By George Rowand

You’re running a local business, and you have joined organizations, placed ads and have a website up and running. You think you are covered when it comes to getting your business’ name out.
It seems that you’re not. Technology has moved on, and you’d better catch up or you might be sorry. Now a business needs to be doing mobile marketing to keep their name in front of potential customers.
“More and more, the smart phone is the preferred device to access the Internet, and a lot of our local businesses are not catching up to that trend yet,” said Yvonne Herbst, owner of Herbst Marketing in Warrenton. “If you look at most websites on a mobile phone, they don’t look good. They’re too hard to read.”
Herbst’s business has an answer to this problem, plus a way to make mobile marketing pay off for local businesses.

Two ways
“Mobile marketing has two components. The first is a mobile websites that are easy to read, and the other part is mobile messaging, which is the next logical step,” Herbst explained.
The entrepreneur said that she came up with the idea out of necessity. She used to be a yoga teacher, and her former website wasn’t helping her business grow.
“My first website was very difficult to change, so I decided to do this on my own,” she said. “And because I figured out how to do websites on my own, I discovered that I was getting calls from people I never would have heard of otherwise.”
She decided to go mobile early on, and she sees that this is the next wave in advertising on the Internet.
“The smart phone is becoming the preferred device for accessing the Internet, and local businesses need to get on board,” she stated.
According to a Nielsen Research Group survey from 2013, two-thirds of adult Americans now own smart phones, and that percentage has been rising.
“The advantage to mobile marketing is that people get very impatient. If they’re looking for information on-line, they want to be able to find it fast and access it fast. And if you have a website that is mobile, you’re going to attract more customers, you’re going to get more customers, and you’re going to keep them longer.”
The second aspect of mobile marketing that Herbst’s company can provide for a local business is mobile messaging.
“This is like signing up for email, except you’re doing it for text messages,” she explained. “Your business can have a keyword for a customer to text and join, and when they text it, they can get a text with a mobile coupon. So this eliminates the need to cut out coupons and save them and, typically, lose them. Now it will be on your electronic wallet, and it will be right on your phone.”
The possible ways for a business to reach its customers are varied and extensive.
“It could be a dollars off deal or a percentage off deal, and the cool thing about it is once this goes to the customer’s phone, they can share it with their friends,” Herbst said. “When they do that, then you’ve got viral sharing, and it can all happen within a couple of minutes. And it’s very low cost.”
Herbst said that typically there is a set-up cost of around $97 and about $49 a month to send out 500 messages a month.
“This kind of promotion works best for retail, but it could work for a company like a landscape architect. They could offer a $100 coupon for the first $500 or something like that. Or they could have a seasonal special … $100 off your Autumn planting. Let’s say you are a business that is appointment-based, and you have a cancellation. If you have a text-message list, you could pop it out right away, maybe offer a discount if they can come in right away.
“The average open-rate for emails is 20 percent,” she continued. “Text messages are permission-based. The customer has to say they want to receive text messages, so you are not spamming them, and the open rate is 90 percent.”
Herbst said that her aim is to help local businesses obtain customers and to keep them coming back.
“It used to be that if you had a phone number as a business, that was good enough,” she said. “Now, if you don’t have a website, it’s like you don’t have a phone number. And very quickly it’s going to be that if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, it’s almost going to be as bad as not having a website at all.”
She has a simple question for business owners.
“Would you like to have your business in a customer’s pocket 24/7, 365 days a year?”
Herbst Marketing can be reached at (540) 937-7234. The website is herbstmarketing.com .

George Rowand is a member of the board of the Greater Warrenton Chamber of Commerce. This article is provided courtesy of the GWCC.

Gayle Sheldon was an occupational therapist, but she loved gardening, and her opinions were so respected by her friends that they came to her for help.

“People just started asking me, ‘What should I do about this, what should I do about that,’ so I started to realize that I loved what I was doing in the gardens more than I loved what I was doing with patients,” she explained.

That passion led her to throw off one career and go back to school for three and a half years to get a masters in landscape architecture. She’s been running her business – Green Gate Studio – in Warrenton for the past four years. She clearly enjoys the profession.

“It’s tremendous fun being a landscape architect,” Sheldon said. “It’s beautiful because whether you’re working a commercial project or you’re working a residential project or a public project like a park, you’re still dealing with an end user.  The people that you’re working for have a whole set of tastes and lifestyles, and then you’ve got the site itself, and it’s going to be unique with its own sun, its own soil, its own exposure, how the water moves on the property, all of those kinds of issues. Then you try to bring that all together and come up with a design that works. It’s a very complex puzzle, and everything changes all the time … plants get bigger, plants die, and then you have a tough winter like the one we just had. Things change. It’s very challenging.”

Sheldon’s career started 14 years ago, and she has worked in a wide variety of places, from Hilton Head to Baltimore and lots of sites in between. She and her husband decided to settle in Warrenton for a very good reason.

“I worked on Hilton Head, and I liked it,” she related, “but I like it here a lot better. When what you do is all about ‘green,’ you can’t get much more green than what we have here.”

Thinking it through Sheldon said that she aims to create a garden that is more than a one-season wonder.

          “One of the things I try to do create a garden that is working all year long. It’s easy to just throw a bunch of plants in a garden, but if you really want things to keep producing all year around, it’s a complex three dimensional problem, and I always do studies so that the garden is always working.”

She decided to open her own business for a very good reason.

“I had a great job in Baltimore, but I was staying in Baltimore during the week and driving home on the weekends, and that was too tough,” she stated. “My husband and I thought it over, and I said, ‘Well, we’ll hang out a shingle and see how it goes.’”

She hasn’t looked back, in spite of the problems and the anxieties that every business person running a micro-business faces.”

“It’s nice to be able to be in the driver’s seat creatively. I get up thinking about the business and go to sleep thinking about it, and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. You always do this when you’re in the creative field. I never thought I wanted to be a business person, but I like this a lot.”

The challenges get her creative juices flowing, and she likes solving problems. She currently is working on a solution to a problem at the Northern Fauquier Community Park in Marshall.

“They have a drainage problem, and we’re trying to get this solved. It will be a beautiful addition to the park if we can make it happen, as well as solving a drainage problem.

“The jobs that mean the most are the ones where I can say, ‘This is going to be a beautiful solution to a problem,’ or ‘This is going to give them a great place to live outside.’ It just matters so much to me to make that happen.”

Her chosen profession keeps her enthused about life.

“I really am passionate about what I do,” she said. “I love doing it. A day spent sitting at my drafting table coming up with ideas is just glorious. It’s an amazing feeling.”

          Green Gate Studio is located at 189 Jefferson Street in Warrenton. Sheldon can be reached at (540) 347-4943. Her website is greengatestudio.com, and her email address is Gsheldon@GreenGateStudio. com .

By: George Rowand,  member of the Board of the Greater Warrenton Chamber of Commerce

For immediate release

December 28, 2013

Photo Credit: Fauquier Times

Latitudes Fair Trade Store and Great Harvest Bread Co., two adjacent retail shops in Old Town Warrenton, Virginia are constructing a large walk-through opening in the wall that separates their stores.  Construction will begin January 2, 2014 and last two to three days. The stores are located at 104 and 108 Main St., respectively. The work has been approved by the Town and will be performed by Golden Rule Builders, Inc. of Catlett, Virginia.

A hidden door will be installed that can be closed in order to separate the two businesses during hours when one is open and the other is closed or during special events.

Both businesses are part of the Fifth Street Coalition, an informal group of shopkeepers with retail stores at the intersection of Main and Fifth in Old Town. The group seeks to improve business for their stores and for Old Town by advertising cooperatively, hosting special events, and providing support and encouragement for each other.

Contacts:

Pablo Teodoro (703) 401-8128

Lee Owsley (540) 349-2333

Golden Rule Builders (540) 788-3539

Photo courtesy of Jordan Koepke Photography

All Our Award Nominees

Les Nichols Award for Volunteerism (individual award)

Mark Child, Sound Investment Management
Heather Devers, Northwest Federal Credit Union
Elaine Harris, Small Business Support Services
Bob Moe, Moe Technologies, Inc.
Deb Trnka, Edward Jones
Bert van Gils, The Van Gils Law Firm

Excellence in Innovation (company award)
Joel Barkman, Golden Rule Builders
Robert Grouge, Iron Bridge Wine Company
Valerie Riccardi, Edifice Building Group Inc.

Excellence in Community Service (company award)
Steven Cosby, Cosby Insuranc e Group, Inc.
Elaine Harris, Fauquier FISH
Milan Patnaik, Holiday Inn Express & Suites

Excellence in Leadership (company award)
Ray Burt, The Ray Burt Appraisal Company
Kim Jenkins, Union First Market Bank
Margaret McCann, Simply Social 101
Tony Tedeschi, Piedmont Press & Graphics

Excellence in Customer Service (company award)
Micheal and Heather Appleton, Appleton Campbell
Klaus Fuechsel, Dok Klaus Computer Care
Kevin Lee, Oak View National Bank
JT McConnell, Dragon Ridge Home Inspections

Excellence in Entrepreneurship (individual award)
Joel Barkman, Golden Rule Builders
Liz Casazza, Mountain View Marketing
Valerie Riccardi, DCMI Mid-Atlantic Inc

Thanks to the aid of the community, the Boys and Girls Club of Fauquier has a chance to save their home. Three member banks, The Fauquier Bank, Oak View National Bank, and Union First Market Bank have agreed to restructure the mortgage on the club’s building at 169 Keith St. in Warrenton, purchased almost four years ago for $1.8 million. For the restructure to work the Club must still raise $335,000 by year’s end.

The fundraising campaign led by Crystal McKinsey of McKinsey Development has brought in $15,000 thus far from about 100 donors, with a potential matching gift of $100,000.

For the cost of a house, the Boys and Girls Club of Fauquier can keep their home and continue serving children on our community as they have since 1997.

See the full article on Fauquier Now. To donate visit http://bghomecampaign.org/

Each year we bring an array of local winemakers to our table, and with them the experience and beauty of the Piedmont region. A tasting was held every week featuring some of Virginia’s greats, such as Pearmund Cellars, Narmada Winery, and Barboursville Vineyards. Four of their best wines brought by their all-star crews -and, in some cases, the owners themselves- paint a picture of their range of culture, from passion to tranquility. To raise the stakes still more, we presented a monthly Winemakers’ dinner, pairing 5 unique courses with wines crafted by masters of the art. Some of these events, such as the one featuring Gray Ghost Vineyards, gained such popularity that we had to repeat the act a second time to satisfy the demand! Summer in wine country is an exciting time.

Why have we brought this theme back year after year? It brings us full circle back to home, back to the land where our food and atmosphere are grown. More and more of our food comes from around the corner, grown by farmers you may have passed on the road or walked right by on the street. Nothing compares to the finest meats and vegetables grown in the fertile soil within a few miles of us, and the local wines reflect that all the more. It is a match made in heaven.

Now as the seasons begin to change we too must change our flavor. There is more wine out in the rest of the world also worthy of note, and we are bringing that to Warrenton each week. With tastings portraying regions around the world, we can compare Virginia contra mundum. Our food lineup each week is also evolving, with our own pastas made from local ingredients each Tuesday and unique wine paired dinners each Wednesday matching up local food to wines from around the world. With so much happening at the Bridge, we can’t wait to see where the Autumn takes us!

When you boil us down to our most basic identity, we are an expression of the love and commitment that farmers and winemakers here in Virginia pour into their lives’ work. We are the Bridge from field to hearth, from farm to home, and our arms are always open in welcome. The heart of the events we bring you all week is dear to us. It is the simple fact that local wines and local foods grown, raised, crafted and cooked here in the beautiful Piedmont region can stand toe-to-toe with the best that the rest of the world can offer.

We are the Bridge from Virginia to You.

-by Bob Grouge and Jim Hollingshead
Bob Grouge is the owner of The Iron Bridge Restaurant and Wine Company, located in Old Town Warrenton. Jim Hollingshead works at the ‘Bridge’ with Bob and is a Virginia wine enthusiast.

For Immediate Release

June 17, 2013

Mountain View Marketing Voted Best Advertising Company in Best of Culpeper 2013
Mountain View Marketing, based in Warrenton, Virginia, was recently voted Best Advertising Company in the Best of Culpeper 2013. Liz Casazza, president and principal consultant with Mountain View Marketing, commented, “We are very honored to receive this award. Mountain View Marketing looks forward to continuing to serve the Greater Piedmont Region by bringing our clients’ brands to life and growing their businesses.”
The Best of Culpeper program was started three years ago by the Culpeper Star Exponent newspaper. It provides Culpeper and surrounding communities with an opportunity to select the firms they believe provide the best in services.

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For additional information please contact:
    Liz Casazza
540.349.4001
liz@mountainviewmarketingllc.com

“Dear Dennis:

I hope this finds you well and ready for winter!  I think it will be early this year!

I had to share this photo of Reid, one of our Wounded Warriors, who rides with the Warrenton Hunt, courtesy of Mary Ann Ghadban, one of my Capital Campaign Committee Members.

This photo speaks volumes about the success of our programs and the power of partnership!

Reid came to us from Walter Reed.  He rides 2-3 times a week (in the Thursday group session and privately with one of my instructors).

After a group lesson this summer he told me his dream was to fox hunt like his mom.  I told him I thought we could make that happen!

I called Mary Ann who offered to let him use one of her horses and she and her groom would train him.  Reid met at Mary Ann’s farm the very next morning.

He was outfitted by a journeyman in Middleburg.  Special boots had to be crafted to fit over his prosthetic.

Today, he rides at Rainbow and with the Warrenton Hunt.

Our services and lessons continue to blend our entire Rainbow family in a beautiful community of support!

I hope you have a great weekend.  Thank you for the Chamber’s support over the years to make these life uplifting stories possible!

All the best,

Debi”