Torlando On Business

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First, I apologize for the sassy title. I wanted to get your attention. I’m just here to tell you keep it up. Trust yourself and what you know. But there are three things that matter most as I have scoured and scrutinized the work that is out there.

People have a lot of stories that they tell themselves. The story that we tell ourselves is usually some type of excuse as to why we aren’t succeeding.

When most companies begin digital marketing it all really starts as an experiment. Let’s face it. We don’t have decades of experience with this stuff and the technology and platforms change all the time. It’s just so hard to know what actually works. And believe me. I get it wrong more often than I get it right.

One thing PPC experts know that they aren’t telling you is that the top brands get more monthly average searches with the brand name as the keyword than the top keyword category.

In the book, How Brands Become Icons, author Douglas Holt talks at length about the icon. A person or figurehead sometimes with a cult of personality, sometimes justifiably idolized, stands in proxy as the aspirational identity and embodiment of the ideal member of society incarnate. The expectation of who they are and what they represent is a brand, albeit even mythical in pumped up status. Says he:

The growing demand for web based booking apps is on the rise. Not always from the companies owning the website, but from the site visitors using the website.

Join Torlando Hakes, host of the PaintEd podcast, speaker and author in a distillation of everything he has learned through more than a decade and a half running a service based business and what he has learned from the switch to selling SaaS, including insights gained from interviewing some of the brightest minds in the business world to day.

The above photo is a James Turrell installation. James Turrell is a light artist. I experienced this particular installation in person on a trip to Japan.

The United States economy is largely considered at this point to be a services economy. While manufacturing throughout the 20th century had been the strong hold of the American economy with services a separate but supporting sector, global out sourcing and the advent of the Information age has made the service sector a critical factor of our economy as “farming and manufacturing as a proportion of total economic activity are in decline.” (See quote below)

Before I begin, yes, your company needs a website. However, I think it’s time we start admitting that the website isn’t that great of a conversion tool.

When you look at the evolution of the way business is conducted online selling goods or products online is leaps and bounds ahead of being able to sell services online.

Pricing your services is one of the hardest parts of agency work. There is something about it that rarely feels like a good deal for your buyer and yet for you it’s a shoe-string budget. But if you do that deal, neither of you will be satisfied and neither of you will get the best end result.

Abraham Lincoln said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend…”