Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC

Please describe your company and your position there.

Global Data Fusion provides employment screening (background checks & drug testing) for companies around the U.S. My position is Chief Operating Officer/Owner.

For what projects/services did your company hire Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC, and what were your goals?

We needed a new and more powerful website. We wanted to create a website that utilized a newer and more visually appealing version of WordPress and to drive new clients to our site.

How did you select Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC and what were the deciding factors?

Finding a local, and responsive design agency was not an easy task. From the moment I called for a quote, I had no trouble getting a live person on the phone whenever I had a question, and set up a proposal meeting with the Firefly Team.

Once we completed the proposal meeting, I had no doubt that Firefly was the team for Global Data Fusion.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Kickoff meeting was held to gather our company's information, style, offering, and marketing desires. Site mock up was created for approval via in-person meeting. Data was transferred to Firefly from our old website via email, and copywriter was commissioned for added SEO effect.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Office manager, design specialist, and project manager.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Shortly after launching the new website, we noticed an increase in traffic and were told by many clients and perspective clients that the website looked good.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Information stream was good...no complaints at all. Phone conversations and email communication were used and in some cases in person meetings were held.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We truly enjoyed the family atmosphere and willingness to work and listen. We love the Firefly team from receptionist to office manager.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I can't think of anything that needs improvement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Susanna Garcia: I’m one of the two managing partners in the company. eNovative Piano is a web-based curriculum that provides the content to universities, public and private high schools, and middle schools throughout the country. We’re moving into having international clients.

We market to teachers, not to students. Teachers have the ability to design curriculums for their needs. There are different things for teaching elementary school and college students.

What challenge were you trying to address with Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC?

SG: We’ve been with them for over 10 years. We create all of our content in-house, and Firefly Marketing Solutions’ role has been to develop our website.

We have a unique product. There were no models for it, and we’re not business people; we’re educators. We were trying to provide great things to other teachers, with no models. It took a lot of planning and revising, so the first challenge was simply design. Most of our background with them has been in website design.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SG: Starting out, we had many planning meetings where we discussed what we thought our needs were. Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC, created a custom platform to deliver multimedia content.

We also had to manage user subscriptions, given that that’s how we sell our material. We had to have integration with a payment gateway and a bank. It was a lot of custom website design and business integrations and the maintenance of that throughout the years.

The site itself is template-based, so all the pages have a uniform look with colors and page elements. We have a custom media player for audio, video, and slideshow files.

The original site was custom, and the new one is built on WordPress.

What is the team composition?

SG: We’re working with 4–6 people from their team. They put together a specific team for us with an account manager, a dedicated programmer, a designer, and an agency manager.

How did you come to work with Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC?

Chan Kiat Lim: We looked online for local companies. There’s a lot of opportunity to work with people overseas or in different parts of the country, but we thought it would be difficult not to have in-person discussions.

Today, it would be easy to work remotely, but it wasn’t as common 10 years ago. We felt that having someone local was important.

SG: Lafayette, Louisiana, is a small city, and there weren’t that many options. We contacted a few other people, but at the time, they weren’t able to give us the kind of product we were looking for. Firefly Marketing Solutions was there. They were creative and wanted to work.

Before any work was ever done, we spent a lot of time hashing out the details.

How much have you invested with them?

CKL: Since we’ve started with them, we’ve spent between $300,000–$400,000. This includes design, hosting, and maintenance.

What is the status of this engagement?

CKL: We started working with them in 2008, and our product launched in the spring of 2009. We started the next version before December 2018, and we finished in the last couple of months.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

SG: Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC created everything in terms of the new platform's look and feel. We do all the content, but they’re the designer.

We’ve done very well in terms of the number of users. Since the new platform came online, we’ve expanded. I’d say we’ve tripled our subscription base.

We’ve gotten positive responses from teachers on the new platform. The new design and features have been well-received. People are enthusiastic and excited about the new platform, especially longstanding users. Reports from new users are positive as well.

CKL: The platform is something new. It hadn’t existed before, so everything had to be done from zero. Their team was resourceful in getting everything done. They listened to us, learned what we wanted, and responded to that.

How did Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

CKL: We have group meetings where we talk to the programmer and designer, in order to have a cohesive idea of what’s being done. We work closely with them, and what we appreciate is that they allow us to work with their programmers and be an integral part of the process.

A lot of programmers don’t like to be told what to do, but they’ve allowed us to be a part of the design and programming process so that we can hash out the things we need.

What did you find most impressive about them?

CKL: We’ve only worked with one provider, so it would be hard for us to compare them.

What we appreciate the most about Firefly Marketing Solutions is that they’re willing to work with us and make us a part of the design and programming process. That’s made a difference. There’s a synergy that we wouldn’t have achieved otherwise.

Even with our craziest demands, they’re willing to accommodate, and that’s something we appreciate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

SG: It’s a very complicated site where things sometimes go wrong. We’ve been surprised by some issues, but their team has always been quick to respond to our concerns, and if there’s a problem, they’ll fix it as quickly as they can. They’re willing to put checks in place to make sure that whatever’s gone wrong doesn’t go wrong again.

As the company's public-facing part, my co-founder and I don’t like it when things go wrong, but our users are always pleased with the speed with which we get things fixed. We have a good relationship with our teacher subscribers and with Firefly Marketing Solutions, so we can deal with the ups and downs of having a website.

CKL: Firefly Marketing Solutions is a smallish company, and our relationship with them started more than 10 years ago. In the beginning, there was less consistency because we had different account managers. That’s something we voiced, and they listened to us. We’ve been working with the same group of people for the last several years, and that’s made a huge difference.

While there have been some issues, they were willing to work with us in terms of what we needed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

CKL: We had an idea of what the site should be, but we had no programming knowledge. Over the years, we’ve had to learn that we have to be clear in articulating what we want and to create mockups and similar material.

In this project, we were designing an educational tool, not just a website, and we’ve learned that putting things down and giving them visuals helps a lot.

SG: We’ve also had to learn how to communicate. We’ve been working with them on the design, but I know they’re going forward as a marketing company. One thing we had to learn was that they take the client literally and don’t read between the lines. We have to say exactly what we’re thinking, and this is why it’s important to have mockups and clear descriptions.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an umbrella group that includes several entities within the ambulance, EMS, and safety fields.

What challenge were you trying to address with Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC?

We hired them to convert our websites to WordPress.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They moved all of our websites to WordPress and redesigned them. This included 5–6 websites in total. They worked to make them accessible for mobile users as well. They continue to act as our web maintenance partner. 

What is the team composition?

We primarily have one point of contact, but we’ve worked with 2–3 designers and several technical people. 

How did you come to work with Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC?

I had worked with them previously at another company. They’re also local to us. 

How much have you invested with them?

I think we’ve spent about $35,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2017. The bulk of the WordPress work was done in October–November of that year, but we have an ongoing relationship.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Prior to working with them, our sites were pretty stagnant. Now, they’re much more scalable and it’s easy for us to make updates as needed. They provided us with a product that’s adaptable to our needs. 

How did Firefly Marketing Solutions, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily worked with them via email and using Google Drive to share documents we needed to collaborate with them on. It worked really well for us. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Them being local to us has been really helpful. They understand the challenges that we face in our area. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would appreciate it if they could provide more frequent updates on their progress during a project. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear from the beginning about what your expectations are, but also be sure to remain flexible and open-minded.