"Practice doesn't make perfect, Perfect Practice makes perfect." 
We define Art Direction as the process of: "Taking a 10,000 foot look at the 'visual concepts' inside the message of the entire marketing campaign." From this perspective we can perceptively look at how the visual artistry supports the entire application.
It is our goal is to resonate with your market at the 'gut level' using the devices of:
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Theme
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Metaphor
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Sybolism
We use a rational, methodical, disciplined process to pull the most out of ourselves (and perhaps our clients). This process follows the following steps.
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Idea Generation
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Pruning
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Reflection
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Proofs
Art Direction is a key component in both our Coportate Identity and Web Design services.
If your site is usable, it has a better chance at being successful.
Usability boils down to whether the experience is intuitive and valuable.
Is your site valuable? Does is represent you well?
Check out our Portfolio, then look at our Pricing. When you've decided its time for your site to become more valuable, then Contact Us.
Why Managed Content Management Systems?
Enhanced User Productivity Now you are empowered to create, publish, and manage your own Web content by means of an Internet browser. This enables you to realize the full potential of your very own Web site by using it as a business tool for communication with customers, partners, and coworkers.
Increased Usability and Aesthetics Managed navigation, content scheduling, archiving, and centralized control over publishing standards through page templates and style sheets result in Web sites that are richer, more accurate, timely, and have easy-to-find content.
Reduced Operating Costs By empowering you to manage your own content, your expensive developer/designer resources are freed. This results in reduced support costs for your Web site and enables you to refoucs those resources to work on new projects or projects that support your website to address your most critical business needs.
Experienced Design Team With over 20 years of combined experience designing websites, you get a top notch design team available without having to support full time Animators, Illustrators, and Page Layout experts. This results in a great looking site at a budget that you can afford.
Reduced Time to Value With a high level of pre-built functionality, a rapid application development environment using Microsoft's newest technologies, production quality beta sites, and prescriptive best practices, our development team can build and deploy powerful e-business Web site for you in record time.
Scalability and Reliability The NucleaTM Website Solutions enables you to scale up and scale out to meet the needs of even the largest global Web site. MaximumASP hosts "World Tribune" that receives over 12 million hits a day! Still think your site has too much traffic for us to handle?
Expert Dedicated IT Certified MSCE monitor the website 24x7, and guarantee 99.93% uptime. That's only 12 minutes a year. How good is your IT department?
Greater Interoperability Support for XML Web services and the Microsoft .NET common language runtime enables your applications to achieve seamless interoperability with the rest of your business systems or business partners. Extend the reach of your business solution by integrating industry standards links to suppliers and marketing services.
Based on Industry Standards and Leaders With industry-leading support for standards like XML and SOAP, and with support from industry leaders like Microsoft, NucleaTM enables flexibility and interoperability with business partners regardless of their choice of application, platform, or transport.
Increased Integration with Microsoft Technologies & Solution Providers By integrating with Microsoft's developer tools, Microsoft Windows Server System, and Microsoft Certified Partners, NucleaTM enables you to focus your efforts on your most critical business needs and rely on Microsoft to integrate the software for our Solution. NucleaTM integrates with a number of Microsoft products, technologies, and services including:
- Visual Studio .NET for Web site development.
- Microsoft SQL Server™ for content storage.
- MaximumASP for Enterprise level hosting. Microsoft Certified Partner.
- PhotoShop / Image Ready for Web Layout.
- Microsoft Word for content authoring and publishing.
We specialize in taking mediorce sites and making them look great through:
We also offer three distinct specialties in Lead Generation and they are:
Interested in a quick consultation? We can review your site, and give you a quick summary of what might benefit you most right over the phone. Just contact us.
Brand Building / Identity Services
Brand Building is our term used to develop your brand equity (the value of your brand alone). Brand is a hard thing to define, but it is very obvious when it is strong. Strong brands instantly bring an "emotion" to mind (i.e Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola). Your brand is likely to become your most valuable "intangable" asset. Make sure it brings the emotion you are intending to mind.
Re:Alignsm our brand building process enhances the image, and efficiency of small to medium sized businesses by brand makeovers, and (where applicable) technology based solutions.
Many companies feel the need to "redesign" their website, not taking into account the actual business needs or considering their supporting collatoral (Business Cards, Letterhead, Brochures). Our aim is to align the brand with the business environment, to align all your touchpoints (contacts people have with your brand) with your primary message. In short to re-align rather than re-design. This makes changes to your brand a business decision and not an emotional decision, and easier to manage in the long run.
By establishing strong partnerships with respected experts in Brand Management & Web Marketing the Schafer Group has developed it's own process of re-invention, re-thinking and re-doing, called re:Alignsm . We use professional graphics artists, illustrators, print houses, public relation firms and copywriters to assure that your identity re:Alignment is just that, your business expertly re-aligned for it's current environment. Don't go another day with mediorce marketing.
Web Search Engine Optimization & Lead Generation Services
The Schafer Group is your source for high quality brand building, web design, SEO and lead generation services. Our team of outstanding graphic designers, software programmers and SEO consultants are backed by solid experienced IT engineers who know how to keep all this technology running smoothly.
Integrating these seperate disciplines forms the base of our Search Marketing Campaign. Without each our SEO offering would not be complete.
Search Marketing Includes:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Web Advertising
- Paid Inclusion
- Logo Design
- Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (PPC)
- Email Newsletters
- Brand Building
- Identity re:ALIGN
- Content Management
- Content Development
Lead Generation Services & Analytic Services
Over the last few years, marketing has turned on it's head. Consumers now drive the marketplace, searching for products and services. The agency of yesterday is left powerless until they understand the emerging market of lead generation.
For the informed buyer and the prepared seller, lead generation is a 'win-win'. A buyer is able to search for, find and request information (often for free) from one of the many businesses that offer the exact product or service that they are searching for. The seller (if prepared) is given the opportunity to pitch their product or service to the exact someone they are looking to sell to. This is the marketplace of Lead Generation. Companies with the ability to drive more focused leads already leading the pack (Google, Yahoo). Expert agencies using these companies to maximize relevant leads at lower prices show their similarities to the Advertising Agencies using TV or Cable media outlets of the past. The leaders of Lead Generation are also beginning to emmerge.
Conversion rates on leads from lead generation often have a higher success rate than cold contacts, traditional media or even SPAM, because the prospect is not only prequalified, but specifically seeking the product you are marketing to them. Often, they are further along in the sales cycle, and nearly ready to make a purchase.
Some of the integrated methods The Schafer Group uses for lead generation include:
Lead generation has become popular with businesses because it enables a business to:
- Develop a more accurate ROI on a per lead basis
- Choose the product/service and the time they wish to offer to prospects
- Control the geographical area that the business focused to reach
- Control the budget on leads a business wishes to receive per day
- Pay only for the leads that are received
- View detailed analytics on the leads in order to realign it's business to the market.
CAN'T I JUST BUY A LIST?
Buying lists is simply backwards to the way consumers want to be addressed in today's marketplace. It's called spam, no matter how you phrase it. We believe that Email Marketing fits perfectly into the Lead Generation continuum as part of 'Relationship Management'. You should treat every email you send out like showing up at someone's personal residence. Only do it only when your invited, and bring a gift when you show up.
So where do you start then? Email gathering, from interested parties, driven to your site from targetted advertising. Just like you got here. No matter how you look at Lead Generation, no lead is free. Organic listings are not free, they are the result of persitent, educated, deliberate marketing efforts.
HOW MUCH DOES A LEAD COST?
Web Lead generation can be extremely cost effective. Par Per Click leads range anywhere from $0.05 to $8. The price often depends on the amount of players in the field and the potential profit margins involved. The good news is, the more niche the market, the lower the price seems to be. Also, when combined with SEO techniques the cost of converting leads is reduced significantly.
WHAT ABOUT FREE LISTINGS?
Free listings (sometimes called 'organic') is just one focus of the Search Marketing prong of lead generation. Organic listings take time to develop and require continual cultivation. Organic listings are cultivated by two major techiniques: On-page, and Off-page optimizations. It is not rocket-science, but is does require constant observation and manipulation. Therefore, we recommend our MSEO or Managed Search Engine Optimization for clients seeking the long term benefit of free organic listings. We use only white-hat techniques and keep abreast of the latest changes in the search engine world.
Evaluating SEO Companies?
You feel the need to hire an SEO Consultant/Firm to do search engine optimization for your website. Who can you trust and what kind of results should you expect? Look around, and the come back to us. Why? We only use 'white-hat' techiniques and refer-out only to only trusted reputible affiliates. If we can't directly solve your SEO request, we can show you other options. Give us an idea of your budget and we can give you some solid options.
Need SEO Advice?
The Schafer Group SEO Consulting will help you to reach a practical vision for your SEO campaign. Often just a few hours over phone with our specialist will answer many questions. So before you commit to spending alot of valuable cash on some SEO Company recommending a complete overhaul, try our SEO consutling services.
Our SEO Consulting Service May Be All You Need!
SEO is not like performing 'brain-surgery', however, it is not something you can learn overnight. The good news: it can be learned by almost anyone. There are many techniques, but just learning a few 'basics' can make a large difference. Talking to one of our SEO consultants is a great way to learn the steps and tools needed to start to manage your own "SEO". A small amount expert advice from our SEO consultant may save you a lot of money in the long run.
Managed SEO >>
Managed Pay Per Click Services >>
Pricing >>
Regional Promotion is targeted Seach Engine Optimization. By making sure that your business has the correct Regional Promotion Search Marketing focus, you can increase the conversion rate of your website. SEO Consulting firms, using Content Management Systems should make sure that the Keywords have targeted regions in the Meta Tag information. Especially the Title, and Keywords sections of the Meta Information. This allows for more relevant content. By making sure pages are promoted regionally, Search Engine Companies and Search Engine Optimization companies both suceed. There is no sense finding a plumber in Phoenix, Az when you are trying to find one in Santa Barbara, CA. Using Google Adwords, is another great way to promote your business in the exact location you want. For more information on lead generatng regional solutions we recommend reading our sections on Managed Pay Per Click Services. Make sure that the Lead Generation Company that your are using is able to optimize your pages for Regional Promotion. The cities we currently specialize in for regional promotion are listed to the left. However, we can target local metro areas anyhwere in the United States. If you need an evaluation of your website in regards to Regional Promotion please contact us . Managed Pay Per Click Services >>
Regional Promotion >>
Pricing >>
Managed Search Engine Optimization? - MSEO
Unfortunately, there are too many companies that spend thousands of dollars on SEO and Search Marketing that get no results. Why is this? There are many just too many practitioners that use worthless techiniques, or worse yet, use 'black-hat' methods to gain quick results only to end up getting - you the client - completely 'banned' from major Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo!
Managed SEO is the gradual process of building 'relevant' web content to both the Search Engines an website visitors alike. It is therefore offered as a managed service that is part of an overall Search Marketing Campaign. If you're ready to ensure that your website is a brand building, lead generation device, then MSEO is for you.
We use professional copy writers, regional promotion, Web Analytics, Pay Per Click advertising, On-Page Optimization, Off-Page Optimization. If all this sounds a bit "Greek" to you, just know that our expertise is to get people to your site, 'convert them' (i.e. buy / contact / subscribe) and do it for the least amount of money.
This can not be done by a simple one-day page cleanup, like many SEO practitioners might claim. Simply creating a 'Blog Roll' (plastering your URL on forums and blogs) will not do it either. Understand this, not all traffic is equal. Neither are all Lead Generation Companies.
Not quite ready for a full-time managed solution? Try our SEO Consulting services. It's an easy way to start our relationship. And that's important, because we want to develop a strong relationship with all our clients.
However, if you want to see just how powerful Lead Generation can be, then Contact Us and ask about our Managed SEO services today.
Interested in learning more?
Managed Pay Per Click Services >>
Regional Promotion >>
Pricing >>
If the whole pay per click marketing trend has you confused, let us help. Our Managed Pay Per Click services not only provides you with a basic overview of the process, but also provides you with reports to evalutate your PPC marketing efforts.
Our professional SEO copywriters, and Web Analytics staff are dedicated to making sure your Lead Generation efforts are maximizing your return on your investment.
Pay only for the actual visitors clicking on your ad. By using Regional Promotion you can limit the Pay Per Click ads to web searchers only in your area. Combine this with Web Analytic reports that show you the percentage of visitors that make it all the way to your purchase or revenue generation stream and you will know the cost per lead. Armed with that knowledge your website transforms from a cost center into a profit center.
For instance if your cost per click (CPC) is $0.50 and 25% of those visitors reach your conversion (payment) screen then your cost per conversion is $2.00 per conversion. If your average profit per conversion is $25 then your making $23 per every $2.00 spent on your Pay Per Click campaign. So now you website has a metric that is measurable and profitable.
Once you establish your cost per conversion then your job is two fold: Deliver more conversions, and deliver them at a lower cost per conversion. This is were we come in. We are experts in maximizing your ROI though minimizing your cost per conversion.
If you would like to learn more, please Contact Us for more information.
Not conviced yet, feel free to read on. We are happy to assist you in any way. Why? Because we believe that open honest communication is the best method of developing relationships. And when you've finally come to the decision that we know more about what we're doing than you would ever care to learn, then you can go back to what you do best knowing full well that you've hired the most knowledgable, professional and co-operative Lead Generation company around.
Regional Promotion >>
Web Analytics >>
Content Creation >>
Content Management >>
Pricing >>
Web analytics refers to the tracking and reporting of visitors' behavior on any given website. As the ecomonic pressure to show return on investment continues to increase, the importance of accurate web analytics also keeps pace.
When looking at the Web Analytics services available to date, there is one clear standout. Google. Google Analytics defines the Web 2.0 standard. No other analytical suite come close when it comes to Geo-reporting, Marketing Reporting, Campaign Reporting, Executive Reporting, and Webmaster Reporting for the price. Needless to mention is the seamless integration of reporting on Pay Per Click campaigns, Organic Search results, and even competitive search engine leads (ie. Yahoo! and MSN).
This is why we have chosen Google to provide our Analytic needs. Once the domain of only the top echelon of well funded web giants, performance based analytic reports are now affordable by the small to mid-size business.
Better yet, Google Analytics is used as part of our Managed Search Engine Optimization (MSEO) packages. You can rest easy knowing our MSEO experts are doing everything possible to lower your cost per lead (see: Lead Generation) by studying each of these analytic reports.
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