Category: Marketing

Interesting thread here from a non-profit group looking for good, but cheap, marketing. We hear this every day (multiple times) as Harrelson Agency mainly focuses on helping non-profits, religious groups, community organizations, and startups get marketing right.

My solution? Realize that marketing is an investment, and one that you should budget for wisely but not try to push off to someone on your internal team who doesn’t have the time or skills to do more than update your Facebook page.

How does my startup hire an affordable marketing expert?

We’re a non-profit niche social networking company serving a minority group. We are have a volunteer working on marketing our pending web social network app, however as CEO, I’m looking forward to hire an expert in web marketing tactics mainly to help make our launch a successful one.

The main role of the person is with helping us plan with our marketing strategies as well as helping us implement them. We are very hard pressed with resources, what’s the best way to hire one which we can afford, at say a rate of $10/hr or even less. I really do not have trust in freelance websites because of the poor quality I’ve received from them so far.

via How does my startup hire an affordable marketing expert? — Clarity.

Wow, what a metaphor about consumer culture…

“What caused the problem with movie theaters is not Netflix, but YouTube,” she says. “What is making the old temples crumble is not smaller temples, but it’s rather this kind of polytheism—you know, you make your own gods.”

via The Most Modern Curator – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.

Testing is great. Finding a better solution by gathering data is one of the reasons our species has developed and survived. The same is true for solid results on websites, and using tools such as “A/B testing” to determine the best outcome is a worthwhile endeavor for small businesses, churches, community groups, and non-profits with a website…

At many Web publishers, such decisions can lead to impassioned arguments, fruitless debates, even hurt feelings. But 1-800-Dentist doesn’t leave it to chance or opinion. Instead it runs an experiment. It launches two or more versions of a Web page, and then watches as users react. After thousands of people have visited, one version will have edged out the others with a statistically significant improvement in the number of sign-ups.

via A/B Testing for Websites Redraws the Web | MIT Technology Review.

However, there are downsides to relying solely on tools such as A/B testing and the resulting data when it comes to web design (also from the link above)…

In fact, intensive testing appears to be reshaping what the Web looks like. But the page designs that are succeeding won’t win any awards for art direction, just as listicles don’t win Pulitzers. Even proponents of optimization technology admit it can produce sites with simple, cookie-cutter looks.

But A/B testing is spreading because it’s become easy to do. Optimizely says it can pick a winning design after as few as 100 visits for sites that have never been optimized. In practice, running experiments is often much harder. At 1-800-Dentist, which is based in Los Angeles, Kharkats says he’s testing text and images for several slightly different landing pages and estimates that he will need 150,000 visitors to each in order to detect a difference. That could take months, he says.

So, do some testing (we always do). Let it help you guide your path towards a better website or search campaign or poster design.

But, use your gut and trust your instincts (or the instincts of the agency you hire to help you out). After all, we’re humans, not robots.

I’m excited that we’re launching a couple of new services for clients and potential clients this weekend (gotta beta test, you know… weekends are the best time for that!). We already offer our clients some pretty excellent services from overall marketing strategies to website design and development to social media management to affiliate marketing management to product design and development to billboards to … well I could go on forever.

However, we’re primarily offering these services to people or businesses or groups or churches on a more limited budget that want to have the ability to work with a marketing agency but might not have the funds to do so in the capacity that most agencies require:

1) Have Your Own Company/Church/Group Website: We’ve been calling this “Project Willie” for a couple of reasons we won’t disclose (to quote Willie), but the idea is that for an one time payment of $499 and $50 a month for hosting costs, you’ll get a professional and responsively designed clean and unique website that will serve you well for years and years.

We talk to so many businesses/groups/people/churches who want a well designed site on their own hosting plan but can’t afford the thousands of dollars it can take to accomplish that.

This is my attempt to help with that.

So for $499 and the $50 in hosting, they’ll get a great site, unique logo, email addresses, a web host, etc.

2) Learn About Your Own Site (why aren’t people finding us? why aren’t we ranking better in Google?): We’ve been calling this Project Waylon, and the idea is that you’ll get a complete diagnostic of your site at a high quality level from the point of view of a marketing agency that works with Fortune 100 companies on these same topics for $199. Phone calls or emails…whatever is most convenient for you.

Not only that, we’ll hook your site up to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools and make sure you have the tools and insights you need to have a site that people discover and share.

It seems like common sense, but there’s a literal ton involved in figuring this stuff out, and we’re hoping to share our expertise with you for a reasonable cost.

More soon!

When I was seven (maybe eight) years old, I decided that I was going to start my own company one day. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and DIY’ers. My dad has run his own business my entire life. My grandfather before him did the same and dabbled in a number of areas. I blame my dad and “Grandpa Frank” for my compulsion to have my own business, and to dabble myself in many different areas of entrepreneurship from marketing to publishing to racing to a music label to a few things I haven’t made public.

When I decided to make my own business at that early age, I knew I needed a good name and a good logo. I had notebooks full of drawings for imaginary baseball teams and comic book characters that hadn’t found their homes yet, so I knew my company logo would need to be something special. One Sunday morning, I remember seeing a piece of crystal in my family’s china cabinet in our living room that had a very calligraphic “H” etched into it. I decided that the logo would be an H and I would name my company “Harrelson Corporation.” I didn’t know what Harrelson Corps was going to do yet, but I had a name and a good idea for a logo.

Decades later, I sit in my office in downtown Columbia and look over our company’s client list. Things are going well. I was right all those years ago.

When I’m in my hometown of Mullins, SC I like to visit my Grandpa Frank’s grave. He passed away when I was only three and I’m sad to say that I really don’t remember him as a person. However, he’s been a large presence in my life and I always use his name when I get that silly “Who would you want to have an hour long conversation with if you could talk to any human – living or dead – for 60 minutes?” question. I think we would have much to talk about and I know he could give me some good advice on running a company / companies and what it takes to tread down the untrodden path of starting your own business/es.

I was back in Mullins for just a few minutes on Tuesday and stopped by his grave where I took a picture of that H above. His gravesite has four H’s at each corner and it matches the font on his tomb. I think it’s a great stylistic choice and I was taken aback for a moment when I realized that Grandpa Frank still has such a large role in my own professional and personal life as to inspire me with the font on his grave.

When you start a company, you have to know the starting point. You might never get to the end point or finish line, but you have to have a point where you know that this is what you’ve decided to do and understand that after this singular point in your life, nothing will ever be the same. That realization came at an early age for me but has been an extended realization over the last 25 (or so) years.

You also have to know where you come from in terms of your own identity and backing. Even though Grandpa Frank has been dead for some 32 years, he’s been there (in my own head at least) coaching me on the way to starting this agency and helping me to find people to surround it and make it into something that will last so that my children will one day be able to work with us (if they hopefully choose to do so).

So start your business. Go out on a limb. But don’t forget where you come from and don’t let those 3 A.M. panic attacks keep you from hearing the still small voices of your biggest supporters.