Hosted by: Ron Morris
Title: Host Ron Morris talks with Bob Faletti
Time: 03/03/2010 11.26 AM EST
Episode Notes: Host Ron Morris talks with Bob Faletti about Marketing Strategies.
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Ron Morris: Alright, we are back and thanks for sticking around. When you are on the radio and something really bad happens in your private life, you can’t just go on the radio and moan. You have to deal with it, so I am dealing with it. But, oh boy! I just got a really bad phone call at the break. But, that’s my problem and not yours. I am supposed to make you guys happy and teach this stuff. So, here I am and my guest is Bob Faletti for this hour. And I hope you enjoyed Susan Ephringham: very interesting lady. Did you ever get a chance to hear the part of her interview, Bob?
Bob Faletti: I did not.
Ron Morris: RAND Corporation, You know, I thought they were kind of spooks, either they are doing sneaky stuff on nuclear war scenarios and things like that, but not really. They are studying drug introduction, stuff like that. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, alright, Bob, I’ve got to tell you this story. It’s actually a sad story. Two weeks ago, I was at a funeral in Shadyside -- a funeral home, I should say. And, here, a very dear friend... I don’t know if you listened to this show regularly or not... but a very dear friend of mine, very dear friend of mine: a guy by the name of Jack Night, died suddenly. He had a massive heart attack on Saturday morning. He was 58, 62 or 64 depending on which of his girlfriends you were talking to, I guess. Anyway, but he went to get the paper and bang! His heart flew up and he went into a snow drift and that was that... two weeks ago... it will be 3 weeks ago this Saturday. I was devastated because this guy wrote great columns and correspondence with us all the time, he was a great guest on this show and also a great listener to this show. Anyway, so I go to the funeral, and I am very destroyed about this. It’s just a total bummer. And next thing, I know, after the funeral, we all were to head to this bar in Shadyside to celebrate Jack’s life... it was a place called... I want to say... Ali Baba or, anyway, it’s right next to your place, because I was walking and, actually, I walked right pass Blue Archer. I am guessing that had to be you. There can’t be another Blue Archer.
Bob Faletti: No. That’s our office.
Ron Morris: That was you.
Bob Faletti: Across from the Starbucks at Copeland Street in Shadyside.
Ron Morris: Yes. What’s that place which was next to you?
Bob Faletti: Mardi Gras.
Ron Morris: Mardi Gras. I couldn’t think of that name, okay. Do you go over there very much?
Bob Faletti: No. no...
Ron Morris: No.
Bob Faletti: Drinks are too strong.
Ron Morris: laughs. Specially during working hours, right.
Bob Faletti: That’s right.
Ron Morris: I got to tell you. That one is the skinniest bars I have ever been in. I mean, I got claustrophobic because it’s very narrow. I can’t be more than 15 or 20 feet wide and it’s probably 110 ft long.
Bob Faletti: Yes.
Ron Morris: I am guessing you are office don’t mirror that.
Bob Faletti: No. Actually we have. It’s narrow because there’s a staircase that goes up to the second floor. we actually have the entire second floor of that building
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: So, it’s a relatively new building and it’s very nice inside. But it’s relatively narrow yet really long.
Ron Morris: OK. Alright. Now, you have more than one office. Don’t you?
Bob Faletti: We have two offices. The office that you are talking about seeing at Shadyside is our second Shadyside office. We had an office next door a few years ago and we outgrew it and we got the new space in Sahdyside and, then, we outgrew that space, and instead of relocating all of our employees, we just got a second office in the North Hills. Primarily our sales staff is in that office. So, most of our operations are in Shadyside.
Ron Morris: Now. Let’s talk about operations. A lot of people don’t even know who you are or what you do. So, let’s start with that. Blue Archer is, first of all... I know we talked about this once before. But I will be darned if I could remember where did the name Blue Archer come from again?
Bob Faletti: It’s a long story
Ron Morris: Alright.
Bob Faletti: There’s not a whole lot behind it.
Ron Morris: Not really. Okay. We will just say Blue Archer, then. You, yourself, are an IT guy... your background is in software and systems and things like that.
Bob Faletti: It’s primarily in marketing and strategy.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: I spent a significant amount of my career at Arthur Anderson Business Consulting, and...
Ron Morris: But, it wasn’t related to software and high tech?
Bob Faletti: Well, I spent a little bit of time doing software implementation. But, actually, this was in ‘96-97 where the internet was really starting to come of age and a lot of mid market companies were trying to figure out what do we do with this and how do we apply it to our organizations and Anderson started a new practice called “revenue enhancement” and it was a really fancy word for: let’s put a team of people together and build some methodology around helping companies figure out what to do with the internet. I was on that team and I helped to develop that methodology and I got a lot of exposure to a lot of mostly mid-market companies in this region and helping them figure out, again, how to apply the internet.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: We got a lot of good background and strategy when things were really starting to come about.
Ron Morris: OK. And, in the IT game these days, you almost have to specialize… you have to find a niche where you are really good at something that’s relatively narrow. I mean, you don’t want to be all things for all people because you can’t. Where exactly, does Blue Archer, claim its turf?
Bob Faletti: We have always been focused on the web. So, everything, we do, focuses on web solutions. At this point in time we span a number of different competencies, again, all are related to websites. We do lots of strategy work: helping companies figure out how they can structure their site and how to set goals, how to set matrix, etc., etc. We did lots of strategy work in…
Ron Morris: Using the web as a marketing tool primarily?
Bob Faletti: Right.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: Right. And we also do design work. So, once we have the strategy in place for organization, we do a lot of design work and that work sometimes includes branding and identity work, and, almost always, includes actual web site design. We provide development services: we build standard websites, static websites… we build content management, systems behind websites. We also provide custom application development. So, we have a lot of organizations that need systems behind their website that might support different functions within their organizations or might integrate to another system or to an external company’s extranet or internet. We provide those custom application developments… we provide hosting services and we provide marketing services specific to the web. So, we really focus on search engine marketing which includes organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.
Ron Morris: OK. Now, let’s talk about those last two things that you brought up: pay-per-click and SEO, and we got to be careful that we don’t get too deep or we are going to lose our audience. Search engine optimization is talked about quite a bit. What percent of your business, do you figure, you spend in that area?
Bob Faletti: 2 years ago, 3 years ago, it was probably…
Ron Morris: A lot more I guess…
Bob Faletti: It was actually less…
Ron Morris: Oh, less! OK.
Bob Faletti: 20 maybe 30%...
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: When the economy started to slide, we saw a huge increase in companies calling us for search engine marketing services.
Ron Morris: Now they want more for their buck, yes.
Bob Faletti: They are trying to get out new ways to drive revenues.
Ron Morris: And then they differentiate themselves too, I guess.
Bob Faletti: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it actually is a very inexpensive way to market your organization.
Ron Morris: Tell our people exactly what do you mean by SEO? Give us a hard example.
Bob Faletti: Well. We’ll use Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: And, really, what Search Engine Marketing is, is a practice of the leveraging the search engines to gain exposure for your organization. And, at a very high level, the goal is to capture potential buyers when they are ready to buy -- they are on the search engine searching -- to get your company in front of them, to have them come to your website, qualify you as a potential vendor and then take that next step to contact you. We call that a “conversion”.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: If you do it well, you capture very highly qualified leads and the sales cycles are typically much shorter. We have seen it in our own organization. We do a lot of search engine marketing ourselves. And since we started our sales cycles have gone down… shortened… our profitability has gone up, our revenue has gone up, it really changes the way that we have done business at least on the marketing side of things.
Ron Morris: Give me hard example of… you don’t have use a client, but… let’s use Pittsburgh Business Radio. How would you optimize or market PBR. We came to you and said “you know help us, here we are”. And it’s player, obviously we are talking to business owners as you surely known, If I say it one more time my audience will skin me, but we are the number one medium in Pittsburgh talking to business owners: that’s a fact… it has been audited, it has been proven. How do I get that word out? How do I do that?
Bob Faletti: Well, the first thing we want to do is an analysis…
Ron Morris: Well, I’ll tell you what. I am going to stop you here, OK. Because we have got to take a break. Darryl just put a finger up and it was the index finger. So, we are going to take a quick break but when we come back… that will give you an excellent chance to noodle that around to come up with a really excellent answer, not that you wouldn’t, anyway. My guest is Bob Faletti. Bob is the CEO of Blue Archer, right in Pittsburgh, two offices and we are asking, when we come back, to tell us how to take a company like PBR and get us up the ratings, so to speak… to get us marketed more efficiently and more effectively using the web. Stay with us, we will be right back.
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Ron Morris: Alright, you hear that snap, crackle and pop in the back? That is my wax. I had to dig that one out and when I converted it… that wax is really what you hear, all that dust is there. I cleaned it as best I could. That’s the Royal. That’s from 1965. I think I bought that record when I was a sophomore in high school. Alright, Bob Faletti is my guest. Blue Archer is his company and just before the break Bob is in the business -- and some other things -- of helping people get more bang for their buck out of their website. So I just said OK, Bob, let’s talk about Pittsburgh Business Radio. If I came to you with the fistful amount of money and said “help me generate more business, whether that’s leads or even sales through the internet, what are some of the things you could do for us starting, first, with just optimizing our position and, by that, I mean… you know, when you click on Google, folks, if you ever go past that first page listing, I will be very surprised. I don’t know anybody that has gone past that first page. I guess people do. His job is to try to get you up towards the front of the pack… not on the third, fourth, fifth or tenth page. That’s one of the things he does. And I know that there is a lot more to it than that. So, I will shut up and let you sing.
Bob Faletti: Well. The first thing will be what we would do is complete an analysis. We really need to understand who your market is and what they are searching for. So, that’s the first step. We talk with you about your market, if there are different markets within your… if you got primary target and a secondary target market… we want to look at that and then we would ask you what do you feel your customers might be searching for on the web. We take that information and then we start an analysis and research project and we look at competitor websites: both direct competitors as well as supplementary other competitors that might be gaining your market share. You wouldn’t look just at radio, we look at other advertising mediums as well. We determine what they are doing to get their results that they are getting. And we also do we call the Keyword Effectiveness Index. The KEI allows us to sign a weight to a particular keyword or key phrase. So, we would look at the keywords that you suggested… we would add to that list, come up with some of our own, and then we would run some numbers. We determine how many searches are being done for a particular keyword and then we determine how many companies that are competitors out there in your market place are also optimizing for those words. Just to do some basic numbers, let’s say 100 users a day search for keyword one and you have 100 companies that are optimizing for keyword one. Keyword two, you have got less searches… maybe, 50 searches a day. But there are only ten companies optimizing for those keywords. Keyword two would be a better keyword in terms of trying to get qualified traffic to the site. You got less competition, so you’re more likely to get those users to your website and it would easier to get your rankings up. So, we got to through this analysis process and then we come up with a plan. We sit with you and we talk with you about our findings. We make our recommendations and we put together an entire plan for what we are going to do over a number of months. We also put together a pay-per-click strategy. Sometimes, doing pay-per-click advertising can have better results than organic optimization. The difference is…
Ron Morris: Now, explain pay-per-click for those who don’t know.
Bob Faletti: Absolutely. Pay-per-click is… let’s just talk about Google. Google has a program called Ad Words. You pay Google for placement on their website. Now the placement compared to…
Ron Morris: You pay for Google for placement…
Bob Faletti: On their website. So let’s say …
Ron Morris: So, anytime somebody uses Gmail, for example. Or this is on the Google…
Bob Faletti: When they are doing a search.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: For example, someone goes to Google and types in Pittsburgh radio stations…
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: On the top of the page and on the right side of the page you will see what is called sponsor results. Those are paid advertisements. You tell Google, “I’ll pay X amount of dollars per click”. So, when somebody sees your ad and then clicks on it, you will pay whatever that fee is. Google sets the prices and you tell them you are willing to pay. You could set budgets per day. There are lot of parameters that can go into it but you could pay Google for those. What we find is different user bases, different markets, respond to pay-per-click advertising differently. Pay-per-click advertising is not as effective in business-to-business situations. But, business-to-consumer advertising… we see consumers using pay-per-click significantly more. Now, when you do that same search, the results in this center of the page: those are what we call organic results. You can’t buy those from Google. Google is looking at websites and ranking them and providing those results. They are saying to their customer: “here’s what we feel the most relevant results are for your keywords”. .. over the keywords that you used to search. That’s where we come in to optimize your site, so that Google looks at your site and says “Wow”, for this keyword, this website is extremely relevant. We are going to move them to the top of the list. And that’s what we shoot for whenever we are executing an optimization campaign for organic search results.
Ron Morris: I see, very interesting. How many people actually use these techniques? Don’t most people hire some high school kid and bang out a website and pray?
Bob Faletti: You know, it’s interesting. There are no barriers to entry in our industry…
Ron Morris: That’s true, that’s true. That’s got to be a problem to you, a headache.
Bob Faletti: It used to be more of a headache than it is now. As we grow, as we get larger, we are able to speak to our clients of our history…
Ron Morris: They will appreciate you more.
Bob Faletti:; While they appreciate that and…
Ron Morris: You have a history of getting results.
Bob Faletti: Absolutely. But there are…
Ron Morris: But you are right. Any Tom, Dick or Harry with a computer screen…
Bob Faletti: You know, there are college kids. There are freelancers. There are boutique firms, there are large companies, and there are advertising agencies that all sort of jump into it. They all have a different business model. And there are pros and cons to every business model. But we are completely focused on the web. We have been doing this for a long time and we have more website clients than any company I can find in the region. So we are getting to the point where we are really becoming one of the, if not the major player as far as the web is concerned. Certainly there are companies they have more revenue than us that do advertising and marketing and a little bit of web... but as far as a company that’s just focused on the web, we have, of what I think of, the best history in the region.
Ron Morris: I would imagine the people that you hire have almost got to be knowledgeable, at least able to understand your client’s businesses much more intimately, but, yet, also have to have technical skills or at least be able to guide the people with technical skills. I am sure that you’re… I don’t know how do you organize for what you do? I guess that’s my question: how is your company set up?
Bob Faletti: That’s actually a good question and the answer is…
Ron Morris: I guess you get one per interview so…
Bob Faletti: Yes. Thanks.
Ron Morris: (laughs.)
Bob Faletti: That’s one of the differentiators. Let’s say you’ve got a freelancer. That person has to have… what is the cliché… a mile wide but an inch deep: not a lot of depth but understands a little bit about a lot of different things. Our approach, and it’s matured over the years, we have different personnel, different employees in our organization that are focused on different segments of the process. We have project managers that manage the overall implementation of a website, but, when it’s time to execute as a search engine marketing campaign, that project manager is no longer the point person. It moves to one of our employees and our SEO staff. And that person is responsible for managing that portion of that project. So we’ve managed to build a staff that is very deep in their respective disciplines. And it’s allows us to grow, it’s allowed us to be more efficient and it allows us to get through projects more quickly for our clients and much more effectively.
Ron Morris: So, what do you look for when you are bringing these people in? Are you looking for guys that… do you want someone that comes in with prior experience or would you just want to get some smart person that you can train your way?
Bob Faletti: The latter is what we have done typically over the years. We have a lot of really bright people that are on our staff that, you know, they came to us relatively young and they have really done a great job of learning and applying that knowledge. At this point of time we have a really strong staff.
Ron Morris: That begs the next question because, I, like you, have managed companies with bright young technical types, primarily technical. But, you know, they are different. I don’t mean that they are eccentric, as, though, that is possible. But, managing those kind of folks, Bob, is not the easiest task. You’ve got to keep them motivated, you’ve got to keep them interested and you got to make their jobs challenging and fun at the same time. You got to get work done and you got to be paid by the client. It’s not like you managing brick layers… these are, generally speaking, unique individuals. So, I am just curious: is your company structured with self directed work teams or are you hierarchically laid out? I will guess not. But, how you structure your organization? And how do you manage those guys?
Bob Faletti: It actually leans more towards a hierarchical structure…
Ron Morris: It does?
Bob Faletti: It does.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: You know, because you’ve got different disciplines and multiple people working on projects there needs to be some oversight. So, one of the things that we have tried to do is create an environment that provides lot of personal freedom for our employees.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: And to be honest with you, on the operations side, I don’t manage day-to-day. My business partner handles that side of the operation. I focus on sales, marketing and strategic development for the company.
Ron Morris: So there are two key partners in this company?
Bob Faletti: Two of us own the company and…
Ron Morris: And you divide it up: I’ll go bring the meat into the cave and you process.
Bob Faletti: There you go.
Ron Morris: laughs. And that’s not an unusual structure for a high tech company. You’ve got a hunter or killer and you’ve got a processer. And, so, he, as you just said, gives his people a lot of free space because, you know, I’ve never been to Blue Archer but I have been in companies like Blue Archer and it’s not unusual to see a Nerf thing or a ping pong table or stuff like that. I mean do you have that kind of loosy goosy, or?
Bob Faletti: We don’t take it that far.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: We don’t take that far.
Ron Morris: OK. (Laughs). Alright. You are smiling.
Bob Faletti: But I know exactly…
Ron Morris: You know what am I talking about?
Bob Faletti: I know exactly what you are talking about.
Ron Morris: Yes. Alright.
Bob Faletti: Yes, yes.
Ron Morris: Now you said your background is Anderson.
Bob Faletti: Arthur Anderson Business Consulting.
Ron Morris: OK. Alright. And were you there in Arthur Anderson’s in the day, you know, when it… you weren’t. Were you there before that?
Bob Faletti: When it imploded?
Ron Morris: Whatever. You are right.
Bob Faletti: When disappeared? Laughs, no I left before that.
Ron Morris: OK. I can imagine. So, when did you start Blue Archer ?
Bob Faletti: We started it in 1999.
Ron Morris: Wow! So you have had it for a while. So, you are a survivor in this business!
Bob Faletti: Oh yes. We have been…
Ron Morris: That says it about right there. How many people do you have?
Bob Faletti: Right now, I think, we are up to 12 or 13.
Ron Morris: OK. Alright. That’s commendable. How many clients have you… or is that proprietary?
Bob Faletti: No, we have over 400.
Ron Morris: is that right?
Bob Faletti: Yes.
Ron Morris: Wow! Wow! Good for you. Now, I would imagine it’s all over the map, I mean do they laid dormant for awhile and then they come out and they have a flurry of activity, I mean, how do you manage the client relationship ?
Bob Faletti: Typically, for most of our clients, they come to us with a specific need. Let’s say its building a website. We build a website, we provide hosting for that website and then we provide any ongoing support. So, most of our clients, they come in… project’s over… and they lay dormant for quite awhile. They come to us if they have questions or any new functionality…
Ron Morris: They grow, they acquire companies, they acquire new products, things like that?
Bob Faletti: Absolutely.
Ron Morris: OK.
Bob Faletti: Some of them decide that they want to do some more marketing or spend some more time on the design on their website… could be any one of number of things. Then we have some clients that are extremely active on a very regular basis. With some of the clients, they see the value in the website and they are getting a lot out of it and on a monthly basis, we are working with them on some level.
Ron Morris: OK. And is it an 80/20 deal as in 80% of your work comes from 20% of your clients? Is that generally the case or…
Bob Faletti: I would say 80% of the ongoing work comes from 20 % of our clients, but then we are always adding new clients. We are always adding new clients.
Ron Morris: Adding new clients. Now, Bob… by the way folks, if you want to call Bob with any questions about web development, web optimization, any of those tricks… I am sure he will be happy to talk to you: 412 -333-1360 # 1360. That’s a free call, if you are using Verizon. You can also drop us an e-mail at taeradio.com and I promise, I will look at TalkShoe. I am having one of those bad TalkShoe days, partially because my first guest sat over there. I am pointing to my right. At least Bob sat on the left side where I can see him and the screen. Bob, building a website… I mean I go back a long way as you can tell by looking at my grey hair. But, I remember the early, early, early days of the web and, man; there was some bad stuff out there.
Bob Faletti: Sure…
Ron Morris: But on the other hands, the tools weren’t very sophisticated and neither were the customer’s so did it much matter. In fact, it’s amazing that you had a website. Where has that gone? What is the approach to building a website these days? You had mentioned earlier a lot of people now are using a website much more than using website as an electronic brochure… they are conducting business and they are selling products… you name it: videos and interviews with founders and… you name it. Everything is out there. What do you recommend the people starting out… what do you like to see? What are the fundamental things that, when you visit a website, are important to you and should be important to your customers?
Bob Faletti: We like to look at the strategy of the site. There are still a lot of companies out there…
Ron Morris: By the way, a quick question: how many websites you think you built in your day… not that you built but, you have been responsible for building?
Bob Faletti: About, you know, I’ve had a hand in almost every one of our client sites. So, I have seen in some way, well over 400, probably 500 or so.
Ron Morris: Right there is a differentiator, I would imagine. You can’t do 500 websites... so, go ahead, please continue with the question I asked you...
Bob Faletti: We have seen a lot of different things, but in today’s world we want to look at each new site strategically. We want to make sure that we are not just putting up a site so that someone’s name is out there, because, let’s face it, if there’s someone out there that’s using the web to qualify a company and if one website isn’t up-to-par then they are going to go to the next one and the next one is going to be great. So we look at it strategically and we want to make sure that the company is using the website for exposure. We have a acronym we call ECCO and it stands for Exposure, Credibility, Conversion and Ongoing care. So, we want to make sure that there is a plan in place for using the website for exposure, for driving traffic to that website, and making sure that the company is getting exposure to new customers or existing customers.
Ron Morris: People forget that existing customers probably go there a lot more than anybody else.
Bob Faletti: Absolutely. It’s not always about just trying to get new customers. So we look at exposure. How do you get exposure? Once you get that exposure and someone comes to your site, how are you establishing credibility? And what does that mean in your industry? What does that mean for you in relation to your market?
Ron Morris: So these are the strategic sit downs you are having before any pen goes to paper or bit gets twiddled.
Bob Faletti: For most sites. I mean, again, we have some clients that say: “Hey, we just need a re-design. We just want a pretty site.” and I don’t recommend that always, but…
Ron Morris: But you want to know what’s important to you. What’s your differentiator, what’s your barriers to entry, what’s your strategy?
Bob Faletti: Right. We want to figure out what’s important to the customer and…
Ron Morris: Did they always tell you? Do they always know?
Bob Faletti: Oh! No, no. It’s funny. We did a strategy the other day for a company in Chicago. It was a business intelligence consultancy and they contracted with us to put a strategy together to build a website. It’s wasn’t a huge project but all the steps were there to make it a good website. Well, I delivered them the website strategy questionnaire, which is the first step in our process. It just gets them thinking and asking them basic questions about what their goals are for their websites… who their markets are… how and what their sales process looks like… we wanted to know how their website fit into the sales process… lot of things. Well. It was time to schedule, they had it for a few days, it was time to schedule and the marketing director called me out and said: “Bob, we got to put this off for a few weeks”. So I was thinking: why? Maybe that they got the questionnaire and it made him not want to do business with us. He said: “We got your questionnaire and it really opened our eyes and our partners are sort of in a little battle trying to figure out what strategy is for the company.
Ron Morris: Laughs. What is our strategy?
Bob Faletti: We see that kind of thing a lot. But once we have gotten through the strategy, it’s pretty easy to build the rest of the website. So want to know, you know, the C in the “ECCO” acronym stands for credibility. We want to make sure that site provides what the market needs to see to qualify the vendor. Then, the next “C” stands for Conversion. Once we have gotten a prospect of the site and the prospect is qualified, and the organization is potential vendor… how do we convert them? How do we actually capture their information? Do we want them to pick up the phone and call? Do we want fill out a form? Do we want them to download a white paper? What is that conversion mechanism? And then, once that happens, then it’s the company’s job for closing the deal.
Ron Morris: OK. It’s interesting. I used to put MRP systems in and I had the same discussions: would sit at a long table and you’d have the materials manager and the VP of manufacturing and they’ll say here’s how we process payables or this is how we order material. No, it isn’t. Yes it is. (Laughs) No it isn’t. And sometimes I thought about having a company that never really put MRP systems in and just had that preliminary meeting to talk about how we do things because you get a lot of payback, I mean, there really is a lot of payback to just having that discussion and to just getting everybody on the same page and in big companies that could happen. And also, there’s probably turf battles too where one department would say wait a minute, now, why am I over here and why can’t I be of higher profile and things like that.
Bob Faletti: Yes. That happens to some of our larger clients, but we deal with a pretty diverse client base: a lot of mid market companies, a few relatively large companies…
Ron Morris; Do you go out and research, Bob Faletti? Do you go out and research, other… I know you mentioned you look at other sites in those same industries. So if you want to do a job for us you want to go and look at the websites of… I don’t want to mention their call letters, but other radio stations. Do you also find yourself digging into other sources? For example, might you interrogate a sales person that calls on that company. I don’t know, I am just thinking out loud. Do you go out and… to what limit would you go or not go in order to find out not only the industry that your customer lives in, but how he or she has to deal with the competitiveness in that segment… in that industries slice.
Bob Faletti: We typically don’t get into that level of depth, although we can on a large engagement that’s really focused on strategy we will do those sorts of things. Typically, you have to remember, we are looking at the website. We want to create a website that’s going to be effective. So, the best tool we have at our disposable at looking at competitors is auditing their websites and trying to understand what they are doing well and…
Ron Morris: What they are thinking there. Right. By the way on TalkShoe, Daryl did me a favor of converting it from the computer over to my screen here which means it’s a bigger type, but Daryl says Guest Number 6 has some comments regarding using the most often used keyword in order to play in this same arena as the competition -- parentheses, anything else is additional – and unless you want the customers who haven’t already bought from your competition. Woah. Let me read that again. Do you understand that?
Bob Faletti: Uh, some of it.
Ron Morris: Using the most often used keywords in order to play in the same arena as competition – parentheses, unless anything else is additional -- unless you want the customers who haven’t already bought from your competition. I think I understand that. The most often used keyword that everybody uses I guess. But doesn’t that just put you in a dead heat with your competition?
Bob Faletti: It can certainly.
Ron Morris: Let me look that up in real-time and see if Darryl lost something in the translation but go ahead…
Bob Faletti: Using the most popular keywords pretty much guarantees that you are going to be competing head to head with all of your major competitors and if they have a jump on you, then you are really struggling to catch up. Also, it guarantees, for the most part, that any of the Ad Words that you are going to leverage are going to cost the most. So we would like to look at the most effective mix of keywords and some industries, it’s very straight forward. There are only a few keywords that are used and those were the keywords you have to use.
Ron Morris: You have to use.
Bob Faletti: And, frankly, be honest with you, there are some organizations that we talked to about search engine marketing projects and we said, look it’s going to cost a lot of money to get the exposure that you need because of how a competitor of your industry, because of the geographic reach… and sometimes there is not a cost effective solution. It happens.
Ron Morris: Now, when you are researching… now Daryl refined it: that you use one keyword for the… I think we got that Daryl. After that you need to differentiate… that basically is what you said Bob. So, Bob Faletti is my guest here. We are talking about the internet itself. How many companies are there in this region, Bob, which are here in this business in one way, shape or form, I really can’t count all the shingle-shingle guys. But how many significant players are there?
Bob Faletti: That’s a tough question to answer. Honestly, if I have to guess: 100… 150.
Ron Morris: More.
Bob Faletti: I mean there are a lot of organizations.
Ron Morris: Very competitive. And I bet you 3 years from now there are less than 50. I have seen this my whole life: something starts and starts to consolidate.
Bob Faletti: We’ve seen a lot of companies come and go in the market when we’re out there competing against other companies. There are a couple of companies that we see fairly regularly, but just a handful.
Ron Morris: OK. I got to stop you right there, we have 10 seconds to the break. We’ll take our last break. We will be right back with Bob Faletti of Blue Archer. Stay with us, please.
3:00 pm EST
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3:45 PM EST.
Ron Morris: Alright, we are back and we’ve got about seven or eight minutes to go. So, I got some questions that I kind of rapid fire at you, Bob. Number 1. One thing you said at the very outset is that… the whole goal of this business is… I think a lot of people, particularly young kids in this business, may be a little bit crazy but… is that they think the whole purpose of a website is just to generate interests, leads, tire kickers, whatever. You know better, you know that what pays the bills are customers, people that actually spend money. I noticed that, looking over yourself and talking to you right up front, that you spent a lot of time and effort in your site to convert these guys to customers. Tell us how do you do that.
Bob Faletti: The first thing we do: whenever we are involved in a search engine marketing project we spend a lot of time looking at the analytics, looking at the site traffic and really trying to analyze what’s going on with it. We want to know where visitors are coming from, we want to know where they are going on the site, how much time they’re spending, we try to look for trends, we try to look for areas where we are loosing them and then we take a look at the site and we try to modify or make modifications to the website so that we can improve the conversion ratio. And that’s what really helps to set us apart: we are very good at looking at the analytics and drawing conclusions from that intelligence that help us improve the conversion rate over time. And that comes with experience, that comes with looking at a lot of analytics at a lot of different websites and trying a lot of different things because let’s face it: A lot of this is trial and error. If Google would tell us exactly what their algorithm is…
Ron Morris: laughs.
Bob Faletti: To do the ranking, that would be fantastic.
Ron Morris: That will be nice (laughs)
Bob Faletti: Yes. Fantastic. But they do…
Ron Morris: But, how do you think they know that?
Bob Faletti: I don’t know. Who knows? Two, pr obably.
Ron Morris: I guess Sergey and the other guy.
Bob Faletti: I am sure they got a obviously have a large team, so…
Ron Morris: Do they keep changing that? Do you think?
Bob Faletti: Oh! Yes it changes very regularly. It changes very regularly.
Ron Morris: Because they smell people coming and closing and figuring it out, or?
Bob Faletti: Well, not that they see people figuring it out, but they make it smarter, they make it more intelligent.
Ron Morris: You can’t really game it. Can you?
Bob Faletti: No. Not anymore.
Ron Morris: Yes. You could.
Bob Faletti: There was a time, yes. Put your keyword in white text, white background a thousand times and they’ll say this site is really relevant. But you can’t do that anymore.
Ron Morris: laughs.
Bob Faletti: And we have tactics that we employ and every once in a while will see them start to either work better or not work as well. We know when things are changing at Google.
Ron Morris: Do you really? You can feel that?
Bob Faletti: Yes. You get a good feel for it.
Ron Morris: That’s interesting.
Bob Faletti: Because you are doing a lot.
Ron Morris: Do you guys sit around and talk shop, you and the other… not the kids, but the people that are mature professionals like yourself. Do you guys sit around and say here’s where Google’s going and.
Bob Faletti: Every once in a while. Certainly.
Ron Morris: Couple of drinks make that flow, right? (laughs)
Bob Faletti: Yes. We are.
Ron Morris: I know, you don’t drink, you told me that. (Laughs)
Bob Faletti: Did I say that?
Ron Morris: You did, at the outset.
Bob Faletti: Oh, I was lying (Laughs).
Ron Morris: (Laughs). I know you were. That’s alright.
Bob Faletti: Yes. But we have very regular conversations to talk about what’s working and what’s not working and how we change our tactical mix for our new clients whenever we start to see something either working very well or not working as well as it used to.
Ron Morris: OK. Hey I have only a couple of minutes but one of the things you guys do do that a lot of people don’t do is that you offer a free website analysis… I saw that in your literature. What exactly does that mean? Are there strings or do you actually come in and say… is it written? Is it verbal?
Bob Faletti: No. it’s actually written. We…
Ron Morris: Wow! How can you afford that? You’ll have to do it, I guess.
Bob Faletti: Frankly, people don’t tend not to take advantage of it and we convert a lot of clients that way. We have some, certainly, that just want some free advice, but we want to talk to the clients for the prospects first. If somebody wants a free assessment, they can give us a call. Typically I will want to have a conversation with them to understand what their goals are and then we can create an analysis. If we don’t know what their goals are for the site then we have got nothing to base the analysis on. But the analysis covers… it looks at the marketing efficiency of the site, looks at the design, look at usability. So we look at search engine marketing and we put a report together that basically says these are the things you are doing well, these are the areas where you can improve, this is why, here is the justification for making changes… and it’s actually a very valuable assessment.
Ron Morris: I would imagine so. I would love to have something like that. I am going to talk to our people about it. I didn’t know that you did that, but, by the way, if somebody wants to reach you, let’s give them your information. Hell, you’ve sat here for an hour; somebody should know how to reach you.
Bob Faletti: Sure: the best place is the website. It’s www.bluearcher.com. If anyone wants to take down a phone number, you can reach us directly at 412-353-1050. You will always get someone at that number. Again: www.bluearcher.com.
Ron Morris: And 412-353-1050, and, as always, we will link that to our site and of course, there also be some other information about Blue Archer on the American Entrepreneur Radio site as well as Pittsburgh Business Radio website. Bob, thanks so much. Enjoyable hour. I hope you enjoyed it too.
Bob Faletti: Thank you. It was great.
Ron Morris: All right, super. Thanks.