Climbonline SEO - The Apprentice

[DSLiverpool]

Won £250k yesterday, has spent a few years selling the stuff with success, can do a pitch with gravitas (ish)
so why do I think its going to crash and burn in huge style.
As a potential customer for Climbonline I can only see it from a client side maybe the SEO guys can have an input but.

• He promises to use analytics and monthly consultations with the sales guys - most clients will simply moan about no extra sales from month 2, this will tie up the sales guys stopping them earning commission and will quickly go down the pan - staff churn or poor quality consultations.
• A lot of people with no idea about SEO will want to "get up the pecking order" and will give him a go in a lot of cases this will be the first external SEO agency they have used. These clients I imagine will be the maximum pain in the arse types again taking up time and lowering commission for the "consultants"
• He will be expensive but promise a lot, in reality he cant make hard promises as he is only as good as his SEO "experts" who will have been rapidly recruited as he hits the ground running - more hassle, complaints etc
• Mark I a sales guy - sales guys make crap organisers as all they want to do is sell not organise - he will come unstuck.

Anyone interested enough to provide a better insight ?

[Simpo Two]

You may be right. A team is good - a salesman up front who can sell snow to Eskimos but as you say loses interest the moment the order is signed, and behind him, someone fastidious who sees the work through properly while the salesman chases the next order.

[WTD]

Didn't watch the final yet, but managed to read this article...

The Apprentice: 5 Basic Digital Marketing Errors from @Lord_Sugar’s New Company
http://barker.co.uk/apprentice

[StevieBee]

DSLiverpool said:

He promises to use analytics and monthly consultations with the sales guys - most clients will simply moan about no extra sales from month 2, this will tie up the sales guys stopping them earning commission and will quickly go down the pan - staff churn or poor quality consultations.

This depends on whether he employs 'Salespeople" or 'Account Managers' and how he structures bonuses.

DSLiverpool said:

A lot of people with no idea about SEO will want to "get up the pecking order" and will give him a go in a lot of cases this will be the first external SEO agency they have used. These clients I imagine will be the maximum pain in the arse types again taking up time and lowering commission for the "consultants"

Again, if they are dealing with Account Managers, then this is the sort of things Account Managers do.

DSLiverpool said:

He will be expensive but promise a lot, in reality he cant make hard promises as he is only as good as his SEO "experts" who will have been rapidly recruited as he hits the ground running - more hassle, complaints etc

This applies to any service business.

DSLiverpool said:

Mark I a sales guy - sales guys make crap organisers as all they want to do is sell not organise - he will come unstuck.

Yep. Those that tend to be good at both tend to prosper.


I think Lord Sugar made the wrong choice. I think Mark is the more 'credible' business person but I think the Tights ideas has the greatest financial potential.

[Dick Dastardly]

I didn't see it, but I did catch a few of the earlier episodes. Is this the guy who was at Reach Local? If so, aren't they mainly on the PPC side of things and not SEO?

If he is going from selling PPC to selling SEO it won't be that hard but the account management side of things and getting results couldn't be further apart. Whilst they are both to do with appearing on Google they aren't at all similar.

[mikey k]

DSLiverpool said:

Won £250k yesterday, has spent a few years selling the stuff with success, can do a pitch with gravitas (ish)
so why do I think its going to crash and burn in huge style.
As a potential customer for Climbonline I can only see it from a client side maybe the SEO guys can have an input but.

• He promises to use analytics and monthly consultations with the sales guys - most clients will simply moan about no extra sales from month 2, this will tie up the sales guys stopping them earning commission and will quickly go down the pan - staff churn or poor quality consultations.
• A lot of people with no idea about SEO will want to "get up the pecking order" and will give him a go in a lot of cases this will be the first external SEO agency they have used. These clients I imagine will be the maximum pain in the arse types again taking up time and lowering commission for the "consultants"
• He will be expensive but promise a lot, in reality he cant make hard promises as he is only as good as his SEO "experts" who will have been rapidly recruited as he hits the ground running - more hassle, complaints etc
• Mark I a sales guy - sales guys make crap organisers as all they want to do is sell not organise - he will come unstuck.

Anyone interested enough to provide a better insight ?

We are looking for SEO on a new venture at the moment
Yell offered it for £105/month
These guys are going to be a lot more if htey are putting bums on seats at clients
His USP is himself once he stsp back that goes
BTW anyone know a good value SEO service?

[DSLiverpool]

mikey k said:

We are looking for SEO on a new venture at the moment
Yell offered it for £105/month
These guys are going to be a lot more if htey are putting bums on seats at clients
His USP is himself once he stsp back that goes
BTW anyone know a good value SEO service?

Try the chap posting above you - I used Yell 5 years ago they were worse than useless and used now penalised methods

[dfen5]

I thought he was offering marketing in the package rather than just getting you up the search engine tree?

[jonamv8]

Yell @ £105 pcm - dont do it!

He'd be daft to not offer PPC as well as SEO they go hand in hand in a true online marketin strategy.

My company does SEO so I'd say I'm experienced. I wouldnt bother soending any less than 350/400 a month which is to be fair what Mark said would be his minimum client spend.

As an SEO we have to advise on what keywords a business should target thru detailed research and common sense. If ee get you top 3 page 1 and your not making sales then that falls outside our remit to a degree, your products could be too expensive for example. When an issue with your site is stopping conversions or sales then We would advise and fix but we cannot fix your business plan or pricing policy.

Seo gets you higher up Google and gets you more traffic - thats what we deliver on

[mikey k]

DSLiverpool said:

Try the chap posting above you - I used Yell 5 years ago they were worse than useless and used now penalised methods

Good point
A fellow Aston owner!
I'll ping him a PM later in the week!

[CzechItOut]

When the guy said he was spending £3,000 a month, surely most of that is PPC ot just for SEO, so the agency would only receive a percentage (10-20%?) as a commission?

[jonamv8]

CzechItOut said:

When the guy said he was spending £3,000 a month, surely most of that is PPC ot just for SEO, so the agency would only receive a percentage (10-20%?) as a commission?

Possibly, althought they did make out it was 36k worth of business on the show, not a % of that.

I'd be surprised if small local business was soending 3k on SEO

[jonah35]

Clim Bon leen?

[dacouch]

I found it amusing that Mark whose setting up a company to improve other companies appearance on Google chose on a tv program watched by I guess 8m+ to chose the name for his company for which the website is already in use by another company.

www.climbonline.co.ukwww.climbonline.com

The american owner of the twitter account @climbonline was somewhat confused last night when they were receiving tweets from the UK twitter.com/CLIMBONLINE

For someone looking to assist other companies profile on the internet and who was looking for £250k investment you would have thought he would have spent a long time thinking the company name up and researching it well before he even went on the show. (The majority of the episodes were filmed in the Spring)

Amazing waste of free publicity

[Frimley111R]

Thanks for the spoiler!!!!!!

[Frimley111R]

dacouch said:

I found it amusing that Mark whose setting up a company to improve other companies appearance on Google chose on a tv program watched by I guess 8m+ to chose the name for his company for which the website is already in use by another company.

www.climbonline.co.ukwww.climbonline.com

The american owner of the twitter account @climbonline was somewhat confused last night when they were receiving tweets from the UK twitter.com/CLIMBONLINE

For someone looking to assist other companies profile on the internet and who was looking for £250k investment you would have thought he would have spent a long time thinking the company name up and researching it well before he even went on the show. (The majority of the episodes were filmed in the Spring)

Amazing waste of free publicity

He was on BBC this morning saying they have hyphenated climb-online and were aware of this issue at the time.

[MrSparks]

You would really expect better of someone in digital marketing, and sales, and going on The Apprentice. Yes it's a reality entertainment show but these guys are meant to be business savvy.

I thought that the idea is to have your business plan ready for funding and then you "play the game" to get the funding. Thus he should have had at least a good idea of the name, branding, websites, strategy in place before the process even started? (Same for all the other contestants). It's not a case of "Win the apprentice then make up a business!?"

BBC advertising rules or not, the idea of the show is to 1) make Alan Sugar richer and 2) kick start a company with 8m+ viewers in the final show. To not even have any of the simple principles of what he's selling, in place for himself, is a massive mistake. I don't believe it's down to the BBC not allowing advertising. If he had a pre-chosen name with website and some "SEO" work to make sure it's top 3 results for a landing page before the process even started then you wouldn't even need to mention the website URL for hundreds of thousands of people to go searching for it... He could still have played the "branding exercise" in the game.

As soon as it's on TV and "Alan Sugar" is involved, people will sign up for the service far easier than a random other company. Unfortunately!

That said, he seems pretty switched on and capable otherwise so I'm sure he'll make a go of it regardless of the seemingly basic blunders made so far.

[Wacky Racer]

What I don't understand is how come the eventual winner's identity isn't leaked by an insider, month's before the first episode is screened..(as it is recorded in advance)...which of course would spoil it for everyone.

[DSLiverpool]

MrSparks said:

As soon as it's on TV and "Alan Sugar" is involved, people will sign up for the service far easier than a random other company. Unfortunately!

.

I think the type of person who will call them is the type who doesn't currently SEO or understand it but wants to get higher up "the pecking order" - this type of client (I guess) will be the worst to have as I see a lot of "I`m not higher yet" type calls daily

[MrSparks]

DSLiverpool said:

I think the type of person who will call them is the type who doesn't currently SEO or understand it but wants to get higher up "the pecking order" - this type of client (I guess) will be the worst to have as I see a lot of "I`m not higher yet" type calls daily

Agreed. But it doesn't seem to bother the likes of Yell, Infoserve etc who prey on these types of customers and don't seem to care about how you're actually doing.

It doesn't meet with Mark Wrights whole concept of a personal service, but ultimately his product and target audience don't match anyway.