Double Post Form Tester
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Pardot Form Handler Tester
As Pardot Consultants we all spend a lot of time troubleshooting forms and form handlers, so we decided to make this little handy tool, to test your handler. (Work in progress) First name: Last name: Company: Email address:
New Community Site Launched!
We are very proud to announce that the new Musicians Community Site "Sync 4 Music", has officially launched in Beta Testing mode. This site promises to be a game changer for the music community. Within the site, musicians will be able to meet others to form a band, jam and learn together. It also has a robust functionality for Teachers to be found within the neighborhood aspiring musicians and all of these for FREE! Till now, musicians have few options, which involve either going deep into message boards or pay for similar services. Beta testing should be lifted soon, and marketing will commence to bring as many musicians as possible into the community. Check it out: Sync4Music.com
New Client Website Launched
We are very proud to announce that the new website for our client ECIPay is now live! It took a lot of work but we are loving the end result of this work. Check out the site HERE!
How/When to hire your first marketing employee
I've heard it a million times. The growing small-company who decided it’s time to look like “a real company” therefore is thinking of hiring their first marketing employee. It usually goes two ways, either they hire a very seasoned Marketing VP type or a very Junior kid-right-out-of-school, yet the expectations are the same. Because the general expectation is that this person will have to wear every possible hat in the Marketing world, including but not limited, to Online, Print, Strategy, PR, Packaging, Branding and PR; and all of this with no real metrics to measure it by, the poor bastard is pre-destined to fail. If you go the youngling route, you are being very unfair to the kid; yet if you go the senior route, you should be weary that he/she doesn't realize you are setting them up for failure, which means they are senior in age but not necessarily in marketing/business experience. By the time you decide to pull the plug (usually 6 months or so) on this new hire, you would have spent an average of $100,000 that you could have put back into the business, improve your product, or spread the wealth with those who are currently making the company grow. This is usually the best case scenario, since most will think it was the new hire's fault, therefore will try their luck again and start a vicious cycle that will eat away your hard earned cash and sometimes grows to a full USELESS marketing department. Here some advice on how to avoid this increasingly common Money Pit: When to Hire? Like with everything else in business, the time to make a change is when the need will be met, under the return of [...]
How much does a Website Cost?
If I had a dollar for every time I get this question, I wouldn't have to make website because I would be rich! Its a very common question that comes from the lack of understanding on what it takes to create a website and even more because people haven't always thought through which aspects of Website Development will be needed on their new site. This is a pretty nifty tool (created by the competition) that helps you not only calculate the average cost of the website of your dreams, but also think through some of the basic functionality that you may or may not be taking for granted, like: Social Media Integration, Login, Search, Responsive Design, etc. Take a look, dream big and give us a call when ready. DOWNLOAD HERE
Free Marketing Advice for Small Business
As a Marketing firm, we make the vast majority of our business from Medium Sized companies with a decent amount of funding/revenue and years in business; yet, most of the questions I (Francisco) get on a daily basis are from small companies just starting up. Local businesses with great dreams and ideas that have no idea how to find clients. I LOVE answering those questions. I believe knowledge is power and I want to empower people to leave their boring 9 to 5 job and achieve those dreams they have been putting away. I want to invite all small business owners (specially in the New England area) to email me directly with your marketing questions (or Jazz music if you are into that). Feel free to send me a direct email to advice@staccatointeractive.com and either I or one of the Staccato Interactive "experts" will get back to you with and answer (or opinion) as soon as we can. Yes, this is all free, though I do accept a cup of coffee if you happen to be in the area. ** In case you don't know who "this clown is", here my LinkedIn.
Stop SPAM referrals from ruining your analytics
Every once in awhile you will notice a spike on your google Analytics and with it comes the great satisfaction of a job well done; don’t pop the cork yet! Review where those referrals are coming from. More often than not you will find some names you don’t recognize; some common examples are see-your-website-here.com and Semalt.com. At first you will be inclined to ignore them. “Who cares about a few unknown visits…”; wrong, these are SPAM referrals, and they do matter. These visits can accumulate to a few hundred a month which could reach a few thousand a year. If your website is receiving half a million visits then stop reading this, but if you are like any of my clients, a few hundred “fake visitors” can steer you in the wrong direction in terms of strategy. If that is not reason enough for you, think of the security issues; yes, some are just fake visits paid for some very ill-informed individuals, but some may be ill-intended as well, leaving phishing code in your website or posting SPAM on your comments section. So, what should you do? Elementary my young Watson; block them. How to block them is a whole different lesson to be taught, but here the basics. A simple online search should give you the specifics. Some options: The best way to block referrers from accessing your site at all is to block them in your .htaccess file in the root directory of your domain. This method prevents spambots from hitting your server altogether. Keep in mind, that the .htaccess file controls how your server behaves, and an error here can escalate very quickly into the rest of your site. Another good option, [...]