M & A Rainmaker

I was looking for a weight loss program in Burton on Trent

so I decided to call Jason at E3 Fitness because I knew that he did tailored fitness and weight loss programmes and that he would do something bespoke for me.

You get a free consultation and you can get in there from 6am weekdays and 7am weekends with no over crowding or waiting for equipment and the place has a relaxed feel and a gentle aroma of old chesterfield sofas and chairs with some pretty hot music so it’s not your average sweatshop.

Membership fees run from £29.95 per month with No Joining FEE so that sounds like a bargain to me.

I’ve only just started again so I don’t have any great results to talk about yet but at least they talk to you down at E3 unlike a lot of places that I could mention where you will be lucky if anybody talks to you at all !!

E3 is really a new generation of fitness and wellness club that is sweeping the country and giving the old fuddy duddy work out places a good kicking.

I was looking for personal fitness training in Burton on Trent

on the instructions of Doctor Rob in Alrewas and decided to finally respond to Jason and Mike at E3 Fitness who had been gently pestering me since late last year.

Jason had been providing personal training to me at home for a while but after an illness I had let it drop off and it took a while and a lot of prodding from various people to realise that I needed to get myself on a weight loss program somewhere near to Burton on Trent area.

The great thing about E3 Fitness is that they offer free consultation and free health checks and they open at 6am week days and 7am weekends which suits me because at the moment I am waking up early in the morning.

Now instead of Twittering, Facebooking and other social networking I can actually get myself a tailor made program to help me with steady and healthy fat loss and improved fitness levels.

Having a personal fitness trainer work with me at E3’s studio is both motivating and fun ( as they are a pretty crazy bunch ! ) and the music is great aswell.

E3 also have health and fitness club Memberships from £29.95 per month at the moment with No Joining FEE. So, I can get fit, lose weight and all for not much money !!

Some of you will have read this blog.

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/03/06/targeted-internet-promotion-using-testimonials/

and perhaps even earlier blogs on this subject.

What started as an idea using Ecademy.com Marketplace listings has become much more flexible and powerful.

We  have had some great input from branding, copywriting,  internet marketing and SEO specialists. ( Thank you )

So our TITs are now graphically powerful, branded, well written and search engine optimised.

You don’t have to be a member of Ecademy ( although we recommend that you do become a member ).

This was our first fully formed TIT

http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=list&lid=200364

here are 3 more TITs that are on Ces and Jays website where we plan to add more.

http://creativelyminded.co.uk/nick_tadd_tits.html

Although we started by looking at this from an Internet Marketing perspective ( How we make a really powerful testimonial or recommendation appear for certain searches ) we have also looked at it from a basic ” traditional marketing ” perspective.

You can start with a testimonial that is used to produce posters, flyers, brochure inserts etc and then migrate it onto the web later on.

If you are trying to get fit and keep fit in Burton on Trent then I recommend E3 Fitness

Congratulations to Jason & Mike at E3 ( and Paul in New York and Dr Rob in Alrewas )  for working together to finally get me to do some keep fit.

Health and fitness has not been top of my agenda over the last few years although I am pleased to say that I have cut down on the old alcohol and watch what I am eating.

Since joining E3 Health and Fitness Club in Burton on Trent I have been pretty useless at getting down there but Jason and Mike have gently persisted using email, social networks and all sorts of other devious means to persuade me to come down.

It’s going to be a long haul back to a 3.07 marathon but with Jason and Mike’s help I will get fit and stay fit and healthy.

There was a plan to run The Great North Run this year with my friend Paul from New York but my slow start to getting fit in 2010 has probably meant that I will not make it. Having said that with Jason designing me a great fitness regime and him and Mike watching over me like mother hens you never know what is possible!

The thing about most fitness clubs is that they usually spend about five minutes when you first join making you welcome and then you never see anyone else for the next few years.

In fact my secretary recently resigned from her health club in Tamworth, having not been spoken to about her health and fitness aims or goals for over 3 years and they did not even talk to her when she gave them her 3 month resignation !!

E3 adopt a completely different attitude and keep a regular check of your health and fitness progress. In fact I have had more tests and assessments than I can remember - but at least they were all fun. I mean that Mike is completely nuts - singing and laughing as he beasts his customers

Great job guys !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWIZHxolI0&feature=player_embedded

Some time ago ( after I built this blog ) I came across a company called BCMS who had had a lot of experience in selling companies. I read the information on their website, downloaded various other information and ordered a copy of their excellent book  ” A refreshingly different approach to selling your business for maximum value “.

Later on I attended one of their excellent seminars. ( Very refreshing for Business Owners but a bit damning of normal accountants and lawyers !! )

In this presentation they highlighted the Top 10 reasons/motivations for company purchase ( in order of importance )

Getting an Internet listing is great, getting a testimonial is great but getting a Targeted Internet Testimonial ( T.I.T. ) is even better !!!

Ok, so someone is Googling for more information about something or to find somewhere to buy something.

For example someone wants to find a real ale pub in Holywell area so they type in ” Real Ale pubs Holywell ” .

Back come the responses:

here

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=real+ale+pubs+in+holywell&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

One the first page ( hopefully ) of responses ( in the natural, unpaid for listings ) you see one which says ” Glan Yr Afon Inn real ale pub ”

So, not an advert ( they are in the Sponsored Listings ) or a website or a directory listing or a self-promotion but A TESTIMONIAL or RECOMMENDATION from someone.

This Testimonial or Recommendation is from Jonathan and Ces Loftus on a website called Ecademy.

Question: Is a Testimonial or Recommendation like this more powerful than an ordinary Google listing ?????

It would be an option to have it come from anyone ( who is registered on Ecademy ). So, a business contact could register and provide a T.I.T. for someone. A friend could do it. A family member could do it. Certainly another Ecademy member could do it. It could also be any local businessperson, politician or celebrity. It could be a National or Global Celebrity.

Look here

http://creativelyminded.co.uk/nick_tadd_tits.html

for a series of TITs done about Nick Tadd’s Social Media Training Day by other people.

( So …. they don’t have to be on Ecademy either - they can be on any platform that supports html code !! )

To make this come up on Google you have to know what that person wants to be found for and you have to think about the competitiveness of those words or phrase.

Ecademy is a very powerful website ( to Google ) with lots of great, changing, content, inbound links and keywords and phrases.

Still some words and phrases will be very hard to rank for. ( Obviously not the ones that I have used ).

You can add pictures, graphics and video ( even more examples like this will follow ).

You can get the words done by a copywriting expert. You can enlist the services of an SEO specialist for the ultimate in targetting.

When you do your T.I.T. it can be copied instantly to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc so this will provide more coverage of your T.I.T.

You can also turn your T.I.T. into a pdf and make posters, leaflets, flyers etc etc

Yes, this is a serious promotional tool in your armoury.

Who benefits ?????

- The potential customer

- The person/company recommended

- The recommender get exposure

- Ecademy gets exposure

a win/win/win/win situation.

What do you think ?????

Please let me know so that I can add in your thoughts and views to my own deliberations.

Get your own TIT !!

Hot on the heels of Andrew Sage, VP Small Business Systems in the U.S., tweeting that Cisco and Wholesale Hosted voip provider NGT had been awarded ” Product of the year ” from Internet Telephony magazine “ for Outstanding SMB Service Innovation in Collaboration with Cisco “

http://www.ngt.com/news/?presspager=104&arc=&yr=2009&my=

it was announced that NGT had been acquired by Comcast for an ” undisclosed sum “. ( The announcement was in the small print of the first release aswell )

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/att/comcast-does-wholesale-voip—buys-ngt.html

There’s a number of interesting aspects of this:

1. Some time ago Cisco started partnering with Hosted Voip providers in the U.S. and the U.K. Some of these partners used front ended Call Manager at the core but Cisco also partnered with ” competitor ” platforms. This seemed a little strange until you realised that a lot of Cisco endpoints were getting shipped by these customers - in NGT’s case ”  150,000+ IP endpoints under management ” and the bundle provided used “  Cisco SPA 500 Series IP Phones “.  ” NGT is ( ??? ) the largest provider of wholesale hosted IP Telephony Communication solutions in the U.S. and NGT enables leading VARs, MSOs, Service Providers and Agents to provide nationwide, managed IP communication services to their customers through its proven channel ready solutions “. So NGT had an indirect model. It had sold to a number of ” Telcos “.

2. This might kick off a bit of a ” land grab ” as Telco’s realise that they have to have Hosted Voip in their portfolio. This applies to the U.S. and the U.K.

3. There are a number of Hosted Voip players in the U.K. - a couple using front ended Call Manager; others using a ” competitor ” core but Cisco endpoints and others using neither.

Watch this space because it is going to get pretty wild !!