Archive for the ‘Marketing Automation and Demand Generation’ Category
Best New B2B Marketing Blogs – The Blog Tree (Infographic)
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011The best B2B marketing blogs are once again creatively presented by marketing automation provider Eloqua and JESS3 in this year’s Blog Tree. It’s gratifying to see that Webbiquity sprouted a leaf this time out. As Joe Chernov explains in his blog tree post, “All gene pools benefit from healthy DNA, and if the blogosphere is going to continue to evolve, it’s important that new voices are heard. The Blog Tree: New Growth cheers about 60 active, insightful blogs launched (or significantly re-engineered) after January 1, 2009. It’s truly a collection of the freshest voices on the Web.”
You can find the interactive PDF version of this very cool infographic here or in Joe’s post.It’s great to see some familiar names like Pam Moore The Marketing Nut, Mack Collier, Savvy B2B Marketing and B2B Bloggers on this year’s tree, as well as a lot of new blogs to check out.
Review: Six Small Business CMS and Web Marketing Systems
Monday, August 29th, 2011What’s the best web content management system (CMS) for your small business? Should you look at something beyond a CMS—a web marketing system (WMS), that provides additional functions like customer relationship management (CRM) and email? There’s no shortage of options, and the decision is an important one: you’ll be “married” to the platform you choose for as long as your current site is up.
Content management systems are valuable tools for small businesses that 1) don’t want to make a big investment in IT infrastructure, 2) don’t have web development (HTML, CSS etc.) expertise on staff, and 3) want to be able to maintain their own web content (adding new pages, text and images) over time, without needing to learn web coding skills.
“Free” CMS options such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have an obvious appeal (price) to small businesses, but none are cost-free. All require some level of technical expertise, and Joomla and Drupal particularly have steep learning curves. Low-cost, fee-based tools are generally more user-friendly, provide more features, and most importantly come bundled with support. For businesses looking beyond “free” tools, here are six CMS and WMS options that can help you get more sales and marketing productivity out of your website, while being easy on your web content contributors.
Keep in mind that all of these tools impose some design limitations; if you need a truly custom look and feel like these sites, your only option is to hire a professional web design and development firm. But if you can live within a template (and most of these tools do offer a respectable array of options), you can save thousands of dollars on design and coding costs.
CMS Only
These platforms offer website building and content management tools with hosting, but no “extras.” If you are just looking to get a site up on the web and already have systems in place for CRM and marketing automation, these tools are worthy of consideration.
Pricing: $150-$600 per year ($12-$50 per month)
Squarespace is a generally well-regarded tool with reasonable design functionality for building natively search-optimized websites and blogs. It offers a solid set of features including site search, multiple permission levels for different types of contributors, a form-builder, and built-in analytics. The learning curve is far less daunting than most free CMS alternatives, and a strength of the tool is its mobile support. For anyone looking for an inexpensive, easy-to-use, basic website building and management tool, Squarespace is definitely worth consideration.
UPDATE: After closer examination, SquareSpace is not worthy of consideration, due to weaknesses in search engine optimization, specifically:
- • Custom meta title tags for high-level pages are limited to 50 characters (even the most conservative SEOs recommend 65 characters for the title tag).
- • Meta title tags inside a section (e.g., “blog”) will always begin with the section name. You can customize the section name, but you can’t override the fact the all-important first few characters of every page title in that section will contain it.
- • You can’t create custom meta description tags (!) which are essential in “selling the click.”
- • The people behind SquareSpace seem to lack understanding of how SEO works. True, manipulative tactics don’t work, but solid, white hat SEO is essential to getting a website ranked highly. Their information is both inaccurate and offensive to legitimate SEO professionals.
$240-$1200/year ($20-$100 per month)
Like the other tools listed here, LightCMS is low-cost, easy to use, search-optimized and provides tools like a forms builder. What sets it apart is better design flexibility than most of the alternatives, calendar tools and built-in ecommerce functionality. For developers and agencies, LightCMS also offers one of the most attractive partner programs. Considering all of its features, LightCMS is another shortlist-worthy tool for basic website creation, particularly for smaller B2C companies who want an easy-to-manage online store.
$300 per year ($25 per month)
Another website building option that includes extras like ecommerce functionality with credit card processing, and nightly backups. The site is a bit cheesy, but the functionality of the tool is solid. Solution Toolbox provides their own comparison of their system to Squarespace and LightCMS, but take it with a grain of salt; it’s biased in their favor of course and some of the specifics are out of date (for example, Squarespace now includes a forms-builder). Still, for smaller consumer marketers who want to run an online store in addition to their basic website, this is worth a look.
Web Marketing Platforms
These suites combine CMS functionality with additional web marketing applications to provide more than just a website, but a complete online marketing software system.
$480 per year ($40 per month)
Business Catalyst combines the features of the products above—a CMS, forms builder, and ecommerce tools—with email marketing functionality and a basic CRM system. It provides respectable design flexibility and support for mobile devices. Though the product had issues in its original incarnation, Adobe has fixed many of these issues since acquiring it in late 2009 and continues to invest in product development. The catch? Business Catalyst isn’t sold directly to users, only through web developers and agencies (though there are ways around this).
$2,400/year ($200 per month)
Genoo is a solid, easy to use tool, very strong on email marketing / marketing automation. It offers some of the best built-in SEO tools of any of these packages. Genoo doesn’t provide native CRM functionality, but does have a pre-built integration to Salesforce.com. This is ideal for midsized companies with at least moderately sophisticated internal marketing resources who are already using a separate CRM system and are ready to graduate from hosted email marketing services. Genoo’s offering includes training on how to use its lead-nurturing capabilities.
$1,800/year ($150 per month)
This is a complete web marketing package for smaller, non-ecommerce businesses. It provides a robust CMS for a website and blog along with native CRM, email marketing, and forms-building tools, as well as comprehensive strategy guidance for making all of the pieces work together. The ePROneur package uniquely combines hosting, software, services and strategy to help companies with limited resources effectively generate leads and revenue online. The web marketing resources section of the company’s website also offers a wealth of free strategic and tactical web marketing information.
Any of the alternatives above can help small to midsize companies cost-effectively build and manage their web presence with no IT infrastructure and limited technical expertise. The key from there is to choose a platform whose strengths match up with your business type and needs. And also to investigate multiple options to determine which tool, and company, you are most comfortable working with.
FTC Disclosure: Webbiquity has no affiliate relationships with any of the vendors in this review.
Is Salesforce.com a Player in Marketing Automation Software?
Thursday, January 27th, 2011Guest post by Lauren Carlson.
Salesforce.com is the cloud computing darling of customer relationship management (CRM) software. They have significant control of mind share in that space, and their legacy in customer service and sales force automation software is strong. However, CRM is a trifecta. It is made up of sales, service and—wait for it—marketing! So, where does Salesforce.com stand as a marketing automation solution?
Marketing Automation Software Guide decided to answer this question. Up front, Salesforce.com will garner appeal because the marketing app is bundled with the Sales Cloud 2 product. You can’t argue with a free app. However, there are several best-of-breed players in the market that have developed robust, feature-rich systems that can handle the most sophisticated marketing strategies. So, when should Salesforce.com make your marketing automation software shortlist? When should you look elsewhere?
To answer these questions, MASG evaluated the system by looking at product functionality. They assessed the seven high-level functions of a marketing automation, identifying capabilities and gaps. You can view the chart on their blog post here.
For a more in-depth analysis, you can visit the MASG blog. However, the verdict is that Salesforce.com is a great place to start with marketing automation. It has the necessary tools and capabilities for very basic marketing activities such as limited email marketing and campaign management. However, as your company grows, your marketing activities might need to scale as well. In this case, we suggest seeking out a best-of-breed vendor, such as Marketo, Eloqua, Genius, Manticore Technology, Genoo or the wide variety of other systems. These vendors have sophisticated features and processes that can meet the needs of marketing teams in any size organization.
Lauren Carlson is a CRM Market Analyst with Software Advice.
FTC Disclosure: Webbiquity has no financial relationship with any of the vendors mentioned in this post.
Lead Nurturing – How to Develop a Solid Process for B2B Lead Management
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010Guest post by Alexandre Sagala.
Effective lead nurturing is crucial to successful b2b marketing. “Lead nurturing can help you improve your lead conversions over time.” “Lead nurturing will generate an increase in sale opportunities up to 20%.” “Lead nurturing can help you build a trusted relationship with your economic buyer.” Understanding that not every lead is ready to buy right away, but that it’s less costly to convert an existing lead than to generate a new one, you may be asking yourself, “I need to do lead nurturing right—where do I start?”
Here is a process to get you started on the right track.
Planning
Before starting with the execution of lead nurturing campaigns, you need to spend time planning. Ask yourself and answer these questions:
- Do I understand my buyers’ buying cycle? This is extremely important. You need to be able to map out your typical buyer’s buying cycle. It is the basis of any good nurturing campaign since you will building your nurturing campaign content and messages on each step of the buying cycle. Involving sales at this time is a good idea. Confirm your thoughts on the buying cycle with them. They understand it since they deal with buyers all the time.
- Do I have enough quality content for each stage of the buying cycle? Ensure you have content and the different means to deliver that content at the appropriate time to the appropriate buyer. You can have the best buying cycle map but if you don’t have content you won’t be able to nurture your prospects correctly. To make sure you have the right content consider what goes through a potential customer’s mind as he or she makes a buying decision. Are they looking for more information on the product? Do they need more explanations on the value proposition?
- How will I measure my results? Will it be by tracking number of closed sales? Will it be by percentage of buyers moving from one stage to another in my buying map? Make sure you know this before you start so you can measure the results of your nurturing campaigns accordingly.
- What do I plan to achieve? Do you want to see an increase in the numbers of sales closed? Do you want to build a trusted relationship with your economic buyer? There are different objectives possible from a lead nurturing campaign. Make sure you know why you are doing it and then communicate it internally. This will set the right expectations with everyone in your business and make it easier to interpret campaign results.
Execution
Typically, a lead nurturing program uses these communication mechanisms: emails, case studies, articles, events, podcasts, white papers, social media messages and webinars. Use the map that you built during your planning stage and map content pieces (emails, case studies on product successes, invitation to a webinar) to each step. Think about what type of information the potential buyer is looking for at each stage. What questions will the buyer want answers to? Provide those answers using the mechanisms listed above.
Good practice dictates that mechanism be mixed and matched at each step since different buyers’ prefer different means of communication (written vs. audio vs. video). You should also ensure you are trying to move the potential buyer to the next stage of the buying cycle with your communications. Providing a way to get in contact with sales during the later phases is also a good practice.
An example of simple lead nurturing campaign could be:
- Day 1: Visitor downloads whitepaper on “Effective lead nurturing” (capture visitor information so we can communicate with him).
- Day 3: Lead is sent email thanking him for the download and inviting him to a webinar on lead nurturing.
- Day 7: Lead attends webinar. Send follow-up email asking if he would be interested in learning more how your product can help with lead nurturing.
- If “yes,” schedule a demo with sales. (qualified lead!)
- If “no,” continue nurturing.
- Day 15: Email recent customer success story, in related industry if possible.
- Day 21: Email “touching base” note. Offer other valuable information (case study, new blog post etc..)
- Day 30: Prospect calls up sales (qualified lead!)
Spacing and number of communications should be based on the length of your average sales cycle and complexity of product/services being sold. The more complex and the longer the sales cycle is, the more widely spaced the communications should be.
With this plan and information in place, you should be ready to start your nurturing your leads. If you start a lead nurturing campaign after reading this article l would be interested in knowing how it went. Let me know by email (contact information is on website listed below.)
Alexandre Sagala is the co-founder of Alsamarketing, a provider of marketing automation software that helps marketers convert and nurture online visitors into customers.
Social Media: Making Friends for Fun & Profit
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Guest post by Kim Albee
With all of the hype surrounding social media, knowing how to dip your toe in the water without falling into the deep end of the social media pool can be challenging. Should you participate? What avenues will be most fruitful? And how do you optimize the time you spend with social media sites?
Excerpted from my new booklet, Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell, here are some tips that will help:
1. Find 3-5 groups in your target market and join them. Follow the discussions, and when one comes up where you can add value (not just spout about yourself and your business), then participate – help people solve issues and think more effectively about whatever the subject is.
2. Subscribe to LinkedIn Answers for your segments and/or categories. Answer a question every day (be within the top 5 answers posted) until you are selected as the “Best Answer”. Then slow to 3 times per week until you get another “Best Answer” designation. Then slow to one per week (or keep it up if you’re having fun and have the time). The purpose is to build you up as an expert who adds value in your arena / subject matter.
1. Think carefully about your Twitter name. Use your name or a name that is memorable or says something relevant about what you do for your customers.
2. Tweet according to your content strategy. Push traffic to your available downloads. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly or su.pr to schedule tweets ahead of time.
3. Re-Tweet good posts and make friends.
The jury is still out on Facebook’s effectiveness for the B2B market. We’ve got some useful first steps in the booklet on Facebook specifically, as well as additional tips on both LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social media is in the press every day. Its impact on many industries is still murky, but how it is re-shaping marketing strategy and activities like market research and demand generation continues to get clearer and more understood.
Utilizing social media as part of your overall marketing strategy and understanding where it fits in your marketing mix are critical to effectively leveraging your participation and time.
Effective Online Marketing In A Nutshell covers the 10 essential items of Internet Marketing – the 10 critical factors to focus on to be as effective as possible. It offers more information on social media, where it fits, and ways to use it effectively in your online marketing strategy.
To your Internet Marketing Success!
Kim Albee is Founder and President of Genoo, a marketing automation and online marketing tools vendor for small and midsize businesses. She is a frequent speaker at marketing conferences, such as Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Summit, the Online Marketing Summit national, virtual and upcoming regional conferences, as well as the upcoming Niche Digital Conference in Chicago this September. She founded the B2B Online Marketing group on LinkedIn, and is committed to providing information and tools that allow businesses to compete and win in their online marketing activities.
FTC Disclosure Notice: I have absolutely no financial relationship with Genoo whatsoever, and have not been compensated for this post in any way—other than hopefully getting a few retweets.
