My boss is asking me to look around for a consultant to help us with our overall web marketing efforts - someone we can bounce ideas off of and help us determine how to prioritize what we’re working on for the best return. We have a few e-commerce sites in the electrical hardware distribution industry (mostly B2B, with electrical contractors and various types of businesses being our target market). Our keyword terms are highly competitive across the board. We’re looking at ways to market to our database via email marketing. We don’t use social media at the moment due to the market we’re in, as we haven’t yet determined if it’s worth the effort/cost. We’ve been focusing most efforts on SEO and have seen some improvement in sales, but it’s tough with the competition of our keywords.
We know we need to improve in certain areas. We don’t have a good way of generating relevant content (blogs, articles, etc) that we could use for back links and social media/email marketing efforts. We don’t have a person that can participate in relevant forums to act as our resident expert to help draw in customers that way. We have one PR4 site and the others are PR2 or less. We’re in an industry where getting useful inbound links from related (quality) sites is more than a little difficult, especially when we don’t have much informational content outside of product data. We’re struggling to come up with ideas for regular email marketing that doesn’t revolve around content generation - we’re going to be building out a coupon code system here soon though, which will be important.
Can I get some suggestions on consultants, what to look for, what to avoid, etc. I’ve been involved with web marketing for many years myself but am finding that I could use some help. I’m not new to all of this, but I am new to the electrical industry. I haven’t been able to make a big impact and feel that a consultant might be able to shed some light on a few things I haven’t thought of or put much emphasis on so far. I’ve read plenty of guides, books, etc. I feel I have a solid understanding of web marketing in general, just need some ideas and maybe some explanation on why what we’re doing hasn’t been working as well as we had hoped.
I’ve always found that the best way to know who is worthwhile is to see who the local digital agencies have experience with. These companies manage the websites of a lot of clients and they often find themselves working with (or again) SEO companies, so they’ll have a good idea of who in your area knows their stuff.
From reading your post I’d suggest that you do need some outside ideas but not necessarily someone to dive into execution for you. What you’re describing in your marketing is an attempt to make something stick and odds are if you push hard enough, something eventually will, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the right tactic. Take your email strategy for example… you mentioned a desire to build coupons. If you make discounts your communication method you will see sales, and you will see that you’ve conditioned your customers – people who already know you enough to optin to you – to buy only on a discount. Offers are certainly an effective tool but that’s not a strategy.
On the other hand it sounds like you’ve got a big emphasis on SEO which you describe as difficult to master but you don’t mention a word about purchasing habits or behaviors. Do you know that search is the right call path? If so, do you know that the rest of your ducks are lined up enough to even make the traffic from search beneficial to you? If you don’t know if social has value or not, odds are you’re thinking about 1 input producing 1 output, buying is broader than that.
If your roadblock was time or expertise on SEO or PPC alone alone you’d want to find someone to alleviate that pain and bring a certain amount of experience to scale, optimize and improve results. But your comments are all over the board and to me that screams for a broader approach.
The best thing a marketing [forget web, the internet is a channel, sales come from the results of your entire operation] consultant can do is be your outside eyes, the individual who isn’t conditioned to your internal beliefs or struggles with what what works and what doesn’t and that lets them, for a time, act as a sort of unbiased guide to help point towards what will work. Sure you nee someone who can get their hands dirty but what you really should aim for is a person who can help you discover “where to go” and how to get there.
If you then realize you need someone who can lift heavy boxes [i.e. build campaigns day in and out] you can get those type of “consultants” as well. They come at a far different price tier and frankly that’s someone who is not going to tell you that the channel is the wrong one, or that you’re missing the bigger opportunity to jump into social. Their job is to push through and find results in that.
I totally echo Ted’s comments. My experience of consultants is those who will charge you to tell you what you want to hear. This may not be true for all but its a sure why to loose money without any gain. Take a step back and review your overal strategy. Sometimes the solution is much more simple than you think. You may find that employing someone to post flyers around or for b2b someone to sit and phone around companies and build realtionships with other businesses would be more benficial.
Actually if I’m reading you correctly, I’m advocating the exact inverse.
Yes many consultants say what you “want to hear” but that’s a function of who you hire and if you pick people who focus on “doing”, well, they should be doing what you ask. I’ve been on both sides enough to know that the issue never lies with just one.
The truth is it’s nearly impossible to see your business objectively even when you’re just a few months into working for it and while running to execute is ideal, you have to have an idea about what you’re executing on and if it’s the right way to do it. So when you realize you either need to someone who can help you do something better [and train you on how to do it yourself for the long haul] or find your self unsure of what that next marketing step / focus / priority should be that when there’s an advantage to bring someone in… That someone doesn’t have to be a consultant by any means but then again, hiring someone 365 only makes sense if you need [and can afford] to do that thing 365.
There’s still a learning curve with purchasing habits and behaviors. We don’t have any real accurate tracking in place to measure certain efforts, which makes it pretty challenging as well. I’m working on that though. At this point, I’m being given the general task of increasing web orders, and that’s why I’ve listed specific efforts and am all over the place. My job is to implement various solutions (newsletters, SEO efforts, website user experience improvements, etc) that will increase online orders. That’s probably why I have that “one input, one output” thought process.
I don’t really like the idea of hiring a consultant, as I think you end up risking a lot of money and time into a person who may or may not know what they’re doing. But I know we could use some help. I’d like to be able to ask an expert some questions and know that the information I’m getting back is legit and will work for us.
That sounds like a healthy fear to me, question is how you get around it to go to the level you’ve been tasked with achieving.
I like Ultimate’s idea of talking to local shops… some will of course pitch you on their business but it’s a good way to see who has a track record and of course having someone nearby while at times limiting also presents some great advantages. If you chose to look online the same dynamic still applies – people who know people are an ideal place to start for getting a real feel for the resource.
One of the best signs you’ve got a solid individual identified is their interrogation of you. A good consultant is concerned about their outcome and finding brands they can truly play well with as opposed to just landing more work. I’ve personally moved to 100% referral business… it insures we’re on the same page from the start and lets me focus in on the goal rather than trying to find a magic bid rate.
And oh ya, tempting as it is, stay away from the super cheap / super eager. The guy taking bottom dollar doesn’t tend to have top shelf experience [and if s/he does, pass me their name :D].
Some points to consider before selecting an SEO company.
Check their track record. What is the age of company? How experienced they are in this field? From when they are into this business?
Request few sites they are working on since past six months. Check the keyword ranking for these sites in various search engines.
Ask for details as to what will they cover while doing SEO? Will they do only off page or also on page? Some companies only do off page. I will prefer someone who will also do on page to get the real benefits of SEO.
Check if they maintain and provide regular updates/reports which can be cross checked. For eg: List of directories where your site is submitted date wise, blogs posted for you, your keyword position over a period of time.
These are some of the points you can keep a tab on to check if your company is genuine in what they promise.
I don’t know that we’re going to be looking for an SEO company, as we want an overall marketing specialist that will help us decide what other marketing solutions will yield results and where it makes sense to spend our time and effort. SEO is just one of several areas where we need to improve.
Exactly. SEO is just one part of online marketing - we’re also looking at local SEO/SEM, PPC, banner ads, external product catalog lists (eBay and Google Products), newsletters, auto responders/emails, social media, blogging, etc. Organic SEO is what we’ve been focusing on a lot lately, but organic SEO will only do so much by itself without all of the other web marketing solutions to compliment those efferts… and organic SEO is pretty tough in our highly competitive keyword market. So we want to make sure it makes sense to spend so much time focusing on that specific solution when we might be able to get more return focusing on another part of web marketing (like newsletters, content generation, social media, etc). In terms of offline marketing, we do some print ads but I don’t know that we’re going to focus too much on the offline stuff.
Who handles the marketing for your organization. In the end, SEO/SEM/IM (and all those initials) are an offshoot of marketing - a technical aspect to be sure, but it’s still a marketing aspect. If you’ve got a good working relationship with whoever handles the marketing, it might be easiest to start there first. They may have someone they use regularly and/or a good, solid way to grasp your ROI on your current efforts, at which point you may find you don’t need to outsource the efforts at this time.
We don’t really have anyone who handles marketing outside of the owner. I’ll be the one overseeing the marketing efforts and running some of the decisions past the owner… but being new to the industry is proving to be a challenge for me, and there’s a bunch falling on to my plate. I enjoy the challenge, but it can be overwhelming at times.
