The State of Marketing In Westchester Part 2 [podcast]

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Peter Moses and John Churan on their WVOX radio show, Westchester Eye On The Radio.Our main topic of discussion was the state of marketing and specifically marketing right here in Westchester County, NY.

This is the second segment of our conversation, which covers modernizing websites and “the cloud”.

Key Points from the show

Q: If any of our listeners are looking to hire someone, how would they contact you?

A: Our website address is westchestermarketing.com, phone number 914-806-7720 and you can email me at jann@westchestermarketingcafe.com.

Q: When did you change your corporate name?

A: About 16 years ago when I started the business it was actually Mirchandani Consulting. I was just coming out of corporate and was in marketing and the focus was very different. Seven years ago I re-branded. Our new focus and target market is small businesses and digital marketing.

Q: With the marketing industry changing approximately every 6 months, is there some type of training you have to attend?

A: There is no real special certification for anything in marketing. It’s years of experience and staying on top of trends in terms of marketing. With technology it is much harder because it is constantly changing. The browsers are changing how they render, there are new coding possibilities, and making sure everything works on different types of devices. When doing a website you want to think about everything from something as small as an iPhone 4 to a flat screen TV. It has to fit on all of those devices. It has to be legible and look good. People are still using Internet Explorer and that has to be considered, along with other browsers such as Firefox and Chrome.

Q: Do you end up doing a lot of re-branding for clients?

A: Re-branding to me in the marketing world is a specific focus. Potentially a new logo, a new name, and corporate colors. We don’t do branding in that sense. If a client needed something like that we would bring in somebody. What we do is a lot of second generation websites. We have a couple of projects we are working on right now that were done 5 years ago. They were static, fixed width and they might look good on a pc. Modernization and new coding will make it responsive and work on multiple browsers and devices. Content management systems are really big. Most business owners want to have control themselves. If they offer a special or hire someone new, they want to be able to provide that information to their readers without having to type up changes in an email and wait for you to put it in your queue.

Q: Where do you fall in the whole idea of storing things and keeping things “in the cloud”. Are you a fan of “the cloud” or not?

A: I am a big fan of “the cloud”, but there are caveats. If you lose power and have to access information from a remote location it is great. However, you want to make sure this is not your only source for that documentation. You need a redundancy and security protocols in place so that you’re not getting hacked.