By: William West - Central Valley Business Journal
September 2010 Front page
Internet marketing is the new frontier where small businesses hope to find a way to prosper. The opportunity to reach new customers is the promise. The challenge is learning the skills to thrive in the crowded new world. Here’s how one man did it and some lessons he has learned along the way.
By the way, he learned well enough that his small Stockton company does website and database work for Disneyland. And he recently put on an Internet Marketing seminar where a manager for the Emerging Business Team at Microsoft was one of the speakers. He has dozens of clients and it’s likely that a website you recently visited was designed by his company.
"I would like people to realize they can do it," declares Steve Morales, founder of Mayaco, an Internet marketing company. "They don’t have to be a tech guru. They don’t have to spend a lot of money. They can have an impact in a short period of time. But it is work just like in the brick and mortar world."
Skills and Thrills
Mr. Morales works at improving his own skills even after 14 years in business and a strong background in traditional advertising. He worked as a very young man in the advertising department of the Manteca Bulletin. His original interest was graphic art. He had won awards for oil painting and design work. When he joined the paper he had no idea how to lay out ads. He learned fast.
He went on to be advertising director for Lucky’s and Fry’s markets and was for a time the Marketing Director for the Stockton Record. While at the Sacramento Union the newspaper closed. He was going to take a year off and travel to Europe.
"A lot of the trends we see here begin in Europe," Mr. Morales said. "For example, smaller packaging like concentrated detergents began in Europe. I’ve always believed in learning and so that was my plan, but things changed."
He began getting calls from former clients. He agreed to do some projects but didn’t want to have an office. He just wanted to continue to grow. One thing led to another and in 1994 he founded Mayaco. It began as a traditional advertising and marketing company. Then in 1996 there was "Net Day", which President Clinton and others used to publicize the importance of the new world of the web.
"There was a real big media deal about a Bay Area school that was being connected," said Mr. Morales. "From that day on I knew this was going to forever change the way we market. We decided we needed to be ready."
Oddly, Mr. Morales was very fearful of computers.
"Gladys Knight had lyrics that said, ‘a fool will lose tomorrow reaching out for yesterday,’" Mr. Morales said. "I was more open to change than I was afraid of computers. But because of my history I can really understand and empathize when small business people say they don’t understand online stuff."
Keeping up on the lowdown
How does he stay abreast of all the changes in the online world? The pace of change seems to be accelerating.
"The CEO of Google said the most important thing is to know where the off button is because we get so much information," Mr. Morales said. What is useful and what is just information? That is the question you need to always ask. For me, I use Google news a lot. I read Fortune magazine and PC World. Some of their online info is more current than the printed version. Google news and their tech area is a way to stay informed. They don’t just focus on one publication."
The basics these days include a website but that’s just the beginning. Email marketing is the hook to bring people to your website. But email marketing must be targeted and designed properly or your well-intended email campaign is simply spam. But if you build your email subscriber list in a careful and permission-driven way, it can be a home run.
"One of our clients, Micke Grove Zoo, had a special event," Mr. Morales said.
"They had beautiful birds called Lorakeets that visitors could get up real close with. They had a 32 percent rate of people interested and opening their email. It was the biggest Saturday ever at the Zoo."
"We went to that and I had been lucky enough to be on the zoological board and even I was shocked at how many people were there."
Referrals are an enviable 98 percent of Mayaco’s business, but there is no escaping all the effects of the current economic downturn. They have remained fairly consistent with old clients returning for upgrades and new clients coming by referral, but where the projects were $10,000 and $20,000, they are now often $5,000 to $10,000.
"We are grateful for our customers, but what I see in this environment is that businesses are very, very careful," Mr. Morales said. "We encourage them to spend with purpose. Looking at the Internet, what is their objective? We appreciate this sort of correction in a sense. We do see a tremendous future because of the innovations taking place."
The next wave of innovation is already breaking over the business world in the form of the mobile Internet. Mobile video is not far behind. These are going to be game changers according to Mr. Morales. Just as he saw the future in the Internet Day in 1996, he sees another change in mobile marketing.
In this area, Spanish is very important and will be more so. He hinted that something big would happen in Stockton in October but wouldn’t elaborate.
His final thought was a saying from Helen Keller that he frequently quotes:
"Worse than being blind is being able to see but have no vision."