Red On Marketing Blog

Rick Maltin, Rest in Peace (I Miss You)

You know those “boy racers” blasting along on exotic Italian motorbikes, leaning so far into the curves on twisty roads that their knees are skimming just inches above the asphalt?

That’s my client Rick Maltin, out for his Sunday drive through the Sierra foothills... except that Rick is not 19 like his riding pals, he’s a handsome, tanned, vibrant 61.

Was 61. A verb tense that has no damn business applying to Rick.

Rick died of a heart attack on January 7, 2011. He was never sick or dragging a single day that I knew him. Rather, he was the kind of guy who started every phone call with something like,

“GOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING RED!!!”

It may seem wierd to blog here about a lost client. But it's fitting because Rick may have been the most active reader and participant in this blog. I think he commented on nearly every blog post here in 2010! All while getting a thousand other things done.

Rick was in a Ph.D. program in Astrophysics in the early ‘70s, then transitioned into a long career guiding Silicon Valley technology start-ups. In 2009 he co-founded Youthing Essentials with business and health guru Harriet Diamond, and built a new multi-channel retail operation from scratch.

Rick is someone whose word everyone trusted. Always cheerful and funny. Always honest and humble. And now always deeply missed.

A Huddle with B2B Sales and Marketing Pros in San Francisco

We were happy to see our partner HubSpot take home an award Nov. 9 at the 2010 Sales & Marketing 2.0 Conference in San Francisco (#sm20). And since they were unable to attend, I got to bask for a moment in their reflected glory, accepting the award on their behalf. HubSpot’s award for Best Alignment of Sales & Marketing deals with a subject dear to my heart: the sales-marketing divide. And, having brought clients to the HubSpot internet marketing platform, it was an honor to stand in for them on the physical platform in San Francisco.

Marketing-sales service level agreement works wonders

HubSpot’s internal approach is to use a service-level agreement that helps both sales and marketing work seamlessly to generate inbound leads and close sales. Each team knows what’s expected of them. In addition, HubSpot’s sales and marketing teams (@hubspot) meet weekly to stay aligned with various goals.

Overall, HubSpot has gained in sales productivity, improved communication and lowered the cost of customer acquisition.

Good ideas, good conversation with 400 pros

Awards were only one aspect of the conference, produced by Sales Dot Two Inc. and hosted by Selling Power magazine publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner (@gerhard20). It was a chance to share ideas with and learn from about 400 people involved in sales and marketing in various ways, from CEOs to regional managers.

Some of them, like us, are HubSpot customers and partners. I met up with Jan Cook, director of sales operations at SolArc Inc., and Mike Damphousse (@damphoux), founder of Green Leeds and author of the Smashmouth Marketing blog. (A Bay Area Hubspot User Blog also provides a way for folks to connect when we’re not at conferences.)

And I had some good discussions with several vendors, including Microsoft CRM Dynamics and Whiteboard Selling. I learned a few things about marketing automation software from Eloqua’s Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts (@jill_rowley).

Then there were the panel discussions, which proved that we haven’t yet figured out all there is to know about marketing.

Q: What's the future of cold calling?

In one session a panel of sales and marketing experts were asked about the future of cold calling, and whether there will always be a role for it. The panelists all seemed to say yes?!

If I heard them right, I have to disagree. Inbound marketing can be so effective that there isn’t any need to drop out of the blue and try to sell somebody on something.

Q: Should a CMO carry a sales quota? 

But I enthusiastically support another idea that came up several times: having the chief marketing officer carry a sales quota. It’s amazing how many problems of sales-marketing integration seem to resolve themselves when the CMO’s you-know-what is on the line.

B2B Content Marketing: Attack of the Blog Monster

Remember that delicious post you whipped up last month? Your blog doesn’t care. It wants something fresh this week, and next week, and the week after.... Illustration by Miroslav Kostic (Micheyns on deviantART)

Tame that hungry beast with posts that explore basic points in new ways

Blogs have voracious appetites. They constantly need to be fed with new posts. As soon as you shovel some fresh words into a blog’s mouth, it gulps them down and demands more.

Ungrateful beasts

Blogs aren’t grateful, either. Remember that delicious post you whipped up last month? The one with the clever headline that got Tweeted all over the Internet? Your blog doesn’t care. It wants something fresh this week, and next week, and the week after.

Sit... now rollover

Don’t think you can command your blog to sit there and be patient while you work on other tasks. Because if you don’t give it fresh words, your blog will get surly and start whispering nasty things about you to the people who visit your website:

“The folks who run this outfit don’t have much to say to you. They don’t care if you ever visit again. Maybe you should head over to the competition’s site and see what’s happening there.”

When your cupboard of ideas is bare

Fine, but how are you supposed to keep feeding it when it looks like your cupboard of ideas is bare? You’ve already given it everything you could think of.

Hey, you are the one who brought this little monster into the world and promised to take care of it. Let’s look at one way to maintain the upper hand.

Theme with variations

It could be excruciating to hear a pianist play “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” over and over again for nearly seven minutes. Or it could be entertaining, if the pianist used Mozart’s variations. Take a listen to this performance, and see if you don’t start getting curious about what will come next. (If you don’t care for classical piano, think of John Wayne instead. He played the same basic character over and over for 45 years, but fans looked forward to each new story.)

You have a B2B blog, don't you?

You can take the same approach with your blog. Start with a basic point and explore the various ways it applies to your audience. This being a site about business-to-business marketing, I’ll assume you have a B2B blog. Some of your business customers may be having a much better 2010, while others haven’t yet shaken off the recession. Within those companies, you may have a variety of people to deal with. Your young customers may have a different way of looking at your product or service than older clients. Some clients are wealthier than others. Some have crazier schedules.

Each is worth a separate blog post.

Zoom in

Let’s say you have some thoughts on work-life balance. They might apply one way to a large corporation with a lot of resources, and another way to a small startup with a skeleton crew. Your thoughts might play out yet another way at a company with big seasonal fluctuations, like an accounting firm during tax-filing season, or a retailer in December. That’s at least four ways to explore one basic idea. You can probably think of a few others.

Theory and practice

I’ve given you some hypotheticals. But how does the idea play out in real life? You’re looking at an example right here. I know a lot of ways to cook up content, but I’m telling you about only one tactic right now. Why should I shoot my whole bankroll on a single blog post? In some later post I’ll come back to the theme of “thinking up stuff to write about in a blog,” and I’ll explore another variation of it.

I try to practice what I preach. (Take that, blog...)

Content Marketing: Don’t Let This Happen to You

Robert has been a business journalist for 23 years, both as a reporter and an editor. He joined Business Communications Group in 2005 and is our Business Writing Director.

If you’ve ever been tempted to save time and money by “borrowing” someone else’s material for your website or marketing materials, last week’s uproar over Cooks Source magazine should scare you straight.

I’ll give you the condensed version. For more details, follow the links.

It started with a Nov. 3 entry on Monica Gaudio’s blog. An article she had written five years ago suddenly turned up in a New England food magazine called Cooks Source. That was a surprise to Gaudio, who says had never given permission for the reprint, and had never heard of the magazine. 

Gaudio wasn’t happy about it, but reasoned that even the best-run publications sometimes screw up. She was willing to settle the matter for chump change: A published apology in print and online, plus a $130 donation to the Columbia School of Journalism. That would amount to less than 8 cents a word for the 1,700-word original.

That idea didn’t fly with the Cooks Source editor. Gaudio didn’t name names, but others identified the editor as Judith Griggs, who does show up at the bottom of and old Boston Business Journal story as the person running the magazine.

Whoever sent the e-mail -- if the e-mail is real -- started out reasonably enough, admitting that the magazine had indeed taken the article without first getting authorization: 

“It was ‘my bad’ indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.”  (Yes, you read it right, “minds somethings forget.”)

Flame bait

Then came the passages that unleashed the wrath of the Internet: “But honestly Monica, the web is considered ‘public domain’ and you should be happy we just didn't ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else's name on it!”

This was followed by a non-apology apology, the kind where someone says she’s sorry if you didn’t like what she did, but she’s not sorry for doing it.

And, as a final insult, the e-mail claimed the editor had “fixed” a few things in Gaudio’s original version. “For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!”

Fifteen or 20 years ago, there wouldn’t have been much that Gaudio could do about it. In the Internet age, however, she could tell the world. It’s also an age when any post can turn viral in an instant. That’s especially true when there are thousands of writers out there who are especially sensitive to seeing one of their tribe ripped off.

Within 24 hours Griggs’ name had been revealed and the Cooks Source page on Facebook was filling up with vitriolic comments. Some enterprising bloggers had identified other instances where Cooks Source had run stories that originated elsewhere. One site features side-by-side comparisons of material.

You can’t control an Internet

And then the story started to get really strange.

• Griggs -- or someone claiming to be Griggs -- posted a response to Facebook: “Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry — my bad!”

• This brought a fresh round of vitriol, ridicule and outright nastiness aimed at Griggs and Cooks Source. People started posting what they claimed were the personal address and phone number for Griggs.

• Some of the magazine’s advertisers -- or at least people claiming to be advertisers -- said Cooks Source no longer will get their business.

• A Twitter account opened, purportedly by Judith Griggs, and was quickly denounced as a fake.

• The original Cooks Source page on Facebook went dead, only to be replaced with a couple of others, at least one of which is widely regarded to be a fake.

• At least one blogger is now wondering if the whole episode might be an elaborate hoax. (If it is, somebody went to an incredible amount of trouble to create back issues of the magazine and post them on Facebook, complete with advertisements for real New England businesses.)

Lessons learned

While the rest of the world is sorting out truth from speculation, you can take away several important lessons from the Cooks Source saga.

First: Don’t grab stuff that somebody else wrote and start using it for your own business. The Internet is not “public domain.” It’s easy for others to discover that your words first appeared somewhere else. And yes, people really will notice. So if you didn’t write it or get permission from the person who did write it, don’t use it. It takes only one angry blogger to focus the wrath of the Internet on you.

Second: If you’ve already been filching material, remove it. Take it off your website, throw out the printed versions, and build something new that’s your own. Be willing to pay for original content if you don’t have the time or talent to do it yourself.  If you see something elsewhere that you’d like to use, ask for permission.

Third: If you get caught, fess up and make amends. Don’t play dumb. Don’t make excuses. Don’t be condescending.

Fourth: It’s not just about you. The angry Internet mob didn’t stop at vilifying Judith Griggs, but went on to attack businesses that were listed as advertisers. You can bet those companies aren’t happy about Cooks Source either.

Fifth: People won’t always bother to verify a juicy story. One person adds some speculation, and the next one takes the speculation as fact. Others start piling on. I’ve taken a cautious approach here, because I don’t want to convict anyone in print of something I can’t prove.

Sixth: While you aren’t allowed to take entire works without permission, you are allowed to quote bits of other people’s work. That’s called fair use.

 

By the way, the one thing Cooks Source is not guilty of is plagiarizing Gaudio. That’s when you try to pass off someone else’s work as your own. Cooks Source kept Gaudio’s byline, at least.

Now the story has been repeated by news outlets as far away as Bangkok and Sidney. The word Griggs has now been made into a verb meaning, “To use content on the web without permission, then request payment from original author for rewrites and editing.”

And to think it could have been nipped in the bud for $130.

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Other popular articles by Robert

• B2B Email: Your subject line can kill your pitch (or, Hi, I want to talk to you about … uh, stuff)

• “Solution” is not the solution in B2B marketing communications

• Copywriting marketing materials? How to speak prospects’ language

See all of Robert's articles >>

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Need a fresh pair of eyes?

A fresh pair of eyes can help you ensure your content is original and effective... especially the eyes are attached to an experienced marketer. Get a fresh pair of eyes >> 

Four Secrets to CEO-Managed B2B Marketing Success (Dealbreakers #4)

NOTE: This article is part of the fluff-busting Dealbreakers! series (inspiration: 30 Rock).

Once you have decided that you need some kind of professional at the helm of your marketing effort, you still have to look inside your organization and decide if you want to bring in outside help. This is the classic inside/outside question:

Do you manage your marketing effort from inside the company or outsource marketing to an experienced consultant?

The inside/outside question

Many factors can impact this decision; among them are:

• Money
• Time, and
• In-house marketing expertise

Each CEO’s situation differs.

Advantages of outsourcing

Think of marketing as you would any other crucial aspect of running your company. Some companies have an accountant on staff, or even an entire accounting department. Others outsource. No company would get very far without specialists working on its behalf.

If you or someone on your staff is a well-rounded marketing professional or is keen to dive into the finer points of business-to-business marketing best practices, you may have a great opportunity to use in-house talent to your benefit. If not, it’s time to look outside.

I’ll share with you something I keep handy, that bears on the decision about whether to in-source or outsource: some time ago Peter Kim, an influential blogger on social media, reviewed two Forrester reports that point to a need for companies to work with an agency to leverage brand monitoring and social networks for business. In The Need For Services In Social Technology at the Being Peter Kim blog, he writes:

“To fully understand these technologies and capture value, you're going to need some help. In the future, this won't be the case…. During the long transformative transition in the meantime, companies will need help getting there.”

The same can be said of inbound business-to-business marketing. To fully understand what to do – and to do it – most CEOs will need some help.

How you manage that help can make the difference between a successful marketing investment and a waste of time and dollars.

Advantages of insourcing

Four secrets to efficient CEO-managed marketing

1. Marketing Planning: Use a comprehensive marketing plan to determine goals, budget and methods
2. Specialists: Pick trustworthy, affordable experts in the specific areas where you need help (more on this below)
3. Coordination: Manage consultants daily or weekly for best results
4. ROI: Have key performance indicators (KPIs) such as leads being generated, and measure using tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot and/or Google Analytics. Then you know more about what's working, and your return on investment (ROI)

Step 2 -- picking the right specialists -- is harder than 1, 3, and 4, which relate to managing B2B marketing activities. So the next Dealbreaker article will feature three questions to ask a potential consultant. What are your make or break questions?

MarketingSherpa B2B Summit: Statistics, Social Media and the Sale

The MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit ’10 hit San Francisco last week with two days of data-driven presentations, tactical training and – of course – networking galore.

B2B marketers representing corporate, agency and boutique shops, got down in the tastefully-decorated Parc 55 Hotel weeds to learn how to improve search marketing return on investment using advanced analytics, create more effective content and optimize the all-important sales funnel.

Here is a sample of the lessons learned from the field.

Social Media is Big

Sue Watkins (@susankwatkins), director of marketing with Meridian Systems stayed for the two days and participated in the Social Marketing Roadmap training session the following day. “The challenge to marketers that social media seems to exacerbate is how important it is to keep generating new, relevant content,” Watkins shared after returning to her office in Sacramento. “We do this a lot at Meridian, but with more content and communication channels available to prospects and customers, the ability to create content is more important that ever.”

Metrics, Analytics and Sales

Jennifer Melwani at Salesify (@salesify) shared on her Marketing Intelligence Blog the adage that “Metrics tell us where we’ve been, analytics tell us where we’re going.” At the same time, she cautioned, “Lead scoring is not a substitute for the human touch. The score indicates they are phone ready, then use the phone to determine if they are sales ready. In short, if you have a complex sale, the phone is still the best way to qualify leads.”

Lead the Way

Andrew Spoeth (@andrewspoeth) of Marketo shared these nuggets on the Modern B2B Blogs blog: On social media, he cautioned that while the blog is replacing the website as the center of many social media strategies, be sure it outlives changes in technology. I have heard many caution the identification of microblogging as a way to reach customers rather than focusing exclusively on one application such as Twitter.

On email marketing, he suggested segmented, targeted drip nurturing campaigns that are light on the images. He also wisely suggested that landing pages answer three questions:

• Where am I?
• What can I do here?
• And Why should I do it?

I love that. “Make it easy for them,” he adds. Why do we so often we trip over ourselves to be creative when a prospective customer doesn’t know where to step next?

Did you go to the Summit? Are you attending the one in Boston on Oct. 25 and 26? What are your tips for making the most of statistics and social media to make the sale?

Calling Out the Trash

Why let companies get away with lazy B2B marketing?

British “geek comedian” Tom Scott has come up with a set of journalism warning labels. He actually prints these out on stickers so he can paste them on the free newspapers he finds while riding the London Underground. While they are meant as a joke, they have a sting of truth to them:

• Warning: This article contains unsourced, unverified information from Wikipedia.
• Warning: Journalist does not understand subject they are writing about.
• Warning: To ensure future interviews with subject, important questions were not asked.

Don’t you wish you could stick some similar labels on corporate marketing? I’m not talking about those instances when you know someone simply didn’t have the time and resources to do the job they might have liked. I mean when you know someone has gotten lazy, or thinks the audience is stupid, or has fallen in love with some technology that gets in the way of the message. I’d love to have a set of labels like these:

• Warning: This website forces you to endure a long Flash intro before you can see the information you came for.
• Warning: The client never actually said any of the quotes in this press release. We’re not even sure he read them before giving his approval.
• Warning: The sample size in our survey is so small that the results are meaningless.
• Warning: We don’t know where these numbers came from, but numbers are impressive so we used them anyhow.

Want to play along? It’s fun and depressingly easy. Share some of the warning labels you’d love to attach to B2B marketing materials.

Business Costs Pro: B2B Lead Generation Campaign "Very Valuable in Helping Get Clients"

"This has been very valuable in helping me get clients." -- Van Haas, CEO, Peak Cost Containment

How a systematic approach to B2B lead generation helped Peak Cost Containment get clients

Challenge: meet more prospects

In early 2010, Bay Area business cost reduction expert Van Haas had launched a successful consulting practice, built relationships with referral partners, and honed a valuable service: analyzing companies’ spending patterns and showing them how to reduce businesses expenses by 10 to 30% per year.

To grow, he needed to talk with more potential customers.

"I am not a salesperson by history or personality. I was trying to figure out ways to get out and market this,” Haas said. When Haas looked online, he found Business Communications Group LLC. He contacted CEO Rebekah Donaldson and they discussed the B2B lead generation options. 

Peak's website was not generating any leads. "It seems like the site should help people to figure out who we are, what we do – and have it lead to business,” said Haas during their first phone conversation. He needed help to:

1. Map the right route to follow with marketing efforts
2. Attract high quality leads without high-price advertising
3. Cost-effectively nurture prospects, clients, and partners

Mapping the right route seemed tough because of all the marketing and advertising options. There's referral networks, pay-per-click advertising, telemarketing, use of social networking sites like LinkedIn, and direct communications with his contacts. Which would pay off; and which would waste resources?

Solution: attract the best prospects with inbound marketing

Haas' first instincts had led him to hire a company to do some cold-calling on his behalf, but he had not been happy with the results. Donaldson showed him the value of getting a sound marketing roadmap in place and launching inbound marketing efforts. She recommended a 12 week lead generation campaign that included:

1. Overall marketing planning
2. A campaign to start qualified leads rolling in
3. Preparation of lead-nurturing and sales materials

“She opened my eyes that there were a lot of other things I probably should do first. Her whole point was you need to get the messages, the marketing materials, the website optimized; get all the back-end stuff ready so that when people get that email or press release and click through, they are drawn in further.”

Projecting marketing ROI

Haas was concerned at first about the amount of time and money he might have to invest.

“At first I didn’t know if this was the best bang for the buck, if my goal was to get a client,” he said. But he also saw that in the many case studies that Donaldson provided with her proposal, clients said they'd received excellent return on investment. And looking back now, he says the investment was "definitely" worth it.

peakcc.com guides prospects to next steps

Systematic method for reliable results

Haas wasn’t promised any magic. As the driving force behind his own company, he was the source for much of the information that went into the new marketing materials.

“I wouldn’t say that I didn’t have to do anything, or even that it was a breeze on my end. With this kind of project, it can’t be that way. But I think they did the heavy lifting....There was very little I had to do to tweak documents to the point where they were ready to go.”

Strong value proposition as the foundation

In addition to finding the keywords that Peak’s prospects were most likely to search on, Donaldson conducted a thorough analysis of Peak’s current approach toward its audience. Haas received written recommendations and coaching on the competitive advantages that he should leverage, and challenges in audience perception that he might have to overcome.

“It was valuable to have Rebekah as a second opinion to say, 'this claim needs to be backed up' or 'that may not work with prospects.’ She got me to stop and think of what really is important from their perspective,” Haas said. “I didn’t think I would get as much out of the strategy sessions as I did. It really made me re-evaluate things, and made me stake out a clear market position. It really helped me through the whole process to get clear on my value proposition.”

See a Peak case study >>

Pulling in new leads

Donaldson's team, including Business Writing Director Robert Celaschi, developed search optimized web content such as case studies, executive briefs and blog material, plus press releases and emails to spread the word about new developments. They provided lead handling recommendations and custom templates for delivering proposals and presentations. Content Marketing Manager JT Long helped Haas sort out the best professional networking and social media activities to pursue.

Prospects appreciate thoughtful nurture emails

“Lead nurturing” is the art and science of crafting a series of emails that get automatically sent to leads after they first convert. The idea is to follow up in a tactful way with genuinely useful information, to deepen understanding and trust.

Haas sent emails with decreasing frequency: day 1, day 3, day 5, day 10 and day 60. Each had a different offer, such as links, answers to frequently asked questions, and an offer to help analyze a prospective client’s expenses.

A click-through rate of 1 or 2 percent would have been about average, and 5 percent would have been great. Haas got an extraordinary 21 percent rate. And nobody unsubscribed, which means he was conducting true permission marketing.

Results: conversions average 20+ leads per month

Vistors who came to the site from organic search had a conversion rate of more than 3 percent by August 2010. Within six months, Peak had 130 leads.

Most importantly, Haas is getting clients. “The things that I have received -- both tangible and intangible to help me get my mind around what my value proposition is and what my talking points should be -- have been very valuable in helping me get clients,” he said.

View one of Peak's inbound marketing tools

Download Peak's free Cost Analysis for Profits guide Van Haas' tipsheet takes some of the mystery out of cost management and provides quick, easy-to-digest tips on spotting waste and restoring dollars and cents to the bottom line >>

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Do you need reliable marketing advice? Please see our B2B marketing services >>

Tweet Like a B2B Pro... At a Cocktail Party

Ask questions, answer questions, participate in chats... just like you would in person. More B2B social media marketing advice >>

Twitter is the ultimate cocktail party where people from all over the world come to learn and - occasionally - laugh. You create your own corner based on who you follow, what topics you tweet about and #hashtags you participate. The secret to building relationships with the people you meet there are similar to the etiquette you would follow at a live event.

1. Engage in conversations. Don't just shout out to the room about your new product or offering. Ask questions, answer questions, participate in chats. Thank those who share your insights. Be human.
2. Use Twitter as part of an overall campaign that includes other forms of social media, blogs, webinars, ebook offerings and newsletters. All should be focused on offering value based on the client's interest and should therefore be driven by their request to connect rather than pushing stuff out automatically.
3. Listen and learn. Twitter is a great way to gauge what people are interesting in knowing. You can pinpoint needs in the market and structure blogs and products to meet those needs in real time. It can also be inspirational to see all the neat things people are doing every day.
4. Connect in person. Meet your local Twitter followers at Tweet-ups and conferences. You will find that your online conversations take on a new level of engagement.

Have fun.

 

Tips on Building a Hard Working B2B Website

Together with author Virna DePaul, I spoke at the Sept. 14 Sacramento Press Club Seminar on "creating a killer writer web site that attracts editors."

I suggested that the journalists, non-fiction book authors, and fiction writers in attendance think in terms of marketing their small business' writing services. With that in mind, good goals for a writer's website include:

• Start relationships with prospective clients (editors, publishers)
• Build reach (add subscribers, followers, fans)
• Market research on story ideas
• Build referrals
• Ramp up new clients faster
• And even... get paid faster

Notice that I didn't say “branding” and “awareness.” They might be good reasons… but only if they will drive the goals above.*

Four fundamentals

To accomplish these goals, there are at least four things we must do. They're interrelated, and we can think in terms of a cycle to repeat and check against, to ensure we have a hard working web presence. The four things are:

1. PROVE: Build strong business case (why trust me)
2. PULL: Attract best visitors (where are my clients)
3. ENGAGE: Start a relationship (>1 way to engage)
4. NURTURE: Ping with permission (what do they need)

I've evaluated dozens of small business websites, and in general they are weak in all these areas - so produce little or no return on investment. If we're trying to raise ROI from a website, the place to focus first is #1 (PROVE).

Why believe you?
Here are the types of content that can build prospects’ confidence that what you say about your services is true:

• Decision guides
• Case studies
• Samples of work
• Testimonials
• Statistics
• Bios/profiles
• Degrees/certifications
• Awards
• Affiliations...

Here is a copy of the seminar slides (286 KB PDF).

Any comments or questions on the ideas we discussed in the seminar? Please chime in below.

*Credit: Mike Volpe, 2008 slide deck about inbound marketing, re right and wrong reasons for marketing