Twelve years and Twenty-Two Million dollars ago, I was made an ad man, a media buyer, copy writer, audio/video producer and more, while my biz card read: ad agency account executive.
Along the way, I learned much. I learned the value of an ad dollar through first person media placement and negotiation on the local, regional and national marketing stage. I learned the value of quality, well written creative and how it could be crucial in delivering a desired response. I learned that the client is always right, except when they are talking to me, an accountant or an attorney, because we are the only ones allowed to tell them when they are wrong about something, but if we do, we BETTER be right!
I was right often enough, now my biz card reads: ad agency president.
A several years ago we decided to expand the agency from traditional advertising and marketing to the digital age by developing a digital division. Our focus was on what we knew. We knew paid advertising! So paid search (ppc) seemed to be the sexy product to hang our white hat on.
Several of us went through Google Adwords and Yahoo training, we hired younger staff members and set out to conquer the word of Paid Search Advertising (at least in St. Louis).
We soon found that it was an incredible marketing tool and began selling the idea to our small and mid size clients, most of which found the idea to be from mars (some still do). I began saying; “I used to deliver measured media, now I deliver measured results”. Pretty clever huh, trust me I didn’t coin it but it sounded so good.
During this same period, we were making a transition from utilizing outside, local St. Louis vendors for web development to the creation of our own in house web mastery team. We like our vendors, it’s just the old adage, if you want something done right, do it yourself! We began hiring asp and php code junkies, formed a strategic affiliation with some national Web 2.0 marketing affliliates and began cranking out W3C compliant quality code. Once again we found a way to deliver a measurable quality to our clients.
Early on in the process, the word “new media” was being used so much that I began to realize that my traditional (old) media expertise was loosing it’s luster. I was 30 and I was already staring at the media marketing pasture. The grass surely was not greener. So I embarked on a learning expedition in the world of SEO fueled by passion and fear of a smaller paycheck.
With all that being said, I started with the Cart, not the Horse. I knew absolutely nothing about html code structure or anything else web for that matter. I knew how to market product and looked at the website as a product that needed to be marketed. The next step was to take in as much information as I possibly could on a daily basis and in real time try techniques on clients web sites pro bono (free).
I began learning about all the tools at my disposal and began stockpiling them, we even developed a few of our own. I read blogs like this one, signed up for every RSS feed, newsletter and magazine I could find. I got ahold of some ranking managment software, learned enough about code to be dangerous and began optimizing our clients sites!
The results were simple. This stuff works! Our case studies began to get better and better. Our clients web leads went up, they’re sales went up and the next thing you know, I was flying all over the country preaching the gospel of SEO to mid level manufacutrues and distributor top execs. They loved my no tech approach and simple explanation of everything from SEO essentials like page titles, Meta Descriptions, Image Alt Tags and word densities to Page Rank, No Follow Tags, Reciprical Links, Video Optimization and Tag Clouds.
I have found that the more I get into SEO, the more my simple explanation to agency clients begins to slip away. I have also learned that cheating like with anything else is bad and it hurts. I have learned that SEO is not easy and very labor intensive. I have learned that I do not know it all and that collaboration is what make the internet the “best media” not just the “new media”.
Most importantly, I learned SEO and I have made the grass greener on this side for my Ad Agency and all of our clients.
My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?
