This is a cautionary tail of ‘expertise’ vs. expertise and something I see a lot of in my own business as I pitch against other companies who do what I do.

As you may know, I am a Director of The Escape. We turnover about £1.2m and had an appropriate accounting firm for our needs. They got bought last year so we became a smaller fish in a bigger pond.

We felt we weren’t getting value for money and the meetings that we had to pay for by the hour consisted of someone having a general chat. An hour and £500 later we realised that it was time for the change.

So, we approached a guy that we had dealings with a couple of years ago. At that time he had pointed out something in a deal we were doing, something that our accountant back then had missed.

So we started 2008 with a new firm and already our new accountant in Basingstoke has found a glaring hole in our VAT returns to the tune of nearly £40k, which we can now claim back.

Value is always great when you can clearly measure it. I guess that’s why I love online marketing so much.

And, as a bonus, offering value creates a happy customer and word of mouth, arguably the best form of marketing… hence my little Blog post.

The Christmas break, with time to think, and the beginning of a new year allows for a bit of perspective and goal setting. Here are mt tasks for 2008.

1. Strip down the number of Blogs I read. I waste a lot of time trying to ‘keep up’ when I could probably manage this with less than 10 industry Blogs. This begs the question, should I continue my Blog? This is not going to be a snap decision but I may end up posting less.
2. Experiment more with outsourcing. I need to try a few things I wouldn’t normally. eg. There are many very cheap web services coming out of India for directory submissions, etc. Outsourcing is a viable way of making money and getting results. Articles, directory submissions and other SEO services may be more cost effective to outsource (as long as a level of control remains and good partners can be found).
3. Concentrate on the money. It almost seems as though I shouldn’t be saying this but it’s what pays the mortgage and potentially in the UK, we may be having a tough year. By focussing on where the money is (or could be) made, I can save a hell of a lot of time and effort with more reward.

With technology playing a huge part in the way we watch entertainment, I think it’s fair to say that adverts are losing their effectiveness. For instance, I tend to record TV programmes and forward through the ads, and I am sure I’m not alone.

It’s why I think permission and relevance is the way to go. A way of using technology to the advantage of your advertising, displaying appropriate advertising at the right time, to the right people, who do have an interest.

Sometimes you can force your adverts, when you have a captive audience. Like me today at the cinema. I took my two girls to watch a film today that ’started’ at 2.15pm.

19 minutes of general adverts, followed by 2 minutes of cinema adverts, followed by 8 minutes of film trailers, finished off with another 2 minutes of cinema adverts… later… the film started.

The problem with forced advertising is that it creates resentment, unless it’s clear why the advertising is there, like the compromise for using free software.

I don’t want to watch adverts. And, the cleverer technology gets, the more likely I won’t have to.

I have just read a book about Lance Armstrong, seven time winner of the Tour De France. “How Lance Does It” charts a quick overview into the type of person Lance is and how her has applied four key principles to attain success. It’s an okay book, but one of the principles has had me thinking a lot in the past couple of weeks.

Clarity of Purpose: Develop the deep commitment and focus needed to align your behavior and the pursuit of your goals with your ultimate life purpose.

Now obviously the book goes into more details but the thing I took from it is that Lance didn’t concentrate on winning the Tour De France, he focussed on the process that could make it happen by optimising his peak performance. His diet, his exercise regime, his weight, the construction of his bike (in detail), etc. These are the things he focussed on.

Basically he tested and optimised to the n’th degree. The attention to detail on the processes helped him to create the situation to win.

This arguably needs continuing investment of resources - time - and the understanding that you are never there. The journey to optimum performance is the ongoing challenge.

Sound familiar?

I run a local business news website for my home town of Basingstoke. The idea being that any local company can forward me their press releases and they can get exposure. Meanwhile I create a relevant source for local business news, and a local business-to-business directory.

It’s never going to be a website with so much traffic to monetize and I run Adwords on it just because I can, rather than to make money. . It’s a bit of a labour of love.

That said, it seems to really annoy some people that it is localised to Basingstoke and that I won’t accept stories or directory entries from outside of the town and the local phone code.

I had an e-mail from a ‘marketing’ person in Andover (about 15 miles away) this morning:

I would welcome the opportunity to add our details to your directory. Unfortunately you will not allow companies in Andover to register. We have a number of clients in Basingstoke and would like the opportunity to contribute to the Basingstoke Business News.

After replying with an explanation why, I got this sarcastic reply:

We have decided to start our own Basingstoke Gazette web Site for Non Basingstoke Companies. Please encourage your non Basingstoke Companies to forward their Non Basingstoke news to us. We are also contributing to the non Southampton Directory and the non Portsmouth Directory.

Thank you from a non Basingstoke company.

Firstly, it’s not a Gazette website, that’s here. Secondly, this person is in ‘marketing’.

I love it when people don’t understand it. Especially when they are potential competitors.

This is a tale of caution for any small business owner. Probably one of THE most important parts of your online management - taking ownership and control of your domain.

I often sit in meetings for new web projects with clients and I slip in the question, “So, who manages your domain?”. Often, with a coy and bewildered look, I get one of the following three responses:

• “Not sure, our IT guy set it up and he’s left now”
• “Our web designer, the one we’ve fallen out with, sorted it out for us”
• “I bought it using one of those online superstores. I got it very cheap. Can’t remember which one though”

It’s infuriating to think that their biggest online asset it not being monitored, managed or controlled. I don’t get angry for me, I just can’t understand how anyone would not want to control their prized asset.

An old client of mine once bought a .TV domain online through Easily, using an e-mail account to register it that he rarely checked. The domain expired. It then cost him a lot of time, 90 days and £160 to get it back. That doesn’t include any lost business through no e-mail or website for three months.

What Is a Domain?

Your domain is like a prized personalised number plate. Mine, is craigkillick.co.uk and I use it for my web address on www, for this blog on blog.craigkillick.co.uk as well as for my e-mail address.

If I decide to move my hosting, I can just manage my domain to point it to a new server, a bit like taking a number plate and putting on a new car.

Also, as any domain I own, admittedly not this one, increases in value, it is imperative that the right legal entity owns it, whether that be a Limited company, or an individual. What you don’t want is for your domain to be legally owned by your web agency, hosting company or your IT guy that left - YOU need to own it.

Who Owns Your Domain?

You can check who owns and manages your domain using WhoIs web search tools - I tend to use www.swhois.net, but you should be able to Google “whois” and find other versions.

At the very least you need to make sure you are the owner of the domain. If you don’t you need to take steps to get it. The administrator is the first person to go to and their details should be on the Who Is information.

Managing Domains

Yes, you need some technical know-how to manage your DNS and Nameserver settings and I am not the person to go into that in great detail.

I do however use 123-reg to buy and manage my domains. I’ve never had any problems with them. It is easy to buy your domain and manage it in a control panel, transfer it to other hosting companies, or, if you have the know-how you can point your sub-domains and e-mail to any server you choose.

That said, finding a good hosting company - now that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I had a conversation with a disgruntled website owner today. His website used to deliver him traffic and business a couple of years ago but one fine day, Goggle made a big change to their search algorithm with Jagger it changed everything for him.

His ranking slipped, and his once competitive website began to slip. We built a new one for him but to no avail, the traffic is becoming harder to come by.

This highlights two major points for me:

1. Relying on a search engine for your business is a dangerous thing. Companies have tried (and failed) to sue Google when these things happen but their business is not yours - we all need to become less reliant on one source of traffic.
2. Search, and the internet in general, is become ever more competitive. Bigger players are entering the market with larger resources. SEO is so mainstream now, a new ‘edge’ needs to be found - with a more diversified approach to relevant markets.

It can be done but it takes hard work. Small niche businesses are thriving on the web but are maybe too reliant on search, a problem larger eTailors don’t seem to have.

So, that gives us content, and content propagation. ie. Write some good relevant articles and then tell the world about them. Social sites (such as Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. all the way through to Facebook) are good for this or you could try buying into some Directories. Of course, you could try making your own site more social and, if you are a small business, or one man band, you could, yourself, become more social online.

With the ‘chosen one’ now departed and the football club with the deepest pockets in the UK, if not the world, looking a little lost it makes me wonder how much freedom and power money actually gives you in business.

Here you have a football club owned by a man with so much money that Chelsea is almost like a hobby and he has placed such high expectations on what he expects in terms of success that, in my opinion, they won’t ever be enough. He keeps throwing money at it to get the ‘best’ but it’s not working. Sport is about preparation, tactics, optimisation of performance and, in the case of football, teamwork.

Compare it to my team, Arsenal, who sold [arguably] their best player during the summer and have a team often referred to as ‘kids’ at the moment. Arsenal actually made a profit of £10 million in transfers over the summer and from what I have seen of them this season, they have created the best Arsenal ‘team’ I have seen in a few years. All that, without the big-name signings and throwing too much money at it.

Part of the fun for me of running a business, running a campaign for a client, or creating a new website are the restrictions. Yes, I might battle like hell against them at the time but it adds to the excitement, creates the challenge and adds to the value of the return.

How much effort gets lost because money is the cushion to fall back on; how much creativity lost, and innovation?

You could argue that money gives you the room to take risks but any business needs to take risks and the risks where money is involved usually revolve around the spending of the money, rather than return.