"To unleash a business, you need not stop"

Each subject area has its own experts. Specialists who understand it better than others, whose authority is not questioned, and opinions expressed are quoted and discussed by all interested communities. Igor Ashmanov is a prominent figure in Runet, a recognized expert in the field of search engine optimization. At a lecture for students of the specialization “Management in the field of Internet technologies”, he spoke about the difficulties that arise when starting a business from scratch, as well as the current state of the optimization market, its development prospects, his vision of the Internet marketing market and search engines.

Mr. Ashmanov began the lecture with a description of the general issues of creating and promoting commercial projects, referring to the example of Ashmanov and Partners .

“If you start developing your project, you will go through all the required stages of development,” he promised. “There will definitely be a whole series of problems and failures that you will have to face.” Any novice driver immediately punches the wheel, discharges the battery, “bites” the alarm, the doors with the key slam inside, even if he bought a brand new reliable car. Not to mention the standard chain of minor accidents and adventures with traffic police. Business is the same.
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The basic principle you need to know when starting your business is the flywheel principle, described in Jim Collins’s excellent book From Good to Great. Business is a very large mass flywheel, which you need to promote. To do this, you need to push, push and push for many years, in no way stopping. Then the flywheel will accumulate large kinetic energy, and already you will begin to receive dividends from it, to connect all sorts of dynamos, mills and so on. Even if you just stand on the market for 10 years without ruining, without spoiling your reputation, you will become well-known and will grow much.

For example, in 1999-2001 I worked at the Rambler, investors started the flywheel, launched in 1996 by the creator of the Rambler Dima Kryukov, every six months to remove from the axis, to push the other way, and so on. And then this tradition continued. As a result, by 2008 he didn’t get close to the move he could. And Yandex pushed its flywheel, not interrupting for a day, and only in one direction. Here he is the leader.

In general, a normal business is growing exponentially, by 50-100 percent per year. Naturally, one of the problems is growth itself. If you grow 100 percent a year, then problems will increase accordingly and double in a year, in five years - 30 times, in 10 - in 1000. More people, more tasks, more management layers, more money, more attention from tax authorities, more competition with competitors, and so on. Problems will only multiply and increase. But the flywheel of the project can not be stopped.

In 2001, I left Rambler and started my flywheel, the Ashmanov & Partners company, from scratch. My partners and I have been promoting this flywheel so far, and we see the same exponent - an increase of 100 percent per year. I originally registered the company for myself, as well as the domain. To the people who worked with me at the Rambler, I said: “Guys, I start my company. If someone comes to me and lasts one year in the saddle, I will take it to share. ” The four key employees lasted, and I gave them a share in the company.

The company bears my name - this is also the right marketing move. Almost all successful consulting and legal companies are named after the owners. This gives the business a personal character and creates more confidence. In addition, there is a double effect of promotion - everything that you do, raises your company, everything that your company does - raises you. It turns out a kind of ladder to success.

"Named" company automatically makes you a brand. This is a purely mechanical process. When we first started the business and instead of the office I used the one-room apartment I got from my grandmother, I often answered calls myself. And sometimes the caller almost fainted when he found out that “Ashmanov himself” was talking to him. Fortunately, I do not have delusions of grandeur, I understand that this just works, and not me so great.

If you need to sell consulting, services, professional services - call the company your name. Unlike insignificant technical roots and long names, surnames are always remembered.

We currently employ about 120 people, 40 of whom are directly in the office. Among them, 5 account-managers, 3-4 people are engaged in sales. We started to do our own advertising quite recently. We did not even promote our website. Clients were self-propelled - due to our expert positioning and word of mouth recommendations. I repeat that in this case I consider myself an unimportant businessman, rather, an entrepreneur. But you have to push the flywheel, this is not going anywhere. ”

The company "Ashmanov and Partners" is now one of the recognized experts in the field of search marketing. Mr. Ashmanov explained how this was achieved.

“Personally, I’m not a very businessman, I don’t have a commercial vein. No commercial wits, as well as the ability to gently pull the blanket over himself, while remaining within the bounds of decency. And in general, initially our entire company was assembled from developers and programmers. When it was created, the entire top and middle management of the Rambler came to us. Why Rambler fired them - still do not understand. These were all essentially developers. That is, we did not have people with pronounced commercial talents. We did not feel the craving for classic marketing and advertising. And we decided to act as we would like. As a result, we started a kind of "scientific marketing." We decided to become the main experts in the market and began to act in this direction.

We wrote the first glossary on promotion and optimization, made the first in Russia reports on optimization and website promotion, held the first conference dedicated to search engine optimization. There were a lot of people at once, 300 people. We took, it seems, 8,000 rubles from them. We did not earn at that event at that time (it worked in an easy minus), but declared ourselves as the number one expert on the market. Now the conference was held for the seventh time, there were 800 people at it, the participation cost 25,000 rubles and another 1,500 visitors were at the free exhibition. All our main competitors stand on it, they have stands there, etc.

We began to create content intensively - we wrote articles, gave reports, started publishing a newsletter (now there are 90000 subscribers) and strengthened our position of experts even more. We started conducting training workshops.

There are many opportunities to promote yourself as the main expert. For example, we wrote a book on optimization, which took a fairly high place in the ratings. We wrote this book together with 12 professional optimizers. When we collected all the material, I read it and was horrified - the authors were excellent experts, but, as Andrei Platonov wrote, “they have power in their words, they only put them wrong”. I had to spend two months and rewrite all the chapters, and part of the return to the authors on the mess and then rewrite. The book has become a business bestseller, and this is another noticeable sign for everyone that we are the main experts on the market.

We began to publish the magazine "Practice of Internet Marketing", where we publish all competitors. We have created the Club of optimizers in order to build up from the optimizing hooligan small things, and so on.

In addition, we began to develop technology. We have developed an anti-spam filter "Spamtest" (which we later sold to Kaspersky Labs). In support of Spamtest, we also wrote many articles, created a weekly newsletter, and organized an annual conference to combat spam.

Here is a good example of what is the position of the main expert. At the first anti-spam conference, among many reports was a report from our main competitor. However, with the transfer of the text of the report, the technical director of the competitor took a long time to pull him in about a month and a half, until I asked him about the reason for the delay directly. In response, he said that the report was ready, but I obviously did not like it, and they do not know what to do with it. I asked to give me the text in any case. There, as I expected, was hitting our company. In one of the chapters, they harshly criticized the main technology that was used in Spamtest. What should be the correct reaction of the conference organizer? Correct - to include the report as it is in the collection. Because it is the best demonstration of the strength of your position as the main expert in the market. We give a voice to everyone, because we are above the market. This is what distinguishes “scientific marketing” - they criticize us, and we only get stronger from it.

Well, of course, there is a secret - you really need to be an expert, otherwise all these methods will not help. ”

Mr. Ashmanov spoke quite figuratively about the functions of experts in relation to those who need their help.

“Imagine that you are invited to a wedding where 100 people have already gathered. Even if you know the bridegroom, the bride, one of the guests, in the first hour or two you get the effect of myopia - you can not select individual faces in the crowd, everything will merge. Later, after ideas, toasts, conversations, and exits to the smoking room, separate spots of sharpness are formed. The same situation is observed in any new domain for you.

In general, a person understands a subject area, if he distinguishes small details in it. For example, the designer distinguishes between many shades of colors, a PR person knows specific people in the media, and so on. That is, the question of ownership of the subject - the question of sharpness, resolution of your vision of this subject.

And when a novice comes to the Internet, everything is dull and smeared for him - banners, media, optimization, context, blogs. He does not know the differences, conditions and methods of use, does not understand the basic terms and concepts, does not know the players, the risks.

The expert’s primary task is to focus on sharpness. We do this for our customers, and they are very grateful for that. They always remember the one who explained to them, who helped bring sharpness. Everything that we do, for example, our book, is directed not at experts, not at the community of optimizers, but at those who have not yet figured out the subject area.

The same story with PR and media promotion. In general, journalists are always in a desperate situation - every day they need to write about a new subject area or a new segment in an already known area. That is, they constantly experience this effect of myopia. Market players do not explain anything to them, but try to impose their point of view, to promote themselves, in general, they try to manipulate instead of focusing. I personally try to answer the questions of journalists so that the questioner understands (at least half an hour, while he remembers and writes) the essence of the problem. I often talk with a “not for print” remark to simply explain the state of affairs in this area. And journalists start calling very often, because they have few such experts, and they value them.

This is how expert positioning works - you are not trying to promote yourself, to promote yourself, but simply to explain what you know. And the journalist does not have to push through the PR to the essence of the issue. As a result, each journalist gains a recruitment of experts whom he values ​​and which he addresses as anchors in the subject area.

One of the important components of the activity of optimizers is reports. Many optimizers say: “Here Ashmanovs write terabyte reports, this is all window dressing. You just have to successfully promote the site, and the client simply needs to know his position in the issue. ” But the client also wants to see how and why it all works. The client wants to understand the reasons for promotion, to have confidence that everything is done correctly, that positions are stable, etc. Often our client is an Internet marketing director, webmaster, head of the Internet department. He needs to protect the costs of Internet marketing in front of his superiors, he needs to prove that there are results. And how to do it if there is no material?

Why have a short-sighted person in the subject of a counterpart who communicates with his similar short-sighted boss? In the end, it will bother them and they will buy billboards for all the money. Therefore, we explain, therefore, we write large detailed reports.

Most optimizers believe that it is not necessary to explain anything, that they are cutting their own business, because the client learns how to do everything himself. I think it’s impossible to be afraid to explain in such a business where you are an expert. In no case can one be greedy in knowledge.

Well, in general, to teach the client correctly and useful. For example, once my classmate came to me, who was a very uncomfortable client - not only did he not like anything, he also called me personally, through the head of the manager, constantly and on all issues. As a result, we trained his own optimizer; now we let him into conferences and seminars. He does not pay us, but sends us new clients. ”

Mr. Ashmanov also told about his vision of the optimization market.

“At the RIF-2007 conference I made a report at which I said that optimization is in many ways a gypsy business. It is built on a shaky ground. There is always one unknown thing - a search engine. And if the company does not have a powerful analytical department, there are no working capital for insuring technological risks, it will be difficult to stay afloat after changing the search algorithm. I gave a prediction that search engines will finally take on the fight against the most out-of-date optimizers, and those will start having problems. After that, there was a big uproar in the optimizing environment - on the Searchengines.ru forum and in blogs, that I’m in vain scaring that everything will be fine, that they have long surpassed Yandex and explained that it is not going anywhere.

But lately, Yandex has changed several search algorithms and the situation has worsened for small optimizers. Since spring 2008, many of them have been ruined - they simply lacked analytical resources and working capital. Then the process will continue - small ones will go bankrupt, large ones will strengthen their positions in the market.

The trend towards integrated marketing is also continuing, consisting in the fact that all large optimizing companies will sooner or later turn to Internet marketing on the Internet in general, including contextual and display advertising. ”

Of course, the optimizer can not but be interested in the situation with search engines. Igor Ashmanov also touched this topic.

“Our Kazan employee, Andrey Ivanov, came up with a search engine analyzer that allows you to evaluate how well search engines look for according to different types of queries. We released its first version in the summer of 2007 and are constantly developing. With this analyzer, we saw that a year and a half ago, Yandex was worse than Google in search quality. Then they made a breakthrough, and now in RuNet, Yandex is looking better than Google. Although, of course, Google is looking quite well. It seems that if Google is a common product all over the world, in Russia it is mainly a product for innovators. I have the impression that Google does not yet know exactly how to reach the mainstream Russian user. It seems that Yandex will continue to be the main market for optimizers in the coming years.

In Russian Google I was asked more than once what needs to be fixed in technology in order to become the first. They are a technology company and they have taken the view that the technology itself will allow them to be the first. Then, when Yandex was worse than them, I said: “by technology, you are the best in Russia, but you have a bad marketing, you have a place in the market, you need to buy it”. Now they have no obvious technological superiority, but then they began to gradually engage in marketing. Only while these attempts do not have a noticeable effect. Yandex recovered after a growing pain and does everything right.

Optimization business will exist for a long time, but it will change. The market of paid links will be strangled someday, so the traffic will be in the direction of improving content, selling targeted traffic. Online marketing will move towards comprehensive services, while Yandex will remain the main target for optimizers.

Contextual advertising will develop in the direction of taking into account the socio-demographic properties of users. Now Herman Klimenko, the owner of the best Russian counter LiveInternet, is preparing a revolutionary product in this area. In addition, aggregators, “single-window services” will be developed: a single interface that distributes the advertising budget across various channels.

Due to the crisis, the growth of the Internet marketing market will slow down, but not completely stop. Growth will continue anyway. Advertising budgets will shrink, but since Internet advertising accounts for only 5-10 percent of total advertising budgets, some of the advertising will simply spill over to the Internet, since advertising in it is more transparent, predictable and effective. ”