MarCom Writer Blog: B2B Web marketing tips Tag Archives

Last week Google clamped down on companies that use questionable methods to manipulate search results. According to Search Engine Land, these methods include paid links (sites that pay for links from other sites), and content farms (sites that have “shallow or low quality content“) to use Google’s words.

For months now, SEOers and content marketers have been complaining about Google’s search results. Top results for searches often include crap content from sites like Ezine Articles (a site that got penalized by Google in its crackdown — and about time, too), scraper sites and spam blogs.

The problem with all this crap content is that it’s hard for legitimate sites that practice ethical SEO and provide high quality content to rank well for competitive search phrases. The crappy stuff clogs up the search results, making it difficult for people (searchers) to find relevant and insightful information.

So what exactly is “shallow and low quality content” as it applies to B2B? Basically, it’s content you create to help your site rank better versus helping prospects make purchasing decisions. Shallow and low quality content is based on:

Keywords — Content is created based on keyword searches; these keywords are then used in the Title / meta tags and through out the article or blog post.

Quantity — The more content that’s created around a specific grouping of keywords, the better.

Lack of depth — Shallow content is usually a blog post or article that doesn’t give much in the way of insightful analysis or is filled with information you probably already know. It’s usually written by non-experts who write dozens of articles at slave wages.

High quality, in-depth B2B content, on the other hand, takes time (and yes, money) to create. Generally it’s created by companies who genuinely want to help prospects and customers do their jobs better.

If you’re a company like Eloqua (@Eloqua), you’re creating “Grande Guides” that help prospects learn about content marketing, lead generation and the like.

If you’re Ardath Albee (@Ardath421), you’re creating original blog posts filled with insightful information on how to create content that moves prospects along a complex sales cycle (or, how to create better Tweets — love this post, Ardath!)

If you’re Dow Corning (@DowCorning), you’re creating videos that communicate your company’s values to potential employees as well as educate prospects and customers about new products and services.

If you’re Exact Target (@ExactTarget), it’s offering your followers and fans reports, posts and Webinars about social media — and how you can do it better. (Be sure to sign up for their Webinar, The Social Breakup.)

The point is, developing this high-value content takes time. You have to:

• Determine why you’re creating it in the first place (to help people decide to do business with you, to generate leads, to show your thought-leadership and expertise, to get people to work at your company).
• Map out a strategy for creating it and then publicizing it.
• Create the content (the hard part).
• Get it formatted, designed, etc.
• Publicize it.
• Publicize it some more.
• Rinse. Repeat.

This stuff is not easy — and yes, it is much easier to write 15 crap blog posts and pay someone $25 for doing so.

As Google continues its crackdown, creating consistently great, high value content will only become more important — and given that its vaunted search results have taken a real hit of late, we’ll continue to see more sites get downgraded due to poor content and questionable SEO tactics.

I like to tell my small B2B clients that while having top rankings is important, it’s not the end all be all. What really counts are results: are you getting the calls and emails (inquiries / leads) that become sales? To get these results, you need content — content that’s been written for people, not search engines.

What’s your opinion of Google’s crack down?

While doing a Website audit for both a B2B Website design firm and a B2B marketing services company last week, I noted that the firms’ owners simply showed screen shots of some of the projects their companies had completed in the last couple of years.

The screen shots, while pretty, lacked any supporting copy.

Here’s the problem with showing just pictures: they don’t tell the story behind the picture. You think they tell a story because you know what the picture is about. Your prospects don’t know the story, however, making the photos pretty much useless as sales tools.

How to get around this? Tell the story!

Telling stories is what made the J.Peterman Co. so successful in its heydey. It wasn’t the products themselves that were so wonderful, it was the story behind them — like this one about the “Secret Thoughts Cape.”

For both the Web design firm and the marketing services company, I recommended that the owners pull out three to five of their best projects and create case study pages for each one. Each case study should include:

1. The business challenge and the solution
2. The implementation
3. The results

Even better, these stories should include quotes from the clients and their names / business titles plus some interesting “bits” to lend color and depth.

Two things happen when you present case studies (or success stories) on your site: You show your company’s expertise, and prospects see themselves in these stories and say, “Hey! This company solved this particular problem, which we’re experiencing, too. I bet they can help us.”

I’m such a believer in telling success stories with words AND pictures that I now include developing a couple of case studies as part of my proposal when quoting New Websites and Website Overhauls.

Story Contest!

B2B marketers — here’s a chance to have some fun. In 100 words or less, tell me the story behind these sneakers and why a collector would want to add them to a “canvas sneaker collection.” Post your story in the comments section. Contest ends Friday, January 21, 2011.

The writers of the top five winning stories will receive Godiva Chocolates plus recognition on this blog. Have fun!

Download this free e-book now: The Top 10 B2B Marketing Mistakes . . . and How to Avoid Them, a Crowdsourced E-book compiled by Dianna Huff

My colleague, Mac McIntosh, and I asked our respective networks to send us the top ten B2B marketing mistakes they see other marketers making. From email to social media, people expressed their opinions — and often quite passionately.

The Top Three Mistakes?
1. No marketing strategy
2. Website not optimized
3. Wasting lead opportunities

Are the results surprising? Yes and no. You can find reams of blog posts, reports, articles, etc. full of how-to-do-it-right information. Yet, despite all of this information, you can still find many B2B Websites that aren’t optimized and companies that throw their unqualified “leads” at sales.

The remaining seven mistakes include:
4. Wrong messaging
5. No offer
6. Not testing
7. Jargon
8. Not paying attention to details
9. Not taking advantage of how people process information
10. Not marketing the Website

I included a description of each mistake as well as information from top marketers on how to avoid each one. And since it’s a crowdsourced e-book, you’ll find many of the survey responses on each page. It was a fun book to compile and write — I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, please be sure to tell your social network about it.

Thank you to following contributors who filled out the survey or sent in email:

Ardath Albee
Bob Bly
C. Edward Brice
Katie Brown
Meghan Carmody
Kirstie Colledge
Sarah Farrer
Ed Gandia
Mark Gibson
Matt Heinz
Anne Holland
Adam Jacobson
Russell M. Kern
Rob Leavitt
Michele Linn
Jim Loadholt
Kim Cornwall Malseed
Barry D. Martin
Mac McIntosh
Raymond Ng
Mike Ortner
Ken Poray
John Rasco
Erica K. Rice
Geraldine Roy
Steven Sessions
Mark Schaefer
David Meerman Scott
Altaf Shaikh
Jim Somers
Kate Spiers
Jeremy Victor
Kurt Weisenberger
Ralf Weiser

Edited to add:
No stock photography was used in the development of this e-book (Mistake #8). The people you see are actual contributors. I originally wanted to use an image of a “crowd” on each page, but didn’t want to use a stock photograph. The designer tried to custom make one out of people’s Twitter photos, but they were too low res.

I tried connecting the mistakes with each contributor, but that was becoming time-consuming and not everyone sent me a photo. So, the designer and I made the executive decision to post pictures of contributors through out to illustrate that “real people” were used in the making of the e-book (i.e. “crowdsourced”).

If someone was quoted on particular page, he or she is placed on that page — i.e. Ardath Albee or Michele Linn. The result may seem confusing — as someone just emailed me said, “Who are these people?” But I believe it’s a small trade-off for pictures of real people. What do you think?

The e-book was designed by Sonora DesignWorks (for those of you who want to know).

Here’s a safe exercise you can try at home: pretend you’re a B2B prospect looking for a company who can help you solve a business problem. Choose any B2B vertical / industry, a professional service or a product and then do an online search. Once you’re on the search engine results page, click through to those listings that look like company Websites (stay away from article spam and the like).

If possible, visit seven to ten sites. Quickly scan the home page of each one to see if you can figure out what the company offers. Don’t take notes — just run through each one.

Now, which company stood out in terms of content? Do you remember any of the company names? No? Congratulations, you just encountered what your prospects go through when they’re searching for providers / solutions.

The Problem? Poor Messaging

Poor messaging happens when companies use the same staged, corporate-y images purchased from stock photography sites and content written in jargon-y unreadable gobbledygook. After viewing a few sites, everything starts to look and sound the same.

The result is that prospects come to your Website . . . and click right back out.

How do you prevent this problem? Create fresh, original content that explains what your company does and why your company is different — in plain English.

Marketers usually refer to this process as “developing your message” or “determining your position.” It’s the first step you need to take when redesigning your Website. To develop your message, consider the following strategies:

1. Conduct competitive research
Most small and mid-sized business owners often know exactly who their competitors are and what they offer. Get this information out of people’s heads and onto paper (or an Excel spreadsheet or white board) by holding a strategy meeting with all parties. Also include any “scuttlebutt” you’ve picked up in your travels and from reading the news media.

Analyze your competitors’ Websites to see how they position themselves. What words and images do they use? How are their offerings similar or different from what you offer / provide?

My client, Greenway Golf, for example, differentiates itself from other golf course maintenance companies by stating that they help golf course owners and managers significantly lower costs while vastly improving playing surfaces.

2. Analyze your strengths
Look at how you’ve solved your customers’ challenges in the last few years: what value did you bring to the table? What was your expertise and how were you able to use it to solve the problem?

Ask your customers why they hired you and why they continue to do business with you. (Conversely, go over recent deals that fell through and ask why you didn’t get the deal — this knowledge will help you craft messages that resonate with future prospects).

Ask sales people for feedback they get from customers — this is all valuable information that you can use in your content and to help better define your position.

Also look at the awards you’ve won, industry certifications, and any data you have that shows how your customers are better off since implementing your solution. Veterans Development Corporation, for example, has earned a highly coveted 94% DECAM rating from the State of Massachusetts (a rating providing by the state based on past performance), a fact they point out on their Website in various places.

3. Tell some stories
Do you have great success stories — stories that really show your expertise, strengths and can-do attitude? Showcase them on your Website! While formatted PDF case studies that people can download are always wonderful, you can include vignettes and what I call “mini case-studies” within the content on your site.

These stories don’t have to be text-based or follow the traditional “problem, solution, result” format. I like how Macro-Air Technologies, for example, uses a video to show how their HVLS Six-Blade Fans beat out their competition. I also like how Greenway links to industry articles about their clients via their blog posts.

The goal of implementing these simple strategies is to create fresh, original content that reflects your company’s values and expertise . . . and that gets potential customers to call or email you.

I know lots of other strategies exist for developing great messaging — feel free to list yours below.

61 out of 100. That’s the number of Fortune 100 companies that didn’t respond to an email from best selling author David Meerman Scott requesting information.

The big names are astounding: Abbott Labs. Comcast. DuPont. General Dynamics. Ingram Micro. Pfizer. United Technologies.

You can find the full report and analysis in David’s new e-book, Real-Time: How Marketing and PR at Speed Drives Measureable Success (and his new book, Real-Time Marketing and PR, a MUST READ).

One could argue that these multi-national companies are too big to respond to an email from a book author. After all, they’ve got so many more important things to do. And besides, anything can go wrong with an email, as I’ve learned when people say they’ve sent me email but I never received it.

I’m sure a few of the 100 emails David sent didn’t reach their intended recipient. But still, 61 out of 100 – that’s almost two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies that didn’t respond to a simple email.

As David points out after analyzing the Fortune 100 and their stock prices, the ROI of real-time engagement with customers, media, and prospects is glaringly apparent:

Fortune 100 companies that engage in real-time beat the S&P 500 while others, on average, underperformed the index.

Not answering an email from an author who writes about marketing and PR in the Internet age not only makes you look bad, it costs you money.

This holds true for small and mid-sized companies, too. I’ve heard horror stories of small companies who send all Web inquiries to an email address that rarely gets checked. In fact, I had an electrician to my house a couple of weeks ago who said that the email on his Website doesn’t work. (But he’s so busy, he didn’t seem to care, which is a shame.)

Email is a pain in the butt, but . . .

Look, I know email is a pain. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with keeping up with it. And sometimes things do fall through the cracks and to my horror I’ll realize I haven’t returned someone’s inquiry in a timely manner.

Unlike our Big League Fortune 100 cousins, however, we small business owners really have no excuse. And due to our size, the performance expectation is higher. I don’t expect an answer from a big company. I do expect to get one from a small company — and fast.

When you build a Website, you’re basically building a path to your business that anyone in the world can use to get to you. This path is used by spammers, clueless PR people, vendors who want your business — and prospects interested in your offerings.

This means that instead of keeping people at arm’s length via a contact form, which I often see companies do, you have to make it easy for people to contact you. This is why I think small B2B companies should post their phone numbers and email addresses on every single page of a Website (rather than just the Contact Us page).

When people do contact you (and I’m talking about real people, not spammers), return the favor and reply back to them. Who knows, you could end up a with a sale (which is what happens for me on a regular basis) or you may get a good write-up about your company in a book, blog post or news article, as the following examples show:

Does Your B2B Website Need a Facelift? — An interview with Samuel Greengard of ChannelPro SMB.

Are Customer Testimonials Smart Marketing Tools? — An interview with Lisa LaMotta of Forbes.com

Personal Branding Through the Eyes of a B2B Marketer — An interview with Dan Schawbel.

What do you think? Have you had a company respond to you in real time via email or Twitter? How do you feel when you call a company and get a “real” person answering the phone instead of voice mail? I’d love to hear your stories.

From visiting Annabelle’s candy factory as a kid (think Big Hunk, Abba Zabba and Look — yummy!) to doing the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory tour as an adult, I’m a sucker for the factory tour.

Love ‘em, can’t get enough of them.

So I’m always thrilled when I get a new client and they offer me a tour. (It doesn’t even have to be a factory — I’ll tour anything including a golf course, a printing plant, and a university, to name a few.)

Tours give me a hands-on feel for the company and its products / services. When I toured the golf course, for example, I studied various types of turf, examined how balls rolled across the greens, and watched people play golf.

Learned more in an hour than I did reading reams of source material.

But the best part of doing tours is talking to the person giving the tour – and getting some of my best content ideas in the process.

It’s during the tour that the person giving the tour opens up in a way that doesn’t happen while sitting at a desk. All of a sudden, he or she is talking a mile a minute, pointing out things, introducing people and handing you things to look at or touch.

Best of all, if you pay close attention, you’ll hear the nuggets of information upon which you can build an entire message or marketing campaign.

On one tour, for example, the client said a few times that they had all new equipment. I finally asked, “Why is that important?” and she replied, “Oh, because we were outsourcing our manufacturing but the quality was really bad. So we invested in the equipment and now we produce everything in-house. Our quality is back up to close to 100% and we’re shipping product faster.”

I changed their entire messaging based on that one piece of information — which netted fabulous results for them that year.

Another client, Veterans Development Corporation, told me the story of how they got the West End Heating plant in Georgetown working again. The guys telling the story got all excited and animated and in turn I got excited — and ended up developing content for their revamped site around the messages buried in that story: fast response, deep know-how, creative approaches. They loved it.

Yes, yes, I can hear you thinking, you don’t have anything to tour because you make software, or something equally “flat,” and all your people do is sit pecking away at a computer all day.

So get up out of your chair and go for a walkabout anyway!

Going for a walkabout is one of my favorite ways to find ideas that become the basis for new content. What you’re doing when you go for a walk around your company is looking for “news” that you can can turn into case studies, application notes, blog posts, video, white papers, or newsletter articles.

Think like a reporter and sniff out the news by asking people what’s new and exciting and what kinds of projects they’re working on.

If they talk one-on-one with customers, ask them what customers are talking about. While you’re on the topic, ask which questions customers ask the most — you might be amazed at the answers.

If you work in a company that has a few buildings or multiple departments, go visit the other building or department and introduce yourself. Open doors, peek around cubicles, and go down hallways you’ve not been down before. If you need permission to visit an area (i.e. the clean room), ask for a guided tour.

In short, don’t be afraid to learn more about your company and the people in it. Once you make a habit of going for a walkabout, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it.

If you’re like me, you’re overwhelmed with the amount of marketing information being presented on an hourly basis. On top of that, keeping up with new technologies and terminologies is mind-boggling.

Quite frankly, my eyes have begun to permanently glaze over. So I was happy to hear that the marketing folks at Eloqua agree with me.

“You are correct,” says Joe Chernov, Director of Content for Eloqua, which provides marketing automation products and services. “People tune out when confronted with too much information. And, companies often use confusing concepts and jargon to explain what they do, especially when it comes to marketing automation. We wanted to turn our focus outward and get people’s attention through entertainment as well as substance.”

The result is Eloqua’s wonderful new Grande Guides campaign, complete with spokesperson Juan Eloqua, a “cheeky yet romantic” businessman who specializes in growing coffee — and revenue.

“Our CMO, Brian Kardon, came up with the idea for Juan Eloqua — it was one of those ‘lightning strikes’ type of ideas. Another idea was to film coffee barristas answering people’s questions, but we quickly realized that would be an execution nightmare.”

Campaign goal is more than just buzz

Casting, filming and editing the videos took eight weeks using a professional camera crew and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) actor. Brian wrote the script; Joe was responsible for developing the Grande Guides.

“We had to go back and reshoot the videos because we wanted Juan to introduce the various Guides,” says Joe. “So that added to the execution time.”

The campaign launched August 24, 2010. “We put it out on various social media platforms and set it free,” says Joe. “However, we want more than buzz. We’re sending out over 100,000 emails asking people to subscribe to the content.

“And, because we’re always looking to add information to profiles in our database, we’ve put up forms to collect this information, which we’ll then use for our own lead scoring. We’re also hoping to reactivate inactive prospects.”

Grande Guides present one concept at a time

What I like best about this campaign is that Eloqua is seeking to educate people — the foundation of successful B2B marketing — while having some fun in the process. As such, the Grande Guides have been designed to look like a beloved moleskin notebook with valuable content . . . the kind you don’t want to throw away.

“The point with the Guides,” says Joe, “is to boil down complex concepts into a document someone can read in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.”

The first in the series, The Grande Guide to Lead Scoring, for example, gives you a detailed overview of the topic, why it’s important, and how to do it. Information is presented in an easy-to-read format with lots of subheads, call outs, graphs — and coffee stains.

Be sure to check out the Guide. You can also follow Eloqua and the campaign via Twitter, Slideshare, and Facebook.

For a long time I had one type of bird feeder in my backyard, a feeder I kept filled with one type of food: black sunflower seeds.

The feeder attracted the typical birds you see in New England backyards: Blue Jays, Chickadees, and Cardinals, to name a few.

A few weeks ago, however, I added two new feeders, a nut feeder and a bowl feeder filled with millet in order to attract smaller birds.

Over night my backyard went from being the equivalent of a sleepy small town airstrip to a busy municipal airport.

Birds of all kinds flocked to my feeders — Woodpeckers, Titmice, Nuthatches, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, Grackles, Finches, Mourning Doves, Sparrows and others I have yet to identify.

In fact, the bowl feeder / millet proved so successful, I now have five to six Sparrows sitting in the bowl eating seed at any given time, others fighting for a position on the bowl and more milling around on the ground waiting for seed to drop.

Wow!

Attract more B2B buyers with multiple offers

Generally, companies offer people something in return for “raising their hand” to be identified. I ask people to give me their first name and email address in exchange for my monthly newsletter, for example.

Other companies ask for additional information when it comes to Webinars, white papers and the like.

Giving people free information is good. The problem, however, is that people respond to offers depending on where they are in the buying cycle.

• Someone just starting research will download white papers or checklists but definitely doesn’t want a sales person to call and isn’t ready for a demo.
• Someone who is narrowing down the vendor selection list has probably already read a half dozen white papers and now is now ready to participate in a Webinar and/or read case studies.
• And a team that’s ready to make a buying decision may want to talk to a sales person or have a demo.

Having just one type of offer, i.e. white papers, will attract some buyers, but these buyers will most likely not be ready to buy for months, which is why you need to include offers that attract buyers no matter where they are in the buying cycle.

Instead of attracting people who are “just looking,” you’ll also attract those who are serious about finding a vendor / partner and making a purchase.

As to my new found birding love, I’m now researching platform feeders. My buddy Mac McIntosh (who inspired this post) said to put out cut up oranges, grapes, and bread crusts. He also recommended suet feeders. What’s your recommendation?

(Photo credit: Liz Leyden)

I watched the Old Spice campaign go viral and while my one Tweet sums up my initial response to it (“The Old Spice brand may now be ‘trendy’ due to social media + hottie Isaiah Mustafa, but it still smells icky to me”), technology writer Robert X. Cringely of InfoWorld’s take on it made me stop and think.

The result is my guest post, “Don’t Copycat the Old Spice YouTube Campaign!” for the BlogNotions Marketers blog.

Yes, it’s applicable to B2B marketers.

Enjoy!

I repeatedly hear horror stories from small business owners of how they hired someone to oversee / manage their Website or social media profiles, and then find out after the person flakes out that they don’t have access to their accounts.

This is because the vendor opened accounts using their own name rather than the business owner’s name. Or, the vendor didn’t send the business owner the login and password information and then skipped town.

Here’s how to easily prevent this from happening to you:

1. Open accounts or set up social media profiles yourself and then send the login information to your vendor.

2. If you agree to let your vendor open accounts for you, stipulate in the contract that accounts must be opened using your name / business name and that all login information must be sent to you within eight hours of the accounts being opened.

Being in control of your own Web hosting, WordPress login, social media profiles, and other account information ensures that you own and control your content / marketing assets. If something terrible should happen, you’re not left scrambling for login information — something that happens more frequently than most people realize.

Do you have a horror story of how someone you know — or perhaps you — lost access to your Website or social media accounts? Post it here!