M & A Rainmaker

Clare Jenkins, M.D. of FutureLine, is going to be one of the speakers at UCExpo 2011 and will have a simples message to deliver.

For Hosted Voice to become widely used it needs to be simples !

It also helps when it is supported by one of the biggest networking companies in the world - and Cisco Systems fits the bill perfectly.

At UCExpo 2011 the Cisco FutureLine stand ( 504 ) will show and demonstrate the latest in Cisco S.M.B. telephony options.

Actually there are two audiences for Cisco FutureLine - the end user and the reseller. Clearly the reseller knows all the technical jargon but the end user does not - especially the S.M.B. end user.

The message needs to be simples to both but between Cisco FutureLine and resellers it may be ok to use the jargon.

It’s about communicating in the right way - taking into account who your audience is.

S.M.B. customers don’t know all the answers to questions like ” What features do you need ? ” - they are typically growing, dynamic businesses who are changing structure and direction quite often.

What they do need therefore is FLEXIBILITY and UPGRADABILITY.

They want to know that they can get a phone system that does the job right now but can grow to suit the needs of thier business in the future.

SIMPLES !!

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.

This morning I woke up thinking about the ” share ” facility that you see on so many websites and blogs now. ( Who invented this ??? ). It’s a really powerful thing to be able to share your content so quickly and easily.

This got me wondering about how Synnd and Traffic Geyser were doing. I will explain more about them shortly. As you know we are working with HubSpot on the FutureLine website attracting and converting traffic and monitoring how we are doing over time.

As we know you have to be found on the Internet - for relevant searches. Google is always trying to give people what they want when they type something into the search box.

Yesterday I was sitting in a car service reception waiting for my son’s car to get some new wheels and also they were investigating a problem with the windscreen washers. One of the service managers had a Mini whose keys were not being recognised so he had to get it over to the Mini garage in Derby. We all ( I was eavesdropping and contributing! ) thought that Mini had seperated from BMW and although it was on the same road it was a different garage. So, the receptionist was Googling for the Mini garage NOT the BMW garage. The answers coming back were not clear but the phone number for the garage was found anyway. This led the receptionist and I to a discussion about when Mini was taken over by BMW; who Mini was originally built and owned by and who owned Mini now ?? Googling did not produce all the answers.

We want the best answer to our question or the best result for our search and Google tries hard to give us that.

In our HubSpot trial we have been thinking hard about what people will search for when they want more information on small business phone systems and the we have been trying to ensure that our content, titles, metatags etc are all aligned with those search terms.

When I have produced content e.g. a blog I will share it and post it on various websites e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit etc etc because I know that 1. People that are on those sites and connected to me will see it and 2. That I may gain some benefit to my blog and blogsite by linking back from very highly ranked sites to my own. ( there’s a lot of deep techie debate around this area that I will not bore you with ).

The ” Share ” and ” Like ” facilities are getting easier and I can ” Share ” and ” Like ” to many different sites.

Essentially though what I am doing is a manual process.

Synnd ( see  video on http://www.charlesheflin.com/ or go to http://synnd.com/ ) and Traffic Geyser (     http://mikekoenigs.com/about/ or                http://www.trafficgeyser.com/ )    are about automating this process and creating massive distribution of content or ” Content Syndication ” as it is known.

Mike’s Traffic Geyser is predominantly about the content syndication of videos. Charles’s Synnd covers all content - e.g. blog posts, web pages, pdf’s and video’s .

Traffic Geyser’s focus on video’s derives ( basically ) from the fact that ” a picture or a video tells a thousand words ” and that Google is treating well tagged videos very favourably in search results.

I recommend that you explore all of these facilities and websites - ” Share “,  HubSpot  , Synnd and Traffic Geyser - and watch the videos.

I have subscribed to all of these facilities although I don’t necessarily use them all the time.

One of the things to remember is that once you understand the requirement to distribute content, url’s through ” sharing ” you can automate and scale this up massively if required.

Avid followers ( are there any ? ) of this blog will have noticed the recent blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/01/31/dog-friendly-pubs-in-holywell-flintshire/

On Monday morning I decided to post this blog with the objective of getting exposure for The Glan to those people who were Googling for a ” dog friendly pub near Holywell, in Flintshire, North Wales “.

Between us ( you and me ) we have made this blogsite pretty authoratitive and known to Google. Quite frankly I am sometimes amazed at the speed that Googles spiders find new blogs that I post and how well they rank in Google searches.

I can only guess that the reporters at the Daily Post were thinking about ” Dog Friendly Pubs ” that morning because, I promise you, 2 hours after the post went live the phone rang at The Glan and a Daily Post reporter said that she wanted to send a photographer around.

The photographer wanted dogs in the picture and so a mad rush ensued - phoning customers and asking ones that were in to bring in their dogs.

Photos taken the photographer stated that the article would be in The Daily Post the following day - sure enough

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2011/02/01/north-wales-most-dog-friendly-pub-is-in-flintshire-55578-28090242/

there it was.

The TV and radio stations obviously trawl the papers websites so it was not a huge surprise when Radio Cymru

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radiocymru/index.shtml

called and asked Cerys if she could do an interview ( in Welsh ) around 4 p.m.

This also happened and so in 2 days we had gone from Dog to Superstar !!

I am finding it quite interesting watching old and new HubSpot partners fighting for a top ranking position in a ” HubSpot U.K. ” or ” HubSpot in the U.K. ” Google.

http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sa=N&hl=en&tab=lw#hl=en&sugexp=gsih&xhr=t&q=hubspot+in+the+UK&cp=17&pf=p&sclient=psy&site=webhp&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=hubspot+in+the+UK&pbx=1&fp=ff01f0aca6245e1d

As HubSpot  expands it’s business globally beyond the U.S.   getting more direct customers and partners, the HubSpot partners themselves are making a ” land grab ” for prominence.

How are they doing this ??

The first three organic search positions are, perhaps unsurprisingly, held by HubSpot themselves with posts on the inbound.org site

http://inbound.org/questions/960/uk-hubspot-partner

and posts on the HubSpot.com website.

The comes StrangePR.com for the next couple of entries who, typically for a PR company, reckon that they are HubSpot’s ( only ) U.K. partner.  A quick look at ” Page Source ” for their website pages shows that Titles and Metatags reflect the content and that ” HubSpot ” and ” U.K. ” are liberally scattered throughout the content, titles and metatags.

Next comes Advanced Marketing Concept’s Blog page

http://www.admarco.net/resources/company-news/bid/30271/Advanced-Marketing-Concepts-achieves-HubSpot-Partner-Status

Admarco appears to have a presence in the U.S.  ( San Francisco Bay Area. ) and the U.K.

The next entry is from Wired Magazine and promotes HubSpot itself rather than a partner.

Then you have the HubSpot User Group post from GMIG

http://www.gmig.co.uk/hubspot-user-group-uk/

I understand that someone at HubSpot made a conscious decision to allow this new partner to set up a U.K. HubSpot User Group. It’s a great way to get prominence !

The actual user group is on Linkedin:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3688027

Next we have a Slideshare presentation from Kpi Insight Consulting

http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/kpicase-studypdf

and then a TrafficTroop ( Ireland ) website entry

http://www.traffictroop.com/contact-us-0/UK-Hubspot-Services-Ireland/

to finish off Page 1 of Google.

On Page 2 of the search for ” HubSpot U.K. ” you have GMIG again and then Strong Marketing’s entry:

http://strongmktg.com/hubspot-partner/

and then…….. ooooh ! it’s me - posting here on the M&A Rainmaker blogsite.

So lets stop there shall we - except for a quick comment that it is rather dissapointing ( at least to me ) to see a HubSpot U.K. partner paying for Pay per Click in order to provide discounted HubSpot pricing !! Really ???? Already ???

We can assume that the websites and blogsites being used have a relatively high Google rank which is giving them thier ” authority “.

So congratulations to those HubSpot U.K. partners who are ranking high and good luck for the future !!

We are getting some great positions in Google searches for our test client FutureLine by following the Hubspot process in the U.K.

e.g. for ” Cisco Hosted Voice UK ”

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=gsih&xhr=t&q=cisco+hosted+voice+uk&cp=21&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=cisco+hosted+voice+uk&pbx=1&fp=ab718b42c52c1c5f

We put some thought into our key words and phrases a few weeks ago and then a week or so ago we revisited the web page titles and meta data and  entered certain of these words and phrases.

Together with this blog and related sites we are occupying four of the page one search results and whereas competitors e.g. Cloudnet and Teleappliant are paying for Pay Per Click rankings we have high organic positions for free ( well, excluding our time and effort

I was listening to  a HubSpot Inbound Marketing webinar, that was being transmitted to the U.K. and other countries around the world, the other day when the statement was made ” people spend loads of money and time on the look and design of their website when what they should be spending money on  is being found AND converting people that find the website into leads “.

As I was driving from North Wales to the Midlands today I was thinking how true that was and how pointless it was to have a great looking website that nobody found!

It was, I thought, a bit like having a great looking house in a very undesirable neighbourhood.

Which led me to that well known saying of Estate Agents and property developers ” Location, location, location “.

A definition of which might be :

which I found here

http://homebuying.about.com/od/marketfactstrends/qt/013008_location.htm

and we might translate that into:

” identical websites may be more or less valuable ( productive ? ) depending on their location ( position ) in search engine searches ”  .

Yes, if two websites were designed or looked exactly the same but one got found and converted visitors into leads whilst the other did not get found or even got found but did not convert visitors into leads then that would make the same website much more valuable.

Furthermore if we add this property view:

Happy New Year !!

Over the holidays this video came out from Serial Entrepreuner, David Skok, who is clearly a HubSpot fan..

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine-webinar/

and it is really a great addition to the blog series that I have been writing.

In fact I would say it is really the linchpin of why I am interested in HubSpot myself - which is ” How to get more sales using HubSpot Inbound Marketing ” !!

So, I would really recommend that you take a little time to view the presentation/ slide show.

Following the last blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/12/21/driving-internet-leads-for-uk-smb-using-hubspot-inbound-marketing-part-2/

we got the 2 landing pages done as discussed earlier.

The visit/lead tracking system is working and we can see recent visitors details. These can be transferred to a CRM system and Salesforce.com is probably the easiest one to do this with although other are possible. We will address this shortly but for now the visit and lead records will be held within HubSpot ( they are always held in both places anyway ).

We had done some work around keywords/phrases - looking for words/phrases that were relevant but not too competitive - and we input these to the HubSpot system. We also had the HubSpot system look at the keywords/phrases being used by typical competitors. The HubSpot system identified which keywords/phrases were ” stronger ” than others.

The HubSpot system will show where the visits/leads are coming from in terms whether they are direct ( someone types in the FutureLine url ) via a Google search or from e.g. The FutureLine Blog, Social Media or Press Releases.

Typical Social Media sources would include:

- Delicious

- Digg

- LinkedIn

- Reddit

- Sphin

- Twitter

- Yahoo Answers

- Yahoo Buzz

- YouTube

We set up the FutureLine Blog and discussed the type and composition of beneficial blogs. It was noted that there should be ” Call to Action ” pieces at the end of each blog. HubSpot gets many of its leads via the HubSpot blog.

We also discussed what defined ” strong ” links and noted examples of these. They include e.g. links from high ranking blog sites; links from Press Release sites.

We also discussed the fact that we could ” buy ” traffic using Pay Per Click or Media buying ( CPM ).

We determined to get the ” Call to Actions ” set up on the website together with the landing pages that we had built.

We would also do more work on keywords and phrases and when we had arrived at the best words and phrases give consideration to including these words and phrases on the website and in blogs.

We would also do more research on the ” Top 10 questions ” asked by FutureLine’s customers and prospects.

following the blog post

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2010/12/19/driving-internet-leads-for-uk-smb-using-hubspot-inbound-marketing/

We decided that we needed to create some ” Call to actions ” on the website and that these might include the completion of the sign-up form

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