2008 is the Year of Digital Omnipresence - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #79
Monday, March 10th, 2008Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains ideas for helping B2B marketers secure multiple page one listings on Google and Yahoo.
More tidbits from SMX West have been posted to Web Pro News by Jason Lee Miller. Apparently, digital omnipresence was the hot topic at the event. According to Miller, “the discussion surrounding search is no longer just about securing your place in a same-for-everybody top-ten list of search results. The discussion is about being everywhere; it’s about establishing a case for digital omnipresence.”
Now, I wasn’t there (unfortunately), so I don’t know the full story on digital omnipresence, but it sounds very similar to the concepts promoted by the folks at StomperNet. As a B2B marketer and a follower of StomperNet strategies, I have experienced the results first hand and am hooked. Today, it’s not enough to have one listing on page one of Google. I’m driven to secure multiple page one listings. And that is made far easier by posting valuable, actionable content in a multitude of formats – web pages, blog posts, video, podcast, etc.
When you look at the research on B2B tech buyer behavior, it’s easy to see why. Research from numerous sources, including Marketing Sherpa, indicate between 85 to 98% of B2B technical buyers in North America use the Google search engine. Yahoo dominates in other areas of the world. And, reports published by StomperNet, Enquiro and others show that a double listing at the top of Google not only boosts brand affinity but generates more than 2X the leads of a single listing. Difficult to argue with those odds.
And, it’s not enough to secure organic listings. Enquiro Research suggests that B2B technical buyers start their research in the organic or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) listings of search engines and their purchase process in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) ads. What’s more, Marketing Sherpa reports that organic listings draw 75% of the click through traffic, while SEM draw 25%. Clearly, when targeting the tech buyer, it is vital to be in both places.
To succeed online, B2B marketers are going to have to learn how to present their brand and their corporate and thought leadership messages everywhere, in many different formats. We will have to drive demand, build brand awareness, establish thought leadership and a community of interest using social media, traditional media and Search Marketing techniques.
One way to do this is to optimize a variety of different types of content for broadly searched/highly competitive terms. However, securing a top listing for competitive terms requires a significant time and resource investment so it is not an option for many B2B marketers. Even with the longterm commitment required for success here, I’m not advocating that B2B marketers avoid these keywords. Just the opposite. Go ahead and optimize for those terms, but use SEM programs such as Google AdWords and contextual PPC advertising to fill in gaps and “be there” when both researchers and buyers are searching. Then, leverage new media program elements including your blog and social media/Web 2.0 sites to secure high value inbound links. A steady investment in these programs will help move these listings closer to the top of the search engines.
A far faster approach to top listings, is targeting “long tail” terms—keywords that have moderate search volumes and are relatively easy to dominate quickly.
Targeting these terms should enable you to secure a double or triple listing at the top of page one of Google or Yahoo. At least until Google changes its algorithm again! Once again, it is important to use social media program elements such as a blog, social media, social bookmarking, PR, and high value link-building to secure the best results.
Make Some Imaginary Friends - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #78
Thursday, March 6th, 2008Didn’t get approval to fly to London for last week’s Search Engine Strategies? Never fear, Susan Esparza kindly live blogged from the event and shared a number of wonderful lessons including this super post from Ian Lurie’s presentation on Search Marketing & Persona Models.
When explaining the concept of personae, a topic we blogged about on this B2B Lead post a few weeks back. Ian provided a very “sticky” definition: “A persona is your brand’s imaginary friend.” He also shared these wonderful words of wisdom for building a campaign to woo your persona:
- Pick the persona you want to start with
- Refresh yourself with their needs, motivations, wants, fears, limitations, etc.
- Become empathetic to that persona - really put yourself into their head.
- Too hard? Get a team together to act the parts…but be careful in your casting choices. (Don’t cast a competitive person as a competitive persona. It’s cross contamination.)
ReachForce Announces New Data Service Offering for Events - ReachForce Capture
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008If you are a regular reader of The B2B Lead, you have probably noticed us all talking more about events and tradeshows than usual. This subject has been on our minds because we are today announcing a new data service offering for events called ReachForce Capture.
Our mission at ReachForce is to reduce the amount of waste in B2B marketing. Current marketing tactics, including direct mail, email, trade shows and search engine marketing, have conversion rates of 10% or less. We introduced ReachForce Discover and ReachForce Refresh to increase response rates for direct mail and email from the industry average of less than 3%. ReachForce Capture will enable marketers to convert more trade show contacts and increase trade show ROI.
ReachForce Capture enables you to turn your trade show scans/attendees into actionable leads. At a targeted trade show, most of the companies will be a right fit but the attendees may not be the right decision makers. By identifying the right person or decision making unit by their role within an organization, not just their title, ReachForce’s approach to contact discovery is unlike any other data provider. Targeting prospects based on their role in an organization increases marketing results and sales conversions, ultimately driving revenue.
Find Your Niche in the Corporate Blogosphere - Blog Master…NOT
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008All marketing initiatives need to be targeted. Spraying your message to as many people as possible and praying that it will resonate with the right people just won’t cut it. This is no different when you are planning to start a blog. And for a corporate blog to be successful, you do need to plan ahead of time.
- Determine your focus and have a good grasp of what you are all about.
- Ask your customers what they would like to hear about, and the answer is probably not just your latest product updates (unless you are Apple).
- Find that niche where you can stand out from other blogs in your space (namely your competitors) and don’t try and be everything to everyone.
- Learn about your customers and cater to their needs.
You don’t need a lot of readers; you just need the right readers.
Boost Your Google Juice with Link Bait - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip#77
Monday, March 3rd, 2008Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a list of different types of link bait and key considerations for making sure the link bait is effective.
Encouraging inbound links to your website is a sure-fire way to improve your SEO performance, in other words, to boost your Google juice. One of the best ways to build those high-value inbound links is to produce “link bait” by delivering valuable content that encourages others to link to you.
Nick Wilson, a contributing writer for Search Engine Land, recently wrote about the various forms of link bait that web marketers use to drive inbound links to their web site content. Here’s a summary of the three types of link bait according to Wilson:
- Textual Linkbait: … any kind of page content that takes no more technical skill than being able to type. This kind of link bait is very accessible as the only real cost is time. With good imagination and research, you can quickly devise a series of posts designed to attract links.
- Site Based Tools & Software: … functional scripts that run on a website. These vary widely in nature depending on the site. A good example in the search marketing world is the NetQoS network latency calculator.
- Widgetbait: The holy grail of link baiting in 2007 will be the widget. In late 2005 and early 2006, I came up with a linkbaiting concept to put my previous company, Performancing, on the social media map. That idea was the Performancing Blog Editor Firefox extension that has achieved nearly half a million downloads on Mozilla alone.
I would also add to this: visual or graphics link bait. Bloggers and journalists love visuals and diagrams that help communicate a point. A popular example of this is the Social Media fatigue visual Andrew Shuttleworth created using Mind Manager flow charting software.
Here are a few tips on making sure your link bait is effective:
- Make it relevant and useful to your target audience to drive the right types of links and web traffic.
- Make sure it supports your brand.
- Don’t require registration to use it, but do embed offers for more (this requires a conversion strategy).
While link baiting can be controversial, it seems to me that it has resulted in so many new free tools available to users. How can that be a bad thing?
