Today we’d like to introduce you to Darren Farnsworth.
Hi Darren, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My dive into the digital world began with a startup company in Silicon Valley in 1999. It of course was a small company and we all had to wear a few hats. This gave me a taste of what the future may bring.
From there, I worked for a wireless solutions company that serviced high-tech companies and local government in the SF Bay Area. To manage my enormous customer and prospect list, I had to learn Microsoft Excel and Word. After seeing the inefficiency with this process, and taking a 3-day Tony Robbins seminar, I was inspired to draw up a detailed blueprint of a customer relationship management system that had several flows/processes based on customer or prospect status. The owner took a leap of faith on my plans and we had it built/customized for Goldmine CRM. This reaffirmed my love for digital organization and optimization.
In 2002, I relocated to Utah to continue selling and servicing wireless solutions. One of my clients then, Willey Ford, seduced me into the auto business. In late 2002, me and a partner designed and developed a custom automotive CRM tool which was built from the ground up. Naturally, this led me to web design, development and search engine optimization for the automotive industry.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
My curse and my blessing is that I have been obsessed with the technology of the future ever since I was a kid. There were notebooks full of futuristic ideas drawn out with descriptions of their functions. Probably all inspired by “The Jetsons”.
Seeing that these ideas were later invented and implemented by others, it inspired me to try to launch these concepts of my own. However, coming up and implementing new concepts is always a challenge. There is definitely a certain timing to everything and admittedly, I’ve been a little too ahead for my own professional good. These “lessons” at the time sometimes feel like a huge loss but eventually, find their way into current practical “cents”.
Speaking of timing, other challenges for business have been the economy and in this current pandemic. My business, 2020 eConsulting, started in 2008 at the peak of the recession. Surprisingly, even though at the time it felt like the end of the world, business was great. On the flip side, marketing during the pandemic has been a strange dance. At first, business was consistent, even though it felt similarly scary, if not more, to 2008. But trying to market products that aren’t available seemed like a waste of time and money. In fact, most businesses had so much more business than they had products (or employees to service these customers). With these changes, you have to be flexible in the way you run your business and the services or offerings that you provide. So with that said, I’m still dancing with it.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
2020ec.com is a digital marketing firm that specializes in building “smart automated websites”. What does that mean? Most sites are what we call “online brochures”. Businesses have these brochures and spend all of their time and money on social sites while practically ignoring their own. We have a different concept. Instead of feeding the content directly to social media, we build websites and train our customers to add that time and content to their own websites. The smart automated website will then send a headline like post on social media with dynamic hashtags, image and link that drives traffic back to your website. This does 2 things. One, it builds your content on your site which equals better SEO. Secondly, this can allow for your site to send automatic emails based upon sales, events and or blog or news about your business.
For example, one of our customers is a live music venue that also serves food. They add their events and menu items into the site and then their smart website does all the work from there.
1) It sends a post to Instagram, Google My Business, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn 10 days before the event
2) It sends a post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn 1 day before the event
3) It sends weekly emails that include the upcoming events and the current menu items (images included)
4) They have TV displays in their business that dynamically show the current menu and upcoming events
5) They have a QR code that goes to their menu and or to their upcoming events
6) Their website has special coding so that when you Google “Events near me”, they show up in Google’s events
You can see video examples of all of these features on our website, https://2020ec.com/sw
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
My general advice for anyone trying to get into digital marketing is to find parts of it that you are most passionate about and hone in on those things. Also, keep in mind that even though things move fast in this field, consumers and your customers take a while to catch on to things. This allows you enough time to become an expert.
Pricing:
- BRONZE (Online Brochure) $224/mo
- SILVER (Smart Website) $427/mo
- GOLD (Smart Website) $793/mo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.2020econsulting.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2020econsulting/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/2020econsulting
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/2020-econsulting-salt-lake-city
- Other: https://darrenfarnsworth.com/
