Get Found Online – ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, November 20th, 2008HubSpot’s ebook, Get Found Online, is right on the money. Today’s marketing is changing from outbound to inbound, and “consumers are going to the Internet to start their purchasing process.” For businesses to remain competitive, their websites need to be found online through search engines, the blogosphere and social media sites.
Luckily, this eBook gives detailed steps on how to be found on each of these inbound marketing techniques. Here is a short outline which should entice you to read the eBook for all the great how to tips (pages 5-9) to get found online.
How to get found on search engines:
- Find Keywords - choose keywords that your target market is using
- On-Page SEO - place keywords in the page title, URL, headings and page text
- Off-Page SEO - build more links
- Measure & Analyze
How to get found on blogs:
- Read - other industry blogs
- Comment - join in on the conversation (even link back to your own blog)
- Write - find the right blog software, blog weekly and promote your blog
- Measure & Analyze
How to get found on social media:
- Guidelines for Engagement - join communities and provide useful information, don’t just sell your company
- Publish, Share, and Network - everyone can publish and share anything, everyone can network with anyone (through content placement sites, linking to others an online communities)
- Measure & Analysis
I manage all the online media for ReachForce, and found these tips extremely useful. It is really cool to see how many people go to our website from our blog and social media sites. Think of any other useful tips while reading Get Found Online? Please share!
HubSpot is an inbound marketing system that helps your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.
No book club next week for Thanksgiving (you have an extra week to read)! Look for us on Thursday, December 4th talking about Marketo’s Best Practices in Lead Nurturing…enjoy!
Marc Benioff, a Used Car Salesman? - Marketing WTF?
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Earlier this month, we packed up our little dog and pony show and headed for Dreamforce, salesforce.com’s annual user conference. If you have never been to Dreamforce, here’s a quick description: the Expo floor is pretty typical, cookie-cutter turnkey booths, lots of logoed button downs and khakis as well as a few who think outside the box (one booth was actually handing out condoms). Last year we were the wackiest booth on the floor with a Let’s Make Deal theme complete with costumes. This year, however, this was the first thing every attendee saw when they stepped onto the show floor:
I could not for the life of me figure out why this car was on the show floor and what it had to do with salesforce.com. Come to find out it all had to do with Neil Young, yes that Neil Young. He was a speaker at Dreamforce and is a driving force behind LincVolt. Salesforce.com built a website for LincVolt; you can check it out here. Apparently the site was built on the Force.com platform (so there is some relevancy) but the weird thing is LincVolt is not actually using it as their website.
The old adage says, “All press is good press,” but I have to say this was not at all targeted. They did get a lot of attention and even the local news crew covered the event. But LincVolt’s vision is “to inspire a generation by creating a clean automobile propulsion technology that serves the needs of the 21st Century and delivers performance that is a reflection of the driver’s spirit.” Will someone tell me what that has to do with salesforce.com?
B2B Marketing for $100 - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #173
Monday, November 17th, 2008As I was working on my FREE list last week I noticed I seemed to also be building a list of things that we as B2B Marketers can do that require minimal cost, like less than $100.
- StumbleUpon advertising – be very targeted with your ad and your landing page. Each click only costs you $.05. I’ve only heard good stuff about this, we’ll be trying this one immediately.
- Long Tail PPC keywords – think niche, pick words or phrases people would use to search for your EXACT solution. The landing page is just as important as your ad. You’re goal is to convert unknown visitors into known leads. Remember you can track companies visiting your landing pages using ReachForce Convert.
- Survey Monkey or Zoomerang – both have free versions or subscription pricing (for more features) of about $20/per month. Create a survey and use it for lead generation, thought leadership or PR. People are interested in what their peers think and are doing, share your results with the participants.
- PRWeb – write a news release and link it up. Add an offer to the news release or offer additional content on a landing page with the full announcement.
- Start a blog – you can do this for free but you might consider investing in your own look (vs. stock templates and photos). Regularly updated content helps your SEO too.
- Video/Podcast Series – you can add them to your website and use them for lead generation programs. Get a FLiP camera and set up your YouTube account and you’re ready to go. Remember to keep your videos and podcasts short and to the point.
- Email campaign - If you don’t already use an email or marketing automation system, check out VerticalResponse. Emails start at less than $.02 a piece.
I’m sure my short list is only a beginning of things you can do for about $100, please feel free to add to the list if you’ve got more.
Customer Experience Index Scoring - Part 2 - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #172
Friday, November 14th, 2008Last week I expressed my thoughts about the differences between “loyal” and “satisfied” customers. I give lots of credit to Net Promoter for the role it has played promoting (sorry for pun) the concept of easy to digest relationship marketing metrics. That said – I personally need more than just an advocacy index to create and tune relationship strategy for my company’s customers.
Customer Experience Indexing is how I measure, plan and act on both emotional (loyal) and quantifiable (satisfied) customer feedback. Starting with item 1 below, my next several posts will open discussion about …
- Optimizing the flow of both loyalty and satisfaction feedback
- Analysis of feedback and calculation “CEI scores”
- Using the data for short, mid and long term account plans for retention and growth
- Using the data to locate new prospects using rule based company profiling and role-based targeting
- Using the data to plan and deliver action plans aimed at reshaping customer attitudes and opinions
Customer feedback in the consumer marketing world has become an art form. Comparatively, B2B companies seem to lag far behind in having clear, sustainable ways to collect feedback, as well as having formal business process to make sure collected feedback is actionable.
The best way to get started is to make sure your company’s business leaders buy in and get involved. And the best way to make sure this happens is to write up a plan and make sure it gets budgeted. (Warning — Don’t even start a Customer Experience Measurement initiative if you don’t have this support. Without it, you will do more harm than good with your customers — as well as waste a lot of time and effort.)
While there are many variables to this type of planning by company size, type, etc., this blog series will cover quite a few customer feedback channels. The most common of all is the dreaded “annual customer satisfaction survey” (mine come with a few twists), and for a number of reasons it’s the best way to get a Customer Experience Measurement effort successfully off the ground.
To finish off this week’s post here is a checklist for getting your plan started:
- Subscribe to an inexpensive online survey tool (a valuable thing you’ll find many uses for).
- Figure $60 per customer as a good budget for getting the first year of your plan started (very large customer bases may need smaller scale plan)
- Involve everyone with frequent customer facing responsibilities (Account managers, Project managers, etc.), segment your list up and assign “contact ownership” by role, (not just by account).
- Meet with company stakeholders to craft role-based, multiple choice questions that need to be asked and answered. (We’ll talk about putting the scoring mechanism in place later). There are two basic types of questions to consider:
- Service fundamentals (quality function, basic expectations
- Advocacy (value, competitive advantage)
- Test the questions on at least 2 friendly customers and ask them what questions they think you should ask.
- Create and review the invitee list with your assigned contact owners. Usually, I like to keep the invitations focused on people you deal with (by role) at accounts that have been active within the past 12-18 months. Make sure email addresses and other contact information are accurate/current and that all contact owners “agree” (important) that inviting them into survey process is viable (formula is alive + working + accessible = invitee).
- Clarify objectives, rewards and tactics. I’ve run a few of these initiatives so I tend to aim high.
- Goals/objectives: If the invitee list is agreed to with the assigned contact owners (step 6), shooting for and achieving 90% response rates within 45 days is highly doable.
- Rewards: Offer invitees a meaningful reward for taking time to complete the survey. There are many ideas here, but $20* Amazon.com e-gift certificates have always worked wonders for me. Offer the same $20* (per response) reward to the assigned contact owners as a way to motivate them to provide all important follow-up throughout the remainder of the 45 campaign. *Note that we’ve already used 2/3s of the per customer budget.
- The following tactics have proven highly successful in maximizing response rates:
-Don’t ask more than 10 questions
-Keep questions pithy
-Avoid soliciting open ended responses as much as possible
-Schedule email invitations/reminders to avoid heavy traffic
-Leverage companywide email signature lines with reminders/links
-Leverage all phone customer phone contact with reminders
-Include a write up about the survey in your customer newsletter
-Leverage outbound customer mailing (including billing) with reminders
-Create fun response rate competition amongst the assigned contact owners
-Get upper management involved with reminder phone calls, personal emails, etc.
To be continued. Please chime in with your own ideas and thoughts.
Eight Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation – ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, November 13th, 2008If you’ve been doing B2B Marketing for any length of time you know who Brian Carroll is. If you don’t know who he is, you should. His eBook, Eight Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation, is a must read for “lead generation specialists committed to the long-term proposition that digging for leads, educating prospects, navigating the nuances of the complex sale and creating new, high-level return on investment is what has brought lead generation to the position it enjoys in the marketing hierarchy today”.
I read this eBook a couple of years ago but I was due a refresher. While all 8 factors are important to lead generation success, I pulled out a few things we could all benefit from doing or ensuring on a more regular basis. My summary and highlights by no means replaces reading the eBook.
- Remember you are creating conversations, not campaigns – “Companies don’t buy, people do.” With each lead generation initiative we are developing an ongoing relationship with the prospect. We are educating and providing value with each touch. Or at least we should be.
- Be sure you have identified an Ideal Customer Profile before getting started – we’ve talked about personas many times on The B2B Lead. Building out the ideal customer profile makes everyone’s job easier. Why wouldn’t you do it?
- Universal Lead Definition – it’s key that both Sales and Marketing agree on this. “There is consensus that sales functionaries fail to act on nearly 80% of the leads they get, largely because most of the leads aren’t qualified, or because appropriate buyers haven’t been identified and targeted.”
- Your database – your most valuable marketing asset. “The properly designed and well-maintained database is the hub of all lead generation activity and communication.”
- Lead nurturing – we all know it takes multiple touches to turn a contact to a lead and a lead to a real prospect. “Lead nurturing is not a single marketing campaign, but rather a series of steps and communication tactics with the objective of developing and building a relationship with the potential customer.” Automation tools make this easier than ever. No more excuses to not nurturing.
This is only a few highlights from the eBook, now go read it yourself if you haven’t already. If nothing else, the pictures/diagrams are worth your time.
Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, Inc. part of the MECLABS Group that owns MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog with expertise related to B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales.
Once you’re done with this one go ahead and download next week’s eBook – HubSpot’s Get Found Online. We’ll be chatting about it next Thursday here on The B2B Lead.
FREE B2B Marketing Tools - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #171
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Many B2B Marketers, along with most Americans, are wondering what is going on with our economy. Now that we have elected a new President, will that help? How long will this slump last? How is this going to affect budgets and jobs and new sales opportunities? While wondering all of the same things and how it will affect ReachForce, I decided to make a list of FREE things that we as Marketers can do in a recession. Some lead generating tools and some awareness building tactics, but all things you can do at no cost. Here’s what I came up with, please feel free to help add tot he list.
Twitter - free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (AKA tweets), these text-based posts can contain up to 140 characters. Feel free to share links to other good content in these micro posts too.
Here’s 10 tips for building a following a Twitter.
Commenting on other industry thought leader’s blog or other blogs related to your business - Get in on the conversation and get your view point out there.
Submit your best practice content to free sites - The content will be indexed by the search engines allowing people to find your article when searching for something related. Some examples are Scribd, Docstoc and WhitePapers.org.
Website Grader - Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
Email signatures – Set up a standard email signature for all company emails and include things like your blog, or events you’re attending or a customer testimonial video. Easy to do and everyone that gets an email from someone at your company will also get your mini marketing message.
ReachForce Insight Lite - Do you know your best customers? Can you easily identify your target market sweet spots – markets that you sell the most or the fastest? Are there other business buyers in your sweet spot that you should be targeting with your Marketing campaigns? Download ReachForce Insight Lite on the Appexchange and see.
Re-purpose content you already have – or create a Top 10 list or a list of Top 5 things to Avoid. People love lists and you probably already have all of this information at your finger tips. At ReachForce, we’ve recently turned our best 101 blog posts into an eBook series. We didn’t have to create anything new, we just pulled the best posts and put them together in an eBook format. We’re currently using them for lead generation campaigns and getting GREAT results and feedback. Also, it has increased our daily blog traffic.
LinkedIn – just sign up and start linking up. LinkedIn is rolling out new applications and group features all the time, take advantage of these free networking tools.
Once you’ve set your profile up, check out LinkedIn Answers.
Facebook - Facebook is somewhat of a new thing for B2B Marketers, here at ReachForce we are still figuring out our strategy but know their endless opportunity out there. Here’s a few tips on getting started and promoting your business via Facebook.
Google Analytics – why wouldn’t you use this? Here’s a few more ideas on Tracking Tools.
ReachForce Convert 30 Day Trial - You are probably tracking web site visitors and your best PPC keywords, but are you capturing those visitors and turning them into actionable leads? Only 3% of web visitors fill out a form or announce themselves; what happens to the other 97%? ReachForce Convert, a software-as-a-service application, empowers Marketers to proactively target lead generation efforts at passive web visitors. Why not try it, it’s free.
Press Release Grader – “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.” It only takes a second and the recommendations for improvement are typically easy fixes. Again, why wouldn’t you use this tool?
What FREE stuff are you using out there? Please share with the rest of us. Who knows, it could save your fellow Marketer’s job.
Best Practices for Cold-Call Prospecting - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #170
Monday, November 10th, 2008More great sales tips from Brian McRae, Market Development Manager here at ReachForce.
Cold calling is a discipline that every successful salesperson must adopt to be successful.
Our key steps to successful prospecting:
- Script your voicemails, e-mails, and live connects. Then practice, practice and keep practicing. Be mindful that you have about 15 seconds to make that first impression. Avoid clichés, apologies, “ums” and weasel words. Instead use strong, powerful language to get the prospect’s attention. You have to “reach through the phone” in order to generate interest in your message.
- Approach every dial with a little bit of courage and a little bit of confidence. Remember that you are providing your prospect with an opportunity to derive real value from your product or service. Be bold to capture their attention and intelligent enough to keep it.
- Develop a routine for dialing every day. Nolan Ryan says “I wouldn’t ask anybody to do anything I wouldn’t be willing to do.” So if you’re managing a team…
- Know your desired outcome prior to the call. What specific goal do you want to achieve with this call? Our team’s goal on a first cold call is simply arouse enough interest to set a meeting with the prospect to further discuss our value and solutions.
- Execute. Every single day. Remember that the difference between amateurs and professionals is that professionals do it, even when they don’t feel like it.
If you are looking for more…here are 10 other great tips!
3 Great Tools for Online Reputation Management - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #169
Friday, November 7th, 2008A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how to use Trigger-based marketing techniques in a down economy by leveraging Web 2.0 tools. Some of these tools are also great for online reputation management, as well, you’ll just want to focus on a different set of search/scan criteria.
To get started, you’ll need to identify keywords that are important for tracking your industry, key trends or issues, the competition, your company and product brand names, as well as company spokespersons’ names. Once you’ve come up with a manageable list, configure the following tools to scan and collect that data.
- Google Alerts, Google Blog Search, and Google Reader: We’ve written a lot about using Google Alerts here on The B2B Lead. What we haven’t written about is organizing all of the discoveries you’ve made using these tools in Google Reader. It’s a great way to collect a bunch of sources of insight about your keywords and feed them into a list of must-read links each day.
- Tweetscan: This is one of the most important feeds in your Google Reader list as you can use it to monitor what people are saying about you or your competitor throughout the Twitter universe. It’s also another good way to find people with shared interests.
- For my company, most of the conversations are taking place on tech forums and message boards. I just discovered Boardtracker.com which will enable me to keep an eye on popular forums and alert me by RSS feed if my company is mentioned. But, you have to know which forums to track.
Need more? Marketing Pilgrim published this great post with 20+ others.
Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now - ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, November 6th, 2008In this inspiring and award-winning eBook, Dianna Huff lays out five strategies that all B2B Marketers should be employing and, as the title suggests, will help drive sales and ultimately revenue. During these uncertain times, marketers need to prove their worth and tie their activities directly to increasing the bottom line.
DISCLAIMER: This blog post in no way replaces actually reading the eBook. This is a great one, completely devoid of self-promotion and full of great tips. Not to mention, it is a quick read.
I don’t want to dilute or regurgitate what Dianna wrote, but I do want to highlight some of the best tips.
“Strategy #2: Determine Your Campaign Objectives Before You Start Writing.” I have always been a planner and someone who thinks a project through to the end before starting. I often have to ask other members of my team, “Why are we doing this? What is the ultimate goal?” The course of action you take to update your collateral, re-do your website or create a new email campaign should be dramatically influenced by your goals. Your boss may be pushing you to get it out the door as fast as possible but without planning and execution tied to specific objectives, results will suffer. Check out pages 7 and 8 for questions to ask before you start.
“Strategy #5: Focus on Your Customer, Not on Your Company.” Dianna is not the first and definitely not the last to say this. However, it is amazing how few companies actually employ this strategy. No one likes talking to someone who only talks about themselves, so why do companies think that their buyers want to read about the company’s latest award, product release features or “unmatched customer service?” Every buyer wants to know, “What’s in it for me?,” so tell them. Dianna gives great tips on what you should be telling your buyers on pages 16 and 17.
I am not giving away anymore, but I hope I have given you enough of a taste to entice you to read the entire eBook. And if you don’t trust me, Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now just won a platinum award from the MarCom Creative Awards
Dianna Huff is principal of DH Communications, Inc. and is the author of the B2B MarCom Writer Blog.
Our New President, Barack Obama - Marketer of the Year
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008Did you know that our new President Barack Obama was named Marketer of the Year 2008? Last month, Advertising Age named Barack Obama “Marketer of the Year”. Congratulations, on both counts. It doesn’t matter if you voted Republican or Democrat this year; I think we can all agree Barack Obama took campaigning to a whole new level. As an independent first time voter, I was impressed as a Marketer by the campaign overall. The dimensions of marketing they put to use stretched my marketing brain. With the use of direct marketing, event marketing, online marketing and new media the Obama team understood the need to reach out to voters as individuals – demographics and targeting were central to the campaign.
Obama and his team understood their target demographic/markets and how to use a mix of multi touch, multi level and multimedia platforms to reach these people where they were already hanging out. By using video game ads, Twitter, an active online community, and a list of other marketing vehicles, the Obama marketing team understood the importance of motivating the younger demographics and using multiple mediums that worked for them.
B2B Marketers take note. Our new President has something to say about reaching the right audiences with the right kinds of messages through the right vehicles. Below is a list a few places you can find Barack Obama marketing. Are you there for your business and what lessons can we learn from the reach created by his campaign?
Email marketing
- event based - I would receive text messages and emails while Obama was at an event or debate
- 1:1 with key players - email messages from Barack, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden - For example, I got a message from Michelle Obama reminding me it was the last day to give money to the campaign.
Community – currently over 1 million members. Through the community supporters can:
- find information about local events or groups
- connect with other supporters
- share information or real-life stories
- donate to the campaign
PPC – 14% of Barack Obama’s online traffic in August 2008 came from paid search
New Media – Barack Obama is out there, are you?
|
Polls are showing more young voters have registered to vote than ever before. I have no doubt that Obama and his team’s approach to reach them drove this involvement.
Thank you President Obama. You are proof that targeted marketing does drive real results…oh, and I’m sure your messages and positions on the issues helped too.
