VisionPoint Marketing

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Raleigh Remodeling and Renovations with Blue Ribbon

04/02/2008 by David LeBouef

The Raleigh construction market is extremely competitive. North Carolina is facing unprecedented growth that is driving commercial and residential development. This makes finding an experienced and trusted residential remodeling and construction company a challenge.

John Sperath and Marcia Townsend who run Blue Ribbon Residential Construction in Raleigh, NC have been facing these challenges with much success.

When we first met, John’s company was taking off but their older website wasn’t meeting their business needs. John felt the site could do a better communicating the companies values, process, and finished projects that showcased John’s design and development skills.

The site needed to generate and qualify leads in a way that allowed for John to make the best use of his time and be efficient as possible. This was an exciting task and during our process we found out how very similar the remodeling and renovation industry is similar to the website design and development process.

We spent time listening to the challenges John faced in the residential remodeling and renovations arena and the goals he was trying to achieve with his business. We also got to see the amazing final results of his work from beautiful remodeled kitchens to luxurious renovated bathrooms. Armed with this valuable information we constructed and designed a website that promoted his services and and showed off his great work in a engaging portfolio where homeowners could start to put shape to their visions for a new renovated kitchen or bedroom.

We launched the website in September and the results to date have been a great success. Visits on the site have increased over 200% with people spending more time learning about the Blue Ribbon’s services and talent in the remodeling and renovation industry and more poeple contact John for estimates on new projects.

Comment | 04/02/2008

VisionPoint settles in to new office space!

02/05/2008 by Tony Poillucci

After almost 2 years of planning, working with architects, looking at locations, picking out flooring and carpeting and furniture and a million other things that we hadn’t thought of, we are finally in our new home in North Raleigh.

The open, collaborative spaces that we’ve built in, have already had an impact on the way we collaborate; and the general feel of the place is having a definite effect on our culture (we all think we’re a LOT cooler than we were last year).

I’ve taken a few pics with my laptop …

Okay, the lighting is terrible, there are still some boxes laying around, and our folks don’t look all that energetic, but what can you expect from my laptop video camera?! You get the idea.

Anyway, we’re still putting the finishing touches on the place but we’d love for you to stop in for a coffee, espresso, tea or other beverage of your choice (for which you must be 21 or older).

See you soon!

Comment | 02/05/2008

A Strategic Business Blog: PaladinandAssociates.com

01/29/2008 by David Millsaps

Social media can be intimidating to for folks over their mid thirties, but that doesn’t mean they can’t leverage their business wisdom and skills on the web to build community around their knowledge and business. One of our customers is Bill Warner, a thoughtful business strategist that has worked with us for years.

We took Bill’s excellent content that he had been running through a popular email newsletter for years, and put it front and center on the new site. Now Bill’s wisdom can sit front and center and prompt potential customers through their own quest for answers. He can engage in the conversation that his customers are considering with a minimum of effort, while retaining the presence and thought-leader positioning.

Each of Bill’s articles was optimized for findablilty and the site was built on the powerful publishing platform, Expressionengine. By using Expressionengine (EE) VisionPoint could focus on extending Bill’s strategic site’s publishing power and leave the spam filtering, content & asset management, and forms system to the unified management of EE. What’s even better? Expressionengine acts as a platform, where Bill can build tools, community features and simple applications to support his core business.

Check out Paladin and Associates: Business Strategists

Comment | 01/29/2008

There is life outside of Facebook!

07/20/2007 by Logan

When I began my summer internship with VisionPoint Marketing, I came in knowing pretty much nothing about the internet and what it had to offer. I was not completely clueless: I could surf the web, instant message with my friends, and was a Facebook expert; but as far as marketing goes-my knowledge ended with banner ads. While I don’t think I will take my career in the direction of internet marketing, the knowledge and experience I have gained while working at VisionPoint has been irreplaceable.

Within my first week I was registered on Stumble Upon, Flickr, Digg, Technorati, Netvibes, and Twitter and started reading a few blogs (Strumpette, Micro Persuasion and Richard Edelman’s 6am). I had never read a blog before and my perception of them prior to working at VisionPoint was that they consisted of a random person’s ramblings on what they had done that day (like what you would find in a live journal). I had no idea that there were social networking sites that existed outside the realm of Facebook and Myspace.

My web education did not end with social networking. I learned all about SEO, Paid Search, web analytics, and email campaigns. One of the biggest thrills was actually updating a website. I had no idea how this was done before arriving at VisionPoint. I was so excited to see what I had posted actually go up live on our VisionPoint site. While I would definitely not categorize myself as a web expert, I know that I am now more web savvy than most of my friends and have come a long way from where I was when I started work at VPM.

Comment | 07/20/2007

WWPGD?

04/24/2007 by Tony Poillucci

I’m often inspired by those who surround me. I try to make it a point to hire and socialize with individuals who know more than I do and who will constantly challenge me so that I continue to grow.

And I’m in the fortunate position to be able to choose most of my friends and coworkers but, as is the case with family, you don’t always get to choose your clients. At VisionPoint, however, we’ve been very fortunate to be in a position where the majority of our clients fall into the ‘thoughtful/challenging’ category as well.

I recently had lunch with one such client and he said something that I found INCREDIBLY inspirational and fresh: “What would Peter Gabriel do?” As peculiar as it may sound, when this successful, multi-talented Director at a leading Biotechnolgy firm finds himself at a decision-making cross-roads in his professional life, he does not look for advice from a business guru or even from a higher-power. He looks to Peter Gabriel.

“What would Peter Gabriel do about this new product launch?”

“Would Peter Gabriel support this research effort?”

Most people know Peter Gabriel for his popular music of the late 1980’s (In Your Eyes, Sledgehammer, Red Rain, etc) but what they don’t know (and what my cleint DOES know) is that he has been a true pioneer and visionary in everything from interactive media to performing arts to business and so on. He brings a new perspective to EVERYTHING he does and for more than 40 years he’s exhibited an UNWAVERING commitment to transcendent creativity.

And this is what my client finds inspiration in. He draws from the qualities that Mr. Gabriel exhibits … the qualities that he would like to exhibit in his own life and in business: creativity, longevity, innovation, invention.

SO I started thinking about this theme of finding inspiration outside of the normal avenues.

If it’s a business decision, does that mean I need to look to Peter Drucker, Tom Peters or Michael Porter? (hmmm, lots of ‘Peters’ in this blog entry for some reason … anyway…) Why not open the latest issue of Science Magazine to see how a ‘molecular interferometer’ diagram could act as a model for the way I present our service offerings in my next sales pitch?

When developing the information architecture for a large-scale higher education web site, why not take notice of how PBSKids.com deals with third-level and on-page navigation?

When developing the new company org chart for growth over the next three years, why not take note from Bill Bellicheck (coach of the three time Superbowl Champs, the New England Patriots) about the importance of having players who are versitile and maleable? (I often ask myself ‘WWBBD?”)

Creative thought and inspiration is something that crosses the boundaries of all markets, industries, verticals. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can apply those to everything from music composition to higher education to the synthetic foam industry to health sciences to dentistry and beyond.