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Subscribe in a readerAre You Optimizing Your Email Marketing for Search?
Galen De Young | B2B Search Marketing | May 6th, 2009
I know at first that may sound strange. What does email marketing have to do with search engine optimization? Fact is, the most prevalent type of B2B email marketing is content marketing, most often in the form of an email newsletter containing several articles. Most email newsletters carry abstracts or snippets of the stories. Readers then click through to a website to continue reading—and that’s the crux of the matter.
I get a fairly large number of content marketing emails each week. I’m surprised how many of them come from companies who do a pretty good job of SEO on their sites, but don’t apply the same practices to the email marketing content hosted on their site.
It’s probably the result of organizational silos—those who create email marketing, those charged with content creation, those responsible for maintaining the site, and those responsible for SEO aren’t working effectively together to leverage each other’s contributions.
If you’ve got good email marketing content you’re going to post on a public part of your site—content for which you’d like to get found via organic search—here are some things to keep in mind. (more…)
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New Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Galen De Young | B2B Social Media | March 28th, 2009Michael Stelzner of White Paper Source recently released a study on how marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. Nearly 900 marketers were surveyed.
One of the great questions in the study was an open ended question that simply asked, “What question about marketing with social media do you most want answered?” The question only allowed one answer and was designed to reveal the most pressing concern people had on their minds regarding social media. The 685 responses were then clustered into groups and ranked. The responses likely mirror some of you own questions regarding social media and reflect people wresting with selecting the right tactics, measuring the effectiveness of this new media, and how to effectively use it.
The remainder of the report attempts to answer some of those questions by presenting other findings from the survey. While the report is not specifically focused on B2B marketing, it’s filled with great information of significant relevance to B2B marketers. Here’s just a few of the findings in the report: (more…)
Google’s Launches Longer Snippets. Greater Opportunity for Sites with Strong Content.
Galen De Young | B2B Search Marketing | March 26th, 2009On Tuesday, Google announced two significant changes.
First, is the deployment of technology aimed at better understanding associations and concepts related to a searcher’s query. One of the applications of the technology is the ability for Google to more frequently present recommended related searches, or refinements. Links to these related searches will generally be displayed at the bottom of the search results page, although you may also start to see them appear at or near the top of the search results. An example of such refinements is shown below.
Google noted that these refinements are now available in 37 languages, and that refinements are no being returned for some long query strings as well.
The second change announced by Google is longer snippets. The snippet is the string of text presented directly under each search result. To date, Google has displayed a maximum of approximately 150 characters in the snippet. For longer queries, Google will now sometimes display expanded snippets. (more…)
Market Share or Profit? Pick One.
Buzz Baker | B2B Blog Postings, Positioning | January 13th, 2009In their 1981 marketing strategy classic (it must be a classic, there’s even a 20th Anniversary Edition!), Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout noted that if a brand occupies the category leadership position on the “ladder of consideration” of a customer, that position was essentially unassailable. The “high ground”, if you will. Their caveat, of course, was that the positioned leader could conceivably make a mistake significant enough to cause their displacement from atop that ladder…or that a competitor could “bring in a new ladder” with new discriminating variables favoring the competitor and more important to the consumer. Otherwise the category leader could remain on top indefinitely. With no variance in B2C vs. B2B. (more…)
The Best of B2B Search Marketing 2008
Galen De Young | B2B Search Marketing | December 19th, 2008Articles and blog postings on B2B search marketing are often hard to find. At Search Engine Land, we’re fortunate to have a stable of experts who regularly contribute great content and make the Strictly Business column a success. But during the year, I’ve found a lot of other great content, too. I chose 30 of my favorite B2B search and internet marketing posts from 2009. To that I added three of my own articles that were especially popular or helpful to people. I know I’ve missed some great content. If you know of others, please add them via comments. Continue reading post at Search Engine Land.
Words May Reposition a Brand. But They Must Also Define the Task.
Buzz Baker | Positioning | December 18th, 2008We who’ve been in the marketing communications business for years have certainly been exposed to a myriad of brand repositionings in our professional careers…and most likely participated in more than a few as well. Some simple and easy, some incredibly complex, but all with the intention of moving the perception of the brand closer to what the prospective customer wants to buy (even if requiring change in what the marketer has to “sell”).
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Fortune 500 Starting to Embrace Blogging
Galen De Young | B2B Search Marketing | November 25th, 2008Business-to-business (B2B) blogging is be a great way to forge relationships, talk with customers and prospects, demonstrate thought leadership and dramatically increase visibility in natural search results for targeted search terms. Done right, it ultimately drives substantial traffic when others in the media and blogosphere link to compelling or noteworthy content. Yet the Fortune 500, many of which are B2B companies, has been slow to embrace blogging.
Last year, Forrester Reesearch reported that only 29 of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging. While the number of large companies blogging is still relatively small, that number more than doubled in 2008. Continue reading rest of the article at Search Engine Land.
Demo Quantifies Opportunity. Psycho Makes the Sale.
Buzz Baker | B2B Marketing | November 6th, 2008When assessing a market opportunity, most marketers start with profiling their potential customers based on objectively determined variables called “demographics”. A simplistic winnowing would include who they are, where they are, what they do, and their scope. Again as we know, a second profiling approach is through “psychographics”, which goes beyond demographics to examine how customers think, why they think it and, most importantly, what they will do as a result.
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Five Reasons Why Negative Comments on your B2B Corporate Web Blog Might Be Positive
Mike Marn | B2B Social Media | October 16th, 2008What are you afraid of? Launch a blog; people go negative on you, and you could lose some business, right? Why even give your critics a platform to be critical, or worse, bad mouth your company, brand, products, or services? Hey, doesn’t this fly in the face of everything we know about marketing, building brands, and protecting brand equity? Why concede an inch of space to detractors?
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Why I Think the Getty Images Perceived Invoicing Gaff Just Might Be Costing Them
Mike Marn | B2B Branding | September 24th, 2008By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard about Getty Image’s PicScout bot that’s crawling the internet searching for unauthorized use of their images. It looks like it’s been around for at least a couple years. If you haven’t, well, Getty Images is a client of PicScout [www.picscout.com], an Israeli-based company employing technology that essentially trolls the internet searching for images and comparing algorithms to libraries of companies they represent. Getty Images is one of several stock image sources PicScout lists as clients. With a glance on their customers webpage, you’ll see they also list Corbis, Image Source, Super Stock, and others. (more…)
You Want to Position Your Brand “Righteously”? It May Not be Your Call.
Buzz Baker | Positioning | September 9th, 2008Years ago I was exposed to a psychographic segmentation model developed by Dr. John Cragan, at that time a Professor of Communications at Illinois St. University. By the time my colleagues and I became involved with Dr. Cragan and his model, it had be tested and applied in a number of B2B categories. Most importantly, the tests and applications validated that the approach was, in fact, purchase behavior predictive. That was important because the most recognized segmentation model of those times, VALS, developed by Stanford Research Institute, was lifestyle focused and with no direct correlation to buying styles. The same was true of Young & Rubicam’s Cross Cultural Consumer Characterizations model for global application. But Cragan was different.
Dr. Cragan posited and proved that there were essentially three different buying styles (although there could be also be permutations, with one style being primary and another having some degree of complementary influence). Those three buying styles were:
• Righteous: Accumulating and evaluating information. Establishing criteria through which to assess competitive alternatives. Doing it the right way. Not the “Innovators” in the Product Diffusion model; instead the “Early Adopters” characterized in that approach.
• Pragmatic: At first glance, the price-driven purchaser. Oftentimes “deal” or promotion driven. But not always…because the concept of lifetime value is not foreign to some in this segment, particularly when the pragmatism is supplemented by another buying style influence.
• Social: Often the most easily identified and thus predictable, the social purchaser is often dealer dependent. And even more often will wait to see what those whom he has identified as leaders will do/will purchase. Not doing the work, but benefiting from those who do. Primarily “Late Majority” in the Product Diffusion model, but could sometimes drop into “Laggard” mode as well. (more…)
Some Corporate Blogging Insight That Might Be Worth a Fortune
Richard Hatch | B2B Social Media | August 3rd, 2008If you want some great insight into corporate blogging, both B2B and B2C companies, check out the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, a directory of Fortune 500 companies with business blogs. The wiki, started as collaborative project between Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson and Socialtext’s Ross Mayfield, is a wiki compilation that’s following active public blogs by company employees blogging about their companies and/or products.
With Mayfield, Easton Ellsworth of We Know Media and John Cass of PR Communications have joined the effort to expand the project. Included on the site are lists and links of blogging Fortune 500 companies, example blogs for each (many have multiple blogs), examples of other social media in use (Twitter, etc.), and reviews. As a side note, you can also write and submit your own reviews of Fortune 500 corporate blogs there. (more…)
Would Ebert and Roeper Give your Positioning a “Thumbs Up?”
Mike Marn | Positioning | July 29th, 2008
I saw a headline on CNN that made me laugh the other day. It said “Ebert and Roeper to leave ‘Ebert and Roeper.’” Boy, I’ll bet that show will never be the same!
Clearly, a B2B company isn’t a TV show. But this little news item might be a good excuse to do a little reviewing of your own. Exactly how deep does your company’s positioning really go? Is it a something everyone in the organization believes in and can recite on cue, or does it depend on the performance of the lead actors and a small supporting cast? It’s not uncommon for a B2B company to define itself by the personality and style of the executive(s) at the top. (more…)
Why are B2B Companies so Anti-Social When it Comes to Social Media?
Mike Marn | B2B Social Media | July 28th, 2008After all, it’s really just about relationships. The kind your salespeople brag about, and the kind you desperately hope to develop with customers so that price isn’t the only consideration. Heck, the kind that make barbecues more fun. Many companies preach the value of relationships constantly.
But disguise that relationship thing as “social media’ and they don’t even recognize it. Shun it. Or fear it. And as a result, they often do one of two things:
- Let their uneasiness keep them in their comfort zone, and out of the social media environment
- Barge onto the social media scene with a blatant selling agenda—exactly the kind of thing you wouldn’t dream of in those other settings.
Simple fact: social media fuel relationships. And relationships fuel sales. But you can’t jump from A to C. You need “B” in there along the way. And while you’re pursuing those virtual relationships, don’t focus on the sales value of each contact or on-line exchange, any more than you would stop and measure ROI after every stroke in a round of client golf.
Think of your social media efforts as sowing seeds. You never know which seeds will take root. But if you don’t sow any, you can count on a pretty sparse garden.
B2B folks, it’s time to get off the fence, and into the conversation.
Green Marketing. How Associative Positioning Breaks All Ties.
Buzz Baker | Positioning | July 16th, 2008Everyone has likely heard a few jokes starting with “A duck walks into a bar…”, and immediately become interested because of the unexpected imagery. Today, however, I walked into the office bathroom and was confronted with real imagery that also piqued interest. On top of the commode was a role of toilet paper fully packaged in white tissue with the word “green” depicted and underlined in green all over the package, and “office depot” in red, also underlined, but smaller and more subdued. Had it been Christmas time I might not have noticed. Everything is green and red then. But just after the 4th of July such packaging was unexpected. And inspired more contemplation than your average roll of toilet paper, which is rarely high on anyone’s “Wow! Look at that!” list. If ever. (more…)
Profiling by B2B Job Function? At Your Own Risk.
Buzz Baker | B2B Selling | July 14th, 2008
Every July 4th my wife and I partake of the annual picnic at a lakeshore cottage association on Michigan’s West Coast. Same date, same time, same tent rising from the sandy beach beneath the dunes like something out of Ali Baba, same kinds of shared food (I didn’t know you could make potato salad eight different ways!) and mostly the same people. Including some sames who attended their first picnic there during the Coolidge administration. But every now and then a family extends a bit, and there are new members to meet and greet. We always try to take the first step. Because same is so…same…you know.
Last year a new family joined us and I had the opportunity to meet the father of three rowdy assembly line sons ages 5, 6, and not quite 8. A big guy he was, and soon we were talking sports. He’d played college ball himself, was a rabid fan of four pro teams, and coached his kids in a different sport each season. He had an aggressive, hand-enveloping handshake, laughed easily, shared a few anecdotes, and after our chat was complete he moved on to introduce himself to others as if he were the official greeter and everyone else had just arrived. I had to smile at his “knows no strangers” approach that was so refreshingly “un-same”. Later I remembered that I hadn’t asked what business he was in…although I really didn’t have to. I’ve met a lot of sales reps and managers in my time, and had no doubt I’d just met another. Quite likely a really good one, I thought. (more…)
B2B Email Marketers: New Opt-Out Regulations Effective July 7, 2008
Galen De Young | B2B Marketing | June 30th, 2008New rules issued by the Federal Trade Commission in May 2008 require the opt-out process to be simple and easy. The rules say that the opt-out process can’t require any fees or the input of a password, login, or other information that would somehow hinder unsubscribing. The opt-out process must require no more than the recipient’s email address. (You can’t run people through multiple steps to verify their identity.) In addition, the opt-out procedures must either be a single email reply or a visit to a single web page (i.e., you can’t require people to run through promotional pages or hinder them in any way on their way to unsubscribing.)
The new rules also have implication for B2B marketing professionals who serve companies with multiple divisions. (more…)
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
Buzz Baker | Positioning | June 26th, 2008When we last visited the Prussian military strategist, General Carl von Clausewitz, we noted that his tactical direction for armies attempting to cross wide rivers was not always appropriate for marketers attempting to aggressively reposition themselves.
But the good general also has other advice for aggressive marketers that may well be worth heeding. And while his language is not the language of today’s military or marketer, the message is clear:
“In general it is more advantageous to continue our blows in one and the same direction, because there is loss of time in striking in different directions; and at a point where the moral power is already shaken by considerable losses there is more reason to expect fresh successes, therefore in that way no part of the preponderance already gained is left idle.”
When Repositioning Your Brand, You May Want to Disregard Von Clausewitz
Buzz Baker | Positioning | June 23rd, 2008
The Prussian military strategist, General Carl Von Clausewitz, once said: “No army wanting to cross a wide river would cross only half of it first.”
His point was simple. Once the decision was made to cross the river, the objective was to get to the other side. No ifs, ands or buts…and certainly no dawdling or halting along the way. Stragglers to be shot. Perhaps on most occasions that would be the viable military strategy, but when it comes to repositioning a brand, it could just as likely be a formula for failure. The key determinant in that formula resides in the word “wide”. Here’s why: (more…)
Can Social Networking Sites Deliver for B2B marketers? Absolutely, Positively!
Mike Marn | B2B Social Media | June 11th, 2008
A recent AdWeek article quotes FedEx executive Steve Pacheco as saying “It’s the next logical step for FedEx.”
He’s not talking about entering a new international market, or altering their business model, or a new Domino delivery option, like “30 minutes or it’s free!”
Nope. Pacheco is the Director of Advertising for FedEx, and what he was referring to is virtual delivery, via a new Facebook application. Now members of that social network can send one another FedEx “packages” that can include photos, links, little digital goodies, etc. The recipient clicks on the FedEx package to “open” it.
Traditionalists might smirk at such serous talk about a merely virtual presence that isn’t directly monetized. They shouldn’t. (more…)