7 tips for improving your email marketing effectiveness

December 30, 2009 by ·

Due to its heightened importance in these tight times, we’ve run a couple of posts recently about email marketing:  its pitfalls, plus tips for getting more “oomph” from it …so our regular readers may think of this as this as another in that series.

Start from recent research by ReturnPath showing that about 28% of B2B marketing email never reaches the targeted inbox, primarily due to blocking systems implemented by ISPs and corporate IT departments.  And it’s not always the same 28%;  sometimes your email will reach a given subscriber, sometimes not.

Why does this happen?  For starters, because… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, email ·

Steps to achieving a successful thought leadership program

December 28, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

We’ve often bogged about the many benefits of thought leadership, going back to one of our earliest posts.  Recently, Chris Koch wrote a posting on his blog providing an actual five-step recipe for B2Bs seeking to attain thought leadership, which we felt was well worth a quick summary here (and a click over for the full article).

Research the need.  Maybe the topics you hoped to “lead” on are already claimed by established experts that you can’t hope to compete with;  or possibly your market can’t envision your firm moving into such a role.  Or maybe you’re already there.  Most likely, your current situation is somewhere in between;  and you’ll need a more fine-grained set of objectives, down to specific areas of interest and appropriate vehicles.

Determine organizational readiness.  For consulting firms, this is generally not a problem;  their hiring is typically based on thought leadership.  Others will need to build… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy ·

Try adding a call to action to the end of your white papers

December 23, 2009 by ·

In our recent post, “To register or not, revisited”, we discussed the virtues of voluntary – or even no – registration in front of your thought-leadership conversion bait (usually white papers).  And we suggested also placing your registration request at the end of your downloadable material.

Now along comes Jim Logan, posting on his blog with a more fleshed-out version of what that might look like;  and in his view, it should even look more like a real call to action.  Jim’s white papers give his visitors three choices… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Conversion Metrics ·

Among social media, blogging is “Still the One” for B2Bs

December 21, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

In all the hoopla over Twitter, Facebook and the rest, it can be easy to forget the grand-daddy of all social media tools:  your corporate blog. And as Newt Barrett reminds us in his post on Content Marketing Today, it’s still the most important social media vehicle for most B2Bs, by a wide margin.

Newt backs this up with a number of solid reasons:

  • Both to ensure that your website can be found by Google et al. (SEO), and to position your company as thought leaders, you need to develop a wealth of online content.  With its powerful yet free or inexpensive tools, blogging makes this task simple.
  • Over time, your blog will provide your prospects with a virtually unlimited… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Blogs, Blogging, Social Media ·

Don’t leave your customers out of your B2B’s social media effort

December 17, 2009 by ·

OK, so you’re proud of being an early adopter of social media.  You have a strategy;  you’ve set up accounts in all the relevant places like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even some niche networks in your industry.  This is terrific;  all these profiles show up in Google searches for your company, because they all have super page rank.

There’s only one problem:  your current customers aren’t likely to Google your company name.  It’s a bit like the early days of the Web, when you had to print your url on every available surface, and pray that people would remember it and type it in.  Similarly, the only way your existing customers are going to know to engage with you in these social spaces is… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Social Media ·

Where search is headed

December 16, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

I don’t normally get into predicting the future;  somehow, the here and now always seems to present sufficient challenges.  But I usually enjoy reading where the experts believe things are going, and of course have at least as many subliminal opinions on the subject as the next practitioner.

So it was good to come across Rebecca Lieb’s thoughtful piece over on ClickZ …actually, a review of points she made in a panel discussion at SMX (Search Marketing eXpo) – Advanced in Seattle.  It’s almost like being there, so I definitely suggest clicking on over;  but here is a quick synopsis of some of her prognostications about search…

More blended results …meaning more mixtures of video, book, news, local, etc.  Such mixtures increased dramatically over 2008, from 17 to 31 percent of all search results.  What this means for marketers is… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Search Engine Marketing ·

Updating “To register or not” with a bit of illuminating research

December 14, 2009 by ·

Recently we posted “To register or not, revisited” …an updating of one of our earliest posts from back in ’06.  We reviewed the various camps of strongly-held opinion on the issue, including some promising new hybrid approaches that have surfaced in the intervening time.  And then we bemoaned the surprising lack of research on such an important question.

Without being under any illusions of cause and effect, we’re nonetheless thrilled to report that finally the research logjam has been broken …at least a little bit.  Posting on Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers blog, Rachel Karl weighs in on the side of “make registration voluntary”;  but even more important, she cites a bit of recent research by MarketingSherpa showing that… [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Conversion Metrics ·
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