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As we work to use search to become better marketers, we will devote today to Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) falls under the larger umbrella of SEM, but as we discussed last week, the two should be used in tandem to achieve optimal results.
SEM is most commonly associated with paid search ads that appear at the top and sides of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These paid search results are one point at which search and social begin to collide, because brands can pay to appear in the results pages of social networks as well as search engines. Seeing an advertisement that is appealing in their Facebook or LinkedIn feed makes it enticing and easy for them to share it with their own networks.
While an investment in SEM is very appealing for marketers, it is important to approach it the right way to make the most of your budget while also avoiding common pitfalls. Here are four tips to help you avoid SEM faux pas:
Connect paid keyword campaigns to leads
B2B marketers must make the effort to correlate customer relationships with paid search campaigns. The opportunity for ROI in this arena is huge, but tracking it requires a bit of work, since sales are often closed by sales teams rather than an online shopping cart. B2C search campaigns, in contrast, are tracked more easily as a customer clicks through directly to sale. B2B companies must record a lead’s source info or URL in their customer management system to develop an understanding of what paid keywords are leading to increased revenue.
Make phone calls matter
B2B marketers often find it harder to track ROI on SEM than B2C marketers, because while a customer quickly buys a $20 item online without much thought, a one million dollar software purchase often leads to a phone call. The B2B customer wants to talk to a sales team to find out more about such a large investment. Even though entry into the sales funnel may happen over the phone for a B2B customer, it is crucial that the lead’s source, again, be recorded. There are many companies who offer call-tracking software to link a phone number directly to a paid search campaign; ClickPath and LogMyCalls are both good examples. Because the B2B sales cycle is so long, understanding which campaigns are bringing you qualified customers along the way is crucial to continued success.
Ad copy is everything
As you have realized, the B2B marketer must make many considerations specific to their industry before investing in an SEM campaign. One risk for a pay per click campaign, for example, lies in the fact that there are many more consumer than business searchers online every day. Many B2B keywords also have a general appeal, and even when you make your language specific to your target, unqualified leads will click. This costs marketers money with no return, so developing ad content that is as specific to your product as possible is crucial in the B2B arena. Finally, B2B marketers must relentlessly target the customer they want, be it the entry-level small business employee or the mid-market executives.
Consider contextual advertising
Because keywords can be so difficult for B2B companies to manage profitably, contextual advertising is a wonderful option to consider. The highly specific, industry-related B2B product is not something internet searchers typically have on their mind, so it is the B2B marketer’s job to put it there. Contextual advertising on an industry blog or message board is the perfect way to get your target thinking about a product they didn’t know they needed.
Pairing B2B marketing with SEM can be complex, but the return on investment will be well worth it. Reach out to us on Twitter or LinkedIn to tell us the strategies that have worked for you.
(Image credit: Yaph)
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On Wednesday we discussed search as it applies to marketing, because gone are the days when understanding its functionality can be left to the “experts.” Distinguishing between SEO and SEM can be confusing, especially when you need to use them to complement one another. Many marketers are most intimidated by SEO, since it relies less on money and more on smart content development and social sharing.
Luckily, there are a number of free online resources devoted to SEO that are very helpful, for the beginner or the seasoned professional.
Here are two of our favorites…
This one won’t surprise you, since Google has become its own verb synonymous with “search.” Their Webmaster Guidelines provide information that will help Google find, index and rank your site. It offers important help relating to design, content, quality and technical aspects of site maintenance. Users will gain an understanding of what will help their content pop up organically and successfully in Google search.
Moz has been in the business of search and content marketing since 2004, so they know what they are talking about when it comes to SEO. Their free Beginner’s Guide to SEO is useful for anyone looking to develop a deeper general knowledge of the concept. The guide is nice to look at and easy to use, and it highlights the following topics: discovery of the terms and phrases (keywords) that generate traffic, making a site search engine friendly, building the links and marketing the unique value of the site’s offerings.
What resources have you found most helpful in understanding SEO? Share them with us below.
(Image credit: Jessica Smith)
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Marketers are increasingly adding search marketing to impact their campaigns. While many understand the vital role search can play in campaign success, they don’t necessarily have the knowledge to use it themselves. In fact, C-level executives who leave all search knowledge in the hands of the “experts” are doing their company a disservice; all of today’s marketing professionals should have a basic understanding of how search works and how to use it. The better you understand search as a function, the bigger impact you can create for your company.
One of the biggest steps you can take towards using search effectively is understanding the difference between SEO and SEM, a comparison that can seem daunting to many. Here’s the breakdown…
SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of increasing visibility in organic, unpaid search results, and it is essentially based on a site’s content. To use it successfully, you must combine quality content with traffic and popularity. Merging those two things with accessibility – making sure your web presence is user-friendly – is the key to showing up well above the competition on a SERP (search engine results page).
Only 47% of searchers can distinguish paid ads from organic results, but organic results are only number one in 9% of searches. SEO offers free results over an extended period of time, but not without an initial investment. Time and funding are required to provide your site with the following SEO components: optimized meta data, quality page copy, relevant blog content, clean URLs, fast loading times and social integration. These website qualities work best when paired with an extensive digital community that contributes to social sharing, backlinks and bookmarking.
SEO is cheaper than SEM, but it is only powerful when combined with quality content development and an active social community, so the overall investment of time can be quite comparable to SEM.
SEM
SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, is the process of increasing visibility in search results through paid optimizations and advertising. PPC, or Pay Per Click, listings are a key player in SEM, but success lies in the marriage of content that is relevant to the search and the money invested in the ad. Google AdWords, for example, gives your ad a quality rating connected to its content relevance that directly influences your keyword rates. By doing this, AdWords makes it easy to find out how much a search ad will cost and how likely it is to appear on the first SERP.
A strategic SEM campaign can be a fantastic way for a new business to gain rapid exposure, if the budget is available. Over time, increased popularity will lead to more exposure through organic search results, but high visibility is hard to achieve organically, particularly when so many companies are ahead.
Maximum search engine success is found by combining SEO and SEM, using paid ads to increase visibility that will eventually become organic. Both need long term maintenance, whether it be in terms of quality content, social sharing or financial backing.
Understanding SEO and SEM will have a direct impact on your future marketing campaigns!
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Early in May, we shared our thoughts on the importance of combining search and social for B2B marketing success. Companies like Google and Bing have created a structure in which search and social media work well together. B2B marketers are finding the return on social media efforts are more sustainable over time when one customer response, for example, shows up perpetually via search.
This month we are going to discuss social & search success even further. We will tell you how to optimize each approach and how to make the two work together effectively. As you plan upcoming campaigns, you can apply social and search tactics to make them more successful.
The differences between SEO and SEM will be our topic on Wednesday, offering you a basic understanding of search that will help you to use it efficiently as a marketer. Leaving that operational understanding of search to the experts is no longer an option.
On Friday, we are going to discuss Search Engine Optimization on a deeper level. We will share our best resources that, again, will lead you to a higher level of search success for marketers. There are tools and resources all over the internet that make search an accessible topic for anyone, and B2B marketers will find them especially helpful.
We are looking forward to sharing social & search insights with you this month, and would love to hear how it’s currently working for you. Stay tuned for more information on both topics.
(Image credit: Geoff Livingston)
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In recent years, companies have become adept at using Twitter for marketing and communications. Most of them, however, are only just beginning to recognize the power of Twitter as a sales tool. An increasing number of sales teams are incorporating social selling into their strategies, and as it turns out, tweeting is one of the best ways to increase revenue.
Sales teams can identify leads quickly and easily with Twitter, and making them feel engaged is easy. Here are a few practical tips to get your team on the right path:
Make new contacts
To increase social selling, each sales person should have a targeted number of new connections to make each day. Key influencers of your target consumer can be identified with Klout, and it is in a sales team’s best interest to initiate connections with those individuals regularly. Become familiar with their content, respond to it and share it. Aggressive interaction with your field’s influencers will not go unnoticed by consumers, and leads will begin to accumulate.
Tell a story
The best way to engage leads is with good content. Do not be afraid to let your sales team remove product from their social posts to focus on story-telling. Allow the focus to be a powerful narrative, creating a story around your brand that shows empathy for consumers. This approach will increase social connections and lead to sales.
Encourage personal branding
Originally, sales people were encouraged to lose themselves within their brand’s message, but this has changed. Personal branding has become one of the most powerful social selling tools. When a sales person makes the effort to become an established leader in his or her field, connections increase and leads look to them for answers. Customers relate to a personal, social voice with whom to connect – someone to trust – and that’s when social selling truly begins.
Thanks to Twitter, B2B companies have the world at their fingertips. Tweet your way to sales by empowering your sales team to develop strong personal brands that can tell a story, make connections and in the end, recommend product.
(Image credit: Christopher Jiminez)
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As B2B marketers, most of us spend a great deal of time preparing Keynotes, Powerpoints and decks. For years, all of this work was put in Archive folders on our computers, never to be used again. Thanks to Slideshare, presentations have become shareable, which makes them a valuable new marketing tool. But how do you know if it’s worth it for your company? And how do you create Slideshare content that people actually want to share?
Pros of Slideshare
- Users can store and share their presentations in one place and be part of Slideshare’s online professional community.
- Users can easily add synchronized audio or YouTube video to presentations.
- The site has 12 million unique visitors per month.
- It boasts over 100 million users.
- Users can track the success of a presentation with provided analytics.
- It is connected to a variety of social networks for sharing and generates embed codes.
- Marketers can use the program to demonstrate thought leadership on industry-related topics, promoting their brand through content and expertise.
Cons of Slideshare
- It is possible that your content could be used in a different way than you intended.
- As with any marketing tool, it takes an investment of time to use Slideshare well enough to see effective results.
Key to Slideshare Success
Using Slideshare effectively for marketing requires as much content strategy as any other tool. Presentations should be interesting and shareable, offering an interactive experience for viewers. The ability of Slideshare to outperform more traditional formats, such as white papers, lies in its easy integration of more compelling audio and video elements.
Once an engaging presentation has been created, it must be shared strategically as part of the overall marketing strategy. LinkedIn and blogs are particularly suited to Slideshare presentations, but they can also easily be posted to Facebook, Twitter and Google+. While one perk of Slideshare is that your presentation will show up in Google search, marketers should not rely on that for exposure. Instead, put your presentation in the hands of the people who can use it, be they colleagues or consumers.
Has your company tried Slideshare? Show us your favorite presentations below.
(Image credit: Sylvain Kashair)
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In the past, content marketing was viewed primarily as a means of creating and promoting assets. Today’s B2B marketers have moved beyond that perception with the realization that content marketing in the digital age is much more complex.
Content Hubs are the updated way to build and share content that relates to customer needs. Content marketing has shifted towards this need for brands to create online destinations, or hubs, that are rich with engaging content relevant to their products or services. The old business website is no longer enough. Instead, companies are developing sites of engagement that include news, resources, blogs, customer insight and, yes, product information.
By creating this online presence, brands can tailor their community to engage customers, listen to their problems and meet their needs. You might already have a site that serves as a hub of engagement for customers, but if you don’t, it is probably time to consider a step in that direction. With all the effort put into social networking and conversation, it makes sense to have a site that supports that by making customers feel as engaged as possible. And if you have put the work in ahead of time to answer consumer questions and provide helpful resources, you will preemptively save yourself from answering them later. You will set yourself apart as having valuable solutions for customer problems, and most importantly, you will keep customers coming back for more.
If your website hasn’t made the transition to Content Hub, here are a few ways to get started:
Provide a place for visitors to post
By creating a venue for customers to post messages, questions and responses to your company’s product or industry news, you provide them with a sense of connection to your brand’s online community. Customers will interact with visitors, and this new platform for peer advocacy might even lead to sales.
Make social sharing easy
Every page of your website should be instantly shareable. Add social badges that are prominent enough to be easily found, and visitors and customers will share your content, making your marketing job easier with each click.
Invite employees and vendors to join in the action
In an effort to make your online community as big and diverse as possible, invite your employees and vendors to join in your website conversations. Many of them will be able to provide resourceful blog posts or answer customer questions from a personal perspective.
Would you consider your company’s website a Content Hub? How has it served you?
(Image credit: Aesop)
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BtoB Magazine recently wrote that smart marketers make a point of strategically spying on their competition. They point out that keeping an eye on your competitors can be helpful on several levels, and we agree. Following conversations between potential leads and the competition can be very helpful in shaping your own brand’s communication strategy.
Here are a few tools that make social “spying” easier:
HootSuite Streams
You are probably already familiar with HootSuite as a tool for social network management, but take it a step further. Their side-by-side stream set up allows you to watch and compare competitor posts.
Radian6
Radian6 is a high level tool developed specifically for social listening. Use it to listen in on conversations happening about your product or brand among consumer, or to stay abreast of what is keeping competitors busy.
SimplyMeasured
SimplyMeasured offers features similar to Radian6, but at a more basic and cost-effective level. Their goal is to take data and make it “simple, beautiful, and accessible for everyone – not just data scientists.”
Sprout Social
Sprout Social offers basic monitoring and analysis features and another way to listen in on competitor conversations, with a well-designed mobile-use feature for your whole team
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In recent years, the challenge of social media has been that every marketer knows it is necessary, but it is almost impossible to measure its worth. It is hard to gauge the return on the money and seemingly endless time that it requires to be invested. Even though the capabilities of data and analysis are increasing constantly, it is still hard to pinpoint just how much a company is getting in return on social ventures.
That might be changing. As Social Media Explorer recently explained, we are on the cusp of being able to pinpoint exactly what return a company is getting and what initiatives could be most profitable in light of that data. In fact, predictive analysis software able to do this already exists. The problem is that the price tag is high – probably in the six or seven figure range.
This raises an important question: just how much is predictive analysis worth? Imagine the things it could do for your company. With no guesswork involved, you would know whether to put more money into content marketing or more into online advertising. You would be able to project the differences in putting more money here and less money there. In other words, it could take the risk out of social marketing.
This question is up for debate. Is the certainty of ROI worth a six or seven figure investment?
What would make predictive modeling technology worth it? Do you think it could be more accessible? Share your thoughts with us below.
(Image credit: Doug 88888)
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This month we’ve discussed how B2B marketers should approach a relentlessly evolving world. Technology is not going to slow down anytime soon, and we want a return on this acceleration.
We have noticed that many marketers, in the onslaught of information, are suffering from Perpetual Novice Syndrome. Having new information thrown at you at such alarming rates feels threatening, and we suggest that you cope with Positive Adaptation.
We believe the cycle that leads to Perpetual Novice Syndrome is maladaptive, and we suggest you respond with these steps: Accept accelerated change. Decode accelerated change. Process accelerated change.
Our white paper provides an explanation of each step, with many helpful hints to get there. Download it now.
We can’t control the emergence of more and more sophisticated tools and technologies. The only thing we can control is how we adapt.
