Small Businesses Looking Forward While Reflecting on Last Year in San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas, January 27, 2017 (Newswire.com) - The dust is settling from the election last year, markets are ups, it’s the beginning of a new year, and the Great Recession of 2008 is within grasp of beginning ten years in our rear-view mirror. There are a great many reasons to be cautiously optimistic for business in 2017.
Cautiously being the keyword. From a local market perspective, there were many more challenges in 2016 that shouldn’t happen again in 2017. Some of the wrenches thrown into the gears were two hail storms in San Antonio, moderate weather, and the figurative hail storm of the 2016 Presidential Election.
Ensuring my clients comply with Google's, Moving towards a more secure web, is less expensive for them because I'm very efficient due to the advantages of many years of history developing the sites Google is crawling.
Matt McCrossen, President
With most of McCrossen Consulting’s clients in the home service industry we faced the reality that unless a client repairs roofs and windows, they could hope to break even by year’s end. Another challenge, though odd, but understandable at macro level was the impact the election had on social media marketing.
“For many reasons, we have social media management in 99% of our contracts. The terms are flexible which gives us latitude to be flexible with the crowd. In 2016, we had to be flexible like never before. It came down to hoping the candidates paused in their Twitter battles so our marketing content had a chance. When you compare the resources, it takes to create, deploy and manage unique content we just didn’t see the same return as years past. So, we had to shift resources to other channels,” said Matt McCrossen, President of McCrossen Consulting LLC and the Chairman of the Internet Marketing Association San Antonio.
Matt Continued, “I produce high quality and unique content for clients that generally is published across several mediums and channels; such as the client’s website, email campaigns, social media and press. When you see how similar content resonated year-over-year for four years straight, and then compare it to 2016, well I made the decision to shift resources to longer-term investments in SEO, PR and strategy consulting.”
Consider the big picture. Within the United States over a few decades, there was a small recession in 1982, global shift in industrial manufacturing, dramatic shift from energy exporter to importer, War on Terror, 2008 Recession, and now another foreseeable era of polarizing populist politics. On the macro level, unless you’re an entrepreneur in the tech industry the odds of retiring with a few million in the bank are slim.
“You’re either a leading consultant, or not in my industry,” remarked Matt McCrossen. “Years ago, when I jumped into being an entrepreneur a friend and local author Michael Farlow who wrote Leaders Are Made Not Born, imparted on me the common issue with tech industry types. In sum, it comes down to communication. Mike told me the thriving tech execs can communicate their vision clearly to their team. It’s been a huge challenge for me a former US Army veteran that served in leadership positions, a tech startup founder, and now fully committed entrepreneur. Yes, I’ve learned to communicate better with my team and clients. However, I appreciate Mike’s book and guidance more now; this is nuanced. It’s not simply this or that. There are times when I communicate strategy and tactics, and there are times when I need to help turn wrenches. It takes experience, maturity, and vision to be a leader today. Honestly, my clients and team count on me having this aptitude; their employees and families count on them making the right bet on me, and so on in the commerce ecosystem.”
In an industry that changes frequently leadership and creativity is essential elements to succeed. Matt technically is a marketing consultant. However, his company focuses most resources for his clients on Internet marketing. Any technology advances in the consumer market space tend to directly impact Matt’s operations.
“One of the toughest industries I work with is the Heating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) in San Antonio,” said Matt. "The strategy is pretty simple in that it’s increased impressions and clicks on my client’s content generates a ratio of cold, warm and hot leads depending on what channels I’m using. The devil is in the details and the details here are the tactics. Enter a hailstorm and now a homeowner generally must choose to pay insurance deductibles or replace an AC system. Pit a billionaire reality TV host who lives on Twitter against an established political machine for about 18 months of campaigning, and standard fatigue in marketing is literally Trumped by social media users just not wanting to participate in the platform. It’s one thing to account for fatigue with a certain marketing campaign, it’s a whole other story when users disengage in a channel.”
Patty Wilson, Vice President of Mr. Wilson Heating and Air Conditioning remarked on her outlook for 2017, “We are cautiously optimistic for 2017. Many of the anomalies that impacted business in 2016 shouldn’t happen again this year. We’ve already seen a few 80 degree days in January when usually March and April is when it begins to heat up. As more ACs run, they need to be serviced and replaced, and it means more business. We’re very ready for that this year. It was a hard year in 2016. However instead of being reactionary, we were strategic. Across the board, we assessed what has worked, what is working, and made some plans for 2017 based on relativity concreate data. As a small business owner, you can either throw your hands up in the face of adversity, or lead your team through the rough patches just like you do when things are good. Tim and I chose to lead.”
“Patty did an amazing job last year,” remarked Tim Wilson, President of Mr. Wilson Heating and Air Conditioning. “Both in business and in our marriage, we’ve worked as a team. In one or our most challenging years Patty lead our office staff and managed our vendors while I went out in the field to help my guys. I’ve been in this industry for over fifteen years. I can comment as an expert when I say it’s a big team effort. Superb office operations ensure my technicians are servicing AC systems and generating invoices. The techs labor produces revenue that funds the office operations and pays my well trained, highly experienced tech teams. It’s a cycle that happens every day, every week, every month, every year no matter if the weather or economy wants to make it any easier for us.”
This year should be full of enhancements to historically launched changes on many platforms such as Google and Facebook. Internet marketing and business should be back on track realizing the year-over-year gains that Tim, Patty and Matt have enjoyed; chalking 2016 up as an anomaly in a long-term data set. Already the announcements from search giant Google in 2017 are shaping up to be manageable. Last September Google published a notice for webmasters to ensure connections are secure if a web-page collects logins or credit card information. Enforcement was scheduled to begin in January 2017, and email notices from Google’s Search Console started arriving in McCrossen’s inbox this week.
“I haven’t seen anything too demanding on businesses yet,” Said Matt. “The biggest headache will be with my e-commerce clients. Most of my clients are using McCrossen Hosting or I manage their instance on a specialized environment through Rackspace or another vendor. If it’s something I control the process of adding SSL to comply with Google’s webmaster guidelines will be easy. About 85% of my clients have been with me from the start in 2012, and I have probably accomplished roughly 99% of the content development, SEO, UX, UI and deployment of those sites. Ensuring my clients comply with Google’s, Moving towards a more secure web, is less expensive for them because I’m very efficient due to the advantages of many years of history developing the sites Google is crawling. Despite the cost, it’s a modest project and either clients comply with Google’s webmaster guidelines or risk ROI from years or work. Thankfully I have a strong relationship with my clients and Google so many of the hurdles are mitigated.”
Matt McCrossen is an international award winning Certified Internet Marketer (CIM), President of McCrossen Consulting LLC and the Chairman of the Internet Marketing Association San Antonio. McCrossen specializes in integrated marketing campaigns leveraging Internet marketing channels as the core tools in projects, and communication mediums. For more information on McCrossen Consulting visit their marketing website today.
Source: McCrossen Consulting
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