B2B Marketing Blog

Many companies are starting to question whether or not their traditional means of marketing are as effective as they once were. For example, at one time, taking out an advertisement in an industry journal was a great way to get your company noticed. However, if your competition was also doing this, were you really getting noticed, or just getting lost among the clutter?

Many of those same companies who have been questioning their current marketing strategies have moved towards an online marketing strategy simply because they are able to regain their competitive advantage. Remember, the most successful businesses are the ones who have embraced innovation.

It’s also understandable that many businesses do not know a lot about online marketing or even where to start when implementing a new strategy. The following are three steps that will help you on your way to marketing your business online in order to see your business flourish and prosper into the future.

1. Search Engine Optimization and Marketing:

Search engine optimization is a garden that must be tended to and cared for. The first step is planting the seeds, or in this case the keywords. For example, you can research targeted keywords that you feel people will be searching for to find your products and services and build them into your website so that Google can index them. Along with that and other “seeds” you should plant, you must maintain and water your SEO garden. It is very important to remember than you cannot simply set and forget your SEO. You must keep up on whether or not you are getting your desired results. SEO is an effort that, with the right amount of time and care, can produce a positive outcome.

The second element is search engine marketing, which are ads that are set up and only paid for if they are clicked. This is called pay per click advertising.

2. A website that looks and acts professionally:

Would you hire someone who didn’t look or act professionally? If you did, would you expect professional results? Probably not, right? The same goes for your website. Many businesses view their website as an online brochure and those same people do not get much return on their website investment. The key is to have a website that converts visitors into prospects for your business developers to follow up on. This in effect is a website that makes you money.

3. A Marketing Automation System:

Wouldn’t it be handy if you knew which companies were interested in your goods and services before they even told you? Well this is actually possible. By implementing a marketing automation system, you will not only know who is coming to your site, they will be lead scored, and inform you of their current engagement level. Further to this, for those who are not yet ready to buy, you can also set up email nurture campaigns to continuously remind them of your offers so that they will think of you when they are ready to buy.

Author: Jon Edgar is an Account Specialist at ActiveConversion

I recently had the pleasure of  attending the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference, which is a leading search & social marketing event, on Aug 18  in San Francisco.  It was great to hear from the industry’s best!  Personally, I checked out conference talks about Local Search, Mobile Marketing, Competitive Research, Twitternation & Automation, and B2B Lead Generation Management/CRM Integration.  I also had the opportunity to go down the expo floor and checked out vendors pushing the latest and the greatest they had to offer.  I can’t possibly cover everything from SES, but I wanted to boil it down and bring you my personal highlights.

Autonomous Twitter personas maybe the evil future

Jeff Pulver, Tracy Falke and Paul Madden provided a wonderfully heated panel on Twitternation & Automation.  Jeff highlighted that Twitter has empowered individuals to connect in ways that has incredible reach, impact, both globally and individually.  His background and stories were inspiring.  On automation, it was clear to many within the audience that automation and management systems were necessary to cost effectively leverage channels like Twitter. Tracy did a fantastic job on explaining this well, and brought attention to tools like SocialOomph to help in those efforts.  B2B Marketers in particular should take note of twitter and social media automation tools to conserve their precious time spent in social media efforts.

Finally, Paul showcased how a whole ecosystem of almost fully autonomous Twitter personas can be established and leveraged to create ongoing massive influence on Twitter.  It was both eye opening and interesting to learn the impact that such automation could have with social media if just a dozen companies implemented automated ecosystems of thousands of Twitter personas.  The impact it can goes beyond the Twittersphere but also how it can be manipulated to impact real time results on search engines is something Twitter and Google will likely have to address in their algorithms and policies.

The Mobile Frontier is here

Sandeep Aggarwal, Cindy Krum and Michael Martin presented a panel on mobile marketing.  Sandeep’s presentation made clear that mobile isn’t just an emerging market but a fundamental channel for online interaction.  B2B business websites receive significant mobile exposure.  Individuals in B2B are among the largest adapters of smartphones.  Smartphones are frequently the primary method of accessing online content for individuals in B2B industries.

Mobile browsers doesn’t just impact the way visitors interact with media and content, it also impacts search engine optimization. Cindy commented that mobile SERPs (search engine result pages) are already showing differences from non-mobile SERPs.  Inevitably search engines will be moving towards tailoring algorithms for mobile devices for mobile optimized sites.  It’s important to start setting up SEO strategies to be prepared for that now.

It’s not all about the ‘i’ devices either; Michael was great to point out that Android is a growing player and is faster in growing market than the iPhone.  This is particularly important for businesses who are considering jumping onto the ‘Apps’ craze, and selecting which device platform to develop for.  Regarding ‘Apps’, it was acknowledged that iOS is the big gorilla right now.

‘Pay per’ Advertising Expo

Online advertising management and automation systems seemed to be the big thing on the expo floor.  Every other booth was for automated online advertising management which offered one stop shop for managing PPM campaigns on AdWords, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.  Pricing for many of these systems are based on charging a percentage above each CPC run through their system, Google’s DoubleClick (whom Google acquired in 2007) is a solution that offers this pricing model.  A similar breed of products was a competitive analysis system that allows users to dig into competitors online marketing efforts to see what/how they are doing in different channels.  Mark Munroe, a panelist on the Competitive Research panel, recommended AdGooroo SEM Insight and Spy Fu as good candidates for doing competitive analysis for paid advertising (e.g. Adwords).

The other big thing on the expo floor was the ad networks.  I want to mention them because many of them were offering a cost per acquisition (CPA) model of pricing.  Although these networks aren’t going to replace your AdWords, the CPA model makes them a fairly low risk channel to add into a marketing mix, particularly if you are in e-commerce.

The Keynote

BJ Fogg’s keynote was about how technology allows us to create or change behavior. BJ was fantastic in illustrating the mechanics of how it needs to operate, and where it fails.  It’s worth checking out to help frame your mentality towards online marketing as it’s fundamentally association with BJ’s topic.  Adam Singer did a more in-depth review of the keynote for TopRankBlog: http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/08/persuasive-technology-ses-keynote/

Business blogging is regarded as the domain of experts, experts willing to spend lots of time each day telling the world about an industry or a sector.  We’ll call this “hard blogging”.  The benefits of hard blogging are many, but the time commitment of hard blogging is usually a huge deterrent so most SMBs balk at it because they feel that a) they don’t have the time to think up analysis or insight that anyone would read, and b) there’s nothing to blog about my business that my customers would be interested in reading (e.g. after I buy a granite countertop for my kitchen, I’m probably not interested in following the granite countertop industry).

An alternate form of blogging that brings it’s own basket of  benefits is what I’ll call “soft blogging”; not blogging analysis but rather easier, once a week, announcement-like content.  Here are five examples:

1. Customer testimonials; getting testimonials from happy customers is an obvious best practice, and when you do, a blog is the perfect venue for maximizing the return on that testimonial.  Include a small description of the service or product rendered to get the testimonial.
2. Portfolio of projects; this is for companies with fewer clients but bigger projects – this is a case study in effect.  Nothing makes you real like a list of real projects you’ve completed, far more so than all the “motherhood” statements on your website.
3. News and Press releases; all companies should put out press releases, submitted to an online wire service like PR web, once a quarter. They are like little golden micro-sites devoted to your company that deliver visitors for years.  Examples of what to put in them include a new management hire, a major client landed or project completed, a new service you now offer, or a new product line you’ve begun carrying (here’s a bigger list).  Publish to your blog as well.
4. Job postings; hiring people says your company is growing and the job description is a wonderful grab bag of what your company does well.  Blogging a job posting is one of the only ways a small business can attract attention to a job posting on its own without relying on a 3rd party website.  Once you hire someone, change the post to a hire announcement and re-publish.
5. Marketing and Sales collateral; you have brochures, and you have digital versions of them. Do a paragraph summary of what they contain and post them online.  Instead of emailing a PDF to a prospect, your sales person can now email them a link to where it resides on your web page, and if they do come to investigate it, they may partake more of your messaging on your website/blog.

A key element of this strategy is that the blog must be sub-domained to your website; the search engines will then see it as part of your website.  This is a bit technical, but here’s a company that will do it for you.  This approach is search engine ‘gold’.  You are adding new content to your website on an ongoing basis (I’d suggest once a week) and you are educating search engines (i.e. Google) about what you do.

In some ways for many companies “soft blogging” is more beneficial than “hard blogging”. Testimonials and /or a portfolio of projects is often a more powerful aid in getting new business than stating your opinion on topics many of your prospects will likely not have the time or inclination to read.  Getting new business is the acid test after all; will this activity bring you more business?  The answer is yes.  This approach will bring more visitors to your website, and you will convince more of them you are a real company that has happy customers.  More visitors will identify themselves and ask questions and request quotes.  Go “soft blogging”!

The days when all you needed for online marketing was a nice website have long passed.  In order to be effectively represented online, you’ll need effective campaigns on several critical platforms.  The platforms vary depending on the type of business you are in, but for those of you still finding your footing; here is a short checklist of platforms you should consider.

Stable Content

• Website: Since its 2010, you should have professional website.  If you don’t have one, get on it.
• Bonus Points Wikipedia Entry: Businesses haven’t fully embraced Wikipedia but it is the authority for information reference.  Having a Wikipedia entry will become increasingly important for online credibility and exposure.

Regularly Updated Content

• Blog: A critical platform for establishing credibility with the online community and search engines.  If your organization doesn’t have a blog, you are missing out on establishing yourself as an online authority in your industry.
• Bonus Points Periodical Press Releases: Press Releases still have their place online, particularly when pushed out with a service like PRWeb.com.  It can do more than just a blog posting or website update as it pushes to many channels, allowing for more exposure and credibility.

Social Networking

• Twitter/Facebook Fan Page: Twitter and Facebook are the kings of social networking and an increasingly important platform to promote dialog between companies and the online community.
• Bonus Points LinkedIn/Foursquare: LinkedIn and Foursquare aren’t for everyone, but depending on the kind of business you do, these maybe valuable platforms to reach potential customers.

Video Media

• YouTube: YouTube continues to be a predominately an entertainment focused community, but its reach is undeniable.  If you have how-to videos, or a business presentation, they are good candidates for YouTube.
• Bonus Points Webinar: Webinars are a great way to interact with customers and the community.  Webinars add great value for any customer base.

Search Engine Marketing

• Google AdWords: This isn’t a must but for those of you who are just starting out, or struggling in competitive markets, pay-per-click campaigns with Google can get you that exposure when you need it.
• Bonus Points Pay-per-click on Facebook/LinkedIn/Yahoo/Bing: Although Google is the most recognized player; pretty much every major platform (Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Bing, etc) has a similar version of the pay-per-click program.  They may present a less competitive and more targeted environment to push marketing efforts.

Depending on your business and goals, the platforms mentioned may not be critical.  Also keep in mind that just because you are represented on these platforms doesn’t necessarily mean you are being represented well on each platform.  However, how to assess your effectiveness on the various online platforms is the topic for another post.

Do you have other platforms that are critical to your business’s online marketing strategy that you feel should be on this list?  Please share it with us in the comments.

Your website’s online exposure is a key component of business life, just like getting healthy and into shape is a vital component of our own personal lives. However, most people never  ‘get into shape’. Many people buy gimmicky workout machines or slim fast drugs only to be tricked out of time and money. Many get confused, frustrated, or give up.

The Online Marketing Athlete
Online marketing is very similar to personal health and fitness, so don’t be tricked by thrills and gimmicks. Think of building and maintaining online exposure like training to become a competitive athlete. It takes planning, time, diligence, and the right combination of exercises.

Get Healthy
Most websites are not fit or robust enough for the internet search environment; many have problems they don’t even know about. Most websites aren’t very healthy, even if they look ‘good’. Fortunately, that means with the right ‘diet and exercise’ of a good online marketing solution, you’ll be ahead of the pack just by improving the health of your website.

Get Fit
Sometimes, just a clean bill of health isn’t enough. If you are in a very competitive environment or are playing in the big leagues, you’ll need to have an online marketing solution to match. You will need a highly regimented solution that is high impact and intensive.

Use a Trainer
Just spending more time or money on your website does not mean you are reaching your goals. The advice and on-going coaching from a good online marketing specialist is an essential guide for success. Lastly and most importantly, you don’t have to do it on your own. A good agency can do most of the heavily lifting to keep your online marketing in tip-top shape. And just like a trainer, it doesn’t require much of their time, and therefore it won’t cost you much.

Especially Important in SEO
This advice can be generalized to most streams of online marketing, but this is particularly important when assessing search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. The process of SEO is a credible and important part of any online marketing effort, however, be aware that SEO is becoming a growing buzz term associated with quick success schemes and effortless automated programs and software which search engines detest. Don’t be fooled.

Conclusion
Employing a physical fitness mentality and approach for online marketing will keep efforts focused, committed, and working in the right direction. It may be hard at the beginning but it won’t be long until you’ll see results. And even easier to keep that way!

The 2010 mediaFresh awards hosted by Digital Alberta are dedicated to the recognition of those Alberta Digital Media Professionals and Post-Secondary students who have created outstanding project and programs between September 2008 and November 2009.

Category: Best Entrepreneur Award for creative/business/technology entries will be judged on

• 40% Marketing Strategy
• 30% Commercial viability
• 30% Uniqueness of technology

Winning entries will be featured in a full color catalogue that will be published and distributed following the awards ceremony. Each winner will receive a complimentary copy of the catalogue for their portfolio. Additional copies of the mediaFresh 2010 will be distributed to promote digital media production in Alberta and around the world.

Fred Yee, CEO of Foundpages/ActiveConversion, is one of the nominees. We think Fred and the product / services fit the ranking criteria very well.

I spoke with a prospect recently who was disappointed with the results they were receiving from the Google advertising they had set up and paying as much as $5 per click with little or no response.  Search advertisers make it very easy for business owners to set up a pay per click account but the costs of setting it incorrectly are not as apparent as they should be.

In today’s blog we look at the top 5 mistakes made when setting up pay per click advertising:

1. Not doing the right keyword research – Search advertisers provide research tools to find keywords to run your advertisements on, but often they suggest the highest searched keywords which have the highest competition.  Selecting these keywords also requires you to bid significantly higher for them in order to have your advertisement show up.  In most cases it is better to select keywords which have a reasonably high search volume, but lower competition, which will help to keep your bids down in the long run.
2. Not defining a daily budget – You can define a daily budget for your advertising where your advertisements stop showing after the budget is reached.  Not doing this may result in your monthly budget being reached within a week or two and your advertisements not showing for the remainder of the month.
3. Not targeting the right audience – You need to define the cities, states or countries that you want your advertising to be shown in. It doesn’t make sense for a local service provider to show advertising across the nation.  It is also important to set the time of day you want your advertisements to show (ex. Not in the middle of the night).
4. Not improving your website or landing page – If you do not get any business off your website currently, then driving more traffic using pay per click advertising does not always mean that will improve.  Your company website needs to be credible and look professional before someone will contact you from it.  Improve your landing page and add the right offers or calls to action to entice your visitor to make contact.
5. Not maintaining the advertisements regularly – There are a lot of moving parts in pay per click advertising that often get overlooked; It’s not easy enough to simply set something up and let it run.  You need to pay attention to things like: bids, keywords, ad copy, click through rate, bounce rate, quality score, etc.  It is worth the effort to run experiments and try different variations on ad copy and landing pages to see what produces the best result.

Search advertising is a very powerful medium to use when it is done right.  It can produce a good amount of business and easily pay for itself.  If you do not have the expertise or time to manage it, we recommend consulting with an expert who can help you to manage and achieve better results.

It is important to note that paid search advertisements are only clicked on by ~30% of search engine users; the large majority of search results are delivered through organic listings, so ensure you have a search engine optimization strategy as well.

The folks at Forrester Research have updated their Interactive Marketing Forecast out to 2014. 

The table of contents has some predictable headlines:

• Interactive Will Cannibalize Traditional Media
• Interactive Marketing Spend Will Near $55 Billion By 2014
• Search Marketing Still Leads Interactive Spend
• Display Advertising Rebounds
• Email Marketing Continues Healthy Growth
• Social Media Fixes Itself In The Interactive Mix
• Mobile Marketing Matters – Post Recession
• WHAT IT MEANS – Interactive Trends Will Redefine Your Business

It’s a very good read, and a few points jumped out for me.

When faced with budget cuts or the need for immediate sales, these marketers find that interactive tools are less expensive, more measurable, and better for direct response than traditional media.

Empowered consumers today expect a customized, interactive brand experience that goes way beyond a 30-second television spot or two-dimensional print ad. Forty-two percent of online adults and 55% of online youth want to engage with their favorite brands through social applications.

And last, even laggard industries feel that they have enough experience and data to prove interactive marketing’s worth. Online display spending by telecom companies in Q1 2009 grew 50% over Q1 2008.

What was also interesting was the the potential for more growth; interactive marketing ad spend is still under represented and laggard compared to how much of sample media time is spend online.

You can sign up for a copy of the full report here, courtesy of  DemandGen Report. Check it out. Your marketing future may depend on it!

At the end of October Google released the latest PageRank (PR) updates. Has your Google PR gone up or down on your website? One of our brand new product websites, ActiveProspects, has gone from PR0 to PR5 in just two months and we are excited about it.

In an earlier post, I described how Google PageRank is based on a link analysis algorithm that is similar to a ballot system. When one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important that page is assumed to be. It is also calculated on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites.

Here are my tips on improving your Google PageRank:

1) Create professional and useful content on your website. When people find your content valuable, they will likely link and reference to your web content.

2) Provide client testimonials to your vendors. They will be happy to post your testimonial on their website and link to your website to show that its legitimate and credible (format the testimonial with a link).

3) Post insightful comments on blogs related to your industry (like this one!).  Avoid simply commenting with just “good post” etc. You’ll have to show that you understand the post; in your comment demonstrate a  shared experience or even challenge their idea with relevant sources.  Make sure in your profile your name links back to your website.

4) Your partners and clients are also good sources of relevant inbound links. Work hard at getting links from them.

5) Does your business have other websites. Make sure you create links to your website from your other web properties (but make sure these are not mirror sites).

There are many more ways to get credible inbound links, including outsourcing a link building campaign. Building up Googe PageRank through a link building campaign requires creativity and hard work. The upside is once you’ve earned a good Google PageRank for your website, the payoff is long term.

Inbound marketing is one of the hottest topics for marketers today. Whether it’s referral traffic from blogs, tweets or the king – search engine optimization, it’s obvious that visitors coming to your website on their own accord (or searching for what you do) are usually the best leads.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is key for inbound marketing as it’s how relevant content such as blogs, tweets, videos and websites get found – and how you can get qualified leads – for free!

One of the most important tasks for a marketer is to get the search engines to discover and index all page content of your website.  Search engines generally can find the pages on your website, but  unfortunately there are certain website elements commonly used by web designers that prevent search engine robots from doing their job — discovering the web pages.   I’m going to list some common ones so that you’ll be aware of them and take them into consideration when developing your websites.

1) Flash – I don’t mean not to use flash.  When Flash is used properly,  it can make a web page look very good and attractive.   However, when it’s used in the wrong place, it’ll prevent search engines from finding the content and positioning your website appropriately in the search results.  Generally, I’d advise not to use flash in creating your  navigation menus.

2) Image content – Do you know that even though you can read the text on the web page, the text content can be an image. Most search engines are not able to read the text on the images.  It’s also harder to perform content updates on the page when using image text.  To find out whether the text on the web page is an image or not, you can use your mouse to select and highlight the text. If the text cannot be selected,  it’s likely image text.

3) Javascript link – If  your website is using Javascript links, most search engine robots won’t be able to follow the links to find the other web pages.  Move your mouse over the link.  If you see that it says something that starts with “http:” in the status bar of your browser, you are OK.  If the test in the status bar starts with “javascript” in the status bar, the link is using javascript and is not search engine friendly.

4) Session ID – Websites that require a session ID to track visitors may have problems when ‘visited’ by search engines.  Session ID’s in URLs are the absolute kiss-of-death to search engine accessibility.  You can tell it’s a session ID in the URL adddress, as it will say ‘sessionid=xxxxxx’ where xxxxxx is a lot of numbers.

5) Frames – they don’t usually prevent search engine robots from discovering the web pages.  Content within a frame is not part of the same URL, it is actually another page inside the current page.  As a result, when searchers clicks through the search results, they might be landing on the ‘internal’ page which doesn’t contain the other parts of the original page.  This will also affect the web experience of your visitors.

6) Splash or intro pages – they usually contain a movie which search engines don’t understand and subsequently won’t index.  It’s also a fancy delay tactic that is disliked by most viewers. It also provides only one link for the robot to follow if it can find it.

There are solutions and workarounds to these problems. If you notice your website has the above search engine robot barriers, you will want to address the problem as soon as possible.  Allowing search engine robots to index the content of your web pages will dramatically increase your success on getting leads  from search engines!