How to Use Advisory Boards to Rapidly Grow Revenue
In this episode of the Parker Web Partner Show, host Darryl Parker sat down with Nancy Mayer, author of The Advisory Board Playbook. Nancy discussed the intricacies of advisory boards, the impact they can have on small businesses, and practical steps for setting up and running an effective advisory board. She also provided valuable insights on how to select advisors, the importance of professional facilitation, and various types of advisory boards.
Is Creating a Process Worth the Effort?
In this episode we discuss the significance of process in establishing structure, rhythm, and consistency in work, as well as creating organizational clarity, building products, transferring knowledge, and creating value within an organization.
Build Your Brand with Kate DiLeo
TRANSISTER.FM SPOTIFY APPLE AUDIBLE GOOGLE https://youtu.be/qYgB1sT9Otc Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we provide creative solutions for creative agencies. This week we have a special announcement from Darryl Parker of Parker Web and Kate DiLeo of The Brand Trifecta. Kate, a Parker Web partner, is hosting a revenue acceleration event in Minneapolis where companies can build their brand messaging and sales assets in just three days. This event aims to provide a more immersive and hands-on experience compared to typical conferences. Participants will have the opportunity to work with experts and receive immediate results. The event also includes curated networking sessions and special activities like tequila tastings and fireside chats. The dates for the event are August 14th-16th, November 20th-22nd, and December 4th-6th. Takeaways: The revenue acceleration event offers a unique opportunity for companies to build their brand messaging and sales assets in just three days. It provides a more immersive and hands-on experience compared to traditional conferences. Participants will have the chance to work with experts and receive immediate results. Curated networking sessions and special activities enhance the learning and relationship-building experience. For more information visit the event website here – https://katedileo.com/events/ If you run any type of creative agency (ad agencies, digital marketing agencies, social media agencies, etc.) we would love to hear from you. What are some of the challenges you see in your world? SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARKER WEB PARTNER SHOW APPLE PODCASTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL SPOTIFY AUDIBLE
CRM’s – Customer Relationships Matter
TRANSISTER.FM SPOTIFY APPLE AMAZON AUDIBLE GOOGLE Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we provide creative solutions for creative agencies. This week, the show’s topic is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. These programs are so much more than simple customer contact databases. With the right CRM, you can track marketing campaigns, sales processes, invoicing, customer service needs, and more. 00:00 – Introductions and overview. 01:04 – Developers Desk: Connecting your CRM to your website and customization. 03:41 – The Corner Office: When is the right time to look into a CRM system? 07:51 – Roundtable: Today, we welcome Lidiane Mocko from CRM Growth Strategy. We discussed how CRMs work, why they’re so important, some pitfalls to avoid, and what to look for when you’re ready to use one. We also share our favorite digital tools and applications. 38:22 – Wrap-Up: Review everything we covered today. We would love to hear from you if you run any creative agency (ad agencies, digital marketing agencies, social media agencies, etc.). What are some of the challenges you see in your world? Links mentioned in the show: WordPress – https://wordpress.com/ HubSpot – https://www.hubspot.com/ OptinMonster – https://optinmonster.com/ ActiveCampaign – https://www.activecampaign.com/ Salesforce – https://www.salesforce.com/ Zapier – https://zapier.com/ Clockify – https://clockify.me/ Calendly – https://calendly.com/ Contact information: Lidiane Mocko CRM Growth Strategy lidiane.mocko@crmgrowthstrategy.com https://crmgrowthstrategy.com/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARKER WEB PARTNER SHOW APPLE PODCASTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL SPOTIFY AUDIBLE Caleb Parsons 00:02 Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we find creative solutions for creative agencies. Darryl Parker 00:11 Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show. Thanks for joining us today. I am here with my co host, Merrill. Merrill Loechner 00:16 Hi, I’m Merrill Loechner, Founder and Podcast Producer with Smith Douglass Associates, a creative agency based in New York. Darryl Parker 00:25 And I am Darryl Parker with Parker Web. And today we have a great show ahead, we’re going to be talking about why the customer really matters, CRM. That’s what we think CRM means. And we’re going to be talking about CRM systems and tools. And we’re going to start out with Caleb, and I’m going to talk about a couple of things. And then we have a great guest coming on: Lidi Mocko, who’s going to tell us a lot about CRM. She’s a CRM consultant and works with small businesses all over the country and helping implement their CRMs. So, welcome to the show. Next up, we’re going over to our Developers Desk, where we’re going to talk to Caleb about what’s going on at Parker Web behind the scenes. Caleb, what’s going on in the Developers Desk? Caleb Parsons 01:11 So recently, and just on theme with our topic of CRMs, we’ve gotten lots of tickets with from clients just looking for: Can you help me connect to this? Or can you assist me in adding this form to my site? There’s lots of different ways that clients can connect their site to a CRM. There are plugins for WordPress, for example, for things like HubSpot and OptinMonster. There are ways that you can embed forms using something like Active Campaign, which can be really useful, because then you can style that form after you’ve embedded it so that it matches the rest of the site, and then all those leads can go right into your CRM. Or there are other integrations with things like contact forms that will connect to Salesforce or Active Campaign, or sometimes you need a little help in connecting those forms, which is when we turn to something like Zapier. Darryl Parker 02:36 So that’s what we’re seeing? We’re seeing people needing Zapier more or needing this integration more? Caleb Parsons 02:42 I think it really all depends on what they’re looking for. I think it’s a total variety. But what you will see more and more is that for something like WordPress, there are an increasing amount of people that are connecting to XCRM. And so there will be a plugin for getting that integration working. Darryl Parker 03:08 On their websites. If they have their website and it’s out there, or if they’re running a campaign on social media and they need it to come back to a form that’s on their branded web page, they can do that. If they don’t necessarily want to do it in the CRM, they can do it on their website, right? Caleb Parsons 03:22 Right. Darryl Parker 03:23 And the website can connect back. That’s great. It’s a great reminder about how flexible the website can be as a platform for your business and feed all the other components. Caleb Parsons 03:35 For sure. Darryl Parker 03:36 Well, that was really informative, Caleb. I really appreciate you bringing us that information. This week in the Corner Office, we’re going to talk about how we use CRM at Parker Web and how I invested in over the last 15 years. So, one of the things that I did coming out of the recession of 2008-9, is we started working with clients on scale. Instead of having just a handful, having maybe a dozen or so clients where they were big and we mostly were working with them from a project management perspective, to having dozens and then hundreds of clients. And it required us to try to develop a system that would allow us to work with the clients in such a way where we could maintain their information, but it wasn’t QuickBooks. It didn’t seem like QuickBooks, or all these other off-the-shelf systems, matched the business process that we were trying to implement with how I wanted to run my business. So at the time, my only solution was to build something. So we built this system in 2009. And so you have to remember this is a 15-year difference to today. We have rebuilt it a few times; we’ve gone in, we’ve learned a lot about how our employees interact with the system, how our
Mastering Your Domains
TRANSISTER.FM SPOTIFY APPLE AMAZON AUDIBLE GOOGLE Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we provide creative solutions for creative agencies. This week, the topic of the show is TLDs – Top Level Domains. Historically there were only a few choices like .com, .net, .org, .gov. But now there are over 1000 domains you can choose from. In this episode, we talk about when, how, and why to use various domains, what other options you have, and some things to be careful of. 00:00 – Introductions and overview. 01:35 – Developers Desk: How to spot scams that are trying to dupe you into switching your domain registrations. 05:47 – The Corner Office: Is your domain name considered intellectual property? You may be surprised. 11:27 – Roundtable: Benjamin Wilson from Deliverypath joins us today to talk about the various ways creative agencies can use domain names as a branding tool. Do you really have to register with multiple domains? Maybe. But there are other options. We also share our favorite digital tools and applications. 38:27 – Wrap Up: Reviewing everything we covered today. If you run any type of creative agency (ad agencies, digital marketing agencies, social media agencies, etc.) we would love to hear from you. What are some of the challenges you see in your world? Links mentioned in the show: “Four Domain Trends to Expect in 2023“- https://www.inc.com/inc-masters/four-domain-trends-to-expect-in-2023.html ICANN – https://www.icann.org/ Google Domains – https://domains.google/ MxToolbox – https://mxtoolbox.com/ WP Engine – https://wpengine.com/ Internet Archine – https://archive.org/ Dig – https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/ Contact information: Benjamin Wilson Deliverypath Wireless, LLC ben@deliverypath.com https://deliverypath.com/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARKER WEB PARTNER SHOW APPLE PODCASTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL SPOTIFY AUDIBLE Caleb Parsons 00:02 Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we find creative solutions for creative agencies. Merrill Loechner 00:10 Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show. I’m Merrill Loechner, founder of Smith Douglass Associates, a creative agency in New York. And let me introduce you to our co host, Darryl Parker. Darryl Parker 00:24 I’m Darryl Parker. I’m the owner of Parker Web. And we love to have you here today. And we also have with us, Caleb. Caleb Parsons 00:33 Hello. Hello. I’m Caleb Parsons. I’m a developer at Parker Web. Darryl Parker 00:38 Welcome to the show. So we’re going to be talking about the domain, the TLD, the Top Level Domain. Dot coms, your parkerweb.com, your domain itself, and all things domains today. So one of the things we’re going to jump into with Caleb is just trying to understand how to track domain expirations, domain scams, things that your clients may be running into that you may be running into. I’m going to be talking about our domains’ intellectual property; can they be trademarked? You know, is that something in my experience? And then we’re going to have Ben Wilson with us for the Roundtable from Deliverypath. And Ben knows, way more than all of us put together about domains and hosting and dealing with DNS entries and all that fun stuff. So we’re going to riff with him about domains and all the different TLDs, top level domains that are out there. So Caleb, what are you seeing in the Developers Desk? Caleb Parsons 01:41 Yeah, so a fairly common support ticket that we will get from a client is an email being forwarded to us that is: “Your domain is going to expire soon.” Or “Make sure to register your domain here in the annual website domain listing.” And sometimes they’re not really sure whether it is legit or not. We have plenty of clients where they’re hosted somewhere, but their domain is somewhere else, and their email is being managed by something else. And it can get really complicated really fast. And it’s often just nice to hear from someone: this is a legit email, make sure that you are renewing your domain or your site will go down…or: do not respond to this, this is spam, don’t worry about it. Many domains are set up to auto-renew, but it’s a really good idea to be familiar with when that renewal date is, especially if you’ve just changed credit card information or anything like that. There are payments that can not happen. And when those don’t happen, the site will go down usually immediately. So it’s always a good idea to be on top of those things. Darryl Parker 03:10 I think one of the things that a lot of clients that we have struggle with sometimes is understanding that there’s a registrar, and then there’s a host. Sometimes a host is hosting your website files, and then someone is hosting your domain name itself. Sometimes they’re the same people. So for instance, like a GoDaddy can sell you the domain name, and they can host your website. And it kind of looks like it’s the same thing. But really, it’s two different entities. So you knowing who your registrar is, and what company you’re paying that fee to, is going to save you a lot of hassle. But that’s also one of the biggest scams is someone will send you a bill in the mail that says we’re from Domain Name America, or whatever it might be, and you need to renew your domain. And what they’re trying to do is to get you to move your registrar from wherever you registered it over to the new place. I own hundreds of domains; I’ve bought hundreds of domains. And I think these people must spend a fortune sending me mail, because they’re they’re trying to get me to change my registrar from whomever I registered with over to them so that my renewal has to happen through them because they make money on those renewals as well. Caleb Parsons 04:27 Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. It’s something to really watch out for. We’ll have clients that will take pictures of things because they do get sent in the mail, too. And that’s when you get something and
How to Attract the Right Employees
SPOTIFY SPOTIFY SPOTIFY SPOTIFY SPOTIFY SPOTIFY SPOTIFY Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we provide creative solutions for creative agencies. This week, the topic of the show is about attracting the right employees to your company. Post-Covid, people are looking for more than just a paycheck. You now have to recruit employees with the same focus as you do with attracting new customers. 00:00 – Introductions and overview. 01:08 – Developers Desk: Why your contact form may be the most important thing on your website. 05:23 – The Corner Office: What is the difference between an employee and a contractor, when should you deal with one or the other, and what laws are you breaking if you treat a contractor like an employee? 15:16 – Roundtable: Michael Cinquino, from SoHo Creative Studio, joins us this week to talk about companies needing a strong employee value proposition. What attracts potential employees to your company, and what repels them? We also share our favorite digital tools and applications. 40:08 – Wrap Up: Reviewing everything we covered today. If you run any type of creative agency (ad agencies, digital marketing agencies, social media agencies, etc.) we would love to hear from you. What are some of the challenges you see in your world? Links mentioned in the show: Google reCAPTCHA v3 – https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/v3.html?ref=techmoon How the IRS Determines Independent Contractor Status – https://www.thebalancemoney.com/how-the-irs-determines-independent-contractor-status-398618 The Employer Toolkit – https://www.sohocreativestudio.com/employer-toolkit NH Union Leader Article “Hiring is the New Marketing” – https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/ask_the_expert/ask-the-expert-hiring-is-the-new-marketing/article_3e31d087-c99e-5de0-a8da-1981f41ee204.html Sharp Careers – https://business.sharpusa.com/Careers Jotform – https://www.jotform.com/ Jotform Smart PDF – https://www.jotform.com/products/smart-pdf-forms/ Canva – https://www.canva.com/ Vidyard – https://www.vidyard.com/ Contact information:Michael CinquinoSoHo Creative Studiomichael@michaelcinquino.comhttps://www.sohocreativestudio.com/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARKER WEB PARTNER SHOW APPLE PODCASTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL SPOTIFY AUDIBLE Narrator 00:02 Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show where we find creative solutions for creative agencies. Darryl Parker 00:03 I am Darryl Parker, and welcome to another episode of the Parker Web Partner Show. This week, we’re going to be talking about how to attract the right employees. And I’m going to be talking about employees versus contractors in my segment, and we’re going to have Michel Cinquino here from SoHo Creative, and he’s going to be talking about the employee value proposition and the employer branding opportunities that are available to you. But before we get to that, let’s everybody introduce yourselves. Merrill Loechner 00:11 I am Merrill Loechner, founder of Smith Douglass Associates, a creative agency based in New York. Caleb Parsons 00:50 Hi, I’m Caleb Parsons. I’m a developer at Parker Web. Darryl Parker 00:55 Thank you both for being here. And we’re gonna jump right into the Developers’ Desk with Caleb, and Caleb is going to talk a little bit about something that he’s seen coming up in the ticket system this month. What’s going on Caleb? Caleb Parsons 01:14 Recently, we’ve had multiple clients talk about contact forms. This is the most important part of a website, typically. You want as much engagement as possible, so we’ve got clients tweaking fields, just to make sure that they’re interacting as much as possible. Or maybe they’re adding another contact form on their website to enable the online functionality of something like scheduling an appointment. Or we’ve also got clients that are looking to continue to reduce spam by making CAPTCHA more aggressive, for example. Darryl Parker 02:01 But not too aggressive, right? Caleb Parsons 02:03 Well, yes, not too aggressive. Darryl Parker 02:07 What kind of CAPTCHA do we use? Caleb Parsons 02:11 We often will use Google reCAPTCHA version 3. It is invisible; there is no extra box that pops up that makes you click all the motorcycles and you’re never quite sure whether that’s a motorcycle at the edge of that image. Nothing like that; it’s totally invisible. And it allows also allows you to change how, by looking at the data that’s coming in, you can make adjustments and make it more aggressive or less aggressive, depending on how much span you’re getting in, and things like that. Darryl Parker 02:53 So what are some examples of forms, what are some of the questions that our clients are asking inside of the forms? So is it like a job application? Or contact forms? Like, what are some of the examples of forms that you’re seeing? Caleb Parsons 03:07 One example would be, we had a client recently looking to sort of make a better online form to capture potential new clients looking to schedule an appointment with their various clinical practitioners. So not only would they say what dates and times work best for them, but then after that, they would go in a little bit about their health backgrounds and things like that. And they wanted a form that could capture all of that. We used Jotform to create a form and capture all that information and then send it to the client so they could have everything and print it out easily. Darryl Parker 04:03 And that’s HIPAA compliant? Caleb Parsons 04:07 Yes, yes. JotForm does have the ability to be HIPAA compliant. Darryl Parker 04:11 Right. So that is something that’s available in the marketplace. That’s great. Merrill, do you have any examples of web forms that you see out there? Merrill Loechner 04:20 I really only pay attention to the bad ones. We were joking about those ATS systems that say: Here, upload your resume, and now copy and paste everything that you’ve just posted into these boxes so that our HR people…it’s like, NO! Darryl Parker 04:36 Yeah, so bad forms can be a detriment, right? So we want to be sure that we’re reviewing forms. And one of the things that I’ve seen over the 25-plus years that I’ve been doing this is that forms have changed. It used to be that you would put a form in your site, and it was native to the site. And now it’s very often that it’s coming from a third party service like WordPress
Using Responsible Communications with Creative Clients
YOUTUBE AMAZON AUDIBLE SPOTIFY Welcome to the Parker Web Partner Show, where we provide creative solutions for creative agencies. This week, the topic of the show is asking about the responsibility of communication when it comes to creative clients. 00:00 – Introduction and why communication is so important for creative agencies. 01:38 – Developers Desk: Discussion about the introduction of Google Analytical 4 and why it’s important to upload Google Tags Manager first. 06:25 – The Corner Office: Why having a human answering your phones is imperative for client communications and customer service. 18:34 – Roundtable: We speak with special guest Patrick McLean on the responsibilities creative agencies owe their clients when it comes to communications. We also share some of our favorite business apps and programs. 40:08 – Wrap Up: Reviewing everything we covered today. If you run any type of creative agency (ad agencies, digital marketing agencies, social media agencies, etc.) we would love to hear from you. What are some of the challenges you see in your world? Links mentioned in the show: Patrick’s Article – Creative Responsibility Beats Creative Freedom – https://reinforcements.substack.com/p/creative-responsibility-beats-creative Google Analytics – https://analytics.google.com/ Google Tag Manager – https://tagmanager.google.com/ Tag Assistant Legacy – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-legacy-by-g/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk Grasshopper – https://grasshopper.com/ Grammarly – https://www.grammarly.com/ Keynote – https://www.apple.com/keynote/ Drobox Paper – https://www.dropbox.com/paper/start Bear – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bear-markdown-notes/id1016366447 Ulysses – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ulysses-writing-app/id1225570693 Contact information: Patrick McLean Reinforcements, Inc. https://www.sendreinforcements.com/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARKER WEB PARTNER SHOW APPLE PODCASTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL SPOTIFY AUDIBLE