It’s because sometimes hardly anybody enters.
Last month we had a contest for people who signed up for Friday Internet Marketing with me and Greg.
Only 7 people signed up.
The lucky winner was Charles Budde.
He’s a regular at the show and a great participant. So it was really cool he won.
Keep an eye out for future contests. You probably stand a good chance of winning.
Congratulations, Charles! Let us know what you bought. 
That’s just plain hot.
Akron and Cleveland have been a world-renowned center for medicine for some time.
A doctor once told me it’s because the industrial revolution brought a lot of money into the area and industrialists invested in medicine. That gave us a boost that has always allowed us to stay ahead.
SageRock is current doing some in-depth training and consulting for the Adventist Health System just outside of Chicago.
Here’s a tweet from them:
Adventist Midwest (@keepingyouwell) tweeted at 9:29 AM on Thu, Jan 31, 2013:
Thanks to @sagerock for an excellent day of SEO training yesterday! We’re getting ready to take http://t.co/bm74B4sQ to the next level.
(https://twitter.com/keepingyouwell/status/296988639685140480)
They are a super great group to work with.
We’d love to do the same for you all Akron General.
I’ve always wanted to be a ninja. Now’s my chance.
I’ve just been approved into the Live Ninja community here:
http://www.liveninja.com/sagerock/
Sage is a Live Ninja
I didn’t really think much about getting into the program. But I submitted my application some time ago. And I just got approved today. So, there must be some sort of vetting process.
At any rate, using this tool you can hire me by the minute ($1.50 per minute). I’ve never tried offering my services that way. But I’m very interested in experimenting with it.
Greg and I discussed Live Ninja and an audio-only tool that is similar called Clarity. You can see that video here:
Clarity and LiveNinja on Friday Internet Marketing
The way it works is you schedule a time to meet and we do a video meeting through the Live Ninja tool.
You only pay for the time you use. So if we only talk 11 minutes that’s all the time you use.
It could be a really affordable way of getting some quick advice.
If you are interested check out my profile here:
Industry
Our client is a leader in critical cleaning detergents since the 1940′s – manufacturing quality detergent made in the U.S. and distributed internationally for hard surface cleaning applications in the laboratory, health care, and industrial fields.
The Challenge
The company contacted SageRock in 2001, looking for a partner in online marketing. Still together after ten years, this partnership has blossomed as we learn the trends of each other’s business and tackle the changing online environment together.
SageRock implements:
- 2001-2004: SEO, Paid Search, and Email Marketing
- 2005- 2009: +Network Banner Ads, Blog Creation, Video, Site Redesign
- 2010-Present: +Social Media Campaign Management and Integration, iPad app
Result Highlights
Year over year, innovative services have been layered upon the effective previous tactics to establish this now Fortune 500 client as the international online leader in critical cleaning.
- Paid Search — Conversion costs cut 50% year over year since 2009. Conversion volume up 25% 2010 to 2011.
- SEO – #1 in Google, Bing and Yahoo for target phrase: Critical Cleaning Detergent. Also #2 in Google for Critical Cleaning @ 58mil competitors.
- Social Media — 100% conversion rate on LinkedIn Ad campaigns.
- Email — 17 industry segmented emails w/ average open rate @ 20% and targeted open rate up to 42%.
Testimonials
Email Newsletters:
These newsletters are getting excellent open rates, click throughs and resulting literature, tech question and sample requests. Year to date the email newsletter program has resulted in 158 people filling out one of the online offer forms for literature and/or samples and 96 of those had some kind of additional comment or question – 2/3 of those in the desirable pharma, med device and restaurant world. The additional comment or question ones tend to potentially lead to business sooner as they often indicate a more immediate need rather than a longer term general interest.
-MM
Vice President, Product & Business Development
Social Media / Blog:
Great new lead found us by putting “Alkaline Cleaner” in to Google, and our blog on critical cleaning came up 3rd, even though he noticed we came up 1st in organic. On the basis of looking at the blog, he called us before the competition.
I was able to give him all sorts of technical advice, validation support ideas, etc. – I believe we have a high degree of likely hood of getting this account. I have no idea what [the dollar value] will actually be – it feels bigger from having spoken with the guy. As a result of what I am sending, I am sure we will have ongoing dialogue. He seemed very pleased and said “Wow, I really found the right people, thank you so much.”
In any case, the lead came from a our SageRock run blog with listing that came up highly in Google. So things work the way they are supposed to!
MM
Vice President, Product & Business Development
Above Average – The Big Picture
SageRock enables our critical cleaning client to soar above industry averages for search traffic, meaning more potential customers who do not yet know their brand (Direct) find it through Internet research (Search). Also note that organic (free) search, from 10 years of SEO effort, is the highest source of their traffic.
Percentage of Traffic — Direct 15% vs. 35% average. Search Engines 73% vs. 27%.
I’m about to go pick up Greg for a Megabus trip out to see a client in Chicago.
As I’m drinking my first cup of tea I’m sitting here studying my stats.
I look at them like a detective looks at a crime scene.
What is there?
What is the information telling me?
What am I missing?
You should know that I get caught up just looking at the numbers. Not certain what they are telling me to do.
And I can imagine if I do that, you probably do too.
I do this because my marketing strategy is content. It’s blog posts like this.
I’m not just buying ad space and seeing if I get leads. I do a little of that. But I most build content.
When you are building content the nuances of the numbers matter more. It’s not a straight line from a person who reads an article to a person who fills out our contact form.
It’s not like that.
Content marketing is about building relationships.
I’m truly fishing here. I’m throwing my line out into the lake and seeing if someone is interested in that worm. I made that analogy in this blog post.
In content I believe the clues are in how long a person is staying on the page and what the bounce rate is.
Looking at this past week’s stats and comparing it to the same time last year my visit duration is up 257% (from 26 seconds, on average to 1 minute 34 seconds). Good!
My Bounce rate is down 11.6% (78.80% vs 89.17%). Pretty good.
But how confident can I be that’s getting me closer to more leads.
I then have to correlate it to the number of form submissions I’ve received.
This is difficult because I wasn’t tracking this for a full year yet.
But comparing this month to last month I can tell you they are up 125% (18 vs 8). But the previous month was December. It’s naturally a slower month.
So, let’s compare this month to November: Up 100% (18 vs 9 leads).
Compared to October I’m down 28% (18 vs 25).
Compared to September I’m up 500%!!! (18 vs 3).
So the conclusion: It’s working.
The content is working.
That’s, by far, our primary form of marketing. And everything points to the fact that it’s working.
…and so on I write.