M & A Rainmaker

I have recently been using Hubspot’s Marketing Grader to assess how well some of my clients Internet Marketing efforts are working. It is a fantastic tool and looks at not only a company’s website effectiveness but also the supporting Internet ecosystem.

A tool like HubSpot Marketing Grader is vital when trying to work out how easily a person or companies website is being found on the major search engines for relevant search terms and also how well visitors to that website are being converted into prospects and customers.

HubSpot has always looked at Internet Marketing in simple terms: How well are you found ? How effectively do you convert ? What are the statistics that support that process and how can they be improved ?

What I find so often is that people don’t understand what a website is there for. It is there as part of your overall marketing efforts to create leads and convert them to orders.

As a salesperson I completely identify with this view of the world and I say to people ” Treat your website like another salesperson or sales team ” and look at it’s effectiveness in the same way that you would look at the effectiveness of your sales team.

If, as I have done, you were running a salesforce ( in a fairly advanced way ) you would measure things like Activity, Skill and Knowledge and collect information like “How many prospects they have ? ”  ”How many proposals they have written ? ” and other data that would give you some indication of the effectiveness of your investment into a salesperson or salesforce.

It is somewhat interesting that HubSpot eschews some of the “old ways ” of prospecting and selling ( broadly lumped into Push Selling or Marketing or Outbound Selling/Marketing e.g. telemarketing, mailshotting etc etc ) whilst utilising many of the same methods of analysing the effectiveness of the ” Pull ” or ” Inbound Marketing ” approach.

Internet Marketing is not just about an effective website it is also about traffic being driven to that website from blogsites and social media and about the effectiveness of e.g. your Facebook campaigns and presence in their own right.

HubSpot’s Marketing Grader gives you a comprehensive checklist to work through but you do have to understand the overall strategy.

Get your Internet Marketing Grade here:

http://marketing.grader.com/

If you need help understanding what to do please contact me.

Here are a couple of links to videos about Marketing Grader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj80vTmJp4Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlAA18xjKE0

I recently watched the Twylah video referred to in Jim Connolly’s Marketing Blog here:

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/05/30/get-everybody-talking-about-you-with-this-1-simple-idea/

( See also the video at the end of this blog for more about Twylah )

and aside from what Jim had said and the fact that I agreed with him that Twylah had a great story there were a couple of things that resonated with me:

Internet Monetisation

I noted that Eric Kim, the co-founder of Twylah had been involved in Internet Monetisation ( that’s like ” Show me the money ” in amongst all this Internet stuff ! ) for around 11 years and that he had founded Twylah because there was no obvious monetisation strategy emerging for Twitter. I also noted that he carried around in his head an ” Internet Monetisation Hierarchy ” ( I was going to call it a Pyramid but Pyramids have such bad press in recent years ! ) which went something like - an email address has the highest monetary value ( he actually put a value on a 1000 email addresses being emailed as ranging between $5 and $100 ) and then said that email has a higher value than e.g. a Facebook ” like ” which in turn has a higher value than a Twitter ” follow “.

He said that ” email is STILL the number one mechanism for communicating. People check their email first ( typically ) before checking social media “. A point which I will come back to.

I am sure that Eric has a whole load more ” valuations ” in his head and they range from the obvious like ” the number of visitors to your website ”  and ” the number of transactions through your website and the value of those transactions ” to the less obvious like ” the number of favourites and retweets  on Twitter “.  Everything has a ( micro ? ) value.

Recently I have been using HubSpot’s ( Internet ) Marketing Grader to see how well some companies Internet Marketing ” System ” is working. Since HubSpot is basically trying to see how easily you get found on the Internet, how well you convert visitors into ” leads ” ( which might mean getting their email address and permission to email ) and how well the being found and converting process works it is broadly speaking helping to measure the ” value ” of your Internet Marketing system.

It looks at your website, your blogs and your social networks and how one element provides support to the other elements.

Included within the HubSpot Marketing Grade is your Klout Score  ( arguably, a valuation of your Internet presence ) and offers you incentives based on your Klout score e.g. a £50 credit to AirBnB .

Twylah is another piece of the Internet Marketing ecosystem jigsaw - automatically converting your Tweets to what looks something like a blog page ( Mine is here ) and also analysing the effectiveness of your Tweets in achieving micro-value via follows, favourites, retweets etc etc.

2 of HubSpot’s favourite elements are ( or can be )  included within a Twylah page - an email sign up and/or another ” Call to Action ” ( e.g. Click here and buy and download  Lady GaGa’s latest single ).

The Importance of email

As Eric says ( and many people agree with him ) email is still very important.

This blog

Email Marketing is down but not out !

is spot-on. There are challenges with email marketing but it is probably the highest value item that you can attain and therefore it is your OBJECTIVE to get it !!

Platforms

I am constantly reminded of the value of ” platform websites ” . This blog is on Wordpress which is becoming hugely powerful. ( It has an Alexa ranking of 18th in the world ).  N.B. HubSpot’s Alexa ranking is 691 and Twylah’s 14,504.

Ecademy.com ( Alexa 9,377 ) was one of the first sites where I noticed the effect of ” Platform Power ” some 10 years ago.

Content posted on these websites becomes very visible to search engines like Google and ranks highly. ( I highly recommend Wordpress and HubSpot based websites !! ) Over time Twylah will also become very powerful ( it’s Alexa ranking grew 35% over the last 3 months ).

So, in summary keep in mind platforms and the Monetisation Hierarchy and keep trying to get those email addresses and use them !!

Another great video about Twylah  below

http://foundville.com/2012/01/09/twylah-interview/

Well I do - but then again I don’t - according to the applications that tell you who has the most Twitter followers in e.g. Lichfield or Birmingham or London or the World  -  like Twitter Elite

http://tweet.grader.com/location/?Location=lichfield%2Cstaffs%2CUK

and Twitaholic

http://twitaholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/Lichfield,+Staffordshire,+West/

I do, in that if you look here

http://tweet.grader.com/@cwindley

I have a Tweet Grade of 97.4 and ( currently ) 2,278 followers but I don’t appear on the list ( at the time of writing ) produced by Tweet Grader in the first link that I detailed above.  Philip John has that honour currently. (  philipjohn )

Out of interest the person who has the most followers in Birmingham

http://tweet.grader.com/location/?Location=birmingham%2CUK

is an 18 year old Economics student called Aluna Sagita Gutawa with over 1.1 Million followers !!!! ( How ?? Why ?? )

Philip and I have never met ( to my knowledge ) but he and I do have a common interest in Wordpress blogs it seems. ( Where I am writing this ).

Does it matter ????

Well actually the number of followers ( like e.g. the number of Facebook likes or the number of email addresses ) does actually have a monetary value, small though it may be. ( For example I recently heard the co-founder of U.S. based start-up Twylah talk about a dollar value for the number of email addresses something was emailed to ).

What does matter is visibility on the Internet and being found on the Internet via search engines like Google.

Tweets are also being turned into website pages that can attract ” traffic ” ( visitors and users ) and rank on Google. Here is my Twylah page for example:

http://www.twylah.com/cwindley

( Twylah is in beta at the moment so you have to request a Twylah page )

If you don’t think being a Tweep is very interesting then you might find being a ” Twyp ” of more value

You might not think very much of Lady GaGa either but she is a ” Twyp ”

http://www.twylah.com/ladygaga

along with a whole host of other celebrities

http://www.twylah.com/featured.

GaGa’s ephemeral Tweets have been turned into a much longer lasting web page ( with the invitation to download her music ).

Translated into something that might interest the average Lichfieldian ?? well it’s another way of getting ( global ) visibility for your Lichfield based business.

Connecting with and communicating with people is important and so is being found.

Poundbury Systems of Poundbury, Dorchester is offering local companies advice and support on the pros and cons of Cloud Computing alongside its general computer, telephony and network support offerings.

” Cloud Computing ” is a term that gets mentioned quite often these days, usually accompanied by various general benefits of cloud computing like - lower cost, pay-as-you-go, flexibility, scalability, upgradability etc etc

Poundbury Systems believes that Dorchester based companies should look at the pros and cons of Cloud Systems solutions in relation to ” on premises ” solutions for their particular situation.

Poundbury has developed and supported Cloud Solutions via their Cloud Computing subsiduary ” FutureLine ”  http://www.futureline.net.uk/

FutureLine initially focussed on Cloud based telephony, supported over networks owned and managed by Poundbury Systems. In recent months the emphasis has been to develop a broader range of cloud  based solutions alongside the Cloud based telephony.

Whether cloud based or on premises the solutions that should be adopted should meet the customers requirements now and in the future.

Factors like performance, security, reliability, fault tolerance, risk and manageability should be discussed and the potential solutions evaluated against these criteria.

Poundbury Systems is known, within Dorchester and beyond for talking to customers in plain English and not in ” jargon “.

See below for contact details:

Contact Us

I have just rushed to make this post after my friend and business colleague of many years, Brian MacIver, posted this comment

“Chris,
A well timed and topical posting. Several of my clients are asking “hard” questions about their ‘investment’ or web ’spend’. Particularly in the Property Market, they laid off sales people, boosted their web content and saw little return. Now that the property market is returning they cant find Salespeople (did they all go to Dubai?)
Good posting, thanks.
Brian”.

on this blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/08/what-return-are-you-getting-from-your-website-investment/

and it just made me think - You have to manage your website like you ( should have ) managed your salesforce.

What do we mean by that ??

Well, back in the day Brian would have coached us on 3 essential elements for a successful salesperson - and more were added over time:

1. Activity - a salesperson must be active - phone calling, writing etc etc

2. Skills - a salesperson must have good sales skills

3. Knowledegable - a salesperson must be knowledgeable about his products, his company and his competitors.

4. Personality - surrounding all of this - people buy from people - so be nice !!

5. Administration - You have to manage your salesforce and they have to manage their business - turning leads into orders -  and to do that you need some information - How many calls did they make ?? How many appointments did they go on ?? How many proposals did they write ?? How many orders did they get ?? How close was this to their target ??? etc etc etc

6.  Going alongside 5 is the analysis of their progress and performance to determine their R.O.I.

There may be more aspects but lets start with these. What’s the analogy in terms of managing your website like you would your salesforce ??

Going in reverse …

5. & 6. Analysis and Administration   It is essential that you have the means to monitor the performance and progress of your website. You need to know how many prospects it is reaching ( visitors ) and how many of these turn into a lead ( respond to a Call to Action ). You need to know which activities ( posting a blog, posting on Twitter, posting on LinkedIn etc ) produced the best results. You can only do this with the right software on your website.

4. Personality. When you do post information you have to do it in the right way. You want your ( attractive ! ) personality to come out and you want to be nice to people. We all know that ” hard nosed salespeople ” sometime do succeed in spite of themselves but I always thought that this was creating unnecessary ” friction “. Being funny sometimes helps aswell !

3. Knowledge. You have to be knowledgeable , educational and informative in what you say. Many of the most successful people on the Internet ” give away ” loads of free advice and information.

2.  Skills. There are lots of skills that you are going to have to learn and develop ( or you can find people with those skills ) to succeed. Blogging; Posting on Social Networks and building your networks; writing etc etc

1. Activity. Yes of course - as with salespeople it is partly a numbers game and you always have to be active - blogging, posting, commenting, liking, sharing, reading etc etc.

I think it is a great way to think of your website as like your salesforce ( or part of your salesforce ) and of managing your website as you would your salesforce.

If you can get it right the R.O.I. can be massive - just think of all those salespeople’s salaries you are not paying

Establishments providing food to the public in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are starting to see food hygiene ratings from the local council and associated websites ranking on Page 1 of Google searches.  To put it simply when someone Googles your food establishment name ( shop, restaurant, hotel etc etc ) they are likely to see a star rating ( these ratings start from 0 to 5 and range from ” urgent improvement necessary ” to ” very good ” see http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/webpage/moreabouten for more information.

Yesterday someone I know was googling a restaurant and one of the first things they said to me was ” oh dear, it has only got a 2 star food hygiene rating ” .

Let’s take a random example of a food outlet Google  :

” The Tweedale Arms ” ( I mean the one in Tamworth - Google asks if I mean the Tweeddale arms in Scotland ).

No website for the Tweedale Arms appears in the first few Google listings ( either they don’t have one or it has not been optimised - SEO’d - to come up ).

There are a couple of listings from Beer in the Evening and Tamworth Heritage Pubs and then you have the listing from the ” Scores on the Doors ” website

http://www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk/business/the-tweedale-arms-tamworth-427869.html

This website describes itself as

“ Scores on the Doors is the No. 1 national food hygiene rating scheme where you can find the official local authority hygiene ratings for food businesses - now the largest in the world! “

Further down the Google there is a listing from Rate my Place

http://www.ratemyplace.org.uk/view/3061/The-Tweedale-Arms.html

which is the official website for Food Safety Inspections in Staffordshire.

ie the 5th and the 8th front page Google listings for The Tweedale Arms are Food Hygiene Ratings listings.

Owners of food and hospitality establishments typically concerned themselves with e.g. TripAdvisor and Booking.com listings and reviews and comments alongside with the ranking of thier own web and blog sites but now they must consider another couple of websites - “scores on the doors” and ” rate my place”.

Obviously the easy and most appropriate answer is to ensure that you get  high food hygiene ratings by having a clean and well run establishment. Food establishments have been undergoing random food and safety inspections for years.

These 2 websites will have massive, changing content and they will rank high with Google searches - as long as what they say is good then no problem.

However, I think this is also a wake up call to hospitality venue owners to not only get websites and blogsites up and running but also to get them recognised by Google ( and other search engines ) and search engine optimised.

If you are looking for a company that can provide Marketing Services in the Ironbridge, Telford and Shrewsbury area then I would recommend that you contact Claire at CSL Design.

CSL Design offers professional and honest marketing services in Telford, Shropshire. They offer a full solution for your business from Internet Marketing, Graphic Design and Print to Event Management, Photography and PR. They can also provide you with a free initial marketing overview to measure the effectiveness of your current marketing and show you where improvements could be made to make your efforts more cost effective and successful.

Marketing Services Provided:

Internet Marketing
Websites
Search Engine Optimisation
Social Media (Facebook/Twitter/Blogs)
Email Marketing
Branding/Re-Branding
Graphic Design & Print
Event Management & Marketing
Photography
PR & Copy Writing
Marketing Plans & Reviews

Contact Claire on:

Contact: Claire Windley | Email: claire@csldesign.com | Mobile: 07891 285514

This blog is based on a recent  interview with Mike Volpe

http://www.mikevolpe.com/

by Lewis Howes - Author, Speaker and Entrepreneur.

The full transcript and  video is here, which I recommend you look at

http://www.lewishowes.com/marketing/inbound-marketing-plan/#more-2030

Why would you put your effort into Inbound Marketing ??

Inbound Marketing Budget & Results

Lewis: So, what I hear from that is that:

You spend more energy, time and resources or money on creating content, or creating free software, free downloads, free webinars.  So you’re putting that paid advertising money into the free stuff, which is converting twice as well as the paid stuff.  Correct?

Mike: That’s exactly right.

The cost is lower per lead and the conversion rate is twice.  So the cost per customer… it’s 3 or 4 times better. It’s fantastic.

And you’re right.  I think… so we spend some money on creating content and the way that you typically do that is that you end up hiring people.

So I think that in the long term we may have much more as the percentage of marketing budget going to the team and, you know, the people that are blogging and doing webinars and creating content versus buying media.

Building Versus Renting

And I think the interesting… you know, the other analogy if you think about it that way is that:

• If you’re buying media or advertising from someone else, you’re really renting the capability of attracting an audience because you have to pay them every time you wan to do an ad.

• If you’re building up your own blog, if you’re becoming your own media company, you’re building something.  You’re purchasing real estate and building your own real estate.  And obviously what you typically want to do is own those assets over time and things like that.

So just like you do with your blog and everything that you do, you’re building up yourself as this media agency, right?  And if you were to take a month off, you would still get a ton of web traffic because you’ve built this up over time.  If you stop paying that bill to that company you’re advertising with, you get nothing the next month, right?

So I think, again, you should want to build and not rent, and that’s another way to sort of think about it.

How would you start with Inbound Marketing ??

How To Start Inbound Marketing

OK. So let’s give them a good example.

• Say I’m a tech startup company.
• I’ve got 10-25 employees.
• I’m trying to grow.
• I’m trying to get more leads.
• I’ve got a free software, or a free service, but there’s a paid model as well, but I’m looking to get those free leads in to use the service first.

How do you guys collate the information through your blog, your books, your webinars, etc?  Do you hire… if you’re this company, do you hire someone externally?  Do you have members of the team who are doing different things; developers, CEO, running content?  Do you get all the members of the staff involved?  Or do you use one person?  How would you go about that?

Mike: That’s a really good question.

I’m a huge fan of getting the entire company involved in the effort.  I think we’ve had a lot of success and seen the best success among our customers if there’s more than one person.

Maybe you can have a leader, or a manager for your inbound marketing program, but unless you have multiple people contributing… you know, it needs to be the whole company.  You just sort of change your company philosophy to some degree to really make these things effectively.  We’ve seen the best success with companies that have multiple people contributing to the blog.

Because you get those different perspectives: the perspective from the VP of Engineering versus the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing or the Co-Founders.  It’s going to be a little bit different.  And that helps you attract different facets of your audience.

Lewis: So, what if a company is not willing to do that?  Do you think you’ve really got to adopt this philosophy? Or you’re going to be struggling if you don’t?

Mike: You know…

• It will still work to some degree if you have one person sort of dedicated to it and spending some time on it.

• You will get better results if the whole team is dedicated to it.

IQMS Success Story

I’ll tell you a story about a company called IQMS.  They sell, sort of in that range, or I think they’re around 200 employees.  They sell ear piece software to manufacturers.  They’re based in California.  And what the CEO did, is he decided to basically…

You know it was like when Cortez came to the New World he burned his ships so all the people with him would committed to staying and making a life in the New World.

• He did that.
• He fired their PR agency.
• He cancelled all of their print advertising.
• And he told his marketing staff of only 2 people, that you need to embrace inbound marketing and make it work and here are your lead goals.
• And they said, “Holy crap! What are we going to do?” Right?  And then they said, “Well, I guess we really need to make this work.”
• So they started blogging.
• And the CEO was great because they did have that leadership above.
• The CEO created some content.
• Some other people in the company started blogging and things like that.
• And they’ve actually seen their business, I forget if it was 10% or 20%, buttheir business increased after having decreased the past 3 years.

And you know, we’re still not in a great economic environment yet, and they were able to see an increase in 2010 after having declined in 2008 and 2009.

He really attributes all of their success to that program and being really, really committed to it.

So again, you’ll have some success if it’s one person, but I would really recommend to folks that they think about really transforming their company.

Lewis: Gotcha.

How would you get started with Inbound Marketing ??

A Simple Inbound Marketing Plan

What would be a simple marketing plan for any company trying to get more inbound leads?

Mike: Yeah.

#1: Website Grader

I think the first thing is, I honestly would recommend Website Grader. It’s totally free. I’d run my website through Website Grader. Usually for many of the smaller companies, there’s usually one or two small changes they can make to their site to improve their search engine optimization, or how they’re site is displayed in search engines.  That’d probably be the first thing.

#2: One Blog Article A Week

After you’ve made a couple of those changes, I think the next most important thing is just to start to create some content.  So I would actually say about one blog article a week is probably fine.

You know, someone like you, you’re passionate about the stuff and you create tons of content. You’re doing hundreds of webinars.  If you can do that, that’s fantastic.  But for many of these folks they’re really nervous about getting started so even one blog article a week will have an effect.

#3: Good Lead Generating Offer

And then I think the third component that you definitely need is:

• What’s that good offer that’s going to get people to convert and become a lead?

And usually I think a webinar is a great example of something that people can do.  And then you need to take that call to action, that offer to become a lead and put that on your home page, and put it on all of your blog content.

And I think that if you use just those 3 things, the blog articles and the SEO will start to attract more people to your site and you’re going to have that good call to action and you’ll start to get more leads through that call to action.

And then, you know, there are lots of ways to make it even better and do more with it, but those 3 things will get most people started.

In common with many hospitality establishments around the world The Glan yr Afon Inn suffers from enemies of the business posting rude and defamatory reviews.

The main places that reviews on The Glan yr Afon Inn are published is on TripAdvisor and Booking.com.

Reviews posted on TripAdvisor are completely anonymous and anyone can post bad reviews. The sorts of people that do post reviews are typically ex staff members - chef’s and managers particularly. They disguise themselves as proper customers.

Although TripAdvisor says that it regulates reviews it does not. It is completely biased towards the public. Even though it gives the management of hospitality establishments the opportunity to respond to reviews it does not necessarily post those reviews citing that they do not conform to it’s guidelines.

Other articles have been written about TripAdvisor on this blogsite.

Reviews written about The Glan yr Afon Inn and other establishments would be fairer if the people that posted them were required to identify themselves instead of hiding behind aliases like the cowards that they are.

For another example of the damage that ex-staff can attempt to inflict on their previous employers look here

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186438-d1746487-Reviews-We_Three_Loggerheads-Denbighshire_North_Wales_Wales.html

Most of the reviews that have been posted here are also completely untrue.

There are thousands and thousands of businesses who are being defamed by enemies.

TripAdvisor is going to be facing legal action soon over the defamatory remarks made on it’s website. See here

http://www.techeye.net/internet/travel-and-hotel-industry-gangs-up-on-tripadvisor

As they say ” On the Internet nobody knows that you are a dog “. On TripAdvisor nobody knows if you are a real customer or a friend of an ex-staff member doing their best to cause trouble.

If you are visiting Convergence Summit North and want to discuss Hosted Voice solutions then please call onto the Azlan stand where you will find Clare Jenkins of Cisco FutureLine.

Not sure if George Clooney is going to be there but I am reliably informed that there is a Nespresso machine and coffee mugs and Clare will be happy to go for a coffee with you and discuss how Cisco Hosted Voice might be the right Hosted Voice solution for you.

Andy Brocklehurst, Cisco’s RSM for Small Business will be presenting and participating in a round table discussion and wondering around the show.

Cisco have a new Small Business website at http://www.ciscosblaunchpad.com/