Category: Business Consulting

Is your business ready for a new perspective from an experienced business builder, system expert, and senior software and cloud engineer? I know how business consulting needs to work together to achieve clearly defined goals.

As your business consultant, I will help you find the right questions to ask of your company, your goals and your team. Are you ready to shake things up?

I will help you and your leadership team clearly identify and optimize all the pieces your company relies on to be successful.

There are A LOT of moving parts in any organization. Are your efforts coordinated in a way where there’s synergy among your different departments and teams? Before you go full throttle with any advertising I recommend making sure the customer service channel is optimized first.

Call into your company, or if you are a retailer, visit one of your stores unannounced. Look around, listen. Is every customer in your store treated with respect and deference? When you call in, do you go to voice mail, or worse, does the person who answered the phone unpleasant and rude?

What good is it to drive more traffic to your store or website if they’re not optimized for maximum customer satisfaction?! These are critical business systems, they’re your life blood and that’s why a good Marketing Director should be adamant that these channels get optimized first. This makes sense both for any brick and mortar AND websites.

It doesn’t make sense to start any new SEM ad campaigns, paying for clicks to a site that is slow and not focused on what the customer wants and needs. This is the same priority as in-store customer services issues. You have to fix these primal business things first and if your marketing director isn’t asking these questions and attempting to raise the level of customer service, this shows an opportunity to improve your company’s conversion funnel.

There’s no sense investing in advertising to send people to a store that can’t convert them into happy, paying customers. These are things our business consulting services can help optimize, and maximize for you!

The Ever-Changing SEO Landscape

May 18, 2024 Aaron Belchamber Leave a comment

No matter any organization’s size, we only have so much time and resources to operate a business. Most people agree that an effective website and web presence could make the difference between growth and stagnation, a sale or losing a lead or opportunity to a better-positioned competitor. It could impact future growth to the point to be the difference between survival and going out of business.

My Elusive Search for Ranking “Video Production in Jacksonville Florida”

AI and our ability to have conversations with bots to get more succinct and detailed information has already changed the SEO landscape in very profound ways which at the moment are hard to measure. That said, I am still operating my website under the premise that these bots are still using under the hood using some form of the search algorithm that we became so accustomed to.

Focus on search terms that will convert!

If a person in the Jacksonville area types in “Jacksonville video production”, “video production in Jacksonville”, or “Video production services Jacksonville” or something close to that effect, I would like to be found on the first page. Even though I have global clients I edit videos and provide 3D animations for, this is just a local challenge for me. The reason I will find this beneficial as a video producer is that it will enable me to work more closely with local businesses for on-site video shoots. I have helped remotely direct shoots but it’s not the same as being hands-on and on site. Also, closer proximity means being more accessible and available to local clients which can strengthen business relationships.

Search engines want businesses to not worry about their algorithms

Over the years I have learned a lot about digital marketing, content strategy, SEO (search engine optimization) and CRO (conversion rate optimization). Something I had suspected about content strategy that I believe has been confirmed not only by paid consultants but from my own experience is that businesses should not focus too heavily on SEO and conforming to every little detail. The act of being found in improving your web presence comes down to the quality of your content. Videos are by far the most effective web content with the most proven impact.

Google definitely is the leader in search right now, so taking their advice is paramount to becoming successful. One of the national leaders in search engine optimization and speaker at many Google Next events as a consultant repeatedly states that search engines do not want companies to focus heavily on SEO. Search engines do not want to get in the way so they recommend focusing on creating useful content that will be valuable to your organization and web visitors. Search engines recognize that being transparent will likely encourage more organic and natural content as opposed to influencing content creators to artificially “hack” the search engines ranking systems.

Content is king… still

It’s all about content and quality content is king! It is possible to be over optimized which also partly weighs towards your overall SEO performance which can affect your search page rankings. There are two reasons for this, one is an obsessive focus on SEO diverts resources from improving your website and making quality content. The other reason is that search engines are suspicious of companies with pristine SEO scores.

There is a real opportunity cost diverting your time, talent and resources massaging your content through SEO.

Do not fall into a profile where the search engines may subject you to higher standards and scrutiny. You don’t want your web reputation to fall into the spam and click farm crowd, I have seen this happen. I have also seen a well seasoned website fall and never recover once it is flagged as low quality or spam.

Dedicate no more than 10% towards SEO efforts

There is a real opportunity cost diverting your time, talent and resources massaging your content through SEO. For your business by all means pay attention to the SEO basics but don’t let it divert more than 10% of the resources you would usually use to actually create quality content. In a perfect scenario, no business would have to worry about SEO at all. Perhaps AI is already changing that and will positively influence a movement towards complete invisibility. However, until then, I prefer a balanced approach but if it comes down to time and resources remember CONTENT IS KING.

Keep Your Video Production Costs Down By Bartering

April 28, 2024 Aaron Belchamber Leave a comment

It is possible to get video production, video editing and 3D animation services with little out of pocket or up front expense to a business. The solution is collaborating on trade so if you have a business that provides products or services that I find valuable we can leverage each other’s value propositions and exchange them. So if you need video work done, I may need a new roof (which unfortunately we will need soon) — you get the point.

One of my goals for this website is to find more freelance video production, video editing and 3D animation projects. In the past I have enjoyed providing video services for smaller companies and nonprofits and have even provided these services on trade. Bartering in this way has proven to be a creative win-win relationship!

Startups have limited resources at first

Perhaps you are a startup looking for quality and high value and want to keep your costs down. Maybe your organization was looking to get videos made but due to the prohibitive cost and high quotes you were getting you decided to delay such investments to divert your limited resources to grow your business elsewhere. Trading what you provide as value with other businesses that can help you is a creative win-win.

Maybe you tried making videos yourself and you’re just not happy with the results. I have a lot of experience taking existing video projects and re-editing and repurposing them so organizations can get more value out of them. You can save money and I have always found it challenging and fun to revitalize a business’s branding and messaging in this way.

How bartering for video production works

In exchange for your services and products I can provide video and general media services. Perhaps you have a lobby video running on a loop you would like to freshen up or you do not have one at all but want one? Perhaps you are looking for a new series of television commercials or web explainer videos? Maybe you want to put new testimonials on your website from some of your happiest customers, clients or patients?

We can both benefit from this type of collaboration. In this sense it is not a matter of “you get what you pay for”. This arrangement allows us to trade on the premium value we each assess for each other. Depending on the scope of the projects, sometimes the trade doesn’t have to go dollar for dollar, we can even arrange for a percentage of trade at least to keep the project or hourly costs down.

We are currently open to trading our video production and editing services with a few of these businesses:

Restaurants & Cafes
Roofers
Computer/Workstations
Cloud hosting
Pest Control Company
Auto Sales & Repair
RV Sales and Rentals
Home Insulation
A/C Repairs
A/C Vent Cleaning
Home Construction and Subcontractors
New Driveway
Landscaping Companies
Plant Nurseries

This list is subject to change, so if you are a company looking to find creative ways to get Video Production Services without breaking the bank, reach out to me!

Bartering isn’t for everyone

In summary, in the past I have found it very rewarding to work with smaller companies on trade. Startups without the capital at first to afford the level of video production they could afford at the beginning have limited options. Some companies may find that this is too low brow and are too proud to barter so they will work around not using videos. Rest assured if these companies wait too long their competitors inevitably will not.

I’ve developed some great relationships with some very successful business owners and I’m proud to have seen many of these companies really take off. Here are some examples of some of the partial trades I have provided video production services in exchange for: A restaurant with a tab, a week with an RV, a credit for plants at a nursery, pallets of mulch and paver bricks, new computers and monitors, etc.

Please contact me by filling out the contact form or giving me a call. We can talk about your business goals and how videos can help you achieve your goals in advertising, providing information and helping you communicate effectively to your target market.

Let us help you choose the right system, data, and marketing tools for your business

June 26, 2019 Aaron Belchamber Leave a comment

When it comes to choosing system, data and marketing tools for your business, start with “the framework approach” but don’t be surprised if you decide a custom system is a better fit for you! We’re talking CRM (Customer Relationship Management), MA (Marketing Automation), CMS (Content Management System), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or BIT (Business Intelligence Tools).

Some of the best web development practices you may read about might be a great fit for your company or they might not. It’s always a good idea to take “the framework approach” towards your business first. After all, your company isn’t that unique, right? So, if your company has needs for tools that can help it function more effectively and automate your processes, it’s pretty likely there are solutions out there you can then adapt and tailor to your company.

But not so fast. Looking at the price tag of some of these systems that cost well over $100k to license and even more in costs of time and labor to implement, you have to weigh this and compare what you get in return. How are you going to migrate your legacy data to this new system? Who is going to maintain all of its moving parts once your high-priced consultant leaves?

You may have the best web developers but that’s not guaranteeing your company will transition smoothly to a new system and platform. Your web developers are only human, I mean, even the most senior web developers are senior in only certain areas, but they’re always still junior in others. I’m senior level in PHP, MySQL, WordPress, Symfony and Javascript/JQuery, but I’m not so senior in Magento and Drupal. Besides my own personal projects and exercises to keep learning and stay fresh, I have been out of the heavy ecommerce side for almost 4 years now.

You may find out that your perfectly capable web development team likely never had experience integrating Salesforce, Marketo or other heavy data-driven platforms into a business, so that will be another challenge, especially if you’re a small company that can’t afford to stretch its resources to have part of your web development team working exclusively on this type of project when you still need execution for the daily grind development activities that will continue to keep your lights on!

Legacy Attitudes

We haven’t even addressed the most important question: How are you going to migrate your people to this new system? Your company may have some of the best web developers on staff but they might not be the most talented and skilled with your people. So, how are you going to deal with this change? You may find it’s too much change for people, you may also discover opportunities to automate processes that were performed manually before that would enable you to let’s say deprecate certain positions?

If you are optimizing your business and you are making your workforce more efficient, that is quite a business achievement. Imagine if you could shift two full-time salaried positions out of, say accounting and invest more in good web talent or other people with newer skills and experience more tailored towards the technology-driven horizon you are taking your company.

Custom Systems

A lot of the heavy lifting of some of these enterprise tools aren’t that sophisticated, complex, or magical. Having built out a few custom ERPs for retailers and factories, I can say that compared to the packages they were considering with price tags over $500,000, that’s a lot of technology talent they could buy for a few years with super custom, tailor made, yet still scalable solutions built right in with technical support.

The first reason they decide to go customized is the price tag, the uncertainty of success, and the potential future costs of ridiculously expensive upgrades and support contracts to off-shore call centers later. The reason many smaller companies go the custom route is they trust their web team more than these slick “enterprise solutions” salespeople coming in with their big price tags not understanding the company’s intricacies, culture and existing systems that work fine. They want to come in and burn the house down and start completely from their foundation of understanding, what a waste. They want to redo everything their way and it’s difficult to pick and choose with cafeteria-style options to only buy what a small business needs because there’s a disconnect between the small business’s understanding of what these tools are capable of and these business tool sales and support people not understanding what the business actually needs. You may get to this point in weighing your options and finally just say the hell with it.

So discussions go away, management just deals with the confines of an inadequate, dysfunctional system, and HR pays three extra people to enter information from one print-out into a screen so the same data goes into another. All in the name of “keeping the peace” and not upsetting the apple cart.

Well, in my experience of helping companies, large and small – national retail chains and small manufacturers, I’ve seen the sense of helplessness in looking for “the right tools”. Usually, the solution is pretty close at hand. Often, the POS and other data systems are already collecting data into an accessible database. If your company collects data and you can see reports somewhere, you may be 90% at a solution to help you automate perhaps up to 80% of your systems and processes that are achievable without buying expensive ERP and other “enterprise” solutions. All you need is a knowledgeable and creative-minded web developer or programmer to outline your biggest priorities and system gaps and identify solutions that could be built all with NO EXTRA COSTS except what you pay the developer AND YOU WILL OWN THE CODE AND THE SOLUTION for eternity.

Yes, that all sounds good, but how do you solve your business systems dilemma? Trusted people with this experience can guide you through the process. We can create a plan to help you prioritize your company’s own tailored ERP based on open source that runs right on your company’s secure intranet as a one-stop shop for all your company data and reporting, organized by department and restricted access by user roles and privileges.

All code, programming, logic and database design and setup are scalable and future-proof. You may choose to go with a custom solution but you can still make sure your web team adapts a common development foundation, at least choose an MVC pattern and structure or go an actual PHP framework like the Symfony framework along with other options that will enable your current web development team to quickly integrate, familiarize and be productive contributors to your future proof, scalable custom ERP solution.

If you are a business looking for guidance for choosing the proper direction for a CRM, MA (Marketing Automation), ERP, CMS or you’re just swimming in this stew of acronyms and are getting confused, contact me to arrange a Business Tools Assessment by clicking here. We know what questions to ask you to help present to you the pros, cons, strengths and weaknesses of going in the myriad of directions. We’re your SME (Subject Matter Expert) for all things business management tools — I couldn’t resist to throw in one more acronym in there.

If you’re looking to go alone on a shoestring budget and even free solutions, I suggest looking into Odoo, the community edition is packed full of many features and Mautic, a robust open-source marketing automation tool.