Something that I hear often is” “I don’t really need a website, I use a Facebook page so people can find me” (Or something like that) As a marketer and an entrepreneur I completely disagree that you do not need a website. Facebook or any other social media is incredibly important to have and keep up with, however, your website is where you have complete control of what and how you want to display. The cost of creating a website is relatively inexpensive, and when it comes to investing in online marketing, your money is much better utilized when you are investing it on yourself, as opposed to a link from another’s website: i.e.: Facebook.

Yes! You will have an administrative user login that can do as much as I can. Usually, my customers want to make sure that they are able to make changes such as hours change, or post special holiday events, or change product inventory. I will create a website structure that you will be able to easily maintain, and I will offer support so you do not have to spend money every time there is a change in your business.

Web Hosting is space in a webserver where you can upload the files that people around the world will find online. There are many types of web hosting. There are even sites that offer free web hosting, but this is not something I would ever consider going the free route. The cost of getting your own excellent web hosting solution starts at about $3.00 a month to maybe about $8.00 a month. The web hosting providers I recommend are Hostgator.com, Godaddy.com, or Bluehost.com

A  domain name is an easy-to-remember label for your website. It is the http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com. “.com” is just one of many extensions, but it is the one that is 90% of the cases, I would recommend as most effective when it comes to marketing. Owning a domain name is neither difficult nor very expensive. First you must do a domain lookup, to check if the domain you want is available for purchase. I would recommend the name you choose to be short and easy to remember. You may look up and purchase domains at godaddy.com, hostgator.com, bluehost.com among many, however, those three I use and I know they offer all the services I have ever needed from a domain provider. It is noteworthy to mention that you do not have to have hosting with the domain name provider. I myself get my names in GoDaddy, because I love their domain management interface, but I get hosting most of the time with Hostgator.

Just call me, text me or email me and tell me what you are wanting to do. I will be able to tell you right away what the estimate is. I will email you the resources I will need from you in order for me to develop the website, such as logo, pictures, colors, etc. Once you have collected all the information and can send it back to me, I will invoice you with half of the estimate and an estimated due date for your website. Once the website is completed, the balance will be invoiced.

The difference between building a good website and a great website will be the information you give me, That’s right! I am being honest here, all I bring to you is the technical aspect of the website, but what you have to offer is the knowledge of your business. I, first hand know how much passion we can have about our small businesses. We offer services and products that for one reason or another are not offered anywhere else. That is what MUST be communicated on your site!

In lamest terms, a plugin is an additional section of software that is added on top of the WordPress core application, to add specific features needed on your site.

Yoast SEO is an amazing WordPress plugin that will help you optimize every single page to rank higher on search engine searches (such as Google). When I install it on a website, I will use the free version. The features on this version have been enough for about 90% of all my customers, however, it does have some really cool premium features if you are willing to buy it. Check all the free and paid features it offers here: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce WordPress plugin, which was developed on WordPress principles. about 4% of top trafficked e-commerce sites use WooCommerce. Its magnificence is that there is a strong community that develops on top of it, and there are more than 1000 add ons to this plugin. Some of the add ons are free, some are paid, most are a combination (You may get free features, but if you want premium features you must pay for the add on) The point is that when you are setting up an e-commerce solution, you can find the way to do anything under the sun with WooCommerce. Checkout their site and all they have to offer: https://woocommerce.com/

Contact 7 is a free WordPress plugin that offers easy to create and manage different forms. It offers all the features most sites would need on a contact form

MailChimp is is a plugin that is industry-leading in their niche. They make it easy for your website visitors to signup for a newsletter. The marketing genius about this tool is that once you have your visitors’ email addresses, then you can market them. The difficulty is always to have enough content for a newsletter and make sure your customers are not disappointed because of inconsistencies.

BuddyPress, much like WooCommerce, is an open source WordPress plugin, incredibly robust and completely free to download and use, but where wooCommerce was developed intended for eCommerce sites. BuddyPress was developed for social networking sites… imagine you want your users to sign up for membership to your site, and you want your users to relate or network to each other somehow. I can work incredibly well for intranet communities, community associations, non-proffit communities, churches, etc, etc. Its an amazing tool to keep your community in your site.

Wordfence is a very easy-to-use WordPress plugin for security purposes. It was built from the ground up to work with WordPress. It will scan file by file and lets you know of files that should not be there. It will block malicious attacks. The free version is extremely useful for most websites, but if you have a security problem or major concern, you may want to consider the premium version.

Website optimization is a constant job. Google considers over 200 different attributes to rank your site. The algorithm is extremely smart and the best way to stay ahead of the competition is to be better than the competition. To do that, the content in your website must be unique and users must find it useful when they click on your link. Keywords used within your content and within your metatags must be developed with your target market in mind. The user experience must be smooth. pages must be easy to load. Design should be easy on the eye and the code behind the scenes must be in a way that  Google understands the way you are communicating. using <h1> tags and <h2> tags (titles and subtitles) Your website should be secured using SSL (secured socket layer) Your template must be responsive (it resizes when it’s viewed by different size devices). When all of this is done correctly, people find a need for what you are offering which means Google is more than happy to rank you before your competition. This is a gradual process, that takes time and growth may be exponential

Organic search is the result of ranking using your website’s content and other SEO efforts used by the search engine’s algorithm to place you in a position as compared with other people’s SEO for the same keywords. When it is a paid search, you are paying to be shown on top for the specific keywords, you will be competing on how much you are willing to pay, or the paid search may be more cost-efficient when the content of your site is more likely to be exactly what the user is looking for when typing the keywords.

Google performs over 12 billion searches a month, you may want to think, well, I would be happy with a  slice of those 12 billion people. The way to get a slice is not to send the message to all 12 billion, but to find the kind of person that would be more willing to bite. The more you narrow your message to that person, the more effective and cost-effective your campaign will be.

SEO score is an evaluation by moz.com of your URL. The score goes from 1 to 100, 100 meaning its the best optimized. Just a tip, no site is 100, not even Google; that’s because there is always room to improve your website’s SEO. Follow this link: https://moz.com/domain-analysis to get Moz free to to find out your domain authority score.

A Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) is software designed to build s strong relationship between you and your customer. You can identify potential customers, you can remarket past customers. The key of this type of application is to keep and analyze customer information and use it for a marketing strategy. I know I’m writing this in the SEO section, this is not completely SEO, but it is a bridge. It is information, that when it is collected and used effectively, your paid search can be better targetted, hence more effective and you may have more targetted information to improve your organic search.

The reason why many small businesses do not use CRM is the burden of the cost.

I suggest collecting the cell phone numbers yourself. Let your market tell you they are interested in receiving your offers. Do not trick people into signing in, or use deceptive language. Communicate clearly what you have to offer, let the customer decide if they are interested. To be successful, the customer must feel great every time they receive your message.

There are many ways you can let people opt-in. You can add a widget on your website, where the customer just enters their cell phone number to subscribe. You may be also aware of shortcodes and keywords, where the customer (for example) texts “sales” to 55555. This would require you to have a system to distribute the shortcode subscription. You could put it on your website, it could also be printed on cards, posters, window clings, etc. I will be talking about this in upcoming videos.

Bottom line you do not want to market people who do not want to hear from you. You are spending time and money on texts you are sending. Sending it to people who do not read it is a waste of your very valuable resources. The more you keep your customer list clean and on point, you will see how much more effective it will be.

This question is always hard to answer, mostly because it always depends on your market. As a rule of thumb if you have something to say that is truly unique and will benefit your customer somehow, then send a campaign. That could be once a day or once a quarter, or anything in between, however, the key is to make the message valuable to your customer.

A call to action is when you explicitly ask your customers to perform an action: click on a link, submit a form, subscribe to the mailing list, call to a phone number, like, follow. These are all actions we ask people to do. It seems silly, but it has been proven many times over that when we are specific on what we want our customers to do… they will do it!!!

The one thing that should grow and should be most valuable for your small business is your customer’s list. For the marketing success of your business, you need a system to keep on adding names to it. There are many types of customers. Those who have already had an interaction or a transaction with you, those who be thinking about it, but are still doing their research. For both types of customers, you need to stay in contact so they do not forget you. You need to remind them you have what they need. There are CRM systems that are designed specifically to start and maintain such customer information. You can also ask customers to opt-in for subscriptions, utilizing many of the techniques that are explained in many sections of this website.

All small businesses should allocate a budget for marketing. From that budget, a portion of it should be invested in social media. The portion should be according to the previously planned goals and the path to achieve them. Much like Google, most social media networks will allow you to advertise based on budget, so it is easy to keep control of expenses.

Part of what SEO measures are how much your website is liked or talked about, or shared online. When you create a successful social media channel that is linked to your website where people will comment and share, it will all be taken into consideration for SEO algorithms.

Absolutely! Your social media can grow without spending money on it, just like SEO can grow organically. It will take more time, and as long as you keep on working on it, growth should be exponential. The trick is to not give up. Believe in your business, communicate your message over and over to your customers

Before you start any campaign on social media, you will find it much more effective to establish goals: Do you want to increase followers? Do you want people to sign up for your mailing list? Do you want people to learn about you? Do you want to remind previous customers of what you have to offer? Do you want to convert into sales? These are all different goals. The more clear your goal is, the more effective your campaign will be.

I find Facebook and Instagram to be incredibly effective. They can both work together. They overlap on different market segments. They are both on top of their game. where Facebook has been losing subscribers in the last couple of years, Instagram has been gaining them by the millions. They allow advertising with images, videos, and links. They both offer many types of calls to action and geo-fencing to increase the effectiveness of your campaign. There are others that should be considered such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, Tik Tok. All these are more specific to the type of campaign and audience you want to reach for.

For me to create social media content for you, we will have a meeting where we will discuss the message that you want to communicate, marketing goals, keywords, and target audience. Using the information from that meeting, I will have the information I need to create the necessary content

In order for me to be able to post on your social media account, I will request administrative access to the specific page or profile. I will not be able to post it until you grant access.