Who is Burning River Marketing and Why the Phoenix? Burning River Marketing is an online marketing services provider specializing in helping small business owners with location-based businesses to get found online. Why? Because we love small business owners and are tired of seeing them miss out on opportunities without a solid online presence AND we’re frankly sick of seeing them getting ripped-off! We started the company in Cleveland, Ohio (thus the burning river) and have home-based offices on the East Side and the West Side (anyone from Cleveland knows that’s a thing) with a commercial space in Cleveland where the virtual team regularly reconvenes. Burning River – Proud to be in Cleveland, Ohio We went with the name Burning River Marketing to pay tribute to Cleveland, our home-base and home to many small businesses that are under-served in the internet marketing industry. However, the multitude of jokes and jabs that Cleveland has taken over the fires on the Cuyahoga River was not our inspiration – instead it was what Cleveland has become since. Our very own Cuyahoga River, infested with pollutants from surrounding industries, having caught on fire 13 times from 1868 to 1969, was the catalyst to a slew of environmental controls that have been instrumental in water and air quality nationwide. Included are the Clean Water Act, Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). Phoenix: Rebirth In Greek mythology a phoenix is a bird that is reborn from its ashes – giving life to a new phoenix. We see Cleveland in a state of rebirth around every corner – Ohio City, Tremont, Gordon Square, the Flats, Public Square, the list goes on. Cleveland, a city that once suffered from brain drain, corruption and decay, is now ranked as the 2nd (to London) as the city every thirtysomething should move to and has more than 1,800 people on waiting lists for downtown Cleveland apartments! As our city is rising from its previous ashes as a corrupt, polluted butt of jokes and into a reborn mecca of fine cuisine, local brews and fun events to attract and retain the Millennials, Burning River Marketing embraces the name and refaces the identity with a phoenix. (and when it catches-on, just remember it started here folks – Sept. of 2015!) So What’s the Small Business Thing? “Small Business” can be classified in a number of different ways – revenue, number of employees, etc. When we say we focus on the small business we’re basically looking for “yes” answers to most of these questions: 1) Is your business going to increase substantially with a better online presence (let’s say 10-20% at first)? 2) Do you have the capacity for an increase of this size (we hate it when you get too many inquiries from your website and have to shut us down)? 3) Are you a location-based business, meaning are your clients in one general geographic area that we can target with local search efforts? 4) Do you currently have a marketing budget for say Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, ValPak, Gold Clipper, Groupon, local cable, etc. that isn’t delivering the ROI you would expect or that you aren’t satisfied is being tracked to determine its effectiveness? ($12-25K/year) 5) Do you NOT have the marketing budget to employ an on-site full-time marketing manager with the skills to manage your website, SEO, local directory listings, national directory listing, creating compelling content for blog posts, social media, email marketing and marketing campaigns? (+$50K/year) 6) Are you NOT getting at least 20% of your new clients from online searches i.e. someone used their desktop or smartphone to search (Google) the services you provide and quickly found your website? If you own or run a business and answered “yes” to theses questions, we’re referring to you when we say “small business” and we know you have limited options for outsourcing your online marketing activities. We provide a comprehensive, holistic approach to tie in all your current marketing activities in order to maximize their impact and your relevance to the search engines. We also use our breadth of expertise and services to do just what our tagline says “Making the Internet Work for Small Business.”