On Friday I attended #BrightonSEO – it’s an amazing conference providing first rate SEO insights, put on by Kelvin Newman, the Creative Director of ThinkVisibility.  I was fortunate to be invited to speak, and my topic was about winning marketing directors over with SEO.  You can read my official blog post on how to pitch SEO to marketing directors or view my slideshare profile to see other presentations I’ve done.

If you have time, there is a great conference happening in London today.  It’s the Drapers Fashion 2012 Conference in Tower Hill.   Some of the highlights include:

• Essential strategies for growth abroad.
• Innovative ways to use social media to increase returns.
• Best practise to utilise mobiles to their full potential.

Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman

I friend of mine actually is a salesman who travels the UK, and I asked him for some advice.  He is the antithesis of a “traveling salesman”; his hair isn’t greasy, you can’t see manipulative cogs turning in his head, and he’s friendly.  So if I’m going to emulate anyone in pushing sales, I’d like to be a bit like him.  He has given me the following advice.

Sales Books = Fluffy Bull Sh*t

Books can give you ideas and structure to your sales approach but ultimately the best sales people are born to do it.  If anyone could just learn to do it he argues successful sales people wouldn’t be so well paid.  That said, here are a few of those which he recommends:

What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro.  It’s a bit pop-culture / pop science but an easy read, take it on holiday.

Flipnosis – the Art of Split Second Persuasion by Kelvin Dutton.  Again, by no means an academic book but an interesting read for sure.

The New Strategic Selling by Miller Heiman, Sanchez & Tuleja.  More of a typical sales textbook.

Copy Cat = Successful Cat

The best way of learning is to watch what your most successful peers do and “borrow” from their best bits.  Don’t try and become them, that won’t work.  Adapt what you do based on what you’ve seen working for others and develop your style accordingly.

Personally, I have a sales friend who can charm the socks off any receptionist he rings and skip away with a direct line for just about anyone.  However, I can’t flirt like him, so I’ll try utilising my American charm.

Know Thy Product

The real secret is to know what you’re selling / your product so well you don’t have to think about it. Then you can focus your attention on your audience, what they’re doing, how they’re responding to you and each other. It’s all about the non-verbals.

Sales Karma

Lastly, believe in the “Sales Karma” for real.  I believe that if you help others to develop and grow, or just generally do someone a good turn you get repaid in Sales Karma (i.e. you do better yourself).

The lovely folks at digital content strategy agency Quad London have organised the Online Marketing Meetup today, Thursday at 7pm near Temple & Monument tube stations. Details for the event can be found here.

And I’m going to be presenting on the effect of tv advertising on organic search patterns.  It’s really interesting!  I know this because my mom said so when I practiced to her on Skype.

There are other fascinating presentations too by like likes of Richard Shove, and some other great peeps.  So do come along for drinks and discussion if you’re free, in London, and like online marketing.

About to ring an agency and tell them you’re interest in having them pitch to your business?  Be ready to answer these questions, so they can give you the best campaign.   A big thanx to my in-house friends who suggested these questions!

Questions a Digital Agency Always Asks a New Lead:

What’s your budget?  Please please please, don’t be a c*ck and tell them “I don’t know, show me what you can do”.  If you want to be all mysterious, you need to at least give a reasonable range like “£4000 – £6000 a month” or “£50K for the next business year.”  Without this, most agencies wont be interested in investing time pitching anyways.

Who are your current agencies?  To be honest, leads only answer this about 1/2 the time.  Some will even go further and email through some documents from their current agency, but this is less than 25% of the time.

Why are you looking for a new agency?  Was it because results weren’t good enough? Did an account manager frustrate your in-house team?  You may want to have a little internal brainstorm on how to answer this question, it will help your team arrive on the same page when selecting a new agency.

What is the purpose/goals/targets of your website?  Many in-house marketing teams don’t even agree on an answer to this question.  One person could say it’s to sell more products while another believes the purpose is to lure people to attend brick and mortar locations.  What’s important is that the decision maker’s answer is relayed to the agency, so they know what to focus on when drawing up a potential campaign.

What are your in house capabilities?  Agencies will take on as much work as possible because it means the most £ for them. Be clear with them on what can happen in-house, as this will help keep costs down as the pitch process evolves.  Answers like “we have 2 developers who we get to use 2 days a week” or “our PR company writes all our copy” make things clear for the agencies.

What would you add? Have you been asked any other good questions by agencies?  Looking forward to your opinion!

Yesterday I wrote a post about how to target agencies for a pitch.  That’s all great, but then you have to actually make the phone call and suss each agency out, while their sales team tries to suss you out.

Questions to Ask A Digital Agency Before Inviting Them to Pitch

It’s your first chat with a sales person at Agency X – be sure to ask these questions to get a more accurate picture of what’s going on under the hood.  Yes, you could just invite them to pitch anyways, but doing your homework now will mean you make the best decision in the long run.

1) How many people are full time employees?  Do some research before hand on Linked In to get a sense of how many employees currently are registered as working at the agency.  You’d be shocked by the difference at some.

In the same breath – the best are not always the biggest – and there are many independent consultants/small teams which produce amazing results the big boys don’t always compete with.  I’d be wary of those agencies which project a big image when you can suss out that they’re quite small, and be  open minded to smaller agencies which are happy to share their real populations.

2) Is all the work carried out and are all the full time employees located in your head office?  Some agencies outsource over 50% of their work to India, so be warned.  I don’t know how to confirm if work is outsourced; perhaps if you get to speak to a current client, ask that client if they are 100% sure the work is done in the agency or perhaps outsourced.  Regarding full time employees, that will be obvious when you visit the office.

3) Where have you guys been featured in the press or spoken at events lately?  If the agency isn’t out and about, it could be because they’re overworked and not spending enough time investing in the development of their staff.  It could also be because after 5:30pm, they can’t be arsed.  You want an agency which can be arsed to be an authority in their field.  Personally,  I struggle to see how not sharing knowledge and not participating in industry events can be a positive.

4) What do you do to ensure your staff is on the cutting edge?  Whatever answer the sales person give you, be sure you remember it and ask a real employee the same question when you meet them down the line.  Does the employees answer match what the sales persons originally told you?  If not, and the outlook is a bit bleak, be concerned.  Ask the real employee which events in their industry they have attended recently, and ask them what they learned form it.  Fuzzy answers will be easy to tell.

5) Do you also do ____ as a service? Pick a few services which are clearly not on the agencies website (perhaps app development for Facebook, conversion optimization for mobile, or media buying) and ask the sales person if they do those services.  If the sales person keeps saying yes, you may want to take a step back.  Most agencies cannot do everything under the sun and don’t have experience doing everything under the sun – so don’t believe the hype.

6) Can I meet the person who would be running my campaign at the pitch?  I have met some sales people in agencies who are so good, they literally cast a spell when they walk into a pitch.  It’s magic.  Repeat after me: DO NOT BE SPELLBOUND!!! These are sales people, 90% of the time they will say YES to everything and NOT care about you once you’ve signed a contract.

You MUST meet the team you’ll be working with.  When you’re organising your meet and greet, tell the sales person you want it in your contract that whomever you are introduced to really will be the account manager, seo manager, etc for your business. This will make the sales people think twice before pulling the best looking/most charming manager into your meeting and then dumping you with Fred from Slough whose keyboard crunches every time he hits the letter K because of his affinity for Walkers.

Final Tip:

Visit the agency’s offices.  It’s like shopping – but for digital services!  You get to ride around London being swooned for business, snooping around offices, and feeling wanted.  Enjoy the experience.  You’ll get an instant feel for each agency based on how the office is presented (trading desks or separate offices?), what people wear (suits required or jeans & t-shirts?), and if the receptionist seems happy.

I am consistently impressed with how many people work in digital and have very little clue as to what’s going on.  Call me a digital snob, but when I hear stories about SEO managers who couldn’t tell you what effect Panda had on their client sites, or search directors that believe pagerank is a significant factor (in 2011!), I am shocked.

While I could pretend it’s concerning for the wellfare of the industry, it actually just warms my heart to know I may be a bit above par.  Below are a few tips on how to start off the pitch process on the right foot, by inviting real agencies who know what they’re doing, and don’t just have good looking sales people.

Identify Authentic Digital Marketing Agencies to Invite to a Retail Pitch

A retailer did ask me this question recently, as they are starting up the pitch process and struggling to work out who to invite.

Check out the major sources.  These include NMA Search agencies guide; be careful though, because some of these agencies include PPC spend as turnover which can inflate figures massively.  Another great source is eConsultancy’s Directory of Members.

Industry specialists.  My personal humble opinion is that this is bull shi*t.  You don’t need to hire an agency which already deals in your space.  SEO carries the same principles wether you’re selling luxury bathtubs, cat food, or flights.  If anything, looking at agencies with a clear grasp on a diverse range of industries means they’ll be bringing creative ideas from different spaces to the table.  A good friend of mine on an in-house team specifically looks to hire agencies to consult  who do not work in his sector, so as to benefit from the widest range of ideas. 

All of this said, if you’re dead set on tracking down competitors agencies simply google “competitor name + seo/ppc/social media” and chances are their agency may have advertised the partnership with a press release or case study.

Ignore the ad space.  Honda may spend billions on advertising each year, but I still know I’d like a McLaren F1 instead.  Some of the best agencies don’t bother with giant spreads in marketing magazines, or any other media buying medium.  This is because their work is likely to speak for itself, so check out their websites for case studies and client feedback.

Out and About.  Look at some of the top directors and check out what events they have recently spoken.  Check out this calendar of digital marketing events to understand which are legit events.  The agency’s websites will probably advertise it too.  If you can’t find anything on the site, this is definitely a good question to initially ask them.  Personally, if an agency is not interacting with the rest of the digital community, by speaking at events, attending events, or sponsoring events, I don’t think it reflects well on them as part of the larger digital community.  If their justification is “we’re just so busy with our own work” or “we’ve got enough impressive clients to know everything within our own teams” they’re lying.

Winners.  What awards have they they won lately? This will surely be splashed all over the website. Even if the didn’t win, being shortlisted proves that an agency is interacting with the wider community.

Social Reach.  Are they interactive on social media platforms?  Checking out these platforms will also give you a better sense of what the agency’s tone is and how popular they are (follwer count, facebook friends).  Does social reach reflect SEO/PPC results for clients?  No.  Is it slightly fickle? Perhaps.  But again, like with Out and About, it’s a reflection on how with it an agency is.

I read this Guardian article of predictions for the next 25 years over the weekend, and found a few quotes interesting. It’s 1am, and I can’t be bothered to reflect, but here are my favourite bits.  How do you think digital retail and ecommerce will look in 25 years?

Charles Leadbeater, author and social entrepreneur says the open web may be a thing of the past:

The open web created by idealist geeks, hippies and academics, who believed in the free and generative flow of knowledge, is being overrun by a web that is safer, more controlled and commercial, created by problem-solving pragmatists.

Henry Ford worked out how to make money by making products people wanted to own and buy for themselves. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are working out how to make money from allowing people to share, on their terms.

Facebook and Apple are spawning cloud capitalism, in which consumers allow companies to manage information, media, ideas, money, software, tools and preferences on their behalf, holding everything in vast, floating clouds of shared data. We will be invited to trade invasions into our privacy – companies knowing ever more about our lives – for a more personalised service. We will be able to share, but on their terms.

Julian Assange and the movement that has been ignited by WikiLeaks is the most radical version of the alternative: a free, egalitarian, open and public web. The fate of this movement will be a sign of things to come. If it can command broad support, then the open web has a chance to remain a mainstream force. If, however, it becomes little more than a guerrilla campaign, then the open web could be pushed to the margins, along with national public radio.

Russell Davies, head of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather, predicts a shift in the relationship between society and advertising as video screens become even more common.

…what’ll really change advertising will be how we relate to it and what we’re prepared to let it do. After all, when you look at advertising from the past the basic techniques haven’t changed; what seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and the products you were allowed to advertise.

… we’ll also be nudged into renegotiating the relationship between society and advertising,because over the next few years we’re going to be interrupted by advertising like never before. Video screens are getting so cheap and disposable that they’ll be plastered everywhere we go. And they’ll have enough intelligence and connectivity that they’ll see our faces, do a quick search on Facebook to find out who we are and direct a message at us based on our purchasing history.At least, that’ll be the idea. It probably won’t work very well and when it does work it’ll probably drive us mad. Marketing geniuses are working on this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that being allowed to do this kind of thing depends on societal consent – push the intrusion too far and people will push back.

Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It’s not necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang.

I wrote a great post about Christmas SEO 2011 on the Tamar blog today/yesterday.  Be sure to check out why you should consider:

1) A digital pop up Christmas shop

2) What to do with content from previous holidays

3) How to make the most of your holiday meta data

And a few more tips!

Most retail clients seem to be under the mistaken impression they’ve got emerging platforms under control as long as they have a Facebook page and a Twitter account.  While utilising these two social platforms is a great start, I believe such an approach is dangerous for the following reasons.

Other platforms are gaining ground.  Relying exclusively on these two platforms cuts you (and more significantly, your marketing budget) off from other opportunities like geo-targeting platforms (Gowalla, FourSquare) and Google+.

Different customers, different channels.  Engaging customers wherever they are choosing to live out their virtual lives means being in many places at once.  Not everyone is on Facebook or Twitter, there are plenty of customers excited to interact with their favourite brands who aren’t utilising these two platforms.  While I believe it’s likely a customer  on a squidoo lens is likely to be savvy Facebook users too, it’s not a guarantee.  This is especially true in the silver surfer marketplace.

Facebook & Twitter Want ALL Your Marketing Efforts.  I don’t mean to sound like a radical lefty, but if a brand invests heavily in these 2 platforms without spreading their bets it’s like giving all your content over to “the man.”  This was recently exhibited in Facebook’s news feed update, by which brands are now seeing their updates features much less in fan’s feeds.  Don’t forget (queue paranoid anarchist…) platforms own all the content a brand puts on them and the analytical data – they are effectively directing how any brand may utilise their platform and have the perogative to shift that direction without any warning.

What so you think?  Is it okay to focus exclusively on FB & T?