Online Strategy

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out than to initiate a new order of things.  For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

~Machiavelli

We are approached often from companies wanting to build and/or market  a new product or service.  Whether it is a Social Network, a widget, desktop application or other, one of the first questions that we get is.

"We already created this site and now we need some help driving traffic and sales. Can you help with this?"

This is a legitimate questions, and ‘yes’, we can certainly help with this but this leads us to a very important point about marketing on the web.  If you haven’t already laid out a game plan or understand the complexities of making a website or online tool successful, then we may steer you back towards creating this game plan.

You see, we’ve been asked too many times to count to come in and try to fix, redesign, or improve upon something that has already been built.  The problem is that 'it' (your deal-io) is oftentimes flawed from the start. The problem with this is that companies still have a very tight grip and don't want to let go of what's already been done.  That's not to say that your project isn't salvageable, it's just saying that there is a benefit to figuring out the goals of the project and what  needs to be done in order to accomplish these goals.

This is where Jivaldi comes in.

It is scary starting a new venture and wondering what the heck an agency is going to charge for something.  Keep in mind that Jivaldi hasn’t survived 10 years by taking our client’s money and delivering no results.  The reason we are still business and doing well is that we make good things happen online.

Yes, we understand it is difficult to spend money on something that you can’t touch or feel.  Terms like online marketing, social media, SEO, analytics - when they are preached by a marketing sales guy (or pretty sales girl)…probably make you feel that you are dealing with a witch doctor. But the bottom line is this; if you can’t drive traffic or find customers for your product or service your efforts will simply fade into nothingness in a place we call the Internet. (ps. we don't have a sales staff)

Funny thing is, we’ve seen good online products die because the company was over-focused on the engineering of the application and never stopped to think of how they would get people to use their product. They failed, not because of a lack of knowledge of their own business, but a lack of knowledge of the online realm.  They underestimate the task of getting people to use their site or product.

This happens all the time.

In many cases, companies stop short in marketing their product thinking that, magically, people will start using it and it will just go viral by itself.  You must understand that for something to go ‘viral’ it requires a good product, hard work, more time than you realize ...and a lot of luck.  The reality of the situation is that if you want to be successful online you have to market yourselves properly, be prepared for a long haul and realize that successs will not come overnight.

Creating a good looking, easy to use online presence with an accompanying online game plan will greatly increase your chances of success.

For you to become successful online you have to create groups of people that will help push your message, product or service for you.  Good marketing teams plant seeds, create a good online foundation, and let the'product's fans do the rest.  This is no easy task though. Dare we say this, but we are very good at what we do.