April 13, 2010

Q&A: EO chief on networking (both online and real-world)

By Steve Hendershot | Crain's Chicago Business - Enterprise City

The Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a 7,300-member group of business owners, recently named Kelly Cutler president of its Chicago chapter. Ms. Cutler, CEO of Chicago interactive marketing firm Marcel Media with 2009 revenues of $4 million, is the first woman to lead the local EO chapter. (The Entrepreneurs’ Organization is headquartered in Alexandria, Va.)

She spoke to Crain’s contributor Steve Hendershot about the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) as well as how small businesses can use search engine optimization to stand out.

Crain’s: Interactive marketing is the epitome of high-tech, whereas the Entrepreneur’s Organization is pretty traditional, with lots of meetings, events, and so on. What do you think is the benefit of a group like EO?


Kelly Cutler

Kelly Cutler: It’s a little bit different than some of the more technology-focused ways of doing business, but we’ve found that there’s a lot of value to be gained through sharing experiences with peers in similar situations, who are also trying to grow a business from the ground up, who are also being pulled in different directions, trying to manage client relationships and employee relationships. An entrepreneur is in a very different situation than someone who is just working for a company, and EO provides a really nice opportunity to network with people in a similar boat, who are facing similar challenges.

Crain’s: A lot of Marcel Media’s work is focused on search engine optimization (SEO). Describe the opportunities there for small businesses. Is the Internet still a place where any business can shine, or have the big companies figured out how to dominate search results?

KC: The nice thing about online marketing is that there is a level playing field. The company that puts the most in is the one that gets the most out of it, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the 800-pound gorilla in a particular industry. In fact, a lot of big, Fortune 500 companies are very slow to move because they are more bureaucratic, and more tied to an older style of thinking that’s focused on traditional advertising strategies. That gives a huge opportunity to flexible, nimble small business that are smart about putting their resources in the right place.

That doesn’t mean that SEO is easy, but it is something that is available and open to anyone, not restricted by size of your company.

Crain’s: But SEO is more expensive now, right? Or is it still more tied to effort than money?

KC: There’s definitely a financial commitment. It’s not 2003, where nobody knew what SEO was and if you had a couple of developers who were working on your site put keywords into your text, you’d be optimized. It doesn’t work that way anymore.

But it’s a combination of (effort and money). Smart companies are those that put their dollars and resources toward an online marketing strategy. It’s just a question on focusing in the right areas and taking advantage of opportunities.

In the old days, it was just about on-page SEO, everything taking place within your website—putting keywords in your content, utilizing title tags, meta tags, alt tags, naming images properly, making an XML site map, those types of things. And those are still important. But now we’re looking more at off-page SEO, as well as usability. Those three components are all very important. Off-page SEO is more focused on strategic linking, authority building, bookmarking, those things. And usability relates to how long people stay on the site once they click through from Google—how relevant your site is. All of those factors are very influential now.

Crain’s: What are the benefits of paid search vs. SEO, which is aimed at maximizing a company’s organic search results? Do you steer clients one direction or the other, and has that shifted over time?

KC: The most savvy marketers are taking advantage of both paid search and SEO, because there’s a benefit to doing both. Focusing on SEO is the best long-term strategy, and we really try to get that message across to our clients, but we also have to manage their expectations in terms of results and speed to market, because SEO is more of a marathon compared to paid search, which is the sprint. So if a client is looking for immediate results, we encourage them to utilize a paid search strategy. Then we can learn a lot of good lessons from that, in terms of what works most effectively, by tracking conversions and using analytics to connect the dots. We’ll come out with a very strong SEO strategy based on those findings. 

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