Just to be clear, we don’t:

• build websites (why not?)
• create banner ads (why not?)
• buy email lists (why not?)
• promise top Google rankings (why not?)
• claim to be ’social media gurus’ (why not?)

We don’t offer web design and development as a service because this is not the focus of our business. However, our clients’ websites of course play a big role in their online marketing, and we frequently advise clients on how their website could be doing a better job. We are accustomed to working closely with web developers and ‘talk their language’. The two aspects of a website that we pay particular attention to are whether it is being found in searches and whether it is converting browsers into customers.

We don’t create banner ads or run advertising campaigns on behalf of clients, because we think they offer very little value to small businesses. In our experience, small businesses are far better off spending their marketing resources on getting the basics right – a well-optimised website that converts visitors into customers, a good presence across the social web and a solid customer retention strategy.

We don’t buy email lists because we only carry out permission email marketing on behalf of clients. In other words, we encourage clients to build their own house lists of customers who have agreed to receive email from them. This means we only advocate email as a customer retention tool, not as a way of acquiring new customers. Email lists are notoriously unreliable, and it is illegal to ’spam’ individuals. So we leave well alone and advise our clients to do the same.

We don’t promise to get clients to the ‘top of Google’ because no-one can truthfully guarantee that. Google keeps its search algorithms secret and changes them frequently. There are ‘black hat’ search engine optimisers who, for a fee, will ‘game’ the search engines and can sometimes deliver short-term results, but this tactic rarely pays off for anyone looking to build a legitimate long term business. Beware.

We don’t claim to be social media gurus. (There are plenty of them though, if that’s what you’re looking for.) What we have is a great deal of experience and accumulated expertise in marketing, communications and training, focusing for the last ten years on online marketing and the internet. We do our best to walk the social media talk. Like everyone else, we are forever learning. Plus, we’ve trained hundreds of small business clients over the last 8 years in the basics of online marketing and social media.

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