.Com Marketing uses a technology platform that optimizes conversion rather than just the number of visits.  Over time, this delivers more leads that engage and take action once they click through to the landing page.  The disconnect is in how a  “lead” is defined. Many B2B companies are sales focused and define qualified leads as “someone ready to buy.”  Therefore, when they look at campaign goals stated as visits, web events and calls – they tend to discount any lead that doesn’t result in an immediate sale.

Marketing defines a qualified lead as a prospect with a need that can be filled by a product or service and that has the access and ability to buy.  Marketing sees the value in filling the sales funnel with people that can buy, even if they are not ready yet.  This is especially true for B2B clients that generally have longer sales cycles and can have higher price points.  This is often why B2B companies are sales driven, because it takes relationship building and persistence to close a sale.

Dave Green for Marketing Sherpa defines the difference between sales and marketing well:

• Marketing improves the probability of success across a pool of responders.
• Sales identifies the probability of success for a particular responder.

If B2B companies accept that these 2 approaches are complimentary, Pay per Click advertising can be a very useful tool for attracting a pool of likely customers.  PPC is a very valuable tool in filling your sales funnel and should not be measured only by immediate sales. People that raise their hand and opt-in to hearing more from you are strong prospects that can be nurtured with future communications throughout the buying cycle.

After phoning all our clients to update them on the problem…we are using some creative ways to communicate and keep clients updated on progress..my biggest tools are social media:

• Facebook posts
• LinkedIn update
• Twitter

I’m collecting my favorite “server down” messages, and so far I like Hootsuite :

Owls need a break sometimes too

Have you been affected by Amazon Cloud Server’s service disruption?  How have you been communicating?

There is nothing as disappointing as having to report little booth traffic, and no prospects or leads.  But if you are attending an industry’s Mega Tradashow (Thousands of exhibitors and attendees) it is possible to get lost in the crowd and have little to show for your efforts.  In this case, you should consider a “Reverse Tradeshow.“

What is a Reverse Tradeshow? I define it as attending a tradeshow as a “booth-less exhibitor.”    Then instead of being trapped behind a booth at the mercy of booth traffic – you are free to roam the aisles meeting clients and prospects (and keeping an eye on the competition).

When to try a “Reverse” tradeshow. When faced with the following, consider saving exhibitor costs.

1. When it is  a “Mega” industry show
2. When you are a first time participant
3. When you are new to the industry
4. When your budget doesn’t allow for premium booth placement
5. When you don’t have time and money for significant pre-show marketing
6. When prospective clients will be exhibitors

Especially if you are new to the industry or a particular trade show, your year one mission should be reconnaissance and actively meeting as many prospects as possible (instead of waiting passively behind a booth).  Your goal should be prospecting and gaining insight for the best positioning (booth location, give-aways, messages and prominence) for next year.

Several clients have tried this strategy and reported positive results. Have you tried this technique, what were your results?  Would you try it again?

Kathleen Peters is the Senior Account Executive at .Com Marketing.  She specializes in B2B marketing and internet marketing strategies.

When Social Media Doesn’t Work for B2B it may be due to:

1. Posting infrequently, going weeks or months between posts

2. Using social media to broadcast marketing messages instead of engaging in a dialog with prospective customers

3. Providing little or no value to readers that actually solve their businesses problems

If any of these describe your social media efforts, then you haven’t given social media a fair chance and may be turning your back on a valuable marketing channel that can and will generate leads if utilized effectively.

Simplify your Social Marketing Strategy:

1.  Start with Blogging. If you only have the time and resources to invest in one social media channel, I would highly recommend blogging.  Blogging is the best 1st step in social media because it offers multiple benefits in both engaging with customers AND in the SEO benefits of generating new content and links – both things that Google values highly and will benefit your Search engine rankings.

• Tips for success: Provide value to your target audience, focus on solving customer’s problems

2. Go where your customers are. If your customers use LinkedIn more than Facebook, then concentrate your time and resources there in the beginning.

• Tips for success:  Be sure you have a company profile as well as a personal profile in Linked In. Link your blog to your social media profile so blog postings appear in Linked-In updates

If you still don’t think social media will work for you, consider outsourcing your social media strategy to an internet marketing company that understands B2B on-line marketing and can help you develop a strategy and content calendar to help you build leads with Social media.

Search Engine Watch has an excellent article on how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms and Web developers should work together during redesign (see link below to read full article). I hear three frequent complaints from clients  when they have not consulted with us during site redesign.

The Top 3 SEO risks of website redesign:

• Losing position and prominence in search engine rankings
• Struggling with a new content management system (CMS) that is difficult to use
• Losing usability with new navigation that is different, but not necessarily better than before redesign

The benefit of having your SEO firm partner with your web developer throughout the website redesign process is that they eliminate these risks and avoid down time and costly mistakes.  An experienced SEO team can can help you throughout redesign by providing:

1. Information Architecture/Wireframe/Template Review. More than technically sound, you want your proposed architecture to be user friendly AND drive relevant  search traffic.

2.  CMS Review. Unless you are using Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or other  friendly systems, it is important to have your SEO firm review the proposed new CMS.  Many niche CMS platforms can be difficult to use for non-programmers or can actually hurt on-page optimization.

3. URL Transition/Redirect Strategy. It is vital to have a migration plan for a smooth transition to your newly designed site to avoid down time,  broken links, or missing pages.

4. Content Optimization. Your SEO firm can review new copy content during redesign to guide copywriters and give you a jump-start on optimization.

5. Final Review & debugging before site goes live.  SEO firms can review site from a search engine perspective and help locate broken links and other problems before going live.

Remember that Compliance is not Optimization

While a good web development firm should ensure SEO Compliance, they should not conduct optimization. They do not have the knowledge of your business or optimization expertise to conduct proper keyword research, measure & evaluate on-going analytics, or develop a content plan to generate traffic.

Read the Search Engine Watch article in full for more information on how SEO Firms and Web Developers should work together during web redesign.

“How do I get more Consumer Direct Bookings” and “Why should I pay for my own brand name in Pay per Click (PPC) advertising?”  The answers to both these questions are surprisingly related.

The Quick Answers:

1. Add Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to your internet marketing plan to gain page dominance on Search Engine results pages (SERPs) for competitive advantage and drive more consumer direct bookings.
2. Yes! You should include our brand name in list of biddable keywords for  PPC marketing.

Here’s 5 Reasons Why:

1.  Dominate the page – Research shows that if users see you in the top (paid) positions AND in the organic position on a page, click through rate goes up to 77%.  (while CTR of organic alone is only 1-2%)

2.   Own your name – it’s inexpensive.  This is the least expensive word you will bid on and gives you the best position, at the lowest price, when your business category is searched for

Add PPC for Page Dominance & Competitive Advantage

3.    Edge out the competition – Competitors often bid on others’ branded names, but you will always score higher by search engines for your own name and thus can push competitor results farther down the page

4.    More Profitable click through– Intermediaries are also bidding on your banded name, & you pay more in commission & fees to OTAs than if guests book directly.  (One booking would more than pay for a month’s worth of clicks on your branded keyword).

5.    Branding & reputation management – When people are searching for hotels & resorts, you want them to see positive content first (not a negative review from social media) Important for both potential & current guests.

• Another aspect of Branding is – more control over your message.  Even if it is not a negative review…organic is slower to get new meta descriptions and other SEO efforts to appear (and the caching nature of search engines means old content hangs around for a long time).  PPC allows instant visibility to marketing messages you want prominent for the month…linked to your name.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) combined with Search Engine Optimization tactics will give your company the greatest visibility possible to your market segment

So what makes a small business website successful? A website is successful if:

➢ It looks professional. It has an attractive graphic lay-out and design that communicates a quality brand image for your business

➢ It works. It is user friendly, people can find the information they want easily and all navigation and links function properly

➢ It can be found.  People can find your website when using search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN

➢ It meets a business objective. It accomplishes a defined goal such as building credibility, inquiries, sales…etc.

When I looked at my friend’s website, I found it did “work” in that the usability and functionality were good, the problem was that the search engines couldn’t find it.  That is a problem, because it doesn’t matter how great your website looks, or even how usable and functional your website is – if it is hard to find, it can’t meet your business objectives.

All four key factors listed above must be present for a successful website, but rarely can one person deliver all four.  Why? Because each key factor requires a very different kind of expertise.

Full service agencies cost more but have teams of people to deliver all key areas of expertise, while individual web designers tend to specialize in one, maybe two areas.  Individual web designers tend to be either “Geeks” or “Artists.”  In my experience, both the Geeks and Artists tend to be weak in Marketing, especially in search engine optimization (SEO).  Therefore, small business owners should understand the specific capabilities and expertise of a web designer, before beginning website development.

For more information on developing an effective small business website, go to my website to download a free eBook for small business owners on “How to Save Time, Money & Sanity while Developing a Small Business Website.”

I started sharing this good news with a business owner when I realized that my “Marketing Speak” was making it difficult for non-marketing folks to understand.  So in keeping with my goal to make leading edge marketing strategies accessible to small businesses, let me define a few marketing terms before giving you my top line summary of the benefits of integrating social media and SEO for small business websites.

Marketing Speak Glossary:

What is SEO again? Search Engine Optimization utilizes strategies & tactics that make it easier for search engines (like Google) to find your website when people search by keywords related to your business.

Why is SEO important to my business? Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN…) display 2 kinds of results for every search:  Paid ads and free or “Organic” results.  80% of people click on the “organic” search results because they find them more credible than paid advertising.

This preference for “organic” search results is good news for small businesses (since “pay per click” advertising can be expensive and time consuming to manage well).  So the goal is to improve your free search engine results as much as possible before spending on paid advertising to drive traffic to your website.

Executive Summary:  Using Social Media to Improve Organic Search Results

Does Social Media impact SEO?

Yes, Sherpa reports that social media can improve search engine rankings.  (More good news for small businesses, since social media is also “free” media).  Social media benefits SEO by:

• Improving search rankings
• Increasing traffic from targeted keywords
• Expanding content shown in universal search results
• Improving the ROI from search programs
• Generating more qualified leads

How does it work?

Social media provides two main things search engines evaluate:  Content and Links.

What should I do?

1. Content: At minimum,  you should be aware that Google is now indexing more content from blogs, Twitter and Facebook.  While your main focus in social media should be “ to provide great content, interact with your audience and build relationships,” you should consider and include relevant keywords while writing that  “great content.”

2. Links: Although many social networks use “no-follow” coding to prevent search engine indexing, linking to valuable content in your social media “updates” is an area of opportunity.  You can get SEO benefits by “adding relevant URLs to your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter”.

Two easy tactics to integrate social media and SEO to improve your search engine rankings and help drive website traffic:

1. Be sure to include relevant key words when writing social media copy

2. Include URL links to great content in your social media updates

What’s the ROI on integrating social media and SEO?

Right now social media volume is relatively low and these new “real time” searches of social media drive little traffic.  But the return-on-investment of building your SEO savvy and utilizing as many free marketing tactics as possible is high.  Social media volume is growing fast; as is Internet usage of search engines to find and research products and services.

Ready for more depth on social media and SEO?  Read the entire Sherpa Marketing Report on Social Media’s impact on SEO.

Way back when I started my business, I just tacked on “.com” to my business name and then tried to buy it on godaddy.com.  It wasn’t available.  After considering the .net version, I decided to include the “inc.” of my corporate name and bought www.kmpmarketinginc.com.   Not an easy URL to remember or type correctly.

Today, I would make other choices.  In fact, I would probably purchase a domain name before I named my business!  So if you are in the process of naming your business and/or choosing a domain name for your website, consider the following tips to choose a strong small business domain name:

5 tips for choosing an effective small business domain name:

1. Shorter is better than longer. Longer URLs are harder to remember and offer more chances for typos.

2. Include a keyword in your domain name.  Since I am a marketing consultant, I wanted marketing to be in the name of my company and in the domain name for my website.

3. Avoid hyphens, underscores and plurals. Confusing and easy to forget.

4. Use a 301 redirect so you can be found whether people type “www.” or not. Your Webmaster will understand this direction. But basically people can find my website whether they type in “www.kmpmarketinginc.com” or just “kmpmarketinginc.com”.

5. Consider purchasing alternatives: .net, .org, .biz., mobi etc. if available. I prefer .com for business domains, but purchasing your domain name with various endings is a fairly inexpensive way to prevent competitors from diverting your website traffic.

I suggest reading the inspiration for this week’s blog at Rohit Bhargava’s blog titled: 6 Pitfalls To Avoid When Choosing A Domain Name. Two I particularly liked were:

7. Don’t automatically use your business name.

(I could have used this advice earlier).  One personal testament to this one is that there is not a chance I could remember or spell correctly www.rohitbhargava.com !  But I did remember  www.influentialmarketingblog.com. (you can get to blog from both addresses).

8.  Look at the URL typed without spaces & caps.

“So if your small business…is called “The Books Exchange” – if you register that name online (www.thebooksexchange.com), you inadvertently just gave your site a whole new meaning”.  So true!

BTW…Rohit Bhargava teaches Global Communications at my alma mater Georgetown University, and is an author and international speaker…So I will definitely remember his name in the future!

Even more important than how well your website looks, is how well it works. Do they understand what you do and what step you want them to take next?  Can they find what they want easily?  Can they make it through simple (conversion) tasks?

You can do simple qualitative research by asking 5 people to walk through your website and complete a few tasks while you watch them.  Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, says that as few as 5 people can uncover 95% of basic usability flaws on a website.  So if you are redesigning your website or launching a new site, it is crucial to try some basic usability testing before you go live.

The Over the Shoulder Beer Test… of website usability

One idea I love is Steve Krug’s  “Over the shoulder beer test” from his book:  Don’t Make me Think.  The idea is to ask a friend or neighbor to come over for a beer (or a cup of coffee) and try-out your new website.  It should be someone outside your company, that doesn’t know your products or services well.  While enjoying their beverage, let them navigate through your website while you literally watch over their shoulder.  Ask them a few questions and give them a few tasks to complete (Resist the urge to help! It may be obvious to you that the free download button is right there…but it may not be as obvious, or logical, to someone that hasn’t been working on the website for the last 3 months).

Then observe and ask questions:

• Do they understand what you do and who you are?
• Do they get stuck anywhere?
• Ask them to try a few tasks.  Can they….
  • Find the free download?
  • Sign-up for your newsletter?
  • Contact you?

Remember that the average time visitors spend on your website homepage is 8 seconds. That’s 8 seconds to grab your readers’ attention and convince them your site is relevant and  “clickable”.  So the more user feedback you have before going live, the better.

Try it and tell me how it works for you.

P.S. For more help designing effective small business websites, download my FREE Website Development Guide to save time money and sanity during small business website development.