I am often amused by people’s fascination with getting themselves on page one of organic searches – as an agency we have never tried to achieve this – rather it has beeen a pleasant and surprising side effect of what we consider as “just doing the job right”.
To the point where we have clients with from 100 to over 200 keyword searches that we check 3 monthly and find them on page 1 of organic searches for anything from 50 to 100 of them. It is quite a buzz to put in an industry relevant search term and find our client on page one 5 times - the client is pleased too!
There seems to be confusion over what is important and what we are trying to achieve – yes it is great to get your own website high up the listings – but there are a number of other considerations:
1. 3rd party listings gained through PR, Content Marketing and Social Media will get listed much more easily and more quickly because the directories and journals are more valued than a single manufacturers site – and their listing for you will still take people to you. Such listings will also keep out your competition. We frequently find our clients listings appearing on page 1 a number of times eg 3, 4 or 5 times for a single search string. These listings seem to get picked up very quickly and to stay relevant for many months.
2. Your blog is likely to get higher value than your website if you are keeping it active – not only does a blog get picked up quickly it can be quite a stable listing.
3. Your website can get up the listings supported by the value accrued from your total activity and traffic. Once there it is usually quite stable if you maintain your online activity.
Well lets think about this logically -
1. How much did you/would you spend on a brochure/literature? – £10K per year? £20K? £30K? More?
2. How much do you spend on a sales rep including salary, car, expenses? £50K per year? £60K? More?
3. How much did you/would you spend on a national exhibition? A shell scheme for £10K? A space only site at £100K – plus, plus, plus?
Now if you have a website then you don’t need a brochure - and if you think that you do for customers that do not like the internet ( we are talking about technology company customers, but there are some who don’t get on with computers ) then you can easily print one from your website - and the website should at least be up to date, unlike a brochure or manual which goes out of date the day before it is printed!
Well your website and blog are not sales people but they do manage to do a whole lot of things that sales people do – and they do it 24/7/365 - coupled to PR reaching a couple of hundred or more publications and Social Media reaching hundreds or thousands of customers and prospects, they do a lot lot more than your best people ever could on their own.
And with the right approach to photography, graphic illustrations and video demonstrations your website and blog can between them do most of what you normally achieve at an exhibition – with the exception of shaking the customers hand and offering a drink.
Don’t get me wrong the personal touch is very important – I have personally sold £1M pa on commission and know well that people still buy from people – and I’ve yet to meet a website that can negotiate, research a client application or respond to a customers emergency problem - but let’s understand the sales function is expensive and lets get things in proportion – your other marketing/sales/promotion tools should have a budget in proportion to their value.
So now - how much should you spend on your web/blog sites?
Are you spending £10Kpa – roughly the minimum cost of a catalogue?
Are you spending £50Kpa – the minimum cost of sales rep?
Or are you spending £100K plus?
The internet and our ability to use websites to substitute for these other sales tools has enabled businesses around the world to hugely cut costs, survive, protect profits and to do much more with less resources – but you should still be spending appropriately and not penny pinching on these valuable internet based tools.
So how much are you spending on your website/blog – enough?
Following the success of our early 2011 program of seminars, registrations are invited at www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration for a free seminar on 23rd September on the subject of “Industrial PR and Social Media Marketing”. We are delighted that these free seminars are proving so successful for the delegates, since all seem to go away with a much better insight into the roles of PR and Social Media in the industrial marketplace – which is very different from the mainstream perception – and since we are an active and experienced company we are passing on what we actually do and what we know works – not just a theoretical training.
The seminar will cover the basics of Industrial PR and how to do it for yourself – press relations vs. public relations, keywords, directories, printed and internet media, press releases, features, building a database, web profiling, with “hands on” exercises. Other topics will be Marketing for Industrial SMEs – building a cost effective Promotional Pyramid – blogs, newsletters, website SEO, video, advertising, exhibitions and social media – with a guest Social Media Manager from our associate Lesley Whiteman Social Media Agency.
We believe that PR is cheaper and more effective than ever, PR is the cheapest promotion a company will ever do and that based on a solid foundation of PR a company can build the other major elements of online marketing, content marketing, social media, exhibitions and advertising into a worthwhile long-term investment that will protect a company through the downs and leverage growth in the ups of the economic cycle.
One day free PR seminars are planned for September and October 2011 at a quiet relaxing venue near our offices in Bedfordshire, with complementary networking lunch and free car parking. To register for the September seminar please go to www.id-marketing.co.uk/free-seminar-registration
The creation of easily digested information regarding products and services. By presenting genuine information in a quickly assimilated way we are helping engineers to stay up-to date with developments and trends so that they can quickly solve problems in design or production. This presents a wider profile of possibilities and helps optimise the innovation cycle.
Dissemination to enable it to be easily found – build a better mousetrap and people will NOT beat a path to your door – unless they actually need a mousetrap and know about yours! This is a genuine need – by putting our information where it can easily be found we are serving that need. People sometimes need to be told that a) mousetraps exist, b) some mousetraps are different/better/cheaper than others and which is which. A whole range of media publications have grown up to serve this need on a wider basis from the national press to Google, to a plethora of very small but very targeted publications.
