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A great thing about repeat customers is projects like Toombas allows both sides to learn from and capitalize on previous project miscues.  As with everything, their original website, launched some 5-6 years ago, was quite deprecated in terms of the business needs outgrowing the capability of the site.  From the type of hosting account and services to the entire shopping cart codebase, we engaged Toombas in a thorough review of aligning both their business and technology needs to not only ensure for their current needs assessment but to also capture future needs of business and technology growth.

So with a thorough list of precise business and technology needs aligned, we set out on the adventure to bring to life a clean, jean-themed user experience that would keep the existing base coming back while capturing a new customer base at the same time.  And what a pleasure it was to take Toombas’ website to the next level with a newly branded website to drive more online sales, and a social media marketing strategy to integrate both twitter, and facebook withing their new website.  The *newly improved* Toombas website boasts the following out-of-the-box osCommerce enhancements:

• Jean-themed website
• Seamless checkout with PayJunction and PayPal Payment Methods
• Discount Codes
• Search Engine Optimized product pages
• Facebook Like/Comment integration
• Product Banner Ads
• Real-Time Inventory Management
• Site Search Capabilities
• Secure Payment with SSL
• Site that loads ~220% faster than the previous site - (Optimized images)
• Customer Reviews

One blogger in particular, J’s Everyday Fashion, we’ve been able to grow a personal and business relationship with her and her brand.  Truly authentic, yet serious about her passion and love for women’s everyday fashion, J has taken the fashion world by storm with her latest announcement: ShopJCloset.com.  My wife and I both had the pleasure of helping J create, craft and develop ShopJCloset.com’s website and overall business model.  So it is with great anticipation and excitement to see that J has launched the website today!

ShopJCloset.com is a budget-friendly, interactive website for J’s Everyday Fashion fans to shop together.  On this shopping website you will find the following:

• Items in J’s closet
• Items that are very similar to items in J’s closet
• Items J would like to own
• Opportunity to socially share and leave questions and comments on items

Moving forward, ShopJCloset.com is a concept and business model Brownstone Strategies’ hopes to bring to both new and existing ecommerce clients in a similar or different format.

Give me a shout, I would love to hear from you should you have questions or comments in regards to ShopJCloset.com, or having a similar or different project created for your company.

As a way to reduce their monthly spend while giving greater functionality and ease of managing the site, Brownstone Strategies had the pleasure of migrating the existing website to WordPress.  Using WordPress as their Content Management System (CMS), Cat Mountain Villas Homeowners Association can now accomplish the following:

• Reduced cost in not having Brownstone Strategies manage meeting minutes, page updates, events and newsletters
• Easy to use WYSIWYG editor for the technical and non-technical users, creating new pages as well as new blog posts
• Easily searchable content with a comprehensive search feature
• Comprehensive Search Engine Optimized website
• Greater control to add various WordPress Plugins in the future

Although our rates have been reduced, we can’t help but to be happy and overjoyed with the success of the Cat Mountain Villas Homeowners Association website migration to WordPress.  We look forward to further assisting Cat Mountain Villas Homeowners Association in the future with more complex website development and integration to help serve their community.

For more information about the benefits of WordPress, go here.

But my point is that the ever so growing Facebook community is an entertainer’s biggest stage and marketers biggest advertising candy store with all shapes, colors, styles, sizes and more in terms of target market audiences!!!  Being in the business of helping my clients to harness the power of integrating both marketing and technology, I can’t help but to share the latest Facebook Pay-Per-Click (PPC) secret with each of you: Competitors Referring You Qualified Customers!

Yes, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is nothing new.  Most of us at some point of owning our small businesses have had a run into, whether good, bad, or ugly, with executing a PPC strategy to drive more traffic to our websites and more profit to our bottom lines.  Whether with the now defunct Yahoo PPC, or Bing, or Google, there are many claiming to know ALL of the secrets to driving the $0.05 per click qualified lead that will buy your $**.99 product or service.  The truth is that they never tell you how much they spent to get to the $0.05 level, do they?  Think about it… would you be willing to spend into the tens and hundreds of thousands for a 25% or less chance of converting a customer?  Hmmm… that’s what I thought.  So my question to each small business owner, is why spend such an exuberant amount of time, energy and money when your competitors have done the homework for you on Facebook and are willing to send you qualified competitors?
That’s right!  My little Facebook secret is that your competitors are waiting to send you QUALIFIED business and ideal clients.  How, you ask?  Well, let’s take a look.  Write down your top 3 or 5 competitors, look at their website for their Facebook profile page or go to Facebook and search for your competitor by name (fyi, latter is more difficult).  If you want or need to add more competitors feel free to do so.  Look at each competitor’s fan count… here’s your golden opportunity.  Your competitors have identified qualified customers who are in need or have experienced a service ‘like’ (I use ‘like’ loosely) yours or in the same industry.  Once you’ve identified your competitors, then make sure you setup a Facebook profile page for your own company if you don’t already have one.

Okay, now the real work begins.   Once you setup your fan page to your liking, now it’s time to setup an ad to promote your fan page using Facebook’s Social Media Advertising Engine — which puts your in front of 500+ and growing user base.  Here’s where things get real interesting, because you can choose to promote your page like a traditional PPC strategy and continue to lose money with lackluster performance, or you can try my little secret.  Again, why are you reading this?  If you’re going to do the traditional method, you might as well pull out a lighter and money you’re willing to spend and POOF… that’s right, burn it because that’s what you’ll be doing by do the traditional PPC method.

So are you ready for the secret?  Okay, go to Facebook Advertising and click “Create Ad” and follow the instructions in regards to setting up your ad.  Follow each step until you get to “Connections – Target Users Who Are Connected To”.  Here’s where the magic happens.  In the input box below “Target Users Who Are Connected To” label, start typing each one of your competitor’s Facebook profile names until it autocompletes.  Submit your ad for Facebook to review, and sit back and watch the fans and conversions start rolling through.  How does this happen?  Well, your ad is placed on the right hand side when users that meet your ad criteria are logged in and using Facebook.

Now what? Wash, rinse and repeat.  Do this until no end and you’ll be set and ready to start having target customers like your profile page and hopefully visit your website and convert into profitable, repeat business! Yes, it’s just that easy.  Oh, and how much per converted lead are you looking to spend?  On average, $5-10 per person.  So for every $10 you invest, you at least get 2 fans to convert into customers.  Not bad, aye?  Well, no need to stick around here when you could be adding more to your bottom line using my Facebook secret.  Create many types of ads, testing and trying each to see which ones do the best via the Click-Through-Rate (CTR).  Oh yeah, don’t forget to turn off your PPC ads elsewhere and move that in your newly found Facebook Budget.

One last thing, be sure to thank your competitors for doing the homework and laying a great foundation for you to capitalize on.  NOT!

For more information in regards to driving more fans to your fan page, go here.

It was a rather quick turn project whereby the focus was on providing a more up to date look and feel in regards to web design, simple, yet effective search engine optimization, and an easily manageable website that non-technical users would feel comfortable updating from time-to-time.  It truly was a great site and I enjoyed working with the Barbknecht staff and project manager.  Check out www.barbknecht.com and let us know what you think!

How will a contact us form draw more local business, you ask?
Yes, by itself, your contact us form will not draw more business; however, how about you make a contact us form for each of the local cities you’re wanting to gain more business from and link those cities on each of your website pages.  Making sense yet?  Probably not, huh…?  Well, lets walk through an example further explaining how localized contact us forms are utilized by a Brownstone Strategies’ Client: Armadillo Auto Glass.  
Brownstone Strategies’ Client: Armadillo Auto Glass.
Armadillo Auto Glass is locally owned and operated in Austin, Texas by Greg Kieke. Since 2001, Greg, a our trained auto glass technician, has specialized in mobile windshield repair and windshield replacement throughout the Greater Austin, Texas area and many parts of Central Texas.  Being a small business owner and working many hours a day, Greg doesn’t have the time or energy to focus on always driving business.  Most of his business derives from referrals and word of mouth.

The Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Cost Challenge
Here recently, Greg approached Brownstone Strategies in efforts to see if he could capitalize on Armadillo’s PPC strategy, and Google Places Ad.  One of the main issues for Greg is that despite his best efforts of driving more business to his site, he’s having to spend way more money on PPC to drive more business.  He was happy with the business he was receiving; however, his PPC expenses kept rising as if he had not done a thing.  Is your business at this point, or has your business ever been at this point?

The Optimized Solution: Localized Contact Us Forms.
Seeing how much he spent per month on PPC, Greg was willing to invest a small amount of money into his current website to deploy localized contact us forms (Take a look at the general contact form here as well as notice the links at the bottom of the page).  Our plan essentially was to come up with a list of local cities he serves and would like to serve.  Then we created a localized contact us form for each city, combining his keyword and keyword phrases customers search for with each city.  We then listed each city in the footer of his entire website and linked each city to it’s respective page, and submitted the site to the top 25 search engines.  Now instead of Greg’s website having a broad and ineffective one or two-dimensional approach in regards to visibility to existing and new customers searching for auto glass repair and replacement, the Armadillo Auto Glass website now has a more efficient and effective three dimensional approach thanks to localized contact us forms.

And the rest is history… Greg’s phone is now ringing off the hook with more NEW business, more contact us forms are being submitted for auto glass business and he’s been able to decrease the amount of money and dependence upon PPC.  And you too can have the same when you spruce up your contact us form!

It was my pleasure to assist in helping 11^th Street Station bring a branded online presence to 11thStreetStation.com.  The final product has yet to be created although the complete site will be released in the coming weeks!

In short, the overall site design is basic.  Included in their package is simple SEO optimization and information architecture.  We’ll also submit the entire site to the top 25 search engines once completed.  In addition, 11thStreetStation.com has taken advantage of listing it’s business location via various free listing services throughout Austin (i.e. Google Listing, Yahoo Listing, MSN Listing, UrbanSpoon.com, Groupon.com, TheLunchDeal.com and more).  Each of these services are very powerful in driving word-of-mouth advertising and business to the bottom-line.

Also, a value-ad strategy for 11thStreetStation.com is keeping their site up to date using dynamic content and driving customers to the site to view the latest events coming to the venue.  The true nuts and bolts of the strategy and entire website will rely on using automated marketing.  The customized automated marketing package will allow for 11thStreetStation.com to message to it’s customers who sign up on the website to receive email ‘meal deal’ alerts as well as customers that complete a survey when dining in.

The messaging timing of 14, 30, and 60 day messages will include contests, giveaways, East 11^th Street Fun Facts, as well as an opportunity to join the 11^th Street Station’s Social Media (Twitter and Facebook) online presence.  The power behind this strategy is that it’s all automated – that’s right, no hiring of a full-time agency to manage it.  It’s all database driven and dynamic content.

Well, it’s about time for lunch and I’ll let you guess where I’m headed… see you there: 11thStreetStation.com!