Organic search is our #3 source of traffic to Find New Customers, but you can help us make it even bigger.
Google loves inbound links so we made a simple page that you can use to link your blog or website to Find New Customers.
Just copy the text from the link and paste it to keywords on your blog or website.
Thank you.
For another post on this, see Find New Customers is back and better than ever.
Last fall, Find New Customers was shut off when a small CRM company in Florida called A p l i c o r who had purchased our popular website and blog domains of findnewcustomers dot net and fearlesscompetitor dot com refused to return them and flipped a switch. We went dark on August 3, 2010. No website, no blog and no email. We were out of business. (They used our websites for “black hat” SEO techniques - keyword stuffing.)
We purchased www.findnewcustomers.com (A vastly better domain name anyway) and www.fearlesscompetitor.net (for my blog) and started over. It is now May - just 9 months later, but the verdict is in.
They have been vanquished.
Our website is vastly more popular than theirs. The second best source of traffic to our website is organic search - our Alexa ranking dwarfs theirs. Check out the comparison here.
Since thanks go out to our supporters, like Marketo, Eloqua, SiriusDecisions, Junta42, Avitage, MarketingProfs, Communications Strategy Group and a special thank you goes out to Jill Konrath for her faith and support.
The future is bright indeed. If we did this in just 9 months, what can we do in the next 9 months?
(Editor’s note: The review of the book below is of the hard-cover copy and not the “New and Updated” book. I apologize for an statements about issues that may have corrected in the newer edition.)
I had the pleasure of meeting the author and getting a signed copy of this book. Now that I’ve finished it, I want to share a review for our readers. While our reviews do not always please the authors, we hope our readers appreciate our candor.
Here’s my bottom line:
Brian is undoubtedly a top expert in personal interaction and social media. His book covers every aspect of those key elements. He covers ideas like the Conversation Prism - great stuff.
However, the book is laid out like an college textbook. For instance, Chapter 14 is The New Media University | MBA Program - Second Year. This academic approach - as if you were in college - means the book has a rather dense, academic bent.
I believe business books need to be simple, straightforward and action-oriented. For instance, the book Inbound Marketing By Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, David Meerman Scott has simple action items after every chapter. Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman is simple and clear. In contrast, I found Engage to be complex and academic.
We give this book 2 stars (out of 5)
Jeff Ogden
I’m one of the featured speakers at this social media conference today. My featured talk is at 12:45pm. I’d love to see you there. But don’t be late, as I only get 5 minutes.
Here is the full list of speakers.
The world has changed, is changing right now, and you know it; it’s exciting and terrifying all at once. The 140 Characters Conference is your opportunity to learn what this change in the world is, how it affects us here in Long Island and how it affects your life and your business personally. When you leave this conference you will walk away with real answers.
The #140conf events provide a platform for a worldwide community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time Internet on business. On Thursday May 26th 2011, Long Islanders become an important part of that community.
The schedule is unique and fast paced. We will provide a platform for as many people as possible to share their thoughts and engage in conversation with the audience. Individual talks are 5 minutes, “Featured talks” are 10-15 minutes and Panel Discussions are 10-15 minutes.
Jeffrey Hayzlett
It’s important that companies can quickly sum up what they are about.
At the Aprimo Marketing Summit (where I hosted the B2B track) Jeffrey Hayzlett, as keynote speaker asked this question of the audience of top marketing leaders.
“Can you describe your company in 118 seconds? What’s more, can everyone on your team do the same.”
Jeffrey is right. Can you simply and clearly describe your company to a total stranger in under two minutes? What’s more, can everyone in your company do the same?
What do you think? Can your team cite your 118?
By the way, Jeffrey’s presentation was hilarious. Watch it here.
Our goal is to share great guest posters. Here we feature the marketing automation experts at Software Advice. We thank them for their contributions here.
SoftwareAdvice does great analysis of the marketing automation space. Their recent post is a superb analysis of the marketing automation industry. I post part of the article below. Click the link at the bottom to read the full article.
I really like Lauren’s candid and unabashed analysis of the space. (but I also added Hubspot to the analysis) Also, Lauren shared with me that she got this data from sites like IRS.gov and venturefunding.com, as she was striving for unbiased, objective information and to avoid vendor bias.
Jeff Ogden, President, Find New Customers
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by Lauren Carlson, SoftwareAdvice
I’ve talked to a lot of marketing automation vendors in the last year, and the topic of venture capital comes up often. Some vendors are proudly announcing new rounds, while others are deriding the fundraising as reckless and unsustainable.
I’m not exactly a Silicon Valley insider, so I decided to dig a little deeper into the topic.
On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got Marketo, (Jeff - our great white paper, How to Find New Customers, was sponsored by Marketo) which has raised $58 million to-date and $35 million of that in the last twelve months. They position these venture rounds as validation of their momentum in the market. They say the capital will be well-spent on product development and building an enduring company. Time will tell, but they seem to be doing very well.
On the other end of the spectrum are a dozen or so vendors who claim to be struggling with the VC math.This creates questions:
VCs invested over $3.96 billion in marketing automation vendors since 1998.
While marketing databases, data mining, and campaign management tools have been around for decades, the modern marketing automation market really started attracting venture funding during the dot com era (1). Of course, that bubble burst and there was little funding for a few years (2). However, activity picked up in a big way in 2005 as the economy recovered and investors became smitten with all things cloud (3). The financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 slowed funding again, but that was short lived (4). 2010 saw the largest flow of dollars into marketing automation vendors, including two sizable rounds by Marketo (5).
Jeff: Though Laura did not discuss Hubspot, I calculated that they raised $65MM in four rounds, including $32MM in a recent D round. The chart below, from a recent Hubspot blog post, shares their view of the marketing.
Take it with a grain of salt - is 50% market share by revenue or number of customers? (To illustrate - which company has higher market share? Company A has 1,000 small customers and company B has 600 big ones. Depending on what you measure will put either company on top.)
