Focus Consulting Bridges the Digital Divide

InfoFree.com profile of Focus Consulting
Sources: Interviewed Focus founder/president Patrick Allmond, reviewed company

website, etc.

Photo contact: Allmond, 405-850-1034

Focus Consulting Bridges the Digital Divide

by Leo Adam Biga 

Online Isn't Optional Anymore

Patrick Allmond has been riding the digital wave since completing a military stint and entering the business world. In a corporate career he never felt comfortable in he found his true niche as a teacher and presenter on technology topics. He left the What-Makes-Sammy-Run? treadmill to contract out his expertise for a company. Finally, in 1998, he went entrepreneurial and opened his own business with his wife Angela Tapley-Allmond.

Their Focus Consulting began as an IT support and software development service. Now it provides social media and online marketing support, training and consulting.

His ideal clients, he says, are companies with fewer than 10 employees looking to establish an initial or improved online presence. Focus designs, launches and maintains social media systems and social networking strategies. He says online marketing is a necessity today if a business is to realize its potential.

"All of us want to be able to close business but there's several steps you need to take along the way before that happens. People need to know you exist and some information about your company and this is especially true in the Internet age, where people are shopping online and comparing several companies in a matter of minutes. If you don't have a presence online and a good presence people are going to blow right by you. Awareness is really important."

Doing business smart today, he says, means having, “at a bare minimum, a website, and then from there, you should start branching out by using social networks to push people to your site." He recommends clients blog and use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. He practices what he preaches by utilizing all these tools and more to promote his own business and to connect with peers and potential client prospects.

Making the Most of Your Online Profile

It's one thing to have a website, it's another to have an effective one.

"I tell people they have to be updating their website on a regular basis and talking about the terms in your field or industry that people use in searches. Search engines live and breathe off of relevancy and recency and if you are talking about relevant terms people are talking about and searching and if you've done it recently that's going to affect your SEO ranking and float you to the top."

He says social media engagement will be increasingly important as search engines begin taking into account social media indicators in ranking sites.

Focus gives clients as much or as little tech support as they need.

"We can sit down with somebody and coach them through a few hours and let them go off and running on their own," says Allmond. "We have other clients we bill on a monthly retainer basis who want someone to do it and to do it right and want it done on a regular basis. We meet with them for an hour or two a month and we have our marching orders for the next 30 days."

Prospecting Combines Old School and New School Marketing

With his business in a growth mode in a still volatile economy he knows it’s vital to have a broad client base and different avenues for reaching prospects. That's why he subscribes to InfoFree.com as a lead generation source.

"I need to make sure I'm diversifying the ways I'm getting business inside the door,” he says, “and I really enjoy the ability InfoFree gives me to filter lists, so that I can target people who more than likely can afford my services but are also of a certain size. I'm targeting businesses under 50 employees, with a really good credit rating. I can then customize my message to be in synch with the filtered lists InfoFree gives me."

He just sent out his first direct mail appeal to a targeted list and, he says. “now I'm waiting to see what the return is going to be on that."