Lets rephrase the question: “how much of an investment should I be looking to secure in order to create an effective online (or print, or both) marketing campaign?”

What are we saying?

It costs money to make money, but rather than thinking about it as COST, think about it as an INVESTMENT in your brand. When it comes to creating a website to market or showcase a brand, what you put in is what you will get out. If you try to cut corners, the end result will be corner-less.

How do you maximize your budget?

Read more about scheduling a consultation and budgeting cost to get a better idea on where to begin.

PLANNING and COMMUNICATION are key. The more thought you give to what you want, the easier it will be to map out a plan. You have to be able to effectively communicate what you are looking to do. I can then take your ideas and research solutions matching your budget to incorporate into the overall campaign.

My attempt to back up my hard drive over a long impatient weekend full of glitches and error messages led me to Tekserve where I was informed everyones greatest nightmare: “just to prepare you for the worst case, you might need a new hard drive”... then after diagnostic “yea, so I am not really sure how your computer is even running – it crashed”. The outcome was that thankfully even as my computer slowly crashed into the afterlife, it still turned on and ran well enough (sort of) to let me back up as much as I could.

Not everyone’s computer shares the same values as mine (which runs even when there is no reasonable explanation as to how it even turned on). Had I not been able to backup my files I would’ve lost blood, sweat, tears, free labor, bartered labor, bored labor – I would’ve lost a chunk of my life.

YOU TRY:

1. INVEST in an external hard drive that fits the requirements of the file sizes you will be archiving. Be sure to leave room for the addition of new/updated files as your company and portfolio grows.

2. SCHEDULE BACKUPS regularly. Depending on how frequently you create and edit files create a schedule and be sure to stick to it. Set an alarm or find a way to schedule automatic updates.

So the flaw in all this, who knows where my software backups have gone…

We will see the eCommerce shopping trends go from a personal preference of the individual to the lifestyle necessity of the masses. It is my opinion, based on observations through both professionals and your average consumer, that in this turbulent economic era the internet will dominate as the preferred way to cost-effectively and efficiently run a retail and service business. What will set one retailer apart from another will be how they invest their resources to create an online presence that keeps customers coming back every time they shop.