How To Find The Right Website and Digital Marketing Partner For Your Small Business

With all the spam and noise out there trying to scare you into the latest in digital marketing hackery, business owners need a trusted, reliable, and able website and digital marketing LEADER to help them navigate, build, and manage their online presence; the right website partner.

In this post, we will discuss the benefits of selecting the right website partner for your small business and some tips for going about it the right way.

What is a website LEADER?

The LEADER method is something that I created to help me help my clients obtain the best possible website and online presence for their business; to help them put in place a solid and reliable platform to market their small business on.

The LEADER method is this:

• Listen
• Educate
• Align
• Deliver
• Empower
• Report/Results

Because digital marketing is the fastest way in today’s economy for a local consumer to find, learn about, and interact with your small business, you will need a website partner who will guide you through the many vast and confusing solutions the internet offers and not another “guru” who is looking to just sell you on their services, whether you need them or not.

It’s important to also recognize that these steps are not necessarily performed in sequence. But the right web partner will be able to apply these to every situation and interaction you have with them, and for your benefit. 

I wrote this post without myself in it, so you can begin to objectively asses whether or not you have the right digital marketing partner or perhaps it’s time to start looking for a new one.

LISTEN

Listen with the goal of learning. 

The right partner will be one that first and foremost listens to you with no other goal than to learn as much as possible about your business, clients, employees, problems, ideas, wants, needs, and anything else that can be learned by having a relaxed conversation. 

Because the right partner is not here to sell you on products or services, it’s important to recognize when someone is asking questions merely to lead you into a purchase or asking so they can clearly understand your business and its’ needs. Otherwise, you’re likely to invest in a solution you likely didn’t really need at that moment or that wasn’t the right fit for what you were really trying to accomplish.

EDUCATE

Educate to bring clarity. 

The number one issue small business owners have in regards to managing a successful online presence is clarity. There is a major lack of clarity with the-what, the-why, and the-how to serving and attracting customers online. 

The right small business website partner will focus on education to bring you true clarity about the state of your online presence and what is needed to get you where you want to go. 

It is this clarity that sets you up to consistently make the right decisions with regards to the speeds and direction you take with marketing your small business online.

ALIGN

Align efforts towards the desired outcome. 

What good is knowing the problems and potential solutions without actually having the strategy and ability to get there? The right website partner understands that the internet is not static and therefore must be able to problem-solve dynamically across the entire digital landscape.

Ultimately, the main issue with those fancy “marketing gurus” that promise LEADS, LEADS, AND MORE LEADS is that they have a very limited ability to create a sufficient and lasting digital marketing strategy. In fact, they can usually only do one very specific thing for one very specific type of business type and most are not too concerned if you are even the right fit for that one specific service offering but merely want more sales for themselves so they use scarcity, among other tactics, to get you to buy right now.

So, it’s not that they or their service is bad, but it just might not be the right fit for what your business needs at that moment.

The right partner will help you figure out and focus on what matters to you using the most effective tool for the job.

Furthermore, whether a one-man operation or a large corporation it’s important that everyone understands the direction you’re going, how you’re getting there, and the role each person has in the process.

DELIVER

Deliver without compromise. 

Beyond education and strategy, the right web partner will be able to actually deliver high-quality services across the entire digital landscape, including a mobile, fast, secure, conversion-optimized and search engine optimized website. 

Otherwise, you will have to start over and search for a new agency, freelancer, or digital marketing consultant who can deliver on each aspect of the custom strategy your business needs for digital marketing success. Which can be time-consuming, tedious, and costly because then you have to try and educate them on that strategy. 

It’s always best if you can stick with one digital marketing partner instead of managing multiple and having to get them to work together in the process.

And even though there will never be anyone that can truly accomplish this perfectly, the right partner should be able to recommend or offer to research potential solutions they don’t directly offer and then be there to help you see it through and implement as well.

EMPOWER

Empower to perform and make the right decisions.

Since this partnership is not just about a sale of one certain marketing product, platform, or service the right partner will always be empowering you to be the best at what you do while they are the best at what they do, for you.

From ongoing training, strategy, and support to lighting fast, hassle-free service and beyond, the right partner for your small business should have the goal of empowering you to better serve and attract your customers consistently over time using the internet.

REPORT

Reporting on the results.

By delivering high quality and understandable reporting, the right website partner ensures that you get a clear insight into exactly what is going on with your online presence and why. 

By continually monitoring the data, trends, and new web technology, and through the partnership you’ve formed, you are able to make real-time improvements into all digital marketing efforts and the way you run your business as a whole.

Your Small Business Website Partner

If you are a small business owner that is looking to the internet to solve a problem or grow your business, finding the right internet marketing partner will be crucial to your success. 

In fact, I believe that no single digital marketing platform, tool, product, tech, or service, and therefore, no single digital marketing or website guru, is the solution that small and local business owners need to have success in marketing their business online. 

There is just too much noise, spam, information, and technology out there. Business owners need a way to understand all of what’s out there in relation to their business in order to create and implement the right digital marketing strategy for their business. 

The right digital marketing partner is the real solution for small and local business owners looking to market their business online.

With the right partner, marketing your business online no longer feels wasted and never-ending, impossible to track returns, daunting, draining, tedious, and something you would just rather not deal with.

Gary Johnson Design

Gary Johnson is a digital marketing and website partner that focuses on empowering small business owners to take their online presence and business to the next level through high-quality consulting and digital marketing services.

I follow a customer-focused consistency over time approach to building and managing the online presence of my clients.

But make no mistake, digital marketing success will only come by design, so why wait, start today by reaching out to start a relaxed conversation about the intersection of your business and the internet and how you can start to overcome your challenges today!