​February 9, 2016
Expert Rentals
8126 Veterans Memorial Pkwy, St. Peters, MO 63376
636-379-4933

​February 11, 2016
K&D Countertops
2760 State Hwy K, O'Fallon, MO 63368
636- 294-3750

​February 24, 2016
Bark 2 Basics
107 O'Fallon Commons Dr, O'Fallon, MO 63368
636-272-2620

​February 24, 2016
Bark 2 Basics
107 O'Fallon Commons Dr, O'Fallon, MO 63368
636-272-2620

​February 26, 2016
Supercuts
2973 Hwy K, O'Fallon, MO 63368
636-294-6686
The O'Fallon Chamber of Commerce & Industries is committed to promoting the economic vitality of O’Fallon and the St. Charles County Region by engaging its members in networking and educational opportunities, while advocating for pro-business public policy.

Meet Pat Turner with LWCS...
Tell us about yourself.
I  grew up in St. Louis Mo. and graduated from Parkway Central High School.    My wife Donna and I just celebrated our 47th wedding anniversary.  Our sons and their wives and our 6 grandchildren all live here in O’fallon.  I spent 18 years as a land surveyor in St. Louis and St. Charles counties.  My wife and I were missionaries for 20 years, 18 of those in Quito, Ecuador.  I was the Upper School Principal of The Woodlands Christian Academy in the Houston area.  From 2009 to 2014 I was the principal and Superintendent of Living Word Christian School here in O’fallon.  I am currently the LWCS Campus Pastor and Development Officer.  I am a 10 year cancer survivor and a survivor of a triple by-pass heart surgery.  My wife and I attend Grace Community Chapel.
 
 
Tell us about your organization.
Families from 41 different area zip codes, covering more than 4 counties, take advantage of the exceptional education available at Living Word Christian School.  We have two campuses; a PreK - 5th grade campus, located in St. Peters, and a middle school and high school campus, serving 6th- 8th grade and 9th - 12th grade, located in O’Fallon, MO, two blocks from the TR Hughes Ballpark where the River City Rascals play their home games. 
 
We believe that God is the source of all truth, and all knowledge stems from Him.  God has chosen to reveal Himself through both natural and special revelation.  We integrate Christian truth into all courses and activities.  Qualified teachers—many with advanced degrees—teach over 80 different classes.
 
What is the mission/vision of your organization?
“The mission of Living Word Christian School is to assist Christian families in equipping students with a Christ-centered education, empowering them to impact the world for the glory of God.”
 
What do you do to serve your clients best?
We serve our clients best by having authentic relationships all the while providing quality education with a Biblical worldview.  At LWCS, a student doesn’t “slip through the cracks.”  We work diligently to make sure the student is flourishing academically, spiritually, and socially.
 
What are you most looking forward to in the next 5 years for the company?
Over the next 5 years we are looking forward to expanding our campus and programs and partnering with more families.
 
Why would you recommend the O’Fallon Chamber?
I recommend the O’Fallon Chamber because of their people who exhibit non-stop energy!  They work diligently to bring the right people together through partnerships and networking.  The O’Fallon Chamber is working to help all businesses and industries have more exposure not only to O’Fallon, but the greater community of the St. Louis region and state.

1145 Tom Ginnever, O'Fallon, MO 63366
636-978-1680 ​

​Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the committee members, sponsors, donors and attendees of Taste of Vegas Casino Night! The evening was a great success for the O’Fallon Chamber of Commerce & Industries.
 
Events like Taste of Vegas (and the upcoming Firecracker Run) mean much more than a really good time. These fundraisers help your Chamber to keep membership investments at a rate that is affordable to businesses of every size so that we can offer benefits and services to any business who wants them. We want to see all businesses succeed and the monies raised from Taste of Vegas help us to do just that.
 
One of the ways that we are able to assist our members is through continuing education. We do this in a variety of ways; the easiest may be our Coggno Online Training program. The training can be found on the Chamber’s website under Creating Growth. There are over 1,000 categories of training courses available ranging from Social Media to Working with Reactive Chemical, and everything in between. This is a great asset for many of our members who might not have the time to send their employees (or themselves) out of the office for a day of training. These courses can be done from the comfort of your desk, for minimal cost and most even offer a certificate of completion for employee files. If you haven’t roamed through the variety of courses lately, I encourage you to do so soon as the provider is always adding new training.
 
You will also start to see information about our Spring Seminar Series. These free seminars will be held on Friday mornings from 8:00-9:00 a.m. at the Chamber office beginning April 1 and running through May 13. The topic being covered, again, have a wide range from Creating a Healthy Workplace to Succession Planning for Key Employees. These seminars are a great way to start your day.
 
These are just a few of the opportunities your Chamber offers in accordance with our mission statement to provide educational opportunities.
 
I look forward to seeing you all soon!

Mark Crank
2016 Chairman of the Board

If you actually have this question on your mind, my guess is either that you are struggling to make digital marketing work or that you’ve heard from another business owner who’s finding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in St Charles to be a challenge. In either case I’m here to tell you that digital marketing does work in St Charles, just as it can work anywhere. However, as with anything, there are always pitfalls to trap the unwary or rather the ever-busy small business owner who has little time to focus on digital marketing strategy and tactics.

Some Common Digital Marketing Mishaps to Avoid
Busy as you are though, if you can spare a little time to read this post, I’d like to share a few mistakes that are commonly and unwittingly made by businesses getting their feet wet with digital marketing, paid search, and SEO in St Charles and other locales across Missouri. After all, when you know what the pitfalls are, it’s a whole lot easier to avoid them.

Skipping the Strategy
Without first putting together a solid strategy, digital marketing can indeed become an endless investment of time, effort, and money with little in the way of tangible results. That’s a real tragedy, given that digital marketing performance is actually measurable, a quality lacking in more traditional marketing disciplines.

I liked the concise way that Forbes contributors Brent Gleeson and Jeffrey Baskin laid out the key elements of a digital marketing strategy in their article titled 3 Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2015. To condense their explanation even further into some quick bullets, the essence of Gleeson’s and Baskin’s message is that good digital marketing strategy development requires:

• The effort to understand your marketplace and its trends
• An analysis of your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
• The identification of objectives and the KPIs that will be used to measure performance
• A clearly defined digital marketing budget

The one requirement I’d personally add to this list is that while considering strategy, it has never been more important to include local and mobile marketing as a priority in your overall plan. This leads nicely into the next mistake to avoid in digital marketing—ignoring all those local consumers who use mobile devices to search and to shop.

Missing Out on Mobile
You might notice that at the end of the last section, I said mobile should be included in your digital strategy AS A PRIORITY. It is a lot different to tacking it on as a secondary feature, which unfortunately, all too many businesses do when planning and executing SEO in St Charles.

Of course, this isn’t an error made only by local Missouri businesses. As Stephanie Walden, a writer for Mashable, points out in her article called How to Improve Your Mobile Marketing Strategy, for every business that integrates mobile fully into its digital marketing strategy, there is one that treats it as an afterthought and as a result, risks losing business to the competition.

In short, mobile is huge and for your digital marketing efforts to be successful, you must design a strategy that effectively targets mobile users in your locality. These will also include people who use products or services that you provide, and who might switch between desktop, smartphone, laptop, and tablet multiple times on their journey through your marketing hourglass.

Cutting Corners with Content
To return briefly to my earlier speculation, perhaps you’re struggling to see results from your digital marketing and wondering why. Maybe you have a solid strategy that prioritizes mobile optimization. Perhaps you update your blog frequently, so you’re doing the necessary to drive your marketing through content creation and … wait … stop right there. Let’s rewind.

When it comes to content, blogging isn’t the be all and end all, but you don’t need to take my word for that. Content marketing guru Neil Patel stresses the importance of content diversification clearly in a recent article for Content Marketing Institute, called Here’s Why Your Content Marketing Strategy is Totally Failing.

Neil writes that while a balance is necessary and you shouldn’t go overboard with many different forms of content, you should at least try different tactics and see what resonates most with your particular audience. You might find your blog is less important to your visitors than some other forms of content.

A Great Way to Avoid These Mistakes
Who has time to make digital marketing work though, when running a small business where you’re all things to everyone? A possible solution is to set aside a digital marketing budget and use it to hire a managed marketing solutions company. That way you can continue to care of business while a service provider (specializing in St Charles SEO and local digital marketing) looks after your online marketing activities.

Changescape Web is one such provider of managed marketing solutions. Why not contact us and see how we can help you? It’s easy to get details of our managed marketing services for digital marketing—just fill out the quick and easy online form and we’ll be right in touch to discuss your needs in more detail. ​