Your Customer Is My Client

I've come to see this as the great divide. If a potential client thinks we are working for them then they just don't get it.

Marketing is essentially proactive customer service. Giving potential customers a preview of what their experience will be once they come on board.

As Zappos and other companies have shown- customer service is marketing. It's your customer doing the marketing for you based on their experiences. Nothing is more powerful.

Increasingly I find battles over design, messaging and overall direction to be a huge waste of time when it comes to Web marketing. It rarely adds to the end product and almost always delays it.

I'm not advocating for careless marketing but we need to stop treating the Web like traditional media. It's fundamentally different, so your approach should be as well.

The Web is not a physical structure. Try something, see if it works, change it if it doesn't. Build for agility not permanence.

Let your customer tell you what works. Their actions will and must speak louder than your words.

Stop the endless guessing and internal turf wars, it's not necessary. Agree quickly, test quickly and change quickly.

Client or Team?

Sometimes, not often, I have to decide between the client and my team. It's a difficult situation but not really a hard choice. The team always wins. This may sound a little tough on our clients but it actually serves them better in the long run.

If we become subservient to client whims, unreasonable timelines and hidden expectations then our morale and culture takes a hit. The team gets exhausted and work suffers.

Our culture is really what people are hiring us for anyway, the way our team works and gets things done. Without good morale and a healthy culture we cannot be that for other clients. 

The Problem with Ideas

Ideas are great, necessary things but lately I've been getting a little disenchanted with them.

Often an idea grows into a delay. They can be serious momentum killers.

I'm seeing that managing a project is really about managing ideas. Ours and the clients.

The best ideas are ones that can be quickly and easily tested. I look for those first. What can we start with?

Websites should not start out with every idea everyone had or even half of them. They need to be iterative like software.

Why do we build websites like houses, arranging every last piece of furniture before the reveal? These sites aren't physical structures. 

So put up something better than what you have, quickly, then add on based on feedback.

Digital square footage is cheap and ideas can be expensive and distracting.

New Elevator Speech

Small Box is a 5 year old company with 12 employees and over 150 clients. We use the Web to grow businesses and organizations. Most of our client engagements focus on building and marketing a website.

When we build a website we focus on accomplishing three things- easy to find, easy to use and easy to update. An "owner friendly" site is critical to having a site that is both search and user friendly. If you don't like updating your website then you probably do not have an "owner friendly" site. Users and search engines hate stale sites and keeping them fresh with content is crucial.

When we market a website we leverage a customized blend of approaches that can include: E-mail Marketing, Social Media, Link Building, Local SEO, Pay Per Click and Ongoing Conversion Analysis. It's all about results. We see what works and build on those successes.

We seek clients that believe in the power of the web, to grow their business online and trust us to make it happen.

I Don't Know

It's so hard to admit I don't know something- how long it will take, what it will cost, etc.

If I admit early and often to what I don't know, even with serious pressure to make definitive statements, the better the overall outcome is. Every time.

My former business partner, Dan Ripley, told me early on - "it's ok to say 'I don't know'".

Great advice.