thebuzzforge is a boutique marketing agency specializing in Social Media Marketing, interactive and local marketing including web sites supported with forum and chat word of mouth advertising, traditional media keying on brand and relationship building and stealth campaigns targeted at highly specific audiences.

Here’s where we like to start:

Your brick and mortar store – Is it welcoming? Clean? Cluttered? Is your placation easy to find…how about parking? It doesn't matter if you’ve been in the same location since dirt new people would probably like to find you. And they don’t want to see that original dirt on the floors or walls.

Is your staff knowledgeable, friendly, helpful, genuinely interested in your business, their success and giving customers a positive experience.

We have an easy questionnaire you can fill out for your own business if you would like to try. Our suggestion is to also allow your employees to fill it our an your customers. Anonymously of course. You’ll be surprised at what you learn.

Your web site – If you have no physical location here’s were we’ll start.

Why is this next? Because it’s an extension of your brick and mortar location (or your only location in the case of a virtual store).

Your web site allows you greater real estate at a relatively low cost. Things you can’t address in ads can be included on your site at little or no added expense.

Collateral Materials – What do your business cards and brochures look like? Do you have any?

We are currently working with a very successful service business that has a downright ugly brochure, no logo, no web site, but an extremely driven owner. The business is successful because of her drive and sales ability. By creating an extension of her (it would be impossible to duplicate her) via a web site and allowing potential customers to visit before speaking with her we can help reduce the time needed on any one face-to-face call and give potential clients a place to visit on their time to become more familiar with the business.

The peripheral materials will aid in answering questions and directing people to the site.

Your traditional advertising – Most businesses do some form of advertising even if it is the yellow pages. And they usually do it poorly because they rely on Sam their good ol’ ad rep. Unfortunately most good ol’ ad reps were car salesmen, in school or serving food sometime in the last year and will probably be somewhere else within another year.

There are very few good long term ad reps in any media.

Another obstacle to effective advertising with most traditional media is that the copywriter or designer, if there is someone other than your rep, is swamped and uses a cookie cutter to create your ad.

My experience is that a copy writer is given hand scribbled notes, including phone number and address (aaarrrggg) and takes 10-15 minutes to write an ad. Hey, it highlights your fast friendly service and the fact that you’ve been in the same location, 456 Main Street, Anytown, 555-239-3993, but who’s ad doesn’t?

I’m being told to get off the soap box.

To boil it all down thebuzzforge believes in developing a cohesive business universe. No one element exists in a vacuum. All ingredients in your marketing recipe add to the flavor of your business success, or failure.

Sure, we’ll develop a web site for you and not touch your traditional advertising. We’ll design you a logo and produce your peripheral materials and nothing else. But be assured we’ll reiterate our belief that it all works together and if half your recipe is for angle food cake and half for baked beans your guests are probably going to cringe at the thought of eating your dish.