B2B Search-Generated Leads: Quality and Quantity

SEO may generate both more and better leads for your sales staff, but paid-search is an integral part of a B2B online-marketing plan because it allows businesses to control timing and placement in search-engine results. That was the finding a recent report published by MarketingSherpa (PDF) on B2B Internet-marketing:

While paid search gives marketers more control, natural search page rankings driven higher by search engine optimization tactics generate as many high-quality leads as all paid search sources combined.

 

 

The strongest, integrated search strategies combine search engine optimization and paid search to give marketers and their sales teams the best of both worlds - in this, case both a a high quality and a high quantity of leads.

As the above chart reveals, using a mix of SEO and paid-search is the optimal way promote your B2B business online. Of course, the first priority for your business is to research your possible keywords and then optimize your website for search engines. Optimizing your website and then drawing enough relevant traffic is a process.

(Shameless plug alert: If you need help choosing keywords consider a PPC/keyword assessment by Wakefly)

Additionally, your site may need to generate significant amounts of content to enable proper optimization for all of your targeted keywords. Thus, if your targeting 300 keywords - plan on optimizing a single page for only 2-3 phrases with a 1-2% keyword density. Creating high value content is one of the most overlooked, underrated elements to successful online marketing. With out great content, your site will not generate links pointing back to your site from 3rd party sites. Links are the "fuel" that drive high rankings in the major search engines. By give people great information, you are giving them every reason to want to link back to your site.

 

Basic Link Building Strategies for B2B Companies

Business owners and employees know that when choosing a 401K plan, a diversified portfolio is always a solid investment choice.  The market is constantly changing.  Financial advisers always encourage choosing a variety of financial instruments for safety and growth. With that same focus in mind, a B2B hi-tech or B2C bio-tech internet firm should apply the same principles, when developing their marketing internet strategies.  With all the new technology and social-marketing alternatives on the Internet today, a smart marketer needs to explore each one and apply what works for them.  What a great way for any B2B or B2B startup internet firm to delve in and create some substantial buzz, while increasing their website traffic!

Using Back Links as a Marketing Strategy

Back links are important to search engines.  When a search engine, such as Google, sees the number and quality of sites that link back to yours, it sees that link as valuable.  Google then gives it a higher ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

Creating Back Links

• Write articles and press releases for submission to sites within your market niche
• Leave relevant comments on blogs within your niche areas.  See what your competitors are saying.  Be creative. Leave some comments on their sites, as well. Comments can lead to large exposure, which in turn can lead to even more relevant visitors finding your site and linking to it.
• Post your website on a variety of website directories that are relevant to your space. Avoid low cost, general directories that have low (or no) editorial standard
• Join some industry forums placing your back link as your signature
• Write blogs submitting them to over 40 social bookmarks and social news sites.  Again, the additional exposure created by syndicating your content can lead to more potential link partners finding your website.
• Create a YouTube video; share some valuable knowledge about your company and product, while including a back link to your website.
• Do not forget to put your name, company, and link at the end of everything you write.

Internet Strategy Never Replaces Quality Content.

Obtaining a good website ranking is so much more than just having a website, blog, and hundreds of back links.  It means your site contains relevant and important information, worth sharing with others and linking to.

Having back links does not guarantee success.  Google and Yahoo rank websites in several ways.  Where your links are placed, and the quality of the sites they are from, can also determine the amount of SERPs, traffic, and ranking you will get.  Links placed within content get a higher ranking.  The search engines also look at the relevancy between both your site and the source site.  Another key point to know is how many back links that source site contains.  The more back links contained, the less relevant your link is.  Therefore, it is advantageous for you to link back on sites with a minimal amount of back links.

The Honest Approach to Link Building

Honesty and integrity are always the best policy.  Google started devaluing traded links in the Fall of 2007 and started penalizing directories that used dishonest means to raise their own PR so they could sell links.

"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search.   Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.  However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such."

Therefore, having well written, solid content is the best way to encourage anyone to link to your website.

How Many Back Links do I Need?

There are no correct answers to that question.  Your market and competition will be the determining factors on the specific paths you need to take to stand out and get noticed.  As we have previously stated, back links are just one part of your internet portfolio strategies.  You will need to explore and experiment with many more avenues of marketing tactics as you create your own customized formula.  Remember to employ the three "T's" - Test-Test-Test.

Marketing is a time consuming tedious process; but it does work.  There are so many options, and paths to take, especially when you are a B2B hi-tech or B2B bio-tech start-up firm.  Concentrate on first developing a solid and trustworthy web reputation.  Web reputations are built very slowly, one post and blog at a time.  Create good content; and stand behind your promises, product, and service.  Cultivating your readers and membership into loyal clients is priceless and worth the investment of your time.

Further reading: "Discover your Links" by the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

Online Newspaper Pay-Walls: Online Newspapers Fail to Monetize

First, the New York Times failed with Times Select. Now, the same fate has befallen Newsday's pay wall:

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

Times Select had readers pay $50 a year to read the newspaper's columnists as well as have access to the full, historical archives and other premium material. After drawing 221,000 subscribers, the newspaper pulled the initiative because advertising revenue declined. Newsday took it one step further and charged for all website access (except for print subscribers). Both did not succeed. Still, both the Times and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are going to put their entire websites behind a pay wall soon. The Times will allow a certain number of articles to be viewed each month before asking for payment; Murdoch's specific plans are still unclear.

What does this mean for online marketers? Well, first, you need to understand several points:

• An interest in a print or television medium (free or paid) does not guarantee that the curiosity will carry over to a website (free or paid). The publication or channel needs to provide teasers (more on this investigative story online!) and incentives (register online and get a month's subscription for free!) to draw people to a website. Most news outlets already do this with varying degrees of success/
  
• People will not pay for website access when they already pay for a print publication -- this much is obvious, and it is the reason why sites like Newsday do not charge current subscribers. However, this begs another question: Will Fox News viewers, for example, pay for Fox News online when the cable channel is free?
  
• Those (relatively fewer people) who will pay for their news, particularly during a deep recession, will more likely be people with higher levels of disposable income -- or, in other words, the people whom marketers want to reach.
  
• So-called "interchangeable news" -- wire reports, major stories, and general-interest articles -- that vary little from one media outlet to the next will slowly disappear. If a person, for example, will need to pay to read an article about President Obama's State of the Union Address in the Times, he will likely choose to read it in another publication -- like the Boston Globe -- for free. (And countless sites will simply offer the text for people to read.) In an Internet-driven, consumerist, individualized world, the market is become segmented to an almost infinite degree. The news websites that will be successful with a pay-wall strategy will be those that cater to niche audiences and provide articles for them that no other site will have.
• No one knows yet how -- or whether -- pay walls will affect Google News.

Many business publications like the Wall Street Journal as well as specialty trade publications -- as opposed to general-interest ones like the Times -- have already erected pay walls. Moreover, online media like blogs and social-media websites can still link to and share articles with friends and business contacts for free -- meaning that your marketing pitches will still reach your targeted audiences online regardless. (Think about this: People will rather read a blog post about an article for free rather than pay to read the original because they will still get the general point.) And as I have mentioned before, writing and distributing online press-releases will always bypass mainstream media-outlets altogether -- the online news-releases will still reach Google News from the PR websites even if major news-outlets are no longer included in the news-aggregation site.

So, the future?..the news media will increasingly need to create niche products with a strong online element to remain successful in the Internet world, paid or not. 

Wakefly on the Peter Blute Show

I'll be on the Peter Blute Show (WCRN AM - 830) - discussing online marketing and how area businesses can generate more sales and leads online.

I'm also planning on mentioning this little tidbit:  I just reached my 30,000 search on the Google search engine.  If you have a Google account, simply login and visit google.com/history and you can review every search you have ever made - for me, my history goes back 6 years. 

I can't say I'm suprised as I'm online every day as part of my job. 

However, when I did recently move into a new house in a new community I found a real estate attorney, a CPA, a home inspector, a storage facitility and a plumber all online to help me make the move.   Thus, while I've made thousands of searches online and hundreds of purchases stemming from online searches, I can't say I've made a single purchase inquery stemming from my use of the Yellow Pages.

 

Book Review -- Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google

The information contained in a new book by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the co-founders of Hubspot, a leading internet marketing SaaS platform that helps businesses manage most of their marketing activities online is quite exciting for B2B marketers looking to pull in increased traffic and leads to their websites  in 2010.

One of the real contributions of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs is that a  vast amount of information and theory about online marketing is now synthesized, refined and contained in a single, hard-cover book.  The added twist is the author's promotion of the idea that you savvy web marketers need to give web searchers what they desire (valuable content) in lieu of what is despised (bland promo/brochureware copy) all the while working to keep visitors engaged with a compelling user experience.

In many ways, this volume will be a game-changer just as David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of PR and Marketing revolutionized online public-relations. "Inbound Marketing" will interest every marketer looking to stretch his budget, increase brand-awareness, establish thought leadership, invest in his internet marketing activities for the long-term, and, ultimately, create the best website in his respective niche.   Again, the creation of the best website in Halligan and Shah's work extends beyond mere design and development into the arena of content creation and content delivery.

Halligan and Shah argue that websites can attract customers with remarkable content, quality SEO, meaningful social-media engagement, and clear calls-to-action that replace dated, interruption-based, big-budget advertising techniques.  Thus, prospects and customers are "inbound" flowing to you by choice in response to your marketing efforts.

Makes Sense, Right?

The book's argument depends on the idea that remarkable content must be created -- in other words, you will not succeed if you cannot produce good content that is both satisfying the informational needs of searchers and piquing their interest enough to potentially earn a link pointing to your website.  According to Shah and Halligan, Google gives higher rankings to sites with the best, highest-quality links from third-party sites. This, of course, is nothing new. However, if you look at the big picture, the authors are stating that artificial link-building is a waste at best or of secondary importance (or even downright detrimental) at worst. Their point: If your site is just not remarkable enough in terms of content, value proposition, and positioning to earn a backlink by itself, then other link-building efforts will not have as great an effect.

Link growth is the foundational piece for most truly successful websites. This is true. For the forseeable future, websites will need a grab-bag of tools, widgets, features, and content to attract links. Without them, your website cannot compete in any competitive niche - where active competitors are stacked deeper than the first page for any given targeted keyword. In addition, if you or your search marketing company is building low-quality links or automated link building, your site will never overtake a competitor that is using an aggressive, inbound-marketing strategy as described by Halligan and Shah. Inbound-strategies are future-oriented and need aggressive, dedicated, online marketers to implement them effectively.  Here at Wakefly and at other leading search marketing agencies, our link building campaigns are extremely labor intensive and are the product of extensive research to ensure that the 3rd party websites that should be linking to your site are, in fact, doing so [Shameless plug alert: Wakefly is a Hubspot parner].  Too many times are we approached by B2B firms looking for blue chip rankings,  only to be dismayed to find they have paid low cost offshore link builders to build spammy, low quality, automated links that will only decrease the chance of their rankings ever reaching the pinnacle for their niche.

In conclusion, Halligan and Shah's book will help eliminate the idea that Internet marketing is easy and that SEO is trickery. Successful online-marketing is hard, ongoing work that requires new skills, new rules, and a dedication to creating the top website in your niche and working tirelessly off-site to engage customers through social-media networks and the active syndication of high value, fresh content.

How Much is One PPC B2C Click Worth?

The U.S. company Adgooroo released an interesting report about search engine advertising in the last quarter 2009. It makes compelling reading. When looking at the most expensive keywords on the three search engines, we see interesting differences. Each engine has clusters of expensive keywords - and they are, interesting enough, not the same (or even similar). 

Let's look at Google first.

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. It is a major health-concern, especially in the United States. The chief advertisers are law firms driving visitors to thinly veiled "informational sites" in the hopes of garnering contact information. The cost per click for these terms is astounding, look at the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of related keywords in Q4 of 2009:

• Mesothelioma $99.44
• Asbestos law suits $78.10
• Asbestos law firm $67.97
• Mesothelioma $67.37
• Asbestos law firms $65.03

Yes, this means if you Google "Mesothelioma" and click on the top listing you could be costing someone up to $99.44 for one SINGLE click. Another cluster of expensive keywords relates to business and marketing. "Pop up display booths" at $72.53 and "trade show pop up" at $60.27 rank high as do "conference calling companies" at $75.29, "800 conference calling" at $52.23, and "qwest conference calling" at $49.54. The rest of the high-ranking keywords are mainly relating to (re)financing, loans and insurance.

Now, let's take a closer look at Yahoo!

The leader of the keyword pack is "Lloyds tsb insurance" with a maximum CPC in Q4 of 2009 of $53.44 with "Lloyds insurance" in third-place at $44.58. Yahoo is more popular in the UK than domestically, which also explains the ranking of "british gas" $21.45 and NatWest banking services -- "natwest car insurance" at $32.84, natwest insurance at $24.31, and "natwest credit card" at $20.23. Yahoo! users obviously like sending flowers ("800 flowers" at $24.82 and "1800 flowers" at $22.94) as well as entertainment ("love film" at $40.20 and "tickets now.com" at $30.29).

Last, but not least, search engine Bing also shows us different keyword-clusters. The highest-ranked keywords in Q4 of 2009 relate to education and students:

• Low apr student credit card $54.24
• Accounting degrees $54.02
• Student credit card application $51.39
• Online masters degrees $44.07
• Online masters degree $43.56
• Nursing degrees $42.74

The rest of the high-ranking keywords mainly concern (car) insurance, online stock-trading, and FTD (Florists' Transworld Delivery).

One practical take away for B2C advertisers is that if you're in the legal, insurance, lending or telecom business and are trying to find clients or end users/buyers be prepared to spend a pretty penny on clicks. If you're in the B2B world, targeting business buyers on niche industry terms, you can expect to pay much lower costs - namely, anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars for a click on Google. While on both Yahoo! and Bing's PPC platforms, B2B advertisers can expect very limited competition.

Google 2009 Ad Revenue: Q4 Results In

The year 2009 has been another good one for Google - the top-80 U.S. retailers spent an estimated $264 million in online advertising with Google during Q4 2009 alone. According to AdGooRoo, this is an increase of 12.5% from to Q3.

In general, U.S. online-advertising spending rose from the start of November 2009 through Christmas Eve to $27.12 billion even though individuals spent slightly less than they did last year. Still, it's a growth of 5%.  Although all retailers were up, several stood out -- especially the traditional retailers ("bricks"). This is understandable since about 78% of people research something online before making a purchase. But, online retailers ("clicks") were also strong. Retailers told Google that they have begun to see a surge in online searches impacting offline sales (and vice-versa). This means that retailers need to have integrated offline and online campaigns. If the study commissioned by eBay in the U.K. applies worldwide, Internet-related spending will account for 20% of retail spending.  This, of course, is excellent news for online advertisers -- and Google is very much aware of this. During Google's Q4 earnings call, the search-engine discussed the aggressive, retail-ad spending that occurred in Q4 and how it received new investment by some of the world's largest brands.

In 2009, Google also introduced its hosted commerce-search, an aggressive move in the retail space.  Focusing on a handful of popular sites, the technology brings up a second search-box for a search-within-a-search. This enables visitors to search within a given domain automatically. With commerce search, Google is playing into "conversion rates" when advertising the product for retailers. The reason it clear - the average online-retailer conversion rate is just three percent. Google aims to increase the rate five to ten times, using a powerful search technology for what it calls "ultra-fast speed and accuracy." As the New York Times pointed out, analysts like it for saving time and effort, but web publishers and retailers were not amused Google displaying ads from their competitors in the secondary search.

Google perceives 2010 as the year of YouTube advertising. Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. If successful, it would be the first year that the acquisition would turn a profit. Google CEO Eric Schmidt foresees the adoption of major advertisers in YouTube as a component of ad campaigns. "Nowadays, just about every advertising campaign involves YouTube as part of the solution. That's a big deal," he said. Google also hopes to improve its market position by focusing on a convergence of mobile search along with advertising and applications including location-based technologies that include a heavy dose of social networking.

With the pending Bing-Yahoo search deal in the works, 2010 will be an interesting year for online advertising.

Online lead generation for life sciences companies

We all know that patients and doctors use the Internet to research medical devices, pharmaceuticals and other treatments for aliments. We all know, too, that it’s a competitive marketplace, so the more eyeballs who see your company online, the more likely you’ll emerge as the winner in your space.

Let’s say a patient or the love one of the patient, or even the patient’s doctor for that matter, has read about or seen a print or TV ad for a high blood pressure drug. What’s the next most likely thing he/she will do? Go to the Internet, of course. This person will do a search on a number of possible keywords, such as “high blood pressure drugs”, or “high blood pressure treatment” or “treating high blood pressure”, etc.

How do you get in front of those patients and the rest of your target market? How do you ensure that they see and go to your site rather than your competitor’s? There are a number of ways to achieve awareness and visibility within your target market, including PPC, SEO, and Social Media. But the most important online marketing initiative that you can do is to build your website with online lead generation best practices.

When building your website, keep these things in mind:

• Make sure you select the right keywords and place them in all the right places
• Obtain as many inbound links from relevant external websites as possible
• From a usability standpoint, employ an easy to use navigation scheme so that visitors immediately know where to click for further information
• Have a succinct, easy to understand positioning statement on the home page

Provide fresh, educational content on a regular basis

How to Create a Successful Business Blog

Companies are embracing blogs as a strategic marketing and communication tool that won't break the bank. In 2010, we will see more and more companies (big and small) starting and maintaining their own corporate blog.

To make it a successful marketing tool, there are several key elements companies have to be aware of.  

1)    Formulate your goal. Are you a small business owner looking to increase your online sales? Do you want to create brand or product awareness? Are you looking to showcase thought leadership? Are you looking to highlight your companies' charitable activities? Do you want to communicate with your customers more directly to find out what they think about your product? Do you want to use it for posting news, updates or to do damage control? The answer determines the content as well as the voice of your corporate blog. An example of a brand awareness blog is Coca-Cola's Conversations.

2)    Formulate the content. A B2B blog on a business website should offer new, interesting, and relevant content. We all know that search engines love new content, so make sure your blog posts incorporate relevant and important keywords. Linking to other websites and to interior sub-pages is essential. If done correctly, new blog content ensures that search engines keep crawling and indexing your site to regularly. The White House blog is a nice example of blog containing links and video.

3)    Decide on the frequency. It might seem so obvious, but way too many corporate (as well as private) blogs often become inactive over time. Companies often cite lack of resources (time, contributors, content) as the main reason(s). Having an inactive or infrequent blog can do more harm than good to a business and its image. The best way to avoid this pitfall, is setting up a fixed schedule for new posts - ideally at least once a week!
 

4)    Decide who is going to write, post, manage, and supervise. A business must decide who is going to write the blog posts. Is it one person (internal employee or a freelancer?), or can several people in a company contribute? In any case, it's good to have a proofreader/editor to ensure that the content is in sync with the corporate policy (and, of course, legal requirements). The posts writer(s) should be aware of the themes and topics they can blog about, as well as important keywords and links they have to embed. For various target groups, large companies often opt for several blogs. Just take a look at carmaker Daimler that has two corporate blogs on its website: the Daimler-Blog (in German), where Daimler employees post articles in the Daimler-Blog providing insights into their daily business, and Car2Go-Blog (also in German), which serves as an additional exchange platform for the pilot project Car2Go.

5)    Find your voice. Blog readers want to be informed in an entertaining way. They don't like to be targeted by (blatant) sales pitches or marketing fluff. As a company, you know your own customers and target audience best. You need to find the right way to get your message across. If you do need to promote a new product or service, use the corporate blog to tease and entertain - it's far more effective.

6)   Make it personal. Your website is the formal side of your business; your blog shows your human side. The idea is to communicate with your readers as equals - in short, make it personal and become their friend. The latest example of a personable blog is TheGatesNotes of Bill Gates (yes, the one of Microsoft fame).

7)   Make it user-friendly. Corporate blogs should be fun to read, and peppering it with illustrations and video clips only enhances its appeal. Humor can be used, but be aware of cultural, religious, or other sensibilities - you don't want to alienate! Allowing comments is a given, but monitor carefully. Spammers often try to leave URLs in blog posts containing malware. Negative comments can be handled in two ways: if blatantly abusive, they must be removed. If a comment is negative but not abusive, it must be addressed in a following blog post (if it relates to a major issue, such as reputation crisis) or as a comment from the company to the comment of the poster. Allow readers to subscribe to various feeds, including RSS feeds.    If done properly, you will be amazed how a corporate blog can benefit a business. Let us show you how!

The Future of B2B Trade Publications and What it Means for Savvy Marketers

While many B2B trade publications will be working to further define their focus on an even narrower niche market along with developing a stronger online presence in order to survive, the fact remains that many of them will still disappear despite their best efforts to remain viable. The Internet can be too powerful -- after all, more than 100 newspapers closed in 2009 alone. Many B2B magazines -- like Editor & Publisher most recently -- will suffer the same fate.

Now, this can actually benefit your business. Much of the B2B information in these periodicals can also be found by your prospects conducting online research and talking to people in their industry. But the most important thing to remember is that in the Internet Age, there is little need for middle men! Anyone can publish great content, and the search engines won't care if your a $1 million dollar company or a $500 million dollar company.

For instance, if your B2B company wanted to communicate with your potential audience and customers, your method has likely been historically to get (free!) coverage in your trade magazine at best or place advertisements at worst. The industry publication, editors and journalists were the gatekeeper between you and future sales. But just as technologies like blogs and social media eliminated the position of traditional media as the sole gatekeepers between news (and advertisements) and the public, so will the same Web 2.0 advances free your company from relying only on trade publications and other traditional avenues to get your message out.  Already. there are fewer obstacles between your B2B company and your clients - provided some basic online marketing concepts are taken into consideration.

Now, imagine that trade publications relevant to your industry were disappearing (this shouldn't be hard) and fading into the sunset.  There would be no objective reporting on the industry. There would be no print platform for thought leadership anymore. And just as nature abhors a vacuum, your most savvy competitors could be planning to step in with a content marketing strategy.

In any human community, the most knowledgeable and respected person will naturally rise to the top. And that person should be your company. The future lack of industry thought-leaders when more B2B print publications go bankrupt creates a space that your company can fill. By using online marketing techniques, your company can position itself as the new thought-leader. If any given trade publication were to disappear, then a motivated content creator could devote some of its resources to posting news, analysis, commentary, and other value-added content on its website, blog and in their social media outlets.

Over time, that company could become known as the new thought-leader. Think about what that would do for branding and sales. In addition, buyers will increasingly depend on Internet searches to find the B2B products and services they desire. This makes search-engine optimization (SEO) and search-engine marketing (SEM) for content creators even more important.

With a little focus, creativity, and outside help, even smaller companies could use the opportunities provided by disappearing trade publications to surpass competitors that have multi million dollar budgets.