Marketing conversation

[blue moon]

we are in a middle of setting up some pretty snazzy marketing and wanted to get a conversation going to see if we can share some practices and ideas.

We went with Zoho and are using it for email campaigns, metrics, CRM, web hosting, social media management and few more things. It is all integrated together and even tied in with the phone system. We reach out with an email directly and send the newsletter out. all the info on email deliver, who read what, what they clicked on, how long they spent reading the pages and the company information (from a paid data provider) is used to assign the score so we know who to contact first (this works well for B2B, for retail it would be set up differently). We are also using forms to have them order sample shirts, schedule phone calls (part of zoho calendar), and set up reminders to follow up. We are only few months into the  setup, but results are pretty promising.
We spun up a new web site www.promodecorators.com just to utilize all the marketing tools properly. Large part of Zoho customization is done, we are adding the fine details now and working out any kinks. The website is in the early stages of development, but a good chunk of Google seo optimization is set. Bing is next, then Facebook advertising. Almost all of the articles are done using ChatGPT so it moves relatively quickly and more importantly efficiently. ChatGPT has been programed to generate emails, landing pages, articles, videos and key seo data for each one of those. Content is typical AI stuff, but we needed to get something out to get started. It will get cleaned up soon. Some of the pictures are total garbage too! High on the priority list is taking the new pictures that will represent us better.

Can we talk about best practices and what to do here? I'd like to start a separate section for it if there is enough interest.
I'll also gladly share our configuration and what it takes to implement it.

thoughts?

pierre

[whitewater]

Im def game.

I get the site because you are B2B...for me as a business I would read it and look at it. It would be interesting on my side seeing how much the potential customer would be willing to look at.

I feel like people do not have the patience to go through alot of info to get what they need. I would think uf we were to do it , it would need to be simpler, easy to navigate quickly.

I think being direct to customer, this process would have to be tweaked. BUT I THINK WOULD WORK WELL.

Who on your team keeps up with this?

[Atownsend]

Def interested in this as well. I've tried to integrate pipedrive CRM but it really takes some dedication. Its no easy task to get that sales / marketing / follow-up / customer experience pipeline down. We've added some pieces here and there but CRM was a bit of a flop.

I feel like people do not have the patience to go through alot of info to get what they need. I would think uf we were to do it , it would need to be simpler, easy to navigate quickly.

^^^^ This is 100% true. Really into storybrand for this. When we we redo our website this is the route we'll be going. Its a little harder to pull off then the book may lead you to believe. Difficult enough to realize I should not be writing any kind of marketing copy. Prob why we havent touched our website in so long...  ya kind of get stuck. So overdue for an update.

[blue moon]

Post your web site so i can take a look (you also get a free backlink to help with your ranking).
Pierre

[blue moon]

Def interested in this as well. I've tried to integrate pipedrive CRM but it really takes some dedication. Its no easy task to get that sales / marketing / follow-up / customer experience pipeline down. We've added some pieces here and there but CRM was a bit of a flop.

I feel like people do not have the patience to go through alot of info to get what they need. I would think uf we were to do it , it would need to be simpler, easy to navigate quickly.

^^^^ This is 100% true. Really into storybrand for this. When we we redo our website this is the route we'll be going. Its a little harder to pull off then the book may lead you to believe. Difficult enough to realize I should not be writing any kind of marketing copy. Prob why we havent touched our website in so long...  ya kind of get stuck. So overdue for an update.

Had to look up storyboard. Thank you for bringing it up. That is exactly what we are doing with our approach.

We are working with a zoho partner out of Croatia and they are setting everything up based on our requirements. I think about $3k would get all this customized for your needs. They dont do anything with content, thats on you, but with chatGPT you can generate it pretty quickly. I can help you with training it so it ends up about an hour to generate article, landing page and email. It also spits out all the info needed for the ranking optimization (to be netered into various fields).
There sooo much we can do here if we out our minds together. I’ll gladly share and help.
Pierre

[blue moon]

Im def game.

I get the site because you are B2B...for me as a business I would read it and look at it. It would be interesting on my side seeing how much the potential customer would be willing to look at.

I feel like people do not have the patience to go through alot of info to get what they need. I would think uf we were to do it , it would need to be simpler, easy to navigate quickly.

I think being direct to customer, this process would have to be tweaked. BUT I THINK WOULD WORK WELL.

Who on your team keeps up with this?

‘Getting things off the ground, i am doing all the work now. Our sales guy is answering emails and handling what comes through the pipeline. My job is to work with zoho developers to custom configure everything for us and populating the web site. Again, chatGPT has been huge for this. It’s easy to use, anybody can do it.

I will be setting up a retail site too so it would be easy to duplicate the results and share for others to use. Or something along those lines. I think if we brainstorm what we need developers can make a template and just spin it up for any of us needing it.
Pierre

[rusty]

I would love love love a section dedicated to marketing and similar conversations. I am in the middle of a complete rebrand and all that, and would love to share ideas, talk about results etc.

While I am it. I would love a section about fulfillment but thats getting away from the core of this site probably

[blue moon]

funny thing!
I've been trying to train chatGPT to write in that style and I keep having to tweak it a lot. I just told it to do it storybrand style and BAM! on the first try!
thanx for that info!

[Atownsend]

funny thing!
I've been trying to train chatGPT to write in that style and I keep having to tweak it a lot. I just told it to do it storybrand style and BAM! on the first try!
thanx for that info!

Thats awesome! Story brand is def the way to go. Ive spent the last 6-8 months or so implementing a lot of backend systems. Really getting pumped about getting the front end going. Front end web / customer facing things have always been a little intimidating, but i 'm getting more and more confidence that it can be implemented successfully.

Main system now is two Synology NAS units that backup to each other, one local and one off site. They integrate with formstack (contract order submissions), which pushes orders to one drive cloud, which syncs to the nas (local). Order data is pushed to shipstation via zapier, so auto tracking notifications go out and we never have to input addresses manually. Zapier also triggers a mail chimp NPS survey (for retail customers) on a two week delay which includes a link for google review. All of the incoming files are stored locally the nas, so makes retrieval super easy, anyone can work on anything from anywhere. I can easily setup shared folders for clients, or just give them read access. Just having the SMB mounts on our local machines is amazing. With snapshots enabled you basically have version control over every file. Proofing is done via Ashore, which is freaking amazing if you guys havent checked that out yet.

Plan is to setup seo friendly websites to dominate local search which will act as a sales funnel (ie xyzcityshirts.com, xzycityembroidery.com, xyzcfullcolorshirts.com etc) They can all backlink which will help seo. I will host locally from the NAS via webstation, so all i have to pay for is the domains. Its relatively easy / free to get SSL certs from lets encypt. You just have to point the CNAME records and port forward. Have been learning HTML / CSS but will likely start with wordpress to just get off the ground. I like the idea of using AI to write the copy, but I do worry about is how that will affect SEO. I dont know for sure but my gut tells me that the SEO algos may have already figured out that people are doing this and will flag that type of content and de rank the page on that alone.

I like the idea of zoho, but dang its a little overwhelming to see all of the stuff they're offering. I feel like we have pretty decent systems other than the lack of CRM (yeah thats a big one), but honestly im trying to get things off of the cloud. Once you get in that ecosystem its hard to get out. I know there are a lot of benefits, but i might keep on with our peicemeal approach and add things as they're needed.

[blue moon]

funny thing!
I've been trying to train chatGPT to write in that style and I keep having to tweak it a lot. I just told it to do it storybrand style and BAM! on the first try!
thanx for that info!

Thats awesome! Story brand is def the way to go. Ive spent the last 6-8 months or so implementing a lot of backend systems. Really getting pumped about getting the front end going. Front end web / customer facing things have always been a little intimidating, but i 'm getting more and more confidence that it can be implemented successfully.

Main system now is two Synology NAS units that backup to each other, one local and one off site. They integrate with formstack (contract order submissions), which pushes orders to one drive cloud, which syncs to the nas (local). Order data is pushed to shipstation via zapier, so auto tracking notifications go out and we never have to input addresses manually. Zapier also triggers a mail chimp NPS survey (for retail customers) on a two week delay which includes a link for google review. All of the incoming files are stored locally the nas, so makes retrieval super easy, anyone can work on anything from anywhere. I can easily setup shared folders for clients, or just give them read access. Just having the SMB mounts on our local machines is amazing. With snapshots enabled you basically have version control over every file. Proofing is done via Ashore, which is freaking amazing if you guys havent checked that out yet.

Plan is to setup seo friendly websites to dominate local search which will act as a sales funnel (ie xyzcityshirts.com, xzycityembroidery.com, xyzcfullcolorshirts.com etc) They can all backlink which will help seo. I will host locally from the NAS via webstation, so all i have to pay for is the domains. Its relatively easy / free to get SSL certs from lets encypt. You just have to point the CNAME records and port forward. Have been learning HTML / CSS but will likely start with wordpress to just get off the ground. I like the idea of using AI to write the copy, but I do worry about is how that will affect SEO. I dont know for sure but my gut tells me that the SEO algos may have already figured out that people are doing this and will flag that type of content and de rank the page on that alone.

I like the idea of zoho, but dang its a little overwhelming to see all of the stuff they're offering. I feel like we have pretty decent systems other than the lack of CRM (yeah thats a big one), but honestly im trying to get things off of the cloud. Once you get in that ecosystem its hard to get out. I know there are a lot of benefits, but i might keep on with our peicemeal approach and add things as they're needed.

you  are probably right about AI copy, but in my eyes as long as it is quality content, the styling si probably going to be acceptable. Any article we are putting up is now at least an hour or two worth of work and is heavily massaged before being put on line. We'll see how much difference it makes. My guess in our contract field probably not much since there is a limited umber of companies doing it.

As far as data, all our stuff is in the cloud now. No more worries about 4 different backups, power surges compromising the database and computer maintenance issues (and I owned 3 computer companies, one being IT support). it's a personal preference...

Zoho has a lot to offer and I would not tackle it on my own (again, another one of I could, but should I?). We can set up a video call where I can share a screen and show you what we are doing. We are still working out the kinks, but you'll get the gist of it.

I am also working with the Zoho partners to make a pricing calculator so might be able to share it if you go with the Zoho platform. Their web site software is not bad, take a look at our new web page and you'll see it has pretty much all you need. After doing many Wordpress sites, I would not go back. Too many updates and things to keep track of. This is fire and forget, might have to pay every few years for couple of hours in case of some drastic changes (not sure what that would be, but you never know). We will pay one of the guys to do all the web site blogs and email campaigns with the articles we generate. That might end up being about $50 per week.

'just talk ed to a friend today who is looking at retiring and he has a marketing company. I'll see if he is interested in selling. So there might be another angle here too. Right now he manages everything we talked about here for his clients. We, as an industry, could really use somebody who knows their crap in the marketing field.

let me know about a video call. Offer is open to anybody else who is interested!

pierre

[ebscreen]

Don't self host. Just don't.
Most shared hosting will let you stack a stupid number of domains at what, a grand total of $15 a month?
And if you need root/more configurability get a VPS, it's not expensive.
There is no cost savings in self hosting, only headaches.

Also, as a 40 something, the moment I see AI slop in any way shape or form I'm hitting the "oh hell no" button post haste.
There's something just super off putting about it. Probably the same way victorian era people felt about seeing ankles in print.

[Atownsend]

Eb you're 100% right on that. Went with VPS from Scalahosting, they have some really amazing packages. Its been a while since ive looked at any kind of hosting so i wasn't really sure what was out there. Better to keep our local data segregated from web exposure as much as possible. The Apache server on the synology box isnt exactly that relaible either as i found out. Lots of conflicts since syno uses ngnix as default. Too much effing around on the backend for sure...

Would love to setup a weekly / biweekly / monthly TSB marketing zoom call, that would be awesome if we could get a group going. 

My schedules is just a little whacky right now. 9 month old at home, 1 more otw.... busy at work adn then we had a coon in the chicken coop last night. Crazy times. Hart to prioritize / time manage while also running the contract side and putting out fires. Still on the treadmill so to speak.