Latest Interviews
Phill Bernier – ‘Getting The Most From The ‘Net’.
Posted: Wednesday 11th Jul 2007
As those of you who were at our last networking event will tell you, Phill Bernier gave a really good talk on promoting your site. So we decided to ask him for a quick interview and he kindly obliged.
Anyway, do introduce yourself and your firm. “I’m MD of Adira ltd, and I started it about three years ago. I have a technical background and Adira – I suppose – has three main products: web site builds, online shops and web sites you can manage yourself.”
And there was a simple reason why he set Adira up. “Just because we saw a gap in the market for web site products that actually featured in search engines without costing tens of thousands of pounds.
Since then, the firm has apparently done very well. “Very well indeed! All of the work we get to through referrals and word of mouth we’ve done very well in terms of advertising. So yeah! We’re doing very well….”
Anyway, let’s go back to the talk you gave. “Well, basically the talk was about how to get yourself found on the search engines without spending a huge amount of money or without employing the professionals. The theme was that you could do it yourself if you had the time or you could understand how it works so you would know if you’re getting value for money if you did hire the professionals. Now obviously, there are a huge number of people out there offering this kind of thing. So it’s very hard, as a non-technical person, to know whether or not they’ve doing the right job or they know what they’re talking about. So the idea was really to give an introduction to the two main areas of what we deal with, which is search engine optimisation and ‘pay-per-click’.”
Phill also has tips for new businesses that are just starting to work on the net. “Well, if they’ve got a lot of time, and they have a technical slant, then they should research search engine optimisation. All the information is out there; I mean, there’s tons of it – you just have to type in ‘web optimisation’ into Google and you get pages and pages of information. Additionally, there are forums where people will answer your questions directly. The alternative to that is pay-per-click. If you read it carefully, Google tells you carefully what to do, and how to set up a good pay-per-click campaign.”
But surely it’ll all go horribly wrong when everyone’s using the same tricks? “Yes, but what we’re dealing with is now, and now there’s an opportunity, certainly for certain industries: lawyers, accountants…”
Indeed, Phill sees a golden opportunity for these traditionally non-net businesses… “They’re traditionally sat back and let people came to them, but a few have suddenly realised that there’s an opportunity here, because there’s very little competition online, so they can make the most o it – and they are! They’re right in the forefront, and they’re making a huge amount of money. They’re not done anything particularly clever – they’ve just realised that the opportunity and power of the Internet is here now. It’s not coming anymore: it’s here. So you’re right in that it might get saturated, but what’s important is that there are opportunities to be had at this minute.”
That seems to be the Internet’s strength: it does actually allow for innovation, for people to do things to do things they’ve never done before. Who has the hardest time doing this though? Phill’s answer may surprise you. “The ones that will find it hard are people in the web industry itself. I mean, think about it: web design and search engine marketers and even graphic designs probably all know this, and therefore they’ve got huge amounts of competition already. If you count up the number of web designers in Hampshire, it’s huge! Try to compete with that sort of market on the search engines! For example, if you were to type in ‘web design Hampshire’ in Google, we [Adira] wouldn’t appear. We do appear top in some of the others, but because of the saturation rate and the length of time people have been doing it, professions like that don’t stand a chance, as you’ve already said.”
But again, the sort of companies you’d least expect are the ones who could do best of all. “So pretty much, all of the other ones – like locksmiths, trades… I mean, trades are a huge one at the moment, and that’s something I’m getting involved with at the moment. Trades have traditionally never used methods like the web to get found. But with the advent of things like checkatrade.com, Yell.com pushing their services and Thompson.com too, the trades are starting to wake up to it.”
One firm is already reaping the benefits. “So we’re working with a building company at the moment, and what we’ve found is that there’s no competition for them at the moment at all. In time there will be, but there’s an opportunity for them right now. “
And that’s the exciting thing: you’ve got established businesses suddenly doing something new and radical. “Absolutely”, Phill says, and you get the impression he knows what he’s talking about.