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101 b2b marketing and sales tips from the b2b lead - 101 lời khuyên marketing online và bán hàng online cho doanh nghiệp B2B
101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead VOLUME ONE Online Marketing Driving Leads to your website through paid search advertising, search engine optimization, blogging and more PRESENTED BY 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY 30 Online Marketing Tips for Driving Lead Generation Today, online marketing is vital to any integrated marketing program With so many new avenues for reaching prospective buyers, we as B2B Marketers have to think outside of the box to stand out in the crowd From significant improvements in marketing program metrics to greater efficiencies in your sales funnel, employing new online marketing tactics can create immediate benefits, if done right In this collection of 30 online marketing tips from The B2B Lead, you will find information on the basics of SEO, optimizing your video for the web, boosting your blog using twitter, how to measure your online successes and much more Here’s a few of the included tips in this eBook: • Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads • Boost Your Google Juice with Link Bait • Invest in the Right Tools to Track the Metrics That Matter • Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start Plan • Practice Metrics-Based Copywriting • Twitter to Attract Readers to Your Blog If you like what your see here, be sure to check out http://www.theb2blead.com for more B2B Marketing and Sales tips Content contributed by: Scott Daughtry, SEO Specialist Kyle Flaherty of www.engageinpr.com Amy Hawthorne, Director of Marketing at ReachForce Pam O’Neal Mickelson, VP of Marketing at BreakingPoint Leigh Anne Wallace, Marketing Coordinator at ReachForce VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Table of Contents Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search Advertising Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start Plan Boost Your Google Juice with Link Bait 2008 is the Year of Digital Omnipresence Optimize Your Video for SEO Results Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist: Step - Start with SEM (ala Google Adwords)? Practice Metrics-Based Copywriting Sprout Widgets, Mashups and Other Great Content That Drives SEO Blogging 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Blog Basics Page Titles are Important Keep Your Blog on Track to Support SEO and Other Business Objectives Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Corporate Blog Want Bloggers to Write About You? Make Sure Your Website is Blogger-Friendly Twitter to Attract Readers to Your Blog Blogging to the Beat Everything I Know About B2B Blogging I Learned from Perez Re-think Blog ROI Social Media 17 18 19 20 21 When it Comes to Social Media: Play By the Rules A Case Study in Viral Video Marketing - The B2B Lead Vidcast Put These 20 Ideas into Action for B2B Viral Marketing Success Building a Following on Twitter Learn From the Cs of Social Influence Marketing Other 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads TagClouding Your Leads Web Analytics for B2B Marketers Make Some Imaginary Friends AKA a Persona When Investing in New Media Programs Track the Metrics That Matter Invest in the Right Tools to Track the Metrics That Matter Creating Forms for Content - How Much is too Much? 10 Signs You Picked the Wrong Web Design Agency Keyword Optimization for Press Releases VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start Plan Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides quick tips for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and six-step plan for getting started You might call me a fast-follower when it comes to Search Engine Optimization I resisted for some time because the prospect of researching and sorting through hundreds of keywords and applying techniques to outwit Google’s ever-changing algorithms seemed so daunting I can barely spell algorithm, after all Then a slew of industry surveys showed that anywhere from 80 to 90 percent or more of B2B tech buyers start their research and buying process on Google Well, that was a wake-up call So, last year I made SEO a higher priority I shifted the funds from online advertising into SEM and a ReachForce role-based database build (That way, I could cover both my Inbound and Outbound bases.) I also maintained my investments in PR and some key sponsorships to cover the brand awareness and drive Inbound traffic Then, I pulled resources and funds that had been spent trying to keep up with endless campaign design and development, and re-focused them on social media and SEO It’s truly amazing how quickly you can get results like Page Google rankings when you focus resources on boosting a particular page ranking Here are a few tips to help you the same: • • • • • • Invest in the right tools: There are literally dozens of free and low-cost SEO tools that you can use to get a lay of the land and assess your best SEO prospects Of course, Google provides several like Google Suggest and Google Trends Another one of my favorites is WordTracker And, a new tool I am using right now is HubSpot HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe makes a great case for SEO in the HubSpot Inbound Marketing blog More about that another time Don’t just go for the highly competitive popular terms Consider niche or long tail keywords terms There are dozens of keywords with significant search traffic that have little competition Optimize for all of them and the numbers add up Integrate your PR and SEO efforts to ensure inbound links from press releases support your strategy Make sure your “anchor text” on in-bound links is optimized to provide the greatest SEO value Optimize with a conversion strategy in mind Leverage your “educational” assets for landing pages and social media sites like hubpages.com, scribd.com, flickr.com and others Here’s a quick plan for getting started: • • • • • Information Gathering Session: Just like data cleansing, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to SEO Pull together a team to discuss and prioritize objectives and scope your initial project Research: Review your marketing objectives, competition, and your web site and blog to get a lay of the land and identify low-hanging fruit Produce a plan and guidelines for optimizing your top five web or blog pages This should include recommendations for URLs, internal link building, meta tags, page content updates, blog cross-linking and a conversion strategy for each of those pages Then begin to build your inbound links to those pages by leveraging other sites, partners, blogs, social media sites, portals, and other high-value (not spam) paid link directories like Yahoo Review and Revamp: After the pages have had sufficient time for Google Indexing review the project and results, and adjust the components of the program if necessary I realize this post presents a fairly simplistic view of SEO It is, in reality, a very complex and overwhelming discipline But this is a quick plan for hopping on the moving train You will, of course, learn more through trial and error and there are numerous online tutorials that will help you hone your skills VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Boost Your Google Juice with Link Bait Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a list of different types of link bait and key considerations for making sure the link bait is effective Encouraging inbound links to your website is a sure-fire way to improve your SEO performance, in other words, to boost your Google juice One of the best ways to build those highvalue inbound links is to produce “link bait” by delivering valuable content that encourages others to link to you Nick Wilson, a contributing writer for Search Engine Land, recently wrote about the various forms of link bait that web marketers use to drive inbound links to their web site content Here’s a summary of the three types of link bait according to Wilson: • • • Textual Linkbait: … any kind of page content that takes no more technical skill than being able to type This kind of link bait is very accessible as the only real cost is time With good imagination and research, you can quickly devise a series of posts designed to attract links Site Based Tools & Software: … functional scripts that run on a website These vary widely in nature depending on the site A good example in the search marketing world is the NetQoS network latency calculator Widgetbait: The holy grail of link baiting in 2007 will be the widget In late 2005 and early 2006, I came up with a linkbaiting concept to put my previous company, Performancing, on the social media map That idea was the Performancing Blog Editor Firefox extension that has achieved nearly half a million downloads on Mozilla alone I would also add to this: visual or graphics link bait Bloggers and journalists love visuals and diagrams that help communicate a point A popular example of this is the Social Media fatigue visual Andrew Shuttleworth created using Mind Manager flow charting software Here are a few tips on making sure your link bait is effective: Make it relevant and useful to your target audience to drive the right types of links and web traffic Make sure it supports your brand Don’t require registration to use it, but embed offers for more (this requires a conversion strategy) While link baiting can be controversial, it seems to me that it has resulted in so many new free tools available to users How can that be a bad thing? VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY 2008 is the Year of Digital Omnipresence Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains ideas for helping B2B marketers secure multiple page one listings on Google and Yahoo More tidbits from SMX West have been posted to Web Pro News by Jason Lee Miller Apparently, digital omnipresence was the hot topic at the event According to Miller, “the discussion surrounding search is no longer just about securing your place in a same-for-everybody top-ten list of search results The discussion is about being everywhere; it’s about establishing a case for digital omnipresence.” Now, I wasn’t there (unfortunately), so I don’t know the full story on digital omnipresence, but it sounds very similar to the concepts promoted by the folks at StomperNet As a B2B Marketer and a follower of StomperNet strategies, I have experienced the results first hand and am hooked Today, it’s not enough to have one listing on page one of Google I’m driven to secure multiple page one listings And that is made far easier by posting valuable, actionable content in a multitude of formats – web pages, blog posts, video, podcast, etc When you look at the research on B2B tech buyer behavior, it’s easy to see why Research from numerous sources, including Marketing Sherpa, indicate between 85 to 98% of B2B technical buyers in North America use the Google search engine Yahoo dominates in other areas of the world And, reports published by StomperNet, Enquiro and others show that a double listing at the top of Google not only boosts brand affinity but generates more than 2X the leads of a single listing Difficult to argue with those odds And, it’s not enough to secure organic listings Enquiro Research suggests that B2B technical buyers start their research in the organic or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) listings of search engines and their purchase process in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) ads What’s more, Marketing Sherpa reports that organic listings draw 75% of the click through traffic, while SEM draw 25% Clearly, when targeting the tech buyer, it is vital to be in both places To succeed online, B2B marketers are going to have to learn how to present their brand and their corporate and thought leadership messages everywhere, in many different formats We will have to drive demand, build brand awareness, establish thought leadership and a community of interest using social media, traditional media and Search Marketing techniques One way to this is to optimize a variety of different types of content for broadly searched/highly competitive terms However, securing a top listing for competitive terms requires a significant time and resource investment so it is not an option for many B2B marketers Even with the longterm commitment required for success here, I’m not advocating that B2B marketers avoid these keywords Just the opposite Go ahead and optimize for those terms, but use SEM programs such as Google AdWords and contextual PPC advertising to fill in gaps and “be there” when both researchers and buyers are searching Then, leverage new media program elements including your blog and social media/Web 2.0 sites to secure high value inbound links A steady investment in these programs will help move these listings closer to the top of the search engines A far faster approach to top listings, is targeting “long tail” terms—keywords that have moderate search volumes and are relatively easy to dominate quickly Targeting these terms should enable you to secure a double or triple listing at the top of page one of Google or Yahoo At least until Google changes its algorithm again! Once again, it is important to use social media program elements such as a blog, social media, social bookmarking, PR, and high value link-building to secure the best results VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Optimize Your Video for SEO Results While prepping for my upcoming presentation on Viral Marketing for the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit, I ran across this excellent posting on http://seo-space.blogspot com/2007/09/14-best-practices-and-tips-for-video.html Here are three of the 14 best practices listed in the article: Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information Videos that demonstrate step by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too Videos that have nothing to with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1: Give your video a Catchy Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site One way to get users to view your video is to give it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your site According to B2B Magazine, currently only 1% of the videos on YouTube are posted by businesses But I can tell you from experience that viral video is a great tool for B2B Marketers for both brand awareness and demand generation Marketing WTF? - This Marketing Geekout Moment Brought to You By StomperNet Quick – how can understanding the science of vision and cognitive psychology help you boost B2B Marketing leads and revenue? The Click Fu Masters at StomperNet just posted this intriguing video tutorial to help B2C and B2B Marketers boost their “Click Fu.” The team explains that understanding the function of the human eye and brain can help you improve marketing results and drive more revenue First, the eyes: StomperNet advises Marketers to understand the function of the eye and visitor blind spots to improve landing page design Well, that’s a nobrainer But, they go further explaining that primal man’s eyes were designed for two purposes: to eat and avoid being eaten The FOVEA, designed for finding food to eat, is sensitive to fine details and color The Periphery, designed to avoid being eaten, is tuned to motion and contrast Understanding how to make appropriate use of color, organization, and design details while employing the right structure to the page can help Marketers boost conversions by more than 25 percent Now, the brain: StomperNet advises you to understand the link between vision and behavior so that you understand why a #10 result on Google will get you more clicks than a #6 or position Basically, their cognitive psychologist advises that: Easy wins out over Good or Better Make user feel it will be easy to get what they want and they’ll stay longer and learn more Understand your visitors’ goal and what they need to achieve the goal But that’s just the beginning This is definitely a video that is worth watching VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist: Step - Start with SEM (ala Google Adwords)? Most website owners eventually come to the conclusion that to have any success getting traffic to their site, they need to one of three things: optimize the pages of their website (SEO), start a pay-per-click campaign (SEM), or both In an effort to save money, most people will tell you to go the free route first – that is, work to optimize your website and hope that your pages get indexed high in the search engines I’m here to tell you a couple of reasons you may want to consider shelling out some money on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign first For those of you with limited budgets, you may be asking yourself – why spend money on a PPC engine like Google Adwords before taking advantage of every possible opportunity to get free listings? My best answer to this question is that doing so will save you weeks or possibly months of frustration How? When you begin optimizing your website, you have no idea what will drive potential customers to your site, let alone what will prompt them to buy Sure, you hopefully will some keyword research ahead of time, but you still won’t know which keywords will ultimately bring you the targeted, motivated traffic you are looking for Aside from that, you have no idea if Google or other search engines will even list your pages anywhere near the top (check out the chart below to see why being above the fold on page is essential in a competitive b2b environment) In the end you may end up spending a lot of time and effort waiting to gain that first page result only to be disappointed because you show up on page 10 Alternately you may show up on page 1, but end up getting the wrong type of traffic resulting in few or no leads/sales Eye tracking study: Areas of the page searchers focus on Now let’s consider that you the same keyword research, but set up a Google Adwords account first and wait to optimize your site With Adwords you can be up and running ads in minutes instead of waiting days or weeks to get indexed by Google in the organic (free) listings You can also guarantee visibility within the eye tracking sweet spot from the chart above Now you can begin testing You can test which keywords are getting the most conversions, which ad copy resonates best with your target market, and which landing page copy convinces people to fill out their information Once you begin gathering this data, you can begin transitioning the things that work to your website; you can now be confident that your optimization efforts will not be a waste of time It’s like having the ultimate focus group; people from all over are telling you which keywords they are interested in when looking for products or services you sell You will now know exactly which web copy to add to your pages to get the most conversions - it is no longer a guessing game Authors and publishing companies test book titles with Adwords before going to print Entrepreneurs use adwords to test product ideas before manufacturing the product Adwords is the ultimate market research tool; if you look at it this way, it is well worth the money spent Of course this all depends on whether you use Adwords to its full potential and testing capabilities My next article will discuss the first step to creating a successful Google Adwords campaign – Keyword Research VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Practice Metrics-Based Copywriting The B2B Lead features a number of helpful articles on copywriting, so I thought I’d share one of my favorite tips for ensuring B2B marketing copy is relevant As marketers we constantly try to write compelling copy that motivates people to take some sort of action The trick is to write in the voice of our target audience; speaking to them using language they respond to Sometimes we use focus groups or A/B testing to help with this; getting out in the field and talking to prospects/customers also helps In the end though, the words we choose often amount to best guesses Keyword research tools like Wordtracker, Google Trends, and the Google Keyword Tool provide a wealth of insight into the voice of our audience Using search data and trends can give excellent clues to the words people use to describe things Talking to your audience, using the same words they search for themselves, puts you at a major advantage For example, the other day I was crafting an email to promote a new webcast Problem was, some people were calling it a webcast and others were calling it a webinar – which was it? What would more people respond to; a webcast offer or a webinar offer? I decided to use Google Trends to compare the search volume of both words I figured the term that is searched more often will also be the term used more commonly in conversation This term should also spark a higher interest if used in my email So I quickly pulled up Google Trends and here is what I found This obviously made my decision easy Split testing my email offers confirmed that using “webcast” got the better response Now, this is just search-driven copywriting in its simplest form If you want to take this further, you can use the Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker almost like you would a Thesaurus For example, maybe you are promoting a “golf strategies” guide If you plopped this keyword into the Google Keyword Tool, it would offer you numerous suggestions for related terms people are searching for In this example (shown below) maybe you would be better off promoting it as a “golf tips” guide since that term is searched more frequently Hopefully by now, you are starting to get the idea This stuff really works – I have personally seen higher conversion rates on landing pages and emails by using this strategy If you are interested in reading more about similar ideas, Aaron Wall has a very interesting article on keyword research that is definitely worth a read http://learn.wordtracker.com/articles/keyword-inspiration-aaron-wall-of-seobookcom-shares-his-secrets/ http://www.wordtracker.com http://www.google.com/trends https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Sprout Widgets, Mashups and Other Great Content That Drives SEO One of the best ways to increase your SEO rankings is to attract inbound links to your blog or website Traditional link building efforts involve asking for links, link swapping, or link buying This process is extremely time consuming and can get expensive if you are buying high quality links Really, in this instance, is there any such thing as a quality link? After all, Google has made no secret that it is actively seeking ways to weed out this practice In contrast, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by leveraging social media to convince others to link to your content The challenge is coming up with link-worthy material and then spreading the word via Twitter and other social media tools Fortunately for those of us with little time and fewer resources, the process of building this content just got a lot easier You no longer need to embark upon a lengthy research project or write a 10 page white paper These days, successful link bait is taking the form of widgets or mashups or other forms of rich media content The prerequisite is that the content should be helpful, clever, funny, or remarkable enough that others want to write about it or include it in their roundup of free tools The process of building a widget or mashup used to require Web development skills or enough budget to farm out the work I’ve been reading about a number of free tools that allow just about anyone to create their own widgets but have not found the confidence to try them Prodded by a “tweet” from one of the more influential Twitterati (did I really just write that?), I decided to check out, Sprout, an extremely cool and easy to use site to help you build widgets or other informational tools that can be embedded in your blog or web site http://sproutbuilder.com/whataresprouts Sprout looks easy enough to use and I’m ready to check it out Now, I just have to come up with the “killer app” for our blog readers To get ideas, the first step will be to reach out to the community reading the BreakingPoint blog at http://www.breakingpointsystems.com/community/ and then a bit of brainstorming VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 10 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Viral Video Idea #8: Protect your brand You can make fun of yourself but don’t anything that will embarrass you or the company Don’t take chances with controversial content or release anything of such poor quality that you create a negative brand image Don’t use dubious tactics to get noticed or bait and switch techniques We explained very clearly what Netcosm was (a data visualization) and was NOT (a product for sale) We also made it clear that the work was done through NetQoS Performance Labs and not beta tested Viral Video Idea #9: YouTube reports that the average viewing time for videos is 15 to 30 seconds You have a very short runway to take off Get to the point fast, entertain and leave them wanting more We added captions based on the old “This is brain, this is your brain on drugs” campaign We selected clips that showed the most action and had some fun with the content Then we offered a longer video if people were interested in seeing more Viral Video Idea #10: Somewhere between 40,000 to 65,000 new videos are posted to YouTube every day Help people find it by optimizing for search engines: Tag it, name it appropriately, describe it, add links and compelling copy and optimize using the right keywords If it takes off in a big way, you want as many links to your content as possible using your top keywords Viral Video Idea #11: Use your corporate blog to trigger the viral distribution and keep the story alive You’ve got to get the word out and a press release is simply not appropriate for viral marketing What’s more, blogging with the full story behind the campaign helps to give your program and your company a face and a personality Make sure that personality is one that will garner respect by being completely open and honest on your blog Viral Video Idea #12: Build a community of interest This is the core message behind my prior B2B Lead post on the subject of viral video marketing Don’t use trickery or bait and switch to get people to your video because you will be forgoing one of the most valuable benefits of the viral approach – the ability to quickly and inexpensively build a community of interest The Word of Mouth aspect of viral marketing gives Marketers a powerful way to attract a following Do this by explaining each step of the program using your blog Tell your audience what you were thinking when you produced it Report on the results Give followers a way to track the momentum and keep it alive Viral Video Idea #13: Seed the story with the blogerati, your customers and friends, your social network Post it to Digg and Reddit or whatever social media site is appropriate for the topic Twitter your followers Leverage Social media like Facebook, MySpace, and other groups to spread the word Of course timing is everything Here’s a high level snapshot of our timeline Viral Video Idea #14: Track and monitor the results and keep your followers and the blogging community posted on the momentum building behind your viral video This helps build excitement and credibility around how your video is resonating with the audience It might just convince an influential blogger that he/she should write a story about you We not only tracked YouTube views and Most Viewed Honors, but we also monitored: • • • • Google Analytics for web traffic Google Alerts for media and blog coverage Salesforce.com for leads and evaluation requests as well as revenue opportunities Eloqua for clickstream analysis to determine if people were using the right path from the blog story to the video to the microsite and finally to product pages and offers VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 24 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Viral Video Idea #15: Automate and expedite lead processing When viral goes big, it really goes big And, studies show that B2B Marketers and Sales reps need to follow-up on Web-generated leads within 30 minutes of a registration or the chances for conversion are poor If you don’t have a great program for automatically scoring and qualifying leads so that you can route quality leads to your salesforce instantly, you could be asking for big trouble using viral First of all your Inside Sales team is likely to be swamped with a larger percentage of irrelevant leads Secondly, you will miss out on a number of great sales opportunities by taking weeks to respond We were actually given the Marketer’s Choice award by Eloqua for our Lead Scoring and Automation program that enabled us to process the leads generated by our viral campaign within 24 hours Eloqua’s Marketing Automation was critical to this process Viral Video Idea #16: Demonstrate that you met your objectives YouTube will allow you to track some of your results, but it won’t show the whole story Here are a few results that NetQoS tracked: • YouTube Views: 66,000 and growing (This did not include those who viewed it on Google video, Tech Crunch or other blogs.) • Blog Coverage: 70+ blogs wrote about the video • NetQoS Blog Readership: Traffic more than tripled • NetQoS Corporate Web traffic: YoY 43% higher • Organic SEO: As the chart below shows: weighted market exposure for NetQoS top keywords increased by 41% for all keywords plus 600% on the primary keyword Viral Video Idea #17: Show your campaign delivered value to the business You most certainly will have to a lot of convincing to get sponsorship for your viral campaign, so don’t miss your chance to prove to all of the skeptics that the idea was worth the investment Show that the spike in traffic and coverage hit the right audience and generated brand awareness or demand For us, the results show it was: As the charts below show, there was a spike in web traffic for all product pages and a large 4X increase in Web-based leads We also showed a 26% increase in product demo requests Our cost per qualified lead was $16 Other techniques range from $60 per qualified lead for Google AdWords to $250 or more from a seminar or online advertising campaign VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 25 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Viral Video Idea #18: So, show me the money Viral video, like any other Marketing campaign, should always demonstrate a positive return While it is still too early for us to show revenue, we have more than a half a million in pipeline from this campaign that cost $7,000 Viral Video Idea #19: Don’t forget to subtly brand the video and microsite with your company name Don’t be overly obvious or slick The point is to entertain and encourage people to spread the word while subtly associating your company with the content Viral Video Idea #20: It’s not over when it’s over Extend the life of your campaign You’ve done the hard work to build a community of interest, so keep them interested and the lines of communication open Evolve your story, and continue to post updates For NetQoS, we turned the Netcosm experience into a live event and continued to post about it on our blog When we first embarked upon this viral video campaign, there was no playbook The NetQoS Marketing Team, Dr Mike Johns, and the Porter Novelli Austin team all worked together to figure it out Now we are sharing our playbook with you Let us know if you’ve had success using it or your own techniques VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 26 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Building a Following on Twitter If you are anything like me, keeping up with all of the different social networking tools out there can be a bit overwhelming Now that you have joined Twitter how you leverage it to boost your brand? It doesn’t really matter what your tweets are about if no one is reading them I found a great article on building your popularity on Twitter by Dan Zarrella Here are his top 10 tips: Match Your Usernames and Avatars Search Twitter for Twitter Users Mentioning Your Favorite Social Site Search Google for Profiles on Your Favorite Social News Sites Mentioning Twitter Link to your Twitter Account from All Your Social Profiles Ask Readers of Your Blog to Follow You “Twitter-jack” Active Social News & Twitter Users’ Friends Ask Questions Don’t Just Spam Twitter, Add Value Post the Title with the URL 10 Consider Using a Social Media Specific URL Shortener To get the specifics for each tip, click here I know I learn best by example, so here is a great TechCrunch article about Connie Reece and the frozen pea phenomenon VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 27 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Learn From the Cs of Social Influence Marketing When I was in college (far too many years ago) we learned about the P’s of Marketing Of course, in just the last few years, we’ve seen a major shift in thinking about the 3rd P – promotion We no longer accept the notion that 2% returns on direct mail or 0% responses from print advertising are smart Marketing Instead, we are laser targeting our messages to audiences and using social marketing to build a following of like minded customers With increasing interest in the power of communities, we now have the C’s of Social Influence Marketing thanks to Dave Friedman, president of the central region for Avenue A | Razorfish In today’s post, I’ve shared some of Friedman’s very timely advice on making social marketing and communities work You see, I’ve had some very interesting discussions of late on how to design and “position” a community It boils down to “can you really design and position a community or will the community itself determine what it becomes?” We’ve decided to let the BreakingPoint community define itself Stay tuned for the big launch announcement and see how this works for us In the mean time, here is what Friedman has to say courtesy of Chief Marketer Report Content: Access to valuable tools and content is a key factor in a consumer’s decision to interact with a brand Regardless of their goals, brands need to think about customizing bite-sized, portable content or experiences for their most prominent target segments—content that their “friends” would be proud to display, share, or support Sound familiar? This was the focus of The B2B Lead – snack size educational nuggets Customization: Users crave the ability to customize, post and share content On social networks like MySpace or Facebook, users define themselves through their personalized profile pages and the elements that they choose to display Marketers need to empower consumers to express themselves Community: The adage “build it and they will come” is not applicable here To build community within social media campaigns, brands need to achieve several things: Give users a reason to interact with your brand frequently by providing unique content, value or engagement Let your content travel by distributing it across widgets and other mechanisms beyond your Web site Get the rest of the Cs Or, check out Joseph Jaffe’s version at http://www.jaffejuice.com VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 28 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads If you’re like me, you pour a lot of time and effort into wordsmithing press releases It’s important to get the message just right Then you go back and forth with executives and/or partners to make sure all parties are happy with the messages It can take days or weeks and become frustrating Sadly, if you’re not taking advantage of new ways to publish your own content online, chances are nobody’s reading the results of all of that hard work Or, so says David Meerman Scott In his recent post entitled Top 10 PR tips, Scott’s #1 piece of advice is “The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.” Here’s some ideas I came up with to stretch beyond traditional media Did I miss anything? Distribute the release via a wire service like MarketWire, Business Wire, PRWeb or PRNewswire Include video or audio interviews with the wire service post to get pickup on a wide variety of sites like Odeo Post a supporting video on YouTube Develop a chart or image that supports the release and post to Flickr Blog about it on your own blog and your partner’s blog Reach out to other bloggers to conduct a Q&A about the news Promote via StumbleUpon Create a Google AdWords or Yahoo campaign using the headline of the release – promote using traditional PPC ads and contextual advertising Send out the link to your LinkedIn or Facebook friends to help you spread the word 10 Post your blog post to sites like Reddit, Digg, etc 11 Include it in your RSS feeds – both press release and blog RSS feeds 12 Send out a tweet to your Twitter following 13 Hold a webinar to discuss the reasons behind the news 14 Turn the release into an educational article and post it to http://www.scribd.com or http://www.ezinearticles.com 15 Embed the headline and a link in your email signature 16 Include it in your own newsletter or magazine 17 Post it to your customer support site 18 Send the release to relevant user groups or professional organizations 19 Use a free press release posting service such as: http://www.free-news-release.com/ http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/ http://www.i-newswire.com/ http://www.prleap.com/ (I’ve never tried these but heard they are good for SEO Anyone had success with them?) 20 Oh yeah, pitch it to the press VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 29 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY TagClouding Your Leads Messaging is critical to how you communicate your benefits and your product to your audience Your messaging follows you throughout your communication and no place is it more applicable than your main website This is the spot where your prospects must make a fairly immediate decision whether to stick around and gather some more info (and hopefully make a purchase) When you find the proper messaging you will ultimately be able to provide customers, partners, media, analysts and even internal owners your core value proposition: • • • • Who are you? What you stand for today? Tomorrow? How you explain your main benefits? Your first step to consistent and powerful messaging is to have your internal and external constituents answer the above questions If done properly you’ll have a tremendous amount of data In a recent scenario at my last gig, we were able to gather information from more than 1,500 survey responses from users, partners, executives and investors Often you simply comb through all the data and make various hypothesis based on a thorough scrub of the data It is great to have so much data, but with too much data comes the fear that we won’t be able to get to the core of what people actually thought of the company and its solution Also, we would need hundreds of hours to sort through it all properly One thing we have noticed as we sifted through data were the patterns in the answers that were receiving The ability to quickly view these patterns is critical to discovering how your audience views your company and your product, thus starting to form the messaging that will most resonate with prospects The most simple and effective way for you to visualize the patterns of your data is to create a tag cloud A tag cloud will help represent the words that appear the most; the larger the font the more that word appeared in the results Very quickly you will see if your prospects will respond more to particular words and phrases Fortunately there is the ability to automate tagclouds using tools such as TagCrowd, which allow you to input data and create a tag cloud; this could be a URL, a file or just paste in the text to be visualized It then gives you options for how many tags to show, ignore common words (‘and’, ‘the’, etc), grouping of similar words (innovate, innovation, innovating) and whether you want to show the amount of times each word appears You can then grab the HTML or take a screen grab and you have a great visual way to demonstrate data Reviewing these tag clouds is highly effective and can lead you to terrific conversations about your company and your final messaging…which of course is the goal But the power of the tag cloud goes beyond simply helping to create the proper messaging Use it to visualize what each of the pages of your site actually say about you, critical for SEO/SEM, but also to determine if you are actually saying what you mean to say It can be surprising to find out that not only are the words you are using on your homepage not resonating directly with your prospects, but often we are using hypocritical verbiage The same can be done for any marketing campaign you are gearing up to drive leads Just remember you may not be saying what you think you’re saying VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 30 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Web Analytics for B2B Marketers In today’s world of new media, search engine marketing is perceived as a necessary tactic in the B2B world The challenge with online advertising is that we, as B2B marketers, take a B2C approach We build PPC ads under the guise of “if we’re out there they will come” The problem is that B2B buyers are different from B2C buyers When you are shopping for new running shoes, you search in Google for “red nike running shoes” Various sponsored and organic results appear, you click through and pull out your credit card B2B sales cycles are measured in months not minutes, so why are we trying to use the same tactics? B2B marketers instead need to whatever they can to drive leads to their website, be that SEO, PPC, links from blogs, etc but because their business is less transactional they must capture those visitors so that they can control the marketing messages and proactively target interested buyers throughout the buying cycle You may be thinking, “Well I capture web visitors through landing pages and forms.” The thing is that only 3% of web visitors fill out a form and according to MarketingSherpa, only 50% of those fill it out completely and accurately The #1 name filled in on forms is Mickey Mouse (although cute, I don’t think he is the buyer you are looking for) Also, did you capture contact info for the right buying roles? How many college interns did you have filling out information? You know there are unannounced visitors on your website, the challenge is to identify those visitors so that you can turn passive visitors into actionable leads There are several web analytics tools out there that can help you on your way to identifying these unknown visitors You should look for a tool that: • Identifies the companies visiting your website • Analyzes those visiting companies to determine trends in the industries and sizes of visiting companies • Allows you to set up business rules to score visitors based on pages visited and time on site • Offers data services to find the right buying roles within those companies Also, be sure to ask for a free trial so you can test the power of the tool and see results before you have to buy VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 31 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Make Some Imaginary Friends AKA a Persona Didn’t get approval to fly to London for last week’s Search Engine Strategies? Never fear, Susan Esparza kindly live blogged from the event and shared a number of wonderful lessons including this super post from Ian Lurie’s presentation on Search Marketing & Persona Models When explaining the concept of personae, a topic we blogged about on this B2B Lead post a few weeks back Ian provided a very “sticky” definition: “A persona is your brand’s imaginary friend.” He also shared these wonderful words of wisdom for building a campaign to woo your persona: • Pick the persona you want to start with • Refresh yourself with their needs, motivations, wants, fears, limitations, etc • Become empathetic to that persona - really put yourself into their head • Too hard? Get a team together to act the parts…but be careful in your casting choices (Don’t cast a competitive person as a competitive persona It’s cross contamination.) VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 32 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY When Investing in New Media Programs Track the Metrics That Matter I have a confession to share with you And, to most readers of The B2B Lead, this will come as no surprise I am a metric-aholic! My professional life is ruled by metrics Metrics help me plan my day They buy my credibility and expedite decision-making They inspire my competitive spirit and drive me to produce more They help me justify the purchase of $30,000 worth of t-shirts without a song and dance Best of all, they empower me to utter the dreaded “No” when asked to use resources unwisely So, when it comes to B2B marketing techniques, I rarely invest in programs that not result in a demonstrated return Leigh Anne recently posted that she struggled with social media and its effect on lead generation and asked the question “Is social media like traditional PR? You have to it but there is no way to measure results?” Well, Leigh Anne, I’m happy to tell you that you can track and measure the results of social media My post on viral video marketing provides a real world case study of those metrics in action But the post did not include all of the metrics I track Nor did it include the tools I use to track these results, some of which may break the average startup budget In this week’s post, I’ll share a few metrics for determining if your Web Site, blog and social media marketing techniques are working for you Here are a just a few of the metrics I track weekly: Website Traffic: Ensure unique visitor trending is “up and to the right.” Top Referrers: Monitor the sites that are contributing the most traffic to my Website Hopefully, your blog is in the top Unsolicited Inbound Leads: Provided you use Salesforce.com, track the source of all inbound leads using Salesforce.com web-to-lead tracking codes This will give you insight into your campaign results Track all leads without a campaign separately and monitor the trend You can attribute growth in these leads to a combination of PR and social media Blog Rankings: Monitor your Technorati ranking and authority rating This will enable you to monitor your position in the blogosphere Conversions from Blog to Website: Is your blog converting readers to your Website? This is critical If you are providing valuable, relevant, and actionable content on your blog, you should see a high rate of conversion to your website If you are tracking web-based lead growth, you should be able to make some correlation between an increase in blog conversions and inbound leads RSS Subscriptions: Monitor your Feedburner stats to see how many people are signing up to receive your RSS feeds Once again, make sure that number is growing and experiment with promoting your feed to fuel growth Inbound Links to Website and Blog and Link Value: Social media is a wonderful tool for search engine optimization (SEO) And, when it comes to SEO, there is nothing better than a large number of high value optimized inbound links So make sure you are tracking an increase in inbound links that use the proper anchor text Google Page One Listings and Weighted SEO Exposure: Sadly, page one search engine listings don’t just happen with a call to Google Monitor and measure performance of target keywords and your exposure for both search engine marketing (SEM) and SEO That’s probably enough to get started In my next post on The B2B Lead, I’ll share insight on a few of the tools I use to track these metrics and assess the value of search engine marketing and new media programs VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 33 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Invest in the Right Tools to Track the Metrics That Matter In my last post, I shared a few of the metrics I track each week to assess the performance of my social media programs In this week’s post, I focus on the tools I use to track results Because I’m a metrics-aholic, I have racked up a rather expensive habit over the years But, I have found the insight these products provide is well worth the investment Here are a just a few of the products I use to track social media and traditional marketing program results: Website Traffic: Google Analytics helps me track web analytics basics And, it costs nothing! Top Referrers: Once again, Google Analytics has my vote for the best info at the best price Unsolicited Inbound Leads: I use a combination of salesforce.com and Eloqua to track inbound leads Eloqua, while one of the most expensive tools in my tool chest, actually gives me details on a one-off basis so can monitor the click stream of a user from our blog to our web to a lead form And, it helps me automate lead processing which can come in handy when you have a viral marketing success I have been able to identify enough leads that came from our blog and converted to closed deals to more than justify it’s expense (including the salary of my full-time blogger) Blog Rankings: Technorati posts blog rankings and authority ratings Once again, the price is right: Free Conversions from Blog to Website: Google Analytics shows me the conversion rate from our blog to our website RSS Subscriptions: If you use Feedburner for RSS you can easily get this data for free Inbound Links to Website and Blog and Link Value: I use a wonderful SAAS service from Hub Spot to provide this data and more And, it’s not really that expensive Google Page One Listings and Weighted SEO Exposure: This is a tricky area because web traffic data can often lie But I’ve found another somewhat expensive offering that gives me a good idea of our company’s weighted search engine exposure –both paid and organic– on the keywords that matter The service is called CIRadar Compete.com can also give you an idea of your web site traffic trends compared to the competition provided you have enough volume to show up on their radar I’m also intrigued by the possibilities of other tools that help measure share of voice and analyze the value of coverage Products like Meltwater and Factiva Have any experience with these products? Are they worth the price? Would love to hear from readers about their value for the small and medium size business B2B marketer VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 34 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Creating Forms for Content - How Much is too Much? Marketing Sherpa says the average abandonment rate on forms is 95% Is this because we as Marketers are asking too much of our visitors? Sherpa also tells us that only 40% of the forms that are filled out are accurate and complete So what’s that…40% of 5% of your visitors are possible leads? Are forms really helping identify buyers? I also wonder if forms are prohibiting people from getting to that demo, webcast or white paper we might be offering Everyone knows by now that if they fill out a form at some point in the near future a sales person is going to be reaching out to them If a prospect is still in the education phase of the buying cycle, are we helping or hurting ourselves with forms? If you are going to use forms, here’s a few ideas to help boost your ‘submit’ rate • Pre-populate forms with as much information as you have People are more likely to continue on if they don’t have to much • Ask questions that enable you to better qualify a lead and allow for more targeted marketing messaging • Ask questions in stages Forms with more than fields have very low submit rates • Ask questions that are related to the best practice piece you are offering • Offer multiple choice questions, not free text boxes Chances are you won’t get the kinds of answers you are hoping for Here’s a few more tips from Kevin Gold - Evaluating Lead Forms for Greater Conversion, Less User Frustration (use this link here http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/articles/2008/03/evaluating-lead-forms-for-greater-conversion-less-user-frustration.html ) I’m not sure on what the exact right answer is here but we are running programs with content behind forms and some without I don’t have enough data yet to say one way or the other but I’ll definitely keep you posted What’s working for you? Chime in and let us know VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 35 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY 10 Signs You Picked the Wrong Web Design Agency I’ve just emerged from a very difficult web site redesign project with a local agency that hasn’t yet moved into the Web 2.0 world After living through the ordeal, I thought I would share some of the lessons I learned during the process to help others avoid the same nightmare (I’m also hoping the process is somewhat cathartic for me too.) Fortunately, most of these signs are easily identifiable during the review stages If I’ve missed any, please share your ideas When you ask about multi-browser testing, you’re told “Well I have a Mac and so and so has a PC, so I’m sure we have it covered.” Sadly, there is no one browser standard and today’s websites must look great in the top browsers-Firefox, IE, and Safari, at the very least That requires a systematic plan for multi-browser testing and attention to detail There is no upfront information discovery session to determine your goals and objectives for the site No one asks about the personae of your target audience or your sales process It is absolutely vital to start your website design with careful consideration of your target audience and how you engage with them It’s also wise to map your conversion strategy prior to design When you mention in the first meeting that the site design needs to support your SEO efforts, the instant response is “Oh we don’t SEO.” Designing a website without considering your future SEO efforts is extremely dangerous Hard coded H1 tags, too many graphics, failing to redirect valuable inbound links, and a difficult to update site will hamper your efforts Your agency’s idea of a project plan is a list of dates for a design template, copy drafts and a go-live date Marketers really need to approach a website design or redesign like a software development process with a solid project plan that takes into consideration the need to iterate and fully test After several attempts to come up with a design, you have to supply “inspiration” sites to get them on track Well, this one really should go without saying but sadly it still happens If you find yourself stuck with an agency that can’t figure out how to design to your satisfaction despite being given brand guidelines, target personae, a site architecture, etc you can pull the project out of the ditch by giving them some other sites that you like to help them get on track If the right work has been done upfront to understand your business, however, you shouldn’t have to this You realize that when the home page design is reviewed on a normal size monitor, the flash movie takes up the entire monitor screen pushing your core content below the fold Just like multi-browser testing, monitor size is critical It is vital that you look at the site on different monitors to ensure visitors can get to the content they need Once the home page is designed no further design goes into the layout and graphics elements of the subpages This is like walking into a gorgeous store with a beautiful faỗade and stepping into a bare warehouse Put the same care and attention that went into the home page into the subpages to make sure you provide content and next steps for your visitors There are no status checks or project meetings In fact, it is extremely difficult to get a return phone call from your project manager Designing a website is a team effort requiring lots of different team members to contribute And, that requires coordination and conversation Make sure your agency schedules frequent project update meetings and discussions to make sure you are on track You are ready to go live with the new site, your project manager is nowhere to be found leaving you to work with a developer This is a biggie Always make sure you have a plan for go-live, a backup plan in case something goes wrong And, go live in the middle of the night or over the weekend, just in case there are problems no one will see them 10 You must conform to the agency’s process of logging in all processes, errors, changes and questions to an Extranet with no training on it You find that you still must post those changes multiple times before resolution OK, you got me on that one, it was just a rant Today’s B2B Marketers need to have a well thought out site architecture, succinct and compelling messages for their target audiences, engaging designs, and an error-free site that supports search engine optimization And marketers should select their agencies carefully, building in strict contractual demands for things like multi-browser testing, and SEOfriendly structure, clean and well-designed page layout, and tight security lockdowns Pick your web designer like you would pick a software development shop Wow, I feel so much better now VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 36 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Keyword Optimization for Press Releases Keyword optimization on your website has become standard operating procedure for most marketers But are you optimizing your press releases with keywords? Here are a few reasons why you should: • If you are posting your press releases to your website (and you should be), it is probably the freshest content Google gives precedence to new content (that is why blogs rank so highly in search engine results) • Press releases and news articles rank very highly on Google The more keyword rich your press releases are, the better they will rank in Google • Press releases are not just for the press Make it easy for prospects/bloggers/analysts/media to find you wherever they are searching Don’t know where to start to find the right keywords? Check out these tips from MarketingProfs: Four Steps to Writing Search-Engine-Optimized Press Releases (I highly recommend the entire article) by Kim Cornwall Malseed: • Find out what keywords successful competitors are using • Read articles written by target journalists • Survey your PR and Marketing department personnel • Survey your Web site development team • Survey product development personnel and executive management, Many press release distribution services (PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.) have SEO features Use them a few times (the companies usually permit you to a free trial) and track results to get an idea of which keywords are most popular Also, be sure to avoid gobbledygook, those over-used industry words like “flexible,” “scalable” and “market-leading” so aptly named gobbledygook by David Meerman Scott After you have written your press release and think you have optimized all necessary keywords, put it to the test HubSpot recently announced Press Release Grader, a free online tool to rate your press release “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimization and link analysis The free tool is designed to optimize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and prospects Press Release Grader provides an analysis and recommendations that will help you improve the way your press release is structured.” As it is for most marketing tactics, in the end it is all about testing and re-testing to find what works best for your audience I am sure I am missing a lot here Anyone have any more tips? VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 37 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY About ReachForce ReachForce delivers software (SaaS) and data services that enable B2B companies to laser target their lead generation programs ReachForce solutions allow marketing and sales teams to target market ‘sweet spots’ using CRM and website visitor data then reach the right buyers in these companies using role-based contact discovery services ReachForce was created to ensure Marketers, keep their seat at the table As a team of long time Marketers we decided we were tired of it being ok to be wrong 97% of the time With marketing response rate industry averages being less than 3%, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we as B2B Marketers have been driving lead generation initiatives Response rates don’t equal leads and leads don’t always mean qualified buyers At ReachForce, we don’t care about or measure response rates, we drive and measure revenue delivered to the business from lead generation initiatives By addressing the foundation of any marketing program, the data - or “The WHO” as we call it, ReachForce was founded with one goal in mind: to provide businesses with revolutionary, high quality, costeffective data to fuel their marketing and sales lead generation initiatives About The B2B Lead We’ve designed The B2B Lead blog to deliver real world, practical B2B Sales and Marketing Tips to help you capture more qualified buyers and convert them into profitable customer relationships Each week, we will deliver snack-size how-to’s and thought-provoking commentary from B2B Marketers for B2B Marketers ReachForce customers–who include Directors of Marketing Communications, Sales Professionals, Marketing Programs Managers–and other guest writers will share techniques that help you take a more deliberate and predictable approach to increasing the velocity and efficiency of the Marketing and Sales funnel If you want to share ideas while learning from your peers, subscribe to our B2B Marketing RSS feed now We hope you will make it your go-to resource for techniques to succeed in the new world of metrics-driven Marketing This is the first of a five volume collection of B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead Below are the upcoming volumes To download all 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips, check back in the coming weeks Volume One: Online Marketing Volume Two: Event Marketing Volume Three: Direct Marketing Volume Four: Marketing and Sales Alignment Volume Five: More Marketing and Sales Tips VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 38 ... http://www.betterbusinessblogging.com/seo-in-blogs/basic-seo-in-blogs-important-title-tag/ VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 12 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY Keep Your Blog on Track to Support SEO and. .. using the right path from the blog story to the video to the microsite and finally to product pages and offers VOLUME ONE • Online Marketing 24 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead. . .101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips from The B2B Lead PRESENTED BY 30 Online Marketing Tips for Driving Lead Generation Today, online marketing is vital to any integrated marketing program