Bill On Business

I remember my L1 US Visa application process when I moved to USA for Ask.com

Apart from the glamour of Oakland,CA (North Silicon Valley…..no…really) the visa application process was hilarious. By the time HR had finished the write-up it literally said ‘Bill will be an asset to US National Security’ (my team used to do stuff like track inappropriate content publishers)

The L1 document was the least British self deprecating process ever. Nothing in my 3 pages of  ’why Bill should be allowed to go to the US’ was anything but true, but it was also like the most positive..caffeine fuelled new manager giving you a staff review during a cross-country run.

Yesterday I had to step into cover a colleague who couldn’t talk at SES. Typically I keep a fairly low profile and and work on technology, human relationship or financial levers to business and stay out the spotlight. Anyhow…at very short notice I had to prep a talk for the UK State of Search industry panel and supply a biog. Quickly  written on blackberry during the fire alarm at Google’s Avinash talk…I sent it off in 90 secs and thought no more of it.

It just appeared in my Google alerts and it was like a flashback to the L1 process..only this time I’d written it and am blushing at the megalomania sound of it. Then I read around for a while on different sites and you’ll notice something about most biogs…how few people talk about their roles as parts in successful teams and focus on a very singular voice of ‘I made xyz’ as if the successful team element dilutes rather boosts their relevance to the world….certainly everyone led and true as it may be, ‘collaborated to achieve’ is less present.

I don’t know about you but it’s harder and harder to strike out alone and deliver something without being part of a team….and it’s great teams that get the results in most of the world I live in. If I could never lead a tech initiative again, but just make teams work consistently excellently I’d be cool with that.

On this point, not progressive enough yet to rework my client pitch bio sheets, but maybe one day I’ll take the leap and say:

‘Was part of a great team. Full Stop. The company did xyz. Full Stop. We learnt xyz. End.

So..time to eat my own 2am love up advice.

Shout out to my old peeps..a truly amazing gang I was honoured to work with and miss everyday…. Gary Chevsky (Engineer 1 and THE man at Ask.com, also my old boss), Steve Orr (still at Ask.com 11 years in and resident genius, 3 way co-parent of Smart Answers), Mike Tierney (All your tech is happens now), Michiel Frishert (we’ll always have maps), Rona ‘eat my TFE mod/ don’t you dare’ Yang, Charlise ’paint my cake, eat my SA’ Tiee, Hope (NY Gentry Dictionary Empress) Hackett, Scott ‘Make Rocket Go’ the Visionmeister Grieder, Mike ’would you like an affiliate ID with that…no..I’ll fire you next time’  Poynter, Vlad ’Ukrainian Matinee Idol’ Sayenko, Vlad my Russian friend and last but in my UK team 1st…Hugh ‘Laughing Lord Lucan’ Poynton. You were it, we was there..and it was a pleasure to do my little bit along side you. All the best to my old Ask.com friends still fighting the good fight. …and maybe one day Ask.com will…..well… youknow.

See you in 51o.  

(Apologies to those I missed out…thing about teams…so damn many people to love)

Books are being burnt to keep warm and the weak and wounded getting hungry looks from SEOers. 

Twitter is down during SES London and it’s really just business as usual but goddamit I need to Tweet that Twitter is down. 

Humbled by Twitter offline ness, I’ve been forced to go back to my blog for a reunion. 

Not that I Tweet much or blog much anymore as work eats my life, 

But I’ve noticed that whilst 140 char Tweet on the lack of Twitter (ironic/unlikely surely) could be an interesting Tweet…as a blog article it really……..isn’t. 

Twitter Outage promotes new G8 vote on social media law?

I’ve just launched a new blog on Search Quality at http://blog.searchenginequality.com/ 

The focus is on improving search relevancy, freshness, spam reduction and a myriad of other themes that paid my wages for 8 years and still very much remain a key interest of mine. There may be the occasional post on SEO and PPC that are relevant to agency types but for the most part I’ll be writing about Search Engine Quality issues.

Value Based Consultancy – Fixed Cost Consultancy

As the recession swings in, more clients are looking to fix their costs, especially in areas such as legal and consultancy, where huge costs can be ran up.

The benefits to the client are clear, but few lawyers or business consultants are keen to embrace Fixed-Time, Fixed Price Consultancy models.

The demand for flat fee consultancy will not go away and can be very successful in attracting new business. It is also playing with fire.

How to Run Fixed Price Consultancy Projects (Just a short top level review, books are dedicated to such things)

1. Protect Your Brand. Ensure offering fixed price services does not diminish your brand by appearing to be discounting. Some people like reassuringly expensive, that’s one reason why Magic Circle Lawyers and McKinsey Consulting do well (apart from they are also very good).

2. Watch for canibalisation. Calculate revenue canibalisation from existing clients demanding a move to a Flat Fee Model

3. Look Ahead. Introduce Flat Fee models only in areas where you have very accurate knowledge of time/resource costs for the next 12 months. I recently bought US contractors in Dollars and then saw the £ drop 15% below my currency hedge. Nasty.

4. Resist scope creep at all costs, make it clear up front that the project will needs to be very well scoped/planned and that creep will be proactively managed.

5. Stick to what you know. Favour Fixed Price Consulting where “We’ve done this thing a million times before”, NEVER when “I think my estimates look ok, it’s a bit like what we did last time, I guess we can do this”. Make sure there is clear start point, clear process and clear sign off, use time and materials for everything else.

6. Be realistic. Fortune favours the brave, Fixed Cost favours the very realistic. Count all the time it takes to do a project including client management.

7. Add a safety margin: Calculate the hourly rate to carry out the project and then add 15%.

8. Look for time savings: Calculate how much time can be saved on time tracking and complicated billing that is removed by a flat fee. Treat that saving like it’s VAT and save it in a project fund called “Oh My God – I looked away for 5 minutes and now have a huge overrun on a fixed cost project”

9. Focus on efficiency: Introduce new equipment and efficient processes wherever possible in relation to fixed price projects. Efficiency has to be invested in.

10. Delegate. Now the client is not paying for a named individuals time, offload the simple tasks to a junior staff member who should enjoy a more varied workload

11. Talk to customers: Is there a demand for fixed price services in your industry, if demand is weak then consider shelving the idea until demand grows. If you do run with a Flat Fee service offering, get as much feedback from those trialing the model (staff and clients) and modify as needed. Openly say to happy fixed price clients “This pricing model is quite new for us, we’d like to try it out with more clients, is there anyone you know open to trialing this model. It’s a direct request for a referral, but there clearly a benefit for the new prospective client.

12. Try it out: Once you have a plan, start small and try it with a single client. A few weeks later you will almost certainly have made a few tweaks. Continue to roll out the pricing model slowly and make sure your financial backers such as banks understand what is happening so they understand the benefits as well as the risks.

The aim should be to maintain or grow revenue and profit whilst differentiating yourself in the market. Win win for clients peace of mind and consultants finances.

When buying online media it is useful to compare website user statistics to offline audience figures so you don’t lose perspective.

When buying media or generating revenues strategies for online publishers I compare costs/incomes to audited offline media such as newspapers and magazines.

Whilst there are huge differences in what you can do online compared to a printed page, at the end of the day advertising dollars should follow the audience and the biggest ROI.

One online network is charging around £6.00 CPM for a mass market run of site marketing campaign, yet I can buy the same quality eyeballs and attention in a London morning newspaper for slightly less in terms of comparative presence and audience impact. I will use this to leverage a discount where possible.

Regardless of being an offline or online marketing consultant, it is important to tell your client where to put their money to gain best effects, and sometimes that is where you traditionally buy.

ABC provide a PDF certificate of distribution for many publications. For instance The London Paper is distributed at 641 locations including 173 locations around train stations and has a average distribution of 501,329 issues per day, and carries around 39% advertising content. I know this and can show my client this because it’s certificated: http://abcpdfcerts.abc.org.uk/pdf/certificates/15571687.pdf

.Net magazine has 18,001 copies distributed but I would wager money that many of the advertisers do not realize 34.6% of copies are sent internationally and never reach a UK or Ireland address. Over a third of the readers are unlikely to buy their UK targeted services. How do I know..because I have a calculator and…the audit certificate http://abcpdfcerts.abc.org.uk/pdf/certificates/14775673.pdf

Surprisingly, offline media has much better transparency in some areas, assuming you take the figures with a small pinch of salt.

Don’t assume online is the best place for your clients money, and if it is…leverage offline advertising rates to bargain down to a rate based that reflects the cost of marketing to that audience (regardless of medium). 2009 is a year to negotiate down the rising costs of online marketing.

Top 10 US Airlines Measured by Passengers Carried in September 2008.

With Ad Targeting this good, where do I sign up?

How to isolate yourself from customers with a Christmas Card

In the last week of December I received 40 or so Christmas e-cards from companies I had dealings with in 2008. Most were amusing or bland but one stuck out.

The memorable greeting came from an SEO company where I occasionally speak to their Managing Director.

The unnamed company sent me an e-card that was little more than a flyer for their services and a list of their products, tagged with Happy Christmas at the top.

Apart from the debatable ethics of a business contact feeding my email address into his CRM, the e-card touted a number of services my team offers and thanked me for my good custom in 2008.

Since I’ve never bought from this SEO and indeed we compete in some areas, this message was wholly irrelevant. Moreover I consider it fairly impolite to send customers a sales flyer disguised as a Christmas card.

Issues of taste aside, this SEO companies approach was a lose/lose method of doing business.

If I’m a valued customer this is a crude and impersonal messaging that suggests I’ve been blended with cold sales leads, or worse, my relationship is of little importance.

If I’m a cold sales lead I feel no warmer from such an untargeted spammy sales message.

If I’m a business contact or competitor I get an understanding of how nascent my associate/competitors CRM capabilities are.

It’s easy to criticize so I should state my approach, by no means a perfect example, but more respectful:

I avoid Christmas giving as not all my clients are Christian or in Christian countries, I’ll face to face/verbally wish people a happy holidays as relevant. Crunch or no crunch my clients get something (Sarbanes-Oxley compliant) they can enjoy as a New Year Thank-you for the year past.

I send a Happy New Year present such as Champagne, Port, Dinner and Cinema tickets, an iTunes or Starbucks credit, accompanied by an unhurried handwritten Thank You card from me. It takes ages, literally several evenings but my client took hours or days to select my company’s services, the least I can do is spend a few minutes writing a card to say thanks.

Legal restrictions stop me giving anything more generous but it’s a personal touch and I remove my sales head well before I start writing Thank You cards. One thing is for sure, clients do not get a sales brochure disguised as a Christmas Card.

Regardless of my tastes, the net result of sending a heavily sales focused Christmas e-card is that I’ve gone from respecting this unnamed SEO Company to doubting their ability to segment a customer base, deliver relevant messages or understand how to sell. Generally my clients are not receptive to a big ticket sales message in the last week of December; I doubt many of their clients were either.

Considering SEO is all about relevance and appropriateness, this SEO companies 2008 Christmas card just lost them any business I could put their way in 2009.

If the troops at the Somme could take a day out of a war and respect Christmas, there is no reason SEO providers and Digital Agencies cannot do the same in a recession.

The Business Development Director of a significant Search Engine Marketing player in the UK contacted my office a while back.

I sit on the IPA Search Panel with one of his colleagues, so making contact could have been easy.

The following cold call email arrived with our receptionists and found its way to me. It sat in my inbox for a while, and I’m yet to respond anytime soon.

From: xxxxx xxxxx [mailto:xxxx.xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:47 AM
To: Front Desk London
Subject: Search Marketing Partnership
Hi,

xxxxxxx is looking for partners and we would like to invite you to consider a relationship with us. We specialise in Search Engine Marketing (PPC & SEO) and we have an Agency model that we would like to introduce to you.

If you are interested in discussing this further, then please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
xxxxxxx.

Top 100 UK Online Agencies 2008 as reported in New Media Age’s 2008 Rankings.

Sapient comes in 1st place for the second year running.  See 2007 UK Digital Agencies rankings.

I’ve added in revenue per staff member based on the quoted earnings declared. Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel came in higest billings per head at £213,691 while  e-InBusiness revenues suggest a mere £33,649 per head.  Mean Average revenues per head were £88,729 across the ranked agencies.