Do you use the web when searching for products or services?

Of course you do. Almost everyone does. More than £70 billion was spent online last year – just by consumers in the UK. Add to that the fact that more than 95% of people use the web when searching for goods or services, and you have a fairly compelling landscape. So if that’s the opportunity, how are you going to make the most of it?

are you going to do Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

Trade secret: don’t use an SEO agency

When marketing online, some companies make big mistakes. We know – we’ve made most of them ourselves!
1

Some of the traditional techniques used to target keywords can now get you removed from the search engines,

(just search for ‘Interflora ban’ if you want to read an example). Some agencies still employ these techniques. Which is bad. It’s simply not worth the risk.
2
To succeed, you MUST look at the whole picture – you cannot silo SEO away from the rest of your marketing or business. Your website design and development, your Pay-Per-Click, your advertising, your press, your sales people, support staff, accounts team, social media… each part of your business can help drive sales, can

keep customers coming back and can secure recommendations.

SEO agencies cannot help you with that.

3
Too many businesses focus on ‘position on Google’, ‘hits’, ‘traffic’ and ‘awareness’. Some organisations outsource to agencies who promise to “get them to number 1 in Google”. But there’s a problem. Getting you to rank for a certain keyword has NOTHING to do with sales. It neither guarantees traffic volume nor necessarily brings you visitors that will convert to revenue.

Online marketing, like any marketing, should be about two things: creating sales and making profit.

It isn’t about traffic; it’s about the right traffic. Guaranteeing search engine position is snake oil salesmanship.

Reduce your marketing spend by using your own expertise

You won’t find many agencies telling you this because your spend is their revenue, but you don’t always need to spend more on marketing to boost sales.

We’ve seen businesses go from:

zero incoming enquiries
to
hundreds of thousands in revenue

purely by putting their existing spend, materials and expertise to better use.

your people

The simple fact is that nobody knows your business like your people do

– and you will almost certainly have a wealth of knowledge, skills and ability on your payroll already. This is an untapped marketing resource. We can help you turn your existing team into a lean, mean marketing machine.

Get in touch now




Don’t call us yet

Before you contact us, we want you to know the facts. Have a read of the following:

1
To market your business online, you will need to allocate some internal resource. You can’t just pay some money to a third party and wait for the results. If you’re not prepared to talk to us regularly or to empower a member of your staff to help, please don’t call.
2
Our perfect client engagement is to help a business hire and train its own people, then to work with those people to get the best results. This is far and away the most cost effective strategy. Who wouldn’t want to be come self-sufficient at this stuff? So if you’re happy paying hundreds per day in perpetuity for an agency junior to ‘do your SEO’, please don’t call.
3
Online marketing is about generating the right content for your clients and prospects to build your authority. This takes time. Depending on your starting point you need to commit to at least 6 months of effort before you see a return. If you want instant rankings or a one-month trial, please don’t call.
4
We want to make you money by generating leads and sales and this is how we want to be measured. If, instead of counting leads and tracking revenue, you have a shopping list of keywords you would like to rank for on Google, please don’t call.
5
Some businesses have an easier path than others. If you’re the next Printing.com or Expedia, you need to understand that there’s a very high, very steep mountain to climb. The strength of your competition will directly affect the speed and extent of the sales you can generate online. If that doesn’t sound plausible to you, please don’t call.
6
There is no silver bullet on the Internet. If your business is uncompetitive or failing offline, there’s a good chance you will be uncompetitive and fail online. Whatever you do, you cannot stop your customers shopping around. You need to be competitively priced and to offer something that your customers consider valuable. If you don’t believe you can match your competition’s offering, please don’t call (close your business and do something else!).
7

But if you’re prepared to work with us, to listen to our advice, to act on it, and to commit to 6 months of working together to sell your product or service, we will show you exactly how to generate leads and sales online.

About us

We are Internet entrepreneurs who are doing this stuff for ourselves. We’re launching several stand-alone sites that, one day, will make us rich – we hope. But to avoid giving away ownership of our ideas to VCs, we’ve decided to self-fund. That’s where our clients come in. The fees we charge for consulting pay our wages and bills, and enable us to create our own projects without raising capital.

We work with 20 small and medium-sized businesses because they’re the ones we can help the most. We don’t employ office juniors – we work with our clients ourselves. We’ve been there and done it; we know what works and what doesn’t, and we know how to avoid wasting money and taking risks. We are our clients’ Marketing Directors, without the six-figure salary.

Since we have no desire to grow our consulting business, we have no vested interest in getting more work out of you. We don’t have lots of mouths to feed and, with only a certain amount of time allocated to client work, we will not sell you additional services you just don’t need.

It works. Our time, processes and fees are totally transparent and, if either party feels like it’s not working, we can part from our clients as friends.

Please note: in order to start a new project, we may have to resign one of our existing accounts.

Get in touch now




Our expertise

We are sales and marketing experts. We keep up to date with the latest thinking so you don’t have to.
We know what Google’s latest changes mean and what will get you blacklisted; we know the difference between short-term gains and long-term success and we can teach you how to do this yourselves.
We aren’t just techies, we know all the marketing channels – we’ve been Marketing Directors and Managing Directors, we’ve been PR Managers, Management Consultants and Advertising Copywriters. We’ve chosen digital because we know it’s the future.

Who are we?

Nick Ratsey

started life at Google-owned Doubleclick before building his reputation at Vodafone. Has expertise in all fields of digital marketing – SEO, PPC, mobile email, social and display. Translates business objectives into marketing strategy and gets things done.

Alexis Thornely

Content marketing evangelist and former PR consultant. Specialises in travel and food (in work and in play!). One of the only marketers we know who truly understands that PR, social and SEO are now the same thing.

How does it work?

1

You contact us and give us a brief description of your business, your marketing spend, what you’re doing currently and what you want to achieve.

2

We will call you or come to see you, then come back to you with a proposed way of working. We’ll ask you for feedback, make a few tweaks, then…

3

You tell us to bugger off or you sign our contract.

4

We become an extension of your senior team, delivering against agreed milestones and objectives that we help you measure.

5

We charge you a monthly retainer, which you can terminate at a month’s notice, with additional one off-fees for any specific, additional pieces of work you request (e.g. setting up initial PPC campaigns, writing copy or building landing pages).

Get in touch now




Talk to us with no obligation

Sadly, we can only work with a few companies at a time. To take on an assignment we may need to resign from an existing one, assuming we have one that’s ready to go it alone. This may cause a delay. If you are interested in our support, please contact us using the short form above and we’ll arrange an appointment.

Thanks!

The Orange Cow Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 07790090. Our registered office is The Old Bakery, High Street, Pitton, Wiltshire, SP5 1DQ.