Pay per click advertising (PPC), allows marketers to quickly drive targeted traffic to their website. PPC also affords site owners the opportunity to test new product initiatives fairly quickly. But PPC has its pitfalls; so it is important to hire someone competent to do it for you, or to be prepared to spend a great deal of time learning how to properly organize a campaign and write compelling ad copy, not to mention how to do an exhaustive keyword analysis. Even with a good group of keywords, several different ad creatives and a properly structured campaign, a well-executed PPC campaign requires constant monitoring and adjustment. [Read more...]
Qualifying the best prospects with brand-integral incentives
January 18, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
Posting in B2BOnline, Gary Kreissman of Precision Prospects provides some pointers for overcoming the increasing Internet inefficiency and “clutter” that many B2B marketers see as increasingly frustrating their efforts to identify new customers.
Gary suggests following the lead of consumer marketers, who have moved beyond considering an email address as a “qualifier” and are instead seeking to identify real prospects based on their emotions, motivations and opinions. They’ve found that the secret of getting likely buyers to give this info up is offering them something of real value that is also integral to the marketer’s own brand.
In this scheme… [Read more...]
B2B Online Spending on the Rise
January 10, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
The folks at MarketingVOX have posted another nice summary of some recent research compiled by Lisa Phillips, senior analyst at eMarketer. The report cites Veronis Suhler Stevenson forecasts showing that online spending in the B2B category will rise 23.7 percent next year to $2.4 billion.
Still, that figure is dwarfed by print advertising among the top 100 B2B advertisers, with nearly four times the spending of online in 2005. Nonetheless, eMarketer says the Direct Marketing Association is predicting that 2008 is the year when online marketing efforts will become the dominant medium for B2B advertising …although it’s a bit hard to see how we get there from here quite that soon.
But going beyond advertising, a 2005 U.K. Internet Usage in Business Market Report showed that the Internet is being viewed by companies as a strategic weapon used to improve a business’s entire value chain. There is a very real risk that B2B companies with an online focus limited solely to branding/image and lead generation will lose out to “2.0-savvy” businesses who are busily internet-enabling everything throughout their enterprises.
So You’ve Just Re-Designed Your Website – Now What??
January 4, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
OK, you’ve taken the plunge and just completed your first major re-design in several years. It looks great, says what everyone thinks it should say; but the response “out there” ranges from tepid to deafening silence.
A good bit of the beauty of the Web is that sites market themselves, to an extent; but they invariably do much better with some human help. A new or re-designed site needs some extra directed effort even more; otherwise it could feel like eons before the site starts contributing like everyone hoped it would. Here are some things you can do to jumpstart the effectiveness of your new website… [Read more...]
