8 replies to this topic

[jclayman]

I recently looked closely at purchasing an internet marketing franchise from a franchisor [removed]. For various reasons I chose not to pursue it. However, the SEO/SEM industry itself is very appealing to me and something that I believe I would enjoy immensely. I don't have any direct experience in doing it, but I would like to leverage my 20 years experience in corporate marketing to possibly start up a search marketing agency.

I would target very small accounts at first in order to get my feet wet. What software packages would you suggest I purchase to assist me with helping small businesses take advantage of SEO and PPC opportunities? Also, if I wanted to get into web design work as part of this, what software package would you recommend?

I appreciate and look forward to your counsel.

Edited by Jill, 29 November 2006 - 12:46 PM.

[foamcow]

Having had an amusing, incognito, email exchange with a representative of that company I think you made the right choice by not taking up the franchise.

[jehochman]

• Open Office (free) or Microsoft Office ($)
• Firefox (free) and extensions (also free)
• Dreamweaver ($)
• Photoshop ($)
• Flash ($)

You can get the last three bundled as Adobe Creative Studio

Knowing how to use a tool is much different from knowing what to do with the tool. Your investment in training will be several times more than the cost of the software.

In your situation I'd consider doing the marketing strategy part of the job, and finding partners to do the web development and online promotion. The learning curves are substantial.

A franchise won't help you at all. You can't franchise expertise.

[foamcow]

A franchise won't help you at all. You can't franchise expertise.

Trust me, they don't. lol

[jehochman]

On second look, I don't want anything in my post to discourage you. One of my associates was a long time director of marketing and he's done very well as a copywriter and marketing strategy consultant. He outsources graphic design and technical stuff. In the process he's learned a fair amount about SEM.

Just so you understand the economics, if you have 20 years of marketing experience, you can probably provide 50% of the value on an SEM project, and outsource the rest. A lot of SEM is good old fashioned marketing.

(Hey, come to think of it, I used to be a Director of Marketing, too.)

[qwerty]

    * Open Office (free) or Microsoft Office ($)
    * Firefox (free) and extensions (also free)
    * Dreamweaver ($)
    * Photoshop ($)
    * Flash ($)

I'd leave out those last three, especially if you can farm out your development work. Of the three, I only have Photoshop, and I've never found myself in a position where I wished I had Flash or DW.

I used to have DW 3, but by the time I got into the business, it was already obsolete.

I have FrontPage, but I don't bother with it anymore. I do all my web development in HTML-Kit, and if I needed any Flash work (and I never have), I'd just farm it out to the designer I usually work with.

[Jill]

Software For Starting Up A Search Marketing Agency

The most important thing you need is the knowledge of SEM. There's really not a lot of tools necessary.

I use Keyword Discovery, an html text editor, some firefox extensions, and google. Oh, and you'll need some web analytics software as well.

Can't really think of anything else you'd need in terms of software.

But you'll need expertise. Someone who is a professional copywriter for starters.

[franco81]

One of the most useful tools I find myself using is an rss feed reader of any variety. Personally I use firefox and thunderbird to keep up with RSS feeds - I need to constantly monitor what is being said/latest goss on the SEM scene, for one thing it is difficult to keep up when you can't visit the industry conferences etc.

So, yeah, stay abreast of latest news on blogs and forums with RSS. Although I have compiled my own healthy list by now, here are some resources that might help you start:

www.toprankblog.com/online-marketing-blog-resources/

[FP Guy]

I use Trellion's Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and elbow grease exploring the search results of search engines for the Keyword Research part.

Then I use Trellion's SEO Toolkit, WebCEO, and more elbow grease that is not available from these 2 packages to do my analyzing. Software wise.

These things are very useful for SEO. SEM is more what you have the experience for already and you will find out that the more you know about SEM the better off you will be in ranking in Google. MSN and Yahoo are still easier to rank for using just SEO techniques.

I still believe that SEO and SEM will merge thus making the software not an essential tool anymore, but more of an investigation tool.

I agree with Jill, you will need a professional copywrite artist on hand as well.