As I was getting ready to start building out a few landing pages for some newsletter advertising I decided to Google landing page best practices. As expected, lots of both organic and paid options came up. I noticed Marketo had an ad out there, so I clicked on it. I’ve seen their stuff before and was very impressed, so I thought I’d start here with my landing page inquiry. After a few clicks I got to an eBook – “Building Effective Landing Pages”. This eBook had some great tips that were B2B Lead worthy so I wanted to share and give Marketo a shout out too. You can get this great eBook as well as others at http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-resources/best-practices.php.  For now, here’s a few tips that really stood out:

1. Focus on a single call to action, such as a download or a demo. Distractions kill conversions.
This is really important; offering too much information muddies the waters. You want your call-to-action to stand out. Remember we are not trying to complete a sale via an email program. We are educating our prospects and highlighting pain points in bite size chunks. Warming leads up to better qualify them for Sales.

2. Content – Give it to them straight.

• Make it clear and to the point, but give your prospect a reason to give you his information.
• Setup the problem
• Talk about the solution (your offer)
• Deliver the goods (such as a white paper, video demo or webinar registration)
• And use bullet points - they are easier to read

Emails seem to be most effective when they are 2-3 short paragraphs with a link to a landing page/offer as close to the top as possible. Remember a lot of people view emails in a preview pane. This may be your only opportunity to present your message, so make sure you get straight to the point.

3. Call to Action – Forms – Remember not to ask too many questions up front.
You don’t need everything they first time a prospect engages with you. Remember you are building a relationship. Collect more information as the prospect continues on the journey with you.

4. Confirmation/ Thank Yous - It’s just plain good manners to say thank you. Do you have something else they might be interested in? Make another offer.
I think this might be one of the most important tips on the list. Saying Thank You never goes out of style. And, I agree with Marketo, put another offer out there, see if they bite. Taking you up on a second offer could be a sign of a cold lead moving to warm.

5. Page URLs - The name of the page, along with the rest of the URL path, is weighed fairly heavily. You can use 1024 characters, so you don’t have to be stingy. And use dashes between words, not underscores – search engines like that better.
Marketo example: www.marketo.com/building-effective-landing-pages.html
Don’t forget your Google juice with every landing page you build. Remember to use your PPC keywords here too.

Again, thanks to Marketo for the list of landing page tips. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the list at Marketo’s B2B Marketing Best Practices.

Share on Facebook

TechCrunch published an excellent mini-tutorial on how to develop and distribute press releases in a Web 2.0 world. Why should you care? After all, who reads press releases? Well, according to the Tech Crunch article, a recent Outsell study highlighted that over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals!

Tech Crunch advises, and BreakingPoint just witnessed (with our May 9th announcement) that “the trick for this new breed of press releases is to write it as the article you want to read.” Because, if you’ve done a good job, very often that is exactly what will be published.

Here’s another gem: “When implemented with calls and links to action, and if they read in a way that’s compelling to people aka customers, you’ll find that they’re usually compelled to act.”

The TechCrunch post is a must-read. And, here are a few other tips on getting better press release pickup in last week’s blog post, Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads.

Share on Facebook

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post shares a few counter-intuitive tips for getting bloggers to write about you.

Cory Doctorow – the genius behind Boing Boing, and the inspiration behind ReachForce’s attention conservation notices–has shared more of his brilliance in 17 TIPS FOR GETTING BLOGGERS TO WRITE ABOUT YOU.

If you can get past the InformationWeek’s annoying, in-your-face advertising and survey requests, you will find several great nuggets in this post. Many of which will really throw most marketers for a loop. Here are a few of the more interesting suggestions:

• Have a permanent link. Don’t just change the front page of your site every time a new speaker for your speaker-series in announced. A blogger who links to the front page of your site today in a post about the upcoming address by Philo T Farnsworth, wants that link to stay good for in the future,
• PDFs stink. It’s not a Web page (see “Have a link”). It’s hard to copy and paste out of. It doesn’t show up in browsers half the time. The Web is made of HTML.
• Put your URL on your images. If you’ve got cool photos or other images up on your site, stick your URL in unobtrusive type at the bottom of it.
• Forget the “copyright protection” Javascript. Some sites have bizarre Javascript that pops up snotty little copyright messages when you try to right-click on an image to save it. OK, we get the point: you don’t want people to copy your images. We’ll just move on. Enjoy your obscurity.
• Enough with the legal boilerplate. If every page on your site ends with “(c) 2008 Paranoid Co Inc, all rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced without permission,” then bloggers may just take you at your word and write about someone else’s site.

The world of Marketing has changed drastically in the last few years and it’s time for B2B Marketers to question the status quo (and their legal counsel) and make some changes to thrive in this new world.

Share on Facebook

I was cruising through my Google Reader (one of the best things I could have ever set up as a blogger) and stumbled upon a great post about blog writing on Diana Huff’s B2B MarCom Writer Blog. She suggests that bloggers have a beat just like journalists. If you are just starting your own corporate blog, this is a great tip to help you figure our what to write about. If you can define your “beat” then you will find yourself soaking up everything you see about those topics and inspiration will come more easily.

Also, if you are one of several contributors to your blog, each writer having a unique beat will help each author to be differentiated from the others.

I’ve always loved the saying “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” If you can really narrow your focus, you have a better chance of positioning yourself as an expert in that area which will increase the quality of your content and hopefully your readership.

Share on Facebook

Attention 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.

Share on Facebook

When I overhauled and launched a new ReachForce website, I wasn’t sure what kind of impact it would have on the company. Using Google Analytics, I could get some data but had no idea how easy it was to navigate and if the new copy really got our point and value proposition across. I was lucky and strategic in launching the new site the same day as we announced our Series B Funding so I did see a significant jump in traffic.

I guess if you put enough out there it will come back to you eventually. I strongly suggest, if you haven’t already, setting up Google Alerts for you company name. This will help you find out what people are saying about your company. You might even set up alerts for common key words for your industry or competitor names. Anyway, I got this link to KillerStartups in my Google Alerts. Check it out to see how they independently surveyed our site and interpreted our value prop on their own. Be sure to vote at the bottom as to what you think the future of ReachForce is. This was a great way to receive unexpected and unbiased feedback.

Share on Facebook

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides quick tips for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and six-step plan for getting started.

You might call me a fast-follower when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. I resisted for some time because the prospect of researching and sorting through hundreds of keywords and applying techniques to outwit Google’s ever-changing algorithms seemed so daunting. I can barely spell algorithm, after all. Then a slew of industry surveys showed that anywhere from 80 to 90 percent or more of B2B tech buyers start their research and buying process on Google.

Well, that was a wake-up call. So, last year I made SEO a higher priority. I shifted the funds from online advertising into SEM and a ReachForce role-based database build. (That way, I could cover both my Inbound and Outbound bases.) I also maintained my investments in PR and some key sponsorships to cover the brand awareness and drive Inbound traffic. Then, I pulled resources and funds that had been spent trying to keep up with endless campaign design and development, and re-focused them on social media and SEO.

It’s truly amazing how quickly you can get results like Page 1 Google rankings when you focus resources on boosting a particular page ranking. Here are a few tips to help you do the same:

• Invest in the right tools: There are literally dozens of free and low-cost SEO tools that you can use to get a lay of the land and assess your best SEO prospects. Of course, Google provides several like Google Suggest and Google Trends. Another one of my favorites is WordTracker. And, a new tool I am using right now is HubSpot. HubSpot’s CEO Mike Volpe makes a great case for SEO in the HubSpot Inbound Marketing blog. More about that another time.
• Don’t just go for the highly competitive popular terms. Consider niche or long tail keywords terms. There are dozens of keywords with significant search traffic that have little competition. Optimize for all of them and the numbers add up.
• Integrate your PR and SEO efforts to ensure inbound links from press releases support your strategy.
• Make sure your “anchor text” on in-bound links is optimized to provide the greatest SEO value.
• Optimize with a conversion strategy in mind.
• Leverage your “educational” assets for landing pages and social media sites like hubpages.com, scribd.com, flickr.com and others.

Here’s a quick plan for getting started:

1. Information Gathering Session: Just like data cleansing, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to SEO. Pull together a team to discuss and prioritize objectives and scope your initial project.
2. Research: Review your marketing objectives, competition, and your web site and blog to get a lay of the land and identify low-hanging fruit.
3. Produce a plan and guidelines for optimizing your top five web or blog pages. This should include recommendations for URLs, internal link building, meta tags, page content updates, blog cross-linking and a conversion strategy for each of those pages.
4. Then begin to build your inbound links to those pages by leveraging other sites, partners, blogs, social media sites, portals, and other high-value (not spam) paid link directories like Yahoo.
5. Review and Revamp: After the pages have had sufficient time for Google Indexing review the project and results, and adjust the components of the program if necessary.

I realize this post presents a fairly simplistic view of SEO. It is, in reality, a very complex and overwhelming discipline. But this is a quick plan for hopping on the moving train. You will, of course, learn more through trial and error and there are numerous online tutorials that will help you hone your skills.

Share on Facebook

Quick – how can understanding the science of vision and cognitive psychology help you boost B2B Marketing leads and revenue?

The Click Fu Masters at StomperNet just posted this intriguing video tutorial to help B2C and B2B Marketers boost their “Click Fu.” The team explains that understanding the function of the human eye and brain can help you improve marketing results and drive more revenue.

First, the eyes: StomperNet advises Marketers to understand the function of the eye and visitor blind spots to improve landing page design. Well, that’s a no-brainer. But, they go further explaining that primal man’s eyes were designed for two purposes: to eat and avoid being eaten. The FOVEA, designed for finding food to eat, is sensitive to fine details and color. The Periphery, designed to avoid being eaten, is tuned to motion and contrast. Understanding how to make appropriate use of color, organization, and design details while employing the right structure to the page can help Marketers boost conversions by more than 25 percent.

Now, the brain: StomperNet advises you to understand the link between vision and behavior so that you understand why a #10 result on Google will get you more clicks than a #6 or 7 position. Basically, their cognitive psychologist advises that: Easy wins out over Good or Better. Make user feel it will be easy to get what they want and they’ll stay longer and learn more. Understand your visitors’ goal and what they need to achieve the goal.

But that’s just the beginning. This is definitely a video that is worth watching.

Share on Facebook

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides an eight-point litmus test that B2B marketers and bloggers can use to evaluate their blog posts for Search Engine Optimization and relevance to business objectives.

I’ve stepped in to blog for Network Performance Daily recently since our full-time blogger was vacationing in New Zealand. For the 99.8% of The B2B Lead readers who live outside the network engineering universe, Network Performance Daily is the NetQoS corporate blog. It’s rated in the top .99% of all blogs and received great coverage including this piece in Computerworld. And, it’s also driven a great deal of interest in and revenue for our company. So, we must be doing something right.

One thing we haven’t done right (until recently) however, is to stay on track with our core audience and our company interests. Blogging is, after all, a conversation and conversations often stray off track. The allure of technological innovation was just too great at times and we were sucked into the dazzling world of iPhones and flying cars.

Clearly, it was time to get the blog content back on track to share network engineering tips, news and analysis with our core readers so that we could improve our sagging reader loyalty numbers. This was my goal when I stepped back in to blog for NetQoS, but what I discovered was there were far more benefits to staying on track with the content than just improving readership.

Of course, I knew there was a strong connection between the blog and SEO ranking. I also knew the blog was a great tool to attract readers and prospects to download content from our web site. But, until I actually dug in and crafted my own posts, I didn’t really understand the “magic” and how to create a repeatable process to boost SEO rankings which inevitably drive demand and brand awareness. So, with a few posts under my belt and a dramatic boost in SEO rankings for a couple of valuable keywords, I put together this quick litmus test for ALL future NPD posts.

I know that most blog and social media purists will violently disagree with these tips. They will argue that one should not be blogging with marketing and sales interests in mind. Last time I checked, however, I didn’t live in a Socialist country. And, my ego isn’t important enough to spend hours pontificating about topics without at least something to gain. We are all blogging with an objective in mind. I believe they key is in the “intent” of the post. If your goal is to be found, to educate and to attract a following of potential new customers without making false promises, then the following litmus test should help you to keep your posts on track with objectives:

1. Topic must be relevant to your target audience and—even better— to our company and product or service offerings.
2. Topic should be educational, controversial, timely or related to a news event. Bonus points for link-bait articles like posting a list of valuable resources, expert interviews, how-to’s, special reports, etc.
3. Post must begin with easy-to-understand and keyword-rich title (not just a cleverly worded headline). The goal is to communicate what the story and takeaways are about before the reader has to read the story.
4. Must contain links back to prior blog stories, an important corporate web page, press release or a white paper with more information. The exact keywords that are linked to those pages should correspond with the SEO terms for which those pages are optimized.
5. Post must be tagged with right keywords for SEO and content so that it can be categorized and found.
6. Posts should include our thought leadership messages where appropriate.
7. Post should include a list of tips that can be linked to from within the blog.
8. Post must challenge readers to take action in the last sentence—ie. continue the conversation, seek more information or spread the word.

So, that’s my quick list. I’m sure there are more. I’m sure some of these may become too cumbersome to apply. But it’s worth a shot. I mean, what is the value of a Google Page 1 listing to your company? With 80 to 90% of buyers starting their search on Google, I’d recommend giving it a shot.

I’d like to hear about your experiences with blogging and SEO. Importantly, what has been your success in achieving the coveted Google double listing?

Share on Facebook

Contributed by Scott Daughtry, SEO Specialist, NetQoS

The B2B Lead features a number of helpful articles on copywriting, so I thought I’d share one of my favorite tips for ensuring B2B marketing copy is relevant. As marketers we constantly try to write compelling copy that motivates people to take some sort of action. The trick is to write in the voice of our target audience; speaking to them using language they respond to. Sometimes we use focus groups or A/B testing to help with this; getting out in the field and talking to prospects/customers also helps. In the end though, the words we choose often amount to best guesses.

Keyword research tools like Wordtracker, Google Trends, and the Google Keyword Tool provide a wealth of insight into the voice of our audience. Using search data and trends can give excellent clues to the words people use to describe things. Talking to your audience, using the same words they search for themselves, puts you at a major advantage. For example, the other day I was crafting an email to promote a new webcast. Problem was, some people were calling it a webcast and others were calling it a webinar – which was it? What would more people respond to; a webcast offer or a webinar offer? I decided to use Google Trends to compare the search volume of both words. I figured the term that is searched more often will also be the term used more commonly in conversation. This term should also spark a higher interest if used in my email. So I quickly pulled up Google Trends and here is what I found.

This obviously made my decision easy. Split testing my email offers confirmed that using “webcast” got the better response.

Now, this is just search-driven copywriting in its simplest form. If you want to take this further, you can use the Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker almost like you would a Thesaurus. For example, maybe you are promoting a “golf strategies” guide. If you plopped this keyword into the Google Keyword Tool, it would offer you numerous suggestions for related terms people are searching for. In this example (shown below) maybe you would be better off promoting it as a “golf tips” guide since that term is searched more frequently.

Hopefully by now, you are starting to get the idea. This stuff really works – I have personally seen higher conversion rates on landing pages and emails by using this strategy. If you are interested in reading more about similar ideas, Aaron Wall has a very interesting article on keyword research that is definitely worth a read.

http://learn.wordtracker.com/articles/keyword-inspiration-aaron-wall-of-seobookcom-shares-his-secrets/

http://www.wordtracker.com
http://www.google.com/trends
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Share on Facebook