In this video blog, President and Co-founder of Onsharp, Joe Sandin, reflects on how Onsharp got started 10 years ago by 2 college interns with a passion for web-based solutions.  Joe also comments on how Onsharp has come to be the company it is today, as well as his vision for the next 10 years of growth and success for the company.  Check it out to see where Onsharp has been, where Onsharp is now, and where Onsharp is going.

Onsharp, a professional web consulting firm in Fargo, is celebrating its 10^th year of business this month.  Located at 474 45^th Street South in Fargo, Onsharp was founded in July of 2000.

The company was started by two college interns, Joe Sandin and Matt Hardy, who shared a passion for the web and yearned to share that passion with businesses in order to help them reach their full potential and remain competitive in a dynamic business setting.  Through the several local and nationwide projects Sandin and Hardy received, they realized the full potential and power the web held as a communication tool, channel for sales, and more.  Sandin moved the company to Fargo, ND in 2003, and since then Onsharp has expanded its service offerings, skilled team of professionals, and its client base.

Onsharp continues to grow with an energetic and passionate determination to help businesses create web-based solutions.  The core values of innovation, an unparalleled customer experience, and measurable results are behind every project and interaction with Onsharp, and the company has both an experienced staff as well as a proven process model to ensure growth and success for their clients. Onsharp now offers six core services: web strategy, web design, web development, web marketing, web optimization, and web hosting.  Onsharp also offers a hosted service, SmartPay, which provides web-based billing and payment integration for businesses to help them save time, money, and the environment.

“The key to our success at Onsharp has always been and will continue to be our talented and energetic team,” comments Sandin.  “Without their collective expertise and passion for what we do, the results that we have brought to our clients would not be possible. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of the Onsharp team members that have worked so hard in pursuit of our vision of driving success. I would also like to thank all of our clients, past and present, who we have been fortunate to serve.  We are extremely grateful for your business and we look forward to long-lasting partnerships with all of you for many years to come.”

At Onsharp, the overarching vision is simple: Drive Success. Whether it be for clients, employees, their families, or the community, Onsharp strives to create success in the lives of all people, businesses, and communities it serves.  Offering a full array of services, Onsharp is here to ensure your business is making the most of the web to leverage measurable results.  For more information about Onsharp or SmartPay, please visit www.onsharp.com, www.gosmartpay.com, or call toll-free at 1.866.ONSHARP.

Where are you on Google? How about Bing? Yahoo? You can easily increase traffic to your site by improving your rank in the organic search results of popular search engines (organic search results are not the sponsored links which are paid for). There are a few easy things you can do to move your site’s listing higher in the search results without spending anything but a little bit of your time. 

Get listed

Each of the three major search engines has local listings.  Think of these listings like a web based phone book. Make sure you have a local listing for each city in which you have a physical location. 

1. Go to getlisted.org

2. Type the name of your business and zip code

3. If you’re not listed, follow the instructions to get listed

Make some links 

Search engines look for how many of your links are on different sites. Create some of your own links by setting up a profile about your business on any one of these sites:

• Facebook

• MySpace

• Twitter

• ZoomInfo

• LinkedIn

Directories

There are a variety of local directories where you can get your business listed as well as industry specific directories. We suggest these directories but you can do a search for “your town local business directory” and get a list of even more directories.

a) Hotfrog.com

b) ShowMeLocal.com

c) MerchantCircle.com

d) MyHuckleberry.com

Ask for Links 

We wouldn’t ask just anyone, though! Ask your local Chamber of Commerce, your Current Clients/Customers, Business Partners, and any reputable site that lists local business but isn’t a directory, you can help them out by providing the html code for your link when you request a link. For our client College Nannies and Tutors their code would look something like this: 

<a href=’http://www.collegenannies.com’> College Nannies and Tutors </a> and look like this on our website College Nannies and Tutors.

Advertise your website

One way to improve your ranking is to increase the number of people who visit your site—so first you need to let people out there know you have a site. Put your web address on every marketing piece: business cards, brochures, ads and everything else including your radio advertisements. 

Things to remember

Keep your info up to date on local listings and update your address, phone numbers, and website address if they change, build your links, and be consistent with your social media updates and blogging. All of these things will help to optimize your search engine rankings. 

What about the 3D process?

Now that you have an idea of what we do, and how we do it for you with our services, what about that process? We use the 3D process consisting of three phases: Discover, Develop, and Deliver. Get it? Three “D’s” make up the 3D process. 

We always begin each project with a Discovery session. You tell us what you require: a way to place orders online, decrease costs, a more reliable email system… and we will begin the Discovery process of what technologies we can use to meet your requirements. We’ll even be able to tell you exactly what your project will cost based on your requirements before we begin Development. 

Development is where the technologies found in Discovery are implemented. Our developers will code away while our project manager keeps you informed of the progress. Based on your requirements outlined in Discovery, we create a system that functions they way you need it to. Our project manager sends you progress reports (weekly, monthly, or whenever you wish) to keep your project on course. Once initial Development is complete, we put your solution through rigorous testing. Okay, the testing isn’t that rigorous on the testers, but we do make sure everything is functioning and is up to your standards before we launch or “Deliver” your project. 

When we launch your finished project, it may end the project itself but it does not end the 3D Process. We continue to deliver measurable results for your business. The Deliver phase begins with the deployment of your project to the appropriate environment and continues with ongoing user training, technical and user support, and measurement of the solutions’ continued success. 

In one sentence, Onsharp helps businesses utilize innovative web based technologies to reach business objectives by measuring results; all with an unparalleled customer experience. But not everything can be described in one sentence, let alone, one blog. We admit, this wasn’t as fun as some of our other blogs, but we know you probably had questions the site just wasn’t answering. And if you have more, leave us a comment or send an email to info@onsharp.com . 

Missed the other blogs? Here are links to the other two! 

http://www.onsharp.com/blog/post/What-exactly-does-Onsharp-do-Part-I.aspx

http://www.onsharp.com/blog/post/What-exactly-does-Onsharp-do-Part-II.aspx

As mentioned in our blog called “Web Marketing Strategy”, one third of businesses have a strategy for online marketing. That leaves two thirds without an online marketing strategy let alone a complete web strategy! If you have a strategy, there are probably measurable elements such as your bounce rate, cost per online conversion, and maybe even savings from electronic invoicing and bill payment. 

Why is having a web strategy important? You have goals and objectives for your business; you must have a strategy for each part of your business to be effective and efficient in reaching those goals and objectives. Web strategy is important because it is a very powerful, often overlooked resource that will help you reach your objectives and become successful in your ventures.

Just like a marketing strategy or an operations strategy, a web strategy has a very important role in mitigating risk, increasing value, and aligning everyone involved. Similar to building a house, you want to know before you begin building which parts of the house you want and where as well as how you want the house to look. A contractor will begin by asking you pertinent questions regarding your lifestyle and what you hope to achieve by having a custom built home.

Just the same with a web strategy, our strategist begins with asking you what your business objectives are for your business and your requirements for a web solution. After determining goals and objectives of your business as a whole, the Onsharp 3D process continues with the Discovery phase. Knowing your objectives and requirements, Onsharp researches the available web technologies and presents possible solutions. The deliverables that result from the Discovery phase include weekly status reports, sitemaps (blueprint for web sites), wireframes for each page, and a statement of work that outlines implementation costs and time estimates for development.

After Discovery is the Development phase where Onsharp’s talented team of developers create the actual solution from the materials created during Discovery. Deliver is the last phase of the 3D process.

A great web strategy includes measurable results. During the Deliver phase we work with you to determine a reporting schedule based on your set metrics that determine the success of your web solutions. For example, if you want to increase the number of web leads you receive, then a number will be determined to help you measure the results your site is producing. Without the measurements, how do you know if your web technologies are successful? Without a web strategy, how do you know what web technologies can do for your business? Not all business owners are web experts and getting a little help from Onsharp in Fargo can help you get the best value from your web technologies.

Is it possible to do all the marketing for your business from your website?

Maybe. Why? Are you doing an experiment? Unless that's the plan, it's hard to see any reason to limit yourself in that way. Your website is an essential part of your marketing mix, certainly. But it will combine well with other marketing ingredents:

• E mail marketing Build your house list  with your website, trade show booths, a sign-up sheet on the counter at your physical place of business, or your Facebook page. Then use e-mail to bring customers in --to your website or to your brick and mortar shop.
• Direct mail marketing Send out a postcard, and make sure that your website's address is on it. Studies show that consumers now usually check three different channels of information in the course of their decision to buy: that might mean your postcard, your website, and your shop. Studies also show that an e-mail follow up to a direct mailing can be expected to increase responses by 50%.
  
• Shows and speaking engagements Hold a seminar or workshop, set up a booth at a tradeshow, or take a place on a panel at a conference. Hand out business cards with your website's URL when you do, and you'll be bringing interested people in where you can tell them more.
  
• Your brick and mortar shop If you have a store, an office, or another physical place of business, be sure to put your web address on the sacks, brochures, and signs. Train staff to ask, "Have you visited our website?" when they check customers out.  And be sure to show your address, map and/or pictures of your place of business on your website. The two venues will support each other, and both will get more traffic. 
• Public relations When you do press releases, include a link to your website. Put your press releases on your website, too, or link to them. Again, there's a synergy there, and each supports the other. 
• Social media Have a blog, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page for your business. Link to your website from those social media pages, and link from your website to those pages, too. Encourage staff to link to the company website from their pages at LinkedIn or Xing, Jigsaw or Spoke or Ning. The links help your website, and they make your staff's pages more interesting, too. Friend your colleagues at Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
  
• Physical world networking Share your business card, and make sure your website's on it. When someone at the Chamber meeting gives you her email address, ask whether she'd like to be on your company's email list. People you know in the physical world will be more receptive to your email contacts, and they're likely to visit your website, too, if you tell them about it.
  

 Each time you connect your various marketing methods, you increase the value of each one, till the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Tami Dowers just finished presenting a free seminar on SEM -- search engine marketing, in case you were wondering. Specifically, we learned about how to use paid search ads to drive targeted traffic to a website.

We learned about Google Adwords, Yahoo! sponsored search, and bing search ads. Setting up these ads, Tami said, is like going to an auction and buying a chair. "Except in this case, the auctioneer will take into account how enthusiastic you are about the chair, and how well you're going to use it when you get it home.

In other words, the quality of your website and ads matter to the cost as well as the effectiveness of your search ads.

So your process needs to begin with three considerations.

First, your budget. Google will suggest an Adwords budget for you if you ask, but their recommendations may be a big rich for most budgets. Tami shared an example in which they recommended a budget of $40,000 a day. Onsharp went with $500 a month, and the client is getting great results. 

Tami recommends looking at what you're currently spending on direct mail or other marketing efforts.

"I hear people saying that SEM is expensive," she says, "but I think they're not tracking the ROI of their other marketing efforts." A $500 postcard mailing that brings in five customers is costing $100 per conversion. A trade show that costs your company $2,000 for the booth, materials to give out, and travel may bring 15 customers -- and the cost per conversion is  over $130 per conversion.

Often, this kind of expense isn't even measured in terms of cost per conversion. The costs disappear into the overall marketing budget, or into specific line items like travel or printing, and the company never realizes what their cost per conversion really is. SEM allows you to track and measure those costs with a high level of accuracy. With that kind of information, you can also tweak your campaigns and put more of your marketing budget into the things that give you the best return. You can even set a target for your cost per conversion, based on the value of a new customer, and work toward that goal in an organized way.

The next thing to consider is your targeting. SEM allows you to focus on customers in particular places, people who are looking for particular things -- not just people in your zip code. You have so many options for choosing keywords and targeting ads that you can narrow in on the customers who are most likely to want exactly what you have to offer. 

"If I have a lead in my pocket right now," Tami asked, "what would you be willing to pay for it?" The value of that lead is higher when it's someone who actually wants to buy your services than if it's simply someone who happens to live in your neighborhood or read a particular newspaper. SEM is "pull marketing" -- people are actively looking for you when they come to your website. Compare that with "push marketing," which is what you get when you put an ad on TV. People who see your ads may or may not be interested. They may leave the room just when your ad comes on. They're not out looking for information on your goods and services, as those who come through SEM are.

The third thing to think about for SEM is conversion tracking. You can set up your page and your campaign to measure people's interest very closely. This can give you -- in addition to sales and new customers -- extremely useful information about how people interact with your website and your product. This information can be valuable enough in itself to make an SEM campaign worth doing. 

Plus, the high degree of measurability and control in SEM allows you to adjust your campaign as it goes along, to increase your chances of success throughout the life of the campaign. This is not an option with a print ad or direct mail campaign. 

How do you measure success? Tami's slide above shows some of the ways a company can measure the success of an SEM campaign.

Wanamaker's famous claim that he knew he was wasting half his marketing budget -- he just didn't know which half -- doesn't apply to SEM. Each business has its own ways of identifying success, but all businesses can tell exactly what their return on their investment is with SEM.

The webinar was recorded, so you can contact us if you'd like to see it. We'd also be happy to talk with you about your own web marketing needs. Call Onsharp at 701.356.9010 to get started.

You have a great website with a great message.

Unfortunately, unless the right people are actually coming to that website, the message is missing them, and your work on that website is wasted.So maybe you need to increase the number of people coming to yoru site.

Or maybe you have people coming to your site, but they don't seem to be your customers. Sitting back and waiting to see who shows up can get you traffic, but it won't always get you the targeted traffic you want. Taking control with SEM can bring you the kind of business you want.

And it may also be that your traffic is increasing  steadily already, but you have big plans, and you'd like to bring even more people to your site. 

How can you drive more traffic to your website? With SEM.

SEM also offers a more measurable way to advertise your business.If you've been relying on traditional media ads, you may be echoing retail magnate John Wannamaker, who once said he knew that half his marketing budget was wasted, but didn't know which half. Diverting mroe of your marketing budget toward SEM gives you an opportunity to track and measure results in a way that you just can't with TV or radio.

Join us for this webinar to learn more about SEM:

• what it is
• how it can benefit your business
• basics for managing your SEM account

Register online or call us at: 701.356.9022 for more information.

Admission is FREE.