Offline and Online Marketing

It's one thing for us to do the work you don't know how to do, i.e. designing your website. But, part of working with Chimpy Design Studios is about learning for yourself how to help your business or nonprofit grow and obtain great results without breaking the bank. The reviews and links below are resources that will help you help yourself.

If you have a suggestion for a new resource please send the information to us. We will review the suggestion for possible inclusion on this page.

Skip to a section: Website Hosting | Social Networking | Newsletter Services | Printing Services

Website Hosting

While you can obtain free website hosting services, we do not recommend it, especially for a business or nonprofit. You want to place your best foot forward. Paid web hosting allows you to do that. The providers below are our personal favorites.

Many Web Hosting providers will try to lure you in by offering all kinds of discounts and unnecessary bells and whistles. Here's what you need to be concerned with when using Chimpy Design Studios as your website designer:

Unlimited Disk Storage (preferred)
Email Accounts (preferably with IMAP support)
Unlimited File Transfer
FTP Access
Custom Cron Jobs
MySQL Databases
Audio/Video Support
JavaScript Support
PHP 5 Support
Custom php.ini file Support
.htaccess support

The following Web Hosting providers, along with others, meet these requirements.

Company Name	Website Address	Review
GreenGeeks	GreenGeeks.com	For eco–friendly Web hosting GreenGeeks is your answer, complete with excellent customer service and unlimited storage space. Rated Best Green Web Host by many review websites and an EPA approved Green Power partner, at $6.95 a month you can afford to Go Green. This is the company ChimpyDesign.com is hosted by and we encourage you to check them out too.
HostMonster	HostMonster.com	HostMonster, the #1 rated Web Hosting company by 100 Best Web Hosting and many others, is our preferred choice of Website Hosting companies. We have several websites hosted by them and we encourage all of our clients to check them out. Pricing starts at $5.95 a month and it's very easy to sign up.
Globat	Globat.com	Rated #1 by TopTenReviews.com for 2009, Globat Web Hosting offers great service at low rates. The only reservation we have with them is that after your first year of hosting, they charge relatively high rates for domain renewals. But, being the #1 pick by TopTenReviews.com definitely warrants them a position on our list. Pricing starts at $4.44 a month.
Bluehost	Bluehost.com	Bluehost is an excellent Website Hosting company. They offer reliable service and helpful customer service. Signing up is easy and at $6.95 a month, you won't go broke in the process.

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Social Networking

Social Networking, your most impressive and simple to implement online marketing strategy. Effective social marketing is fun, easy, and can mean more customers or supporters quickly.

When it comes to social networking there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

Social Networking requires your participation
Social Networking should be Free
Don't Spam your social network friends
Provide helpful tips and advice, not just advertisements
The more social networking platforms you're on, the more time you need to invest each day
Be creative, but don't get away from your business/nonprofit purpose
Always seek opinions and advice from others
Have Fun

Social Network	Website Address	Recommendation
Twitter	Twitter.com	One of the most popular social networking tools available to you is Twitter. We recommend you set-up an account specific to your business or nonprofit and Tweet things related to your company/nonprofit and business category through that account. Follow people who show an interest in your business category and most will follow you back if your tweets are relevant and helpful. Helpful is the key word here. You must be willing to provide information people are seeking. Not everyone cares about your big sale, but many people care about news, tips, and stories related to your business category. Small businesses and nonprofit organizations can easily benefit from using Twitter.
facebook	facebook.com	Everyone has heard of facebook and user demographics are becoming more and more expansive every month. For most people, facebook has replaced MySpace and for businesses and nonprofit organizations, facebook is a must-have. Set-up a facebook Page for your company or nonprofit and make sure you invite all of your friends to become fans of that page. You should treat this more as an advertising page for your company than you would Twitter, but also be sure to provide business category posts too. Continue building your fans by promoting your page on your personal profile and asking your friends to do the same. Nonprofit organizations can and should also use Causes to help build their list of supporters.
Biznik	Biznik.com	The Biznik community is specifically professionals helping professionals. In other words, build your network of fellow small business owners who may have more experience than you in your field, make some friends with those people you may wish to work with in the future. You can and should enter full demographics about you and your business. This helps other people find you for networking purposes. It's useful, it's helpful, and account levels are basic or pro - basic is free and pro costs money each month. Free seems just fine for us.
Digg	Digg.com	Digg is somewhat of a hybrid of facebook and Twitter. Basically, you have a profile, you have friends, and you can have photos. But, what you post to the Digg community are links to news articles, videos, and images. This is a great tool if you're using it to promote general knowledge of your business category and with your profile you can link to your website. It's a good tool that doesn't get in the way and doesn't require always saying something to retain friends. Post what's important and only what's important. Can you Digg it?

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Newsletter Services

It's never a bad thing to offer a newsletter to your customers and supporters. In fact, it may be very useful to your online marketing campaign for your growing business or nonprofit. But, if you're going to send newsletters make sure you follow all rules and guidelines set by the CAN-SPAM Act. Not following those rules can get your website and email addresses blacklisted around the globe and you can't afford that.

Some useful tips for composing and sending newsletters include:

Only add email addresses of those who specifically request to be added
Always compose HTML and Plain-Text versions of your newsletter
If your subscriber list is greater than 25, use a newsletter service like the ones below
Immediately honor unsubscribe requests
Maintain a steady schedule for sending newsletters (monthly is best)
Advertise your upcoming sales and events
Share relevant stories and news about your business category
Share helpful tips relative to your business category
Keep the content brief, but informative with an action to take (ex. click here to learn more)
Nonprofit organizations should check for discounted rates

Company Name	Website Address	Review
iContact	iContact.com	iContact is one of the best electronic (email) newsletter services we've come across. In fact, we use iContact to send our monthly marketing newsletter and we recommend all of our clients use their services. Their rates are well within the industry norm and we've had nothing but successful results with them. iContact handles all subscribes and unsubscribes for us, so we don't have to manage each individual email address and they provide easy to understand statistic reports for each newsletter sent. They offer discounted rates to nonprofit organizations.
Benchmark Email	BenchmarkEmail.com	Complete with a streamlined interface making it easy to create and send newsletters, Benchmark Email is a leading competitor for newsletter campaigns. Pricing is competitive and very reasonable, but the real reason we've included them here is because of ease of use. Try them out and see for yourself. Benchmark Email offers a discount to nonprofit organizations.
Constant Contact	ConstantContact.com	Constant Contact is a great example of excellent customer service including webinars, tutorials, and a searchable knowledge base. Pricing could be a little better, as could the campaign reports, but overall, they're not a bad choice and they're eager to help whenever you need them. Constant Contact offers discounted rates to nonprofit organizations.
Vertical Response	VerticalResponse.com	Nonprofit organizations can do email marketing for free through Vertical Response, which is great if you're just getting started and can't justify paying $15 or more each month for sending your newsletters. The only real drawback is the lack of being able to use your own email address as the sender. In other words, you can't send a newsletter from newsletter@yourdomain.com through Vertical Response. The email address used is a Vertical Response email address with your nonprofit name tacked on the front. Since it's free for nonprofits, this is okay while building your subscriber list, but we recommend seeking another service once you reach 250 subscribers.

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Printing Services

Aside from online marketing, developing a healthy relationship with a reputable printing service should be among the top 5 things you want to do when starting your new company or nonprofit. These are the people who can print your business cards, fliers, posters, and help you design and develop custom merchandise/promotion items such as shirts, key chains, and stickers.

What we recommend is that you find a company that is willing to work with you, not just for you, and that you build the relationship by being loyal to that company as best as possible. Some tips for selecting a printing service are below:

Look for a service that can help you with design/printing of more than on product
Think in the future. You may only need business cards today, but tomorrow you might need more
Price isn't everything, always look at quality too
Use the service that makes the most sense to you
Black and white printing should cost less than full-color and you should have the choice

Company Name	Website Address	Review
Jakprints	Jakprints.com	Jakprints really is a do-it-all kind of printing service. They can help you with just about any marketing project that you have, whether it's creating/printing business cards, posters, t-shirts, stickers, admission tickets... Truly, you name it, they can probably do it. We use Jakprints and we've set a few of our clients up with them. No complaints yet!
PsPrint	PsPrint.com	If it's printed on paper or vinyl PsPrint most likely has you covered. And they have very reasonable prices. PsPrint can also help you design and conduct direct mail marketing.
VistaPrint	VistaPrint.com	VistaPrint has some of the best prices around for most of your printing needs and they often have free items to help you promote your business like pens, business cards, and rubber stamps. VistaPrint can handle pretty much anything you throw at them and good customer service to boot.
UPrinting	UPrinting.com	UPrinting is eco-friendly. They use use vegetable-based inks which have lower levels of VOC than traditional petroleum inks and they recycle every unused scrap of paper. They offer full-color print services for paper and vinyl products.

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