If you don’t have the budget to have a full-time marketing department, you should think about hiring a consultant.

Marketing and business developments bring expertise, innovative ideas, copywriters, designers, programmers and everything you need to get the word out about your business.

Here at 2X Momentum, when we’re working with new clients, we get to the core of their goals, budget and desired level of involvement.

Some clients want to hand everything off and have us execute the plan from start to finish with minimal check-ins. Other clients are very hands on and want us to set up the tools and programs that will allow them to run the project. We love doing both!

When we can take something off your plate, or set you up for success, your business wins and nothing is more satisfying for us.

If you think you may have a need for a marketing or business development consultant, take us up on our free 60-minute consultation.

Whether you need to find ways to connect with new customers, need better ways to communicate with your current customers or are thinking about starting a whole new business, 2X Momentum is here to help.

And now that you know a little more about us, we’d love to get to know you. Contact us here or call 703-831-7760 today.

Step 1: Pick 5 Websites You Love and 3 You Hate

Having a clear visual of what you want your site to have and not have is critical when working with designers and developers. Even the best of us have a hard time explaining what we want. Take screenshots and save the URLs of your favorite and least favorite sites and have a brief description of what it is about each that you want to integrate into your design.

You should have a document or notepad with all the design and functionality pieces that you want to have and want to avoid ready for your site builder.

Step 2: Create a Roadmap

Having a roadmap of all the moving pieces for your new site will include will let you and your designer properly structure your site and accurately estimate costs.

Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself when creating your roadmap:

Will I have a blog?

Do I need a forum or commenting features?

Will my site have interactive tools?

Do customers need to login?

Will customers be making purchases straight from my site?

Do I need education pages to explain concepts or different services?

Will I have videos?

Step 3: Decide What You Will and Won’t Do

Are you going to provide all the art and photos for your site? Will you be writing all the content? Will you be determining which keywords to use? Will you take the lead on SEO? Will you maintain the site? Will you update the blog regularly?

You certainly can learn how to do each of these items. But will you have the time and is that what you want to spend your time doing. Knowing what you’re committing to and what you’ll need to hire someone for will keep your site fresh and engaging to your audience.

At 2XM, we’ve built sites for businesses large and small and we help our clients work through these three steps every time.

In the last month 2XM developed several Direct Mail and other printed materials for our clients. The timeline was short, the budget was small and our traditional design and print solutions couldn’t move that fast or on that budget.

So we went to the internet to find online printing solutions that would fit all of our criteria.

We hadn’t used Vistaprint before, but we’re blown away at the tools, turnaround time, price quote and support by the online printer.

One of the jobs we started with was a postcard mailing. There are an overwhelming number of customizable templates to start with and we were able to quickly find several base designs that would work for our client.

All we had to do was enter our content and drag and drop the pieces until we were satisfied with the design. Uploading client lists was a breeze (once we got the formatting correct) and the special discounts that VistaPrint was running for postcards was a bonus we weren’t expecting.

In the next 5 to 7 days this beautiful postcard will be hitting mailboxes in Washington, D.C.!

We unanimously decided to start working our next print job with Vistaprint. This time it was a media kit that included a glossy folder, a coated brochure and a coated letter insert.

Here is where Vistaprint blew us away. During the review process, VistaPrint alerted us to the fact that the client’s logo was a bit fuzzy. We only had a low-resolution file to work with so the designers at Vistaprint recreated to logo, placed it in the file and didn’t charge us a dime for their services. Oh, and it was done over a weekend so we didn’t lose any time getting the materials to the media event at which our client was a featured speaker!

We can’t say enough about the quality of the products and support we’ve received from Vistaprint.

There are plenty of printed materials that this company won’t be able to handle for us, but we will be looking to use Vistaprint in the future and would highly recommend them for small business owners that want to create professional print materials but don’t have a budget for experienced designers.

And the same is true when it comes to marketing strategies for business. So when we saw a book that claimed to explain marketing in less than 1,000 words, we were skeptical.

After reading it, we should make it mandatory reading for all our clients!

It’s called Marketing In Less Than 1000 Words by Rob Burns.

Now, you aren’t going to have any breakthrough epiphanies, but you will think about your business and marketing plan in a new light. Mr. Burns connects the dots between what you want to do for your business and what you need to do for your potential clients.

For us, if you have a marketing professional working for you, you’ll be able to do a better job evaluating what he or she is doing and challenge them to do more or less of it after reading this quick book.

As a business owner your time is valuable and taking 15 minutes to have a better understanding of the mechanics of your marketing is well worth it.

On Amazon.com there’s a great e-book (26 pages) that lists a ton of great free resources you can put to work right away.

It’s called 99+ Best Free Internet Marketing Tools and Resources to Boost Your Online Marketing Efforts and it was written by Uday Shankar Byri.

There are links to every tool discussed and the short description provided is very helpful so you can quickly find what you’re looking for.