Mark Tull

Managing Director of Website Essentials TM and Clicks and Clicks Mark Tull

My name is Mark Tull and most call me Tully. I was one of the two Founding Directors of An Authorised Google Adwords Reseller ( Hot Goanna TM), one of the largest Google Qualified Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Specialists in Australia. Since February 2005, we built and lead a team of professionally trained online marketing experts who, still today, show millions advertisements per week on Google search. This company rocketed from a start up to receiving the much coverted Authorised Google Adwords Reseller contract from Google Australia in 2007. I believe that  I have successfully demonstrated that whatever a company has to offer the market – whether homing pigeons, mobile dog washing, resorts, luxury fishing trips or undertakers – web exposure, conversions and sales increase dramatically through a well planned and managed online internet strategy works, but only as good as the company and product of course.. Statistics such as organisations achieving over 13,000 per cent return on their advertising spend (beauticians) and generating one million in quotations in five days (builders) are what makes these results a standout.  However, there are always failures, not many, but they are there.

Some say I was as an online marketing enthusiast and pioneer, some say that I have helped change the way Australian businesses utilise online vehicles to generate increased market penetration. I was lucky to be one of the drivers behind the pay search industry’s massive growth in the last 10 years in Australia, in a small way of course. Today I am still  a Yahoo Search Marketing ‘Ambassador’, a Google ‘Advocate’ and a Qualified Google Adwords Professional (even though these badges have changed, I refer back to them historically when I earned them – for example there was only 13 GAP individuals listed in Australia at the time).

I was an early adopter of web design and was building websites for businesses as early as 1993 and remember fondly wondering what internet explorer was with the windows 95 disk install.  I try to be a regular spokesperson at industry events and forums, as I am a compulsive &  passionate blogger. I have  written articles and papers covering such topics as The Truth about Australian Internet Advertising, SEO/SEM which comes first – Current Statistics, Hits, Links and Banners, Online Hits – Are Conversions Everything?.

I wrote the constitution and set up the Adword Association, an industry body for Google Adwords Professionals in Australia, but it was before its time, when Google wouldn’t train people.  Now they are (to their credit).

Whilst this was happening I stood for State Government as an independent in the seat of Southport in Queensland in 2007 and ran a magnificent 10 day campaign (fully self funded) and achieved 4.97% of the vote at the biggest booth in the Electorate, just to ensure that the local issues got some traction for the residents.

After selling Hot Goanna to TPP Internet as part of a buy out by Net Registry (who now own the tradmark and company) I went to work with  THE SEO expert in Australia.  Following my time there  I came up with the idea that people had not been building websites well.  There is too much void between website designers and website marketers.   Each Blame The Other…  So, website essentials was born.

I went on a course to talk to everyone that had worked with me in the past and told them Mark Tull’s mad idea.  Chenoa, Melanie, Ross, Adam, all came on board and then we found and plugged in people like Rod, Peter, Akshat, Amit and a few others to build up the team at Website Essentials. My plan was to make Mark Tull redundant with great people around me, but, I only got busier building the business over 4 years. Then, I came to the decision that I didn’t want the business to continue to grow, and luckily caught this at about the same time that Google changed the rules in May of 2013.  We now have  a happy small business, we all work from home and central office is at my house.  I love it and without the sales focus, you get a lot more time to work on clients accounts and performance.

We have big clients and little ones, with some in between and we treat them all the same.  We try out best, and I am pleased that some clients have been with us for many, many years.  Some, however, we can’t help, but they are few….

Internet Marketing is a very broad church.  It starts with domain name and hosting,  which are the initial pillars of a good account.  Then it comes down to website choice and lead generation, the engagement with Google and Bing and the ability to grow the site over time.  Most importantly, it also depends on your brand and prices, ie. how much bang you have in the market for your product and services and also how much market there is for your product and services.  You can always grow your market share based on price and performance, but it is very difficult to actually grow search volumes for a product.  Binding this all together with your above the line or traditional marketing is vital as one really supports the other.  Then there is the new phenomenon these days of the internet, reputation management.

View My Linked in profile here…  https://www.linkedin.com/in/marktull1/