Get Found Archives - Strategic Digital Marketing with CNC

Looks good, talks the talk .. Does NOT perform. Change or Get Rid !!

May 24, 2013 By chrisw 1 Comment

If you are a business owner or a Sales Director then you know EXACTLY what I mean when I talk about a salesperson that you had working for you who looked the part, said all the right things but did NOT actually DO THE BUSINESS.

What do you do with them?

Well, the first thing you do is start agonising over them. What are we going to do with George or Jane? What’s the issue? Why don’t they bring in the deals? Can we fix them? Are they a lost cause? Should we just cut our losses and get rid?

When I was in IT companies it was actually a pretty big deal to get rid of a salesperson. We used to talk about it being a loss of £50-100K if we got it wrong hiring a salesperson. Of course on the other hand there was an ongoing loss taking place if they weren’t bringing in enough business to cover themselves and more.

Actually, when you break it down, there are only a few reasons why they don’t make it: Not enough ACTIVITY, Not enough (SALES) SKILLS, Not enough KNOWLEDGE, Not enough DESIRE – being some of the top ones.

How do you find out where the problem is ???? You ANALYSE the data.

If it’s ACTIVITY it will show in things like number of phone calls, meetings, proposals etc If it’s in SKILLS or KNOWLEDGE then it will show in lack of CONVERSIONS. If it’s in DESIRE – you will probably know already – but you could do tests to back up your gut feel and experience.

Eventually you will work out whether that sharp suited , smooth talking salesperson has to go or will stay.

Now, you see lots of sharp suited, smooth talking websites and Internet Presences around; slick looking websites that say all the right things …..

I don’t care for them much …

They cost a lot to build. They cost a lot to maintain. My question is, ‘What’s the Return? How many Visitors, Leads and Orders are YOU actually bringing in? – you flash piece of software you!’

To me a website is just like a salesperson (actually it is an ‘always on’ salesperson) and I have no time for a salesperson that just sits there looking good and saying all the right things.

Just like when I ran sales teams and sales forces I have ways of finding out (analysing) how virtual salespeople are performing and I also can tell whether it is an ACTIVITY issue (not enough traffic ) or a CONVERSION issue (it’s the same thing).

Either I will show you how to fix it or I will tell you how it needs to change.

The only thing you have to do is to realise that your website is just like a salesperson ……

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Commuters might not want traffic but we do – lots of it !! Go Fish !!

May 21, 2013 By chrisw 6 Comments

Traffic is the life blood of leads and new clients or customers

Once you have created that fine piece of content – go and PROMOTE it

If you are commuting in and out of town the last thing you want is lots of traffic – it clogs everything up and if it rains as well …. well you know what happens then !!

However, for Digital Marketers TRAFFIC is vital. When we produce CONTENT – a blog post, a video, a piece of research, a white paper etc etc we PROMOTE it wherever we can in order to find Traffic that we can CONVERT into visitors.

We are basically going Fishing!

We think about where we might find a likely school of fish and we drop in the baited hook. As I am not actually a fisherman I don’t want to get too technical on the analogy but we have various tools and our knowledge and experience – just as the deep sea fisherman has sonar and his knowledge and experience – to help us find these schools of fish.

However, for the fisherman and us it is not a precise science.

If we know what sort of fish we are looking for then we know roughly the best place to fish. However, like the oceans the Internet is a big place and sometimes the numbers are not there or if they are they are not the right type of people.

Also, we don’t really have big nets to catch people with – we have something more like a rod, line and bait.

So, before we get too caught up in this analogy the way it turns out is that you have to PROMOTE your Content and yourself in a number of different places and in a number of different ways before you get the visitors, leads and orders that you want.

You may have heard of the terms Owned Media , Paid Media and Earned Media? Basically it means that you use your own digital assets to promote something e.g. your social media accounts; you pay for promotion e.g. on Facebook or you ‘earn’ promotion e.g. somebody takes your blog and refers to it in theirs – just like I am going to do with this blog from Matt Gratt over at BuzzStream who goes into more detail about Content Promotion. Here’s another blog post for you on the same subject.

We often use the HubSpot phrase ‘Get FOUND, CONVERT and then ANALYSE how you did it’.

Getting found in Google searches for relevant search words and phrases is certainly one way of getting traffic. Recently we blogged about how we got top positions in Google searches for Wealth Management related searches where the amount of traffic is huge (20-55 million responses ).

One of the primary objectives of the Digital Marketing Ecosystem is to build you a platform from which you can dominate almost any search term. It is, in some ways, a little strange to think that we can dominate ‘Wealth Management‘ with our Digital Marketing orientated Internet Presence.

Getting found in Google searches is just Option 1 of many promotion options. Within this option there are many potential sub-options e.g. different ways of getting a natural or organic listing – using websites or blogs, Domain Name Optimisation (DNO), Google Maps etc. We could also resort to Pay per Click or Adwords if we wanted to.

Another way of finding traffic is to buy or rent an email list and send out a Solo Advertisement . How effective it is depends on many factors but it is certainly an option.

Also options are the use of the various Social Media sites and again in various ways. Each of the of the Social Media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Pinterest etc) have different options for promotion and advertising. Some of the promotional options are not as expensive as you might think – at least once you have worked out how to do them cost effectively they aren’t anyway.

There are many other options for where you can find traffic,some mentioned in the blog links I included.

We have not really spoken about the ‘Path to Conversion’ i.e. once your promoted content has been found how someone becomes a lead and then, eventually, a client or customer.

This is deliberate because what I want to talk about here is TRAFFIC.

TRAFFIC in many ways overcomes shortcomings in content quality. This is a hotly debated topic. Some people think that you have to have ‘High Quality’ to get the ‘right traffic’ or visitors. It is , in fact, only partly true. Actually there are many, many examples of ‘good enough being good enough’. Your blogs don’t have to be perfect they have to be good enough. Your videos don’t have to be perfect, good enough will do it. In some cases too high quality can work against you and mediocre quality can work for you.

Whatever the truth of this what I want you to do is to think about TRAFFIC and PROMOTION.

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We don’t do website design !!!

February 24, 2013 By chrisw Leave a Comment

Or more precisely we don’t do website design alone !!

Why is this ??

In simple terms the design of a website – whether it be the look of it (the aesthetics) or the way it functions – does not, on it’s own, get enough traffic, visitors, leads and orders.

As this New York Times article states ‘A common mistake is to prioritize style over substance‘.

The Restuarant, Quo Vadis has, according to this article, a website that is both ‘navigationally efficient‘ and ‘engaging‘. I would also add simple to that description. (It is quite interesting that their black and white website is somewhat similar to ours).

You have to get people to your website, they have to look through at least part of it, they have to leave some contact details (with the right tools you may be able to get some details of visitors from their IP address) and they have to have given you an order or taken some other positive action (e.g. phone you) before you can say your website WORKS !!

We believe that a website is part of your Internet Presence , part of your Digital Marketing Ecosystem. It is an important part – what we call your Authority Site but it is far from the only part.

People get to your website either because: they were looking for you and they found you (They typed your url into a web browser or into a search engine and you came up for your name), OR they searched for a product or service in a search engine and they found you that way ( which implies that some on-site SEO worked) OR they were led to your website from a blog post (Content Marketing) or a post in social media (Facebook, Twitter etc). They may also have received e.g. an email which led them back to your site, clicked on a banner advert or some other advert or similar. They could have come from a mailshot or from an advert on a vehicle.

They might have left a name and email address in order to e.g. download a white paper or join the mailing list.

If you have a shop on your website they might be able to purchase directly there, otherwise a purchase will come from some email nurturing that led to a ‘Buy one now’ button being clicked.

Getting traffic and visitors to your website used to rely a lot on SEO techniques but this turned out to be a temporary achievement and quality ‘Content Marketing’ has proven to be the more solid foundation.

Actually SEO knowledge combined with quality content marketing works very well.

What is clear, as we say in our videos, is that you have to have a number of elements working together to make an effective digital marketing system.

You want a website that has key SEO elements and content focused on your main keywords and phrases but you also need e.g. a blog, social media accounts, email software and a CRM system. You have to know how to create Landing Pages, Calls To Action, Squeeze and Sales pages.

So, we do like nice looking websites but we know that you need much more than that to get visitors, leads and orders.

The story of how I got to the IME and then met Chris and Michael … and the DME was born !

February 6, 2013 By chrisw Leave a Comment

Over the last 8 years ( Yes – 8 years !! ) I had been looking for the best way to market the businesses that I worked with and invested in, online. This probably started ( in 2004/5 ) with a realisation that many people were starting to use Search Engines like Google to find information on Products and Services that they were looking to buy.

I therefore began to study Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – how you optimise your website to be found on the Internet. I also joined a couple of Social Networks e.g. Linkedin and Ecademy.

I looked for the best way to achieve visitors, leads and sales. I found the answers very elusive. I could get my companies websites found (for relevant words and phrases) but turning being found into leads and actual sales was another story. I was never very satisfied with the results.

A couple of years ago I came across U.S. company HubSpot – whose mantra is ‘Get Found, Convert and Analyse (how you got found)’. HubSpot was the closest thing to the perfect system that I found but after a few installations I discovered that it was too expensive and resource and skill intensive for most small and medium sized companies and certainly for most home based entrepreneurs.

I began to develop my own system, which I called the Internet Marketing Ecosystem (IME) which was and indeed is, very good at driving websites to the top of Google for relevant search terms. Conversion of traffic and visitors into leads and analysis of what was working was another matter.
It required knowledge of landing pages, Calls to Action, Analytics, emailing systems and auto-responders and you had to know how to use them together and effectively.

In about July 2012 I came across an Internet Marketing System developed by Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek. (I randomly clicked a Facebook advert initially – which I normally never do !! – but it turned out that Stuart knew someone I knew well.) As soon as I looked at this system I realised that it had everything that I had envisaged for the Internet Marketing Ecosystem and much, much MORE !! The most important part of this system was that Stuart and Jay had PROVEN that it could generate lots of leads and orders. I halted the development work I was putting into the IME and put all my effort into understanding and promoting Stuart’s system.

I really recommend this system to everyone who wants to increase leads and orders for themselves and whoever they work for or with. I could not believe how much information Stuart gave away for FREE. It answers many of the questions that people have about how to be successful online in a simple and straightforward way. When you saw the system that Stuart and Jay put together there were a number of light-bulb moments. People often understood many of the issues that existed but didn’t know quite how to solve them. Stuart knew how to put all the components together in order to make the system work and he presented this in a way that anyone could understand. In addition he provided a support team to help you. This knowledge was applicable to anyone who was involved in Internet Marketing and who wanted to grow their online business.

After joining the Six Figure Mentors I met Michael and then Chris.

The SFM system is targeted at ‘solopreneurs’ who would use the system to sell the system to other solopreneurs. We felt that many businesses would need a system that they could integrate into their existing sales and marketing systems – an online version of their offline systems. We used all of our years of sales, marketing and business experience to develop the IME into the Digital Marketing Ecosystem which is the core product of Centripetal Network Consulting.

Hence we promote the SFM and DEA systems to individuals and the DME to companies.

A few things that are driving our development

January 31, 2013 By chrisw Leave a Comment

Although it didn’t start with this we recently came across a survey of CEOs which stated that whilst 90% of CEOs/MDs trusted their Financial Directors/ CFOs and IT Directors/ CIOs, 80% did NOT trust their Marketing Directors/CMOs. I guess we were a bit surprised that IT Director’s /CIOs had gotten to a position of such trust (although it was good that they had) but we were shocked with the view of Marketing people. We guessed that Digital Media marketing people probably had an even worse rating.

To some extent it is the fault of Marketing people that they are so mistrusted. Many have not tried hard enough to deliver tangible results and Return on Investment. On the other hand the marketing world has gone through incredible change in the last 10-15 years. With Digital Marketing in particular it is difficult to keep up with the pace of change. In addition it seems that CEOs sometimes have unrealistic expectations of marketing and what they can and should be targetted on.There is also the ongoing friction between Sales and Marketing in terms of who does what and who is responsible for what. (What is the handover point ? What does a marketing qualified and sales qualified lead look like?)

As someone who has held roles as CEO, Sales Director, Marketing Director, Strategy Director and Non Executive I have a lot of empathy with the challenges that the CMO has faced. In my view it is the fastest and greatest changing of all the disciplines.

In particular marketing departments have to continuously keep updated with new digital marketing developments and then try and work out how to make these new technologies deliver the important results.

The important results are of course traffic, visitors, conversion of those visitors to leads and conversion of those leads to orders.

So, one way of keeping focused is asking – does this improve being Found ?? (leading to more traffic and visitors), does it improve Conversion (from visitor to lead and lead to customer) or does it improve our ability to analyse and understand what is happening in this process.