Me and my business partner got into the automotive marketing world, because we are pure petrolheads. We love cars, engines and tire smoke, and we don’t know much about how cars work, so we decided we needed to contribute to the scene in some way!
We both came from an automotive background as we both loved anything with an engine and got motorbikes as soon as we were old enough, which then moved swiftly onto cars as we were sick of getting wet!
We both got small cheap first cars, and we started modifying them straight away. Dave had a fiesta with a Peco big bore exhaust, and i had a nissan micra with more speakers in than you could shake a stick at!
Soon enough we got the BUG and ditched those cars in favour of some shiny un-modified VW’s, and the MAXXD process began!
Daves awesome polo, and you cant deny it DOES look awesome!
Sadly, we have both moved on from this, but are still big fans and loyal members of the modified car world, and we will continue to provide automotive marketing and automotive design services to the scene until we are old and grey
Me & Olly recently entered the Mansfield 2020 Business Innovation Awards and had a short interview for a video that is being played at the Awards Ceremony.
This award is for Innovation and has been entered under Dijitul Media as its all about the Gourmet Ingredient website
Since the launch of the magazine last year we have been trying to get the backing of a Road Safety organisation or drug/drink driving campaigns. The magazine goes out to young drivers aged 18 - 25 so is the perfect audience for such campaigns.
Today LARSOA have kindly put some editorial on their website to help attract Road Safety Organisations, so hopefully we shall hear something over the next week.
Well, what can I say, the show seasons come round yet again and we have a fantastic line of shows coming up over the next few months.
The car club attended the Fast Show a few weeks ago at Santa Pod, despite it being cold the turnout was brilliant. Donny Show is in a couple of weeks and is looking good. Rumour has it that Live Events have requested more space for clubs as its been packed out. We have a large stand with about 25 cars on show. This time last year we had the very first edition of the Maxxd magazine being printed, and all of us were running around like headless chickens.
The past fortnight has been crazy, I have done nothing but make phone calls and spread the word about the magazine and directory across networking sites such as myspace and facebook. MySpace is a good site for networking with car owners and clubs as many use it for their cars unlike facebook thats used more for the actual person.
Olly has recently updated a few of our websites and also built a new one for the car owners that love to upload and watch videos online. Maxxd.TV was launched a few days ago and we are now in the process of marketing the site and getting users onboard. Similar to youTube but purely for car related videos we are hoping this will become a success and eventually attract people from all over the world. We will be hosting other peoples videos as well as shooting at some of the popular car shows up and down the UK getting footage for the site.
Maxxd.co.uk - the main website for Maxxd Marketing Solutions has also been redesigned and expanded to expose our services in a better light. This is one of many designs but one of the best and we are now sticking with this site until further notice as it does more than serve its purpose.
Looking back on the past twelves months is not only time consuming but overwhelming.
Remembering that first day we took an office on and left full time employment and dived in head first, for many months we juggled with our options and almost left the idea alone. We have now been up and running as Maxxd Marketing Solutions for over eighteen months and things have literally gone mad.
The online advertising has become a great success, the MaxxDirectory has had many changes and improvements but is now well and truly finished. We are still working very hard on the marketing side of it and spend most of the week selling advertising on here. For more information please visit http://www.maxxdirectory.co.uk
Last year we launched a new magazine which was aimed at young car enthusiasts, the Pilot edition was launched at Donny Show in April 2007 and Edition one was released at Modified Nationals in May 2007. Below is the front cover of Edition One…
Both magazines proved to be a success, the only downfall we had is that we charged people £1.00 for it so it was harder to get the copies out there. After careful thought and a bit of a revamp we are now working on the next issue and will be distributing them FREE of charge at Modified Nationals show in May.
We are currently in talks with national companies about them sponsoring and advertising in the next issue and all seems to be going well, people like the idea behind the magazine and seem to have more faith than last year. New things are always hard to get backing on, certainly when we are such a small company but we have proven that we do what we say and get the magazines out there into the crowds.
In regards to other lines of work we have made a massive impact on a client’ s busineess
After five months of carrying out search engine work for one of our clients they have risen from page eight of google to the top of page one and will remain there. They have noticed an increase on their sales from the website and are looking forward to expanding the site and working with us on other projects in the future. We are now in talks with other companies regarding search engine marketing and are hoping by the end of the year to have a few more clients onboard.
Firstly we would like to wish all our clients and all our readers a happy new year and hope that you all had a good christmas break, however long or short it was.
The past year has gone so fast for us, it’s mad to think that we have been trading over a year now and are still going strong. The past few months have been totally crazy and we have seen ourselves move from one area to another in regards to work.
You may remember us talking about the wallplanner for 2008. We spent November and December working on this and had it printed over christmas. It was supposed to go to print a bit earlier but due to an advertiser pulling out the very last minute we had to find a replacement. It was a great project to work on as it really tested the team work between the two of us and was the most enjoyable yet. It was a new thing for us but after spending two solid months on selling the space, designing and getting all the booking forms back and then seeing it in the flesh was amazing.
It looks fantastic and I’m sure the advertisers and people who receive one will think exactly the same. We will definately be doing another one for 2009 but hopefully on a larger scale.
The christmas break gave us time to sit back and think about what we intend to do for 2008 and evaluate what we have done over the past year. We both know what we have done right and what we have done wrong, and we are both as confident as ever now as we continue to expand the business. We both have our own areas to concentrate on and know what our main priorities are. We have experienced so much in such a small space of time and learnt a hell of a lot and intend to learn a lot more this year.
This year we are continuing to promote the MaxxDirectory and carry out marketing and design work for companies that are selling modified/performance car parts and general accessories. We have proven to our clients that the systems we have put in place do work and can only continue to drive more and more business through their door.
We have finally cracked search engine optimisation which is an area that we are very keen to work in. Not only have we got several clients high up on google and yahoo but have got our own sites onto page one. This year we intend to get even higher, increasing results for various keywords and also increasing the google page rank of ours and client’s sites.
The modified and performance car show season will seen be upon us and we intend to hit things very hard this year. 2008 is the year that we make a massive impact on the retailers and car enthusiasts out there.
Since starting the sister company dijitul media, we have started putting a divide in between the things that we do as a company, putting everything non-car related under dijitul, and everything that is related to the automotive world, under the Maxxd banner.
Since the last blog update, we have started many new exciting websites and it is sometimes hard to keep up with them all ourselves!
We have really started moving forward with the business now, and have ironed out any imperfections in the day-to-day running that we have had over this last year.
We have previously mentioned traffic ranks, and now thanks to the people that use it, and the way in which it is constructed, our first and oldest website - Maxxd.com - has broken into the top 100,000 websites in the entire world according to alexa! It was such a proud moment for us, as it has been 7 years in the making, and is in a way part of the core of the automotive wing to our business.
The MaxxDirectory is probably less than half as old as Maxxd.com, but is catching it up fast! It doesn’t make that much difference to the site or anything, its pretty much just a milestone that we have reached!
Our sister company that deal with the web design and the web hosting is doing well too, our website is crawling up the listings in the search engines and is starting to become a risk to all those people in our local area who do similar things. Watch out
We haven’t forgot about the blog, its been two months since the last entry and boy has it gone fast. From the last entry we promised a big blog post soon, two months later here we are. I could write the biggest post known to man with whats being going on here, its crazy.
I shall start with the traffic ranks that we mentioned last time, just to refresh the brain, the MaxxDirectory one which is the most important one has gone from 367,112 to an amazing 245,223. There are more links in to the site now and its still going strong. The layout of the site has changed as we decided to split the categories down and make the site that little bit more useful for the users. This has done wonders and has also helped massively with the search engine spiders, they love the site.
We have been analysing the traffic for the MaxxDirectory alot more closely over these past two months, finding out more indepth information about where the traffic is coming from and what the best referrals are. There are so many different search terms that brings up the site yet so many more to put in place. We will continue to expand this site and promote it across as many car related sites as possible until we reach our goal.
The aim for the MaxxDirectory is to get within the top 100,000 ranked sites according to Alexa and get to a google page rank of 5. At the moment we are on 245,223 and a google rank of 3, so theres still a long way to go.
More recently we have been working on a 2008 Wallplanner for the modified and performance car scene, the initial idea was to give people a calendar for next years show season and have all the major event dates advertised. After careful planning and contacting companies on our database we have sold a total of fourteen adverts that will be placed around the outside of the calender, all at 80mm x 80mm.
The wallplanner is almost finished, we are just awaiting artwork from two clients then all can be put to bed and go to print, ready for distribution in November/December. It has been an excellent little project to work on and has really shown the both of us how strong a team we are. Out of all the things we have done this year its been the most testing and most involved in regards to both our efforts.
We also have quite a few new directory clients as well as a couple of new ones for web design and search engine optimisation. After two months of working on a particular project we have managed to get one client from page seven to the top of page four, we aim to hit page one by December or early January.
There are alot of projects in the pipeline at the moment, we have now set up another company called dijitul media. The aim with dijitul is to provide non car related companies with a range of marketing and design services as well as do work for MMS. This is on a totally seperate domain and is nothing to do with Maxxd as we are trying to keep the automotive things totally seperate.
The MaxxDirectory is doing well. Following a few more changes and introducing better sales and marketing techniques it seems to be heading in the right direction. We have spent many hours getting the site perfect ensuring that its content is spot on.
Over the past few months we have seen the site increase in hits and page views. Our alexa traffic rank as it stands today is 367,112, which is an increase of 600% over the past three months. Maxxd.com (the main modified car site) is now at an amazing 165,133.
Check back soon for more news. Just keeping it short and sweet for now. Time for a big blog post soon, so much has happened and there’s other projects in the pipeline.
The MaxxDirectory is continuing to climb the ranks. All seems well.
Over the past five weeks we have seen our rank, according to Alexa increase as follows:
1646185
1546185
1449304
1403771
1403675
and then today it has increased again, which was the biggest rise we have ever seen and is now reading 965,030 !
The page views have gone up 42.9% in one week, the reach over the past three months has risen by 167%. There’s no doubt that if we carry on the way we are it will soon be in the top 100,000, thats our aim anyway, then we have to crack the top 10,000. I know for sure that our efforts will not stop until this site is the biggest and ONLY site that people use to find parts for their modified car.
After looking at the competition which is out there, we can see that overall, our site is being used alot more and is being marketed in exactly the right places. We are not only getting traffic from the heart of the car clubs but also, google and yahoo searches.
As we continue to advertise the directory, the page rank and amount of traffic can only get bigger and better.
More guides have been added, one of which is now supported by Craigsplates.com
We now have the search engine friendly URL’s working, which again will be great for the site and search engines. For example:
Over the next few weeks we are expecting even more traffic and a much higher page rank, a few things have been done over the past few days that should hopefully have a big impact on the whole site. Fingers crossed.
Last but not least we now have a more informative and useful “submit your company” page which helps potential advertisers understand what the sites about.
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