Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences are the largest global conferences focusing around Search and Social Marketing, touching on topics ranging from SEO to Video Optimization to PPC Management. The conference, since its start in 1999, has been held in major cities across the world and brings together professionals from a variety of different industries. The extensive, three-day event encompasses over 70 sessions, within tracks such as SEO, Paid Search and Social Media, along with interactive workshops led by Marketers and SEO professionals from major companies.

SES recently hosted one of their conferences here in Chicago. Rise Interactive’s CEO and Founder, Jon Morris, was featured on Day 1 during the SEO track. Morris participated on a panel focusing on Metrics for SEO. He later went into more detail on the topic with his presentation entitled “SEO: How Understanding Your Analytics Gives You the Edge,” which emphasized the importance of Web Analytics when looking to generate the highest return for your interactive investment. Following the event, Morris participated in an interview hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM where he further discussed the concept and practice of Interactive Investment Management.

SES Chicago presentation: http://www.riseinteractive.com/webinars/understanding-seo-analytics/get-the-analytics-edge.pdf

SES Chicago interview: http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/search-engine-strategies-conference/2011/interactive-investment-management

So, you might be wondering… how do I motivate employees to write blogs?

Honestly, our blog started as a simple competition…yes, we started with a trip to Vegas on the line! We quickly discovered that this was a good motivator, but there was an even better finding from this competition:

Thought leadership and personal growth is the ultimate motivation.

I recently had the opportunity to see Kevin Ryan, former CEO of DoubleClick and current founder and CEO of Gilt Group. The topic that Ryan spoke about was, “Hirer’s Remorse? Why 80 Percent of Business is Choosing the Right People.”  At this conference, Ryan said,

“A people want to work for A people.”

This means a couple things to me:

1.  ‘A’ people seek out other ‘A’ people to surround themselves with. ‘A’ people want to learn and grow from other ‘A’ people.

2.  You’d better hire an ’A’ person for HR since they will be doing the hiring!

Rise Interactive is a group of ‘A’ people; we are thought leaders who seek to surround ourselves with ‘A’ people . Everyone at Rise quickly discovered there was a new excitement that went along with doing research and digging into a topic that may be outside of a person’s expertise. When you really took the time to pull your nose out of your expertise, listen and reflect on what is going on today—right this minute—you can come away with some incredible findings which can be applied to your clients.

The best advice: encourage thought leadership.

We have always taken tremendous pride at Rise that we go above and beyond for our clients so that we ultimately make their lives better.  This has been core to Rise’s culture from day 1.  In fact, on the first day of work, everyone is taught that our #1 sales goal is to never lose a client.  My feeling is that if you asked any employee they would all agree that this is core to who we are and something that will never go away.

Although we are probably one of the most client-centric organizations you will ever meet, I believe we have to be more than client-centric.  We need to become employee-centric, vendor-centric, etc.  That does not mean that we do not treat our employees, resellers, vendors, and other parties well.  I believe we treat everyone well and that we strive to be a good partner.  The difference though is that we always made our clients the primary focus.  Everyone else was always secondary.  After all, our clients are our boss.

I believe that this customer-centric philosophy is excellent, but falls short of building truly passionate advocates.  I think that every group is integral to the success of our clients and we should make it our mission to improve the lives of all parties we touch.

In order to make this happen, I am asking for your help.  Please share ideas with me on how Rise can improve and evolve our culture.  Ideas can range from helping me craft our core values to something that makes life more fun.

   1. We Work Hard and Deliver Results

Not enough emphasis can be placed on how hard we work. We have a very dedicated team that takes pride in their work and strives to only deliver the highest quality of work. We measure every piece along the way and learn new ways to improve constantly.

   2. We work hard and deliver results all while having fun

While we work very hard, we have fun while we’re doing it.  It’s currently Friday afternoon, there are 7 of us sitting around discussing creative ideas for each of our accounts with the creative help of Michael Jackson jamming in the background. Even though we don’t each work directly with each and every account, we all have creative and unique ideas that could help another account. So, while this isn’t everyone’s idea of “fun”, we’re search nerds!

   3. We’re a bit competitive

Nearly everything is a competition. Internally we collaborate and work as a team on everything. Ideas are shared openly and we constantly brainstorm together. But, when it comes to winning for our clients, we consider ourselves an extension of their teams. We immerse ourselves into our client’s goals and work very hard to make sure our clients are not only competitive in search, but that they dominate!

   4. We are a team

We support each other’s creative ideas and work together to achieve the best results for our clients. We bounce ideas off of each other, we collaborate on new ideas, and ultimately we enjoy success as a team. The relationships that we have formed internally allow us to work together and better each other, which ultimately impacts our clients and the work that we do.

   5. We build people up

The sky is the limit at Rise. No one here will ever stand in the way of someone growing and moving up within the company. In fact, Rise even takes it a step further to focus on training. Rise wants every single team member to be an expert. We have time dedicated to learning and staying on top of the latest trends. The more we learn, the stronger of a team we have.

From my experience, every 10 employees in any Web development or Internet marketing agency should result in approximately $1 million in revenue. This represents a good indicator of how your firm is doing relative to industry benchmarks.

Why match up $1 million for every 10 employees and not 1 or 30? It is not practical to look at very little, or very high numbers. Imagine, for example, you charged $1 million per hour to your client. It would then be possible for you to hire 1 person and pay that employee $500,000.00 per hour. Paying this salary allows you to hire the most qualified person in the world to do the job while still returning an impressive profit. Win-win situation, right? The employee is not overworked, the client got great output and you gain a large profit.

Now, imagine the other extreme. Assume your revenue per billable hour is $10. To earn that same million dollars in revenue requires 100,000 hours worth of agency work. Additionally, you would have to find qualified staff that is willing to work for less than $10 per hour so you can make a profit.

As you can see, both of these scenarios are impractical. In the first example, though the quality of work and profit are great, it is not realistic to expect clients to pay $1 million in services for the work produced in one hour of one employee’s time. In the second example, the low wage required to make a profit will result in underpaid, overly stressed employees and low profit margins.

For this reason, I believe that $1 million for every 10 company employees is a realistic and reliable ratio to operate by within the Online marketing vertical. It allows you to hire quality employees, pay them a fair amount and give them enough work without reaching high stress levels.  It also allows the agency to  retain a reasonable profit for the organization.