VOLUME ONE Online Marketing Driving Leads pot

Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start PlanAttention Conservation Notice: The following post provides quick tips for Search Engine Optimization SEO and six-step plan for getting st

from The B2B Lead

Driving Leads to your website through paid search advertising,

search engine optimization, blogging and more

Online Marketing

VOLUME ONE

30 Online Marketing Tips for Driving Lead Generation

Today, online marketing is vital to any integrated marketing program With so many new avenues for reaching prospective buyers, we as B2B Marketers have to think outside of the box to stand out in the crowd From significant improvements in marketing program metrics to greater efficiencies in your sales funnel, employing new online marketing tactics can create immediate benefits, if done right

In this collection of 30 online marketing tips from The B2B Lead, you will find information on the basics of SEO, optimizing your video for the web, boosting your blog using twitter, how to measure your online successes and much more Here’s a few of the included tips in this eBook:

Dive in and Jumpstart SEO With a Quick Start Plan

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides quick tips for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and six-step plan for getting started

You might call me a fast-follower when it comes to Search Engine Optimization I resisted for some time because the prospect of researching and sorting through hundreds of keywords and applying techniques to outwit Google’s ever-changing algorithms seemed so daunting I can barely spell algorithm, after all Then a slew of industry surveys showed that anywhere from 80 to 90 percent or more of B2B tech buyers start their research and buying process on Google

Well, that was a wake-up call So, last year I made SEO a higher priority I shifted the funds from online advertising into SEM and a ReachForce role-based database build (That way, I could cover both my Inbound and Outbound bases.) I also maintained my investments in PR and some key sponsorships to cover the brand awareness and drive Inbound traffic Then, I pulled resources and funds that had been spent trying to keep up with endless campaign design and development, and re-focused them on social media and SEO.It’s truly amazing how quickly you can get results like Page 1 Google rankings when you focus resources on boosting a particular page ranking Here are a few tips to help you do the same:

Invest in the right tools: There are literally dozens of free and low-cost SEO tools that you can use to get a lay of the land and assess your best SEO prospects Of course, Google

•

ing, Mike Volpe makes a great case for SEO in the HubSpot Inbound Marketing blog More about that another time

Boost Your Google Juice with Link Bait

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a list of different types of link bait and key considerations for making sure the link bait is effective.

value inbound links is to produce “link bait” by delivering valuable content that encourages others to link to you

Encouraging inbound links to your website is a sure-fire way to improve your SEO performance, in other words, to boost your Google juice One of the best ways to build those high-Nick Wilson, a contributing writer for Search Engine Land, recently wrote about the various forms of link bait that web marketers use to drive inbound links to their web site content Here’s a summary of the three types of link bait according to Wilson:

Widgetbait:

• The holy grail of link baiting in 2007 will be the widget In late 2005 and early 2006, I came up with a linkbaiting concept to put my previous company,

Perfor-mancing, on the social media map That idea was the Performancing Blog Editor Firefox extension that has achieved nearly half a million downloads on Mozilla alone.

I would also add to this: visual or graphics link bait Bloggers and journalists love visuals and diagrams that help communicate a point A popular example of this is the Social Media fatigue visual Andrew Shuttleworth created using Mind Manager flow charting software

Here are a few tips on making sure your link bait is effective:

1 Make it relevant and useful to your target audience to drive the right types of links and web traffic

2 Make sure it supports your brand

3 Don’t require registration to use it, but do embed offers for more (this requires a conversion strategy)

While link baiting can be controversial, it seems to me that it has resulted in so many new free tools available to users How can that be a bad thing?

2008 is the Year of Digital Omnipresence

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains ideas for helping B2B marketers secure multiple page one listings on Google and Yahoo.

More tidbits from SMX West have been posted to Web Pro News by Jason Lee Miller Apparently, digital omnipresence was the hot topic at the event According to Miller, “the discussion surrounding search is no longer just about securing your place in a same-for-everybody top-ten list of search results The discussion is about being everywhere; it’s about establishing a case for digital omnipresence.”

Now, I wasn’t there (unfortunately), so I don’t know the full story on digital omnipresence, but it sounds very similar to the concepts promoted by the folks at StomperNet As a B2B Marketer and a follower of StomperNet strategies, I have experienced the results first hand and am hooked Today, it’s not enough to have one listing on page one of Google I’m driven to secure multiple page one listings And that is made far easier by posting valuable, actionable content in a multitude of formats – web pages, blog posts, video, podcast, etc

When you look at the research on B2B tech buyer behavior, it’s easy to see why Research from numerous sources, including Marketing Sherpa, indicate between 85 to 98% of B2B technical buyers in North America use the Google search engine Yahoo dominates in other areas of the world And, reports published by StomperNet, Enquiro and others show that a double listing at the top of Google not only boosts brand affinity but generates more than 2X the leads of a single listing Difficult to argue with those odds

And, it’s not enough to secure organic listings Enquiro Research suggests that B2B technical buyers start their research in the organic or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) listings

of search engines and their purchase process in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) ads What’s more, Marketing Sherpa reports that organic listings draw 75% of the click through traffic, while SEM draw 25% Clearly, when targeting the tech buyer, it is vital to be in both places

To succeed online, B2B marketers are going to have to learn how to present their brand and their corporate and thought leadership messages everywhere, in many different mats We will have to drive demand, build brand awareness, establish thought leadership and a community of interest using social media, traditional media and Search Marketing techniques

for-One way to do this is to optimize a variety of different types of content for broadly searched/highly competitive terms However, securing a top listing for competitive terms requires a significant time and resource investment so it is not an option for many B2B marketers Even with the longterm commitment required for success here, I’m not advocating that B2B marketers avoid these keywords Just the opposite Go ahead and optimize for those terms, but use SEM programs such as Google AdWords and contextual PPC advertising to fill in gaps and “be there” when both researchers and buyers are searching Then, leverage new media program elements including your blog and social media/Web 2.0 sites to secure high value inbound links A steady investment in these programs will help move these listings closer to the top of the search engines

A far faster approach to top listings, is targeting “long tail” terms—keywords that have moderate search

volumes and are relatively easy to dominate quickly

Optimize Your Video for SEO Results

While prepping for my upcoming presentation on Viral Marketing for the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit, I ran across this excellent posting on http://seo-space.blogspot

com/2007/09/14-best-practices-and-tips-for-video.html Here are three of the 14 best practices listed in the article:

1 Make sure that your video clips are relevant and informative - For starters, ensure that your video provides useful and informative information Videos that demonstrate step

by step procedures are great, videos that express an opinion about a specific topic can be useful too Videos that have nothing to do with your brand or service offering or are general or vague in nature will just confuse your audience

2 SEO Video Optimization Fundamental Tip #1: Give your video a Catchy Title - Video can be used to bring visitors to your site One way to get users to view your video is to give

it a catchy title that contains a related key phrase that is relevant to your product, service or brand

3 Use Video as a Portal to other Content on Your Site - Upload a couple of videos to portals like YouTube and provide links back to related content and other videos on your

site

ers for both brand awareness and demand generation

According to B2B Magazine, currently only 1% of the videos on YouTube are posted by businesses But I can tell you from experience that viral video is a great tool for B2B Market-Marketing WTF? - This According to B2B Magazine, currently only 1% of the videos on YouTube are posted by businesses But I can tell you from experience that viral video is a great tool for B2B Market-Marketing Geekout Moment Brought to You By StomperNet

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist:

Step 1 - Start with SEM (ala Google Adwords)?

Most website owners eventually come to the conclusion that to have any success getting traffic to their site, they need to do one of three things: optimize the pages of their website (SEO), start a pay-per-click campaign (SEM), or do both In an effort to save money, most people will tell you to go the free route first – that is, work to optimize your website and hope that your pages get indexed high in the search engines I’m here to tell you a couple of reasons you may want to consider shelling out some money on a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign first

For those of you with limited budgets, you may be asking yourself – why spend money on a PPC engine like Google Adwords before taking advantage of every possible opportunity

to get free listings? My best answer to this question is that doing so will save you weeks or possibly months of frustration How? When you begin optimizing your website, you have

no idea what will drive potential customers to your site, let alone what will prompt them to buy Sure, you hopefully will do some keyword research ahead of time, but you still won’t know which keywords will ultimately bring you the targeted, motivated traffic you are looking for Aside from that, you have no idea if Google or other search engines will even list your pages anywhere near the top (check out the chart below to see why being above the fold on page 1 is essential in a competitive b2b environment) In the end you may end up spending a lot of time and effort waiting to gain that first page result only to be disappointed because you show up on page 10 Alternately you may show up on page 1, but end up getting the wrong type of traffic resulting in few or no leads/sales

Eye tracking study: Areas of the page searchers focus on

Now let’s consider that you do the same keyword research, but set up a Google Adwords account first and wait to optimize your site With Adwords you can be up and running ads in minutes instead of waiting days or weeks to get indexed by Google in the organic (free) listings You can also guarantee visibility within the eye tracking sweet spot from the chart above Now you can begin testing You can test which keywords are getting the most conversions, which ad copy resonates best with your target market, and which landing page copy convinces people to fill out their information Once you begin gathering this data, you can begin transitioning the things that work to your web-site; you can now be confident that your optimization efforts will not be a waste of time It’s like having the ultimate focus group; people from all over are telling you which keywords they are interested in when looking for products or services you sell You will now know exactly which web copy to add to your pages to get the most conversions - it is

no longer a guessing game Authors and publishing companies test book titles with Adwords before going to print Entrepreneurs use adwords to test product ideas before manufacturing the product Adwords is the ultimate market research tool; if you look at it this way, it is well worth the money spent Of course this all depends on whether you use Adwords to its full potential and testing capabilities My next article will discuss the first step to creating a suc-cessful Google Adwords campaign – Keyword Research

Practice Metrics-Based Copywriting

The B2B Lead features a number of helpful articles on copywriting, so I thought I’d share one of my favorite tips for ensuring B2B marketing copy is relevant As marketers we constantly try to write compelling copy that motivates people to take some sort of action The trick is to write in the voice of our target audience; speaking to them using language they respond to Sometimes we use focus groups or A/B testing to help with this; getting out in the field and talking to prospects/customers also helps In the end though, the words

we choose often amount to best guesses

Keyword research tools like Wordtracker, Google Trends, and the Google Keyword Tool provide a wealth of insight into the voice of our audience Using search data and trends can give excellent clues to the words people use to describe things Talking to your audience, using the same words they search for themselves, puts you at a major advantage For example, the other day I was crafting an email to promote a new webcast Problem was, some people were calling it a webcast and others were calling it a webinar – which was it? What would more people respond to; a webcast offer or a webinar offer? I decided to use Google Trends to compare the search volume of both words I figured the term that is searched more often will also be the term used more commonly in conversation This term should also spark a higher interest if used in my email So I quickly pulled up Google Trends and here is what I found

This obviously made my decision easy Split testing my email offers confirmed that using “webcast” got the better response

Now, this is just search-driven copywriting in its simplest form If you want to take this further, you can use the Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker almost like you would a Thesaurus For example, maybe you are promoting a “golf strategies” guide If you plopped this keyword into the Google Keyword Tool, it would offer you numerous suggestions for related terms people are searching for In this example (shown below) maybe you would be better off promoting it as a “golf tips” guide since that term is searched more frequently

Sprout Widgets, Mashups and Other Great Content That Drives SEO

One of the best ways to increase your SEO rankings is to attract inbound links to your blog or website

Traditional link building efforts involve asking for links, link swapping, or link buying This process is extremely time consuming and can get expensive if you are buying high quality links Really, in this instance, is there any such thing as a quality link? After all, Google has made no secret that it is actively seeking ways to weed out this practice

In contrast, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by leveraging social media to convince others to link to your content The challenge is coming up with link-worthy material and then spreading the word via Twitter and other social media tools Fortunately for those of us with little time and fewer resources, the process of building this content just got a lot easier You no longer need to embark upon a lengthy research project or write a 10 page white paper These days, successful link bait is taking the form of widgets or mashups

or other forms of rich media content The prerequisite is that the content should be helpful, clever, funny, or remarkable enough that others want to write about it or include it in their roundup of free tools

The process of building a widget or mashup used to require Web development skills or enough budget to farm out the work I’ve been reading about a number of free tools that allow just about anyone to create their own widgets but have not found the confidence to try them Prodded by a “tweet” from one of the more influential Twitterati (did I really just write that?), I decided to check out, Sprout, an extremely cool and easy to use site to help you build widgets or other informational tools that can be embedded in your blog or web site http://sproutbuilder.com/whataresprouts

Sprout looks easy enough to use and I’m ready to check it out Now, I just have to come up with the “killer app” for our blog readers To get ideas, the first step will be to reach out

to the community reading the BreakingPoint blog at http://www.breakingpointsystems.com/community/ and then do a bit of brainstorming

Blog Basics

If you feel like you are completely lost when it comes to blogs, here is a great post on the basics of blogging from VR Marketing blog

Here are some key takeaways and a few of my own thoughts:

Be transparent or risk losing readers

Be sure to include keywords in titles and within relevant content for search engines

Page Titles are Important

Search Engine Optimization is a big reason why a lot of companies start blogs in the first place Make sure you are doing everything you can to optimize your blog Start with having unique page titles Here are a few tips from Michael Nguyen’s Social Patterns blog:

Keep Your Blog on Track to Support SEO and Other Business Objectives

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides an eight-point litmus test that B2B marketers and bloggers can use to evaluate their blog posts for Search Engine zation and relevance to business objectives.

Optimi-As a blogger it is sometimes difficult to stay on track with your core audience and company interests Blogging is, after all, a conversation and conversations often stray off track But when I stepped in to write for my company’s blog, I discovered was there were far more benefits to staying on track with the content than just improving readership

Of course, I know there was a strong connection between the blog and SEO ranking I also know a blog was a great tool to attract readers and prospects to download content from your web site But, until I actually dug in and crafted my own posts, I didn’t really understand the “magic” and how to create a repeatable process to boost SEO rankings which inevitably drive demand and brand awareness So, with a few posts under my belt and a dramatic boost in SEO rankings for a couple of valuable keywords, I put together this quick litmus test for ALL future posts

I know that most blog and social media purists will violently disagree with these tips They will argue that one should not be blogging with marketing and sales interests in mind Last time I checked, however, I didn’t live in a Socialist country And, my ego isn’t important enough to spend hours pontificating about topics without at least something to gain We are all blogging with an objective in mind I believe they key is in the “intent” of the post If your goal is to be found, to educate and to attract a following of potential new customers without making false promises, then the following litmus test should help you to keep your posts on track with objectives:

1 Topic must be relevant to your target audience and—even better— to our company and product or service offerings

2 to’s, special reports, etc

Topic should be educational, controversial, timely or related to a news event Bonus points for link-bait articles like posting a list of valuable resources, expert interviews, how-3 Post must begin with easy-to-understand and keyword-rich title (not just a cleverly worded headline) The goal is to communicate what the story and takeaways are about before the reader has to read the story

4 Must contain links back to prior blog stories, an important corporate web page, press release or a white paper with more information The exact keywords that are linked to those pages should correspond with the SEO terms for which those pages are optimized

I’d like to hear about your experiences with blogging and SEO Importantly, what has been your success in achieving the coveted Google double listing?

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Corporate Blog

ment their PR strategy Whatever the reason, all companies should have set metrics to follow in order to track the effectiveness of their blog I just read a great MarketingProf’s

Feed subscribers are different than traffic and will not count as part of your traffic You may actually see your traffic decrease as your readers find your content to be valuable and subscribe to your RSS Feedburner is a tracking tool for feeds and offers a few other benefits as well (Just as an FYI is owned by Google now.)

tionships with other bloggers

You can track your links through Technorati or Google Blog Search This will help you determine which topics resonate the best with your readers and will help you to create rela-Want Bloggers to Write About You? Make Sure Your Website is Blogger-Friendly

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post shares a few counter-intuitive tips for getting bloggers to write about you.

Cory Doctorow – the genius behind Boing Boing, and the inspiration behind ReachForce’s attention conservation notices–has shared more of his brilliance in 17 TIPS FOR

GET-TING BLOGGERS TO WRITE ABOUT YOU.

If you can get past the InformationWeek’s annoying, in-your-face advertising and survey requests, you will find several great nuggets in this post Many of which will really throw most marketers for a loop Here are a few of the more interesting suggestions:

Twitter to Attract Readers to Your Blog

Blog Master…Not just shared the best way (If You Build It, They Will Come) to attract readers to your blog in a recent post to The B2B Lead

Here’s another: Microblogging Most people I know are absolutely perplexed by the value of microblogging sites like Twitter, Pownce, Seesmic or Jaiku I’ll spare you the details of the conversation it spawned with my husband the engineer Personally, I use Twitter and I love it Don’t always have time to use it, but when I do, it’s amazing It can also be very powerful In fact, we presented a podcast on the subject by a real Twitter expert – William Hurley or whurley (listen here) Whurley was able to build a huge following for his Opens-

ville Blog So much so that his blog rose to a Technorati ranking of 196 in a few short months Want to benchmark that stat? The B2B Lead is currently ranked 2,910,025 (come

on guys, give us a little link love here.)

When you immerse yourself in the community and start sending “tweets”, as they are called, it’s easy to see how powerful these tools would be for building a following and driving readers to your blog That is—if you have something interesting to say After all, as the fine folks over at FiveRuns say “don’t wake up the dog to tell it it’s sleeping.” My advice: don’t register for Twitter with the idea that you’ll really share exactly what you’re doing at any giving moment After all, most of us really don’t care what you had for lunch (bad for the diet), how long the line is at the bank, or who you were having lunch with today (that’s just name dropping)

What we do care about is: the neat idea you just had, your cool new project, a happy hour forming in your city, your latest brush with greatness, the exciting new product you just bought, a hot new company on your radar screen, or a new sale on shoes! OK, maybe that’s just me Anyway, you get the picture Think Word of Mouth Or, Word of Mouth 2.0.Twitter has become my way to become an “insider.” As an avid blogger and social media enthusiast, I follow Robert Scoble, the author of Naked Conversations—the definitive text

on the culture of blogging His tweets turn me on to the most amazing products and ideas Toys like the WiFi detector t-shirt (http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/991e/) Cool multi-media tools like www.vuvox.com He wrote an excellent article on microblogging for Fastcompany Magazine In the piece, he speculates that the step from e-mail to microblogging may be as significant as from fax to e-mail in the 90’s

Hans De Keulenaer also provided some excellent tips for microblogging on his Web Business Marketing Blog He suggests:

1 Daily tips and tricks: energy saving, use of a software package, … But consider, how quickly will you run out of steam?

2 Quick reporting from a roadshow, tradeshow, … Microblogging can be easily done from mobile devices It allows you to communicate broader about your event for the folks not there, while you are busy with the event

3 Information during a crisis, when aid workers have essential information, but no time

4 Animate events, such as a conference or trade fair, showing announcements of participants on a giant screen

For a customer event, you can use it to share developments in the itinerary, speakers as they sign on, encourage feedback, etc This will help you build a community of interest and encourage registrations for the event As adoption grows, you could consider expanding use to organize events at major trade shows, etc The options are only limited by the imagination

Like these ideas? Follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/poneal) Want to microblog with your voice – post a recording at Utterz (http://www.utterz.com) Not convinced? Read more about Microblogging: Microblogging:What Is It Good For?

Blogging to the Beat

I was cruising through my Google Reader (one of the best things I could have ever set up as a blogger) and stumbled upon a great post about blog writing on Diana Huff’s B2B

MarCom Writer Blog She suggests that bloggers have a beat just like journalists If you are just starting your own corporate blog, this is a great tip to help you figure our what to

write about If you can define your “beat” then you will find yourself soaking up everything you see about those topics and inspiration will come more easily

Also, if you are one of several contributors to your blog, each writer having a unique beat will help each author to be differentiated from the others

I’ve always loved the saying “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” If you can really narrow your focus, you have a better chance of positioning yourself as an expert in that area which will increase the quality of your content and hopefully your readership

Everything I Know About B2B Blogging I Learned from Perez

Love him or hate him, but Perez Hilton knows blogging He’s parlayed his celebrity juice blog into one of the most highly visited blogs on the Internet and transformed himself into

a minor celebrity I confess I too follow his blog to read his snarky updates on people whose lives seem infinitely more interesting than my own And, I’ve picked up a number of techniques along the way that I use in my role as a B2B Marketer Here are a few highlights:

ing content our way; it’s difficult to capture attention without being outrageous, humorous, or at least somewhat entertaining It’s more challenging to pull this off in the business world Can you imagine pulling some of the stunts Perez is known for? Still, it pays to have some fun with your blog and take a few risks

Let me info-tain you Today’s audiences want a hefty dose of entertainment with their information Let’s face it, with all of the noise on the Internet and the myriad of sources spew-Don’t take yourself too seriously If you are going to “make some noise” and get visibility in the blogosphere, you better expect to attract criticism and jokes at your expense So, it’s important that you don’t take yourself too seriously, have some fun, roll with the punches… If you do it right, you might even get Farked! Trust me, this isn’t a bad thing Check out some of the comments made in response to my latest viral marketing campaign - http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2729832

Push some buttons Notice how Perez engages his readers by reaching out to them to comment on his images or stories or pushing their buttons? Even better – he actually asks them to contribute to his content by coming up with celebrity Uni-Names—a personal favorite And, let’s face it, he’s the master of stirring up a flurry of controversy which can be the tipping point for instant blog visibility In the blogosphere, being opinionated pays big! So, if one of your posts sets off a firestorm of flames, don’t get mad, get famous

Got any favorite Perez moments to share? Maybe a B2B Uni-Name you’ve coined like Funnelnomics? Send ‘em our way!

Re-think Blog ROI

Yes, you read that right, I did actually use the words “Blog” and “ROI” in the same headline But this isn’t a post about how to calculate the ROI of your blog If that’s what you are looking for, reading further will be a frustrating exercise

Whenever I speak about social media and blogging, the questions always follow the same path from cynical challenges to reluctant how-to questions Sort of like the 5 stages of grief (disclaimer: I am not a clinical psychologist and really have no idea if these stages are even accurate):

I recently read an extremely interesting post by Phil Baumann’s entitled Blog ROI: It’s About Value, Stupid!, in which Phil makes an excellent case for why hospitals should have a blog His reason: “value.” According to Phil:

Ready to get started delivering value? Check out Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Blogging for tips and resources