One of the upgrades we introduced towards the end of last year was the addition of an Excel or PDF documents upload facility of up to 6.5MB into the adverts on the site.
This means that all of our Premier subscribers can upload up to 5 images per advert. Now you can exchange some or all of these image slots for either Excel or PDF documents instead, these documents will have the icon & title displayed alongside the advert images. We are all aware of the problems of selling-off low value dead stock.
So we have added the Excel document upload primarily to give our Premier subscriber a quick & easy way to create dead stock disposal lists/adverts to use in the For-Sale category adverts located on the site.
All you need to do is:
1) Create your advert title and its corresponding description 2) Prepare an excel spread sheet with your: Part numbers, Brief item description, List price, 11Discount of list price (if applicable), and your Nett clearance prices, and a note about carriage charges. 3) Create/add title to each of these spread-sheets to identify their content in the advert 4) There are no restrictions on the type of items being listed in your stock disposal adverts 5) Email the above to us and we will add them to the site for you!
Once we have received your initial adverts, we will create this new Stock Clearance category!
Going forward:
Before looking forward to 2011, we would like to thank everyone for their continued support in 2010. We ended the year with our turnover exceeding our previous year total, in 9 months!
Our core objective for 2011:
We will be focussing our efforts on developing the SubConEng.com site, knowing that due to the success of MC-Tooling.com the SubConEng site was put on the back burner in 2010 the balance now needs to be readdressed this year.
However this does not mean that we are not willing to develop MC-Tooling to meet the needs of our customers.
This is illustrated by, following a request in November last year, we added a free Job Opportunities in the Eng-Toolstore home page category onto the site which both VSM Abrasives & Cromwell Tools Group have used to place free adverts for staff, so why not place your own recruitment ads. Its free!
New for 2011, we are also offering enhance banner advertising right across the site in the right hand column, you will be able to view our first advertiser using this space next week, Unimerco Walmsley
We are considering adding Twitter to the site, but I am not sure that it would not be a step to far for our industry. Is it really ready for Twitter at this moment in time, your input would be welcomed. (unlike using video in ads)?
NB.MC-Tooling is still continuing to grow its internet presents with Alexa.com now reporting that our average visitors/users are now spending over 40 minutes on the site per visit
Best regards Alan
We now have 'Video ads' on the home page!
The guests down in the Astonlee dungeons have been celebrating the completion of the latest MC-Tooling site upgrade!
It's taken many hours of behind the scenes work but we think that you will like the new page layout and we have already been receiving some very complementary feedback from our visitors:
"I liked this website upon landing on it, with its seamless design, easy colour scheme and informative content. It offers a diversity of interesting and informative content that is relevant. The user-friendly layout and eye-friendly colour scheme is systematic and provides fast and easy navigation!"
"Good content, visually pleasing with good navigation, performance and innovation. Well done, you have created a good tooling website!"
"Great site, I like what you have to offer. Good stuff!"
The latest upgrade to the MC-Tooling.com site allows you to:
Have an improved display of your company contact details on the top of the listing as well as a new quick email information request form that has been added below the description, both of which are already showing dividends.
Upload PDF, Excel and Word documents of up to 8 MB, with an easier upload method via the 'edit/add image page' with your icons displayed within your adverts other images.
To add videos from over 150 related video hosting sites, instead of only YouTube videos.
To screen video ads on the home page to create more interest for your potential customers, and to encourage them to explore more of the site.
Make the management/monitoring of your ads even more user friendly!
If you haven't logged on recently then why not have a quick look and see for yourself? www.mc-tooling.com. We always welcome your feedback and comments.
If you would like to upgrade your current subscription package or if you would like any additional technical support then give Alan a call on +44(0)1332 799 913 Regards Alan NB. according to Alexa.com the site's visitors spend an average of 31 minutes on the the site during each visit!
It's Millionaires Row for MC-Tooling!
Down in the Astonlee dungeons we've really had our nose to the grindstone working on the latest major upgrade to our MC-Tooling site, which should implemented in the next 7 days. However, it has meant that we haven't been paying the same level of attention to our site stats. So having grabbed a few minutes to review the recent stats we found that on the 1st of October the site recorded over 1,000,000 adverts being read! A major milestone for any web-based business.
The idea for the site emerged from our frustration of not being able to find good 'technical product information' on the web. Therefore, we wanted to offer a unique platform that no other UK website provides for our industry. Hence the result, MC-Tooling and why Alexa (Amazon) have recorded that on average our visitors spend 27 minutes on the site.
We're sure all of you that have created 'something from nothing' will understand the thousands of hours of hard work and financial investment it has taken over the last two years to reach this goal!
Going forward the latest upgrade to the MC-Tooling.com site will allow you:
To upload PDF, Excel and Word documents of up to 10 MB, with an easier upload method via the edit/add image page with your icons displayed within your ads other images.
To have a new quick email information request form added to the bottom of all your listings.
To add videos from over 150 related video hosting sites, instead of only YouTube videos.
To make the management /monitoring of your ads even more user friendly - we know our advertisers agree as we have already tested it out on our other site Subconeng.com.
Finally we would like to say a special thank you to all those companies who've put their trust in us, and helped us to get started, without your help and support this site would never have got off the ground.
Here's to the next Million!
Regards Alan
MC-Tooling.com Alexa Results Update
Alexa reports that mctooling.com results in less than a week are as follows:
Mctooling.com’s three-month global Alexa traffic rank is now 1,054,265
We are now in the top 3.39 % of all websites, which is a 68% improvement in 10 days!
The time spent in a typical visit to the site is about 28 minutes.
User on average spent 25 seconds on each pageview.
The site's visitors view an average of 24.0 unique pages per day
Mctooling.com has attained a traffic rank of 30,090 among users in the UK (the BBC is at No.6)
65% of the traffic is coming from the UK, with 35 from the rest of the world.
Alexa is an online service that measures websites traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings, and is an Amazon company).
NB these figure are still improving on a daily basis, so watch this space!
AstonLee New Venture: SubConEng.com
You may have noticed that we have been a little bit quite recently, the reason is that we have been doing a lot of lateral thinking and research.
We all know that 'carrying on just doing what we have always done' is no way to guarantee our business will survive in the current business climate!
Why?
Well we have already doubled our record of site viewings in the first six months, and our subscription sales are also growing year on year, times are hard and we know that the key to our long-term success is by continuing giving 'added value' to our subscribers.
But how are going to do this?
Our strength is: Our knowledge of the industry we serve, and the expertise we have gained about the internet coupled with the marketing sense of knowing how to pick our fights!
I well remember the first site I had built for me by a so call 'professional web designer', It looked great, but in truth it was totally useless, and it was only the intervention of a friend who advised me as to why is the only reason I have never looked back (thanks Andy).
We are already way ahead of most other sites in our sector. We really get annoyed when we see that some of these companies are targeting the USA or India to increase their traffic ranking rather than focusing on their UK customers. So with this knowledge we have decided to create a new UK site to help drive traffic back to www.mctooling.com
So our new development /sister site is: www.subconeng.com, and I don’t think I need to say any more, for you to understand where the potential is, other than we have amassed a large data base of end users, and to explain about what makes this new site so different:
Our subcontractor can register and place up to 10 free adverts, but unlike the rest of the other UK internet sites out there, they can list their capacity / capability by: Industry; Component type; Accreditation; Machining Process; Makes & Types of machines available; Location, all of which can be updated 24/7 and validated annually.
So they will be telling us what sector they supply, and the type of components they specialize in machining, coupled with type & make of machines they are using, whilst our competition can only offer them categories like precision, general etc, so which site do you think buyers will prefer to use.....
We will also be encouraging 'Subcontract Buyers' to use the site as an online sourcing tool for them, by allowing them to place free 'Request for Quote' ads on the site as well.
When will the site be launched?
We are currently putting the finishing touches to the site, it’s amazing how much work is involved even though we are experienced with the software. Our objective is to launch the site next week so watch this space weeks.
Regards
Alan
MC-Tooling needs you in 2010?
Why do we need you?
For those of you who don't know us so well. Right from the outset we set ourselves the target of becoming the UK bench mark in this industry, the investment made in our continuous improvement program started to deliver last year and is already gaining momentum for 2010.
Just one example of this is that Google announced sometime ago that they would no longer use Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. But recent changes in Google's search algorithms as brought Meta descriptions back to life as an important ranking factor.
In response to Google's change of direction, we installed some 2 months ago bespoke software not only to allow us to further optimise our own www.mctooling.com tooling categories Meta description, but more importantly to do the same for our clients long-term advertising that appears on the site as well, and this along with all our other changes are really starting to deliver increased UK traffic to the our advertisers!
The only down side is that we now have 1000's of adverts that have to carry keyword research/ optimise on, and trust me when I say "it a lot of work".
All this means that we finish 2009 by recording 1000's of adverts being viewed every day. These figures are then boosted by the video channel which is also recording in excess of 12,000+ Videos being viewed monthly.
So how can you help us?
All we are asking is that you remember to add us to your press release/new letters mailing list. It's as simple as that.
Send us your videos, or any technical help publications/data/article/conversion charts etc which would be helpful to visitors, and gain hyperlinks back to your own site.
Where possible add a back-link or hypertext links from your own site back to your www.mctooling.com advert or video.
Recommendation, if you know anyone that you think we could help their business by being on our site, please let us knows, and we will contact them a.s.a.p.
Everyone in this industry has had to tighten their belts in the last 12 months, but we at MC-Tooling know given your help and support this year we can deliver a truly long term cost effective means of promoting your business online to both to new and existing clients.
Following our members feedback we have improved the actual layout of the listing, and we have also added Image Optimization software to the site which now automatically makes any images uploaded by membership be resized 'on the fly'. An update on the site progress since 14th September launch to 3rd November.
• The software as recorded over 26765 viewings of all the listing on the site(visitor must open listing to be recorded). • Number of Google index pages is now @ 9030 (was 220 on 14/09/08) and still growing! • Hits on site for "October only is: 470087 • Number page hits on site for "October only is: 266248 • October recorded visitors to site is: 6384 • October recorded unique URL's on the site is: 4781 • 87% October of the recorded unique URL's on the site was from the UK! • Our website has an Alexa rank is 1,527,864 which is in the top 4.97 % of all websites. Alex is an online service that measures websites traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings, and is an Amazon company.
All of the above means that in only a few weeks we have now overtaken our target UK Directory competition!
Regards Alan
Get your Engineering-Videos working for you!
Down in www.mctooling.com dungeons:
We are maintaining our philosophy of continuous improvement, and on the 4th November we created our first video tooling demonstration link for Advanced Carbide Tooling innovational NINE9 Spot Drill on YOU TUBE which you can now access by clicking on the image or by clicking on the NINE9 hyperlink at the bottom of this page.
We are more than happy to add good demonstration/promotional videos onto the site for our membership, although it’s quite a lengthy process to upload the files. YOUTUBE state that the maximum size of file that can be downloaded is 1024mb, but please don’t send files of this size as the NINE9 video only processes 34MB, at this size it must have us taken over half an hour to load it even with a high-speed broadband connection.
If you want us to add videos to your company’s link, to both your entries & your own site, please ensure that you provide us with the following: - It must have a good technical bias - We must have your copy write approval to display your video on YOUTUBE in writing from you! - You will send us the video on either on DVD, or via email providing it is a small clip below 8MB. - You must include the title & text you wish us to use on YOUTUBE.
We will also accept good relevant technical videos for the ENG-TECH-INFO from anyone as long as it meets the above criteria.
Following our members feedback we have improved the actual layout of the listing, and we have also added Image Optimization software to the site which now automatically makes any images uploaded by membership be resized 'on the fly'.
An update on the website progress since 14th September launch to 3rd November.
- The software as recorded over 26765 viewings of all the listing on the site (visitor must open listing to be recorded). - Number of Google index pages is now @ 9030 (was 220 on 14/09/08) and still growing! - Hits on site for "October only is: 470087 - Number page hits on site for "October only is: 266248 - October recorded visitors to site is: 6384 - October recorded unique URL's on the site is: 4781 - 87% October of the recorded unique URL's on the site was from the UK! - Our website has an Alexa rank is 1,527,864 which is in the top 4.97 % of all websites.
Alex is an online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the Internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings, and is an Amazon company.
All of the above means that in only a few weeks we have now overtaken our target UK competition!
We often get comments from member on how we are doing so well, as their site never really delivered for them. A typical case in point was the owner of a company I spoke to at the recent TCT exhibition in Coventry. He informed me that he tried the internet but had such a specialist product it was a waste of time putting on. He was so adamant there was no point in arguing with him at the show. He was making the classic mistake that 1000’s of other company make including myself.
I am still amazed how many company websites I visit have the wrong telephone number, address, and missing pages or old news, what is even more disappointing is that over 70% of buyers will not deal with companies who do not have a website, can you imagine what impression these buyers are left with when they land on such a site!
You also need to stop treating the internet like a telephone book, yes if you type in your name with a bit of luck it will find you, or having your site layout like a company profile. You really need to ensure that you not have a site/software that you cannot easily create & add your own content on.
Having done that, there is loads of really good free information on the internet on SEO (search engine optimization) and free software to help improve your site, but you need to spend some time getting your head around it, before you employ some one to do it for you. Otherwise when people like me visit it I will be thinking: “it really is a good looking site” but about as much use as a chocolate teapot!
My site is designed for a busy engineer to find what he looking in hurry, and failing that ring me, is your telephone number easy to see on every product page, or tucked away at the back of your site?
You have to take control of your site otherwise it’s like employing a new salesman that you lock into an office with a telephone that only allows incoming calls, and then wondering why he not selling anything. I have, like others employed poor sales staff, but I have at least given them a chance of delivering the goods, and the same goes for marketing on the internet.
- 91% of engineers use the web to find components and suppliers. - 90% of engineers use the web to research product specifications and 82% research products online before generating an enquiry - 80% of engineers access news and technicalinformation online and 68% check product availability. - The statistics prove that the internet is a fantastic and powerful toolbut users can sometimes get information overload.
After extensive market research within the industry MC-Tooling.com was launched to provide a specialist service to meet the needs of UK machine shop users with the simple objective of making it easier and faster for them to find exactly what they are looking for!
MC-Tooling is not just another online directory, it is a B2B site ran by experienced tooling engineers for engineers and designed to be a true tooling guide - crammed full with blue chip companies,high technical content and useful links/videos.
Thats why we are on target for our monthly veiwing of our adverts to be over 250,000 by September!
An annual entry in MC-Tooling costs only a fraction of a single advert in just one issue of the UK’s engineering press. Which means your potential customers can access your information globally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
You will gain a very valuable relevant anchor text link to your site which will help to improve your overall ranking with Google (Google has around a 75% share of the search engine market).
Easy to set up, MC-Tooling can even do all the work for you by importing relevant text and pictures from your own site - all you need to do is proof read the finished results and make any amendments.
Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 (or for any of our other services).
Is all about heart and minds, nice words, but what does it really all mean?
Like you, I‘ve been feeling the full effect of the recession, and felt the despondency from potential customers when I’ve tried to ask them for an order.
However recently I was ask to create a sales training course from someone who wanted a company who knew the difference between an endmill and a windmill without talking the bull.... you normally get about widgets etc!
Until now we have focused our Astonlee training part of the business on buyer selling tactics and supplier condition messages, but like everyone you take the view it will help pay the bills, so you get stuck in and get the job done, but little did I realised what a benefit this task would be to my business!
Over the years I have collected a vast amount of training materials that I used in the training of other sales & sales management personnel. With this abundance of training materiel I have created a new B2B selling course for my customer base...
However it slowly began to dawn on me, what with all the “end of the business world” type of predictions in the press it’s no wonder that the negative mental attitude of doom & gloom, is descending like a dark veil over the industry, and I like everyone else I was allowing it to control my mental attitude allowing it to become a self-prophecy of “If You Expect less Business, You will Received Less Business”
So since the New Year I have, like many others were lowering my own business expectations, but whilst revising my notes it made me stop and think about my own company’s situation: the www.mctooling.com site.
Since mid-September 08 we have now exceeded 150,000 viewings this month, and we have seen a subscription renewal rate of over 85% by our advertisers, we are still growing our visitor’s numbers, and as with MC-Video Channel still enhancing the services we are delivering, over and above anyone else in the industry.
Our only real competition is the printed press, who due to their unrealistic costs and resultant lack of advertisers are now down to only printing 6 editions per year, in the full knowege that they are now not only selling yesterdays news coupled with being the very last place anyone would look for information, as it is quicker to “Google it” these days,
Don’t agree? Think about it “when was the last time you looked in a magazine/book for information” in fact you got quite annoyed when you could not find it on the internet. How much longer will the industry press be able to keep selling the idea that for companies to keep a presence in the market they must keep buying some very expensive paper normally used at best for recycling is debateable to say the least!
Even though I had so much positive news, I was still allowing the negative thoughts to cloud my judgement, even after being thanked by some of advertisers for their biggest orders they had won this year. So like me don’t fall in the trap, and go and dig out those old sales training courses and revitalised your sales team with a positive approach.
Like the general of a victorious army once praised the perseverance of his men by saying, ‘Our soldiers are not any braver than those of the enemy – they are just brave for five minutes longer.’
If you haven’t the time, or would like us do the training for you, please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 (or for any of our other services).
Regards
Alan
MC-Tooling New Site SEO Upgrade
Down in the MC-Tooling.com dungeons, the Astonlee team have been celebrating the completion of a major site software upgrade, which having been promised would take only 2/3 days, has taken us months to get it working correctly (“ho how we love these software designer houses”).
We have implemented this next generation software upgrade to improve the site “Search Engine Optimisation” (SEO) functionality for google, but it will take a couple of months before we really see the full benefits of this. Hence why we planned July/August being the main holiday season, when business normal slows down anyway for this upgrade.
To help make it even easier than ever for everyone use the new page layout etc, we have started the creation of some Tutorial Videos on how to use/get the best out of the site, and are working flat-out to get them all completed a.s.a.p.
The home page as also had a major update to make it easier for visitors to locate the item/service they are trying to find, and to raise the prominence of the featured adverts section.
Some other great news is that earlier this month we recorded over 190,000 viewings in the 10 months since the site was launch (mid September last year) which is a fantastic result bearing in mind how bad the turndown as been in the industry.
It is also very pleasing to see that our geographical targeting is working, with over two thirds of our traffic coming from the UK, so what is the point of being on a site that may have higher ranking/traffic volume, if the majority traffic is coming from places like India, and the UK traffic is so small it doesn’t even warrant a mention.
However this approach does make it a lot harder work for us, but it does mean we deliver honest value for money, hence the reason why we record every time a visitor opens your advert. We know that we cannot force them to buy from you, but at least you know your advertising budget is being read and not being recycled or wasted in none target markets.
So it’s really pleasing when talking to so many of you about the business you received. Such as from Bob Coals, at Midland Metrology who told me about one of the best orders he had received this year, it was for two 30” projectors from an Irish company who saw his advert on our mctooling site, they contacted him and flew over specially to purchase them from him.
This latest update means no other site delivers in the UK better value for money, especially when you consider what’s included for a fraction of the cost as compared with so called market leaders provide.
So please help us by remembering to add your: new products, news letters, and the special offer or your videos, so we can all gain the benefits of this unique site!
Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
Regards Alan
Upgrade Launch
Here at the MC-Tooling dungeons, after many months of 'Blood Sweat and Tears', we have officially switched over today to the new MC-Tooling software, this follows the completion of changing from our dedicated server to two new servers running on the Raid system. (Hardware RAID protects your important data).
These two high-performance hard drives mirror each other’s data, so if one drive fails it automatically switches to the other drive to stay online.
It's been a major investment for the company, both in time and in money, but we are very confident that you will be very pleased with the results.We still have many more entries that still need adding to the site, so we will be working flat out during the next few weeks to get these on the site a.s.a.p.
The good news is that the number of pages already being indexed by Google has increase by 32% over the old site. The new sitemap software we have also added in the last few days will improve the performance even further!With all the improvement carried out to the site, we will achieve even higher visitor numbers in the coming months as our search engine ranking improves.
We are still really keen to get a lot more technical content for the ENG-TECH-INFO category, so please help us to populate this section!
Regards
Alan
14th September 2008
Making the internet deliver!
We often get comments from member on how we are doing so well with our MC-Tooling site, as their site never really delivered for them.
A typical case in point was the owner of a company I spoke to at the recent TCT exhibition in Coventry. He informed me that he tried the internet but had such a specialist product it was a waste of time putting on. He was so adamant there was no point in arguing with him at the show. He was making the classic mistake that 1000’s of other company make including myself.
I am still amazed how many company websites I visit have the wrong telephone number, address, and missing pages or old news, what is even more disappointing is that over 70% of buyers will not deal with companies who do not have a website, can you imagine what impression these buyers are left with when they land on such a site!
Also you need to stop treating the internet like a telephone book, yes if you type in your name with a bit of luck it will find you, or having your site layout like a company profile. You really need to ensure that you not have a site/software that you cannot easily create & add your own content on.
Having done that, there is loads of really good free information on the internet on SEO (search engine optimization) and free software to help improve your site, but you need to spend some time getting your head around it, before you employ some one to do it for you. Otherwise when people like me visit it I will be thinking: “it really is a good looking site” but about as much use as a chocolate teapot!
My site is designed for a busy engineer to find what he looking in hurry, and failing that ring me, is your telephone number easy to see on every product page, or tucked away at the back of your site?
You have to take control of your site otherwise it’s like employing a new salesman that you lock into an office with a telephone that only allows incoming calls, and then wondering why he not selling anything.
I have, like others employed poor sales staff, but I have at least given them a chance of delivering the goods, and the same goes for marketing on the internet.
Regards Alan !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If You Don't Care About Video, You Should
Online video is consuming the web as we know it whether you like it or not. Some people prefer text content over video in most cases, and that's ok too. I don't think text is going anywhere, but demand for video is on the rise with both consumers, and businesses looking to stay on top of their marketing.
I know many marketing managers wish the whole online thing would just go away. (Like a bad dream!!!!!) Remember when all you had to do was just place an article in a magazine, or place an ad, and their readers filled in the reader enquiry cards? It was so much easier then. Sadly, that source has died so quickly that most magazines don't even embarrass themselves by running reader enquiry cards any more.
At MC-Tooling.com we will add your engineering related video for FOC on the Internet via our MC-Tooling Channel on YouTube!
Why are we doing this?
- As you will be aware from our press releases that B2B Website are ubiquitous amongst business decision makers (97% stated that this is the media most used for work). So by adding videos we can increase our marketing effectiveness.
- Demography shows that 83% of users that visit the MC-Tooling Video Channel ages range between 35~64 with over 60% being between the ages of 44~64 (89% being male) so we are targeting people with real influence/decision makers not kids!
- Simple because it creates high quality back-link from Google for both of us.
- Help us to increase both your site and our own site Google ranking.
- Increases number visitors to both our sites.
Benefits:
- Worldwide reach for nothing!
- Helps you maintain User Brand Awareness when current marketing budgets are being cut-back.
- Make use of those expensive videos that are just gathering dust!
- It also allows you if you wish to embed the video on your own site, or add a link to it!
- Avoids visitors viewing your videos slowing down your own site.
- Make it easy for your customers to view it anywhere they can access the Internet.
- Add valuable links into your new letters.
- Maintenance free, as we will monitor & promote it on your behalf!
Can you add your own videos to YouTube?
- Yes you can, but you will not create the same level of traffic as we can for you.
- How do we know this: some companies having read our news letters have tried going alone and their recorded viewing are around less than 10% of what we have achieved (we recorded 9614 viewing in 1 month)!
- Sadly like most things it’s only hard background work that get you the results on the Internet, how I wish it was as simple as just uploading a few videos on YouTube!
We are running an engineering resources Website, so we will accept any good engineering product or application related video.
All you need to do is to email it to us, or post to the address below, with a covering note giving us your approval for copyright.
Astonlee Partnership Ltd, PO BOX 7438 Derby, DE1 0JG, United Kingdom
Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
Regards
Alan
YouTube Demographics
The demographics of the YouTube members who have been viewing our MC-Video Channel shows that 80% are in the 35~55 age range. Hopefully, this will help you understand why Google spent $1.65 billion buying YouTube! The Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt commented at the time, "This is the next step in the evolution of the Internet". Not being aware of the internet’s power these days can be a very costly mistake, as John McCain recently learnt in the US elections.
Some other good news on the video front is that both YOUTUBE & MC-Tooling have improved their video upload service, so size is no longer the problem we thought it would be.
Now there is no reason to delay sending a copy of your *videos to us rather than leaving them to gather dust!
We are still really keen to get even more technical content for the ENG-TECH-INFO category. Your help with populating this section would be appreciated!
*Please use this address to post your video with a covering letter giving your approval for mctooling.com to use them: Astonlee Partnership Ltd, PO BOX 7438 Derby, DE1 0JG, United Kingdom
Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
MC-Tooling Clients get off to a brilliant flying start!
Here at the MC-Tooling dungeons on the 14th September, we switched over to using the new site/software/servers etc.
You can imagine our delight in discovering that in under two weeks, we are already seeing over a 10-fold increase in the number of pages now being indexed by Google (now 2830 and counting).
Our new site/software has in fact moved us up to being within the top 8% of websites of sites on the internet!It’s been a major investment for the company, both in time and in money, so even though we were confident that you would be very pleased with the results, it’s good to be proved correct.
Some of our advertisers are already reporting back how pleased they are with the number of times their adverts are being viewed. One of our clients had over 400 viewings in less than a week! (The new software only records a viewing if the advert is fully opened by the visitor).
This is our first upgrade since we launched the site last year, and this clearly demonstrates that after many months of 'Blood Sweat and Tears' our decision to upgrade our site has been completely vindicated.
It’s an easy to use format which clearly delivers whether you are an end-user or an advertiser by the 1000s of viewings that we are now recording, and helps us achieve our overall objective of becoming the bench mark in this industry!
We still have many more entries that need adding to the site, so we will be working flat out during the next few weeks to get them included.
We are still really keen to get a lot more technical content for the ENG-TECH-INFO category.
Your help with populating this section will be appreciated!
Regards
Alan
In today's rollercoaster economy, the only way to survive the ride is to cut back and make your assets work harder, and web marketing is one of the best ways of achieving this.
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Review of MC-Tooling site and the way forwards in 2009
Down in the MC-Tooling.com dungeons, the Astonlee team have been celebrating not only Christmas and New Year (and finally eating all the leftover turkey), but the super progress that we have made with the site in 2008. We would like to thank all the companies that have renewed their subscription with us in 2008.
It was a hard decision to upgrade the site so early in its development, but it has proved to be the right move, as we continue to improve our ranking.
We are pleased to report that mctooling.com now has an Alexa rank within the top 3.35% of all websites (Alexa is an Amazon Company). Alexa is a specialist online service that measures traffic for millions of sites on the internet in a similar way to Nielsen television show ratings.
We are also delighted to report that on the 19th December the site had recorded 50,047 viewings of the site listing since the 15th September 2008.
What is even more amazing is that we have now recorded in one month 9,614 viewings of the 10 videos we had placed on the internet on behalf of Advanced Carbide Tooling, SGS Tools, and VSM, (they were not all uploaded and available for the complete month).
As part of our long-term development plan for the site, we are due to implement a major upgrade to improve the functionality of the site software.
Having completed the software upgrade, we will be able to add further new software, to allow us to embed the videos directly into the MC-Video Channel. site listing.
Another key objective for this year is the upgrading of the automatic search engine optimisation software for the listings.
As you will be aware from our press releases that B2B websites are ubiquitous amongst business decision makers (97% stated that this is the media most used for work), but for the small minority that are not so familiar with using the internet, we will also be carrying some advertising of the site in the industry press over the next 12 months
All the above is great, but we really need your proactive participation by regularly revising your content/newsletters, and sending us your videos and if possible providing us with technical information/content for the site visitors.
Regards Alan
MC-Tooling Blog is in the Top 4.57% of all Blogs.
As part of our ongoing site development such as last month's site software upgrade, we also launched the mctooling blog! as part of our long term objective of improving our search engine ranking using www.wordpress.com free blogging service.
We have also registered our blog on technorati which is a popular blog directory service (Technorati is a blog search engine that gets 4.5 million visitors per month).
It measures the popularity of a given blog as compared to all other sites that have been submitted to its system.
Our new blog currently has a Technorati rank which puts it in the top 4.57% of blogs tracked by Technorati.
Blogging makes sense from a marketing perspective. You'll gain leverage in the shift from outbound to inbound marketing and enable interaction with your customers in a totally new way.
This is especially important to us, as we are really trying to develop a unique service for our industry, which is something we care passionately about and need your input!
A blog lets you meet your customers more directly, creating a better understanding of customer needs rather than sending out brochures or an email campaign. It changes your website from a brochure that most people look at once to something that people interact with and come back to.
Hopefully you can spare a few minutes to view our new Mctooling's blog!
Don't forget you are welcome to contact us anytime on +44(0)1332 799 913
Regards
Alan
Our New Video Channel Delivers for Advance Carbide Tooling.
We have also been doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes to promote our new MC-Video Channel. as it’s not as simple as just putting them on YouTube! Great news is that we are already seeing a lot of interest being created by our new video channel (YouTube Link).
The Advanced Carbide Tools (ACT) ‘NINE9 Spot Drill’ was the first video we loaded, and in only a few weeks has been viewed in excess of 360 times.
Denis Houghton of ACT stated, “We like many other companies receive numerous calls from advertisers selling space in magazines or on the internet, but I decided that the MC-tooling offer was different and worthy of our support.
Right from day one MC-Tooling. have done their upmost to work with us to promote our products to a wider market. We had already agreed to renew our annual subscription with them at the MACH Exhibition.
However, since their site upgrade in September we have been amazed by the level of activity that we have received. The new MC-tooling video channel has improved the level of response way beyond what you would expect from any traditional advertising.
We all need to reduce costs at the moment, but we really should as an industry get behind what MC-Tooling are creating for us, as they are really offering a very cost-effective means of not only growing our presence in the UK, but also in the global market place, coupled with a high level of personal service."
Please feel free to ring us on +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
Regards
Alan
LIFTING THE LID OF PURCHASING?
Following requests, Astonlee are resuming business training with a new course called "Lifting the lid of Purchasing"
This course will be delivered with our new presenter 'Noeline Buxton', who is a MCIPS qualified Procurement Professional. Her career has covered working in companies such as: FKI, Brush Electrical Machines, NEI International Combustion, Scomark Engineering, GEC Gas Turbines, Fletcher & Stewart, and Rolls-Royce.
The training is based around a graduate's introduction to purchasing on how buyers are trained to give them the skills' to combat our sales training. The Tools in question originate from the Automotive Industry. The overall objective of the course is to improve the understanding and communication between sales & purchasing.
As an experienced sales professional, the insight I gained from Noeline was a real revelation to me, and I quickly realised how little we really understood about the other side's negotiating skills and tactics. Especially these days, when business is tight, manufacturing cost are rising, and the resultant price increases are becoming ever more a fact of life!
Areas covered in the course are:
Introduction Purchasing Training
Understanding Supplier Conditioning
How Buyers check your pricing breakdowns
How Buyers can work out your PPM (Price per Minute rate) cost
Who are the most dangerous people in your organisation for giving Buyers valuable insider information about your business or your competitors etc.
Enabling you to have an open & frank conversion with such an experienced purchasing professional means this is one course you really cannot afford to miss out on!
Sounds Interesting!
Our course fees start at £350 per person, and we will be starting the training in the new-year (existing MC-Tooling clients will receive 15% discount).
Please feel free to ring us on +44 (0) 1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
Astonlee new MC-Tooling Video Channel Service
Following our ongoing market research we launch a new video channel on YouTube at the end of November 2008 for the MC-Tooling site, and within a month the 10 engineering related videos had received 9,614 recorded viewing, and below is an example of one of the videos from Advanced Carbide Tooling.
Ramping up Mc-Tooling for Caffeine
Google Caffeine was first announced back in August this year. No doubt it's going to be even bigger news when the update goes live in the New Year, and the question is whether this is going to be good news for our sites?
Google is about to inject a new ranking factor into the algorithm - impacting on our site download speed. This new-generation search engine [codename Caffeine] will be replacing the current Google Search Engine which is supposed to be even better in every way. Caffeine will be faster! It will index more pages, be more accurate and will deliver better results. Or at least that's what we are told from Google.
You can learn more on this subject from Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) from this news video.
To stay ahead of the game, we have started making changes to the www.mctooling.com site. If you visit www.mctooling.com home page on site you will see that some of the images have been removed from the home page, although we still have some work to do! If you also click on one Eng-Toolstore subcategories like Workholding Equipment you will no longer see the icons displayed alongside the category headings, this was slowing down the speed of site.
On the upside we have added/displayed a brief description of each advert pulled from the text, and we have already received some positive feedback from visitors, which make me wonder why we had never done it before now!
Video is no longer just for consumer entertainment on website like YouTube, but as a business-to-business marketing tool. Given a choice to watch or read most people would prefer to watch.
Using video in your marketing efforts is about delivering your message in a format that you're target audience is readily willing to it take on board, hence why over a year ago we took the decision to add video via Youtube into the www.mctooling.com listing, with our first few videos being added on the site in November last year.
Since the launch of this video marketing feature on our MC-Video channel, we have recorded them being played over 66,000 times. There is also very noticeable improvement in the number of recorded viewing of adverts which contain videos on the site.
Following our lead companies like: Dormer, Hardinge, Kennametal, Kitagawa, OSG, SGS, just to name few, have also gone on to create their own video channels, and as industry traditional printed media usage declines, they too are being force into upgrading their online actively to compete with sites such as our own!
A few years ago, creating a marketing video for your business was time-consuming and expensive. You might spend thousands of pounds for a video, but these days don't be fool into thinking you need to do the same!
The influents of site like YouTube. Thanks to affordable, easy-to-use video technology, wide adoption of broadband internet that allows for streaming video, and an acceptance of-some would say a preference for-more "homespun" video productions, video is a widely popular tool for B2B marketing, as people feel they are more trustworthy source of information, than traditional advertising methods.
As a way of example, this introduction video was created for visitors to the site to help us reinforce our message, and you could do the same!
Remember if you would us to add your video onto our channel, all you need to do is to email it to use, or post to the address below, with a covering note giving us your approval for copyright.
Astonlee Partnership Ltd, PO BOX 7438 Derby, DE1 0JG, United Kingdom
Please feel free to ring us on: +44(0)1332 799913 if you would like to talk to us about using any of our services.
