Red On Marketing Blog

Audio Dealbreaker #3: Can B2B Internet Marketing Magnify Your Attraction?

JT: Is Internet marketing really necessary?

Red: A better question is: "Are you visible to decision-makers?" 

A recent survey of 4,000 B2B buyers by MarketingSherpa showed that 80 percent went and found their marketing company. This demonstrates a shift in power. Your prospects are out hunting for vendors and you have to be present where they are looking. A smart Internet campaign can help you magnify your attractiveness. 

Four tactics can raise your visibility and build demand for the long-term.

1. Search Engine Marketing: Focusing on keywords, keeping your site current and connected.

2. PR 2.0: Publishing articles and commenting and guest-blogging in all the right places.

3. Tailored Communications: Helping people make good decisions.

4. Ongoing Monitoring: Keeping tabs on how you are perceived in the digital world.

All of these strategies involve the Internet at their core.

 

Take Away: If you hear from an agency that Internet marketing is not important, that should be a dealbreaker.

Your Turn: How do you get found online? Share your best practices.

B2B Sellers of the eCommerce Seas: Promise of the Shopping Cart

Like the crafty Pirates of the Caribbean, B2B sellers lured by tales of gold on the high seas of the Internet need to be aware of the dangers lurking in ecommerce waters.

Just as Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner have different goals and fighting styles, each business has different needs. For example, typically B2B companies have comparatively few products posted online compared to thousands featured on a consumer site. That leads to different considerations when choosing the appropriate vehicle for sailing off into the profitable sunset.

So before you hoist your flag and open for business, let’s take a moment to understand the moving parts in a working ecommerce platform.

Payment Gateway: This virtual port is where an order is actually charged to a customer for a transaction. It is not part of the shopping cart! Payment gateways provide a high security Internet portal for each merchant for manual order transactions and account reporting. The gateway also offers an application programming interface, or ‘API’, for sending and receiving encrypted order transaction information.

This is the source of eCommerce, the passing of dubloons from one account to another electronically. A payment gateway does not need a shopping cart, but a shopping cart needs a payment gateway. The merchant pays a monthly gateway fee and a percentage on each transaction.

Merchant Account: A B2B seller needs a merchant account to accept credit card transactions from the gateway. A merchant account is generally an added option to an existing business account at the business’s local bank. The merchant pays a monthly fee and a percentage on each transaction. Many factors come into play when a bank calculates a merchant's various fees, so it’s important to keep a working relationship with your banker. Missing data like exact address match, as well as off-page factors like your business credit, can influence your rates. Take the time to shop around for rates. The points can add up faster than skeletons in a Disney battle scene.

Alternative Payment Methods: Be sure to examine both sides of every payment method. PayPal accepts credit cards from out-of-network clients; however they have a lifetime limit ($2,500) before clients are required to sign up. PayPal can hold funds from out-of-network (large amounts) or unverified sales. This is part of fraud protection and can take some time to clear. A merchant account, on the other hand, goes right into your bank account. You own it, not PayPal.

Shopping Cart: In its most basic form, a shopping cart is a specialized web application that allows a customer to add products, calculate prices, estimate taxes, and estimate shipping. The application will then bill (not charge) the customer, produce a nice receipt page and send an email confirmation.

Shopping cart websites are essentially the check-out part of a brick and mortar supermarket and a virtual product catalog rolled up into one. The idea is to make it work like a real shopping cart... where you walk around choosing stuff and putting it in your basket. When you're ready to pay, you go to the checkout and it's all added up. You pay by credit card or debit card, and your payment is verified electronically. On the merchant’s side all the payment transactions and approval codes are batched for payment at the end of the day via the gateway. Sales are compared to gateway transactions to reconcile the accounts. 

Fraud protection: The online merchant is at a disadvantage with fraud, having both cyber gangs and the credit card companies against them. Specialized services provide card-not-present fraud protection for merchants at an additional cost. 

The Whole Enchilada

A gateway combined with a shopping cart application provides the greatest flexibility in selling products by giving payment transaction and merchandising tools to the B2B company. With that flexibility comes additional learning and time requirements. 

When evaluating services, don’t forget the cost of your time in managing a store and the daily clerk duties it entails. The simpler the flow, the easier it will be to utilize the resource.

Separate “must haves” and “nice to haves” based on your long-term business priorities. That’s where developing a written business plan around an online service or product line is so important. Mastering the mechanics of digital distribution and payment is far more important than trying to build the best B2B website at first. Small steps get you there quicker.

There is no one size fits all in B2B online sales.  That's why it is important to get the right kind of help with B2B eCommerce.

I just want to take payments

Many times in the services industries there is no one set price for a product, or clients pay for time or by subscription. This can be difficult to handle with a standard shopping cart. That is where experienced sailors of the ecommerce seas can help keep you from getting seasick.

This is the first article in a three part series on B2B eCommerce. The next installment examines the pros and cons of different ecommerce solutions and how you can minimize the price of doing business online. Please share your experiences and ask your burning questions about how to protect your booty from the curse of too many fees.

This article is by Sam Chapple, captain of Ecommerce and Internet Marketing at B2B Communications.

Busted! Three Lies about B2B SEO

Myth #1: Keywords = Jail Myth #2: Software can Write Great SEO Content Myth #3: All Traffic is Equal

Get ready for the B2B marketing version of Myth Busters. In this episode, we dispel the rumor that SEO stands for Stupid, Erratic and Odd

B2B search engine optimization doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to pack headlines and paragraphs with keywords at the expense of clarity, impact or grammar.

In fact, the opposite is true. The more you write to meet your reader’s needs, the more naturally you will attract the search engine attention that will bring you the most qualified leads.

Myth #1: Keywords = Jail

Busted: Well-defined keywords are not handcuffs that tether you to a constrained list of approved phrases. Instead, they are guides to keep you on track. Multiple entries with similar tags show search engines that you have lots of content on a certain subject. It also shows visitors that you have depth of knowledge that could be the answer to their needs. True SEO is a win-win for you and the reader.

Myth #2: SEO Content can be Written by a Computer

Busted: SEO copywriting is an art as much as it is a science. That is why anyone who says they have a computer program that can churn out content based on keywords is missing the mark. Only real people - creative copywriting experts - can bring that creative spark to a subject to explain it in a new way. Only a strategic marketer armed with sound competitive analysis and monster business writing skills will be able to deliver content that meets complex online content and conversion optimization rules.

Myth #3: All Traffic is Equal

Busted: Being found is a long way from being successful. Success means attracting qualified inbound leads. The latter is an order of magnitude harder than the former. It requires a true understanding of your customer’s needs. Only then can you provide the information they need in the format they need it.

How can you tell if you are posting the right content? Ask yourself:

• Does this content help our prospects?
• Does this content help search engines?

The best SEO content does both. So you don’t have to choose between educational, compelling copy and lists of words that will attract Google bots. That is just a myth. The truth is that a well-rounded SEO pro will consistently do both, naturally.

JT Long is Content Marketing Manager for Business Communications Group, a veteran storyteller for local and national publications and a longtime blogger. You can tweet with her @b2bjt.

B2B Websites -- What You Get For Free (Alot of Work)

When it comes to choosing a web content management system to build your B2B website, what you get for free is a lot of work... especially if you try to integrate with a shopping cart or CRM.

When people evaluate a Content Management System for a B2B website, they often miss some very important requirements. They always seem to look for the one that’s ‘best’ and cheapest. Instead, they should base the choice on the intended audience and skill set of the site operators.

Probably the biggest mistake is going for a Content Management System that is perceived as ‘free’. This is a mistake because there is skill in running a website, and many ‘free’ CMS require a multitude of skills and time to develop, test and deploy. This does not end up being a one-time cost either.

Let’s look a little closer at the various options without getting lost in a particular CMS.

Open-Source

There are many ‘community’ based software projects like WordPress, Drupal,  Mambo, Joomla!, Post Nuke and a whole lot more that are technically free. That is, the source code is
available to everyone and can be freely modified and distributed, but not sold.

These projects are excellent sources for development applications but are not some kind of out-of-the-box solution. Many times they end up in the hands of inexperienced but well meaning people who get completely lost in the complexity and the assumption of open-Source software that you know what you are doing, and if not, you will find the answer. That is, no technical support.

It’s true there are user forums and it’s true that open source is a great hobby. But if you are not willing to dedicate your precious time learning about the applications and getting under the hood, then ‘free’ is not ‘free’. 

Closed-Source

Closed-source software applications are proprietary. That means the code behind the application is not available and is usually a trade secret. This is done for business reasons. It’s very difficult to develop software without money.

Companies license their closed-source applications for use only, not modification. Closed-source software companies like Oracle or Microsoft also offer paid support.

The big drawback to closed-source is its cost: It’s relatively expensive and requires additional resources (as does open-source) such as web servers and operating systems.  

Hosted Services (SaaS)

Answering the call of the small business hosted services are application service providers (ASP) and the new breed, SaaS, or Software as a Service. This means you rent the application and not own it. This is an easy way for small businesses to get the tools that the big businesses already have. Probably the most well known is SalesForce, a Customer Relationship Management system that offers cradle-to-grave tracking of business leads and contacts.

A powerful inbound marketing platform called HubSpot incorporates blog, website and content management along with powerful analytics to track leads generated through a process called ‘closed loop marketing’. This is a process of gaining feedback in the form of email addresses, phone numbers and business addresses as lead follow-up, and data to track results.

There are also times when unscrupulous website designers sell an open-source application branded as their own. It’s important to understand and compare your options. It’s fairly easy to check on a brand by using a search engine like Google. You should be able to find a fair amount of feedback on a particular system you are interested in.

What you get for free is a lot of work. I know. I have a ‘free’ sail  boat in my back yard. Free comes in many forms.

This article is by Sam Chapple, Ecommerce and Internet Marketing Manager at B2B Communications.

B2B Companies Don’t Pick That Up - You Don't Know Where It's Been

Before you cut and paste, at least verify that the information is true

A year ago, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for several kinds of fraud and money laundering. People trusted him with billions of dollars, and he bilked them instead of investing it. What’s especially astonishing is how he managed to string them along for decades. Ever wonder how he got away with his scheme for so long?

One reason is that when a new investor came along, he saw the prestigious client list and figured Madoff must be all right. Surely those earlier clients had checked everything out, right? The problem is, some of those clients had relied on the famous names of even earlier clients. They never checked out anything, they just wrote out checks.

Recyling dangers

Here’s how this applies to b2b company marketing materials: A lot of people make the same mistake when they start gathering material for a blog or a web page. They see a great item elsewhere on the Internet, and with a few clicks of the mouse they copy and paste it into their own file. Surely the other guy knew what he was talking about, right?

Nope. Very likely the other guy stole it from an even earlier appearance on the Internet. Even if the other guy said where the information originated, you still can’t trust it. He might have stolen the attribution, or he may have garbled things in an attempt to put it into his own words, in the course of internet marketing.

Oooo, shiny!

In some ways, we’re like little kids who see something nifty on the sidewalk and want to play with it. As Mom always said, “Don’t pick that up; you don’t know where it’s been.”

Earlier this year I spent the better part of an afternoon chasing down a statement that supposedly appeared in a “recent” issue of a national magazine. I thought it was a great item. So did about 20 different bloggers and companies who posted the same statement, word for word.  Not one of them cited a specific publication date, or even the name of the article. Finally I tracked it down in the footnote of a book. The “recent” article had appeared in 1989. Even with that, I couldn’t find out who the author was, or if he was quoting someone else.

Stats sleuthing

Here’s a great bit of sleuthing that illustrates my point. Mel Gosling and Andrew Hiles tried to track down the origin of some oft-repeated stats, such as the claim that "over 70 percent of businesses involved in a major fire fail within 3 years, if they ever re-open at all."

In many cases, the folks presenting the stats online couldn’t say exactly where they came from. They saw it, they copied it, they repeated it. Who bothers checking out whether it’s true?

R.e.s.p.e.c.t. yourself

Now, maybe you don’t care about putting junk in your blogs or your web site. Maybe you are just looking for something that sounds good. Maybe you are so anxious to make a point that you’ll grab anything that seems to support it, even though you have no idea where it came from.

More likely, however, you want to be seen as a real authority. In that case, take the extra time to find out where your information originally came from, and whether it’s true. Yes, that means extra work during blogging, SEO copywriting, etc. It’s worth it.

Sleuthing assignment

Here’s a homework assignment: The next time you come across a statement that you’ve always accepted without question, see if you can find out where it originally came from. You may find out that it doesn’t have the pedigree you thought it did.

B2B Marketing Dealbreakers

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:

• Picking a Marketing Consultant: get what you pay for
• Corporate Logos — examples of what does, doesn’t work
• “Solution” is not the solution in B2B marketing communications
• Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid

B2B Website Disasters (giant blobs and other sightings)

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.

Social Media Marketing - the inside scoop

My dirty little secret about social media marketing

By Rebekah Donaldson

Alot of the questions I've fielded lately have had to do with social media marketing. But I have to tell you what I'm secretly thinking, and not saying, when answering those questions on the topic.

What I'm secretly thinking is,

"Why are we still talking about this? Social media is nothing special."

Which makes me sound very grouchy. And not very "I'm excited to help you find the right answers" - ish. Which is why I keep mum about it.

But, really, it's another way of communicating! Soon the fuss will fade, and it will be as normal as using email or a cell phone. No big deal.

Good old silver lining

One upside to it seeming like a big deal, though, is that companies seem to be feeling some heat to talk more with their customers in the ways and places that customers want to talk.

In the end, that's got to be a good thing. Like a diet someone else enforces... but the opposite. You know what I mean.

After the buzz

Wouldn't it be wierd if a business didn't have a phone number? Or a website? (I do know of one company whose founder insists on not having a website. I'd point to them here but...)

Not having any social media presence is not quite that wierd - yet.

But after 2010 it may be.

Get reliable marketing advice from MarketingSherpa - at a discount

So, good news. I just heard that you can get 50% off this week on MarketingSherpa's 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices. Sherpa's guides are the single best source for sober, impartial guidance about what works and what's a waste of your time and dollars.

The guide will help you right now with your social media planning. It's based on in-depth research from 1,886 social-media marketing and PR practitioners. I think it:

• Helps you determine what really works in social-media marketing
  
• Saves you time and needless effort because you'll find out what doesn't work
• Gives you needed research and data points to prove the value of social media to your executive team

For me, the specific case-studies are what are most valuable. Those really help with understanding real-world possibilities and ideas for practical implementation.

The note I got this morning said, "there are 14 copies left and the offer ends Nov. 30 or when the final copy is sold."

Get your copy >>

B2B Lead Generation Results, By Source

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.

Rebekah E. Donaldson ("Red") has led Business Communications Group since 2001. More >>

 

2010 Marketing Planning – Facts From MarketingSherpa

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

—

Search Marketing Benchmark Report 2009-10

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?