Executionists, Inc.

In the months following Paris Hilton’s recent legal issues and her reaction to them, I would like to think that public interest in her has waned, and unless she releases another sex video or gets a tattoo of her dog on her back, it will continue to do so.

However, google “Paris Hilton” and you get 64,000,000 hits. She shows up everywhere: fan websites, news websites, international websites, blogs…

Does Paris have an online image consultant? If not, now would be the perfect time to hire one. Paris would probably need a whole staff of image consultants, scouring the web for the most popular and agregious articles, working with the site owners to mitigate the bad and promote the good.

What is the good, you say? Well, that’s for Paris’ marketing team to spin. Perhaps it’s her supervising the diets of fat kids at sleep-away camp or helping five year-olds win beauty pageants.

And online marketing is one of the places that we can help. We work with our clients to design and develop branded sites that promote their business via attractive imagery, compelling messaging and flexible promotions. By adding SEO (Search Engine Optimization - see our previous post, Get Aggressive on the Web) and tailoring the site to highlight the uniqueness and necessity of a product or service, we shape a positive, attractive image for a company or individual.

At any rate, an online makeover may be the best strategy for Paris at the moment. So that even if we hit on her less, at least those hits will improve our perception of her before she plunges into obscurity.

Book
(www.readtoc.com)
Launched May, 2007

For this website, we did the entire design and development, including the Banner Ad design. Also, We also programmed basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to maximize potential search result yield.

Glass Family Law
Law & Legal Services
(www.glassfamilylaw.com)
Launched May, 2007

Again, we completely designed and developed this website from scratch. Also, we included basic SEO to encourage traffic from various search engines.

Library Bar
Bar & Restaurant
(www.librarybarla.com)
Launched June, 2007

This was our design, as well. After development, we included SEO to increase web traffic to the site.

Take some time to check out these great professional products, services and establishments.

When you’re done, take note that Executionists can design and develop a website to highlight any product or service — visit executionists.com and browse our portfolio!

Included below are some of the reasons clients have given us for wanting a new designer and developer for their website.

Common:
1) “I had a friend (or cousin, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, neighbor, co-worker…) help me build the site and it doesn’t look like I want it to. I don’t want to ask them to work on it anymore.”

Unfortunate:
2) “I hired some guys in the Ukraine (or India, Argentina, Russia…) and now I can’t locate them.”

Lucky for us:
3) “I had this really talented guy (or gal…) working on it but they are too busy to continue.”

Warning sign!:
4)”I’ve had several designers working on my site, but I’ve had to fire them all! You’re the fourth developer I’ve hired.”

But by far the favorite one for us is:
5) “Your company was referred to us by ’so and so’ and we hear you do great work.”

If you’re a traditional retail business, you can often open a shop selling widgets with little local competition. Other than your signage and the occasional mailer to remind people that you’re there, there’s little need for aggressive marketing.

But, open a business on the web, and suddenly you’re competing with local, national and even international competitors. Unless you have a niche, local service business or exclusive product, you have no choice but to get aggressive on the web.

So what can you do?

A quick Google search shows us:

• 22,056 books on web marketing at Amazon
• 185,000,000 related sites on internet marketing companies
• 109,000,000 related sites for website marketing tips

With all these resources, how do you determine what makes the most sense for your business?

Here’s our top 3 ways to get aggressive with your web marketing:

1) Design.

Make sure your site is designed well. Is it visually appealing, or does it look like someone threw up random text and images? Does the text captivate and motivate visitors to learn about your business?

2) SEM (Search Engine Marketing) & SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

This has become a huge industry over the last five years. If I look at web stats for our website, I can see that over 50% of our traffic comes from search engines such as Google. There’s a strategy to getting a high position in the search engines, and knowing how to develop that strategy and implement it is critical to the success of a web business.

3) Affiliate Marketing.

Are you a member of any professional business organizations? Chamber of Commerce, Trade Organizations, etc. Chances are these organizations will have websites and member directories. Maximize your exposure on these affiliated websites because links from them to you (and vice versa) will boost your website traffic.

Let’s not forget about email and print marketing. But I’ve got to get back to work, so I’ll get to that next week.

If there’s a topic you’d like us to blog about, let us know. And if you want to get aggressive on the web with your business, give us a call for a free consultation.