Archive for January, 2010
How Social Media Changed the Sales Cycle into the Buying Cycle
Friday, January 15th, 2010Back in prehistoric times (before the Internet, that is), b2b buyers learned about products and services by reading (print) magazines and (printed) analyst reports. Once they developed a short list of vendors for consideration, they contacted the companies (using phones, which were connected via wires) and the companies sent them (printed) sales collateral by mail (postal, that is). Then sales people would contact the prospects and use a “consultative” sales process. Buyers would tell each sales rep all about their company, industry and problems, and each sales rep in turn would then explain why his or her product/service was absolutely the best fit to meet the buyer’s needs. Marketers spent a lot of time creating attractive sales collateral materials–brochures, specification sheets and the like–and getting these printed on nice, glossy paper. Store rooms and offices were full of these glorious materials.
Then the Internet came along, and despite pronouncements that it would “change everything,” it really didn’t for the first several years. Sure, it was a leap forward in distribution technology: websites replaced printed magazines and reports, email replaced postal mail and faxes, phones lost their wires, and online conferencing reduced, somewhat, the need for travel. But processes didn’t really change much; marketers still spent a lot of time producing brochures and spec sheets, only now there were more often delivered in PDF form than printed. The sales process benefited from electronic communications, but remained largely the same. Detailed information about vendors and their offerings was still limited, enabling marketing and sales to act as gatekeepers of information. Even in the late 1990′s, sales people were still trained on how to control and manage the sales process.
Things began to change when blogging became popular about seven years ago. Established voices (journalists and analysts) had a new channel for expression. Customers, competitors, and other people with expertise in a given area even if they “had no dog in the fight” became new information sources for prospective buyers. Blogs were different from other forms of communication: less formal, more matter-of-fact, (sometimes) unbiased, and most importantly, they provided the opportunity for feedback. Readers could respond to and extend the conversation through comments. Marketing and sales were still largely in control, but buyers were entering sales cycles with more and better information.
But it’s been the explosion of social media and user-generated content over the past three years that has really changed the sales process. Prospects can ask questions, within or beyond their social networks. Anyone can answer; not just the traditional “experts,” but anyone inside or outside of a vendor organization, including customers. Journalists, analysts and other industry influencers have new channels for communication. Employees who in the past were far removed from customers, or at least certainly from prospects, can join online conversations. Customers can say pretty much the same things they’ve always said, only now instead of talking to only a few close colleagues and peers, their words can reach thousands or tens of thousands of social media readers and participants.
The result is that prospects can learn far more about an offering before ever contacting the vendor. Marketing has more involvement before the sale; marketers can’t control the conversations, but they need to monitor them and participate. By the time a prospective buyer contacts a vendor, they are closer to a decision and their information needs reduced to a small number of very specific questions (almost always including price). And they no longer have time for that “consultative sale;’ just as they are coming to the sales conversation armed with a tremendous amount of information about the vendor and it’s offerings, they expect the sales person to know about their company, needs and industry trends as well. No wonder sales groups are among the heaviest corporate users of social media. Tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs not only enable sales pros to learn more about their prospects before the sale, they also raise the expectation that sales people will do so.
This is not necessarily bad news for sales. Social media has the potential to lengthen marketing cycles but shorten sales cycles, and by enabling both sides to begin the process knowing more about each other, to allow for higher-value conversations.
All of this is one reason webbiquity, or web presence optimization (WPO) is so important. Prospects are going to be checking you out online, well beyond your website, long before they have “raised their hands” and made themselves known to you. What will they find?
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Book Review: Website Optimization – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets
Thursday, January 14th, 2010Author Andrew King, president of Internet marketing firm Web Site Opimization, LLC has really done it. In Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets
Or at least almost any business. There are still some specialized skills required—it certainly helps to have some background in online marketing, web analytics and HTML coding—though King’s clear and concise prose removes a lot of the mystery.
The book is divided into two major sections: Search Engine Marketing Optimization and Web Performance Optimization. It pays for itself in the first 50 pages—two chapters covering natural search engine optimization and an organic search case study. While much of the material here is well-covered in blogs and other books, even experienced SEOs are likely to find a few new ideas here. For example, though I’ve used many keyword tools and even written about some of the best keyword research tools here and here, I somehow managed to overlook Wordtracker’s free keyword suggestion tool, which uses data from Dogpile and Metacrawler to estimate search volume across all search engines.
Here are several more key SEO insights provided by King:
- Wordtracker’s fee-based tool goes beyond free keyword tools by tracking what it calls a keyword effectiveness index. According to King, “The keyword effectiveness index, or KEI, is a comparison of the number of searches and the number of web page results. Targeting high KEI phrases with adequate search volume gives you the best chance to rank quickly on particular terms by going where others aren’t competing. Very Sun Tzu.”
- “Create your keywords tag using your master keyword list and the visible words in your page. Although you can separate keywords with a comma or space, omitting commas will give you more proximity hits between adjacet terms.” King recommends using up to 30 words, with specific key words repeated up to four times.
- “After title tags, headlines are the most important component of web pages for search engine rankings…Include the primary keyphrase of your web page in the first-level header…The main header should describe the content of the page succinctly in 40 to 60 characters.” Use real header tags (h1 through h6) rather than “fake” p-class tags in your CSS files. And keep in mind that h2-h6 tags are just as important, possibly even more important, than h1 title text.
- Bake in your most important key phrase to your home tab, so
What is Webbiquity? How to Be Everywhere Online
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Welcome to Webbiquity! What exactly is that? Briefly, Webbiquity, or web presence optimization (WPO for those who prefer TLA’s), is the fusion of SEO, social media, interactive PR, online reputation management and other disciplines to make an individual or organization ubiquitous on the web for their name/brand and unique descriptive phrase. If SEO is about getting your website onto page one of Google, WPO is about owning that page.
For example, Jill Konrath is webbiqitous for the phrase “selling to big companies,” holding all 10 spots on the front page of Google for that phrase. The results include her website, blog, a link to her book
of that title on Amazon, and articles she’s written. Ardath Albee is almost as dominant for her unique phrase, “marketing interactions,” placing in 7 of the top 12 spots on Google, including the top four. And if you Google “sales management thought leader” in quotes, six of the top ten spots belong to the same sales leadership guru. Interestingly, a Google search for “world’s largest online bookstore” doesn’t display the most obvious result
anywhere on page one. Maybe a company with $20 billion in sales and a $600 million annual marketing budget doesn’t need webbiquity, but smaller enterprises without Super Bowl-size advertising budgets can certainly benefit from it.
From a historical perspective, the web a decade ago (or even a bit less) was still primarily a broadcast medium with limited inactivity. Although in theory anyone could own a website even then, the web presence of most commercial organizations was limited to their own websites and whatever had been written about them by professional publishers and analysts, plus a few directory listings. The last few years have, of course, seen the emergence of social media and an explosion of user-generated content. A company’s website is now only one of myriad places where customers, buyers and other interested parties can find information about it.
This new environment has created the conditions for web presence optimization: using all of the tools now available to make a company as “findable” as possible not only for branded searches but also for key phrases that uniquely describe the enterprise and its offerings. Using these tools properly means not only dominating search, but also presenting a clear and consistent message across channels, wherever buyers or industry influencers may find you.
Specifically, web presence optimization is about achieving webbiquity using the tools show in this diagram, including social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, interactive PR, video and content marketing to disseminate the company’s message as broadly as possible. Just as importantly, companies need to maximize the search value of these different tools and platforms by taking advantage of the linking and cross-linking opportunities they provide.So, for example, social media releases–part of interactive PR efforts–point readers to company microsites and its media sharing (images, video, presentations etc.). Media sharing accounts are connected to Twitter, which is also used to promote content marketing. Reputation management sites point the organization’s Twitter account as well as social networking profiles. And everything links back the enterprise’s website and blog.
The end result is that when customers, prospects and influencers (bloggers, journalists, analysts etc.) are looking for information on your industry, they find you everywhere. Your story and messages are bolstered by your webbiquity. You have the opportunity to become a valued resource in your industry. Further, the interactions you have with these various constituencies across social networking and other media platforms demonstrate that your people aren’t just smart, they are also helpful and responsive.
This is obviously a high-level view of the elements of webbiquity. Future posts here will delve more deeply into the tools and tactics that can help you and your company “be everywhere online” for your brand and industry discussions.
Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010What are the four stages of Twitter enlightenment? How important is Twitter for business? How can you get more retweets and efficiently manage unfollowers? How exactly did Dell generate so much revenue by Twittering? What are the “secrets” of top corporate Twitterers?
Learn the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best blog posts and articles from last year on Twitter techniques, tools and tactics.
Sanity check: The four stages of a typical Twitter user by TechRepublic
Jason Hiner brilliantly summarizes the path to enlightenment of the typical Twitter newbie, from “confusion and indignation” through the use of tools and mobile messaging. Great advice for newbies, and experienced Tweeters will likely get a smile of recognition out of this post as well.
A Twitter Marketing Sanity Check by iMedia Connection
Yes, another Twitter “sanity check.” In this article, Daniel Flamberg explains why he is “stumped and frustrated” by Twitter (maybe he needs to read Jason’s post above?) but in the end concedes that “Twitter is ripe for experimentation,” and advises marketers to “be true to your brand personality and ethos and play with this (not so) new tool.” In another iMedia Connection piece on Twitter, Twitter brand smackdown: The winners and losers, Rodney Rumford highlights lessons from the Twitter successes of Ford, Zappos and Dell. And in a third piece from the same publication, Twitter now a business ‘must-have,‘ Madhuri Shekar quotes a MarketingProfs survey showing that “84 percent of respondents (most of whom represent small businesses) claim that their company’s Twitter usage will increase and 46 percent say it will increase by a ‘significant’ margin” in the coming year, and quotes the conclusion of Ann Handley, chief content officer for MarketingProfs, “Much like Facebook, Twitter is now moving into the business mainstream.”
What’s a Retweet? by Social Media Today
The title may not sound promising to experienced Twitterers, but in this excellent post, Jill Kurtz notes that less than 1/5 of 1% of all tweets get 100 retweets—the level considered a “home run” for a Twitter post—then provides helpful tips for getting into that retweet stratosphere, such as including “pls RT” with tweets, keeping tweets short enough for others to retweet without editing, and asking for RT’s only for relevant content.
5 Twitter Tools to Help You Manage Unfollowers by WebProNews
Jeremy Muncy reviews five helpful Twitter tools, from the ubiquitous (Twellow) to the less well-known, such as Twitterless, an online application that not only notifies you when someone stops following, but also supplies “a graphed out ‘follower history’ over a period of time to help you understand where your (sic) gaining or losing followers.”
Dell Says It Has Earned $3 Million From Twitter by The New York Times
Okay, the figure quoted in the headline is now outdated (the most recent Twitter revenue claimed by Dell on Twitter is $6.5 million), but Claire Cain Miller does an excellent job of outlining how Dell has generated, and continues to generate, significant sales through Twitter. She also notes that “Twitter made exactly $0 from those Dell sales, something that will very likely change.”
Pro Twitterers Share Their Secrets by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Mark Walsh reports on the secrets of highly successful corporate Twitterers from Comcast, Dunkin’ Donuts and Six Flags. Among the tips: be human, authentic, even a bit immature. Favorite snip: “Frank Eliason, director of digital care at Comcast…drew hearty laughter when he described the cable giant as being known for its customer service. ‘I can’t wait until people stop laughing at that joke,’ added Eliason.”
Twitter in B2B – a Velocity Slideshare by The B2B Marketing Blog
Doug Kessler outlines his firm’s presentation on seven ways to use Twitter for b2b marketing. Advising b2b bloggers on the use of Twitter, Doug writes “Twitter is already playing a role in content marketing campaigns — for finding topics, inviting input and promoting the finished pieces. It’s all about the engagement.”
10 ways to get your business in on the microblogging craze by iMedia Connection
Clay McDaniel offers some basic but solid advice in this guide to making Twitter work for marketing, such as pick a leader (so there is “one personality driving the charge”), establish a regular rhythm, and “talk like a real person” (not as obvious as you might think). Three other articles from iMedia Connection worth reading are 7 marketing mistakes to avoid on Twitter by Rodney Rumford, Meet the brands that ‘get’ Twitter by Michael Estrin, and 7 tips for the perfect Twitter profile by Jason Baer.
Twitter 101, Part 2 by Search Engine Watch
Ron Jones reviews popular Twitter tools, offers tips on finding the right people to follow while growing your own following, and provides a basic guide to understanding Twitter lingo. This post is an excellent starting point for those new to Twitter.
Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days by Winning The Web
Gyutae Park details a real-world case of how to use Twitter to drive traffic to worthwhile content, using a hot topic, your network of followers, social bookmarking sites, the Tweet This WordPress plugin, a helpful follow-up article—and a bit of luck.
Twitter background guidelines by Croncast
For anyone still using a “canned” Twitter background found somewhere on the web, or worse, one of Twitter’s own default backgrounds, this post provides the technical specifications—file dimensions, size, coordinates and instructions—for creating a custom Twitter background image.
Twitter FAIL! The 8 worst brands on the world’s hottest microblog by Revolution
Gareth Jones heaps scorn on eight global brands that got Twitter wrong, and explains why their strategies (or lack thereof) went awry. Astoundingly, as of May of this year, major brands like McDonalds, Pepsi, Vodafone and Gucci each had less than 1,000 followers. This article lets you learn from their mistakes.
Best Search Engine Marketing Tips of 2009, Part 1
Sunday, January 10th, 2010What’s the real optimal cost per lead for your SEM program? How can you improve conversion rates? Keep your search marketing program growing? Assure you that aren’t overlooking any important opportunities for optimization?
Discover the answers to these questions and others here in some of the best posts on search engine marketing of last year.
Finding The Optimal Cost-Per-Lead by Search Engine Land
Patricia Hursh makes the case that the lowest cost per lead isn’t always best, as this pursuit can cause marketers to leave leads on the table, so to speak. The goal, as she states it, should be rather on “maximizing lead volume at an acceptable (profitable) cost/lead.”
5 ways to boost your lead conversion rate by iMedia Connection
Noting that 78% of marketers consider generating online leads one of their top priorities, Andreas Roell offers advice on how improve both the quality and quantity of leads, including sharing source information between marketing and sales (as not all leads are created equal) and carefully monitoring the lead generation performance of each source. In another excellent piece from iMedia Connection, 10 tips for extending paid search growth, Noah Elkin and Rick Dalton provide tips on how to increase results from paid search, such as expanding your keyword list, optimizing text ads, carefully segmenting keywords and using the AdWords Search Query report to identify negative keywords to add to campaigns.
9 things you MUST know before you start any conversion rate optimization by Search Engine People
Though this post is aimed primarily at b2c e-commerce sites, b2b marketers may find a few useful takeaways as well. Khalid Saleh provides helpful tips on how to improve conversion rates such as analyzing your analytics, viewing optimization as a long-term commitment, andstarting optimization during the initial site development process.
Finding Google AdWords Super Converter Keywords by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Laurie Sullivan reports on an online presentation by AdGooroo founder Richard Stokes, in which he explained how to find “super converters”—combinations of keyword phrases, ad copy, and landing pages that align to produce “enormous profits.” Stokes pointed out that “They are nearly impossible to predict,” but explained a formula for identifying them and methods to increase the odds.
Researchers: paid search ads don’t get as many clicks as believed by Econsultancy
Patricio Robles reports on a study which showed that contrary to other research indicating that paid search results get 25-30% of all search query clicks, the actual number is closer to 15%. The study authors admit that because they focused on meta search engine DogPile, the figures may be different for other search engines (such as Google, maybe?). What is clear is that, regardless of the precise figure, a significant majority of clicks go to organic results; therefore, smart marketers will invest in both paid search and organic SEO.
Aaron interviews Ben and Karl from Conversion Rate Experts (CRE) by SEO Book
Aaron Wall talks to Dr. Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson of Conversion Rate Experts about improving conversion rates, the most common mistakes search marketers make, messaging, audience targeting, testing, the role of public relations in the conversion process, generating referrals and more.
Never Get Bored With My PPC Tasks Checklist by PPC People
As Amber writes, “This post is dedicated to all the PPC search advertisers out there who think they have done everything to their PPC account and still can’t get the results they need to meet their goals. Just like any job out there, you can never be bored with your PPC account. There is ALWAYS something you can do to improve your performance.” She goes on to provide 15 tips for areas to check and tweak, such as geotargeting settings, keyword groups, negative keywords, ad text, bids, day-parting, landing page design and more.
