When an IT contractor has multiple offers on the table, oftentimes she will find herself accepting the position that offers her the highest hourly rate. Similarly, employers, when presented with multiple candidates for an open IT contract position, may simply select the one that has the lowest hourly rate. For the contractor, selecting positions based on price alone is logical and oftentimes beneficial. But unfortunately for the employer, selecting IT candidates in this manner is usually detrimental. Why?

I believe the answer lies in the qualifying word “IT”. Consider the following: In a company with many data entry employees, the difference between the most and least productive employees with at least 5 years of experience might be by about a factor of 2. In an auto repair shop, the productivity difference between the fastest and slowest mechanics with at least 5 years of experience might be by about a factor of 3 or 4. But in the IT industry, the difference between the most and least productive software developers with at least 5 years of experience might be by more than a factor of 100! Not only that, but more often than not, the difference is not only in how long something takes, but whether or not the task is successfully completed at all. So from a cost effectiveness standpoint, selecting a developer that charges 10 times more than another could very well end up being the less expensive option. It is not uncommon for one IT professional to work on something for 3 months without success before the employer loses their patience and brings in someone else who ends up building the same thing in just a few days.

Of course, you certainly cannot predict the productivity of someone based solely on their hourly rate, and inevitably there will be some people who have higher hourly rates despite being less productive than their counterparts. This is one of the main reasons that companies use IT staffing firms to help them select the most cost effective candidates; it’s oftentimes difficult to separate the talent from the mediocre when all the resumes look the same. Properly navigating the sea of candidates can be a daunting task, but while you’re in the thick of it, remember that hourly rate is only one variable in the true cost of a new resource.

Visit our IT Staffing page for more information about our services.

Customers have a choice when they are purchasing any product or service. Big companies spend millions of dollars every year just to get potential customers to visit their websites. You may have noticed many of these companies no longer even market their phone number, their goal is to get you to come to their website so they have the opportunity to sell you before you visit their competition.

This same business model is at the heart of what Electron Consulting can do for your business. Our goals it to give you the opportunity to sell anyone that is interested in whatever you are selling. The reality is, the companies that get found first usually get the sale. This way of thinking is accurate for nearly any product or service. The number one place people look for something to buy or a service to hire is the Internet.

If your website is not found in the top five results, you will never reach the customers that are searching for you.

Fifteen years ago companies would spend massive amounts of money just to have an eye catching ad in the Yellow Pages. The reason is they knew that if they didn’t catch the customer’s eye right away, they couldn’t possibly make the sale. These days this has all been replaced by websites and more specifically search engine marketing.

A search engine is basically a massive Yellow Pages that spans the globe. Must like a Yellow Pages, a search engine has extremely expensive paid ads – These are the ads that appear at the top and on the side of the search results and they also have the organic results. However, results are no longer displayed alphabetically. Instead, results are based on the relevance of the website to the search that was just performed. Electron Consulting are experts at making your website appear more relevant than your competition for the keywords people are searching for to find you. Thus, your site will naturally move up the rankings until it is the first website that comes up in the organic results.

This process will give you exposure to every customer that is searching for the products or services you offer.

For more information about our service offerings and what Electron can do for you, contact us at (888) 598-2080.

Print Marketing: Print marketing such as newspapers and direct mailing campaigns is an excellent way to reach potential customers in your general area. These campaigns are typically very inexpensive, but provide only mixed results. No matter what product or service you are offering, there are people out there that simply are not interested. Therefore a portion of every dollar you spend on print marketing is completely wasted. In addition, another portion is wasted as there is a large portion of people that are not swayed by print media. They do not read direct mail and skip over ads in newspapers. While a well written, attention grabbing ad can produce excellent results, most direct mail or newspaper campaigns fail to offer a positive return on investment.

Radio and Television Ads: Another great way to market a business is with radio and television ads. These campaigns can reach a massive audience and are often great ways to increase your market share. The downside, of course, is these forms of marketing are extremely expensive. Most markets in the US are dominated by the same massive companies that buy up all the airtime. These massive corporations make it virtually impossible for a smaller company to compete with them in any market. Due to the competition amongst themselves, the cost for radio and television time is cost prohibitive for any business that isn’t listed in the Fortune 1000.

Internet Marketing: Internet marketing has become one of the best ways to promote a small business locally. The main reasons are it is very inexpensive, offers a solid return on investment, and is laser targeted to potential customers that are searching the Internet for YOU! There is no strong form of advertising than when your customers are looking for your product and service, and you have the opportunity to sell them right there on the spot.

Most people that are searching the Internet right now are not passively looking for something that they may or may not purchase or use down the road. An Internet search is an active process used by someone searching for something to buy, somewhere to go, or something interesting to read.

A great example of this is a fictitious pizzeria in a suburb of Chicago, let’s say Oak Park. When someone who orders pizza sees an ad in the newspaper, they may say “I’m going to try this place next time I order”. Of course, this may or may not ever happen. When they hear a radio spot for this pizzeria, they may want to try it and simply forget the name of the place before they place their next order.

However, when they search the Internet for a pizzeria in Oak Park, they are not doing so because they want to order a pizza next week. They are hungry! When a pizzeria comes up high in the search engine this is usually the company that will get the order. They may bounce around through the first few results, but if your pizzeria is not listed in the top 5, it will not get the order. If it is, you have narrowed the field down to the first 3-5 results.

For more information about our service offerings and what Electron can do for you, contact us at (888) 598-2080.

We go well beyond the traditional SEO tactics that most of our competitors use. We have internal planning sessions before the launch of any new campaign to identify your audience and think of ways we can attract your potential customers to your website. In addition, all of our campaigns are 100% manual; we do not use any shady practices or automated software to rank your website in the search engines.

We use a slow and steady approach that cements your website at the top of the search engines for the keywords we target. It is very easy to blast your link out to countless web properties to rank a website for medium competition keywords. However, the search engines catch onto these tactics very quickly. While your site may be ranked at the top for weeks or even in some cases months, it will eventually get penalized by the search engines and your entire site will be delisted. This is a catastrophic even that happens to unsuspecting website owners every day.

Everything Electron Consulting does for your website is approved by Google and the other search engines. In fact, we subscribe to their best practices to ensure your site will never be penalized for any reason. This is the only way SEO should be done and everything else will eventually get your site penalized.

We are aware that there are many providers out there that charge one-time nominal fees to rank your website for whatever keyword they choose. However, these services are mostly scams conducted by overseas business. By the time you realize that your site is no longer ranked, the company is nowhere to be found. Electron Consulting is here to stay and your site will never lose rank or be penalized for our tactics.

For more information about our service offerings and what Electron can do for you, contact us at (888) 598-2080.