eMagine's B2B Web Strategy Blog focused on aspects of web marketing and web strategy.
B2Bs will double their online marketing spending between now and 2014, according to Forrester research summarized in a recent BtoBonline article. Last year, interactive marketing spending totaled $2.3 billion; it’s projected to reach $4.8 billion by 2014.
Many observers have noted that the current recession has greatly accelerated a shift that’s been underway for some time, from [Read more...]
I recently read a few articles about pay per click advertising (PPC); one in particular, a post by Andrew Goodman for ClickZ on Quality Score, got me thinking.
I’ve set up quite a few Google Adwords campaigns in my days as a search marketing specialist. And I learned many years ago about implementing best practices when creating campaigns …mainly because I always felt it was actually fun trying to get a better ROI.
Adwords Quality Score has been around for a long time, but it was made public… oh, around late ’06, I think (but don’t hold me to it). As Andrew notes: Quality Score multiplied by your bid still determines where you rank on the page against competitors in the advertising auction, so it is indeed important.
How the specifics are calculated is still [Read more...]
Many – perhaps most – B2Bs now use one or more white papers as offers in their online lead-generation program. But are those papers giving their early-stage prospects everything they need?
Recent research by MarketingSherpa/Enquiro shows that pricing is the most desired information potential business customers look for on a vendor website. And we can just hear you now… [Read more...]
Let’s say you’ve finally been worn down by our (plus others’) persistent trumpeting of the benefits of business blogging (e.g., “B2B blogging can improve organic search”), so now you’ve decided to take the plunge and start yours. One of the first questions you’ll face is where – virtually speaking – to set up your blog.
Just in time, Jeffrey L. Cohen has posted a nifty guide over on Social Media B2B for weighing the pros and cons involved in that selection. Click on over for more, but here is a quick summary of the options he reviews… [Read more...]
We all know the drill on how to research our search keywords, right? You probably start by entering into the search engines some words that you “just know” will be relevant. Then, looking at the pages that come up, you extend your list with words that you see on those pages; then you enter those words, and iterate the process until it’s clear that you’re getting too far afield.
You then take that carefully-built list and run it through a keyword-research tool, which will show you which words are searched on enough to be valuable, plus show you other useful variations. And then you’re done! …for all time, right?
Wrong, says [Read more...]
It may be the most critical component of your pay per click (PPC) program. It’s where your visitor decides either that there’s something here worthy of further evaluation …or that she’ll just click on over to YouTube (or somewhere).
Yes, it’s your landing page. Much has been written about how not to do one; there’s even a webinar from Google, which we summarized here awhile back. Some of those no-no’s include:
So how to develop a good landing page? Posting in iMediaConnection, Mason Wiley presents a number of best-practice “dos” that [Read more...]
Gotta admit it: we hadn’t heard the term yet, either. But as soon as we saw Jon Miller’s definition…
Seed nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects before you have their contact information.
…we knew exactly what he was talking about; and chances are you do, too.
You see their trails in your analytics: those visitors that swoop in and view maybe 5 or 6 pages – some of them pretty meaty – before riding off into the sunset without [Read more...]
