obituary

A healthy humility reminds you of what you don’t know on the regular. It’s all to easy to become overconfident and trip. Despite over twenty years of experience, we begin every project with a blank sheet of paper before we craft the perfect marketing plan for the budget, and we endeavor to ask the right questions. We aim to arrive at the fundamental requirements of the project, and build out from there.

With an clear understanding of the fundamentals, we can then build out an entire marketing plan. We can employ humility to attack unsolvable problems with childlike imagination. We can find creative ways to attack business with humility and at the same time, confidence that comes from repeated success. We know we’ve figured this out before, we know we’ll find a way to do it again.

There are some pieces of every business problem that don’t require humility. They don’t even really require confidence. With experience, we know how to handle the fundamentals without over-complicating the project.

But there are some business problems that arise – a tighter budget than you’d like, a limited resource when you’d really prefer an ample supply – that require creativity and humility to solve.

When you approach every business as if it were your own, you find the motivation to dig deep and make things happen.

Urgent Kidz Care: Humility Powering Success from Day One

You want a great example of humility? Check out J. Craig Gordon, owner of Urgent Kidz Care in Savannah, Georgia. He knew there was sufficient demand in the Savannah market for an urgent care center for kids. And he found a way to make it happen.

Craig has a massive resume including a multifaceted viewpoint on healthcare that spans decades. He’s worked on all sides of it. He knows how troubled the whole industry is. People are already on edge when their kid isn’t feeling great, and on top of that, the whole medical industry is a scary and expensive one to deal with. So he aimed to make his neighborhood – Savannah – better, by using his imagination and doing his part. He created a child-friendly urgent care facility. One that wasn’t so scary (for kids or for parents). One that was fun. And welcoming. And had popcorn. With kid-friendly staff. One that both kids and parents would look forward to using.

So when UKC asked us to handle their marketing, we were thrilled to be a part of such an important and innovative project. We brought our confidence along with our humility and got to work.

We started with a full marketing plan. We bring all our skills to bear for this project. We spent time getting to know the client, as we always do, no matter their budget. Our on-boarding process takes time, but it’s so important. We’ve had our discovery meetings take 45 minutes, but we’ve also seen them take much, much longer. It’s all up to the client. (And often, we find they learn a lot about themselves!)

From there, we created a full marketing plan at a few different budget levels so the client could feel comfortable with both the budget requirements and the expected results.

First, we began our marketing plan with assessments. We looked at every aspect of the business and competition. What do their competitors look like? What are they doing well? Where are there holes in their marketing plans we can exploit? We looked at strengths and weaknesses exhibited by their SEO results, their social media marketing strengths and weaknesses, and their overall marketing. It’s a lot of work, but did it pay off! We gathered all sorts of valuable intel on the market our client was diving into.

And with that data in hand, we knew where to focus.

You, too, can get SitReps from Interfanatic. They’re one of the most valuable tools we offer in our digital marketing quiver. We have SitReps available for businesses with budgets of all sizes.

Then we crafted an SEO plan for UKC. And it’s working. Our implementation was so good – I don’t mean to brag, we came at it with humility – that the site was ranking on page one for critical search terms before the doors even opened. We continue to work on this to ensure the site stays high in the search rankings as time goes on. With our ongoing Content Marketing plan, paired with our Social Media program, we’re able to target key phrases and key community issues – like the hurricane that shuttered many businesses recently in Savannah. UKC was lucky enough to keep their doors open, and we were able to tell the community that resource stayed available to the children of Savannah, Georgia.

Again, we can do the same for you.

For those important search terms for which the site doesn’t rank, we crafted and executed a Search Advertising plan. We’re keeping the project under budget while getting the eyes of a small market focused on our customer, UKC. We run search advertising programs for businesses with budgets of all sizes.

We’re also executing a consistent social media program, including a social ad spend. It’s proven to be an invaluable tool for informing Savannah about their new neighborhood business.

We of course worked hard to cover the local search setup for Urgent Kidz Care, and it’s working. Along with that, we’re also doing Digital Reputation Management. We have a plan, and they’re following it.

Last, we’re working an email marketing program for them. Again, it’s working in lockstep with our SEO, content, local, social media, rep management, and other marketing programs.

That’s not all. We paired with the brilliant designer Jessica Johnson of Creative Edge, Atlanta, and genius PR agent Mindie Barnett to make sure we knocked it out of the park in all aspects of marketing.

Opening a business to breakeven isn’t easy. The customer trusted us and got out of their own way. The results keep rolling in for them. You have to be humble enough to know what to delegate.

Our competitors would likely charge 4-5 times as much as we have for this program. But we know all about keeping expenses low and revenues up for new businesses. Our passion to treat their business as if it were our own – because it is – makes all things possible.

And still, tomorrow, with this project and the next one, we wake up with humility at our side, paired with confidence to know we’ll figure out the next obstacle.

We got UKC to breakeven upon opening. It’s a humbling experience, and one we don’t take for granted.

Humility: An Interfanatic Quality

“Ego kills knowledge,
as knowledge requires learning,
and learning requires humility.”

– Rolsey

Make businesses work, we do. That’s confidence, but it’s confidence inexorably paired with humility. To know that there is much we don’t know, but we have the experience – almost 25 years – to make great things happen for our client.

Interfanatic Service Focus: An Interfanatic Marketing Plan for Any Successful Budget

We sharpen the axe before taking any swipes. We like to learn as much as we can – we employ that humility to help us learn what we don’t know. With over 20 years of experience, we’re versed on the fundamentals. We’ve seen a lot go wrong and we’ve fixed a ton of problems. But with the ever-changing world we face daily, new ones pop up.

So what’s a successful budget? You tell us what you want to invest and we’ll show you how to make that work.

Let us use our experience to help you craft a winning long-term plan. Tell us your project budget and we’ll tackle it as if it were our own project: trying to keep revenues up and expenses down. Our marketing plans cost just a few hours of labor (the fee and labor involved reflect the budget of the project), and you’ll find it a very worthwhile investment. When we’re finished, either we can execute that plan for you, or you can take it to any of our competitors and have them enact it. Or, if you’re in start-up mode, you can try to implement yourself and we’ll stand by – always available to consult or train for a fee. And, if your budget is tight it’s possible that if you let us handle the execution for you, part of the cost of the marketing plan will apply to your first invoice.

“We bring our confidence, but that confidence is always propped up by humility.”

We take time to get to know you, your hopes, your dreams, your tastes, and your fears. And if you have us execute your marketing plan, we’ll take even more time to really get to understand the nitty gritty details. It’s what we do. We bring our confidence, but that confidence is always propped up by humility. We know we have what it takes to make great things happen for you.

Interfanatic: We humbly serve the greater good.

So what are you doing? Let’s get after it.

How can there be any sin in sincere? Well, there’s not so long as it’s genuine sincerity. So we bring sincerity to website maintenance. As all business, we take it seriously.

That’s our focus this week, sincerity. How can we ensure our customers understand we’re sincere and have their best interests in mind? We’re not just looking for money, we’re not just in it for profit. We’re sincerely here to help them achieve their goals. (And, of course, our hope is that if we do a good job, we’ll achieve our’s along the way.)

I think of a recent customer we just helped a little bit with her website: ThePrecis.com. It’s a neat business! When you lose a loved one, unless you’re a writer the last thing you want to do is try to prepare a eulogy or obituary. The owner of business is a professional journalist, and she’ll gently guide you through the process of giving her the information she needs to write something beautiful and poetic. What more sincere business is there than that!?

The Precis: Sincerity in Word

The Precis has been in business now for quite a while, and they not only write the obituaries and eulogies, they host them on their site, too. That way, loved ones can come and offer tribute to the departed.

They do pre-obituaries, too. So if you know how you want to be remembered, you can have something nice professionally written, so when nobody else will say anything nice, at least you’ve got that. (Kidding!) But it’s a great way to exert a little bit of control over the memories people have of you, which is helpful when you feel you’ve lost control and are just on a ride, whatever and wherever it may go.

Last, if you have a beloved pet, they handle pet obituaries, too. This can be helpful closure for those members of the family that pass quicker than we want, and can be especially helpful to little ones who don’t know yet how to process loss.

It’s hard for me to think of a more sincere business. The Precis is just about as sincere as it gets.

We helped them with a few things in a short period. One, their obits and eulogies each have a comment form for loved ones to add memories. We helped them reduce the amount of spam they were getting through the form by over 90%, just the way they wanted it. After that, we hid their email address and phone numbers (prominently displayed throughout the site) from bots, meaning their information is less likely to end up on new spam lists now. Last, we helped them get their search ads restarted. There were some mandatory changes to the ads they couldn’t figure out, and since this is what we do, we made the changes for them.

Sincerity: An Interfanatic Quality

“Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.”

– George Henry Lewes

A good quote, even though it’s from an over-quoted dead white guy. We try to mix things up a bit and find inspiration from all ilks, but given our client this week, Lewes words are just too apropos. Sincerity, even in error, is strength. That’s true. Insincerity will eventually reveal your weakness. And perhaps that’s why we appreciate the vulnerability of humor.

The point is we’re always sincere when it comes to work. We’re sincere when it comes to making things happen. We work hard at it, and when we have weaknesses, we try to be transparent about them. But it’s certainly hard to fault doing business with a sincere and honest person.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Website Maintenance & Development Work

Last week, we highlighted our SEO content services, showing you how we help our customers climb the search rankings with inexpensively, yet effectively, with our Interfanatic Basic SEO Content. But this week, we’ll change our tune to something a bit more mundane: Interfanatic Website Maintenance & Development work.

Websites break. Websites need updating. In fact, if you haven’t updated your site (ensuring the software is up-to-date or it has fresh content), it’s hurting you. The problem is it’s impossible to find somebody who will help you and do so reasonably.

“We’re here to do the project correctly, with lasting effect.”

That’s why we’re here.

We have two levels of service. Before I explain more, understand that we do all our work in-house. We don’t outsource to some less-than-reliable outfit halfway around the globe. It’s part of our business culture to hire talent local to the project whenever possible, that way that community builds its own. And also, we’ve found ways to be extremely frugal for our customers. We’re not here to do fast nor cheap. We’re here to do the project correctly, with lasting effect.

It used to be that you could build a website and let it be. It is no longer that way. Hackers continually grow in skill and sophistication, and the more visibility your website has, the more it’s a target for them. To counter this threat, websites need be maintained constantly. The software used to build websites is constantly updated, and that means that if you own your own website, your website needs to be constantly updated. That’s why we have affordable management plans that all include some monthly labor – to keep things safe.

But what happens when you need something fixed and the person who built your site is less than reliable? Call on us!

We charge a minimum of $75 for the first half-hour of labor, and after we bill in quarter-hour increments. Our standard fee for Interfanatic Power Website Maintenance & Development is $150/hr, and our Interfanatic The Works Website Maintenance & Development is $300/hr for after-hours (9-5, M-F), rush, or custom coding that requires extremely special skills.

And you can call on us any time and we’ll get you fixed up.

I’ve spent a long time doing this (over twenty years, ya know) and I sincerely feel this is the best way to do things – for us, for you, for a healthy business and healthy business relations.

Interfanatic: Sincerely here to help.

We’re here to help. We have the answer. We’ve been there before, and if somehow we haven’t, we’ve been close enough to know what to do. Don’t panic. Sincerely. Call us. We’ll get your website or digital marketing fixed up. We have the answer.