Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Tue, May 18, 2010
After you resolve to do more effective marketing, there are a few decisions ahead. Among them:
1. Do we need professional help? Or could we do it ourselves?
There are lots of good reasons to self-serve:
- Saves cash
- Keeps all marketing communications efforts centralized
- Builds skills internally
- Leverage free resources available
DIY resources
There are great resources available for DIYs. I recommend just about any MarketingSherpa benchmark report or how-to guide you can get your hands on. Even if it's an old outdated version it could be an eye opener. Vendors like Google Adwords include campaign set-up and support, so why not take their free advice?
Or, if you already do mailers and telemarketing, you could always increase the volume of each. All that requires is bigger lists and a bit more cash outlay. It could be low-hassle, in the sense that the path to increased exposure is nice and short. No fussing with messaging. No fiddling with design. Just feed more bills in and get more leads out.
Machine out of order?
If that will work, do it. And instead of messing with marketing, do something more fulfilling.
It’s a question only you can answer. You have the 30,000-foot perspective on how you’re doing relative to your business goals.
But as you weigh your decision, let me offer a couple points:
- First, unfortunately, bad marketing is worse than no marketing at all. The reason is that it takes more time and money to repair the damage from a bad impression, than to make a good first impression.
- Second, if you're a b2b company, it's probably not enough to just do more of what you’re used to doing already – if what you’re doing is conventional marketing like advertising, call outs, mailers and Yellow Page ads. I could go on about why; in a nutshell, it's because savvy business decision prevent and resent interruptions.
Inbound marketing involves helping your target market find you easily when they are searching for help. It includes such tools as
search-engine optimization, which is a way of making sure your website contains the same keywords that people are most likely to use when they are looking for your kind of product or service. But it has to be done in a way that impresses both search engines and high-potential prospects. And SEO is only one of many tools used in
inbound marketing.
As Laura Ramos, formerly of Forrester Research, wrote in How To Avoid Becoming Obsolete,
“Focusing simply on new campaigns, clever advertising, and delving into social media will only paper over problems. Turning up the heat on conventional marketing activities won't spur the profound changes required.”
Decision point
If you don’t need professional marketing, stop here.
And if you need help shifting to a new, more productive, inbound marketing approach, it’s still not time to hire. It's time for your next decision. Look for our next Dealbreakers article due out next week!
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, May 06, 2010
Kenny Rogers’ Gambler knew when to hold 'em, when to walk away, and when to run. Apply this to B2B marketing agencies and you can avoid screw ups, disasters, flops, and frustration. Kenny Rogers’ Gambler knew that the trick to winning at cards was knowing when to hold ‘em and when to walk away. The same is true in business.
Hear that sucking sound?A lot of marketing-related companies are vying for your attention — and your money. One option is to feed the one-armed bandits by picking Google Adwords keywords without knowing how Adwords works; or hiring marketing automation software companies, web hosts, email marketing tools, graphic designers, online directories, multimedia companies, social media sites and dozens of other types of vendors. All in hopes of a big, lucky payout.
Back on track
A few weeks ago I wrote about a new series of articles on the way about how to pick the best b2b marketing agency. Now I'm finally starting that series. The goal is to help CEOs avoid outsourcing when they don't need to... or avoid underperforming B2B marketing consultants -- who can contribute directly or indirectly to losing customers, partners, competitive edge, and reputation.
I'm finally kicking the series off.
Really.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Apr 12, 2010
"If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing..." - @
We've been ranked #8 in a list of 100 HubSpot All Stars - yahoo!
Hubspot is software & advice that helps your business get found online by more qualified visitors, convert more visitors into leads, and more efficiently close leads. But their inbound marketing community has 10,000+ marketers doing amazing things every day. How did we rank at #8?
According to Hubspot, All Star status reflects,
“the long-term viability and awesomeness of a customer's marketing programs. The higher the CHI score, the more traffic and leads are likely to be generated by that customer in the future. (Traffic and leads make customers happy, hence the name.)”
What is "awesome" when it comes to inbound marketing programs? Here's what worked for us:
- First principles: give reliable, ethical advice aimed at helping you move the needle. Have humility. Own mistakes. Learn daily.
- Awesome content is king: We strive to publish content you might actually want to read. But success with our published content didn’t happen over night. Our first ebook was on the dry side, for example. And I've written some lame blog articles (no, I won't entertain you by linking to them here!). With the help of my awesome team, we've published moderately successful stuff. Our ebook "Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid" has been the most popular.
- Close the loop! Using Hubspot's awesome analytics, over time we've learned more about which keywords are best to focus on, what content you like best, and how you are finding us. Take the Six Gotchas ebook as the example again. You commented and linked the most to articles that called out common marketing mistakes. We wrote an ebook in that vein, gave it a catchy headline, jammed in as much concrete advice and examples as we could muster, and showed on the cover an executive slipping on a banana peel - doh! (Hankering to see what's behind the cover page? Awesome...)
- Brains over cash: Pick cost-effective ways to promote content - like social media marketing and PR. We invest time just about daily in LinkedIn, and just about weekly in Twitter (@b2bcommunicate and @b2bjt). We follow and comment on relevant websites, blogs, LinkedIn questions, and tweets too. Hubspot's awesome Social Media Module makes it possible for mere mortals to stay on top of myriad social media accounts.
- Be clear about the next step. If you get our Gotchas ebook, for example, you'll also get a link to access a menu of services. It's our job to be clear about how to move along. You choose whether or not to take the next step.
High threshold for follow up
Because this whole system results in daily leads, we keep a very high threshold for follow up. For example, almost daily folks download our stuff, and/or click through from the follow up email to get more stuff like the 2010 Information Kit.
There is no way we can call all these folks, so we focus on keeping up with requests for services.
More resources
See all the great resources available in the Hubspot Service Marketplace.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Mar 18, 2010
How can it be that marketers – people who
specialize in creating positive images – have such an image problem?
In my career, I have met a lot of marketing professionals. Hundreds? Thousands? And, on the whole, they're ok. Just folks trying to make a living.
But we also have more than our fair share of wanna-bes.
Spotting B2B marketing wanna-bes
Wanna-bes are difficult to spot until it is too late. They have great business cards, LinkedIn profiles, and brochures. But hook up with a chronic underperformer, and they can run your business into the ground.
The impact of chronic underperformance by a marketing consultant goes beyond the tens of thousands of dollars in wasted advertising, lost sales, and missed opportunities. It can also lead to lost customers, lost partners, a lower barrier to entry for competitors, and even PR crises for the organization -- not to mention a career crisis for the executive who picked the underperformer.
That's a dealbreaker!
Dealbreakers come in many shapes and sizes. Here are a couple to look out for -- I'll expand on these in future articles.
If your marketing consultant...
- Does cookie-cutter marketing, where every campaign is a variation on the same theme... that's a dealbreaker
- Has a "command-and-control" mentality, where the agency tries to tell the client what to do without listening to their needs... that's a dealbreaker
- Over-sells, meaning the agency is all bling and no cha-ching... that's the ultimate dealbreaker
This last bunch is especially irritating. They make lots of noise about design awards and awareness campaigns but say "it's just so hard to know" when prospects ask, "what did it produce?"
It is true, of course, that it is hard to know what marketing produced -- IF the marketer doesn't do closed-loop marketing. That's the sort where results from each effort are fed back into planning cycles. Indeed, deciding about future marketing efforts without a clear view of what's worked amounts to guessing. And guessing on the client's dime is not ok. It's... a dealbreaker!
More to come. Meantime, here are some related articles:
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Dec 21, 2009
Money talks
Over the last nine years, I have made a living at helping B2B companies generate leads. Through close collaboration with clients, we've helped produce $2B in qualified B2B leads and $225M in B2B sales opportunities for clients.
Take my client that in 2009 built $1M in B2B leads in 12 weeks on a $25,500
investment, for example. That’s a 3,922% return on investment. Another increased B2B sales by more than half, with less than 2% of its annual revenue invested in B2B marketing. Another grew B2B sales leads 500% in about 12 months, with less than $50,000 invested.
What is (and isn't) a sales lead?
Per B2B sales lead expert Mac Macintosh, "leads are qualified, sales-ready opportunities."
A guy visiting your website isn't a sales lead.
A guy you bump into at a tradeshow isn't a lead.
A guy who subscribes to your newsletter ain't a sales lead, either.
An inbound lead generation campaign is about jump starting real relationships with real business decision makers, while holding costs to a minimum.
B2B lead generation blueprint
To do it, we prepare and rollout a 12 week lead generation campaign focused on developing and promoting an educational guide (or ebook, executive brief, tip sheet, decision guide...). In each guide is a call to action that helps prospects to the next step.
- BUILD CONTENT - First we interview you about topics important to your target audience. Drawing on your comments, we write one executive brief, guide, or ebook conveying important tips, insights, and steps to learn more. We write a search optimized landing page (LP), confirmations page, and email confirmation. We also adapt the content to prepare a search optimized press release. We prepare blurbs you can place on your website, email signature area, and other places.
- ADAPT CONTENT - We optimize visit-to-lead conversions by having hard-working landing pages and attracting prospects to them using search engine optimization, social media marketing and an optimized press release. We adapt the content to other purposes as well, to get more mileage. For example, we help equip the CEO to offer information on the content via email, on his networking platforms like LinkedIn, and – importantly – in person to other executives.
- PROMOTE CONTENT - On an agreed-on date, we publish the guide, issue the press release, send the promotional email, and post links on social networks. We meet weekly to track and discuss campaign ROI.
When we get started with content marketing, it typically benefits the client within weeks.
Your sales leads and experiences
Where do your sales leads come from? What does and doesn't work, in your experience?
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Dec 02, 2009
Repel visitors with ease
By
Rebekah Donaldson*
(*Note: To develop this article, I took Writing Web Content for the Online Reader by Cris Rominger and turned it inside out.)
Websites have been a standard business marketing tool for more than a dozen years, and yet some folks still don’t know how to present material well on the Internet.
People don’t look at the computer screen the way they look at the printed page, or even the television set.
The web demands its own approach if you want your content to grab the eye and get attention.
With that in mind, you may be headed for a B2B website disaster if you:
Get stingy with hard facts
Business-to-business buyers are information hounds. They spend a lot of time researching, evaluating, and compiling information online because it helps them make decisions. According to Enquiro
research, a full 92% of respondents turn to online resources in the early stages of the buying cycle. What b2b folks don’t like is promotional fluff, mission statements, and other marketing blah blah.
Throw giant blobs of text at your visitors
As information seekers, we’re goal oriented, impatient and critical. We scan rather than read. People have a hard time dealing with more than 100 words in a solid block, according to Crawford Killian, author of Writing for the Web. (Also check out Killian's fiesty post How not to write for the web -- I'm e-swooning.)
If you have more to say, break the chunk into two or three paragraphs, each with a subhead, all surrounded by lots of white space.
Avoid transitional phrases so your content chunks can stand on their own. Information on the web works best in modular rather than linear style.
Take your time getting to get to the point
Heat maps and eye tracking studies repeatedly show that headings grab our eye. To leverage their impact, use descriptive phrases that tell the reader what the content is about.
Place information carrying words at the beginning of headings to quickly convey meaning and use language your readers understand. If they "pick up an information scent" (Cris' term), they’ll drill down. And if they find relevant information that serves their needs or interests, they’ll read.
Write in a flowery style
Use strong verbs. Write in the active voice. Get to the point. "Marketing prose" does more than slow readers down. It annoys them.
Make readers work for information
Help the reader learn what the paragraph is about by using boldface type for information-rich keywords.
But don’t go overboard. Too many bolded words are distracting and hard to read. Use bulleted and numbered lists when appropriate. They rank right next to headings as the most-scanned areas of a page. Bullets are a great place to convey key benefits.
Consider tables for voluminous information. Tables or matrices can quickly convey and compare information that is easily lost in text.
Make the page too gray
Use photos, graphics, and captions to guide the eye and reinforce your message. They are called anchor points. They are the places where we start looking at a page.
Don’t worry about the design
A sloppy or confusing design hides your message. A good design instills confidence and trust. The right visual segmentation and hierarchy will help readers see how to interact with you.
Posted by Robert Celaschi on Mon, Nov 16, 2009
It may be time to give your marketing materials a refresher
By Robert Celaschi
If you check out the little bio under my photo at the bottom of this article, you’ll see that “Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years...”
But it’s not true.
The fact is, this month marks 25 years since I started writing for business publications. I bring it up not to brag, but to point out how easy it is to let the details of marketing copy slip out of date. Where did the last three years go?
Even after all the research, all the editing, all the nice graphic design, you still need to keep an eye on the finished product to make sure it doesn’t get left behind as the rest of the world marches on.
Often it’s the little things that trip us up. For instance there’s that little line on most newspapers and magazines that says something like, “Vol. XXVI, No. 49.” Every edition should get a new number, and the volume number typically changes ever year or six months. It’s so easy to forget to change the number that many publications make part of their standard production checklists.
Even then it’s too easy to let the mind coast. I have seen weekly publications that dutifully change the number of the edition each week: 49, 50, 51, 53, 54 ...
Eventually someone says, “Hey, weren’t we supposed to change the volume number after 52 and start over with 1?”
Your turn
If you have been using the same marketing copy for more than a year, go back and read through it with a critical eye.
- Have any of the facts changed since they went into the brochure or onto the website?
- Do the photos and graphics still show reality? (Of course we assume that they did originally)
- Do the press release dates include the years?
- Do all your web links still go where you think they do?
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Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years, both as a reporter and an editor. He joined Business Communications Group in 2005.
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Need a fresh pair of eyes?
A fresh pair of eyes can help you ensure your marketing materials will be effective in 2010... especially if they're attached to an experience B2B marketer. Get help >>
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Nov 11, 2009
Using 2010 best practices to engage prospects
and speed up sales
By Rebekah Donaldson
Hats off to
Meg Arnold,
Laura Good, and other members of the Sarta team for producing yesterday's seminar
2010 Trends in Marketing and PR.
2010 email trends we discussed
- Prospects have control - adapt to succeed
-
Email is competing with social media for attention
- Is email obsolete because of social media? (no)
-
Far and away email is most popular for sharing
- Email marketing budgets are up
Top 4 tips to improve email results
2010 PR trends we discussed
-
Adapt to succeed
- Microphone vs interactive PR
- Is PR obsolete because of social media? (no)
- PR is social
- "
Someone always pays"
- "'Solution’ is not the solution"
Top 4 tips for improving PR results
- Steadily
produce good content
- Know
your top 10 keywords
- Write
optimized press releases
- Point
to helpful landing pages
Get my slide deck.
(I also posted it using LinkedIn's presentation sharing app, here.)
Audience questions
My co-presenters Donna Chabrier and Ryan McCann were great. Authentic, insightful, and quick on their feet.
Being
quick on one's feet was important because the audience was not taking
our advice lying down! There were great questions during the session,
and lots of post-seminar dialogue. I hope we can continue the Q&A
in the comments section.
Special thanks
Laura Good did a great job pulling the event together. She has created a Twitter list of tweeters who came. Thanks Donna and Josh Morgan for recommending me as a speaker. Thanks to my colleague Robert Celaschi - though thousands of miles away yesterday, he was very helpful. And thanks Todd Lebo for access to the MarketingSherpa 2010 Email
Benchmark Report.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Oct 07, 2009
Visits and conversions by source for www.b2bcommunications.com Sept 7 to Oct 6 2009
By Rebekah E. Donaldson
Here is a screenshot showing the sources of our website traffic that converted to leads over the last month. Looking at the chart, I answer:
- What does this chart tell you about lead sources?
- How much did you invest to get the site working this way?
- We need to generate leads - what's the best way?
Visits and conversions by source (1 month)
This chart shows how different sources have driven visits, leads, and customers to www.b2bcommunications.com. The key on the right shows the sources tracked.
What does this chart tell you about lead sources?
To see our lead sources, we open our Hubspot account (more on this below) and go to the "Reports" tab and pick "Sources". There we have a chart showing visit to lead ratios by source:
Totals for Sep 7-Oct 7, 2009 |
|
|
|
Sources |
Visits |
Visit to Lead |
Leads |
Organic Search |
590 |
0.68% |
4 |
Referrals |
265 |
2.60% |
7 |
Paid Search |
0 |
0% |
0 |
Direct Traffic |
547 |
1.50% |
8 |
Email Marketing |
0 |
0% |
0 |
Social Media |
86 |
8.10% |
7 |
Other Campaigns |
0 |
0% |
0 |
Totals |
1,488 |
1.75% |
26 |
According to the chart, visitors from social media sources convert at the highest rate. A visit-to-lead conversion rate of 8.10% means that in the last month, eight out of ten visitors who came to the site via LinkedIn or other networking sites, responded. Visitors referred to our site from an article, blog, or website are the next most likely to respond.
How much did you invest to get these leads rolling in?
Hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars over several years. The site re-launched in 2007 and it's been an ongoing process to make it so visitors find what they need and take the next step. And there's still so much work to do! Meantime, we've been at blogging, search engine marketing, and social media marketing since 2007 - and public relations since 2001. We've tried to always close the loop (see below), so we know which B2B lead generation activities work and which to avoid.
What is Hubspot?
Hubspot provides advice and software that helps businesses get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers. We use it to build landing pages, attract traffic, nurture contacts, track leads, and connect records about leads and sales with records about marketing efforts.
We need to generate leads - what's the best way?
Here are just two of many ways to get started. Do both or pick the one that work for you:
Get a 60 Minute Internet Marketing Planning Session.
Try Hubspot - Use all the powerful features of Hubspot for B2B lead generation. Free for 30 days.
NOTE: We are pitched weekly by companies looking for affiliates to rep their stuff. So far, we've partnered only with MarketingSherpa and Hubspot. In each case, we bought their stuff and recommended it to others before we were ever a partner. Now that we are a partner, we get a small % of sales we help generate. Just so you know.
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Rebekah E. Donaldson ("Red") has led Business Communications Group since 2001. More >> |
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Sep 24, 2009
By Rebekah E. Donaldson
Everyone is supposed to be nailing down their plans for 2010 marketing efforts. What will go in your 2010 marketing plan?
As I write this, MarketingSherpa’s 6th Annual B2B Marketing Summit 2009 in San Francisco is winding down. And I don’t want it to be over. Every session, every speaker, and every piece of content was focused on helping attendees conquer the challenges of B2B marketing.
Here are links to get some of the facts you need for smart 2010 marketing planning.
Every marketer needs practical, up-to-the-minute planning and budgeting help when it comes to 2010 planning. And with B2B case studies, examples, and statistics from MarketingSherpa, you can justify spending using real-life results and plan new programs based on actual trends.
Here are some questions you may be thinking about this Fall, and my ideas on finding answers:
—
Q: What are the best-value ways to generate leads in 2010?
a. Let’s start with tactics to be wary of:
- Don’t depend on bought or rented email addresses — even if it’s somehow legal to email lists of strangers, your time is better spent pulling in prospects and building a permission-based house list
- Don’t depend on cold calling — even if you can get past the front desk and call screening and voicemail jail, interrupting an executive is getting off on the wrong foot
- Don’t depend on a Flash video or wesite – usually, search engines can’t ‘read’ them and many busy business decision makers will skip them altogether
- Don’t rely on mailed letters — it’s increasingly expensive (think Fed Ex envelope made lumpy with some sort of item enclosed, etc etc) to get your mail opened… much less past the gatekeeper
b. If you only get one Sherpa resource, make it the 6th Annual ‘B2B Marketing Benchmark Report 2009-10’.
In it you’ll see:
- 2,631 marketing professionals surveyed
- 157 charts & tables
- First Ever: Social Media Marketing section
- 7 Marketing Insight sections, including: ‘Strategies & Tactics for a Rebounding Economy’
- 10 practical how-to best practices from the field
—
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Search Marketing Benchmark Report 2009-10
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Q: How should I balance PPC and SEO in 2010?
Should you bump up Adwords investment or focus on organic search?
a. Check out Cris Rominger’s article Effective Search Engine Optimization
b. Check out my article What’s Wrong with this Google Adwords Ad?
c. Consider diving deeper into what works and what’s a waste of time using Search Marketing Benchmark Report 2009-10. In it you’ll see:
- 679 marketers surveyed
- 176 charts and tables
- Stats on conversion, cost-per-click, and clickthrough rates
- Special Section: Worldwide & regional search
- Special Section: Critical Factors in SEO
- Special Section: Testing & ROI Tracking (B2B & B2C)
—
Q: Is business use of Twitter a flash in the pan?
a. Maybe. But probably you should get involved anyway. Here are 9 articles we’ve offered related to the business use of Twitter.
2009 Social Media Marketing and PR |
b. Next, consider this resource: 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices. In it you’ll see:
- 157 charts and tables on the emerging state of Social Media marketing
- 13 practical how-to best practices from the field
- Discover how Social Media is changing PR
- Find out the metrics and budgets of Social Media marketing
- Special report: Using Social Networking Sites for Demand Generation
- Special Section: “9 Steps to Social Marketing Success”
And now a question for you. What will you do differently in 2010?