Marketing Advice

When I was a kid, I loved it when my dad would come home from work and hand me a local paint supplier’s t-shirt. The back would usually have some Hawaiian-style cars, motorcycles, desert, beach, or surf design on it. Frazee Paint, Dunn-Edwards, and Vista Paints were all very popular when I was growing up in San Diego. The shirts were free, so not only did I enjoy wearing them, but my dad’s paint crew would also get in on the action. If they got too much paint or caulk on them, they’d go to the paint store and get another free shirt! Why not? It’s free, right?  Read More

LinkedIn is a powerhouse for B2B connections. It is owned by Microsoft and is showing signs of growing stronger in the market.

I want you all reading this to do two things on your LinkedIn profile to help make you look more professional in your industry. These are best practices. There is a lot to learn about LinkedIn. I wanted to keep this short and make it easy for you all to commit to these two things. Read More

Salesforce continues to be a strong leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for many medium and large companies. I still hear a lot of chatter from companies looking to switch for many reasons. Sometimes it has to do with saving money or that they just need something that is easier to use.

I have used many CRMs over the years to see how they work and recommend the ones I feel are the better choice for my clients and businesses I meet in person or online. I still log in to quite a few platforms to run marketing and sales reports and keep tabs on how CRM programs look and feel. Read More

All my customers have a Facebook Business Page. Over the years I have seen a few prospects and customers of my clients reach out completely through Facebook, using the Facebook Messenger. This past year, I’ve seen consumers use the messaging feature even more on Facebook as well as other platforms: LinkedIn, Yelp, Angie’s List, and so forth. The goal if you accept messages on your Facebook page should be to make it easy for consumers to get in touch with you.

The problem with this, however, can be two-fold:

1. It really is hard to keep up and reply to these messages in a timely manner.
2. A lot of companies don’t get notified that they received a message and don’t reply at all! Read More

When it comes to generating leads, my clients tend to have a love-hate relationship with Yelp (depending on their location and overall review rating, some do get quite a few!).

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I have been a fan of Base CRM ever since they came out with their first iPhone app, 6 or 7 years ago. I became an early adapter of Base CRM and focused on using it for my own business. They have done one of the best jobs since day one making their mobile apps act similar to their desktop version. This makes it much easier for the techie and non-techie to learn and use. Read More

I wrote about CompanyCam in more detail in the post: Is CompanyCam Good For Painters a few months back. In short, CompanyCam is a simple app used to take photos of projects, collaborate about the photos and have one place where all your photos can be stored and organized by job name. It is very easy to use. One of the key features of CompanyCam is how it helps to geo-target the location of the project. You can read more about that in my product review. Read More

Today’s post is more of a journal entry about my visit to Basecamp:

My customers know how big of a fan I am of the popular project management software, Basecamp. They know I use it and push them to use it all the time. It is simply an excellent tool for contractors to use to communicate with each other and for management and staff to check in on their teams.  Read More