do.

Can WordPress replace all the functionality of my Adobe Business Catalyst system?

No, but Webolutions’ system does.

• Our approach reverse-engineers your opportunities to maximize your website’s appeal to Google to attract relevant and interested visitors to your site, and to convert those human visitors.
• Our Enhanced WordPress™ Platform provides WordPress’s ease of use and marketability in a scalable system. All Webolutions Enhanced WordPress websites include:
  • Mobile Responsiveness
  • Real-time guidance for creating optimized content
  • Automatic creation of XML Sitemaps for optimal indexing by Google
  • Customizable Web Forms
  • WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor
  • Video embedding, from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
  • Social Media Integration & Social Sharing
  • Breadcrumb Navigation
  • Document Upload and Download
  • Insert spam-protected email addresses into pages and posts
  • Custom image sizes and excerpt lengths
• Our ongoing Website Support Services ensure ongoing security and performance of your website and include hosting on WP Engine. WP Engine maximizes WordPress functionality and at this writing is the top choice of a very limited number of Adobe Business Catalyst’s Recommended Migration Partners.
• We improve upon Adobe Business Catalyst’s email marketing features by integrating Infusionsoft^® CRM and Marketing Automation system with WordPress.
• All our websites include complete CMS training and a custom, printable User’s Guide. These are provided by the same Project Manager who will lead you through our interactive website design and development process using systems developed over 25 years and 2,000 websites. You will get the benefits of regular, proactive, accountable communications; our 83-point checklist; and your unfettered access to your assets and visibility to the status of your project via online tools.

What’s the next step I should take to migrate my website?

Easy. Let’s chat to see if Adobe Business Catalyst migration to WordPress is right for your business, and to develop a custom plan to ensure this change helps your business to thrive.

The post Adobe Business Catalyst Website Migration to WordPress appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

WordPress themes are designed to be easy for web designers and developers to operate within a predetermined framework. This limits customization and scalability. Because every organization has different goals, different audiences with different needs and different and always-evolving visions of what their website should be and do, it is impossible to create a theme capable of meeting the endless breadth of requirements. These limitations created dissatisfaction among our staff and our clients.

At the same time, we were very happy with the cost and time savings and ease of use WordPress provides. The open-source nature of the platform and robust global community of WordPress experts provided previously unachievable control and built-in redundancies for our clients. It was the perfect vehicle for our Performance by Design™ approach.

We started creating websites within 90 days of the creation of the Internet. Before open-source Content Management Systems (such as WordPress) came along, the trade-off was that while you had to be a programmer to make any change to the site, the programmer’s acumen presented the only constraint. And because we only hire the best designers and programmers and live by values that include treating challenges as exciting opportunities, we co-existed poorly with these limitations. We have systems to help our clients identify and operate in unique market positions. Telling them they need to fit into a box when it came to their website just doesn’t compute.

Most WordPress designers and developers resolve these problems with Band-aids. They attend workshops at WordPress conventions to learn how to change the code within WordPress templates. They read instructional guides and watch YouTube videos that espouse linking “child themes” to “parent themes.” These solutions solve the problem for businesses who see their jobs as to give the client a website, collect a check, and move on to the next client.

Our business model centers on long-term relationships. We are more than a website company. Our purpose is to help passionate people thrive. The websites we create are built to achieve goals for our clients on an ongoing basis. We intend to be your accountable partner. Permanently.

The risks and downsides of the solutions adopted by our competitors are unacceptable. They include weaker website infrastructure, complicated experiences for website administrators, and “code bloat” which slows website download speeds and compromises performance. You can’t build a website like this and then look your client in the eye and say, for example, that it is optimized for search engines, or for user experience, or that training a new user will be easy. Well…okay, you can, but you’re not being truthful, either because you don’t know any better or because you are perfectly comfortable looking someone in the face and telling a lie because you think if you do, they might give you money.

Our in-house application development team resolved this issue the hard way: By creating our exclusive Enhanced WordPress Platform.

When you choose Webolutions to create and optimize your WordPress website, you still enjoy all the base functionality and user-friendliness of WordPress, with a standard suite of plugins our experts have pre-qualified to provide you the best possible results. The platform scales—like a website should—maximizing its utility, performance and longevity.

It’s better for us, too. We remain free to make any design and functionality recommendations we believe will help you achieve your goals, and to collaborate and act on your ideas based purely on their merits, and all of us remain free to think outside the box. Any time, all the time.

Getting your WordPress website built on the cheap will cost you money every day after you make that decision. Avoid transactional vendors. Stay outside the box. You deserve a professional partner whose success is tied to yours. Let’s get you one. Today.

The post Enhanced WordPress™ Website Platform – Why We Don’t Use WordPress Themes appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

First, let’s cover a couple of old rules that remain the same, only because we see some otherwise-savvy businesses missing them:

1. You want a PAGE for your business, not a PROFILE.
A Profile has “friends,” a Page has “likes.” “Friends” require mutual acceptance, the Page assumes anyone who “likes” it is welcome until an administrator says otherwise. Pages provide analytics and allow for custom tabs; profiles do not. If you’re a business, you should demand analytics and…we’ll talk about custom tabs later in this series.

The easiest way I’ve found to explain how to build a Page is: Go to the very bottom of any Facebook Web page and click, “Advertising.” On the ensuing page, click, “Pages (it’s on your left),” and then on the ensuing Page click, “Create Page (top right).”

2. You want a custom, or “vanity,” Web address for your Facebook Page.
Once you’ve launched your Page, you need to acquire 25 “likes.” Surely among all your employees, relatives, colleagues, customers, friends, family members, people who owe you a solid, the guy who sold you your iPhone, etc., you can scare up 25 people to take a few seconds to “like” your new Facebook Page. If not, you need to get out more. There, I said it.

As soon as you hit this milestone, go to www.Facebook.com/Username and name your Page after your business. Triple-check your spelling. Don’t get cute–the point of having a memorable Web address is that it’s memorable. Think ahead to business cards, email autosignatures, elevator pitches and blog posts. Example: You can connect with our company at Facebook.com/Webolutions and on our Website, webolutionsmarketingagency.com. See there? I gave you three things and you only have to remember one.

The Facebook Business Opportunity

Even if your executives don’t see how Facebook fits your business equation immediately, taking ownership of your brand name in this space is a good idea, to say the least. It’s easy. So is doing it wrong.

Do I love or hate the new Facebook Page?
You love it. First of all, I can’t help but notice Facebook changes stuff frequently without asking us, so if we decide to embrace the changes, we’ll spend more time smiling about them. If we don’t, we’ll just be a bunch of grumps sitting by ourselves in the break room and later we’ll come around to realizing just how silly it was to get grumpy about Facebook instead of all the really good reasons life provides for grumpiness AND we’ll still have to figure out how to leverage the changes to our benefit.

Three Reasons You Love the New Facebook Page Functionality
1. You can take on the identity of the Page.
Now, the Page can act as a person on Facebook. It can have its own personality and make comments on other Pages leaving its own thumbnail. Is there a business with which your business would like to interact? Go to your business’s Page, on the top right, click, “Use Facebook as (your page name),” and start acting like you’ve been here before. Have you ever dropped off your kid at school and minutes later been in a business meeting? How about hanging up with your personal financial adviser to take a sales call? Right, so it might be a little weird at first but it’ll be a pretty shallow learning curve. Your Page has its own Profile, with its own messages, updates, etc., etc. Just like you do.

2. The ownership issue is resolved.
Once upon a time, somebody at your company started a Facebook Page but she doesn’t work there anymore and nobody knows exactly what the password is and she didn’t make anyone else an administrator before she left. Or, an agency set up your Page and you’ve decided not to continue with that agency. Or, you created an email address just for the Page and the more you think about that the less sense it makes…Never encounter this scenario, or anything similar, again with the upgraded Facebook Page! We still recommend multiple administrators including at least two from the client company, but that has changed from a fundamental requirement to a best practice for backup.

3. The Page has its own news feed.
Your Page can now “like” other Pages, meaning the status updates that come from those businesses make up the news feed on your Page’s Profile. Ever heard this story? Dad hires son, son is not working out. Dad calls son into his office. Dad is wearing a hat labeled, “CEO.” Dad tells son, “I’m sorry, but we’ve decided to let you go.” Dad removes “CEO” hat, puts on another hat labeled, “Dad.” Dad now says, “Son, your mother and I feel terrible that you lost your job and want you to know we love you and we want to help.” This type of separation is enabled in Facebook. Consume and share items of personal interest from your personal profile, then click over to your Page and do the same thing from your company’s brand identity.

The Business Opportunity
Brand identity and the development and proliferation thereof. Ownership of your assets. Separation of personal and professional.

How does Facebook decide what goes in the news feed?

First, let’s define the term: “News feed” is the chronological list of posts from your friend and Pages you “like.” It’s the stream of information you see when you log into Facebook. Anymore, this works (links) the same when you’re using Facebook as yourself or as your business Page.

Just like Google and other search engines, Facebook uses an algorithm–Facebook’s is called EdgeRank–to determine what “news” it “feeds” you. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (and even if it isn’t) then the way to your human audience is through that algorithm. So: What shall we feed the algorithm?

The Facebook Post Quality Score

If you’ve ever posted anything on a Page you administer, you’ve seen the “quality score” for that post. Every single post on Facebook gets a quality score. The higher the quality score, the more likely it is that more people see that post.

The factors influencing the quality score are:

• Number of interactions–comments, likes, shares–the post receives.
• How quickly these interactions begin.
• How close in time these interactions occur with each other.
• How long the conversation stemming from the post continues.
• The “interaction rate,” which is the number of comments divided by the number of connections you have. So: If your page has 100 “likes” and twelve of them comment on any single post, the interaction rate for that post is twelve percent. The interaction rate for a post that gets 120 likes, comments and shares on a page with 100,000 fans is 0.12 percent. This is a very good measurement for how effectively you are recruiting and speaking to your fan base.

(Of course, if you have 100 “likes” on your page, the total available market for your message is 100 people. That’s beyond the scope of this post but it is worth contemplating.)

Based on these criteria and and observed consumer behavior, you can assume that self-promotion posts will receive low engagement a low quality score and therefore be seen by fewer people. People are most likely to interact with business page posts based on promotional offers.

The Business Opportunity
In social media, quality counts. To get more of the right people to “opt in” to your message on Facebook, your objective must be to generate conversations on your Page in a timely manner. Understanding the rules of the game provides quantitative metrics against which goals and your ROI can be set and success measured.

How often should I post to Facebook?

Not all social networks are the same. When I speak to groups, I talk about this in the context of “culture.” In this post, we’ll focus on the practical, matter-of-fact stuff, but it still makes sense to address, briefly, the nature of how people use the network.

Constants in the Equation

Very few of us interact on Facebook with a primary goal of selling something, and those who project that are broadcasting to an empty channel. We use Facebook for entertainment and keeping in touch, and we make time for this on weekends. We’ve seen recent data that says messages on Facebook are most likely to be consumed on Saturdays and Sundays and Tuesday through Friday before the work day starts, but we haven’t seen that data broken out to the granular degree we would like and we suspect that Facebook is consumed with less discipline and efficiency than, say, email is today.

Frequency

Webolutions’ clients, for whom the audience is consumers, start on a schedule of Saturday morning, Tuesday evening and Thursday evening. As the brand grows more social, the results from A/B testing are collected and interpreted and the audience preferences become more clearly identified over time, the schedule adjusts. The next test we run is to change from Tuesday and Thursday evenings to mornings before work on those days, and A/B testing continues from there until we find the sweet spot.

Dependability

Your audience should get what they expect, when they expect it. I’m a Simpsons geek. Every Sunday, 7:00 pm, this cartoon comes on. Bart is going to say something irreverent, Homer will do something stupid and the rest of the characters will enable by way of filling in the slow spots. If the show hits the air at 7:04 some Saturdays or 6:53 some Thursdays and every once in a while throws in a live action cameo from Eleanor Clift recounting her experiences as a McLaughlin Group panelist…well, I’ll have better places to be. A schedule, an Editorial Calendar, provides structure to your internal processes and frames the expectations for your audience.

Sanity

It bears mentioning that tools exist to help you schedule your output and manage your time. For scheduling output ahead of time and monitoring multiple social media channels in real time, my favorite is HootSuite.

Summary

There’s no easy answer, but start with every other day, outside of work hours. Use what you know about your customer and their tendencies to implement the next step. Collect and analyze data, and do it again. And again.

The Business Opportunity

We’ve suggested where to start. Your challenge will be to find the point at which the timing and frequency of your output appeals to the audience. When your most engaged members become your brand evangelists by sharing your content, smile. You can’t stop analyzing and improving, but you can enjoy a small victory.

The post New Rules for Facebook Marketing appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Havana Business Improvement District

In the early 2000s, Havana Street — from 6th Avenue to Dartmouth Avenue — was a small stretch of road with a bad reputation. As evening commuters passed through this area from their jobs in Denver to their homes in Aurora, they encountered urban blight, condemned buildings and abandoned retail outlets with few prospects, none of them attractive. Activities outside a largely empty shopping mall required frequent attention from Aurora’s police force. Residents suffered from malaise.

This is a common story in metro areas all over America. A popular solution is for the merchants to leave or close from necessity, allow the residents who can afford to exodus to do so, neglect the infrastructure and let the property values bottom out. As we’ve seen in Denver, this creates an attractive environment for developers. The problem gets “solved” by gentrification. The economic woes are replaced by opportunity, at the cost of the type of misplacement inherent to market economies.

Havana Street thought differently. A coalition of public officials, merchants and resident leaders sought to maintain the integrity of the community they envisioned, and which they felt they had earned. They banded together to create the Havana Business Improvement District. Among the group’s top initial priorities was to brand the district and the 4.3-mile artery bearing its name. District leadership worked with Webolutions to moniker and market the district as On Havana Street.

The first two signs bearing the On Havana Street name and logo had to be removed within 48 hours, and replaced, due to the fact that the script and imagery were significantly and irreparably marred by bullets.

Today, the district is an annual leader in sales tax revenue. A parking lot where gang violence was once the norm, families attend free concerts and help maintain a community rose garden. 2018 retail vacancy rates in the district are below 2%. 2018 average family income in a 1-mile radius from the district’s center is up nearly 5% over 2017, which was in turn a 27% increase over 2015. Home values are also rising. Replacement is under way of one of the most iconic eyesores in the Denver metro area by a modern mixed-use development. The district holds an internationally recognized public arts program and annual events drawing tens of thousands of people.

The beauty of this story is in the fact that, at an inflection point, this community took the road less traveled by. Given the choice of turning away or doing the hard work, these people bet on themselves. Today, when stakeholders gather — as they did for their annual meeting in November — pride and confidence fill the room. This group of people needed help and strength and found it in themselves and each other. On Havana Street is proof a community can improve the lives of its residents and merchants while reinforcing, rather than compromising, its soul.

Mytech Make a Difference Community Partner Grant

Webolutions proudly partnered with Mytech Partners and Apoorva to provide awards for the Make a Difference Community Partner Grant, introduced to the Denver community in 2018. (Mytech’s home office in Minneapolis has conducted this grant in that market for years.) Selection committee members included representatives from the Colorado Nonprofit Association and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

On Wednesday, December 5, the day after 2018 Colorado Gives Day, Mytech’s Denver-area office provided a holiday atmosphere for networking and a brief awards ceremony. Approximately 10 Denver nonprofits received approximately $300,000 of value in grants. These came in the form of:

• A Full Day Effective Leadership and Visioning Session
• 3 Years of IT Managed Services
• Strategic IT Roadmaps
• Security Risk Assessments
• CRM implementation packages

Planning for enhancements to the program for 2019 are under way. If you would like to apply or participate as a sponsor, please contact Webolutions.

Webolutions congratulates Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning
for earning their selection as the recipient for the Leadership and
Visioning Session provided by Webolutions.

A Mindset to Honor our Kinship

Webolutions is privileged to operate at the center of a community of leaders, and to gain their perspectives on leadership topics at events including annual meetings to which we are invited and Executive Roundtables we host. We get to see and learn about how cause-related organizations such as Firefly Autism and City Year are fostering community development, and how organizations such as Garden Centers of Colorado and Colorado Food Works are working to support their members and cause-focused organizations.

Market economies require activity and velocity. Denver is home to leaders across the public, for-profit and nonprofit spectrum who understand our interdependence and the importance of the roles each of us play, often invisibly, in each other’s successes.

This is a season of abundance for many, and of displacement for others. In a media-driven environment increasingly focused on our differences, perhaps we can each take a moment to celebrate the nobleness inherent in our daily pursuits and the remarkable results that are achievable when we draw upon each other’s strengths.

The post Denver Businesses and Nonprofits Succeed Together appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Keep Doing Email Marketing

In 2018, email marketing remains a cost-effective tactic overall, and your monthly or quarterly e-newsletter remains a critical component of your marketing mix.

Yet, technology and market developments now render your Constant Contact or MailChimp system obsolete. Tools and systems once available only to the enterprise are now simply a smarter choice for smaller businesses. Contact Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation systems such as Infusionsoft^® have rendered legacy email marketing systems about as relevant as Slimline phones and standard-definition TVs.

What is a CRM System?

Contact Relationship Management systems are the 21st century version of the Rolodex (Your Rolodex is in the storeroom, in a box, next to the Slimline phone. It’s okay to throw away that whole box. Same for the VCR on top of which that box sits. Please recycle.) Small businesses who maintain databases of contacts — customers, vendors, referral partners, etc. — likely do so using Excel, Access, a white board, sticky notes, or simply enter them individually into Outlook or their email marketing tool.

(Small businesses who do not maintain databases of contacts are already out of business; some just haven’t read that memo.)

Your Outlook or Excel database provides critical information, including Name, Business, Title, Phone, and Email, maybe a note on how you met or type of contact. Here’s what information, in addition to all that, is available at-a-glance in Infusionsoft CRM and accessible from any Internet-connected computer or app-enabled smart phone:

• Recent Activity – When did you speak last? What notes are available from that conversation?
• Lead Score – How should your sales team, especially if it’s a team of one, and even more so if that one is you, prioritize its time and energy? Scoring your opportunities brings clarity to your sales efforts.
• Documents – Need to check language in the agreement? No need to access a shared drive. Every document you’ve ever sent this person is available in a File Box on their Contact Profile in Infusionsoft.
• Relevant Detailed Information – When should you send a Happy Birthday card? What are their passions? Family? What music do they enjoy? Fill in the blank. Understanding your contacts on this level helps you find affinity and relate to each other as people.
• What’s Next? – Did you commit to a phone call? Is an agreement coming up for renewal? Do you need to meet a deadline? Are you expecting a decision, or a signature? Set reminders, then have all relevant information in front of you with a click.
• Integrations – With Outlook, accounting software, electronic scheduling tools, your website (of course) and just about anything at which you can or cannot shake a stick.
• Yes, there’s more. But how long do you really want this article to be?

Why Marketing Automation?

When it comes time to deliver the monthly burst e-newsletter, you are uploading and/or auditing your list(s), from however many databases, and enduring delays generated by typos, little errors because your spreadsheet is in the wrong format or has a single blank cell or something, matching fields, etc. This tedium is exactly why so many small businesses start an e-newsletter and then stop it. And you probably continue to pay the monthly fee for the service you’re not using, because you feel like someday you’ll hate it less and need it just as much.

Toss out this whole mess with the rest of the aforementioned box, and shift that money and (a whole lot less) time into a system that generates positive impact for your business.

Infusionsoft CRM and Marketing Automation replaces data entry and uploads with a few clicks. Want to see how? Let’s schedule a demonstration for you.

“Right Time” Marketing – Beyond the E-Newsletter

Your e-newsletter has something for everyone, right? Well, in our current on-demand society, how about an e-newsletter that’s just for me?

So your prospective client just told you that the project was moving forward—after a six-month delay. How do you stay top of mind without being a pest or creating random tedium in your day, i.e., “Oh, yeah, it’s been a month; I should send her an email. What could I say besides, ‘Hello?’ What could I say that adds some value for her?”

Instead, how about:

• With a couple of clicks, classify this opportunity as “On Hold,” or “Long-term Nuture,” or whatever your preferred nomenclature dictates.
• Include links to your blog articles or in-line notes directly relevant to her industry, her area of interest, things about your company that she likes, etc.
• With a series of drag-and-drops, create an automated campaign.
• your timing and sequence(s) for delivery.
• Take out the garbage / Finish taking that box to the recycler.

The process is just as easy and nearly identical for other journeys you might create. Want to understand your new customer’s satisfaction level after her first service was completed? Like, before her fingertips find their way to Yelp? For the Infusionsoft CRM and Marketing Automation user, that campaign might look something like this:

Get Your Marketing Upgrade

Increase prospect velocity through your pipeline. Win more business. Be more organized. Get out of data entry and automate recurring tasks. Elevate your expectations for what email marketing can do for your business. Expect more from your systems. In today’s business environment, the victories go to those who evolve. This competitive advantage is available. Reach out and grab it.

Or get tossed out like an old TV.

The post Why Infusionsoft CRM and Marketing Automation is Killing Email Marketing for Small Businesses appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.

Social Leadership comes to light for executives when they:

• Set the vision and inspire their organizations.
• Serve as “faces” or “voices” of their organizations, in person and on social media.
• Assume profile roles in the business community, as an alumnus, serve on industry committees or advisory boards.
• Enable and inspire their employees.

The overall tone of the discussion was positive. Whereas some topics generate conversation around challenges and frustration, this group was largely proud, optimistic, and eager to share their approaches, progress, and challenges overcome.

Communication, Communication, Communication

In a digital age with fierce and open competition for dollars and talent, “location” may have competition for importance in marketing. Attending executives placed high importance on optimizing communications with their staff. Tactics included:

• Two organizations, including Webolutions, require all employees to complete a Strengths Finder This assessment illuminates preferred communication styles, enabling colleagues to adapt their approach from individual to individual. (Webolutions team members even place our key strengths on our website bios.)
• Discussion included the time, risk, and frustration minimized when time was spent to construct multiple emails to communicate the same thing to different audiences. Examples included a construction company with frequent needs to simultaneously update CXO’s, who only want to hear what time it is; and engineers, who need to build the clock.
• One company represented mandates a once-per-week common lunch break, in which the entire organization eats together. At these lunches, agendas and shop talk are prohibited, forcing people to get to know each other beyond goals and deadlines.

Employee Development

Employee development means pulling people into discomfort, asking them to do things they might not believe they can. For one attending CEO, this includes asking introvert employees to engage directly with clients, especially on delicate issues.

Believing goal-orientation can be habit forming, one represented company provides cash incentives to employees who achieve personal goals, such as weight loss, smoking cessation, or community service.

Visual reminders can help. “Grit” is a notion currently embraced by one company represented at the roundtable. Employees who exhibit “grit” receive recognition and t-shirts.

Executive Interaction

Some in attendance bring field employees into executive meetings to gain and offer perspective. Goals included providing a strategic perspective to people who think and work tactically.

Discussion also included:

• Efforts to embrace younger executives, or new employees from different companies or verticals
• The importance of “real time” feedback, and of including positive achievements and characteristics when delivering critical or constructive comments.

Tools for the Toolbox

Webolutions Executive Roundtables always provide excellent adds for your reading list. Two books recommended by attendees were:

• The Advantage – Summary http://markconner.typepad.com/files/the_advantage.online.pdf
• Leaders Eat Last https://www.meaningfulhq.com/leaders-eat-last.html

Social Leadership in the Community

Is it better to reward individuals or to align the company with a singular cause or organization? Neither roundtable formed a consensus. One company gives three days off each year for individual volunteerism; another mandates engagement with industry-associated charities. Some cited difficulty in coordinating schedules and intruding on personal time. A larger firm noted the newer members of their workforce were eager to participate, and may have won battles for talent in part because of the emphasis placed on community involvement.

Do you know executives for whom a Webolutions Executive Roundtable would be a positive experience, whose perspectives would be valuable for our attendees? Please refer them by completing this brief form or sign up for our next event.

The post Social Leadership Strategies for Today’s Executive appeared first on Webolutions Digital Marketing Agency.