So of course I have to talk about chapter 3 – Reaching Your Buyers Directly. As you know this is the foundation ReachForce was built on, targeting the right companies and reaching the right buyers, every time. Anyway, back to the book…

Know the Goals and Let the Content Drive Action – this is what I really want to talk about. “On the speaking circuits and via my blog, I am often asked to critique marketing programs, Web sites, and blogs. My typical response, ‘What’s the goal?’ often throws people off. It is amazing that so many marketers don’t have established goals for their marketing programs and for Web sites and blogs in particular.” This struck me for some reason. As B2B Marketers we are constantly creating, writing and inventing new content and new outlets for people to reach us all with the intent of building awareness and driving leads to revenue. This doesn’t necessarily mean goals for each outlet are the same.

We are about to do a ReachForce website update. Leigh Anne had just come back from SEO conference and was filled with great ideas on helping us stay focused on our goals at hand. As Leigh Anne and I discussed what we wanted to change and things we wished we could do with the site, she stopped me and asked – “What is the goal for our reachforce.com site?”

Is it to provide general information or are we trying to get people to download our best practice content or are we trying to get them to contact us directly? Navigation, page lay outs and landing pages would be created differently based on our intent and goal. For example, if our goal is to get people to call us, then we should have contact information on every page. If our goal is get people to download content via forms, then we should be creative with the way we continue to collect info. so we can use it to better qualify leads. We should also be sure to mention the resources we are offering on multiple pages.

We are still deciding what we want our overall goal to be with our site and how we are going to refresh it to meet these objectives. As Scott did, I’d like to close with, “Ultimately, when marketers focus on the same goals as the rest of the organization, we develop marketing programs that really deliver action and begin to contribute to the bottom line and command respect.” Ok, all you B2BLead readers out there, my guess is most of you manage some if not all of what happens on your corporate site. Do you have a goal for it? If so, what things are you incorporating to achieve that goal?

Next week we will be covering chapters 4 and 5.