Dan LeVeque, President Emeritus

As industries shift from traditional mass media and place a greater focus on targeted and measurable means for gaining new customers, companies MUST redefine their business objectives and apply online strategies designed to achieve them.

Stop Waiting Around for Your Website to Magically Appear

If you don’t promote and advertise your site that delivers search engine traffic, your website is costing you more money than it is making you. Start Today…

$349 mo.

Via: Online Schools

Powered by the open-source software Open-Realty

Open-Realty is a web based real estate listing management application.  It’s been the number one choice for realtors since 2002.

Open-Realty offers easy listing management, blogging, lead development, integrated virtual tour support, advanced search capabilities, and more.

Combine this with our IDX Data application and you have all tools required to have a top real estate website in your market.

Real Estate Web Site Solution

$99 per month  (1 Year Commitment)

Includes:

• Free Hosting
• Free Email (up to 25 addresses)
• Free Domain Name (.com)
• Free Tech Support (up to 1hr/mth)
• Easily add/edit website content
• Includes your own Blog
• Optimized for search engines
• Add unlimited listings and photos
• Lead generating forms
• No software to download, simply edit your website from any computer connected to the internet
• Google Analytics integration
• Plus more…

IDX Solution:  Setup $500 – $40 per mo.

Our flexible IDX Manager is add-on software design to pull data from your IDX feed and populate your site with your listings and the listings of other MLS member agents.

This is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to have the ability to import from a compatible MLS IDX FTP repository into their website.

Our IDX solutions are integrated into your site content, rather than hosted in another location and/or framed onto your site.  The listings and search results pages are actually a part of your site; they can attract a lot of pertinent search engine traffic.  A cohesive IDX solution also means you have more control over the search functions, as we have direct access to the data feed.

Whatever your business interests or objectives may be, a successful online marketing strategy is a necessity to capture more of your market and compete within your marketing place.

For almost seven years Sandstone Digital has seen the Internet change and business change with it.  No longer can you just build a Web site and expect it to compete well in the marketplace.  Your Web site also needs a compelling online strategy to  slug it out with your competitors for exposure.  To compete with them you need to adopt persuasive online marketing strategy to promote your company.

Many create their Web site with much care and effort then allow it to naturally spread among their potential market.  When it works, it’s great!  If it doesn’t, you’ll be greatly disappointed because you’re not identified on the search engines or spread throughout the business and social networks.  To be in the last pages on search results is a real downer after all the time, money and effort went into building such a beautiful site.  How many customers see the last pages?

To identify the trend in Web site marketing, we’ve gradually changed over the years from just building a beautiful and effective Web sites to implementing Internet Marketing for our customers.  Over the past year we’ve really ramped up Internet Marketing to where it’s now our main focus.  We’ll still build you an awesome Web site, but we’ll also help you compete in today’s marketplace with tools and Internet marketing techniques like SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, e-mail marketing, Web advertising, podcasting, and affiliate marketing.

Good bye Sandstone Digital -Web Site Design…Hello Sandstone Digital – Internet Marketing.  It’s nice to meet you.

As I’ve been saying all along, it’s important to establish and define clear goals with your company and continue to lay the proper foundational principles.

So how do you reassess and reboot your business?

Assess: How much income are you producing?  How are you earning revenue?  Are you taking a loss and if so how much?  What’s working right now, what are we doing right, and what’s going wrong?  What’s not selling?   Which employees can depend on?  Are you carrying any needless expenses?  Do we need this… or do we just want this?

Customer acquisition: What kind of marketing messages are getting through?  Are you cutting customer recruitment unnecessarily?

You understanding what I’m getting at… take a hard look at things and ask all the necessary questions.  Keep asking yourself questions, even though you don’t necessarily need to know all the answers, the key is to make sure your foundation is intact.

Process: With this step it’s time to get answers to these questions.  What are the results and challenges that were uncovered in your assessment?  There might be some that’s easily fixable… others might necessitate more examination before you know what action to take.  Some might even require help hand from external sources.  Do you have the fiscal capital to execute these solutions?  If not, what are the alternatives?

Notice the queries never stop.  It’s only by asking yourself how you can handle maintaining the status quo of what’s working and rebooting what isn’t… it’s only then you can develop successful plan.

Act: We’ve been through this…spending a lot of time thinking and planning.  Don’t get stuck here because you’ll never actually get anything done.  Often by the time you’re ready to make a decision, opportunities may have passed.  I’d never advocate rushing process and acting too quickly.  However, things are moving rapidly in this digital age and we can’t afford to dilly-dally either.

You might run a killer ad campaign, develop in depth viral marketing tools, or maybe even offer smart affiliate programs.  But, unless your Web site is packed with relevant content, the traffic spikes that result from your efforts will be temporary.  Content that is beneficial, respected, informative, educational ,or just plain entertaining can attract and keep an audience better than anything else.

We see many that are overwhelmed with content creation.  They compare themselves with other Web sites and come away feeling daunted by the task of competing on that level.   We tell them not to worry and stress over doing everything perfect, because just being involved with your site and content creation is critical…the rest is learned by doing.

Anyone can create a content-rich Website by following a few key points:

• Be consistent.
• Update your site regularly, even if it’s 15 minutes a week.
• Learn how to create content if you don’t know how. (There are tons of online resources out there to help.)

KEY: Discipline and Dedication
Just like starting a fitness and nutritional program it takes one thing, self-discipline.  It’s easy to lose hours, even days, clicking from one idea to the next.  Don’t let yourself be distracted; limit your online content explorations to 30 minutes.  Then write.  Successful content writers just write…if you don’t like it, you can always come back to it another time.  It’s helpful to create a regular writing schedule and stick to it, whether you feel like it or not.

Developing a schedule to add content to your Web site and following it will bring the traffic you need.  If you’re still unsure, we’re happy to help your write content and keep your Web site up to date.  You may contact us with any questions.

Write it…and they will come.

Don’t ask your designer to create a Flash intro for your site… or try to specify the use of Joomla when it’s totally wrong for your project.  Don’t stress that your designer use Papyrus or Comic Sans for your logo.  That’s a really bad move — even if you happen to be Peter Jackson and you just made the highest grossing film of all time.

The point is this…Hire a designer you trust, then let them work.  Revisions are always a part of the equation.  Let them make something beautiful for you.  So, if your designer tells you that something is a bad idea, listen.  Chances are that the designer is right and had a reason for telling you this.  Remember they work for you and want to impress you away with their work.