There are a lot of things that we never try for lack of courage, extra finances or motivation. However, we all know that some of the best discoveries are made through relentless trials and successive errors. Our businesses and organizations are very much our labs for experimentation. Don’t let our slick websites fool you… we are still learning a lot and trying a lot. We have so much more to learn even though there are a few things we do very well.

But how about you? What are you experimenting with? What new idea do you need to just try? What service have you been afraid to implement or eliminate?

Keep experimenting. Keep trying. Keep enjoying what you have begun.

Grumpy, scared people miss out on the best marketing opportunities.

Down the street from my house is a delicious little bakery; fresh doughnuts, pastries and breads every morning. Across the street from this bustling little place are two nameless businesses and a therapeutic massage clinic. During the busy mornings you can’t find parking in front of the bakery. The clinic and nameless business are not yet hitting their stride so they have ample parking. BUT these 3 businesses have a huge NO PARKING sign in their lot for any patrons of businesses other than theirs. If you dare park there as I do, you risk a tongue lashing and a possible tow. The only thing I every remember about their businesses is their hostility towards the parking space thieves. If I needed the service I would easily drive 30 minutes or more before getting my clinical massages at that business. We have all experienced this before. Hopefully, we are not those kinds of organizational leaders.

Think creatively with me for a moment —
What if those 3 businesses saw their parking spaces as a potential audience?

What if they put kind notes on my car? Placed a coupon my windshield? (I can’t prevent them, I am in their spaces after all.) What if they invited me in to look around as part of a parking space trade? What if they had a doughnut morning in their lot in cooperation with the bakery? What if they did advertising over at the bakery in cooperation for opening up morning parking spaces? The ideas could just keep flowing but you get the point. The 3 grumpy businesses are missing a positive marketing opportunity.

Unfortunately, we may also be missing these same kinds of opportunities. So, who is around you that is successful? How can you intertwine their success with yours? What positive marketing opportunities exist for you that you are missing out on that may very well be right in front of your face? Who is coming by your business but leaving with a sour impression before they even purchase? How do you reach them?

Creative questions and identifying opportunities make for thriving businesses.

There is a lot of debate about the value of Facebook & Twitter. Here are two things that can make them worth some of your time.

1. Follow people, businesses or organizations that matter to you. Identify those who are in your field or in your area of interests. People are watching who you follow.

2. Add value to the people who follow you. If you run a business or lead an organization make sure that you are adding value when you contribute something on twitter. Don’t say things here that you wouldn’t say in a relevant business meeting. Please, don’t tell everyone about your morning breakfast from your work account.

It’s really easy to lose sight of WHO your website is for. We all know it is for our customers. In fact, I would argue it is for the people who aren’t our customers yet but who we really want to be our customers. TRUTH is that we are all guilty, us included, of designing our sites (and other marketing materials) and writing our content the way we know how to. Worse yet we are all are guilty of designing and writing for our personal tastes and styles not for what would be most effective in reaching new costumers.

We all need to stop doing that and we need to start zeroing in on our target audiences.

I read this article about a business owner who has over 2 million monthly subscription customers. He spends a majority of his time writing, editing, re-writing and fine-tuning their website and marketing content. The E-myth (great classic book about small business) teaches us that we need work on our businesses not just in our businesses.

So here are some simple challenges to all of us:

• Study your front page / landing page – Is it geared for new customers?
• Look at your language – Is it clear? Is it proper? Does it have your customer in mind? Are you too wordy?
• Does your website navigate easily for the most important information?
• Do you have a clear call to action?
• Have you any idea how much traffic your site is getting and other important statistics? (Link it up with Google analytics)
• Spend 1-5 hours EVERY WEEK fine-tuning your messaging on your site – Learn how to make it the powerful tool that it can be for placing you first in your market category.

[Ryan also writes for RedBikeLeader.com - engaging & developing young leaders]

Factor1’s own Matt Adams was awarded the “Marketing Superhero of the Year” award from the Maricopa Chamber of Commerce at their Annual awards dinner, on January 14th.

This Award is to recognize all of Matt’s volunteer work and role on the Chamber’s marketing committee.

http://copanews.com/Article.aspx?ID=775

So I have seen companies who hire and shoot their clients video testimonials. Our clients are all over the country, so going to them would be a pricey endeavor. So we just stick to asking for a referal via email to share with our friends and potential clients. I was excited to see this from our client.

Over the summer we built a large site for Get College funding. It was actually our first real expression Engine site, and it went really well.

This video testimonial actually is pretty cool. It shows a great use of technology. Get College Funding is really embracing video rather well into their organization. Its a nice touch, and they find creating these videos a breeze.

Often we are contacted by potential clients that have little to no money. Just yesterday we had an up and coming actress inquire about a site, and only had $300 to spend.

This is hard on me. I love to help people, and I really love the web and marketing. In fact its why I love my job. I really wish I didn’t have bills, I would probably sit around, and help people for free or cheap all day long, and still love my job.

So back to my story. I thought to myself, I wish I could help this actress out, but for $300, there was little we could do. So I had an idea that would get her started on a site, help her out, and not use her entire budget.

Wordpress!

Wordpress is a blog. but it has pages. and you can flip wordpress around to be pages first, blog secondary. Thus turning it into a sweet little CMS anyone can use. Here are the steps.

1. get hosting set up that doesnt have any advertising headers.

Personally I love Liquid web, and we use LW for our dedicated servers.
or wordpress.com works. If you go this route, skip step 2.

2. Install wordpress.

Most big hosts can do this for you, or give you a simple install button in their control panel.

3. Pick a classy theme

there are great free themes and paid for themes.

free:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/18/100-amazing-free-wordpress-themes-for-2009/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

Or there are paid themes: woothemes.com

4. Add in your pages as needed.

wordpress is traditionally a blog, but with a few tweeks, it can look more like a website, with a news page, than a blog.

Learn more about using wordpress here

Now while this is a good cheap and dirty set up, its no substitution to a great designer building something custom.

Dont forget – your organization, product and services are unique, and so are your customers, so you still need to custom tailor the site experience to fit those factors. This is merely a quick patch for a no money situation. A real website will do 10x for you that a free template can.

Sure many of you think Veterans day is a fluff holiday for banks and government. We take the day off here at Factor1. Want to know why?

1. We are thankful to the men and women who fight for our rights.
2. While no one on staff here at Factor1 has served directly, we all have friends and family that have.
3. Our great military doesn’t fight to keep America free so we can overwork ourselves.
4. We enjoy taking a few extra holidays here at factor1. Not because we dont have better things to do, but because we value family time, and feel that because we live in such a great free country, we should enjoy our freedoms, just at home. So we take more holidays than the normal company, and I think we are healthier because of it.

So go home, and celebrate Veterans day with your friends and family. Thank a vet, and enjoy your day!

So last month we launched the all new factor1 website. Over the last few weeks we have heard tons of praise, comments and questions about the site. I want to share some background to it. Not because I think we are cooler than sliced bread, but because I feel like we did things different, in a good way.

Some background.
There have been 5 or 6 (maybe more) versions of the factor 1 site. Each design was often born out of boredom, disgust, or some need that wasnt being met. And to be honest, most lacked in creativity.

In the past, our methodology was pretty simple. We wanted a clean corporate feeling site, that would appeal to a business owner, non-profit director, church pastor, my mother, your mother, and the dog. We would often use safe images, typical content, and basically end up with something predictably average. Which is terrible considering we expect more input from our clients on their projects.  What hypocrites we where right?

Onto the new site
So we threw it all out, and found some core things to stand by. here they are.

1. We are fun. I, Matt, am a goofball. We love having fun, laughing and enjoy each others company here at factor1. Our site needed to reflect that.
2. We are not corporate. Jeans, Flip flops, and helmet hair are the norm for me. I rarely wear slacks. I only wear ties to funerals. Not even weddings (ask Shannon, I didn’t wear one to her’s either, but I did have on a suit). So corporate gibberish text was not us.
3. We are simple. No, not simple in thinking, just simple in a less is more, be clear, say what you mean kind of way.  Again, our past sites had tons of content that said nothing but corporate speak.
4. We are easy. No not that way, get your mind out of the gutter. We are easy in the sense that we dont want to over complicate things. Sure some contracts and proposals get long. At the end of the day, we wanted our users to find our site easy to use, read, and find what they need.
5. We are passionate about what we do here. One of the big reasons factor1 exists, is because we deeply care and love what we do. So passion, excitement, and love needed to show on our site.
6. While we would love to appeal to everyone, its just not possible. And the truth is that if we have to stretch to appeal to someone, it may be a hard relationship to maintain. So we want to make sure our site attracts people who want to work with a firm like us. If they dont, they dont. Good luck to them.

So our site was born. We went from 30+ pages, to 12. clean, clear and easy to use. And best of all, its way fun. To be 100% honest, this is the first site of our own that I have truly loved. Sad that it took 7 revisions over many years, but i think it took that long to work through the junk.

How can this help you?

• Find who you really are. Sure goals and projecting who you want you customers to see is a valid point, but dont loose site of who you REALLY are.
• Break things down to small chunks. Simple goals and bite sized pieces
• Pick your priorities.
• Let things simmer. Sometimes good ideas need to cook longer before they are ready.
• Break the mold. Just because its the norm, doesnt mean its for you.

I’d love to continue this conversation. I think this is a growth and exploring yourself  kind of exercise, that needs to be revisited often.