Our Blog Articles | Sharing our Experiences

A blog by Elsjene Burger

Years ago, I loved fake nails - I even tried to do it myself, so I found this small shop that sold everything you need to put on your own nail tips, gel, colours, sparkling stuff, & more. I remember thinking when I walked in there that they will probably not survive because their location is at the back of a small shopping strip & their signage is too small.

But I was wrong.

Today, five years later, this little nail shop is still going & it is going strong.

Here's what they are doing right:

When I made my first purchase, they ensured that they captured my details. (e-mail, mobile number, birthday, area, etc)
They offer training courses for the "I want to do my own nails" market. (A great value add)
Once every two weeks, I receive an sms from them with some special or event, even though I am now more of an au-natural person & haven't bought something there in about 4 years. (Every time I receive one of these, I feel the impulse to go buy something from them though.)

They understand the power of their current base & have seen great success due to leveraging their data.

Whether you have 20 clients or 20 000; whether you are in manufacturing or own a restaurant, to get more out of your current clients, you only need:

Proper client data
Regular marketing campaigns
Value added mindset to offerings
Creativity

We can learn a lot from that little nail shop. They understand that Current Client Optimisationis not only about great service & client retention, but also about having a pro-active plan that brings your clients & your offerings together in such a way that increases both revenue & goodwill.

I think I'll go paint my nails now.

A blog by Elsjene Burger

As a marketing professional, I do a lot of online research & reading on the subject of engaging more customers, latest brand trends, what to do & what not to do & how to increase this & decrease that in the wonderful world of increasing sales/awareness/product education through our craft. In this never-ending search for more information & more knowledge, one thing stands out; blatant apparent confusion on every subject relating to marketing.

What does a typical marketing ‘how-to’ day look like online?

One article screams that content marketing is dead. The next praises it for being the best, still relevant, thing since Web 2.0. How to engage with B2B customers? Treat them as B2C. You must have a Facebook page – B2B doesn’t need one or does it? Twitter is great for engagement, but maybe Pinterest is better. E-mail is dying. E-mail is still the best way to communicate. Network more. Don’t be overbearing when you network. Traditional media such as radio & print is dead. Don’t forget that radio still attracts the biggest audiences. Get a billboard, get a thousand. Forget about billboards. Get online banner ads. Online banner adverts just add to the clutter. Have you tried experiential marketing? It works. But maybe native advertising will suit you better. Don’t advertise that you are green. People still love to hear that you are a green-conscious company. 7 things you need to do right now to get more customers. The 4 great ideas for content marketing during 2015, etc etc...

Confusing? No wonder my marketing PA decided to follow a path in finance instead. (Maybe I shouldn’t have asked her to write a short paragraph on what she thinks marketing is based on Google searches…)

Where does this leave us & for crying in the name of the 4P’s (or was it 6? Did someone add a 7th just the other day? Is it still relevant?) of marketing, what is the answer to my original question?

Here’s the thing; I cannot answer for you or your company or your agency. Why? Because the marketing tools you use remains a very personal thing. There are & will always be great marketing guidelines. However, what works for an engineering firm in construction will not work for an engineering firm in telecommunications. What works for Coca Cola’s iconic drink, will not necessarily work for BOS iced tea.

For some companies sales & marketing is the same thing, for others PR is the only part of marketing worth doing. Some think that advertising with big budgets are the only way to go for FMCG while others might agree on a more comprehensive & integrated approach.

So, what is marketing anyway?

For fear of also adding to the confusion, I will venture carefully into the last section. I will not go into my theories here, but I will leave you with the one guideline that is prevalent in each article on marketing (and its nothing new);

Marketing yesterday, today & in the future is all about relationships, a marriage of sorts. How you convey this & how you get to build & keep relationships profitable is up to your entire company. Your company culture, your sales team, your product developers & even your finance team are part & parcel of this (sometimes very complex) relationship.

The key for you, as the marketing manager, is to integrate yourself within your company & industry to truly get to know how to start, grow & keep them.

A blog by Elsjene Burger

What is the answer to B2B marketing? Personally, I don't think anyone can give you a straight answer or pretend to know all the answers, but I do think that getting back to the basics can definitely be beneficial.

If you zhave the answers to below questions, you are already one step ahead to get to a strategy that will give you the competitive edge:

How do clients find you?
What is your value proposition – what makes you better than your competitors?
Is your Corporate Identity easily identifiable & used throughout your business?
What is the content/collateral that your clients & prospects mostly want or need?
What is their roadmap/experience once they find you?
What are the steps in the buying process & how easy is it to follow?
What is the after-sales customer experience?

There are at least 8 to 15 questions underneath each of these 7 questions to get to the most comprehensive answer, but just getting main answers already goes a long way to seeing where you need to improve.

For example, have you considered being transparent when it comes to your pricing structure & publishing this on your website? According to a study done by UK company, BaseONE, they cited that publishing your pricing information is becoming increasingly important in the B2B sphere.

For some companies this seems impossible, but we should learn from our brilliant B2C counterparts. If I plan to buy something online & there is no price on a website, I simply move on to the next website.

Sometimes it really is impossible to give pricing information due to pricing differences based on volume & area, but giving a 'from' or sample price is also a great idea.

What about your buying process? Is it a long, tediously drawn-out 18 month process? Then keep your clients engaged during this process; Remind them of the benefits of your service or product, make them part of the process & keep them interested every step of the way.

There has never been a clear cut way forward, but keeping your prospect needs in mind all the time must be your number one consideration to ensure your future success.

A blog by Elsjene Burger

Remember the corner shop aunty giving you a sweet when you went to buy bread & milk on behalf of your mom?

Remember the pharmacist giving you a chance to pop a balloon to win something just because you bought more than a certain amount worth of medicine or bath salts?

Those shops who had the friendliest staff & made my experience with them a little bit more personal, were my favourites. I went back time & time again because I felt a personal connection even if it was just because they fed my sweet-tooth; at least it was done with a smile & genuine interest in how I was doing.

In the B2B market, we are bombarded with 'how-to' guides on making marketing personal with automation; How to write with your specific audience in mind; How to add value before the client even knows who you are, etc etc.

Is marketing automation & content marketing really the only answer for all B2B companies out there?

I don't think so. Here's why:

Resource restrictions: Time & money. It takes a lot of time & quite a few approvals to get one article written. According to 'those-who-know' you need to publish an article on LinkedIN at least once a week, tweet at least 4 times a day, etc etc. This process can take from 1 to 8 & even more working days to just finish one article. With many B2B companies stuck in the perception that all they need to survive is a sales team, they usually only have one general marketing manager or admin person with no budget for more or to outsource.
Sometimes a company's products have so many non-disclosure agreements it will take the Hague court to get to an even vague description.
People tend to forget that your best ambassadors are your clients & whether they are happy with your product & your service. In the relentless mission to constantly crunch content & update the database, the marketing team tends to forget one of the most important processes - the after sales customer experience.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to break through the content clutter

So, what is the answer to creating awareness for B2B companies & their products & services?

Getting back to the basics.

Which is another topic altogether (and can be found here 'link to Getting back to basics article' ).

A blog by Stefan de Beer

Landing on the official website for the Bootstrap Framework & quoted from the front page.

"Quickly design and customize responsive mobile-first sites with Bootstrap, the world’s most popular front-end open-source toolkit, featuring Sass variables and mixins, responsive grid system, extensive prebuilt components, and powerful JavaScript plugins." - https://getbootstrap.com/

However, when an average person reads the above quote, they might not understand it. In plain English, you could understand this as saying that the Bootstrap 5 framework is ideally suited for mobile website applications. It is also pretty lightweight when a basic structure gets used, making web pages load faster. So let the facts speak for themselves.

Bootstrap History

"Bootstrap was created at Twitter in mid-2010 by @mdo and @fat. It had a major facelift in 2020. - write about this. Prior to being an open-sourced framework, Bootstrap was known as Twitter Blueprint. A few months into development, Twitter held its first Hack Week and the project exploded as developers of all skill levels jumped in without any external guidance." - https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/about/history/

Boostrap Statistics

Millions of developers & 40,000+ companies use the Bootstrap framework. Spotify uses Bootstrap on their homepage.

Bootstrap is used by about 28.0% of all the websites whose JavaScript library we know and that rank in the top 1,000,000.

According to https://webtechsurvey.com/technology/bootstrap these websites use the bootstrap framework:

www.paypal.com
dan.com
www.jsdelivr.com
support.microsoft.com
www.stackpath.com

At the time of writing this blog article, there were more than 10 Million websites using the bootstrap framework.

So if you would like a super-fast website, Bootstrap 5 is a great way to go.

At wevolution, we also use the Bootstrap 5 framework for static websites that do not require a database.

A blog by Stefan de Beer

BASH (Bourne Again Shell) is a terminal (or a console) used to manage software & tasks on Linux.

BASH is comparable to the DOS command prompt on Windows operating systems but easier to read.

Since I started using Linux (around 2009) & BASH has helped me become a better general developer. It soon became a part of my daily routine.

It allowed me to run a few installation shell scripts, which allowed me to launch a demo Drupal website much faster than having to click around a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

I was thrilled that there was another alternative to Windows, mainly because I could not afford to purchase a Professional License for Windows at the time & did not want to pirate it.

I remember the day my friend came to me & introduced me to the Ubuntu Operating System.

I felt like it was perhaps not as easy to use at first as I was only familiar with Windows operating systems. I felt nervous at first due to my unfamiliarity with Ubuntu. I started keeping notes on how to run commonly used BASH commands on my Ubuntu OS & that helped a lot.

After realising that I wanted to build websites, it became clear that I needed to install my LAMP (Linux - Apache2 - MySQL - PHP) server locally to assist my development efforts toward Drupal CMS websites.

I then eventually got this to work & felt like I had achieved something decent, as I could now launch my websites to my desktop computer at the time.

With BASH, launching a demo Drupal website was very straightforward, & with a basic understanding of Ubuntu, I was making progress using free & open-source software.

Installing software on Ubuntu happens at a rapid pace & is very stable when using BASH.

After some years passed, I started telling other friends & family about Ubuntu & free software. I got a good feeling, someone who helped people save money on license fees for software.

I remember seeing an old friend one day. He said that he had an old laptop that didn't run very well using the newer versions of Windows & updating was not an option. I suggested we try installing a version of Linux called XUbuntu, which runs smoother on older computers with less impressive specs. The endeavour was successful.

He was able to migrate to Linux from Windows after becoming familiar with the new Linux Operating System. It didn't take too long because we used BASH to update & upgrade all stable software packages for XUbuntu.

After using Linux for 21-years, I recommend using BASH on your Linux OS.

A blog by Stefan de Beer

Being a resident of South Africa since birth, growing up & following the path of a web developer, there has been ups & downs. One aspect of being a web developer is having a stable flow of electricity (power). Before 2010 when we hosted the world cup football tournament, power was an insignificant issue at the time. Even from home, it was a possibility to manage your own hosting servers etc.

Power has changed in recent years and proven itself as a non-reliable source for web development. Power outages appear more often now than ever before due to continuous failing infrastructure in the country. This means that web developers have had to adjust to meet the challenges of not having the power to use machines to develop.

Yes, laptops do have a source of power that should last long enough to save your work but that also is not enough many times to provide power for around 2-hours of load shedding. Developers have had various solutions to this problem, some being:

Backup Power Supply (PSU)
Solar Power (For PSU to charge)
Spare Notebook Battery (that can be charged & inserted when needed)
Relocating to where the power grid does not experience load-shedding.
Going to a coffee shop with a generator, WiFi & plugs
Taking a break in load-shedding times
Tethering your Mobile phone to connect to the internet
Creating content from a smartphone & sending that to be loaded when the power returns. (with some leftover power on the battery)

These workarounds include pricy options out of the budget range of many developers, for the common folk the options are pretty limited, but there are options.

Being able to work consistently, not being interrupted & being able to change according to the environment to manage the day's tasks that need completing becomes valuable if you wish to achieve your goals as a developer. Having a plan for Load-shedding in South Africa is now a part of all our lives, or get left in the dark, literally.

Time management is a part of the solution when choosing how to spend the time when the power is out. To measure your productivity, you can see what options are available to spend the time working on your projects. Mobile devices help a lot when it comes to power outages and can be used to increase productivity in those dark times.

A blog by Stefan de Beer

Drupal 8 is the latest version of the popular open source content management system (CMS) Drupal. It is a powerful and versatile platform that can be used to create websites of all sizes and complexity. Drupal 8 is a major upgrade from its predecessor, Drupal 7, and offers a number of new features and improvements.

Drupal 8 is built on the Symfony framework, which is a popular and well-supported PHP framework. This allows developers to take advantage of the many features and components of Symfony, such as the Dependency Injection Container, the Event Dispatcher, and the Routing Component. This makes it easier to develop complex applications with Drupal 8.

The user interface of Drupal 8 has been completely redesigned and is now much more intuitive and user-friendly. It is also fully responsive, meaning that it looks great on any device, from desktop computers to mobile phones. This makes it easier for users to access and manage their content, no matter what device they are using.

Drupal 8 also includes a number of new features that make it easier to create and manage content. For example, it now supports the WYSIWYG editor, which allows users to easily create and edit content without having to write HTML code. It also includes a new content moderation system, which allows administrators to review and approve content before it is published.

In addition, Drupal 8 includes a number of new features that make it easier to customize and extend the platform. For example, it now supports the Twig templating language, which makes it easier to create custom themes and modules. It also includes a new configuration management system, which makes it easier to manage and deploy changes to the site.

Finally, Drupal 8 is highly secure. It includes a number of security features, such as the Secure Pages module, which prevents unauthorized access to sensitive pages. It also includes a number of other security features, such as the Content Access Control module, which allows administrators to control who can access certain content.

Overall, Drupal 8 is an excellent content management system that is powerful, versatile, and secure. It is easy to use and customize, and it offers a number of new features and improvements that make it easier to create and manage content. It is a great choice for anyone looking to create a website or web application.