M & A Rainmaker

If you have read a couple of my Marketing related posts here you will know that I consider Internet Video to be one of the  ” referrers ” of people and links back to your website and you.

My interest in Internet Video Marketing goes back some way. In fact I realised that I had a couple of timelines for this that I could check and I’ve surprised myself with how the time has flown by !!

In  December 2006 I produced ( or had produced ) a video for the Glan Yr Afon Inn. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1YGFgQHsno

and it comes up on Google alongside it’s Google Video version when you search on The Glan here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=glan+yr+afon+inn&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Now, I think that the thing that sparked me off then was that I noticed how simple and high quality online videos had become. ( not all of them were simple and high quality but some were ).

I came across Mike Koenigs ( who I will talk about later as it is he that has sparked off the recent renewed interest ) and his ” Internet Video Marketing with Internet Infomercials “(  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5R660ePBuI )  and also came across Guy Massey of The Internet Video Company ( see examples of thier work here http://www.ivc4.com/ivn/ ) . There were other people and companies that influenced me at the time – I just don’t remember them all. 

I guess that it was probably Mike who made me decide to produce a video myself and get it online. Fortunately for me I had access to a professional filming and editing team that had been recommended to me and I hired them, gave them a brief and sent them up to The Glan for a couple of days.  A couple of weeks later I went to thier offices and they showed me the demo. of the film. We made a few tweaks, added some ( not expecially brilliant ) music and I had my film on a disc. One of the children ( young adults now ! ) ” ripped ” it off the cd and  put it up on YouTube  and Google ( before Google bought YouTube ) and the other integrated it into The Glan website. So, we had videos on YouTube,Google and the website. Hey!! – I was pretty proud of the whole team !! Although I did not do it all myself it was great to know that we had started from nothing and got to a video on the Internet.

Then we started on our ” biking videos ” , with a new filming and production team. Aberdare Park was our first video:

http://thebikechannel.ning.com/video/945189:Video:4

which we all thought was great and then we moved on to our ” bike upgrade videos ” e.g.

http://thebikechannel.ning.com/video/945189:Video:962

here

http://thebikechannel.ning.com/video/945189:Video:1945

and here

http://thebikechannel.ning.com/video/945189:Video:2222

What exactly were we doing – Hey !! we were just exploring and having fun – ok ??

By this stage I had experience of working with three filming and production crews !!!

Now to put it simply you could say that The Glan video was just about improving the experience of looking at The Glan website and nothing to do with search. Hopefully if people looked at the video they would be even more interested in visiting The Glan. 

The Aberdare Park video was about us starting to produce a programme or a channel of bike related films and the upgrade videos were about educating people as part of the channel content and also some product placement ( Mikuni Carbs and Kuryakyn Hypercharger ). Again not about search.

However, I knew that Mike Koenigs was focussed on using internet videos to get good search rankings. In many ways he worried less about content and quality of the video and more about getting it up there  to generate more traffic and leads.

I also knew that Mike was developing a product called Traffic Geyser whose basic purpose was to upload videos across multiple video platforms. I also knew that Google was ( apparently ) going to start taking more notice of pictures and video. 

Fast forward 4 years ( yes 4 years !!!! ). What’s changed ?? What happened ???

Well I signed up for Traffic Geyser for about 18 months but I didn’t use it ( I was not producing any videos and I did not need to upload them to one video site never mind multiple video sites ) so I let the license fee lapse. I was also off exploring various other way of getting good rankings on the Internet. Oh !! and of course I was busy learning about Social Networks. That’s how I have at this point thousands of connections on Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy and LinkedIn ( not as many as some but more than most ! ).

I was also developing my ideas for the equivalent of the ” great universal connection theory ” or something, latterly known as the ” Marketing Whirlpool ” !! So, I have just expounded my theory when this   

http://www.trafficgeyser.com/poweredby/?p=3

lands in my inbox. Now Mike is also very good at email marketing and obviously tends his database with loving care 🙂 so, despite the fact that I let my Traffic Geyser account lapse I am still on his mailing list. ( I just have not taken any notice of his emails for the last couple of years I guess ! )

After viewing his first videos and having a bit of ( very interesting ) email discussion with him he ends up sending out another email and video here

http://www.trafficgeyser.com/poweredby/?p=160

Now, what you’ll notice here ( and Mike pointed this out ) is that in the first video case study Brian was clearly not very experienced but managed to pull in some good business really quickly whereas Valerie was clearly a pretty switched on and experienced lady ( let’s ignore the ” stay at home mom ” disguise shall we 😉  ) who had developed her business out of another business. Really focussed and niche.

Ok – so what’s the issue here then ??

Well, it’s sort of the old quality versus quantity debate:

Is it better to produce high quality videos and content that are distributed in single or small numbers and are optimised carefully OR is it sufficient and indeed effective to produce loads of  mediocre videos that rank highly in Google – at least for a while ???

Stay tuned while I explore – and please let me have your thoughts !!

Alexa tells you how many inbound links you have to your website and how you rank in the UK and US here

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mandarainmaker.co.uk

I was up at The Glan Yr Afon Inn last week and the manager, Ian, was telling me that we had some new customers.

They had just moved to the area and had Googled ” Restaurants near Holywell ” to see what was around.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=restaurants+near+holywell&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=lw

I am pleased to say that we come up on the first page for this search a couple of times.Once because of our entry in Google maps and once because my daughter Claire did some SEO work on the Glan website and it comes up top of the natural listings for this term. ( Thanks Claire ).

That’s all you need really isn’t it !!

I was a bit amused by the other restaurants that appeared on the front page : The Springfield Hotel have someone working for them who does a lot of work getting them found on the Internet; McDonalds;Two Indian restaurants;The Little Chef up on the A55; then it goes a bit weird – a chain of restaurants in Ireland ! ; a pub in Somerset; something in London etc etc

I am not complaining – it’s a great position to be in !!

The news that 365iT recently acquired IT Managed Services and Computer Hosting company 7 global gave us the opportunity to experiment with getting listed on Google NOT for the names of the companies eg 365iT, 7 global and 5i, but for the products and services that they offer.

As we have mentioned before the only people that are going to search on 365iT, 7 global and 5i for news about this acquisition are the people that already know about it ( because they have been told about it in some way and just need a bit more information).

Actually what we want is for people that are searching for terms like ” IT Managed Services Provider ” or ” Computer Hosting Services ” to come across the news that eg there is an IT Managed Services company that has just become a sister company to a unified communications company and could therefore provide a managed hosted unified communications solution as a ” one stop shop “.

This is actually what the potential customer wants ( assuming that this is what they were looking for ) and what the supplier companies involved want aswell ( ie they are looking for potential customers who want a combination of IT managed services, computer hosting and unified communications ). So, this is truly a win-win situation. In addition since Google wants to provide it’s searchers with the most relevant information for thier search it is a win for them aswell.

So, the first thing to understand is that we are not seeking to promote the company names involved in the acquisition but what the acquisition does for the potential clients. This leads to a re-prioritising and re-wording of the Press Releases and other communications  and it assumes that we have already worked out what keywords and phrases we want to promote. 

In this case for example 365iT, 7 global and 5i make way for IT Managed Services, Computer Hosting and Unified Communications. THESE are the things that we want to promote into the search.

The original Press Release

http://www.365itechnology.com/images/content/press_releases/365_iT_plc_acquires_7_Global_Group_Ltd.pdf

is therefore modfied to this Press Release

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/365-it-plc-acquires-it-managed-services-and-computer-hosting-specialist-7-global-group-ltd-127184.php

http://www.prfire.co.uk/press-release/365-it-acquires-it-managed-services-and-computer-hosting-specialist-7-global-group-4212.html

where one emphasises the names of the companies and the other emphasises what they do. ( This thinking reminds me of the Feature, Advantage, Benefit sales philosophy – a Feature is like the company name, an Advantage is something that the company can do and a Benefit is something the customer needs and the supplier can provide and will lead to a cost saving or improvement in service ).

I chose a paid ( I paid $20 ) Press Release through 24-7 Press Release.com particularly because it is one that I have had a lot of positive experience with and I know that not only does it rank high but also it lasts some time in this ranking. ( Some Press Release sites posts appear briefly and then disappear ).

24-7 PR is also easy to upgrade so that, for example, you improve the SEO and the analytics as you go. I noted that PRFire was one of the websites that got good rankings when we were investigating boiler room brokers in an earlier post.

So it was a calculated assessment that by using the right PR sites with the right wording we would get appropriate rankings and this has indeed proved to be the case ( at the time of writing ) with the search as follows

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBR_en&q=IT+Managed+services+computer+hosting+&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

 achieving a top of Page 1 listing and another front page listing

and subsets of this search eg

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBR_en&q=computer+hosting+services&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

also getting onto Page 1.

It should be noted that this is within hours of the Press Release actually being released ( it was released today ).

As soon as it was released we have supported the PR with comments and posts on eg Facebook and Twitter and links from these sites.

It will of course require further work to maintain these Page 1 listings but ” Objective achieved ” for the moment.

• Strategic marketing objectives
• Tactical marketing objectives
• Messages
• Offerings
• Target markets
• How to get to target markets
• How we will support our proposition
• What the competition is doing

This needs doing whether we are thinking about Traditional Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing or Internet Marketing – all of which we will do in a co-ordinated way.

From this review we will obtain some key messages, straplines, words and phrases.

We will create a website that has:

• Our brand
• Our message(s) – relevant ones
• Our culture
• Our content – relevant

and always – in the back of our mind – will be the fact that we want to be found for certain searches. We integrate these terms into our content and we also ” code ” them in where we can ( in website names, titles,  metatags etc )

 What we are doing is that we are taking care of the relevant content and correct classification aspects referred to earlier. THEN we need to go about increasing traffic and creating links ( ideally from other high ranking websites ).

To achieve this we ” promote ” ourselves.

N.B. Whilst we will concentrate on Internet promotion clearly Traditional marketing and Word of Mouth marketing will lead to an increase in Internet activity alongside a return fom that particular activity e.g. a mailshot may get a return in it’s own right but it will also add to Internet marketing  return .

When we talk about Internet promotion I am thinking that we have already established a website which has everything we have talked about so far in it. It looks great, has the right content, has the right coding and construction.

It will get direct visitors ( because people will see the url somewhere and type this in to the browser ).

It will get visitors via Google and other search engines because when people search for your products and services they are very likely to find you because your website has the right content and coding.

It will get more visitors because you will promote it on and you will create links from what I call referrer sites:

1. Feeder websites. These are small, perhaps niche focussed websites that you establish.
2. Social Networking sites eg Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy, LinkedIn.
3. Photo/Video sites eg Flickr and YouTube
4. Your blogsite.
5. Other people’s web and blogsites.
6. Information sites eg Digg, Stumbleapon,Delicious,Social Median
7. Directory sites.
8. Google Adwords.
9. Press Release websites.
10. Others sites.

Promotion does a number of things:

• People see you on that medium/site eg on YouTube and further promotion may occur there
• They link through to your website ( ie you get more traffic and links )
• It adds to the number of visitors to your website 

To give you an example of how I have used ” referrer sites ” to boost visitors and links to a main website – here is one of the pubs websites

Sometimes the solution just turns up !!

Just recently we have been discussing how to create websites that not only look good and are easy to use but are also search engine optimised.

My past experience of having websites built is that you typically get website designers who are either creative and artistic or programmers. Simplistically the arty types don’t understand coding, databases and SEO and the programming types don’t understand art, aesthetics and ease of use.  In fairness you do get more that have an appreciation of both now.

However, you still get websites designed today without an appreciation of SEO. Some website customers don’t really think that this is an issue but my bet is that most of them will – one day. The days of un-SEO’d websites are long gone in my view.

Website designers often have to deal with customers who don’t understand that they need to do some thinking about what they would want to be ranked for if thier website was to be SEO’d. They also don’t appreciate that some things just take time and steady effort. Many of them also do not know what they want thier websites to look like or criticise designs without being able to say why it is not right for them.

There are a couple of things that modern websites really need that are often not provided.

One of these things is called a statistics monitor – enabling you to see the source of the people that come and visit your website and it’s various pages. One of the reasons for this is that today it is quite common to drive traffic to your website from e.g. a blogsite like this or from social network sites, press release sites. Google Adwords etc etc You need to know which of them is more effective at driving traffic to your website.

The other thing that you really need to be able to do is to be able to update the content on your website quickly and easily, with text and images and even video. Since I have had this blog I have been amazed at how easy it is for me to update it quickly. I am not doing anything clever with it at the moment – not using images and video for example. However I don’t have to get hold of my website designer and explain what I want to do – I just do it with a blog. A good website has to have regularly updated content though so not being able to update it easily is a problem.

So, because I tend to look for a process that will make a business proposition replicatable and scalable I have been thinking about the process for producing an effective website that incorporated things like SEO, statistics and content management.

Amazingly a business contact turned up here today with a system for making the production of websites easier and quicker ( deskilling some elements ) whilst at the same time ensuring that they were SEO’d and that they incorporated things like statistics and content management.

Now, for all I know there are loads of these systems around and more research is required but for now, as I said to my contact, I have a tool which allows me to follow and recommend a much more comprehensive website building process. 

We talked briefly about target market for this and to me it was ideal for businesses that were producing multiple, somewhat tailored but perhaps not exactly the same, websites. The thing was that I could reel off a couple of prospects ( suspects )  for this straight away.

Well I have put the system out for review to a couple of people I know and will get some feedback from them soon. Watch this space !!

Oh, it’s called the Vesuvius Project because I think that when we have the right solution it will explode 🙂