This week must have been the best in years. It is almost like I found my life and found a way how to achieve it. Really, I spend a lot of time with the family and noticed how important that is for me. Just on Saturday I got myself, I mean I got Colin, a hippo for the bath:

On Wednesday I met with good friends from my old work and realised how much I enjoyed the job. Working with the people you like and working as a great team towards a common goal. It was so good to catch up over a few glasses of wine, pizza and great chat. Thanks people.

And, I heard this story about life, work and work life balance – still not sure what to make of it:

A farmer once got some land and thought it was on the sunny side and has a fruitful and great soil. So he was full of enthusiasm to have the responsibility to dig up the land and grow his crops.
He knew that it would take until the next year for him to harvest the fruits, and that it would be a long way to get there. But he wanted to make sure that the soil was perfect, the seeds were perfect and that things would grow in it came out perfect too. So he worked together with some friends who helped him choosing the seeds, and helped him choosing the water, and helped him choosing the right time to put things in place. Some lend him machinery and some helped him to understand how he got the best crops in the world.
Times weren’t easy, times were hard. He had to chase people to get the water for the field before the few shoots dried up. He had to chase people to get some of the machinery in time to get the seeds in the ground. Whilst sometimes it happened in time, sometimes it didn’t. At the same time he started looking around.
On the left was a field his predecessor had worked on and he noticed that it was drying up and didn’t really produce any profit from the crops. It seemed as if they had tried to put more and more effort into the field, just to see that they couldn’t harvest enough to make a profit. However, on his right was a big field. That belonged to a farmer who had done what he was planning to do. But look, he had all the equipment, a few full time helpers and has started a few years earlier than him. He had been harvesting for long, made more profit and ultimately could afford more machinery. Really, a field how it should be.
The farmer got really sad. He knew what he was doing was right, but he thought that he was a few years too late. It seemed that no matter how much effort he put into his field, and however much help he might get, his field would never meet the expectations he had for himself, nor would it be able to compete with the older, flourishing fields. It just wouldn’t work out.

The morale of this story is simple. Sometimes you get into situations in life where you never harvest what you sow. Even in the best playing field with the best players in any game, you never get the best result if they don’t all play towards the same goal. And the same was true for the person who told me this story. He eventually gave up his field and moved on to a new pat, with new friends.

Enough of a story telling for today. Have a great week.

Love and Happiness to you all,
Volker

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Monday was a very lazy bank holiday and Tuesday started with an interview. Wednesday was another interview and so was on Friday. So in total I had 3 interviews this week and have another 3 booked for next week and hope for follow ups from this week. Does that mean anything? Yes, I think it means that despite the recession there is work out there and that our industry, Online and Digital Marketing as well as Social Media, might be stagnating but not declining. So fewer jobs overall and more applicants per job. I just wrote two articles on careers in a recession for a new career blog I will tell you about soon!

For obvious reasons I cannot go into detail of any of the interviews but there are some very exciting opportunities out there!
Enough about my job hunt. My office mate found a job and left me this week, so well done Mr C.! So it is only me left in our London office which, as you know, closes the end of July. I am feeling a tat lonely but will cope.

Has anything else dominated my life this week? Food – I know my wife will now complain that I put food over baby, but we had lovely BBQs, lovely lunches and a lovely party last night. Very good self made Cazik/Tzatziki. If you see a cloud over Beckenham, you know where it is coming from Besides food, drinks appeared on the list of things I did this week. I went to “The Duke” which I will write about next week – a friend got lost too, but I’d rather keep that story for some other time!

Last, not least of course, we are in anticipation of Colin to arrive. Jen’s friend who said he would arrive on the 28th and then dreamt about it was wrong. Sorry G, we wish you had been right. Now, he could appear any day. Or not for another week. You never know and you cannot predict. You can see the little counter in the top right corner. Official date is Friday, 5th of June. But, he might be well overdue and not appear for another 2 weeks. Who knows.

So that is really our week. Anticipation about interviews and anticipation of arrival of baby. Two things that shouldn’t go together but they do. The world is what you do with it and how you approach it. Reading some NLP books again and need to write more about it. There is still so much to learn, explore and live for!

I might write a bit more about spirituality, thoughts on personal development and of course NLP later this week. So watch this space.

Have a successful and peaceful week,
Volker

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A few months back I needed less convincing to use telemarketing and cold calling. I thought, if there is a company out there that fits the niche for my company’s service, then a call to them will work. And, it does. However, it is not as effective as getting this person to find you.

On Linkedina group of Business Development guys discussed telemarketing and particularly cold calling. My comment was: “I have done cold calling for many years but think it proves less and less effective. Ideally you focus on inbound marketing to generate leads. Prospects are funneled through to you and find you online (SEO, PPC, Blogs, Social Media) and if you have the right USP, they will fill in a contact form. Once that is done, you call them. I would almost call that a “luke warm” contact Because the prospect did the first step and you already know that they know you. From there it is much easier to introduce yourself.
Having said all that, for some goods cold calling will still work and becomes a numbers game. Simple example is a washing machine. Everyone needs one, and everyone wants one. There is a saturation in the market but if you call 100 households, I am sure you can sell at least 1 washing machine.”

So, we are looking at several cases here. Cold calling for B2C and B2B and then for products that are niche and products that are common. From my point of view, like the washing machine example, if you have a commonly available product and cold call B2B or B2C, you will eventually win new clients. It is a numbers game.

If you are B2B and you have a niche product people will find you anyway, particularly if you are using inbound marketing and optimise your site with SEO. However, if you are somewhere in the middle, a combination can work. Don’t call it “cold calling” but “telemarketing”. Start a survey and ask people “is that a service you could be interested in?” – get their “opt-in” to send them further information, get them curious about what you have to say.

Once you made them curious, then you got them to search for a keyword you can push in your email, something easy to optmise for and with little competition. You push a keyword that people will connect to your product and services. This is a great SEO tip too

So, to summarise, I still believe that telemarketing and telesales can be useful if it is used as a qualifying tool after the initial contact has been made through a trade show, a contact form or other means of marketing. Used mainly for inbound and “luke warm” outbound calls, as part of a strong inbound marketing mix, telemarketing is a good tool for companies.

And, for anyone who ever worked in telemarketing, it is a great way of starting your sales career. You never have any hesitation to pick up the phone – even if the president was on the other side of the line

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This week was all about Social Media and Search Marketing. You read about my Inbound Marketing strategy and about the Social Media Summit. Next week I am going to review Viadeo and hopefully find time to write more about personal development and coaching. Also, I give you my views on telemarketing.

On Monday I went to York for some meetings. Tuesday I was booked all day with further conversations, meetings and discussions about my future. See above, I let you know if there is anything to report.

Wednesday I met a friend after work who I haven’t seen for a while. He was in London for an interview and although I only saw him for about 20 minutes before he had to catch his plane, it was so nice to see him. It so makes a difference to see people face to face! The night ended in a work night out before the summit with a few pints too many for a school night – at least for my liking.

The summit, see above, went well and finished with a great networking amongst the speakers in the Albannach in London. Not only do they have a fantastic Whisky collection, they also know how to make a very dry Martini, using Beefeater 24 As Hawkeye in M*A*S*H used to say “I’d like a dry martini, Mr. Quoc, a very dry martini. A very dry, arid, barren, desiccated, veritable dustbowl of a Martini. I want a Martini that could be declared a disaster area. Mix me just such a Martini.”

On Friday I had some meetings with my staff in London before enjoying a well deserved weekend. Starting with the finale of the season of NCIS. A sad and interesting end that will give hope for a “new beginning”. I guess it is another 6 months until the next season comes out.

I also updated my CV to find the right Business Development position in London – so if you hear anything, please let me know. I think a start up or a branch of an existing company that opens an office in London and looks for someone to build their sales and marketing team is what I would truly enjoy. Check out my Linkedin Profile for references!

Also, we went baby sitting with our neighbours, I had a great back massage and good food all weekend. Fingers crossed the weather is nicer next week so that I can do some stuff in the garden. Rainy, cold and windy it was. However, after watching the new episodes of NCIS on Sky, I am tempted to get Sky now too…..it saves me waiting for 6 months ;-( (see above).

Let’s hope for a successful week, hopefully more face to face interviews – partly with some bigger companies that offer interesting opportunities. Maybe, it won’t be a start up after all…more soon.

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It all started normally with a “normal” Monday which was just that: a Monday with all the highs and lows of a day. Due to my continuous knee pain I cannot go to the gym but will see a doctor about that next week again.

Tuesday the news was broken to me and my colleague that our company closes down the London office. Whilst I was given the option to go to York to work in our head office, this is not a good option for me. However, I will wait for the exact information to find out what package will be offered before I make any final decisions.

So from Wednesday it was all about tidying up my CV and sending it out to my network and contacting some Recruitment Consultants. It isn’t really the best time to be on the hunt for a new job. The economy is in a recession, our baby on its way, and it was my Birthday this week too. But, I guess there is only one way: forward; and I am confident to come out of it stronger than before.

Thursday and Friday were pre-booked holidays. It was my Birthday and I celebrated into it with my neighbour down in the Tapas Bar in Beckenham. Out of my Birthday was celebrated with my friends of my Tai Chi class.

On Thursday itself I finally found myself a nice new jacket which did not need any alteration. So it was all good. My wife took me to the Mandarin Oriental in London for a lovely lunch. That was fantastic and brought back all the lovely memories of our honeymoon. Thank you so much for the day.

Friday & Saturday: My Leibfuchs Volker from my German fraternity Franconia Darmstadt came up to London for his stag night. I arrived home again on Saturday night, after a pub crawl and London night clubs…..not really used to that anymore. Neither the boozing nor the late nights. But it was really enjoyable and I hope Volker and the boys enjoyed it too. They seemed like they did

Today I am chilling. Obviously polishing my CV, preparing things for the anticipation of next week. With the bank holiday tomorrow, this gives me plenty of time to be in top shape again on Tuesday.

Here is what I looked like today at our Sunday stroll through the park:

I somewhat think it is going to be an exhausting night.

So, if you read that and have a position or know someone who does have a position as a Business Development Director or Manager, with responsibility for people, e.g. Head of Sales and Marketing or Team Leader in a larger organisation, please let me know. This position should be based in London. I am more than happy to look into country manager positions to start up a new VC backed company or helping a company to launch in Germany. So please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you and have a lovely Sunday night.
Volker

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Yet another great case study presented by Pontus Kristiansson, Avail Intelligence: European landscape – Behavioral Merchandising and On Site Optimisation. I asked Pontus earlier what they are doing and, in a nutshell, he explained that they analyse the search behaviour and from that data Avail makes sure that the “product pictures” shown on e-commerce sites are relevant to the user. And, therefore, they increase the conversion rate for their clients.

Wow, this is great. This goes beyond testing what Divolution spoke about at our International Search Summit in London 2008. So now we cannot only test your site on which frames and boxes convert best for your target audience, you can also determine which pictures in the box that converts best will increase the conversion on top of the design. I hope that makes sense?!

Now, does SEO, PPC, e-commerce etc. work – Andy Atkins-Krueger of WebCertain now speaks about Tracking – An Overview of the importance of synchronised tracking and how search patterns are different in different regions. He also introduces WebCertain’s newest product Global Central, the only tracking tool that compares “apples with apples” for various campaigns in various countries, and shows all those results in ONE screen.

Tracking is still very important to see your visitors journey, your conversion rate, the bounce rate etc. – all your KPIs need to be measured and analysed to ensure you are doing the right thing to rectify any campaigns towards achieving your ROI.

Before the round up, Jørgen Brunborg-Næss of Synlighet speaks about Airline – Tracking challenges and KPI differences in a multinational campaign.

Jørgen has worked with clients such as Norwegian (airline), VG.no (newspaper) and Gooba (auction). His presentation focuses on “Norwegian Air Shuttle” for whom Synlighet manages the PPC campaign. Really, the key summaries are:

- acknowledge that each market has its own characteristics
- build a common campaign structure that allows you to easily transfer learning from one market to another
- measure, report and compare on details

Summarising the event, host John Brenne and Andy Atkins-Krueger round up the well organised and well presented day. Real life case studies on SEO and PPC, international campaigns and tracking. Which factors to consider for international search marketing and ways of converting visitors into customers.

Another great event for the search marketing industry is over. Not long until WebCertain opens its doors for the International Search Marketing Summit focusing on International Social Media Campaigns and Developments in the British Library in London.

Bookmark our site, www.internationalsearchsummit.com, and register today to join our event on the 14th of May 2009 with an incredible early bird price of only £345.

Also, feel free to register for WebCertain’s newsletter Secrets.

I will go to the networking event now, having a glass of vino to round up the day and discuss search marketing issues … before heading back to London shortly.

Have a good weekend everyone.

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It is hard to summarise a session whilst moderating it at the same time. However, the howlers point out common or not so common mistakes made by search marketers across the world.

Since I am moderating, after listening earlier at the International Search Summit, I only briefly summarise the key points (sorry). If you want to be involved, register today for our London International Search Summit, the early bird discount expires on the 31st of March 2009

Following form there is speaker Beate Lofseik of MakingWaves.com outlines an interesting case study about VisitNorway.com for their SEO efforts. Beate is an experienced Webmaster and Public Affairs officer and worked for IM Skaugen, Oslo Stock Exchange and Terra-Gruppen.

She focuses on the main categories of:
- content
- Technical
- URLs
- Links

Regarding content, telling a story and giving things people want to read about. It shows, as Peter outlines in his session below, that content is still king. And, that it is so important. Good content, keyword rich with specific messages. Combining it with the above, e.g. a good URL structure in a search engine friendly CMS with lots of links. Basic, but very effective SEO!

The last session before the afternoon coffee break is about “Roadmap: Working with clients to realise their international potential”. WebCertain’s Client Services Manager Paul Reeve together with Peter Kersbergen, SEO Strategist, speak about synchronising the search marketing activities for clients and why the centralised approach of WebCertain works better than a non centralised approach.

WebCertain is the only international search marketing agency offering over 32 languages in house and work on all international campaigns from one location with native speakers. Paul points out which impact the agency structure has on the way agencies can work on international campaigns, drawing on his 20 year’s experience in the travel industry and managing their online marketing.

The advantages of centralised operations are:

- No time zone issues
- 1 point of contact
- Dedicated search linguists and native speakers
- Synchronised search, working on PPC and SEO campaigns across various countries
- The centralised approach allows to turn on e.g. one PPC campaign in Japan whilst turning the one in Brazil off
- Centralised global tracking

But also, coming from a client services point of view, Paul outlines “what good clients are”. Simliar to Efva this morning, he outlines how important it is to form a partnership between the agency and the client to improve the overall marketing and making search part of the overall marketing mix.

Peter concludes the first part of the afternoon with the key factors to be considered running international campaigns. He points out the importance of:

- Domain choice
- Domain names
- Local hosting
- Language choice
- Language tags
- Webmaster Tools
- Localised URLs
- Content
- Duplicate Content
- Local Links
- Country Selector
- Dynamic SEO

Some members of the audience are pictured here

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The second part of the International Search Summit in Oslo hosted by WebCertain, the leading international search marketing specialists, starts with a case study:

Gard Jenssen from Seobra.no,
shows us “How to use SEO for B2B sales support internationally”. Gard
was VP Product Development at Yahoo! Europe, VP Product at Kelkoo, National Expert at European Commission in charge of the
EC’s first web site, Chief Development Editor at Origo.no (Telenor Media) and created the first version of the Norwegian Government’s web site in 1994.

His session discusses the Search Journey, starting with the user’s intention and search, looking at the results and finding and buying. Particularly the B2B sector he points out are “professional buyers” and do thorough research. Often their product search is very “long tail”. So in order to attract any visitors to your site, you need to make sure you have a good keyword strategy and using AdWords for “learning” and for leads. A good strategy is always to run some AdWords to see which keywords are converting and then use them for PPC as well as SEO.

Gard uses his client never.no as a case study and how he improved their campaigns. Very impressive results for a B2B client!

Following up from Gard is Kristjan Mar Hauksson from Nordic eMarketing. He presents a case study on “What you need from an CMS to make it SEO friendly?”.

A “crawlable” CMS is key:

- overcoming indexing barriers
- relevant, good HTML/xHTML
- accessibility
- site and information architecture
- content, right keywords
- links, in and out!

Jens Peter Nielsen from Dynamic Web has a very interesting case study about “Assisting clients with multiple domains using a CMS platform to reach its global potential in search”.

Jens has over 10 years experience in the industry and his case study about company having 120 stores in 45 countries. The main challenges were:

- 40 languages
- over 200 domains and its domain structure
- adjusting the CMS
- 301 redirects
- 404 error pages

The results for his clients, after 27 weeks, he is looking at:
- 30% increase in visitors
- 25% more visitors from search engines

Off for a networking lunch now. The audience here in Oslo is very high calibre. International Search Marketeers from leading Scandinavian companies that run international campaigns and work on multilingual search marketing projects.

Don’t forget, the next MUST ATTEND event for International Search Marketeers is taking place on the 14th of May 2009 in the British Library in London.

Early Bird Discount of £345 is available until end of March 2009!

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2009 will see the next London event, International Search Summit on the 14th of May in the British Library. Speakers there include Bebo, Linkedin and Plaxo as well as international search specialists speaking about Twitter, Facebook, and other social media marketing tendencies and techniques.

The Oslo event on international search kicks off with John Brenne from the WebCertain Oslo office introducing the event and pointing out issues related to “going global”:

- Research
- Language
- Localisation aspects
- Currency
- Methods of payment

Following on from that, WebCertain’s MD Andy Atkins-Krueger, is speaking about “Guidelines for Setting up sites for international markets”. Andy points out the huge opportunity globally online:

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Also, in terms of tracking domain names, the most growth is seen in emerging markets such as China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, and India but also in Germany. Languages used online are still lead by English but followed by Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and French. Further in the top 10 are German, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean and Italian. So the European top languages, English and FIGS (French, Italian, German Spanish) plus Chinese are still the key languages online. Andy points out that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), as mentioned above, have a huge potential for online business!

Brazil for instance has a fast growing Internet user base but also their most popular social network, Orkut, has about 20m users!

Even Russia’s social networks, Odnoklassniki and Vkkontake, have around 18 million and 14 million users respectively. Russia is still a market where Google still hasn’t been able to catch up with Yandex from being the most used Search Engine!

China’s leading sarch engine is still Baidu . Andy concludes his interesting presentation about the right coding, long tail in different countries, SEO localisation, local link building, and further tips to run international campaigns and choosing / avoiding localisation problems. For some languages, there are no translation for certain terms. My most favourite example is “weekend break” which just does not have translation into German, however there are localisations, e.g. “ein Wochenende wegfahren”, “Wochenend Reise”.

Efva Gabrielsson works for Lawson Software and manages their web content and online marketing. She is responsible for the online marketing activities, including SEO and SEM. Main aims and objectives for her is to increase relevant visitors to their site, reduce the bounce rate and being in control of critical parts, e.g. PPC Management and landing pages.

Efva points out the difficulties in house teams face, e.g. getting funding and understanding from top management for online marketing. Also, she outlines how to chose an agency and what questions to ask them:

- Who is dealing with my account?
- How would you optimise costs?
- How do you track conversions and which tools do you use?
- What track record do you have?
- How do you handle global campaigns? Native speakers?
- Do you offer bespoke reporting?
- Do you offer multi variable testing?
- Can you show me your track record/references?
- Can I keep my (ad words) account/own my account?
- Have you worked with similar clients in the field? Experience?
- How do you get me top rankings? White hat techniques?
- Do you take the overall marketing strategy into consideration?

Important aspects are to integrate:

- PR and communication
- Advertising
- Marketing and Strategy
- Goals per business unit
- Integrate IT and other systems

She concludes that it is important to work in partnership with the agency and compares the advantages / disadvantages of outsourcing Search Marketing or to do it in house – or both.

Her lessons learned are summarised as:

- Be a demanding customer.
- Rewrite the contract until you feel good.
- Evaluate the agency and strategic expert – consider changing if you are not happy.
- Consider doing (at least part of it) yourself.
- Rely on your program and not on the people executing it.

This concludes the first part of the International Search Summit in Oslo.

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