Kelly Harman will present “Boot Strap Marketing the Web 2.0 Way” at Women Business Owners Conference
On April 17, our president Kelly Harman will speak to a group of woman business owners on how to use today’s technology to grow their business. Kelly is a tech gadget addict, and when she’s not creating marketing strategies for other clients she is surfing the Internet to learn about the latest resources for small business. Her speech will focus on tools and applications that are free (or almost free) that can be leveraged to drive revenue and generate leads for small businesses.
Reston Limo Selects Zephyr Strategy for New Website Initiative
Reston Limo is the Washington DC’s largest limousine and transportation company. Zephyr has been selected to develop a new website for Reston Limo, including the implementation of e-commerce, an intranet, a blog, and a client-based extranet. The website will be developed to enhance the social networking efforts that Reston Limo undertakes, as well as improve its search engine rankings.
What was old is new again
It seems we’ve come full circle when it comes to communicating with our prospects and clients. I noticed recently that I’ve been paying a lot less attention to online newsletters and those pretty HTML announcements that arrive in my in-box every day. There are a few exceptions of course. But for the most part I’m interested in the CONTENT of what is being delivered, not the design or graphics. When given the choice I no longer ask for the HTML version of anything - instead I choose the text-only version.
There was a time when it was unusual to receive anything but plain text into your email box. Then we moved to designing branded newsletters and “postcard-like” invitations that would capture the attention of our readers. Now, thanks to ever-improving SPAM filters a lot of those fancy invitations, announcements and emails aren’t even making it to our desktop. And for those that do get through the fire-wall, we’ve become jaded and tired of looking at all those designs. We just want the information - short, sweet and simple.
Playing on this hunch we recently experimented with a client that has been holding a series of seminars. As is typical, invitations had been sent out using HTML and branded design. But registrations were down and we were looking for a way to drive attendance. So we sent out another announcement about the event, except this was a simple text email. Read more
Zephyr Wins Design Award for Sabtech Industries Website
We learned today that Zephyr has been awarded a 2009 Gold MarCom award from the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals for the redesign and launch of Sabtech Industries new website. Sabtech is a leading developer of COTS products for command and control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the US Navy.
Before
After
Kathy Albarado, President & CEO of Helios HR
Lessons Learned in Failing
As a serial entrepreneur, Zephyr isn’t the first company I’ve started. Recently, I was interviewed by Tom Heath, a columnist with the Washington Post. He wanted to talk about another company I launched 2 years ago and recently had to shut down. Tom writes about successful entrepreneurs every week in his “Value Added” column. I wanted to take a different approach. I’ve learned a lot from projects that failed, and this was no exception. Any entrepreneur worth her salt has a couple of great mistakes under her belt, and this is one of mine. So I thought that his readers could learn from this story and take away some valuable lessons (just like I did).
I think he did a great job on the article, and I still think the business was a great idea. The problem is I fell in love with
the idea instead of the viability of the company. And I didn’t think through the aspects of fulfillment. In retrospect, I did all the things I tell my clients to avoid every day! It is common for tech companies to fall in love with the idea of the new technology and its capabilities without spending enough time evaluating whether there is a customer need and enough budget for the delivery, sales and marketing of the technology.
I have a lot more ideas perculating and I suspect there are several more startups in my future. At least I hope so! Every experience builds on the next. The lessons learned can be applied not just to how I run Zephyr, but also to my clients (present and future) who sometimes become enamoured of the idea instead of the business viability. At least now I can say “Been there, done that.”
Running a Virtual Company
Although we have a small office in downtown Manassas, it is primarily used for client meetings & strategy se
ssions. It is where we keep the computer that our bookkeeper uses to stay on top of billing and accounting, and it serves as our mailing address and storage facility. But everyone on the team works primarily from home or at a client location. We’ve been doing this since we opened our doors six years ago.
Thanks to Web 2.0 and some pretty cool tools, we are able to communicate with each other, collaborate and share files as if we were right down the hall instead of 20 or 30 miles apart. And, because of my love for Web 2.0, Zephyr ends up being the “beta-bunny” for a lot of new online services which we are then able to recommend to our clients based on our personal experience. I’ve listed the tools we’re currently using at Zephyr below - if anyone has suggestions or new tools to share, let me know! Read more
Ashworth Manufacturing Hires Zephyr for Website Project
Ashworth Manufacturing, located in Winchester, Va is one of the top conveyer belt manufacturers in the world. The company’s 200+ page website is available in nine different languages. Ashworth has engaged Zephyr to reorganize and redesign the website and develop the new website(s) in Joomla, an open source content management system. Zephyr will be developing all nine foreign language sites in addition to the US-based website.
Helios HR Selects Zephyr Strategy as Virtual Marketing Organization (VMO)
Helios HR, a provider of outsourced HR and organizational development services has named Zephyr Strategy as its marketing partner. As part of this agreement, we will support all aspects of Helios’ marketing efforts, including interactive marketing, lead generation, company communication, public relations and events management. We will also provide consulting services for the sales and business development efforts. Helios HR is the region’s leading provider of outsourced HR services and we’re very excited to be part of this dynamic organization.
Verizon Federal Solutions Renews Contract with Zephyr Strategy
We’re delighted to announce that Verizon has renewed our contract to provide tradeshow support services to its federal division for the third year in a row. Verizon attends approximately 25-40 tradeshows per year both domestically and overseas. Zephyr manages the logistics for all these events, managing and shipping booth properties and sales material and ordering all show services.
