Mr. Easter, could you please introduce yourself and the company that you manage to PromotionWorld’s audience?
I’m Brian Easter and I’m the CEO of NeboWeb (www.NeboWeb.com). As CEO, I’ve worked with my business partner, Adam Harrell, to lead NeboWeb to explosive growth, attracting Fortune 500 clients and driving strategic partnerships which have fueled our expansion. I work hard to be an advocate of the interactive marketing industry and frequently speak about capturing the power and potential of online marketing.
As for NeboWeb, we are a full service interactive marketing agency headquartered in Atlanta, GA. We specialize in growing our clients’ brands online. We design beautiful, conversion-friendly websites, drive targeted website traffic, and create compelling online experiences that connect emotionally with our clients’ target audience.
What is special about NeboWeb compared with the other companies providing web services and what takes NeboWeb ahead of the competition?
Value. We deliver award-winning interactive services at very reasonable prices. We’re not the cheapest by any means, but we have a lower cost base than the New York, San Francisco, or LA agencies.
We also approach interactive from a marketing point of view. We help our client’s solve real marketing challenges. We’re not a technology company; we’re in the business of marketing.
Passion is also a differentiator. Our team loves what they do. Our SEO people are passionate about SEO. Our creative team is passionate about creativity. Our developers love nothing more than working late into the night pushing the limits of what a website can do.
Lastly, I think our success is a byproduct of our client’s success. It’s easier to win new clients when they see the great work you’ve done for your existing clients. And a large percentage of our new business comes from referrals from existing clients.
Recently NeboWeb was recognized for several of its interactive projects by the 2008 Communicator Awards. Please, tell as more about them.
Recognition is always flattering. We have great clients and a great team, and that helps us consistently create great work.
Many of the projects receiving the Communicator Awards accolades also have been recognized by other awards programs. Sites like www.revaleskin.com, Shared Health, and American Fiber Systems all have a common thread - their team worked just as hard as our team did, and we created something special.
NeboWeb celebrated its 4th anniversary in April. Within four years NeboWeb has become one of the southeast’s leading interactive agencies. What are NeboWeb's best achievements through the years? What are you most proud of?
The thing I think our team is most proud of is being successful in the way we’ve been successful. We haven’t taken the standard approach and we don’t look at clients as profit centers. We love our clients and over-deliver. We don’t require long term client contracts, and we don’t nickel and dime clients for every small request.
Adam Harrell and I started NeboWeb with very little capital and simply had our ideas, passion, and core beliefs. We’ve grown by reinvesting the profits into the business and doing things the right way. You have to be flexible and adaptable to succeed in this industry. You have to learn quickly and move fast. If you try to manage this business using the old ad agency model, you’re probably going to end up with many sleepless nights as the paradigm has shifted.
How do you envision the company in the years ahead?
That’s a good question to which we’ve given substantial thought. We liken NeboWeb to a talented craftsman versus a mass producer of goods or services. We aspire to be more like Ferrari than GM or more like Sweetwater than Anheuser-Busch. Not that there is anything wrong with GM’s cars or Anheuser-Busch’s beer, it’s just that our goals focus more on controlled growth and high quality than on being a one-size fits all interactive agency.
Please, tell us something more about your management tool called TimeTravLR.
TimeTravLR is the product of an advanced team of interactive marketing professionals who specialize in creating highly usable vapor ware for organizations of all sizes. By utilizing a Web 3.0 framework with 50% more AJAX, the team is able to effectively deploy websites before clients even know they need them. TimeTravLR is not only able to go back in time, but can also leverage future events and internet content not yet developed.
In all seriousness, TimeTravLR is a fake product that we launched on April Fools’ Day this year. It fit very nicely with Google’s own April Fool’s launch of Google Custom Time and GDay which we caught wind of just before we were announcing the launch of TimeTravLR. It was just a coincidence that we both were planning time travel spoofs, but it definitely helped that we received the information on their announcements so that we were able to adjust our new releases to be even funnier.
Which one of the services you offer is most popular among your customers and why?
I’m not sure I can answer that question fully. Our services tend to complement each other. Our design and development services drive SEM and vice versa. Our content management system (CMS) was created because of our need to provide our clients with an easy to use, SEO-friendly CMS.
Many of our Web design and development clients love our work relative to those services, but they also look at our deep, rich history in SEO and PPC and view these core competencies as further evidence that we’re the right firm to choose. We’ve won awards and recognition for SEO, PPC, and Web Design & Development, and many clients prefer to take an integrated and balanced approach.
What does NeboWeb do to retain its existing customer base and how would you recommend the company to potential clients?
NeboWeb retains customers by promising what we’ll do and then doing what we promise. Unlike many of our competitors, we don’t require our clients to sign long term contracts. Most of our recurring agreements are able to be terminated with 30 days written notice.
We put pressure on ourselves to reach our client’s objectives each and every month. The best predictor of future success is past success. If you do good work, get results, and communicate effectively clients will work with your firm for a long time. Attitude, results, and commitment are the keys to client retention and that is a heck of a lot more powerful than any contract.
How do you estimate the development of the SEM industry during the past few years and what are your expectations for the future? What will be NeboWeb’s role and contribution in it?
I think the SEM industry is in its beginnings and there is quite a bit of change to come. I think the convergence of traditional media such as television, radio, etc. will happen faster than people think. We are still at the beginning stages of this evolution and I’m not comfortable predicting exactly what the future will look like, but the integration of Web-enabled technologies with traditional mediums such as television will allow for a more tailored and interactive experience. It will also provide advertisers with deeper insight to the actions people take. The in-depth metrics-focused mindset that dominates the Web will start to be applied to traditional mediums Agencies will have to understand how different mediums contribute to different actions and then be able to place value on those activities.
Another area that will most likely gain traction in the near future is Semantic Search. Semantic Search will result in better search results for relatively ambiguous search queries. If we can truly establish and adopt better semantic standards for the Web, then search will become more accurate and context oriented.
Lastly, and more relevant to the near future, mobile marketing is starting to explode. Devices like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are changing the ways that users interact with the Web on mobile devices. Even now SEM and interactive firms are taking into consideration how their information is found, used, and viewed different mobile devices.
NeboWeb’s role in this transformation is to drive our clients into the future while mitigating the risks related to entering into emerging markets. We have to figure out how new technologies can be most effectively utilized to achieve the client’s brand and business objectives.
Would you share some practical ideas and recommendations so that our readers could boost their web-based businesses?
I would start with figuring out where you stand, and establishing the metrics of success. Campaigns need three vital components to be successful – “good products and/or services + targeted Web traffic + good creative = conversion.” Each piece of the formula is vital. Good products and/or services means more than features, it means features, functionality, price, and effective positioning. Targeted traffic means more than the huge numbers of people coming to your site, it means the right people are coming with the right mindset, at the right time in the sales cycle. Good creative is more than a beautiful design, it’s a design that drives users to accomplish their own goals and speaks clearly to the intended audience while fostering an emotional connection. Ignore any of the three components at your own peril. Embrace all three and you’ve set the foundation for success.
Thank you very much for the interview.