She’s been in the SEO and PPC business for 16 years. Sixteen years! You don’t find that kind of longevity and expertise in many web-based businesses. She owns a company that enables her to do the thing that is closest to her heart: find young women with marketing backgrounds and train them to be both expert marketers and technically confident and authoritative, too.
Who is this woman? Terri Jenkins, the owner of W3PR.com. She and her husband, Mark run the company from Albuquerque, with a second office in Los Angeles. Their business involves internet marketing, advertising, SEO, PPC, social media marketing, website conversion, and Google Analytics.
Terri describes herself as a hybrid – both a technologist and an advertising guru. In order to do her work with PPC campaigns, SEO and marketing, she has to keep current with leading edge technology and the technological implications of new developments to her industry. She says her first love was technology and talks with fond memory of having a beta account at CompuServe and being one of the original advertisers on AOL.
Terri and her husband started their business in L.A. During the dotcom boom, they had over 25 employees. After the dotcom crash they struggled, but didn’t give up. They made their office a virtual workplace, with all remote employees. Now their work takes place in the cloud. Recently they moved to Albuquerque, where Terri’s parents live. Their business consists of Terri and her husband, three women who work remotely full time, and one man who is part time.
When we met to talk, she was delighted to share the news that she’d just hired her first new full time employee since 2008, a young woman with a marketing degree. She said the young woman is smart and eager to learn. Terri looks for employees like that. She says, “As part of their training with me, I want to make sure they a cross-trained with the technical knowledge, too.” She adds, “That gives them and me something extra other ad agencies don’t have – a well-rounded knowledge that we can offer.”
Terri said she sees a lot of insecurity and lack of confidence in young women. She enjoys nurturing them and helping them “own what they know and use it unapologetically. Young women need to value their own opinions to be effective and authoritative.”
Sixteen years on the front edge of relevance is impressive in a world of rapid change. I asked how she does it. She said, “I feel like I read for a living.” Her reading is designed to make sure she understands everything in the Internet world that’s being talked about. She uses the knowledge to improve her own business as well as that of her clients. Virtual phone service, cloud based meetings and document sharing, and online project management tools are all concepts she’s incorporated into her business.
She shared a few of her clients. W3PR works with Red Bull to implement SEO and PPC ads for sites like Shawn White and others. They work with Atari on the re-release of old video games from the 80s. They’re working with AMC Theaters on the promotion of the new dine-in theaters going in around the country. There are many other examples from their client list that testify to their success.
In 2010, the New Mexico Technology Council awarded Terri Jenkins a Women in Tech Award, recognizing her longevity and her talent for inspiring others. A perfect award for someone who says nurturing young employees brings her a great deal of satisfaction.
You can follow Terri on Twitter @TerriJenkins. She likes to share what she knows there.
