M & A Rainmaker

The Internet Marketing Ecosystem ( I.M.E. ) has been producing some great results recently even when only partially implemented. You can find previous blogs on the I.M.E by searching on that term here. ( Use search box ). The I.M.E. is a strategy and a process rather than being absolutely rigid about the specific brand of product used. e.g. I recommend the use of WordPress for websites and blogs but websites and blogs based on other technologies and brands may also work using the strategy and process.

It should also be noted that if a website is already in place ( of whatever technology or whoever it is supplied by ) I.M.E. recommended products can be added and the strategy and process employed.

To summarise the recommended components ( products, brands etc ) are:

– A WordPress based website.

– A WordPress based blog.

– A Twylah page.

– Various Social Network pages such as Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Linkedin , Pinterest, digg etc. etc.

The WordPress website and blog and the Twylah page form the ” core ” of the I.M.E. Typically fresh, relevant ” content ” is produced on the blog and the Twylah page ( using the Twylah Power Tweet facility ) and then shared to the Social Network pages ( I use the Twylah share facility which I call Power Sharing ).

If we bear in mind that our overall objective is to get FOUND ( via Google etc. for relevant words and phrases ) to CONVERT visitors into prospects and customers and to ANALYSE how we did it ( basically noting what particular efforts produced the best results with the help of e.g. Google Analytics ).

If we also remember that producing a high ranking ( easily FOUND ) web and blogsite is dependant on ( amongst other things ) – It having relevant, frequently updated content; having on page S.E.O. and also having authoritative backlinks. Whilst conversion relies apon ” channeling ” the visitor through a sales funnel via relevant headlines, landing pages and Calls to Action.

The I.M.E. fulfills all of the above criteria. It would take a long time to explain all of the ways that it does but we can take a few  examples:

A blog posted on the WordPress Blogsite ( or page ) can then be Power Tweeted via the Twylah platform ( initially placing the Power Tweet into your Twitter community ). It can then be ( power ) shared to Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, Pinterest and Digg. This creates backlinks from all of these places to your domain ( the WordPress web/blog and Twylah page are all in your domain ).

It is worth remembering that Google is now looking at the whole picture rather than simply relevant keywords and phrases and backlinks so the fact that a piece of content is being shared ( liked, ReTweeted etc. etc. ) around multiple social networks is a powerful indicator to Google.

Lichfield in Staffordshire has a very Internet aware local government ( e.g. Lichfield District Council uses Twitter for Planning Applications ) and local business population. I thought it would be interesting to use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader software to grade the Internet Marketing Performance of a random selection of Lichfield based businesses.

I chose my random selection not so randomly, mainly from HubSpot’s Twitter Grader for Lichfield on the basis that if people were on Twitter then they were likely to be pretty Internet savvy and social media aware. Hence my selection was ( in order of best performing ) Lichfield Live  , Lichfield District Council , Executives on the Web ( our ” web ” company ) , InterVallum ( Paul Hooper-Keeley has the most Twitter followers in the area ) Hellmann ( Logistics ) and finally Framework Gallery ( who I spoke about in an earlier blog and who performed well in a local search on ” oil paintings “.

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/staritems

I wanted to get a bit of a ” spread ” of results i.e. from high end results like Lichfield Live ( who you would sort of expect to have a comprehensive Internet presence ) , through Lichfield D.C. ( who probably have a team of website specialists and as mentioned before are very pro. social media and the Internet ) to Executives on the Web ( who again, as a web based business, you would expect to be pretty high ranking )  to Hellmann’s ( who arguably don’t need a particularly strong web presence ? ) to Framework Gallery who, as I say performed well in some earlier searches.

I don’t propose to go into any detail on each of the reports ( they are all listed below if you want to take a look at them ) but you probably need to understand that these grades are relative to thousands of other websites around the world i.e. 78/100 means that the Lichfield Live website in conjunction with it’s associated blog and social media memberships  has a better internet marketing performance than 78% of the web presences reviewed by HubSpot. That’s pretty good !!

You also need to understand that HubSpot takes a pretty ” salesy ” view of life. Terms like Top of the Funnel and Middle of the Funnel may not mean much to some business people but they will be familiar to most salespeople. HubSpot’s mantra is ” Get Found ( on the Internet ), Convert ( Visitors to leads ) and Analyse ( how you did it and how you could do it better ).

To achieve this HubSpot recommends the establishment of what I call an ” Internet Ecosystem ” i.e. a combination of a website, a blogsite and various social media memberships and other sites that essentially drive visitors back to your website. ”

Marketing Grader Reports

http://marketing.grader.com/site/lichfieldlive.co.uk  – 78/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.lichfielddc.gov.uk – 68/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.executivesontheweb.com – 60/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.hellmann.net – 39/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.intervallum.co.uk  – 31/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.framework-gallery.co.uk – 12/100

Dear M.D./C.E.O./Owner/Proprietor/Boss,

In letter from Marketing No. 3 we talked about the people that ” used ” to design and run websites – programmers or creatives ( graphic designers ).

You need to be aware that while many of these people have invested time and effort in learning the new skills required to run a website of today others, quite frankly, have not. ( This also goes for some marketing companies that you might outsource to )

The people that you need ( probably in the Marketing department somewhere ) running the website, social media marketing and blogsites are a strange mixture – HubSpot Inc describes them as ” D.A.R.C. “

( For a more detailed explanation of D.A.R.C. go to download here

http://www.hubspot.com/darc-ebook-download/ )

D.A.R.C. stands for

Digital – They understand the digital/internet world. They understand, for example, how to optimise a website so that it is found ( S.E.O. ).

Analytical – They can analyse graphs and statistics to check how the website and e.g. marketing campaigns are working.

Reach – They are highly connected ( on the Internet ) already. They have Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin pages and their own blogsite and they have lots of connections.

Content – They understand how to create relevant content .

In order to function correctly your D.A.R.C. person needs to know something fundamental about your business on an ongoing basis:

They need to know ” What it is that you want to be found for?? ”

This means that they need to be plugged in to the business strategy.

Your D.A.R.C. person will do something rather strange but very necessary: they will carry around in their heads your businesses key words and phrases – the things ( products and services )  that you want to be found for and they will weave these into every element of your Internet Marketing Strategy.

These words and phrases will be in all the right places in your website and blogsite ( the titles, metatags etc ); these words will be in the content of your website and blogsite aswell: they will write blogs with these words and phrases in the back of their minds. I say at the back because they will do it subtly – a skill learned over time.

They will understand that being found for these words and phrases is only part of the process and that they must create ” Calls to action ” ( C.T.A. )  to convert website visitors to leads. These C.T.A.’s themselves must be designed in the right way to be effective – using the right incentives and requesting the right information.

They will also understand that ” being found ” by Google searches is only one part of the ” Internet Marketing Ecosystem “. They will also use e.g. Facebook pages, Twitter pages, Linkedin pages, Blogs, YouTube videos and Internet P.R. to ” drive ” traffic to the website ( where it will be converted and analysed ).

They will create a closed loop system and monitor on an ongoing basis – How many times the website was found ? How many people converted to leads ? How many converted to customers ? What was the R.O.I. ? What worked best ?

This is the  raison d’etre of your D.A.R.C. Marketer. How to use Internet Marketing to get you the most leads and sales at the least possible cost ??

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/29/letter-from-marketing-no-3/

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/28/letter-from-marketing-no-2/

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/22/letter-from-marketing-no-1/

The reason that I recommend that my clients use HubSpot Inbound Marketing software is because I want them to be in control of thier Internet Marketing spend and investment.

When researching for this article I quite liked this post here

http://www.wsiwebpro.com/roi-formula-internet-marketing.html

which offered a ” Common Sense ROI strategy ” which basically was ” Increase the traffic to your website OR increase the conversion of traffic to leads OR both “.

Within that simple advice are hidden some basic things that some people just do not understand.

As I have said in earlier blogs the key to a website is how often it is found by the right people ( for the product or service that you are supplying ) and it is of lesser importance what it looks like as long as it converts visitors to leads well.

As very few Internet Marketing and Website Design companies understand this very few of them ask a critical question ” What ( words and phrases ) are you trying to be found for and who are your likely customers??  ”

In fairness those that do often struggle to get a response because thier clients simply do not know the answers to these questions. ( The answer to the first part of the question requires that the client put himself in the mind of thier client and think what they would type into Google in order to find the product or service that they provide . The answer to the second part of the question requires that they understand the typical profile of thier target customer. )

When you have your website being found by lots of the right people then you have TRAFFIC !! The you only need to convert that traffic to a lead. ( To be a lead you need some information about the enquirer e.g. name and email address. )

Conversion of traffic into leads is an art that I will not go into here.

The reason that I recommend HubSpot Inbound Marketing software to my clients is that I want to know ( and they need to know ) how much traffic they have; how it is increasing ( hopefully ! ) over time and where that traffic is coming from.

Is it coming from e.g.

– Direct Traffic ( someone just typed in the name of your company – implying that your name is well known for that type of product or service )

– Organic Traffic ( implying that you ARE being found for the words and phrases that you have optimised for )

– email traffic ( implying that you are getting people signing up to your blog/website and your email camapigns are working )

– Referrals ( implying that other people are spotting and highlighting and propagating your information )

– Social Media ( implying that people are following your Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin pages and that they are following these back to your blog/website ).

etc etc

Once we know what is happening to our traffic and where it is coming from we can fine tune to get more and then to convert that traffic into leads and then, all importantly, into sales.

Once we know how many of what product or service we sold ( at what price and profit ) we can work out what our Return on Internet Marketing spend is.

For todays report please go here
http://www.megabuyte.com/newsletter/&id=1825