New Harbor Design: How It Works

A lot of people have been asking me to give a little detail as to how New Harbor Design works and why we provide the services we do.

First let me explain what New Harbor Design is and why we are different from every other marketing company out there.

New Harbor Design is a design and marketing service company. This means that we provide a wide array of services to help you with your marketing and design projects and achieve your ultimate sales goals. That sounds pretty generic. Let’s get into it a little deeper…

New Harbor vs. well…Everybody

Okay so how are we different from “Joe Shmo Flashy Web Design?” Simple.

Joe wants to sell you every service under the sun and wants to charge you a ton for each individual service. He doesn’t understand that you have a budget and, though you want or need everything he offers, your budget just doesn’t allow for that.

We know you need a ton of different services and in order to be successful you need to implement them consistently on a weekly, often daily, basis. We also know you can’t afford to do this! So we made it affordable for you. For one price you can have access to everything we offer and as many times as you need it. With us, you get the fun of owning an entire marketing and design department without any of the liability and hassle.

The Owner Operator Conundrum

You know you need marketing. You can’t afford not to market your business. Small to mid-size businesses, especially owner operated ones, first look to market their business themselves…in their spare time.

Spare time marketing equals spare time results.

But you have to market in your spare time because you can’t afford to spend your precious work hours on anything other than running your business. Plus, you can’t afford to pay or even manage employees in order to market your business. Even more, every company specializes in so many different things, it would be a full time job just to manage all of the different marketing companies out there!

The Options: Pros and Cons

Until now there were only two options if you wanted to have someone else handle your marketing and design needs. First, you either hired a staff, managed them, trained them, and paid them. You dealt with workers comp, human resource issues and you still ended up working just as hard as before. Or, you hired a web design company and a social networking person, an email marketing company and maybe even a printer designer. You then would have to deal with all of their different requirements, their schedules, their deadlines, their invoices and you still end up spending more time managing them then you should.

Notice I said, until now…

The New Harbor Solution

It is so simple: One Fee, One Contact, No Hassle, No Stress. We just do it. For one affordable monthly fee you get an entire design and marketing team. But you don’t have to manage them. You only have to deal with one person, in most cases it’s me Adam, the owner (me). That means you have an accessible professional who knows how to market businesses like yours and who will always make himself available to discuss your needs.

Adam is very detailed and consistent with his work. He is very passionate about what he does and the quality he puts forth. -Rick, C9 Balloons

Still not sure? That’s fine. Just email me or give me a call. I am more than happy to discuss anything you need.

Don’t forget, we want things to be simple with no hassle and no stress so you are not going to get some pushy polished sales presentation. You just get quality work with good people at an affordable price.

Social poster

           

Top 5 Reasons Brands Fear Social Media

I’ve been meaning to share this link with everyone for awhile now. Online Marketing Trends posted an article on the top five reasons brands fear social media. It’s really interesting and it makes a lot of sense to me.

I’ve talked to a lot of my clients over the last couple of years and all of them have some reason why they are NOT online. When it all boils down, the main reason I’m finding, other than lack of time, is that they just don’t understand it. They don’t get how it works for their business and they just can’t see the point in spending energy on it. At times I see where they are coming from.

I’ve written before about how you must really understand social media in order to make a major impact. Every one of the five reasons listed in this article can be successfully dealt with easily as long as you have a firm understanding if the medium.

I’m reminded of that old saying, though I’m sure it never was meant for social media, “people fear what they don’t understand.” Well it applies here. You’ll never know that your brand will survive and even thrive in social media until you learn to understand it.

Social poster

           

Tweet Less: Get More (Clicks That Is)

Dan Zarrella is always full of in depth studies. His website danzarrella.com is like a living text book on social media. I was digging through the archives today and came across his study on the click through rates (CTR) of links posted on Twitter. I’ll let Dan explain…

Tweet Much? Don’t Expect a High CTR. New data I’ve been working on seems to indicate that the more frequently you Tweet links, the fewer clicks you’ll get.

His post really goes into the details of why this is. I’ve often said, with no real data to back me up, that people posting endless links for their products won’t get them a valid ROI. This seems to back me up a little.

If you want your Tweet to get noticed and ReTweeted, you should slow down your posting rate.

If you’ve got a moment, his post is really worth a read.

Social poster

           

Finding the Pain: How to Start Improving Customer Experience – Part 2

Yesterday, we learned that “finding the pain” with your customers could mean a huge difference in your overall customer experience. I even provided you with some working examples on how other companies are doing this.

Today, I want to quickly sum things up and discuss how you actually “find the pain.”

The best way to do this it to simply have a conversation. Talk with your customers. You could even implement a survey in order to get a large sampling with very little effort. However, I have found that actually talking with your customers takes things a step further and even earns some customer loyalty in return. At New Harbor, we do both. We send a quarterly survey to our clients asking them to provide us with feedback. But, “how can we make things better, or even more fun” is always a part of ongoing client conversations.

Ask your customers what they don’t like about buying from you. Do they feel that the sales reps are not knowledgeable? Are the people who answer the phone too eager to get the sale? Is it too cold in the office? What is their pain? At first they may think there isn’t one. After all, they came in didn’t they? But probe a little. What is the “bummer” in their whole buying experience? The “bummer” is the subtle weakness in their time with you. It’s the fact that they found what they wanted easily on the shelf but had to wait in line too long to buy it. Or, the staff was friendly, but you could tell that they had a lot going on and just wanted to get you on your way so they could get back to what was on their list. See, it doesn’t have to be something huge like the examples I gave yesterday. It just has to be…well..a bummer.

One example I may find when surveying this website is that “the content is great and relevant, but I have to set aside a lot of time to read it because the posts are too long.” See, not the end of the world but it’s a bummer.

It is important to note that you don’t want to ask just one customer. If you do this, you’ll end up changing the thermostat for the old lady who’s cold and forcing the rest of your clientele to sweat. Talk to everybody.

Also, talk to your staff. What are some things that they are seeing in your company? Are they finding that there are a lot of customers that are bored by how long it takes to write up an order? Maybe they don’t have a lot of the answers when their customers have questions. It is important to get a lot of opinions from both your staff and your customers.

Now that you’re armed with a list of “pains,’ head over to your competitors’ place. Watch their clients. Do they look to be experiencing the same pains as yours? Why or why not? If they aren’t having these issues start to see how you can implement similar strategies. I’m not telling you to copycat your competitors but it is kind of hard to create a better experience than them if you have a worse one already. Use this time to level things out before trying to take the lead.

In the end, it is all about subtle changes. You don’t need to make sure everyone that walks into your office gets greeted with champagne and caviar. Find out what’s bumming them out and fix it. That could make all the difference.

Social poster

           

Finding the Pain: How to Start Improving Customer Experience – Part 1

The other day I wrote about Virgin America’s customer experience and how customer experience can make a huge difference in your company’s success. I’ve received a lot of great feedback regarding that post so thank you the people who commented, e-mailed or even tweeted it to someone else.

In response, people have noted that the best customer experiences seem to be in high end markets. True, largely there are the hotels that cost $500 or more a night or the airlines that cost twice as much as the others. But there are many companies who are improving customer experience regardless of their price point. Believe me when I say that customer experience doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be thoughtful.

Recently I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of customer experience specifically about how I could improve it within my own company. Like anything in business, starting is the hardest part.

So how does someone start to improve the buying experience for their customers? It’s easier than you think.

Finding the Pain
(more…)

Social poster

           

Customer Experience Makes ALL the Difference

My newest “Twitter Friend” @izliz wrote a brief article on her experience with Virgin America that’s worth checking out. Note: You have to watch the included video of Virgin’s safety presentation as it is a much needed breath of fresh air for those of us who travel enough to know the normal ones by heart. Yes, I am aware that my nearest exit may be behind me, now let me turn my iPod back on.

I’ve never had the privilege of flying Virgin. They don’t cover a lot of the areas I fly to.  But I have found myself looking on their website in order to see where they fly and what excuse I can have to go there. Cheesy, but it’s true. I’m not alone in this. With airlines like JetBlue and Virgin making that extra effort and airlines like Southwest trying to decide if they can make an extra buck by adding more seats in the baggage compartment, it’s no wonder people are wanting to fly the “actually friendly skies” instead.

I’m so attracted to companies that clearly spend more on customer experience. It seems like every company I run into won’t focus on that aspect of their approach. I understand why, you can’t always get a clear cut ROI from the added investment. If you hire “Jim the Sales Agent” and he sells enough of your product to pay his salary plus increase your profits then you know Jim was a good investment. But, if you add nicer couches in your waiting area and spend more for nicer magazines you won’t know for a fact that it will increase your bottom line. I get it. As  a marketing consultant, I see this every day and I can empathize with a company’s predicament.

But let’s think about this. In the opening paragraphs of this post, I mentioned that I was searching for an excuse to fly Virgin. In fact, in my head, I was having the inevitable conversation with my wife where I have to sell her on spending more for Virgin and flying in to San Francisco instead of in to San Jose to visit her family the next time. It will be a tough sell indeed.

Why do I bring this up? Well…

Who do you know that is trying to come up with an excuse to use your brand? Who do you know that is figuring out what they’ll say to their bosses when they sell them on using your company? Who is writing blog posts about how unique and awesome their experience with you was? That’s my point. Customer experience doesn’t always have a quantifiable ROI but it does actually have an ROI so don’t forget that.

I can’t say this enough. Customer experience turns eager “try-ers” into loyal buyers.

So how do you do this? You don’t have to have a swanky Virgin-esque waiting room but there are things every company can do to make a better experience.

To start, just offer things that your competitors are not. But be sure to keep it within the scope of your company’s image. A termite company is probably not going to want to offer warm face towels and champagne to it’s clients. It doesn’t really make sense. But they could make an effort to make sure that their inspectors are dressed nice, clean shaven, don’t smell bad and even provide them with FAQ brochures to better serve their clients.

Again, it’s all about a little extra effort.

If you know of a company that is providing a great customer experience please send me a comment as I would love to know about them.

Social poster

           

Social Media: A Gym Metaphor

In a previous post I discussed how Twitter should not be regarded as the only marketing tool you need.

In today’s post, I thought I’d describe how Social Media should play out in a healthy marketing program.

At New Harbor, we believe in consistent and systematic approaches to sales and marketing. From trade shows to cold calls, there is a system in place. It may not be sexy to be slow and steady but we believe that the consistency is the key. In fact, our belief in systematic approaches lead us to change our entire product offering in order to foster this philosophy in our clients, but more on that some other time.

Let me explain this philosophy a little.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time working out in the gym. In High School, I cut my weight by 65 pounds and spent way too many hours with a personal trainer in order to get ready for Lacrosse season. In college, the training never stopped as I was trying very hard to keep my weight off and also work my up the ranks of our team. Who knew it, but I actually miss all the training I did when playing Lacrosse.

Now, spending time in the gym is a daily chore for me but one I take on with intense determination. It is probably the fact that working out is always present in my mind that has lead me to this analogy. Stay with me, this will mean something I swear.

Here are two lessons the gym taught me that can change how you look at your marketing program. (more…)

Social poster

           

Teach a Man to Fish…or Tweet

One of my favorite sites recently posted an awesome article giving you 7 Reasons Not Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. You should check it out when you get a second.

I’m going to try hard not to come across as a hypocrite here. After all, my company not only consults on Social Media but actually offers a service where we can ghost write Twitter posts and increase your followers. Of course I like to think we have a different approach to the Twitter thing than most companies out there. We don’t make lofty claims regarding your followers and we look to post relevant content that encourages conversation and trust between the public and our clients.

I’m very tired of the spammers on Twitter posting only ads for their products and not engaging the public all together. It’s just a one way sales pitch! Since being on Twitter, I’ve become more and more disenchanted with the platform all together. It’s becoming like MySpace to me; right about the time I left it for Facebook. It’s very impersonal, overwhelming and there is a lot of crap on there.

There are a lot of good points in the article. One that should not be forgotten while reading my post is this:

Twitter indeed should be part of almost every company’s social media tool kit.

I agree with this statement. If I didn’t we wouldn’t offer Twitter support in our long list of services. Social Media, by and large, is free (free in terms of money – not time). There is no reason you or your product should not have a Twitter presence. However, Twitter is not the end all be all for your brand and anyone who tells you otherwise should not be collecting a check from you.

For better or worse, Social Media is ever evolving. What makes it onto CNN today will be a punch line tomorrow. Anyone remember Friendster? What I suggest, is that you spend less time learning Twitter and more time learning Social Media. It’s the “teach a man to fish scenario.”

Teach a man to Tweet and he can make a sale. Teach a man Social Media and he can build a brand for a lifetime.

Twitter is just a tool in your vast marketing tool kit. Learn to use it, sure, but learning why it is effective is much more important. If you learn how social media works then it won’t matter what new platform comes out. You’ll know right away whether it is right for you or your company and how you can develop a plan incorporating that new tool. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this. “If I get really good at Twitter, what will I do when Twitter goes away?” It’s that simple.

There were a lot of design companies out there that heavily promoted Myspace backgrounds as a product offering. What do they do now when all the custom content slowed Myspace down and forced people to move over to a less customizable and cluttered Facebook?

YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter – It doesn’t matter what platform is popular today because it will change tomorrow.

Learn “why” and “how” and know that it doesn’t matter “what.”

Social poster