After the Global Entrepreneurship Week launch event last Monday I went along to the IoD for the final of The Pitch. Think Dragons Den without the TV cameras.
It was an entertaining afternoon with 6 businesses pitching for a prize package worth £50,000, Anthony Lau, Founder of Cyclehoop was crowned the winner.
One thing that did worry me was the finalists response when asked about their marketing plan. For some of them their entire marketing plan could be summed up in one word: Google. “If you search for x we’re number one on Google”.
It’s something I see way too often. Relying on natural traffic from Google for your sales is a very precarious position to be in. Google can change it’s algorithm overnight and you can drop from page 1 to page 100 – effectively putting you out of business.
Whilst free traffic (as opposed to paid-for Adwords) is highly desirable – and we certainly do well from it ourselves – you should never rely on it as your primary source of new business.
If you’re ranking well now then great – but make sure you use the revenue generated by that traffic to implement a marketing plan so that you’re not so dependent on one source for your livelihood.
What’s almost as worrying is the judges apparent willingness to accept “Google” as an acceptable response to “What’s your marketing plan?”.
It isn’t.
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Tags: GEW, Marketing, seo, The Pitch
This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Ramblings, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Nice post. Might write a follow on about digital marketing myself. Especially today, with twitter, facebook and other digital channels becoming easier to use for marketing activities and better traffic drivers – i.e. more likely to convert in some instances.
Couldn’t agree more Duane.
Further, Google is becoming less and less relevant.
It’s interesting to note that if you ask someone in the generation below me to ring a doorbell, they use their thumb to do it. This seems weird to me as I use my index finger. But then I haven’t been brought up using my thumbs primarily for texting; if I had then my thumb might also have become to the dominant digit.
It goes to show how new technologies can change habits in a generation. And a new generation could see Google confined to the rubbish heap. People are now increasinging asking the crowd for answers through Facebook and Twitter rather than combing through hundreds and thousands of pages of historical content on Google.
Stats are already showing how much more time new web users are spending on social networks compared to where we’ve spent our focus. It makes sense as availability of social networks becomes, through mobiles, ubiquitous that they also ask questions and for recommendations that way too. Why go and sift through a library of answers other people got when I can just ask my followers? People are asking real people for help rather than depending on a bot and a database, mainly because with real people come real answers.
It’s already happening. Just take a look at the opportunities for business that we’re unearthing through our Twitter Sales Leads tool. Most of the posters of those business needs probably never thought to go to Google.
There’s a chance that depending on Google will become as shortsighted as depending on Yellow Pages seems to our generation of business folk now.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I agree that your business plan shouldn’t hang on a single #1 ranking term within google. Similarly, a business plan should not list organic SEO as it’s single source for revenue or lead generation.
However, a carefully constructed website, whether B2B or B2C, reliant upon white-hat SEO techniques to develop traffic and build authority can be a ‘primary’ source of traffic and subsequent product/service sales.
A site which utilises SEO to develop a wide source of well positioned keywords/phrases should find a route to market which is both primary and the most cost-effective.
Food for thought!
Hi Duane, I would completely agree with what you are saying.
My experience with my training course marketplace http://www.trainingcoursebooker.com website has been a sobering lesson in this.
First getting on the first page of google organically is very hard.
Secondly I have suffered from a chicken and egg problem, (trying to get courses published with no paying customers and getting paying customers without any courses published). I have now enlisted the help of an experienced marketing expert who was very quick to identify a number of problems and the lack of a proper marketing plan. They are now working with me to create a ‘robust marketing plan’ with Objectives, Goals, Stratergies and Plans. Being on page 1 of Google is one of the important Goals but it is not the only one any more. There is a lot more ‘business goals’ to running a website that have to be considered.
It will probably take a good few months to finalise my marketing plan and start executing it but I am convinced that it is the right approach. Being 1# on Google as ‘The Marketing Plan’ is why so many companies went under when the .com bubble burst and if The Pitch judges where the investors who accepted this and funded the project, they would most likely have been burnt.
On the one hand, it’s also worrying that people focus on Google so heavily – there are other search engines out there and some interesting statistics in terms of ROI (e.g suggestions that visitors from Bing, although fewer, are more likely to purchase).
On the other, it’s just scary that marketing has dissolved down to simply “people see us when they search”. Admittedly our own marketing strategy is very simple and could be expressed in a few sentences (if I were forced to do this, Google wouldn’t feature highly, ironically) – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t planned and reasoned.
Some people who are new to business also make the mistake of believing that a “plan” becomes rigid, makes you inflexible and is generally a constraint restricting you – rather than tool to help support and structure your activities.
We make plans. We revise them frequently. They help us to stay on track – because while you’re focussing on what is happening with your feet RIGHT NOW it’s all too easy to take your eye off the goal and miss the net entirely!
Great post and surprising to hear the apparent acceptance from the panel that a marketing plan founded on Google is in any way appropriate.
As any marketer will tell you, it’s essential to develop a structured marketing plan that lays out your business objectives and strategy, what tactics you will use to reach your goals, how you will measure the effect of each tactic and how you will control the effectiveness of the plan.
SEO is undoubtedly a key strand of any marketing plan, whether B2C or B2B, but one of only several tactics you could employ. The others might include telemarketing, events, social media & PR, direct mail, advertising etc etc etc. The list goes on and you will need to tailor this mix depending on your business, objectives and of course which will best reach out to your prospective customers.
Relying on Google, or any single marketing communications tactic, is unlikely to be effective in the long run. But then any investor will know this and improving the marketing plan will probably be one of the first areas they go to work on if they invest in a company.
[...] for marketing Nov 24th, 2009 by Farhan. Duane over at Kashflow wrote a great blog post about SEO as a marketing strategy over at the Kashflow blog (). I couldn’t agree more. His main point is summed up nicely in this bit: “Whilst free [...]
I agree with Ian Rhodes when he says
” agree your business plan shouldn’t hang on a single #1 ranking term within google. Similarly, a business plan should not list organic SEO as it’s single source for revenue or lead generation.
However, a carefully constructed website, reliant on white-hat SEO techniques to develop traffic and build authority can be a ‘primary’ source of traffic and subsequent product/service sales.
A site which utilises SEO to develop a wide source of well positioned keywords/phrases should find a route to market which is both primary and the most cost-effective.”
Certainly a lot of my business comes through web pages that are listed on the first page of Google, but I also
have growing lists of susbcribers
run free teleseminars
tap into other markets by being a guest on teleseminars
have an affiliate program
submit articles to Ezine Articles
am active in forums and on Twitter
get referrals from delighted clients
Everything I do to promote my business is online.
I do comprehensive keyword research
Use keywords where the search engines like to see them
Offer helpful solution orientated content
And my business grows as my web presence grows.
[...] On Monday I posted a blog entry with the title SEO is no substitute for a marketing plan. [...]
I certainly agree that SEO is no substitute FOR a marketing plan, but I think SEO needs to form PART of a marketing plan. As a small business, anything you can do to put your brand in front of your prospects’ eyes is a bonus. Executed well, SEO is a great way to pull targeted traffic into your website. However, it’s not the be all and end all. From our experience, we also generate sales through:
- Face-to-face networking
- Online networking (forums, etc)
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Referrals
- Trade shows
It is a marketing plan but one that requires a lot of work depending on how much competition there is. Anyone who says that they plan to get high on Google needs to step back and look very hard at what they need to do.
If you have a good ‘modern’ marketing strategy, becoming highly ranked in Google and all other search engines will stand a better chance.
I think all of us here agree broadly that:
Being on page 1 of Google should be just part of ‘The Marketing Plan’ not the only strategy.
SEO is also very much another part.
But most importantly, social media marketing is probably the best source of traffic today.