Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Feb 17, 2010
Blogging for SEO = mind numbing boredom
In my experience, one of the biggest hurdles any blog, newsletter, website has to overcome is sheer boredom. So much content that's pushed out -- especially stuff written with SEO in mind -- is mind numbingly boring.
Blog content is for blog readers. Readers like new and different. Readers are easily bored.
It's tempting to keep churning out "top ten ways to blah blah blah" stuff, packing it with keywords -- or to keep churning out announcements, packing it with marketing messages.
I do some of that, somewhat guiltily, knowing it's more boring than the other stuff. It's a continuing battle for me when it comes to the content balance at this blog.
Being controversial = being rude?
One thing that's not boring is being controversial. But does that mean being rude? No!
I think this is the breakdown:
Bad idea:
- Ad hominems
- Offensive jokes
- Mocking/ sarcasm
- Posting/commenting with the intent of embarrassing someone or winning an argument
Good idea:
- Frank
- Edgy
- Direct
- Transparent
- Admitting one's own weaknesses/ uncertainty when appropriate
- Posting/commenting with the intent of helping
I have a friend who's really good at walking this line in his blog posts.
What's not boring?
What else isn't mind numbingly boring? Perhaps doing more on this blog regarding...
- Screw ups
- Disasters
- Flops
- Failures
- Blunders
- Mistakes
- Backfires
I think that may be our theme here on this blog, in 2010.
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 Fri, Dec 04, 2009
Good content and ethics -- why responsible marketing takes courage.
By
Rebekah Donaldson
A few minutes ago I read a post by Sonia Simone of Copyblogger titled "The First Rule of Copyblogger." It took my breath away. She writes,
"....content is too often a lame version of work done by a real expert. (You know, someone who cared enough about the topic to actually learn a lot about it.)
It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of content marketing. Which means I’m a huge opponent of badly done content marketing.
Sloppy, junky, selfish content just gives the legitimate folks a bad name.
The first rule of Copyblogger is you do not publish content that sucks
Why do we hammer you every week with techniques to make your writing sharper, crisper, more effective, and more magnetic?
To let you create content that’s as strong and alive as it can possibly be.
Sure there are tools that will let you hack, mash, smash, and mangle
someone else’s content into a word soup that Google thinks is original.
Google won’t help you if no one wants to read what you’ve got to say.
It's not just a practical matter
Sure there's the practical matter of, "what works? What produces the best results at the lowest cost?"
And yes there's the professional ethics issue of keeping a promise made in a headline and teaser.
But beyond that there's an issue of, well... intellectual chutzpah.
Meaning: When marketing, am I holding myself to a high standard of clear thinking, clear expression, and original contributions? Or am I being intellectually lazy?
Regularly publishing crappy marketing content reflects a deep cynicism about B2B buyers.
Resolutions
Sometimes I get lazy about content. But it won't do. I'm better than that. And you can smell stinky content from a mile away.
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 Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Nov 19, 2009
Zap weak email content for higher ROI
By
Rebekah DonaldsonEmail newsletters don’t cost much to create, they give people something to look forward to,
and they keep your name top of mind. That’s especially important if you have a
long sales cycle.
Like every other aspect
of B2B marketing, there are right ways and wrong ways to creating an email
newsletter. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll consistently produce a winner:
Flip It
Traditionally, corporate newsletters are like mini press releases squished together. As in, "here's what we did/ are doing/ will do."
But unless you do really interesting things or you're super cool like Steve Jobs, that's not a great hook for a conversation with clients.
It's better to keep the focus on
the client, not on your company. Give them valuable and relevant information
that helps them work smarter, stay abreast of latest trends, or justify that
they’ve made the right choice by working with you.
What Isn't Boring?
Examples of items that often play well:
- Comparisons of products or services in your space
- Customer stories ("they faced x... they did y... they achieved z")
- Previews or reviews ("X is a useful book/ workshop/ guide because...")
- Human interest stories (especially about executives at the companies you serve)
- Advance notice ("next month this new executive brief will go public; here is a sneak peek...")
- Online resources they
can access (on your site and elsewhere)
- Reader
responses to surveys or previous newsletter content ("some readers disagreed with our article on blah... they have a point there")
Don't Worry About Filling Up Your Newsletter
If it seems like a lot of
work to fill a newsletter, here’s the good news: You don’t have to fill it! Details coming in my next post about email marketing...
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 Mon, Oct 12, 2009
National Business Group On Health publishes "Choosing the Right Hospital" toolkit with our help
By Molla Donaldson, DrPH, MS and Rebekah Donaldson
With all the talk of health reform, one issue that keeps coming up is that people should have access to affordable quality care. But how can we know what quality of care is when it is so complex? Part of the answer is to make quality of care information publicly available. Another part is to take the language of quality ("mortality" "risk" "variation" etc.) and translate it to plain English.
|
See the Toolkit and Employer's Guide we helped write. What do you think? Please comment in the Comments area below. |
The National Business Group on Health has published “Choosing the Right Hospital,” an online toolkit developed to help people choose the hospital where they are likely to receive the best care. Molla Donaldson and I helped prepare it, under the leadership of National Business Group on Health President Helen Darling, and Director of Benchmarking & Analysis Karen Marlo.
We also developed a guide for Human Resources officers to help employees use the guide.
“We are grateful that Molla and Rebekah were able to lend their expertise to the development of these valuable tools for employers and employees alike,” said Darling. “Helping employees understand the importance of using quality hospitals and providing them with tools to do just that is imperative to improving the safety of care in our hospitals and helping to control health care costs.”
The National Business Group on Health is an association of many of the country’s largest self-insured businesses. Their website and publications provide a large employers’ perspective on national health policy issues and practical solutions to its members’ most important health care problems.
Through this project, I (Rebekah) learned how frequently medication errors, surgical mishaps, and other patient safety issues occur. The Institute of Medicine (with Molla’s help in 2000) alerted the public to medical errors almost 10 years ago in a widely publicized report. There was great hope that safety would improve. But in a follow up study, the federal government’s 2008 National Healthcare Quality Report found that hospital patient safety measures have worsened by nearly 1 percent each year for the past six years.
When people can choose a hospital, it is most likely based on their insurance, where their doctor practices, and advice from family and friends – but this information may not be accurate. There are good web sites now, and our work tried to make it easier to understand the quality and safety information–and what patients themselves report — at the federal government’s site, Hospital Compare.
We’ve written in the past about how organizations do well by doing good. The National Business Group on Health has merged doing well with doing good. Choosing the Right Hospital helps everyone compare quality and safety. We believe that the more people know about and insist on safe care, the more likely it is that health care will improve.
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(Note: comments were imported 11/6/09 during migration from Wordpress)
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 Mon, Sep 21, 2009
By Rebekah E. Donaldson
We’ve all heard the phrase, “You get what you pay for.” The truth is, sometimes you get a lot less than you pay for.
This is the first in a seven-part series of articles to help you get what you pay for when you choose a marketing agency. I’ll start today with a decision tree that shows the five key decision points. As the series progresses, I’ll show you a framework that CEOs can use to sort out the answers. In later articles I touch on the various types of marketers in the industry. You’ll also find 11 questions to ask an agency – with an example of what counts as a good answer (“pass”), and what counts as baloney (“fail”), for each. And in my seventh article in this series I’ll give five warnings, each of which begins, “Why to watch out if you hear…“
Outsourcing marketing – opportunities and threats
On the one hand, you need effective marketing because of competition and economic conditions; on the other hand, you risk:
- Wasting money
- Wasting time
- Making a bad impression on customers and internal stakeholders if marketing poorly represents the company
The real risk of taking the wrong path
A lot of marketing-related companies are vying for your attention — and your money. Cash vacuums like Google Adwords. Thousands of marketers with consulting practices. 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.
Fig 1 - Picking a marketing consultant decision tree |
Five key decision points – overview
After you resolve to do more effective marketing, you need to decide:
1. Do we need professional marketing help?
This decision is easy to overlook. After all, vendors like Google Adwords include campaign set-up and support, so why not take their free advice? Or, why not redouble your efforts with mailers and telemarketing, which produce a trickle of leads? That just requires bigger lists and more investment in the same types of marketing as before.
In this series I outline why not. And if you do need professional marketing help, you need to decide:
2. Do we need to outsource marketing or should we keep this in-house?
In 2009-2010, talent of all kinds can be had at bargain prices. But maybe you feel ambitious. Perhaps you’re up to managing marketing directly?
If you are interested in outsourcing, you may wonder:
3. Do we need a formal RFP process to look for a consultant?
There are some benefits to doing a traditional request for proposals. But that process can take months to complete.
If you can arrive at a short list more quickly and easily on your own using search engines, social media and referrals, what sort of professional marketers should make the list?
4. What kind of agency do we need — specialists or an all-in-one firm?
Specialists in marketing subdisciplines are critical to overall marketing success — but it’s risky to grasp at individual tactics (see also our Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid ebook). If you decide you need a firm to be accountable for helping you move the needle for your firm (not just hit marketing-centric numbers), you’ll need to decide:
5. Who should we pick — what do we ask to ensure we get the best agency?
Some folks grapple with what I think of as “early” decisions, like whether to outsource. Others skip the early decisions and go straight to weighing one resource over another.
Now that you see the path we’ll be following, we’ll start looking at the individual elements in more detail. If you haven’t already, please subscribe by email.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Aug 27, 2009
By Rebekah E. Donaldson
One of the big laughs in the fake documentary film Spinal Tap came when the band took to the stage to sing of Stonehenge. The set was supposed to feature a replica of a section of Stonehenge standing an imposing 18 feet tall. Due to a miscommunication problem with the set designer, it shows up at a ridiculous 18 inches tall.
Here’s a story about one of my own screw ups, some tips from the trenches of corporate logo design — and 5 corporate logos that help illustrate how a logo can help — or hurt — its owner.
When it comes to your corporate logo, you want something that works no matter what size. Sticking with the music theme for a bit, consider how graphic designers have had to adapt as the 12-inch LP jacket gave way to the 5-inch CD cover, and finally to the tiny icon that shows up on an iPod. A recent issue of Wired magazine gives examples. Your logo has to work as tiny square icon in a browser address bar and as a 50-foot long banner hanging from the ceiling of the Cow Palace… and also on business cards and in email marketing…
Creating corporate logos: when pros make mistakes
In 2007, I was trying to update our logo within two weeks. I considered lots of things before signing off on a final pick, but I didn’t test it in all contexts. Then when we applied the logo to our website, we had to use the logo in reverse — as white text on a blue background. The logo text looked a bit wispy and puny in this context — so we doubled back and doubled the letters’ width. I wasted some time and money fixing things because I skipped the step of testing the mark in a range of contexts.
Tips from the trenches of corporate logo design: factors to check
- Is the name and tag line descriptive? Is the tag line credible?
- Is the logo memorable? Attractive? Legible when tiny? Still strong when reversed?
- Do customers instantly grasp the symbol, graphic or mark next to the logo’s words?
- Can the logo fit inside a square? On one line if need be? In a column?
Compare the following corporate logos of companies trying to position themselves as on the leading edge of their fields. Symbols at right tell my opinion — I think three of them need updates to make them work. What do you think?
Bulldog Solutions’ logo meets all the criteria above. The tag line, “Lead Generation Unleashed”, is small when logo is 150 pixels wide, but short and powerful like a bulldog. The dog can be shrunk to icon size and still convey just the right tone: tenacious, fierce, and loyal… with a wink of humor. The company actually uses a blue paw print for their browser icon. The name is clever but not too clever — together with the tag line it’s descriptive and compelling. Truly a brand identity helps its owner.
Bluewolf’s brand identity could work harder for its owner. The logo is clutter free, which is great. But what is a blue wolf? Why expend energy to figure it out? Their tag line doesn’t help me figure it out. It reads, “Success. Gauranteed.” Success at flipping burgers? The 100 meter dash? Fixing space stations? Also the logo is roughly 4 times as long as it is tall here. A 2×1 ratio is more versatile. Too, I’d add a unique mark their team could use when confined to teeny tiny spaces. (Indeed, I don’t see an browser bar icon when I visit their site. Warning: you’re forced to watch Flash if you visit. Heavy. Sigh.)
Rubicon Marketing Group’s red logo stands out — in a good way. In the browser bar they use a red capital “R” for their mark. The tag line “Marketing IS sales” is interesting – when I read it I think, “no B.S. here — tell me more!” Roughly 2×1 proportions make the logo versatile. There’s a bit of incongruity between the conservative traditional font and the hip modern out-with-the-0ld, we-are-pushing-the-envelope positioning statements. But otherwise a good example of a logo that helps its owner.
Verticurl’s logo has been updated since I started this post several months ago. Happily, now it has roughly 2×1 dimensions, has different type treatments to convey the distinction between the first and second parts of the word, and the tag line was moved below the logo and is pretty clear. Still worthwhile to consider a distinguishing mark. And for sure, someone needs to put a few minutes into the site banner, where the logo shows up blurry/pixelated. Good example of a logo that could work harder for its owner.
Pedowitz Group’s logo is most troubling. The graphic to the left of the words says to me “blue pizza!” and ”homemade logo! ” while the tag line text says: “The Leader in Web 2.0 Marketing” and their latest press release touts the company as “the world’s largest and most experienced provider of marketing automation services…” Oh no! The blue pizza is in the browser bar when I visit their site! (Flash in the site banner! Boo Hiss.) I recommend an upgrade for the logo, positioning statement, website, and marketing materials. The logo is hurting its owner’s brand.
Corporate Logo Checkup
There are certain kinds of corporate logos that won't help you - and others that will hurt your brand. Get our help checking your corporate logo design to make sure it's helping you in our Web 2.0 world.
