If we were to take that scenario offline and a company promised to make you the most visible company in Glasgow etc there would be skepticism at best and disbelief to the majority of companies

I believe it is because many business people just assume that these ‘techies’ know things that they don’t and the insecurity of not understanding it gives overwhelming trust to what very often is inexperienced people delivering the wrong thing and giving nothing in return for your budget.

The maddening this is that these techies can often deliver you to No 1 in Google however is being number 1 the same as getting more business which is really what most business want

When a company tells us they want to be number 1 we try and find out what they really want. When we have discovered this then there is a plan and I don’t think for all the companies that we have delivered the extra business to that getting to number one was ever in our targets

Businesses want more business. Business people are usually very smart. When it comes to spending money on online activities you have to keep your business head on and forget about the technology and computers etc. Just understand it is the same thing as always. How you get to your targeted audience, how to get them to spend more with you and how to do this as efficiently as possible giving you the return on investment

My message is simple being number one doesn’t necessarily mean more business, so keep it simple and ask a few questions. Who have you got to number 1 and how much extra business did they get?

Once you have these answers and before you spend your budget do a little housekeeping and call these companies to confirm that it is what they say it is. Job done!

Not all the details are out yet, however Google is going to start adding them to accounts over the next few weeks.

What this means to companies like Toltech is more accountability with our clients.  We welcome this as presenting the client with clear, transparent figures helps both us and the client.  There are too many businesses kidding themselves on with high number of visits to their websites and no breakdown of the facts to calculate the ROI per 100 or 1000 visitors.  Hopefully more accountability in this area will sort the men out from the boys in our industry.

We recently won a contract from a business who had been paying for online marketing but were getting no statistics to work with to determine how successful their online marketing strategy was, and what it was delivering for their business. It was wishy washy to the extreme with any good sales being attributed to the work of the Internet Marketing company however any loss was ‘not their fault’.

More stats – more measurability – more accountability.

We hope that Google continues to deliver and upgrade these services and any business who doesn’t have Google Analytics installed and would like them call Toltech.  We will set this up for a small fee.

Ultimately each phrase carries its own weight and people gravitate towards the one that suits them. It doesn’t really matter what phrase you choose to use but what is important is that the people you choose to deliver these services have a clear understanding of what these services are and can deliver.

I am hearing more and more horror stories of companies spending £30k, £60k and even over £100k for essentially the promise of being Number 1 on Google.

Whilst that is a good position to be in Internet Marketing is not about being Number 1 in Google and as Google serves up different information to different local areas and also that people have more control of how they search via the browsers the truth is that there is no longer that Number 1 guarantee of everyone seeing the same result.

There have been thousands of “Digital Marketing” businesses setting up with a small set of phrases – Keywords. meta tags and optimisation with a promise of these number 1 positions. It is a totally flawed plan

Internet Marketing is a far deeper range of services based on traditional marketing campaign. Sure there are far better monitoring results and you can work to an audience faster than ever with the right online application, however the principles are very much the same and should be seen as such.

No business should be throwing away large sums of money on the promise of Google position and keywords. Anyone with half a webmasters brain can achieve these positions however it is usually done in such a way to deceive.

A solid Internet Marketing plan covers approximately 8 areas with keywords and meta tags being a very small part of the bigger plan. With the right Online Marketing Strategy in place there should be a set of tasks and deliverables in order that at monthly meetings clients can see the growth in qualified traffic, enquiries and overall position. All the other areas are key measurables which I will cover in future blogs.

I offer Free advice to any business thinking of investing their hard earned money into online marketing or advertising.

The best advice I can give is when you think you have found the right supplier ask for the following:

A case study or two of clients they have helped grow their online business
To view the monthly targets set in place and the outcomes
A summary of their experience in marketing
A copy of the ROI each client had
Client phone numbers to discuss how the project ran from beginning to end
If you don’t at least ask for this and spend £60k and get no results – don’t be surprised. You may be Number 1 in Google, however that doesn’t always translate into more business.

Like all services there are good and bad companies delivering to various levels. My final suggestion is please use a company with a solid track record. Each day we are all bombarded with emails telling us they can get us lots of traffic, No1 etc and they come with a gmail address. Do not reply or call these companies you will be left disappointed at the least and with no money with no results at the worst.

I always think that the media seem to over hype this area and manage to get a few unsuspecting people to comment on this when they had never really had any thoughts on it before. ‘Suddenly they are ‘devastated’ – ‘frightened’ – unhappy about the camera looking in their windows.  This is the hysteria that they get from mis-information and poor reporting to sensationalise a non story which could have been written in the positive. However as we know the papers have their agenda – ‘to sell more papers’ but fortunately the Internet is weakening their position, hence the reduction in advertising and the power of online groups and bloggers.

It does make me question, why people, when they are going on holiday expect to see as much about the area they are going to online, yet they don’t seem to focus on the reverse for visitors coming to this country.

Much is said about Google Street View being abused by criminals planning escape routes – casing houses etc, with street view and Google earth.  This is just ridiculous. The police have mentioned on numerous occasions that many house break -ins are opportunistic – having not been planned in advance.

I’m personally not sure whether it is an infringement of civil liberties, as I am a proponent of better technology, believe that it will more likely help people as we integrate this more with Sat Nav systems, and which I believe this will turn into a Virtual 3D tool on our dashboards to make life simpler.

You can’t stop the world or technology and for me I believe it’s getting more exciting each month with the speed of change using the Internet. However with modern pressures I do think that maybe many people are struggling with the speed of change. For anyone who as ever read the book ‘Who moved my Cheese‘ will understand why this could be stressful to many people.

Domain names are the address to your website  e.g. www.toltech.co.uk  which is our address

How can your domain be sold without you knowing it?

It all goes back to when you purchased the domain name. It may be have been done 3, 5 or 10 years ago when you first entered this online world and so most things about it are forgotten. The most common scenario that we come across is that the Managing Director or  business owner at the time asked an employee, his IT person or more often his daughter’s boyfriend to book his domain name because he knows nothing about computers.

This  is the fatal part right at the beginning. Many of these people when purchasing the Domain Name when asked the name of the Registrant will put their own contact details in and inadvertantly became the owner of the domain name.  This is fine at the time and all runs smoothly until the IT person, daughters boyfriend etc. move on and are no longer in contact with this business owner,

The day the world falls in

It usually starts something like this.  Hello I’m wondering if you can help me. I have a business called MMCM Partners and for some reason all our email has stopped working. No one in our 5 offices can receive any mail. Also our website has disappeared.   Warning bells are ringing immediately for us. However we ask the standard questions -

What is your domain name?   We check immediately

We ask  “who is Jimmy Duff”  Why do you ask that they say. How do you know his name – he was once an employee of ours? Well he happens to be the owner of the domain and he has let it expire.

Never mind that they say – just turn it back on we can’t operate without it.

Too late someone in Germany owns it.

This has happened a number of times over the years we have been providing these services.  We are asked to go in and rescue a company’s services because they decided to use a friend etc. to organise a what looks like a simple task but needs proper management.

I say to businesses all the time that they have to understand the importance of losing a domain name rather that being able to save £7 by buying it themselves.  The reason companies like ours manage thousands of domains is because we have proper systems and processes in place to manage these domains and not let them expire.

What does it cost to buy a domain name properly?

The cost of buying a domain is typically £25 for two years and that usually comes with the setting up of email and the management of the domain to make sure it never expires.

What does it cost to buy a domain name with someone with the wrong knowledge?

Firsly you will get the domain name for £10 for 2 years or maybe even less. However they may not know how to set up email accounts etc. so you may pay yout IT person more for this service.

The cost if trying to save a couple of pounds by doing it yourself can run into thousands of pounds

• All email stops – if you have a large number of employees, sales people etc. out on the road then it all grinds to a very fast halt.
• The website disappears.
• You have to start contacting clients telling them that your email is down and to send via other methods.
• All your stationery such as business cards, letterheads, brochures are all useless and have to be reprinted
• You have to either repurchase your name from the new owner at an extortionate rate or buy a new domain (hopefully using a proper web developer this time)
• Your IT Person has to reprogramme all your computers – assign new emails – reset iPhones, Blackberries and other handhelds

All this upheaval can cost thousands of pounds. A Hotel we helped had just spend £5000 in adverts in Visit Scotland printed advertising plus their own stationery and brochures had just been updated when they lost their domain. (The girl receptionist had bought it 4 years earlier in her own name and had since moved on and was back packing somewhere round the world).

Use a proper Web Developer – not a guy from a back bedroom

The lesson here is Ask a proper web development business what is costs first to purchase your domain name. Also ask them the pitfalls of managing it yourself. They will tell you and you can them make a proper assessment of whether to have proper professional management in place or whether to do it yourself.

Domain Names are a much bigger discussion than the comment above as there are many other areas I have not covered but will with other posts so keep watching. If you want advice on  Domain names please contact me.

Any business who has a website today that is not updated on a monthly basis at least will never really have a website that works for them.  What was most shocking about this request was the fact that the owner couldn’t think of anything that had changed in her industry since the launch of her site.

Google and other search engines will revisit your site more regularly and give you better ratings if your site is updated more often.  Not only that but the new content you add every month will also be catalogued by the search engines and work to your advantage.

To all website owners who have a website that drives few enquiries toy our door, you need to talk to your web developer on a regular basis and arrange for an area on your site to be added that allows you to update your site as and when you want with no fuss.

Even sites that do bring  business and  have never been updated in a long time need to be updated. You probably are losing business without realising it

All information on this site is given from real world experience from 13 years in the Web Development and Internet Marketing arena. Read on…

I suppose my aim is to break down a lot of the misinformation and preconceptions about what the Internet is, how it can be used for your business advantage and many other avenues that will expand your knowledge of what is and isn’t possible online.

My primary aim is to help businesses understand in laymans terms what they need to do to understand the component parts that make up this Internet world that we at Toltech live, breathe and sleep on every day

My angle is very simple I am going to run a series of articles defined as “a man down the pub said…” based on years of experience of watching good business people being swayed from doing the right thing because of an interjection of a non expert (the man down the pub) telling them he knew someone who could do it cheaper etc.

I find it incredible in these situations which I myself have also been swayed, and to realise later the power a non professional in a field can have over you with nothing but his own take on a subject. He has the ability to sway a smart thinking person from dealing with a professional company.

How can this ‘Man down the pub” be so powerful? What is it that he says that makes him more believable than the expert.

After studying this over many years I have come to the conclusion that it is so complex with so many reasons it is hard to define a single cause. However the one statement which rings true is usually this:- “How much? – Oh No! I know someone who can do that for you at half the price! You would be a MUG to pay that. Leave it with me, I’ll see my mate – his son is a whizz with these things and we’ll save you a fortune.”

That in it’s simplest terms is the swaying point to the savvy business person making a poor buying decision.

Firstly, no one wants to consider being called a mug. They also don’t want to go back and say I decided it was good value and I paid £2000. This leads to them agreeing to see the ‘whizz’ of a boy and because they are now surrounded by people they know the emotion of the situation doesn’t allow them to back out easily . Hence we now have a poor buying decision – poor product and/or service delivered – leaving nothing but a trail of disaster.

There is a law called the Pareto law which means :

The 80/20 Law – Maximum results with Minimum time. Many people understand the 80/20 rule and understand it can be applied at most situations. I beieve that this is a major factor in these situations. Whether it is building fences, painting and decorating, servicing a car or building a website the reality seems to be that most of us if we apply ourselves can do 80% of most things properly. However the other 20% is what defines the expert in their field from the amateur.

When the guy down the pub sees a friend build a fence or the whizz of a boy build a website he believes that the boy can actually do, however this is mainly borne out of his own lack of knowledge on the subject. Therefore he recommends happy amateurs on a regular basis until it all goes wrong.

When it does go wrong and you go to the man in the pub re the whizz kid he will easily sidestep it by saying Ah! I never thought he was any good – he’s let a few people down that boy! I’ll not be recommending him again! and that’s it – he has no guilt, shame he just orders his next pint.

It comes down to a simple fact of referral by non qualification.

Don’t be caught out – Don’t be fooled that the cheap option is the best – don’t be forced emotionally into what is a bad deal for your business. Make the right choice – you and your company will pay for it. You will pay even more for the wrong choice.

Next time you are down the pub and someone says “How much? Don’t ne a mug! ”

You now know don’t listen to that person.

Always buy from existing quality businesses – it is more expensive for a reason.