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Spire has a new website design. Please check out the new site, and let us know what you think!

Here's an extremely simple example of a pretzel stand using mobile marketing. Every customer who visits their stand has a mobile phone in their pocket.

Are you using Facebook? There's a 65% chance that you -- and your future customer -- would say yes. This thing has been like an avalanche -- slowly, steadily steamrolling

As a local business owner, and a homeowner in the city of Ashland, I plan to vote "YES" for the bond issue for Ashland City Schools. My wife and I don't have children, but nonetheless I see this as a critically important issue.

Here's your chance to build a stunning design portfolio and get invaluable work experience with one of Ohio's top-ranked web design firms. Spire is searching for another all-star designer to help serve our growing client base.

As we head into another busy month, we pause for a moment to celebrate. Spire just turned 5!

We've added twelve new designs to our portfolio, a sample of some of the many sites we launched the first 10 weeks of 2011. Check them out by visiting our web design portfolio

Bryan Lefelhoc & I just got back from Las Vegas. Our mission? To share our new online pizza ordering system at The International Pizza Expo.

My favorite commercial from Superbowl XLV - hands down. I don't think much of Chrysler, but their agency did a masterful job repositioning what's a negative opinion of Detroit into an emotionally charged commercial that will sell cars.

I've been buying stock photos from iStockPhoto.com for more than 8 years. However, I recently decided to switch to Dreamstime.com as our organization's primary stock photo service. Here are a few reasons I'm dumping iStockPhoto.

We just found a moment to update the portfolio with several more websites that went live in December. The newest entries include: Ohio Dreams Action Sports Camp,WVMC-FM,Adv

We've been very busy this fall. Every week multiple new websites are going live. We added 8 new sites to our portfolio today, and added a dozen others to the site last month.

Here's your chance to build a stunning design portfolio, learn on the job, and get valuable real-world experience with one of Ohio's top-ranked web design firms.

Customer service has some similarities to a marriage. If neglected, the relationship will break down, and communication is critically important. Neither type of relationship is ever easy or perfect. But here is a message I sent to my staff today, pointing out how a good customer service relationship should be similar to a healthy marriage...

We just completed a research study and the results were a little frightening. We looked at the websites for hundreds of small businesses in our local area, and checked them on 9 costly mistakes that we tend to see people make on their websites. When looking at 3 of the most costly mistakes, we found that 99.6% of local businesses were making at least 1 of these 3 mistakes.

We received an extremely gracious recommendation from Frank Beier, Jr.. He is the President of Dynamic Webs, LLC, a Findlay Ohio web design company.

If you have an invention, or are working on developing an innovative idea, this seminar may be of interest to you. "Magnet: Innovation, Product Design & Development

Jason Fried recently had an article in Inc Magazine titled "Why is Business Writing So Awful." A great read that I strongly recommend. We design a lot of business websites each month, and too often, the writing provided by the client can be an afterthought... stuff used to fill an empty space on a page.

After 18 years with Clear Channel Communications as a sales and marketing executive, Bryan Lefelhoc announced today that he is stepping down. The Ashland resident accepted a marketing consultant position with Spire Advertising, a 4-year-old website design and internet marketing firm in Ashland, Ohio.

Last week I had the chance to present at a marketing seminar sponsored by the Ohio Bankers League in Columbus. The topic was "How to Transform Google Searchers into Customers."

One of the most important steps of a website design process is determining how you will organize your content. Your goal should be to consolidate your content into no more than 7 top-level navigation sections. Each of these top level sections can have sub-pages... even sub-sub-pages... but even with tens of thousands of pages, you should be able to organize your content into 7 sections or less.

Whenever we design a website for a client, we do a lot of search engine optimization work - to help ensure that Google and the other search engines can find the content. However, the structure of the site is only half the battle. Once your site is structured the right way, it's extremely important to get inbound links that point people back to your website.

Spire is hiring. To keep up with growing demand, we want to hire another exceptional web designer.

The most effective Super Bowl ad this year was, in my opinion Google's ad called "Parisian Love." It was so simple that anybody could have created it with their computer. Yet it told a clear story, demonstrated their product, and pulled at the heart strings of viewers. Well done Google, well done.

Planning to promote your company in a Super Bowl commercial? Better make sure your website is ready to handle your offer.

We've been busy launching new websites for our clients, but finally carved out the time to launch the 2010 edition of the Spire website.

If you haven't heard, we've been leading a series of Internet Marketing seminars in partnership with the Mansfield Area Chamber of Commerce. The first event was December 3 -- it sold out in less than 2 weeks. The second event was January 13 -- it sold out in less than 3 days! The final opportunity to attend will be Thursday, February 4 from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM.

We had a full house at this morning's internet marketing seminar in Mansfield! Thanks to the Mansfield Richland Chamber of Commerce for hosting the event and promoting it to their membership.Today's event booked up in under a week and there were more than a dozen people on a waiting list.

When I went to college in the late 90s, there was an attitude among some of my classmates that a college diploma would be like a "golden ticket" to finding a great job. I suppose that was the case at some point, but it surely wasn't true in the late 90s.Today, college graduates are negatively affected more than any other demographic with this economy.

It's official. I'm tag-teaming with my friends at the Mansfield-Richland Area Chamber of Commerce to present an internet marketing seminar at the Mansfield Chamber Conference Room. I'll be presenting three 1-hour presentations on the latest topics like lead generation, online sales, search engine optimization, email marketing & social media.

Many people have asked us why we chose the name Spire for our company.While the word "spire" is not frequently used in the United States, you probably already know that it refers to the top of a building that comes to a point. Church steeples are an example of a spire, and you'll see spires on many skyscrapers in major cities around the world. Just as a spire helps a building stand out among a crowd, we do the same thing for the companies we serve.

I'm not sure what Apple marketers are trying to accomplish with one of their new Apple 3G commercials. The ability to copy and paste is not a benefit, or even a feature worth spending 30 seconds promoting on television.

Billy Mays was found dead in his Tampa, FL home Sunday morning, possibly connected to a blow to the head he received the night before onboard a US Airways flight. As a marketing professional, I am saddened by the loss. Mays was a man of character. He gave our profession a positive example, in a field that's often overshadowed by manipulative people who will say anything to make a quick buck.

Do you know what people are saying about your company? The rapid growth of social networking has both simplified and complicated things all at the same time.Our only challenge used to be making sure people said positive things about our companies when they talked to their friends.Now we have to keep up with the techno-savvy people too -- the bloggers, reviewers,YouTubers, twitterers, facebookers, and much, much more.

Has your name been "Googled" recently? I bet it has - whether you realize it or not.Now you can control what people see, by setting up your own Google Profile. Like a scaled-down Facebook page, Google's profile gives you a chance to enter some basic information about yourself, add photos, schools you attended and a few other things.

In November I wrote about my system for getting things done. Now, 6 months later it's time to review successes & failures of the system I talked about. Some of the things I was doing worked very well, and have become a permanent part of my organization system. Other parts haven't worked as well as I'd hoped. Let me review both.

Our new postcard hit mailboxes this week - discussing how we can help businesses generate businesses in the recession without spending a fortune on advertising. The postcard is below. We also invited recipients to watch our free video on recession marketing strategies, available here.

Question: "So what is twitter, I signed up tonight, is it just a spin off of myspace and facebook but with a business twist?"

In a recession, consumers are less impulsive, so your business needs to find new ways to reach your customers. AdWords offers a simple way to do so that won't empty your wallet.

Bottom line, if you are paying one or more monthly fees to have a listing on somebody else's website, please consider the three powerful alternatives explained here.

If you do pay-per-click campaigns, you probably know that one best practice is to add brackets and quotes to your keyword list - which makes them a phrase match or exact match. It's simple, but repetitive and time-consuming to do that by hand -- especially if you have hundreds of keywords for each ad group as I do. Here's a simple tool my team just created to help me convert my keyword lists on the fly.

If just one of the big 3 automakers would make it through this economic mess, it would be Ford, in my opinion. That said, I got a chuckle out of a Chevy Silverado commercial I saw today. It was targeted at Ford F-150.

I just finished a new postcard that will be released next week in response to the recession. The headline matches the blog title. The ad copy says the following...

Most folks know that to get more revenue out of their customers, they should sell add-on products. However, some well-crafted add-on products not only give you more revenue at the time of the sale -- they practically GUARANTEE that you will get more repeat business.Here's a perfect example.