Ralph Waldo Emerson, the brilliant philosopher, is responsible for many inspirational quotes. The one that best summarizes tonight’s blog is “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Starting and building a business is much like life – a never ending journey of learning and growing, not a destination for material success or fame.
With that in mind, this blog is really a diary of my journey as an entrepreneur and the path taken to make www.bedfordstmarketing.com a thriving and relevant Marketing Consulting firm. The journey over the past 5 months has been AMAZING, but there are still aspects I need to learn and improve upon.
Here are the three areas that I am currently focusing most of my energy to continue on my journey as a start-up business:
Website Updating:
One of the first things I did, before even getting the official status, was build my company website. I drew inspiration from other Marketing Consulting sites and tried to capture what I felt was relevant to my brand vision. For a first attempt, it was not a terrible site.
However, now that I am 5 months in to this venture, I need to spruce up the site and in some cases – rebuild pages. As my brand concept has evolved and my social media content has shown – there are things I need to refine and revamp to reflect these changes. For example, the site as currently constituted is a bit bland and pedestrian. It has all the talking points that you would expect from a Marketing Consulting agency site – but nothing that makes it stand out.
As I’ve learned from the feedback to my mix of historical events, national day and inspirational/intellectual quotes on social media, these concepts are connecting with the audience I want to capture.
Like the topic of this post, the journey has led me in a unexpected direction, but that is the beauty of the journey – finding what works and having people embrace it and bond with it. This new direction gives me the opportunity to be a little more creative and add more personal flair to the messaging on the site.
Database building:
I’ve been able to collect a good amount of lead data via my sign-up pages and through good, old-fashioned research into business decision makers in my immediate geographic area. Currently I have these data sets in an excel format, but really need a more organized and centralized repository for this information.
I’ve been in the data management/sales business for a while, and always worked with Service bureaus, who took the goal of how we wanted our database built – and created the end product. Now that I am doing it for myself, I am realizing what a unique skill it is to create a relational data base. Luckily, I have Access and in the past, have some experience with building tables and forms – so I am not a complete novice. And, I went to my local library (imagine that, I didn’t Google it or watch a web video.. shame on me) and found two books that give a great overview on data base building in the Access environment.
One of my favorite part of any journey is the fact you never stop learning. There is always a new skill needed and no matter how old we get, it’s never too old to learn. The ability to increase your ability and knowledge through your start-up business is truly one of the best aspects of taking the journey!!!
Learning new skills leads me to my last challenge:
Landing Page Creation:
Again, having managed email campaigns and digital programs, I am familiar with the importance of a good landing page. Of course, in my experience, either the client had the landing pages built already or I’d work with an outside source to create the landing page for my client. For Bedford Street Marketing, that job falls on me.
Thanks to the internet and google, finding information on how to build landing pages and examples of effective ones are in abundance. However, like John Luc Picard points out – they are not easy to develop. It’s a challenge I look forward to and once I master it, I can add it to my list of services to offer clients!!!!!
Well, that’s it for a rainy night here in Connecticut. Hope whatever journey you are on – it brings you much joy and remember – it’s not a destination!!!!
Bedford Street Marketing Insights 