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.

I get loads of comments on my M & A Rainmaker blog. ( ok lots of them are just link spammers – I know ). I read them all and I value them all ( well except the link spammers that write horrible, incomprehensible, inane things and then expect me to approve them ! ).

It has gone way beyond being a place where I wanted to write down my experiences of starting, building and selling companies. In the main it has become a place where my journey through Internet Marketing has been documented. This was a journey that started in the early 2000’s. It was a journey that was driven by a desire to understand how to get found on the Internet. My firm belief was that people would search for information about nearly everything on the Internet – and then, sometimes, they would actually buy. In other words whatever you sold you needed to have a presence on the Internet and you needed to be found for the services and products that you supplied.

Now there are many blogs posts on this website that are meant to be found for certain ( Google ) searches. For example if you search on
” Internet Marketing Strategy Lichfield ” you will find that a couple of blog posts from here rank at at the top and that further down there is a Pinterest link, a Digg link and then a Twylah link. Yes, some social networks will give you search results aswell !!

But I digress, this post was supposed to be about my blog needing a really good sort out.

Actually I think it is a mother beautiful blog. It was designed for me by Nikki Pilkington and I love the colour and the ” clean lines “. It is uncluttered by, well anything really.

What does it need though ??

Well there are a few things that I plan to add sometime:

1. I need links to all my Social Network pages. ( At the moment these are just on the ” Contact Page ” ).

2. I need you to be able to share all my blogs easily on your Social Network pages.

3. I need to put ” Call to Actions ” on my blog posts e.g. at the bottom of this one.

4. I need an email sign-up section ( but this assumes that I am then going to start emailing my email database ).

5. I am thinking about adding ” Skimlinks ” and have actually signed up for it and been approved.

I could put adverts on my blogsite – not sure if I will but I could.

6. I should have some sort of comment spam filter – at the moment I just approve or not comments.

Actually that’s about all I am thinking about.

( Maybe – mobile friendly ?? )

Yeah , I know I should have some pictures here aswell !!

If you have any thoughts then please let me know 🙂

Over the last few months we ( Silicon Crossroads VCT ) have been giving clients and selected friends and business contacts what amounts to an Internet Marketing Masterclass. This graphic here:

which appeared here http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-marketing-landscape-complicated-2012-5 shows just how complicated social media has become. Actually these are not all the categories or all the companies and products in those categories because I can think of a few more.  If you are trying to keep up with the ever changing world of Internet Marketing and Social Media you have your work cut out.

I always start off my presentations on this topic by saying that our focus on Internet Marketing should NOT be taken to mean that we don’t believe in other forms of marketing ( so called Traditional Marketing ) e.g. Word of Mouth ( WoM ), advertising, mailshots and in particular emailshots. Actually our research has led us to the conclusion that one of the primary objectives of much Internet Marketing is to get someone’s name and email address.  Once a person has ” opted-in ” to your email database you have a friend and a prospect. All you need to do is to send them relevant, interesting, funny etc information so that they STAY on your email list !

When I originally started learning about Internet Marketing it was because I had seen some research that said that about 50% of the people who were researching and buying telephone systems did their initial research online. Today we all use Google and other search engines to research and buy the things that we are interested in or want to buy.

In the Masterclass I ask people to think about something they have researched into and perhaps bought online. You can do this too. Think about ” the process ” that you went through. ( This is the simple version ) You wanted to buy something. You Googled it. Some search results were presented. You clicked on a few. Explored the websites that you were taken to.  Compared the offerings. Made a decision. Bought. OR maybe you found a couple of suppliers you liked but wanted to wait to make the decision to buy so you just bookmarked the site or signed up for emails from the company.

I always like to understand what the ” young people’s ” process is because I think it is often different to the way we use Google. e.g. my son ( age 22 ) is always working on cars and if he doesn’t understand something or wants something he will type the exact question into Google e.g. ” how do you fit a light bulb to the rear quarter light of a Peugeot 105 “. As they say – you can tell someone’s age by the way they type things into a mobile phone – one finger is OLD, one thumb YOUNGER, two thumbs YOUNGER STILL. So different age groups Google ( Internet search ) in different ways.

Some people do not understand ( or believe ) that a website is a waste of time and money if it is not being FOUND ( for relevant search terms – words and phrases ). The objective is not only to be found for the company name ( hopefully that is a given ) but for the PRODUCTS and SERVICES that you provide.

This begs the question ( which not many people ask themselves !! ) – What ARE the products and services that YOU want to be found for ?? This is actually a fundamental question and a cornerstone of everything that you do from Search Engine Optimising ( SEOing ) to putting the correct CONTENT into your website and to your blogging strategy.

You may be surprised at how few companies do this and how difficult it seems to be for them. If I was being cruel ( which I sometimes feel like being ) you would think that they don’t actually know what it is that they are trying to sell and therefore be found for.

For other people it is a relatively easy question. They know what they are trying to sell and therefore promote and therefore be found for.

Once understood ( and played with a little bit because some will be easier to rank for than others ) these are the “terms” that will be woven into ALL new content. ( You may want to go back and review what you have already done on the basis of this review aswell !! ).

N.B. This is an interesting time to be talking about what Google ( and other search engines ) want to see in order to rank your web/blogsite high because Google has recently changed it’s “algorithms” penalising some SEO practices. If you read some of the books about Google you will find that it was originally based upon the practice of ” referencing ” research papers i.e. a paper written on a particular subject ( the topic of interest ) would ” reference ” ( provide links to ) other worthy papers. Google ALWAYS ( and in my mind always will ) tries to provide people with the information or answer they seek – to it’s best ability. Therefore, put simply, if you provide ( good, relevant, interesting, nice to read and look at ) CONTENT you will be FOUND over the long term without any risks of being penalised. I guess some people might call this a ” Content Marketing Strategy “.

Once you have been FOUND the next task is to CONVERT visitors ( to your web or blogsite ) into Prospects and then Customers and then ANALYSE how/why/with what you achieved this success and then REPEAT IT !!!

N.B. I borrowed this Get FOUND, CONVERT,ANALYSE mantra from HubSpot ( http://www.hubspot.com/ ) who came up with a new
” meme ” ( means a completely new area, in this case, Marketing Strategy ) called Inbound Marketing.

So, you get FOUND ( because you have built your web/blogsite to be found for the things that you want to be found for ) then you CONVERT ( via the fact that you had the right ” Landing Pages “ ( more on this another time ) and ” Calls to Action ” then you track who found you, who they are, what they did when they went onto your web/blogsite and where they came from. e.g. Was it a Twitter/Twylah post that you made that led someone to your website who then emailed/phoned you or subscribed to your email database ?

For those familear with the term we are talking ” Sales Funnels ” here like :

from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/16759/3-Tips-For-Better-Lead-Management.aspx

It is probably useful to remind ourselves of ” How to create a high ranking web/blogsite ” ( in simple terms ). A web/blog/domain will rank high on Google ( and other Search Engines )  IF:

• The CONTENT is relevant to the search ( and regularly updated with “rich” new content )
• The ON PAGE SEO has been done ( Titles, tags etc ) and it is ” easy to be seen and spidered “.
• There are LINKS back to your your website/domain from other ” high ranking ” websites/domains
• It is based on a ” powerful platform ” ( like WordPress or HubSpot )
• The website itself and the hosting environment are ” High Performance “

Once we understand all of this this we can understand why we must create what I call an ” Internet Marketing Ecosystem “.

Similar to

which was created by http://davefleet.com/2010/01/2010-social-media-marketing-ecosystem/

In my Internet Marketing Ecosystem I typically advise to have :

• A web/blogsite based on something like WordPress or HubSpot. ( You are on Mine )
• A Twylah page. Here’s mine  http://www.twylah.com/cwindley
• Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Linkedin accounts ( as a base ) N.B. I have all of these and more but not all in M&A Rainmaker.
• Other accounts where you can post url’s on high ranking websites e.g. digg.com

and then you can establish an ecosystem that grows in power with every blog post and Twitter Tweet !!

or to put it slightly differently – the number of visitors to your website, the number of those visitors that participate in a call to action ( do something ) and the number of those people that become customers – THAT is the mantra of hubspot.com.

They say that last year they had something like 2 million visitors to thier website of whom 160,000 participated in a call to action and of those about 1,000 became hubspot customers.

It’s a mantra that ALL businesses could do with keeping in mind.

Let’s have a look at this a bit more closely….

Getting Found/Getting Visitors

Hopefully most people now understand that being found by Google when someone types in your company name or a variation of it is a given – if that does not happen then you have not even left first base !! However your objective should be to be found for the products and services that you offer. Ideally you want to be on page 1 when someone searches for your key products and services. How easy or hard this is to do depends entirely on the competitiveness of the keywords and phrases that relate to your products and services.

 Getting found for what you have to offer is absolutely key.

Recently I have been having two in depth discussions with people that I am helping:

1.  Tell me the most important products and services that you want to sell ( List them all and then put them in order of priority ).

2. Tell me what keywords and phrases you think people will type in ( to Google ) to find your main products and services.

I don’t expect them to know every variation of keyword or phrase nor do I expect them to know how competitive ( how hard to rank high for ) those keywords and phrases are. I can find that out myself or with the assistance of my team.

The next thing that I tell them to do is to

3. Get Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools installed on thier website and to get access to it ( for which they will need a Googlemail email address ).

The reason for this is that we need a baseline ( a starting point ) to see the effect that we have on things like visitors, keywords, referrals, links etc etc

Understanding  what you want to promote and the keywords and phrases that relate to it  is the foundation of everything that you will do on the Internet to promote yourself and get more visitors to your website.

The basic key to a high ranking website is on page SEO ( keywords, titles,metatags – related to your keywords and phrases ) , frequently changing and updated, relevant content and lots of ( good ) inbound links.

In thier ” Getting Found ” section Hubspot highlight SEO, Blogs and Social Media. These are the basic areas to address to improve the visibility and ranking of your website:

– SEO your website ( titles,tags,content etc ) in accordance with your keywords and phrases.

– Establish ( seperate ) blogs

– Establish pages in social media ( Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg etc etc etc )

In doing so you will establish an ” ecosystem ” of related online media. You will establish a network of friends/followers/etc for your blog(s) and for each of your social networks and you will also connect them to your website and to you ( they may come to you about business direct from your blog or social media page or they may come to you via your website ).

It is difficult to describe just how powerful this set of interconnected networks is. Facilities like ” share ” and ” join ” enable you to share information posted in one place to all the other places and to invite your friends from one place to another place.

Anyway, by now it will be time to look at your analytics to see where the traffic and links are coming from and how many visitors you are getting now.

Once you have got visitor to your website you have got to get them to do something.

Convert

On the hubspot home page ( thier main landing page ) you will see a number of ” calls to action ” e.g. ” Try Hubspot free for 7 days ” or ” Download a free Inbound Marketing Kit “. To do this you will need to provide them with information about yourself . This might range from a name and email address to a more comprehensive list of details about you and your requirements.

Each one of these is a ” lead “. You have converted a visit to a lead. ( Well done ).

As Hubspot mention – you need to track and manage these leads – then you need to analyse them –  so many referrals to the website came from ?? and they eg downloaded a white paper and then they did ??

Analyse

Analysis would include online and offline analysis. You want to analyse how well your marketing is doing; look at your competitive analysis ( how well are you doing relative to your competitors ) and also look at the quality of the leads. You should ensure that everyone in the company asks where leads came from – and not just ” from the Internet ” – you want to know whereabouts on the Internet !