The Gateway to Client Satisfaction

Thank you for having me.

Teacher.

I wouldn’t say I had a favorite subject. I just really liked school.

Well, I worked for a slot machine manufacturer. And they needed some help with their intellectual property. And they asked me to get some training, which if you get legal training, that’s called law school. So I went back to Emory’s JM  program with a concentration on intellectual property law and helped them with their IP. So the company was bought and lost about half of its employees and I was one of them at the time. And so I worked for another marketing company and then an HR company, and it was that time at the H.R. company where I was working; they had just done a rebrand, but it was very disconnected and disjointed. So like everybody knew them as their old company name. And I think the website was still the old company name, but they had changed logos and their email addresses, and nothing matched, the email addresses and the website were on one URL the company name was something else, and then the logo name was the third thing. So I helped them get everything. I made a website, got everything cohesive, and got their logo on all their other marketing material. And it was kind of about that point where I realized liked doing this and got into doing digital marketing myself.

While I was working at the H.R. company, I had a friend of mine who I called in to help with some network issues. And we started talking about just web solutions. And I was like, Oh, man, I’m building this new website for this company. And he showed me some web tools. And we started talking. And we initially wanted to put the I.T. and the design together, and we were going to call the company Struggle Money IT.

But due to the structure of his business, we couldn’t form another company together. So I wanted to take the heart behind struggling money and get struggle out of the name and come up with something clever and catchy. I liked the idea of a pixel being like the smallest graphical element and how rabbits have a reputation for multiplying. So, the core of PixlRabbit is really about taking a really small idea and growing it. So taking a pixel of an idea and multiplying it and turning it into something great.

I think we’re all about relationships. We get to know our clients and people are not going to call the 1800 number. They’re not going to get an operator. They don’t have to submit support tickets. They can email a real person directly and get a response directly promptly that addresses their needs with customized, personalized care.

When I’m looking at a website that’s under-optimized, the first thing that I’m going to look at is; Well, how does it look, on a high level? Some websites are like, oh this is cool and wow, and then other websites where they’re just like, scroll, scroll, scroll, where’s the contact information or whatever. So, looking at a website and seeing, what does-the branding look like? Do they have a logo? Does it look like they’re implementing brand guidelines? Do they have fonts all over the place? Is there consistency? What about the colors? Do we have a solid color theme running through there? So kind of like surface-level colors, fonts, and structure of the website.

Can I find what I’m looking for? On a couple of websites, I visited recently where you’re just clicking around and you can’t seem to find the information you’re looking for and that’s frustrating. And users leave those websites. So, navigation, layout and how the information is presented, and messaging are important. Then you get into the technical aspects of the website. So there’s the feels side with your looks, the messaging, layout, and then there’s the technical side with, is it fast? Can I look at it on mobile and scroll through it well? Is it intuitive? Do things behave like I think they should. If there’s a color swatch and I click on the color swatch,  does it change the color of the image? Not other linked images. I think things like these optimize websites.

I think it goes back to the relationship with the client. What are their goals? Do we understand what they’re trying to accomplish with the website? And do I feel like they’re talking to me with the content? Do I feel like their content is optimized for the right user? If we’re working on a website doing senior care, we want to be careful about the verbiage that we use. We don’t want to say, hey, are you tired of taking care of your old person? We want to say, this time is really hard. We want to show compassion and empathy. This is an extremely hard and stressful time to decide what to do with aging loved ones. So, having content that speaks to them and shows them that you know what you’re talking about. So, speaking to answer your question, going through, from a technical aspect, we would be auditing the website like looking at their H tags behind your text, kind of looking at; back in grade school when you had to learn how to outline with your like title of that line and then I and then ABC and your sub-points like that. And is the content organized in a way that makes sense to we have a lot of redundant content, things like that, maybe even pulling all the content off and looking at how it’s organized without the visuals? Are we using correct grammar? Are we speaking to the right age group? Are we using too complicated words or using too simple words? Does it sound good if you read it, things like that?

I wrote notes last night.

How we measure success. Well, first of all, I think it depends on what the goals are. If you’re talking about web traffic, then we want to increase traffic. We’re going to look at traffic. We’re talking about looking at increasing speed. We’re looking at speed. We’re looking at engagement. It’s just a wide variety of things. And, talking to the client. Sometimes they’re not necessarily looking just for sales. Sometimes they’re looking for a pipeline. Sometimes they’re looking to adjust their focus. So maybe sales aren’t going up, but the percentage of sales going from, let’s say, selling small churches to doing larger custom projects as maybe the income stays the same, but it’s shifting towards where they’re trying to go and that would be considered a success.

I think we touch on some earlier, speed, SEO, your technical SEO, your page titles, your page descriptions. How fast it is. Does it look great on a tablet? Does it look great on mobile?

For ours?

For some people, I think it’s just what’s helpful to know. It’s a library, we want to start with answering basic questions. I think we have blogs about; should I redesign my website or should I rebuild it?  We get these questions a lot. When I find myself answering the same question over and over for clients, How much does SEO cost, what is that CEO?  Write a blog post about it.

Repository of basic info. And then I think we can look to Google Trends as a great tool to use. You can put in a search term and it’ll show you related searches. So let’s say we’re doing custom jewelry design and we look at the related searches to it. And one of the searches is, how to tell if a diamond is real? And that got very high rankings. So a lot of people search for that. Well, then that informs us on Hey, maybe we should write a blog called – How to Tell if Diamonds Are Real. So we’re looking at what people want, what people are searching for. What’s going to help our SEO with keywords and kind of build out our blog content that way?

I would say honestly, just do it. Yeah, I think so many people get caught up in planning. I know that’s not my favorite part. You can look at data and say, hey, we got a really big wave of traffic on Saturdays. Maybe we should move our Friday post to Saturday. You know, looking at the data, when we get higher traffic, when certain posts do better, let’s post every day of the week and then see which one does the best or let’s pick a schedule and then tweak from there based on holidays and events going on. There are so many tools out there. Wix now has a social media planning and scheduler calendar that’s built into the back end of their website, which is beautiful, and then Can buzz another popular graphic designing tool that also has a calendar built-in. And we’ve got Buffer and Hootsuite and stuff like that. So there are just so many different tools out there for planning. I think it’s just don’t get paralyzed. If there’s a post that you go back to and you’re like, oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. This looks terrible. Then just archive it or delete it. Sometimes I’ve been surprised at certain posts that do well that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought at first glance would have done well. So just surprise yourself. Again, just get out there. I think it’s the most important thing.

I think they are great for email campaigns.

Yeah, email campaigns. Or even like if you do an SMS campaign. I think using them in ways that are organic to how they’re used. So if you’re on a particular platform that uses memes a lot, then it could be appropriate to share something on that. And it depends on the type of business that you have. There’s a group in Atlanta that focuses on gaming. They offer facilities to schools to come in and use their equipment for gaming since that’s such a huge thing now. In their social media, especially because their target audience is younger and they get it, using a meme for things like that I think is more appropriate.

Yes.

The biggest challenge in digital marketing is that there’s so much competition. Everyone is scrambling to get their product and service in front of the right audience, especially since 2020, when we have so much less in-person, face-to-face contact. I think there’s a weird balance between I want the right content in front of me and I want you to market to me. I heard a comedian who was joking about Amazon saying he was mad at Amazon for not knowing ahead of time what he would want and having it delivered straight into his hand. Like you should be sending me what I want before I want it. Like, I want it now. And so we want these solutions, and we don’t always know what they are. And we kind of depend on Amazon and Google to tell us what we want. But at the same time, there’s also this balance with privacy, where it’s like, I don’t want you knowing where I’m shopping and I don’t want you to take my data. We are all so annoyed when we sign up for the email list we didn’t sign up for. We get texts, images, and companies, and we don’t want text messages. That’s so annoying. So it’s like there’s this balance between showing me the right product, but don’t use my information incorrectly. And that’s a challenge.

I mean, it’s something that we think about when thinking about who the client is. I’m big on authenticity. You are a small company that offers personalized service. I think this was a bigger thing a few years ago where I get companies that are like, “I’ve got three employees that I want to look very big”. And I always hesitate and I feel like we had a mini therapy session. There already are big companies out there. Like, why do you want to compete with AT&T? Why don’t you be you? And some companies don’t want to hire the big ones. They want personalized, customized service. So why don’t we start with being authentic with who we are? And I think that’s a big thing that’s gained popularity is authenticity coming through in companies. I’m not saying be unprofessional but we’re not trying to look like something we’re not or offer something that we’re not because you’re going to set your clients up for disappointment. And I think it’s also becoming more important to shoppers, especially the younger generation. Authenticity and thinking about the ethics and brand responsibility and social responsibility that that company has.

Sure. I have a client who makes jewelry. I’m wearing her specifically for the person who’s in there. She does handmade jewelry and she makes it, you know? Yeah. I feel like that’s so rare that we don’t want her to look like a big shop that’s just sending stuff out. We want people to know that your shipping times may be longer because somebody has to make it. So for her website, we are saying we’re using our words to say handmade custom. We’re using images of her doing the work. And in our social media, we’re using her Instagram stories to show the process of doing a custom piece. And asking people, “hey, do we like the longer chain or the shorter chain”. Involving and engaging your audience in the process can show authenticity very well. There are always other ways to get your basics; you’re Google verified reviews and customer testimonials, which show authenticity. But it’s the whole thing?

This is an unusual client, and I love her story. When she came to me, she had a website on a particular platform and marketing email campaigns on another platform. She had somebody taking pictures and doing her Instagram posting for her, and I just thought, we can do better. Her Pinterest account gets tens of thousands of impressions. She maybe gets hundreds of thousands at this point. She is reaching a lot of people. So, again, that was like, okay, I see how we’re allocating funds let’s work and make sure our website is fast. We ended up switching e-commerce platforms for her. We rebuild the website, we manage social media for her. We’re sending out her email campaigns. So as far as her content calendar, again, we’re very aware of holidays and shopping days. You know, on Black Friday, we do bigger pushes and we have more content around shopping times. We want to talk about the general jewelry shopping times, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. Those are the two that have come up recently. So we have more content and it’s geared towards that, looking at different retargeting efforts, and ways to engage her audience. My favorite one and here is, I think, an example of how we are different. Here’s a box with her logo on it and I’m making sure stickers are on it. We immerse ourselves in our client’s business. And so one of the big things I think that helps eCommerce is reviews, showing Google and Facebook, and Instagram that you are a trusted brand and that people are behind you. So her birthday was on Monday. I had the idea to send out an undercover email to her customers that, I think the subject line was something like- “Don’t tell Amy”.

Every time, I just do peak interest. And then inside it was, Hey, we love Amy. If you read any of her reviews, it talks about, everybody mentions her and how amazing she is. And so is like, hey, for her birthday present, why don’t you tell her how much you love her by leaving her view on Google and Facebook. So that was a great way to get reviews.

It was coming from me. It was like, Hey, this is Amy’s marketing person gone rogue.

Yeah, Thank you. 

Well, it led to reviews, which was the goal.

Very important. One of the things that bugs me about WordPress, which baffles me, is like if you put a form on there, well, WordPress doesn’t have a content management system where you get to add gravity forms to it. And then when content comes in, you have to send it somewhere. It’s not like you’re organically sending out marketing campaigns from the back end of WordPress most of the time. And so connecting things is tough. But having an integrated solution, where when content is coming in and having auto-replies, abandoned cart emails are just your basics.  A side note to your question. I think it’s really important that digital marketing companies work with clients who love their products.  And they are passionate about it. It’s so hard and it’s a lot of work. It’s hard to put in the time and energy and have the enthusiasm for a product that you’re not crazy about. And it’s really interesting how we connect has changed in the last few years. So as I mentioned with that avatar, I was chatting on a help window with a wallpaper company. And the gentleman was in Australia, and he was helping me get back into my account, and I submitted a password reset. I got an email back from WordPress to see how that would be a huge obstacle to getting and retaining clients. Because if you sign up for an account and can’t get back into your account, you click password reset, and you receive an email from WordPress. Maybe it goes into your spam folder. You’re certainly not looking for an email from WordPress from a big company. And luckily, the guy that managed the website was also the one helping me out at that point. So I offered to do an audit for them. I’ll be doing a website audit because I love their stuff, so it’s not like work for me. So that’s an example of where their system wasn’t cohesive and integrated and how not being integrated could hinder getting and maintaining their customers.

I have to say, I think Wilkes is crushing it. You can look at Google’s digital reports. So far, the changes they’ve made recently have put them ahead in just their critical Web stats about everybody else. In my experience with Shopify, some sites are gone on. I’m like, wow, this is a great shopping experience, but what platform is this? And I look it up, and it’s Shopify, but they are getting a bit piecemeal in. There’s no built-in review system in how I see the backend. So then you’ve to get Yat com in there and connect to your site to get reviews on your website. If you’re an e-commerce platform, you better have a review option built-in, or you better have a wish list. You have time to add an app to Shopify to do a Wishlist. To me, that’s kind of basic.

Yeah. And if you’re Shopify, these are things that I don’t want to have to ask you for. It’s like they should just be there. And again, I would think that Shopify would have a fast solution. You can understand. As I said, I’ve seen some websites on Shopify that were just beautiful and amazing. And then others that were very lacking. And I feel like if you’re so targeted towards one specific kind of website, there shouldn’t be a huge range of experiences. We want to bring everybody more towards the great, making it harder for people to experience bad.

I think the intuitiveness on the website, especially shopping.

Yes. going back to my wallpaper example. A lot of times, I’m on my phone. I love wallpaper. And so they have their color swatches below the description, which means if I’m looking at the picture, just scroll down, change the color, scroll back up, back up, scroll back down. Change the colors, and go back up.

And it’s not my favorite. Customer service quality and product quality. I think that you’re going to get stickier people because of that. I want to use their online shop on their website but scroll more than I have to. I can’t get it to look the way I want. Even Target Scott has that AR option now where you can just, a lot of other companies too, point and click. I want to see this in my space. We have gotten spoiled. If I’ve looked at X number of products that I can see in my space, and then I find one that I like, but I can’t see it in my space, it will make me less likely to buy that particular product. I wasn’t so inclined towards those see-it-in-my-space products. If you’re doing it a few times, I am more inclined. I think your hair and makeup companies are also jumping. I don’t know if they were the ones that started that, but you can hold your phone up and click on different hair colors, and it’ll put it on you. There is a makeup one where you can test out different lipsticks if you want to. Suppose you want to But now, you know, they’ve come up with these terrible things about the pandemic. We’ve been forced to come up with innovations and the- try them before we buy, especially when it comes to makeup and hair color, know things like in the beauty world. It’s so much more convenient than having to go into the store and hold the swatch or buy sticks and swatch on your hand and then throw them all out and keep one, you know, things like that.

He did ask, why.

Yes, the pandemic has changed how we shop. I think the insistence on convenience and customization has increased a lot. It is no longer acceptable to have bad customer service. We’ve seen an increase in tolerance for shipping delays and shipping times. Like there’s nothing that we can do about it. We can’t change the stock in the Pendleton Canal or we can’t fix certain problems. And so we’re more accepting. While we expect Amazon to instantly put things in our hands, I think people are more like spreading love with small businesses. I think we’re more open to shopping elsewhere other than Amazon. I know that I tried to put the business in the hands of another small business and a person. I bought my daughter a handmade dress from a mom in Texas on Etsy. Did I spend a little bit more? Yes, but I felt good about it. And the dress is extremely well made and it’s beautiful. So in that way, it’s worth it.

I was talking with the gentleman yesterday about lawn care. And he’s about to have a baby. And he doesn’t have a company with many levels of management. So I know that when I hire him, that money’s going to his family. It’s not going to somebody in another state. It’s not going to shareholders or someone that’s not doing any work. I don’t have anything against big companies. It’s just, especially during the pandemic where so many people are in need. 

We’re Socially conscious to shop locally and support people around us.

For us, our process, we start with a conversation for starting comments. I like to think of it as downloading everything in the customer’s mind into my mind and my teams. And I want them to know the customer and I want people to be able to look at their website and be like, yes, that looks like me. You know that. So we start with a very understanding conversation, like how did the company get started? Who is their target audience? and what marketing strategies, if any, have they done that have been successful or not been successful? What kind of logo do they think would be ideal for their company? One thing that’s been quite effective over the years is a little tip here. When talking to clients and you talk about fonts and colors, like let’s say we’re designing a logo, and you’ll say, well, what do you think matches your brand? We don’t always want tech companies like it felt like every tech company was doing blue and gray for a while.

Like, people stand out that way. So the color of their shirt. Or asking them about their favorite color was always a really good way to get to what color direction to go? And, if my favorite color is, that’s one of the reasons I picked companies logo colors. I just picked my two favorite colors. And I think that’s kind of an easy way to get colors that go through. So branding working with them do we have a simple logo? I think that’s another mistake that’s very easy to go to when you’re doing branding. People try to get overly complicated with their logo. A lot of businesses want to like spell out everything that they do. You know, like if you have an insurance company, you want to say insurance, and then you want to have a picture of a car, a house, and a person and a boat. So that, you know, I think there are ways that you can do that, and you don’t have to spell it out or have pictures of everything.

I mean,  the FedEx logo with the arrow built into it. And we have things like that are a little bit more clever. Mhm.

I think I, I love this question. Getting my clients through the pandemic. Oh, why is nobody shut down?

So one of them had their best year to date.

Um, we had a client that sold to convenience stores, Walgreens, companies like that, and they sold masks, and we set up online shopping for them and put the masks online. And as you can imagine, I did pretty well. Yeah. In the spring of 2020, that brought in a substantial amount of revenue for them. There were some of their convenience stores had gotten burned down and riots or weather or whatever severe conditions. They had hit some hard times and nobody was going to Walgreens at the time. Their normal channels of revenue were very, very slow, but we could generate enough revenue that they didn’t have to lay off a single person during 2020.

Yeah, it was. It felt really good. Absolutely. And I also have a dear client who owns a catering company in Los Angeles. And as you remember, everything was shut down.  Even if there was a party, they couldn’t get staff. And nobody’s working. Their income came to a complete halt. All the parties were canceled, and everything had stopped. And we worked with the owner to set up a meal delivery service that brought in significant revenue and helped the elderly in the nearby communities get healthy food and meals delivered right to their door.

Yeah, he still thanks me,  every Christmas card and conversation we have about how we make it through the pandemic and things like that. I mean, that was so cool to be able to take these companies and offer them alternatives. Both of them are out in California and Atlanta to see somebody thousands of miles away come up with solutions that save their business and help their employees and the community around them. And that was just so cool.

I think, not hesitating. Don’t stall on ideas. On plans. I made a list on putting. If you’re throwing $50 that ads and you don’t get sales from it, like don’t say Ads don’t work. You will have to hit a certain threshold with your budget to see results because there’s so much competition out there. So I would say make sure that you can do preliminary testing and see where you’re getting bites when you’re testing. But be prepared to invest in your digital marketing strategies. I think to test your ideas, test your messaging, and earn lots of ways to do this now. There are websites dedicated to just giving feedback. Ask your friends, do polls on social media, and you’d use those boosted posts and your tip talks to see what’s popular. Make sure your brand is organized. Make sure you have colors and fonts and a logo. Make sure that you have your logo file and its different varieties. Your EPS, the vector and PNG, and JPEGs and make sure you have all the needed files. So when you start something, every time your brand is out there, you want your logo. To be clear, no fuzzy, no pixelated look. And then again, as I said, no stalling. Some people want everything to be perfect before trying something. Oh, I got to have 20 perfect TikToks before I put something out on TikTok. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get it out there. I mean, I think that goes back to the authenticity. I don’t want people throwing content out there, either. You can put some thought behind it. In your content be careful about who you’re comparing yourself to. Your content will not look the same as somebody with professional equipment. And I think that’s another thing. We see more equipment and more of what people are using on social media. YouTubers are talking about it,  and they’ll even list it in the description of their videos. We use this camera, we use this lighting, this lighting system, and use this editing software. Some people are going like this, but a lot more goes into it. The content. So don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t be too critical. And you know, when you see a trend, don’t be afraid to move quickly. In the medical laboratory that does COVID testing, you don’t have to wait for the next wave to hit before you advertise. Go ahead and advertise so people already know your brand as a trusted source to go to.  I think people are like, oh, the waves over. So we’ll just wait for the next wave before we start our marketing campaign again. It’s not something we want to do, be ahead of the game, be ahead of trends, look at your competitors, put your spin on things, products and services, and listen to clients. What do they want? I think it’s really hard for everybody to hear criticism. Yeah, but I would say one of the best ways that we’ve been able to grow and provide the services that we provide at the level that we provide them is having hard conversations with clients and finding out, well, what didn’t you like? You know and then changing.

For a Web design company, it’s not necessarily. We see we see seasonal growth. Yeah. And so it’s not the sales don’t necessarily correlate. If we’re doing something right or wrong, it’s not necessarily correlated with our sales directly. Sometimes people that don’t have anything nice to say don’t leave you reviews. I don’t particularly want people to put in a four-star review instead of a five-star review because they didn’t like the way that we did project management or something. I mean, I try to encourage people to go. I want to hear it. You know, tell me when you can fix it.

Yeah.

I lived in Scotland. I’ve been to Brazil five times. I think. Coast to coast. And California. To Fiji. And then again in Brazil and maybe into Nova Scotia. So I don’t know. I don’t have a number, but I’ve been there quite a few times.

I think it was about.

Watching and then do.

Cats.

I think I would make a good spy, but I would be a terrible spy.

On our website? pixlrabbit.com.

P-I-X-L-R-A-B-B-I-T .com.

Thanks so much for having me.