Audit Clears up Strategy Mess after Marketer’s Desertion

Dr Mark Rehn was in a pinch.

His business, platform and portal, My Business Excellence, was ready exposure and he had just been let down by a "marketing strategist".

"It was in a bit of a hurry. I found out on Wednesday and he [the marketing strategist] was going on the Friday," Dr Rehn says, "so I had to start again, basically, with the whole marketing side of what I do."

From Full-Steam to a Fizzle

Finding a reliable marketer at short notice is not something any business wants to do, but for Rehn the situation was even more complicated.

"I'm the content builder," says Rehn. "I'm a one-man band, have been since 2001. I'm reasonably good at logic, as you might imagine as an engineer – it's systemic thinking – but then I came to the question of how do I make it attractive?"

Rehn, who has more than 37 years of experience consulting at the executive business level, has spent the last five years distilling his knowledge into My Business Excellence, a business improvement program and platform for SMEs.

He had just reached a critical stage for marketing to go full steam ahead when his marketer deserted him.

When Your Network is Your Net Worth

"I decided to do some homework on the Internet to find someone who was experienced in terms of SEO and also marketing applications, rather than in terms of content development. I also wanted assistance in terms of copywriting – I'm an engineer and I tend to have more technical language. I have more CEO to CEO type language because that's my marketplace."

Rehn already used LinkedIn to scout his training talent, so looking on the professional's social media favourite seemed the best idea. He initially found three local companies who seemed to cover what he needed, and chose one of Semantia's consultants, Kin Lok Wong (Lok), to reach out to first.

"I very quickly decided I didn't need to go through the other two I was going to research."

As part of Rehn’s initial conversations with Semantia, he brought up an incidental problem he was having with the internet.

"Lok fixed the issue immediately. Within a day he got right back to me and I thought, well this is the sort of group I want to work with."

Audit Leads to Highest Priority Recommendations

Rehn asked us to look into his website SEO and platform as a priority task. He also wanted to use his Infusionsoft subscription to better effect, as he had thousands of contacts to sort but no effective tags to use.

"I decided I needed somebody in Semantia to really zero in on where I'm at," Rehn says. "And here's a plus for Semantia: they're the best listeners that I've ever come across. Everything about it. They said we can't really do anything until we become aware of what's on the website and see what sort of email style you're doing… we agreed they needed to do an audit."

"It was surprising to me, they approach me with this proposal and it was quite, quite professional, formally written with three options."

Semantia gave Rehn a range of service styles to choose from: providing him with the audit and recommended tasks, consulting with him as he worked on the plan, or stepping in and fixing everything.

Rehn was surprised to find a consultancy so comfortable stepping into his place and working so closely as part of his business.

"I actually asked them if they enjoyed working like this because they're standing in my shoes and with that comes responsibility. They said absolutely they do."

Results with Immediate Effect

While Indra (Chandon) began working on how My Business Excellence could use Infusionsoft more effectively, Luce (Chandon) audited Rehn’s SEO strategy with immediate effect.

After receiving the audit report on the first two weeks of work, Rehn revealed, "They've cleaned up my act in terms of search engine optimisation. I'm now on page one of the search on Google."

"I've got some great graphics there also dominating page one, to the extent that we talk about business excellence for SMEs you click on the video and I get the first 10 out of 11 on page one. So I'm dominating that space which is what I set out to do."

Rehn’s reaction?

"Absolutely delighted!"

"They go over the top with feedback to the customer. They've documented for example everything I had in a 150-page document with where I came from and what they're changing it to, so that I've got a record of what was there before and what's there now. It's part of their methodology."

"And I can always go back to it if for some reason I ever say look I don't like it." Rehn says. "By the way, I do like it."

About Dr. Rehn & My Business Excellence

Developed by Dr. Rehn, My Business Excellence is an online platform that provides SMEs and SMBs with with instructions, visibility and accountability for achieving business excellence.

Visit My Business Excellence