Most B2B marketers (including eMagine) rely heavily on email marketing for lead nurturing during our lengthy sales cycles. Most of us therefore worry about our unsubscribe rates …and should worry even more about the generally larger group that isn’t reading our emails, but doesn’t even bother to unsubscribe.
There are many reasons for this, but writing on his B2B Lead Generation blog, Brian Carroll suggests that the biggest reason is relevance …or lack thereof. And the biggest reason for that is taking the easy route of sending the exact same message to everyone, ignoring all the data we’ve collected on them. By contrast, we should be sending more tailored emails, segmented by our prospects’ known industry, company size, stage of the buying cycle, job function, and more. The more of these we can incorporate, the more relevant our emails become to each prospect.
Still more good points/resources in Brian’s piece …as always, well worth a read.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
We thought we should spend some cyber-ink on several tactics that we’ve found to be surprisingly under-utilized – or improperly used – by B2B marketers:
I. 70% of online marketers are ignoring RSS …at their peril.
Research done just last summer reveals that 70% of B2B technology companies are not using RSS at all; and of the 30% that are, only 10% are using more than one feed in order to offer targeted information updates. This flies in the face of a large-scale MarketingSherpa/KnowledgeStorm survey showing that 71% of technology buyers assign at least some value to their RSS use.
By not offering this option, most B2B tech marketers are missing out on a valuable opportunity to influence a substantial audience.
II. Industry Peer Blogs: powerful leverage on B2B technology buyers.
Industry peer blogs differ from vendor blogs in that the information and opinions offered are perceived as being independent; in fact, tech purchasers consider these blogs as being similar to peer word-of-mouth. Examples include TechCrunch and Scobleizer, along with such tech niche blogs as Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Business Intelligence, and Software-as-a-Service.
A KnowledgeStorm research report found that 53% of B2B technology buyers had already been influenced by blog content at least once when making purchase decisions.
III. The Major Mistake 9 of 10 Marketers Make in Engaging Bloggers.
A great way to use industry peer blogs to influence tech buyers is to submit a public comment on a particularly relevant post for readers of the blog to view. It’s a terrific opportunity to increase credibility with your target audience while driving quality website traffic. However, according to professional blogger Darren Rowse of the ProBlogging blog, many comments are shamelessly self-promoting and irritate both bloggers and readers.
Instead of adding value to the knowledge exchange, such comments only serve to ruin your credibility, brand image, and chances of having bloggers link to your website.
Your Web marketing consultants should be able to help you with implementing RSS, identifying blogs appropriate to your market space, and leveraging industry bloggers.
July 1st, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
It’s a fair question… and one we’ve blogged about fairly recently (PPC “vs.” SEO – a choice that really needn’t be made). Now along comes Tom Pick with one of his typically thoughtful pieces on the WebMarketCentral blog, giving us “7 reasons why companies need both”.
As usual, you’ll want to click on over to be edified by all 7; but we found the following pretty compelling…
- SEO isn’t free, either. The clicks are, but getting to – and maintaining – that high position in search-engine rankings costs significant people time and/or money.
- Results while you watch (vs. while you wait). SEO takes time to work; so for a small or new (or newly redone) site, it’s nice to have something working for you that starts just about as soon as you deploy the ad.
- Handle buyers as well as browsers. People nearly ready to buy tend to employ different search phrases than those who are “just looking”, or doing initial research. By cracking that code, you can handle the lookers in SEO – sending them to thought-leadership white papers – and the buyers via PPC, sending them to “closers” such as a product trial or how-to-buy page.
The evidence is pretty clear: using both vehicles helps B2Bs capture more leads than either will alone, and enables them to better handle each lead.
July 1st, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
All marketers feel more comfortable about making decisions when they have some data about their buyers’ preferences …no surprise there. Until recently, such data generally came only by way of well-planned and relatively costly surveys, and thus were usually reserved for only the most critical decisions.
Social media is changing all that, according to Adam Sutton over at SherpaBlog, based on his recent interview of Glenn Edelman, VP – Marketing of Wine Enthusiast. When considering adding video to their site’s wine product pages, Edelman’s team wondered whether the videos should automatically play, or wait for a viewer’s click. They decided to ask their Twitter followers. “We got a huge, huge response to never do auto-play,” Edelman said …so definitive that the team didn’t even bother with a live test.
So there you have it: in addition to Twitter’s marketing applications of PR, branding and promotion, we can now add customer surveys …ultra-quick and inexpensive!
June 30th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
It’s perhaps no big surprise, but new Forrester research shows that online marketers are increasing their reliance on vehicles they know work: in particular, over 90% are clinging to email and search. Meanwhile, spending on emerging channels such as online video advertising and mobile is all but stagnant. The research surveyed 204 interactive marketing professionals, and was briefly summarized by Christopher Hosford for BtoB’s Daily News Alert.
On the other hand, one relatively new area – social media – is doing quite well: 64% of respondents are already investing in social apps such as podcasts, widgets, user-generated content and blogs, and another 22% say they’ll do so within 12 months.
June 29th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Call it “the silent click”, if you will. Most B2B marketers think of Web advertising only in terms of lead generation, and so may be short-changing vehicles that don’t fit well into that ROI model. Now, along comes a study done by comScore last winter – in the teeth of the current economic doldrums – and released by the Online Publishers Association last week; it shows that…
- buyers exposed to display ads spent 55% more time on the advertiser’s Web site than average; and
- those exposed to the ads on business-news Web sites spent 26% more on e-commerce than unexposed consumers.
Thanks to Sean Callahan for finding and summarizing the study in his BtoB Magazine piece. Oh, and it did include some B2B names like Oracle, not just B2C as you might first suspect. Hopefully this will embolden marketers to think beyond their click conversion rate… or, in the words of OPA’s President Pam Horan, “Potentially a better way to look at the role of display advertising is in building brands.”
June 26th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Like eMagine, many B2Bs will ease into social media by way of starting a blog. Most of them will have that painful experience of “hitting a wall” once they run through the stuff they initially wanted to say.
Kipp Bodnar over at Social Media B2B noticed this, and now has given us “20 Ideas For B2B Blog Content To Drive Traffic and Boost SEO”. Click on over to review all 20, but here are 6 that appealed to us:
- Write about trends in your industry
- Review a recent trade show or conference
- Respond to a current event relevant to your business
- Discuss the latest industry research in the context of your business
- Ask a question on Twitter and blog the answers
- Interview journalists and analysts that cover your industry (hmm… wonder whether this might subtly influence those folks to cover our business…?)
You’ve probably noticed this blog using several of these; and I’m thinking we’ll be trying out more of them over time. How about you? …leave a comment (or tweet) if you have additional ideas, or have found any of these to be especially useful.
June 25th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
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