Inbound Marketing Blog

I had a neighbor ask to pick my brain about what it takes to move into the web design and development field. She is starting her degree program and still has a couple of years but is wise to start working toward her career now. I was originally just going to respond to her directly but I figured I’d write a blog post because I think it might be helpful to others, too.

One thing to note: the answers I give here are based on how we do things at Tribute Media but we are a little unique… mostly in how we work with our employees. Our office is closed on Fridays and we encourage our employees to work remotely every Friday. Most agencies/companies will expect their employees to work on site but allow contractors to work wherever. There is something positive creatively about working on-site with your team that you can’t get remotely. (Oh, and a little, not-so-humble brag here.)

In 1911, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hurst made an offer of $50,000 to the first person who could fly a plane from New York to LA in under 30 consecutive days. Calbraith "Cal" Perry Rogers took up the challenge.

Of course, Cal didn't have any money. He had the plane, but in the "good ole days" an airplane required a very large support crew. So, he started talking to businesses about possible sponsorship and was able to secure a sponsorship from Amour and Company for the 1911 Wright Flyer. The company had created a new grape soft drink and wanted to get the word out.

The Vin Fiz Flyer was born. Emblazoned with the logo for Vin Fiz and messages of "Drink Vin Fiz" and "Ideal Grape Drink," Cal began his journey across North America from Sheepshead Bay, New York on September 17, 1911. Not to be outdone, all of the support train cars, paid for by Armour and Company, also sported messages of "Drink Vin Fiz."

Of course, none of this changed the fact that the grape soda advertised as the "Sparkling Grape Drink" did not even come close to living up to its purported luster.

Years ago, in a different life, I was a sales manager in a different industry. I had ten sales associates working for me in outside sales. We won some and we lost some.

Whether we won a deal or lost a deal, I would ask my sales rep to debrief. I wanted to know how it all worked out. I was always much more interested in the reasons we lost deals than the reasons we won deals.

In that highly commoditized industry, more often than not, the reason for losing a deal came back as, "We were too expensive."

That always frustrated me; not because we were over-priced but because the sales rep didn't understand that price is only one part of the buying decision. It's usually not even the most important part.

Oh, this is fun. Two of my favorite things in one awesome title.

Okay, we, lamentably, aren't talking about food (the most perfect food) but we are actually talking about navigation on a website. You've seen it around… usually you'll see this menu structure in mobile views of your website but we are starting to see this more and more often in desktop views as well.

The real question is, "Do people know what these really are?"

In my more than 20 years of employment, I have learned some key things about my own level of productivity. I've learned that in the morning I'm almost never very productive. I get a second (or third or fourth) wind as the day wears on. Sometimes I need a change of scenery. Sometimes I need to close the door and sometimes I need to invite others in to bounce ideas.

More often than not, I need a place that allows me to focus on what I need to focus on without the distractions of phone, email, people, etc. In fact, as I write this blog post, I'm not at the office. I'm away at an undisclosed location to focus.

When building a new website, one of the most important aspects to consider is the hero banner. A hero banner is a large, prominently placed image or video that appears at the top of a website's homepage. It is the first thing that visitors see when they arrive at your site, and it plays a crucial role in setting the tone and establishing your brand identity.

It was only a few years ago that I thought that mobile use of the web would require very little consideration. When the first iPhone was introduced, the ability to pinch and zoom made it possible to use the small screen to see elements on the page without difficulty.

With Google's algorithm updates in April 2015, mobile responsive is more than just a thing. It's critical to the success of your website in mobile search. You can't expect to be successful in your search engine optimization efforts without having a mobile friendly site.

Years ago I worked in the office equipment industry. The companies I worked for sold copiers and printers to businesses, organization, etc. During my tenure at my last copier company, HP rolled out a new copier line. They simply relabeled a line from Konica Minolta.

Our company decided to pick up this line and sell it.

It wasn't a very good copier line. Which is probably why the product line was scrapped after a short while.

I remember asking our rep, "Who is your target market?"

Back came the response, "We sell to small & medium business, departments in large businesses and large businesses."

"So," I said, "you sell to everyone?"

Recently we had an issue with a new client. The old website provider decided that they were not happy we took over web marketing for this client and sent us a nice letter telling us that we needed to remove the website under the DMCA.

Before we had a chance to even think about responding we got a notification from our hosting provider that they were going to take it down because of failure to comply with the DMCA.

The problem was that all the brand elements on the site were brand elements of the client (taken from their artwork). All the images on the site were stock photos... pretty sure that this web builder doesn't own those images. And the content was so bad that we changed it this week anyway as part of the new contract.

The best part is that the bottom of the old website said, very specifically, that the copyright was our client's. So, it was reasonable to assume that our client owned the copyright.

You'd think that, too, if it was yours, right?

A number of years ago I was traveling in upstate New York and went to a Friendly’s restaurant. For those who don’t know the chain, it’s a family restaurant. You wouldn’t necessarily expect the service and food to be stellar but you would still have an expectation that someone says hi, comes and takes your order in a timely manner and gives you food that is halfway decent.

That particular evening as I was sitting in this restaurant it became pretty clear that they didn’t care about me, my money or my experience. I sat in this mostly empty restaurant for nearly 20 minutes before I even got my glass of water and gave my order. I then waited nearly 30 minutes for my fairly simple meal to find it’s way to me. This meal was mediocre at best.