From the desk (and BlackBerry) of Keith Parnell

A couple of years ago our company, JASE Group, decided that we were going to commit wholeheartedly to inbound marketing. The marketing and advertising strategies we had previously used for our company just were not working as effectively as we hoped.

Our process began as a test project around our blog material and extended out to a few of the social communities we were actively involved in. We began creating a massive amount of content then instigated, created and encouraged as many links back to this content as possible.

Guess what? It worked. And it still works. Every day.

Here are a few ways our inbound marketing strategies have influenced our daily business life:

1. Lead generation from our company website and blog has easily tripled in the volume of quality leads. We have essentially hired an additional sales member (our website) without the payroll of an additional person.
2. With inbound marketing we apply less efforts to traditional time consuming advertising campaigns - no more phone book ads, no more (offline) television commercials, no more radio advertising, no more trade show exhibits.
3. Our internet marketing initiatives have made us more effective towards the goals of our sales team. The leads we generate from our online web entities are more qualified than previous offline initiatives’ leads.
4. We are more efficient. Period. Time spent is more directly attributable to results.
5. Our current online marketing initiatives are much less expensive than traditional campaigns. Couple this with the points made above, and we have a winner.
6. Since we spend much less time worrying every single detail of outbound marketing items such as media buys and almost-impossible-to-measure-ROI, we have more time to work on our clients’ initiatives.

Do you wonder how inbound marketing can work for your business? Our team would be glad to talk with you.

Basics of an Inbound Marketing Plan

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On Twitter? Follow me at @parnellk63.

Listening to I’ll Stand By You by Bonnie Rait.

photo credit: sportsagentblog.com

I just ran across a blog post by my friend Leah that touched on a topic that a lot of people think about, discuss (sometimes heated), and wonder about almost daily if they do business on the Internet. Read her blog post here. By they way Leah is an online sales consultant for a local home builder in Hampton Roads.

Leah is struggling with mixing the personas of her business life and her personal life on Facebook. A lot of people struggle with this. Should I mix my personal brand with my professional brand? How would this affect any current or potential business relationships? How would this affect the communications with my personal friends on Facebook?

I offered my comments to this topic:

I think the thing I like the most about this topic is that there is, and won’t ever be, a right answer. Each of us use social media and its various platforms in our own special manner, which is what makes us special, which is what social media is all about - people (personalities).

I don’t think that any of us ever want to upset or disturb the balance of a friendship or a business relationship on any level. And I think the best way to not disturb that balance is to just be yourself. Be your brand. Be your company’s brand (if that’s your goal). And people will like you, or not. And that’s okay.

What about you? What is your take on the mix of personal brand and professional brand on communities like Facebook for those of us that do business on the Internet?

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On Twitter? Follow me at @parnellk63.

In this age of sprouting social media, social networks and easy-to-use social communities, are we really practicing what we preach? Do we use social media to communicate and even more importantly to interact with our customers?

We should. Now, more than ever before, we have the tools to increase bi-directional and multi-threaded interaction with our closest and also the most distant customers. We should be thinking of new ways everyday via social media to let our customers know they can rely on us to deliver on our brand promise to them.

Here’s a quick definition of Internet Marketing from the JASE website:

Internet marketing focuses on creating powerful content that will lead potential customers to your brand, product or service line through online methods like searching, referrals, and links from other web entities such as blogs, video and social communities.

If you are not investing in and actively participating in Internet Marketing, you are certainly missing an audience that is looking for you.

I talked a while back during the Coffee with the CEO series about aligning your business to attract Inbound Marketing traffic. See the video here. A quick overview of the video: social media fits into an inbound marketing campaign, inbound marketing fits into an internet marketing campaign, and internet marketing (along with traditional marketing) fits into an overall marketing plan.

Read that again if you didn’t understand. Internet Marketing can be, should be, and (if you talk to us) will be a vital aspect of solid sales leads generation for your sales staff.

Don’t miss out on Internet Marketing. Let’s talk.

Inbound marketing is fun. Inbound marketing is creative. But what makes inbound marketing so special?

First let’s understand what inbound marketing is. Inbound marketing focuses on creating powerful content that will lead potential customers to your brand, product or service line through online methods like searching, referrals, and links from other web entities such as blogs, video and social media communities.

For this reason, inbound marketing can generate quality leads because it focuses on the people that are already interested in your brand, company, and product or searching for your services.

JASE specializes in the perfect mixture of inbound marketing with traditional marketing. By combining your current advertising initiatives with inbound marketing you can lower your total cost of advertising and increase the effectiveness of your campaign.

Our suite of Marketing Solutions & Strategies

Advertising - Online & Traditional, Brand Development & Management, Broadcasting - Radio & Television, Collateral Development, Inbound Marketing, Interactive Solutions, Market Research, Marketing Strategies, Product Positioning, Public Relations, Publication Design, Search Engine Optimization & Management, Social Media, Statistical Analysis, Web Design & Marketing

Relative info: What is Inbound Marketing?

The Basics of an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Coffee time! Let’s chat about inbound marketing for a few minutes and where it belongs in our current marketing plan.

Grab your coffee and let’s talk about building your personal and professional brand through social communities. Online and offline!

Social community references in this video:

• JASEzone
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Plurk
• FriendFeed
• blog
• Hampton Roads Internet Marketing & Technology Group
• Entrepreneurs Forum of Hampton Roads
• Virginia Opera Guild
• Tabernacle Church of Norfolk

Do you have your coffee ready? Grab it and let’s talk about Facebook. Here’s an earlier post that I’ll reference during the video.

This is the first in the video series, Coffee with the CEO. Hope you enjoy.

If you don’t read any other blog articles today (besides this one!) read Steve Rubel’s The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites.

He speaks of brand messages on the Internet expanding beyond just a single website image. The constellation consisting of many satellite sites involving social community profiles will represent the brand as importantly as today’s main website.

Do people know what you do everyday and what your passions are? I meet a lot of people while tooling around the Hampton Roads metro area. I also have an extensive network of friends and colleagues on the Internet. And quite a bit I get the question, “what do you do?” or “what is JASE?” 

Have an Answer Ready

Normally I gauge the situation by reading the body language of the person I’m talking to or take into account our environment on how I answer that question. I like to have the first words that come out of my mouth (or type in my BlackBerry) put exactly into context because those are what people are going to remember.

I had just that situation happen this week from a member of our neighborhood’s civic association. This was my layman’s response to his question, “can you elaborate on JASE being an internet marketing and electronic solutions firm?”

We have several service lines that we provide for our clients. Of those service lines and within the marketing area is building websites for companies, non-profits, individuals, etc. Not only do we design and create websites, we help our clients build their “brand” online. See this post on my blog that will explain a little of what I mean. Keep Norfolk Beautiful at the Ernie Morgan Center at Lafayette Park is one of our clients we do this for. We designed their website, host the website and host their email for them.

Also as part of the marketing package, we help our clients with social community exposure. See our social media website here and blog here that can explain a little more about our services in that area. Social media exposure, handled properly and not just there-for-the-heck-of-it, can be very valuable in developing an appropriate personal or corporate brand, not to mention build a very large pool of potential clients. Great advertising! See me in the JASEzone here, on my blog here, on Twitter here, on LinkedIn here and on Facebook here to explain more of what I mean. I’m on those websites and my brand is very clean and professional. Gordy EyeCare is one of our clients we are beginning to do this for.

Two other service lines that we provide our clients are both technical. We have software engineers that do computer programming on applications such as books on CD rental, shipping, inventory, etc. Tape Rental Library in Charlottesville is one of our clients we do this for. We didn’t do their web design, we program the back end order taking and CD distribution system for them.

Then we provide web hosting, email hosting, tech support and computer repair under our JASEtech Support division. We have many, many clients that we do this for including Come2HamptonRoads.com, a real estate website for John Berger RE/MAX, Central Virginia ASA, DennyCorp, Covington Contracting and others.

What about you? What do you do? Do you have various environment-specific answers for your passions?

Keith Parnell's brand

Bringing your brand online establishes a protective shield of armor that makes it able to withstand public scrutiny while continuing to grow its delicate and fluid underbelly.

Today’s multitude of social communities has opened avenues for us to expand our brand for the world to see on many additional levels and from many complementary angles that may not have been available prior.

Online Brand Dashboard

Think of your blog or your personal website as a dashboard. The dashboard in itself is a master control panel that controls the many views, or avenues, of your brand.

The dashboard is also, and most importantly, the portal with which your online brand glistens to the world. Every avenue points back to your brand dashboard and must remain complimentary.

Online Brand Avenues

Our digital avenues, i.e., social communities, are living and breathing entities that exude our brand like a flower for a plant. And so we must feed, nourish and protect these social communities’ views of our brand just as we control our dashboard. We do this by maintaining our community profiles with the same integrity and care as we do ourselves.

Expanding your brand online is not the easiest of tasks. But its rewards are immense in just the widespread audience it can touch quickly. So just as you are true to yourself, your human brand, you must be as true to your digital brand because forever will it be an extension of you.

Social communities are the hip topic of the day. MySpace, Facebook, JASEzone, Bebo, Second Life are all hot spots to gossip, message and generally hang out with friends. Don’t misunderstand, we see the business value in the corners of the Internet that encourage and provide accessibility for potential small business and corporate decision-makers. Especially the JASEzone.
But don’t let us forget instant messaging. IM is email’s long-lost cousin and the predecessor to all social community applications. IM’s downfall was its inability to spider and interest the web traffic’s online community. With the expansive saturation of broadband Internet access to the world, client installed apps became not necessary with email still king on this front.

Online and constant access is where the masses have migrated which provides legitimacy to the social communities’ multitude of functional features. In our case, JASEzone provides member profile display including photographs, JASEfriends, JASEmessages, JASEgroups, JASEblogs, JASEforums and searches across these neighborhoods.

Before moving away from IM totally let’s give them kudos. IM provided us a way to very quickly communicate within an office setting. While on a sales call we can quickly ping our R&D department to see what features are coming during a next phase rollout. Or in an extreme case we could solicit comments from our team while briefing the boss on our new client’s needs.

So what we’re really saying is, there are many ways to communicate today electronically. Email, IM and social communities are a small piece of our daily activities that each have a legitimate place in our lives. Let’s don’t give IM the boot yet.

Get more information on the JASEzone here.

I know. That catch phrase is probably so played. We began last week playing around with Twitter here at the office. Catch me on Twitter here, by the way.

If you don’t know, Twitter is an online “status log” of what you’re doing or feeling at the moment. Some of the comments can be rather hilarious. Walt!

Ignoring the playful atmosphere at times our legitimate goal is to uncover any marketing values that could unfold. It’s always a challenge to weave through an unproven, buggy new software application but with eyes wide open, here we go …