insight in high speed internet for rural areas, using drones or towers.

(1) Paying for clicks you would have had anyway. Many people know precisely which site they're looking for in advance. Googling the site and then clicking that paid AdWords link is simply our lazy way of getting where we were already going. And there are cheaper ways of providing visitors with short cuts. (2) Paying for non-customer traffic. I don't mean non-converting traffic. Rather, I'm talking about people who visit your site simply in order to promote their own service. You'll be paying for the privilege of hearing more sales pitches. After all, these people find you the same way as prospective consumers. (3) Providing Google with data about your traffic enables Google to know more about your traffic than you do. Recently Google has begun withholding more and more information. One way or another, that data will be sold back to the same customers who provided Google with the data. (4) Renting space often leads only to further dependence on rented traffic. The same money can be spent on other services and assets that improve content and visibility or expand one's online footprint in terms of actual holdings.

Staff augmentation vs. project work in A&D are really two different companies. Another key segmentation is work that requires certification (NATO Clearance, secret clearance, Airbus/Boeing training, etc). On staff augmentation, a lot of young firms start off bringing in good ex-employees of the majors and and targeting the supply chain. Often the majors Boeing, Dassault, etc like it when subs use talent that already know the primes practices. If you are targeting project work, you need to define if you are selling skill or price. If your the best team for converting major assemblies into a stream line lean process, you need to clearly define that and sell it into the targets. In all cases, you are likely to get your first customers in the supply base. The supply base is likely trying to win a bid or execute a current contract. They want to mitigate risk using temporary labor, especially if you are in a EU labor market. If your model is to sell outside of the Primes, for example selling aerospace talent to boat manufacturing, I would stick more to project work with a few key initial clients. Create an iconic success. I would also look at the UAV market. There is a lot going on there. Often the people creating UAV's are more controls focused, they might like having someone else be there air frame team. I was heavily involved in the lean manufacturing movement at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. Mostly on F/A-18, but also C17, 787, UAVs, etc.

If you want a system that doesn't require any hardware or infrastructure, then a virtual PBX is the best bet. These systems just use your existing phone numbers (cell phones or whatever) and routes the calls among them. The big player in this space is http://grasshopper.com/ They have been around for quite awhile and have a lot of features for managing calls. They're well known for their reliability and customer service. I've also used http://www.ringcentral.com/ and they are very good as well. Never had any issues and they support various softphones and hardware phones as well. I've also heard about a new up-and-comer https://aircall.io/ - But I know very little about them and they look to still be in beta. But you should definitely try it for comparison.

This can be tricky. Generally I recommend paying commissions on revenue-generation events only. The reason being, if it is free to generate a lead then it makes it really easy to take advantage of the system. That being said, there are some ways to go about it. Calculate (you should already have this) your cost of acquiring a lead (CAC). That's your baseline. You can now set your referral commission at or below that CAC number. Since you only pay a commission based on the generation of a new lead you guarantee a positive ROI. A prize/sweepstakes is not a bad idea. Make sure to create a prize that really resonates with your target demographic (YES: set of All-Clad pans, NO: an iPad) I would run the program the first time based on your best estimates; if you expect to generate 100 new leads, and would normally pay $10-$15/lead then you can afford $1,000-1,500 prize. You can then adjust the process during future iterations based on: 1) The quality of the leads you received. Referrals are generally more valuable, but scam/spam leads are not. 2) The number of leads you generated. If you want to work through details in your specific case let me know, I'd be happy to set up a call to discuss further. Good luck!

We use sprout social. They have a free tier and pretty complete. http://sproutsocial.com