 |
| Recent Articles |
An Appropriate Social Media Budget
Today I will attempt to answer my last and perhaps hardest question of the Marketer's Foray into Social Media series, which was "What is the budget?"(for a social media campaign). For this, I will pull in points from Jim's previous post "How much will a Social Media Campaign...
Maximize Your Facebook Application’s Profit Potential
In the final part of our interview, Jason Bailey (AKA Chickenhole) and I discussed how to maximize your application's profit potential by incorporating some tips during the development, marketing and monetization...
Taking Responsibility For Your Financial Destiny
About a year and a half ago, my banker at one of the top US banks gave me a call about investing in a hedge fund. A hedge fund works like a mutual fund in that they aggregate shareholder funds and invest in a basket...
Tips For Buying Paid Links
It seems that search marketers just can't get their heads around the concept of life without paid links. It's as if SEO just cannot exist without at least a sprinkling of links that include the exchanging of cash. Personally, I'm...
SES Chicago: The I-word, Discussed
If you want to build up investment interest in your SEO/SEM firm, you have to make your company compelling enough to separate capital from capitalists. SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to...
|
| 04.02.08
How To Build Investment Interest In Your SEO/SEM
 By Lee Odden
* From the session at SES NY, Session: Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM Firm
How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM with an introduction by Anne Kennedy and a presentation by Patricia Hall, Investment Banker, Hallmark Capital. If you own and/or are running a fast growing search marketing agency and want to gain more insight into making your firm more valuable for acquisition/investment, then this session is for you.
What Wall Street looks at:
• Client list is important - Keep in mind, if you have big name clients now, what will you need to do to keep them.
• Nature of revenues - Are they one time projects or are they retainer based? One time projects can be good if you specialize and can go to all the other players in a category.
• Technology strategy - For example, if you've created a software application to mine keyword data, that is valuable.
You don't have to develop your own software. You can take a best of breed approach and bring to clients whatever the best solution is for your clients.It's an interplay of these factors that interact within your own company that determines how valuable they are.
• Scalability - If you're able on a dime to scale up, that is seen as valuable. Brings up Healthcare industry as an example.
• Management/owner and leadership - There's no one best answer, it depends on who is looking at investing in you. An ad agency will look at different attributes than someone who is new to your industry.
There isn't necessarily one right answer - it's the interplay that determines value. Value is in the eye of the beholder. In the end, you're valuable to the person looking at you. Some companies are percieved as valuable even without revenue, depending on what the acquiring company sees as the compliment the acquisition would bring.
Three key factors that investors look for:
• Sustainable revenue generation. Can you generate revenues today, tomorrow and in the future. What is the nature of those revenues and can they be maintained? Retainer or high volume of one-offs - it doesn't matter. The gap between generatig revenue now compared to the future is a risk to be evaluated.
• Visionary leadership. Whether you are the sole leader or part of a team. The investor will want to be confident the leader knows they market, knows their goals and how to get there. The ability to articulate and communicate that vision is very important to the investor market.
• Competitive positioning. There are many companies in the SEO/SEM industry. You should understan d who the competitors are. Who are you running up against when trying to win business. Think of it in terms of a graph to illustrate the competitive landscape, where you company is within that landscape and be able to articulate how you're different.
What a SEO/SEM firm can do today to enhance their attractiveness to the investment market.
• Reputation - Do what you do well. What clients and the industry say about you. Why? You're selling a very specialized service to a market that doesn't know very much about it. Reputation is built up over time and it's cumulative. Take care of your clients.
• Innovate - Stay ahead of the curve. The SEO industry is rapidly changing so you have to constantly be thinking about how to competitively deliver your services. Search engine optimization used to be about adding keywords to web pages and now it's no longer that simple. Now it's all about content, blogs and social media.
Because things change so quickly in the SEO/SEM industry, 3 months is like a year in the rest of the world. Focus on how you're going to innovate.
Continue reading this article...
About the Author:
Lee Odden is President and Founder of TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog marketing and online public relations. He's been cited as a search marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering daily news, interviews and best practices.
|
!
0 comments:
Post a Comment