Well, the near-constant barrage of voices (including ours) urging your adoption of social media seems to be working: a recent Center for Media Research survey of media planners/buyers found that “having a presence on social networks” is one of the top priorities for media plans in 2010.
This has some folks concerned that such an unexpectedly whopping result could presage a tendency among marketers to do something – anything – to indicate that they’re aboard the social-media express. Among those concerned is Sean Carton, who warns in a recent post on ClickZ against proceeding without a real strategy. Even better, (more…)
January 19th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Remember back in those halcyon days of, say, the mid-00s and earlier, when starting your online program was as simple as…
- build (or update) and optimize your website
- get an opt-in customer/prospect list together for nurturing emails
- cross-market your URL on traditional print, packaging, and other offline vehicles
…plus some more or less optional tasks, like:
- develop a real content strategy
- enable website analytics and set some benchmarks
- assign responsibility for Web-related activities to relevant internal stakeholders
- monitor competitive activity, including website changes and online marketing spend
Ah yes, things were so simple then (and we won’t dwell on those B2Bs who still haven’t worked very far down their “optional” list… (more…)
January 14th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
There’s been a fair amount of e-ink spilled over how to measure social media results …some of it in fact on this very blog. Mostly, what you see is exhortations to measure attributes or variables that are readily measurable within the structure of social media: things like followers, mentions, responses, reach, influence. Perceptive readers, though, will readily see this as a classic example of assuming the conclusion: i.e., I “know” that getting lots of Twitter followers and mentions will have a positive effect on my business; hence, I can measure our social media effectiveness by simply measuring those things.
This leaves open the question of how did you “know” that those inputs had anything to do with your business results, because you didn’t actually measure it end to end; and if that question comes from your CEO or a Board member, it could be quite embarrassing. Fortunately, you can cite studies showing that companies active in social media generate (more…)
January 12th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Mention “cold calling” or “telemarketing” to B2B marketers, and you can all but watch them cringe. And yet, for most B2Bs it’s an absolutely critical element of the sales cycle; if your company isn’t doing it, chances are good that you’re literally leaving money on the table …or, more accurately, sending it over to your competitors.
So, why all the dread?? Talk to marketers, and you’ll hear some or all of these…
- I’ll probably never get past this guy’s Admin, anyway.
- I’ll just get voicemail and never get a return call.
- I really don’t think this person is interested in our widget.
- She’ll never buy from us, after I interrupt her from doing the annual plan (or whatever).
All this anxiety really stems from two basic causes: (more…)
January 7th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Let’s face it… the most critical pages we B2Bs develop for our websites – those that describe our products or services – are not very glamorous. In fact, they can often be pretty dry, dusty stuff. Compared to the latest tabloid story about Lindsey Lohan smoking while texting while driving under the influence, it’s never going to make it onto the first page of Digg.
But that doesn’t mean that search engine optimization (SEO) can’t help prospects find your product pages. Done right, it certainly can; and Tom Pick recently posted four tricks of the trade… (more…)
January 5th, 2010
Posted by: Bill Gadless
Due to its heightened importance in these tight times, we’ve run a couple of posts recently about email marketing: its pitfalls, plus tips for getting more “oomph” from it …so our regular readers may think of this as this as another in that series.
Start from recent research by ReturnPath showing that about 28% of B2B marketing email never reaches the targeted inbox, primarily due to blocking systems implemented by ISPs and corporate IT departments. And it’s not always the same 28%; sometimes your email will reach a given subscriber, sometimes not.
Why does this happen? For starters, because… (more…)
December 30th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
We’ve often bogged about the many benefits of thought leadership, going back to one of our earliest posts. Recently, Chris Koch wrote a posting on his blog providing an actual five-step recipe for B2Bs seeking to attain thought leadership, which we felt was well worth a quick summary here (and a click over for the full article).
Research the need. Maybe the topics you hoped to “lead” on are already claimed by established experts that you can’t hope to compete with; or possibly your market can’t envision your firm moving into such a role. Or maybe you’re already there. Most likely, your current situation is somewhere in between; and you’ll need a more fine-grained set of objectives, down to specific areas of interest and appropriate vehicles.
Determine organizational readiness. For consulting firms, this is generally not a problem; their hiring is typically based on thought leadership. Others will need to build… (more…)
December 28th, 2009
Posted by: Bill Gadless
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