Virtual CTO: Personalized Advisory for Your Local Business

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Digital & Relationships

I’ve owned and run several local businesses. I’ve worked with web advisory and digital strategy for 100’s of other local businesses. The constant is relationships. Whether you’re a service business, retail store, restaurant, doctor, or B2B – there’s already a way that you’re connecting with people. Your digital strategy helps you do that better; both with new and current customers.

Let’s start with your digital base. Surprisingly, it’s not your website – it’s your search engine map profiles. This is more important than your website, but most local businesses treat this as an afterthought.

1. Claim Your Google Profile: https://www.google.com/business/
2. Claim Your Yelp Profile: https://biz.yelp.com/
3. Claim Your Bing Profile: https://www.bingplaces.com/

If it’s too complicated, hire someone to do it. Put money here before investing in a website. The reason: more people will see these profiles than your actual website.

This is where the the path splits and you find yourself looking down 30 different possibilities. This is the reasons I created and recommend my Express Digital & Web Advisory service. The right answer is usually not, “I need a new website”, you need defined purpose with what, why, and how the digital world is going to be a part of connecting your business to customers.

Let’s start breaking this down and looking at some of these “paths”…

Your Digital Fan Base

Here’s where most local businesses will have some level of traction. You have people who love you and love your product. We used to talk about serving above and beyond so you create raving fans that talk to their friends about your business – word of mouth. It’s still true, but now we need to digitize this. The more you and you’re business are committed to creating raving fans the more important your digital system becomes, that turns fans into reviews.

Because more and more people make decisions based on reviews these have become the digital word-of-mouth marketing. Again, I would invest in reputation management (professionals who help you create the systems to turn fans into reviews) before the website.

The Website

I’ve spent a lot of time telling you about all the things more important than your website. Websites are important, but they’ve become the fix-all answer for using the digital space for growing your business. A driving force behind Bisvi’s pure advisory services (On-Demand CTO and Express Digital & Web Advisory) is that the current “digital advisors”, are web designers selling you websites and SEO professionals selling you a first place ranking in Google. There is nobody looking out for YOU and YOUR business. Helping you navigate all the digital options.

Your website is important, because it is the part that only you own. There are a few ways to setup a website, but unless you have a very specific need for a specific function I’m only going to talk about SaaS website platforms. Anything else is going to cost more, open your information to hackers, and waste your time.

A simple and functional way to create a website is with landing page software. You don’t even need a traditional website, especially if you’re just starting. A landing page software can be configured to let you work with multiple pages on your own domain. The advantage is that you can easily split-test each page (compare version A the version B) and see what is best connecting with new customers.

Which ones do I recommend?

Simple landing page solutions for local businesses:

If you’re focused on social media, Wishpond is amazing. It basically is landing pages + email marketing + CRM + social media contests and promotions. I’ve used it with huge success with local businesses.

If not social media, then I’m a big fan of what GetResponse has put together. They are mainly known as an email provider, but their Pro plan includes landing pages, webinars (100 participants), and a CRM. It’s the lowest priced full marketing platform I know of.

Marketing “Stacks”

Soon we’ll be releasing some of our web and marketing “stacks”. These are different combinations of software that can be connected to give you a huge amount of functionality at a much lower price.

You can get access right now and have us help you find and pick the perfect “stack”. Just sign up for our Express Web Advisory package. It’s a small investment that can save you $1000’s in wasted time and money and instead help you generate $1000’s by focusing on the what matters.

Bisvi On-Demand CTO and Web Advisory Services

Bisvi has several services to help you make the right decisions for your business. On the most basic level we have our free resources. We also have an introductory course "What You Need to Know Before Hiring a Web Professional", that gives you the insight, and insider perspective you need before you work with web developers/designers/SEO/etc.

The next level would be our Express Digital & Web Advisory service which is a one-time consulting service that helps you understand how your business is doing in the digital space and set a roadmap for what to focus on and what not to focus on.

Our premium services are our customized On-Demand CTO services. Every business needs digital leadership, not all need a full-time Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Having an On-Demand CTO means you have a partner that understands your business and where you're going. Your On-Demand CTO helps you choose the right strategy, technology, and consultants to make your digital property work for you and your long-term business goals.

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