b2b internet marketing (how to guide)
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• 5 strategic things you must do, NOW!• 10 proven tactics• 25 (mostly FREE) cool toolsTRANSCRIPT
Business to Business Internet Marketing 2011• 5 strategic things you must do, NOW!• 10 proven tactics• 25 (mostly FREE) cool tools
Justin Bruce
©2011 Bluefrog Marketing- Justin Bruce
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www.bluefrogmarketing.com.au
The online toolshed for B2B
Marketing Strategy, tactics, tools and tricks
What is Online?
By Online I mean
A Website,
Google Ad Words campaign,
Search Engine Optimisation of your site,
Creating Content
and the Social Media Sites.
Don’t get scared off by the jargon and new fangled technology stuff,
the old rules of marketing still apply and here they are but with a web-bent…
Using our proven RAPID marketing model the following article
will show you how to research, analyse, plan, implement and detect
your online marketing success with a strategic focus.
Written by Justin Bruce
Account Director BlueFrog Marketing ©2011
1. Research
Who are your customers and what do they want? What did they want and how has that changed?
Have you ever asked a 14-year-old boy how his day at school was? ”Good” would be an elaborate answer
but if you cut off his allowance I assure you the words will flow. Its not just teenagers, most people (clients
included) enjoy the status quo and don’t complain if things stay the same (even if it includes a steady
decline in the relationship). It won’t be until your competitor has formed a relationship with them that you
will hear the words you dread, “not good”
Online provides opportunities for research that are easy, cost effective and sometimes FREE. Now that I
have your attention, here’s a great tool survey monkey, www.surveymonkey.com. If you are thinking of
launching a new product or service, finding new market
opportunities, or simply want to know what your customers think
of you, ask them. You’d be surprised how many clients of ours say,
“No one will do a survey”, and then when the results come in, they
pore over them like kittens in milk.
Here’s a tip, instead of launching straight into the “we are conducting a survey spiel…” wrap your survey
around a specific question then branch off, eg., We are interested in your opinion about the latest
government legislation; could you please answer a few questions so we can better deliver value to you.”
Another helpful hint is to consider an incentive, “ Complete this survey and go into the draw to win…”
There is an abundance of information on the internet
that you will be benefit from researching but how do
you find it? Using google reader and google alerts
(more free tools) you can research your industry
including all relevant blog posts, websites, news articles
and podcasts. You can search for any relevant topics,
your brand and competitor
brands. This information will
be delivered to you sorted and summarised for easy consumption.
Another great online tool for research is social media. You can start by google
searching a forum or blog about your topic then jump on and ask some questions, its free research! “Our
company is looking into developing a new system to solve this problem…does anyone here think that's a
good/bad idea?”
Please keep in mind that online social networks are just like real social networks, you wouldn’t go up to
someone at a party and say, “Give me money for this product”. Here’s some tips; Listen first with two ears
then contribute, use the same formal or informal tone of language as the others and if you want
something then give something first. Here’s a forum with 20,000 members who probably own a small to
medium business like you flying solo, http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/forums/ - have a go!
2. Analyse
It also pays to follow your competitors, suppliers and prospects alike. They are all “out there” in the online
world chatting and publishing information; some of them are even talking about you so you need to listen.
Some great analysis tools that help you track trends around people searching for things and people
chatting about topics are HowSociable, BlogPulse, and Google Insights. It makes sense that Google
delivers great analysis tools as most of the information passes by them somehow.
Here’s a brief description about each but don’t take my word for it; try for yourself, they’re FREE!
• Google AdWords Keyword tool shows how many people are looking locally (set location to
Australia) or globally for your chosen key words or phrases and the competition.
• HowSociable is a free monitoring tool for measuring your brands or
keywords using 32 social networking sites.
• Blog pulse is a free service, which tracks over 100
million blogs. It can also produce the information
as a trend chart.
• Google Insights for Search shows you
the interest in specific topics. It
analyses a portion of worldwide Google web searches to
determine how many searches have been done relative to the
total number of searches done over time. It also predicts the
future for one year.
3. Planning
Planning is usually done offline and there aren’t many online tools I can
recommend, however; if you ever get frustrated with a gush of great
creative ideas flowing down the plughole then this is the tool for you.
Xmind is a very helpful online application for collecting and sorting the
ideas that flow out of a brainstorm meeting or to help with mind
mapping your thoughts into a clear and easy to communicate presentation.
When it comes to setting your objectives and measuring your success don’t be misguided by the chase for
a dollar, it’s not about sales! If you keep sales metrics separate you will have a better chance of accurately
measuring the success of the campaigns isolated from the other variables such as activities of the sales
team, product innovation, operations deliverables, etc.
Online B2B marketing should include the following three key objectives and be measured by these criteria:
1. New quality leads generated,
2. Valuable clients retained
3. Clients grown.
A good CRM will help you manage your database to ensure that you
build and maintain strong relationships with your prospects and
customers to feed your marketing pipeline. I personally prefer Zoho
http://crm.zoho.com/crm/ for its low cost ($12US per month) and easy
use. It helps you track your sales and marketing and manage your leads
through to prospects, customers then loyal advocates.
Don’t forget to be different!
Even a bottle of water can be differentiated - it can look cool or function better with a pump lid or fit in
your bike or come from a rare water fall in the Swiss alps where magical nymphs bathe.
My 4yo looks at a gold fish and says nothing, but when she sees a few stripes on it, she shouts “Nemo
Daddy…crown fishy!” (Close enough). With strong and clear positioning you will allow prospects to select
you and become “Nemo” not just another fish in the sea!
It doesn’t matter how, just do it - and remember price is not as important as you think, especially when
things go wrong. Most of us pay a premium for peace of mind; the trick is to communicate this “peace of
mind” as unique… eg.,“our water bottles are thicker so they stay cool for longer”.
4. Implementation
With clear objectives and a good plan you’re ready to go. But where do you start?
There is no right answer as to which is the best media and message to achieve your goals but now,
more than ever, you have a great opportunity to learn as you go along without going broke at the
same time.
Start with your goals! Every question must come back to, “Will this help us meet our key marketing
objectives?” Then test and measure everything you do. The following recommendations vary
according to the industry so be mindful of how your prospects and customers behave (refer to
research and analysis)
Website
Your website is your front door. Prospects visit to research and solve problems, ask yourself, “Is it open
and inviting?” Here’s some tips and tools that may help. Go to google analytics it's a free tool that
your web developer can help you install and it is more powerful than a locomotive. When you get
there, go to the “Content” tab on the left and to “In-Page Analytics” It’s an awesome new tool that
shows you what people do on your site then you can scrap or alter the pages that no one clicks on.
Here are some basics that are crucial to your website success, if you
aren't doing them, stop everything and do it NOW!
Start with an executive summary (the
elevator pitch) but don’t tell them all
about yourself, tell them which of their
problems you can solve, how, when, where and why. TRUST is the key,
use case studies, testimonials and accreditations but don't bore them
with it; try video it is often more credible.
All your information must be clear and concise and avoid jargon. Make navigation paths obvious
(don’t build an IKEA store where visitors get lost. Your images must entice your target market and
engage with them, they want to see themselves benefitting from your services.
If you are considering an ecommerce site, don’t!
Research first. Run a small AdWords campaign (see
below). First, drive prospects to a micro site (small
website with a couple of pages) with a paypal link
or order form. Make sure the micro site has only
information about that single product/service to
help Google. This low cost testing will help determine whether people are interested in your offer and
whether they want to buy it online. If the results are bad after your testing you don’t need to spend
money building a comprehensive ecommerce site with full payment functionality. If they do show
interest in your micro site then run more tests and apply what you have learnt to your main web site
before setting up the full e-commerce portal.
That’s a start.
AdWords
Google Adwords is where you show your small ads on the right-hand side (& sometimes the top
right) of Google (sponsored inks). It allows you to be found on the first page of Google results for any
word or phrase that you specify which is especially good when you are struggling to compete on the
left hand side in the (organic) natural search results.
What's more, you only pay to send that person to your website if and when they decide to click on
your ad. AdWords is highly measurable and allows you to test many variables like; offers, images, and
even small wording changes. For example, changing “work off that winter weight” to “works off that
winter weight” can have a huge difference to your response rate as it takes the perceived effort out of
the product. Subtle but there it is!
You can use the results from your AdWords campaigns and apply the learnings across all your other
marketing. We recently tested three creative images across Google’s content network (Websites that
feature google ads like Newspapers and Job sites) and we used the most popular image to design an
expensive billboard.
Tools: If you want to do it yourself, I thoroughly recommend
doing the AdWords bootcamp training videos
http://www.adwordsbootcamp.com.au/. Your investment in
this bootcamp (time and money) will be returned when your
AdWords account consistently delivers better quality leads for less spend.
Tips: Test! Put all your themes into separate AdGroups and write two or three ads to test.
Test the search network against the content network and try image ads; they work extremely well for
certain products and services. If you don't have the time then contract a professional and trial it for at
least three month with a big spend (if you fail, fail fast)
Social Media
The Social Media landscape is daunting to a newcomer. Don’t let it scare you. Most Business to
Business small to medium enterprises don’t have a Facebook page or Twitter account. These tools are
good for listening to others talk but require a huge amount of time and resources to run properly so
my advice is don’t bother too much for now if you don't have one but perhaps register an account in
your business name (its free) just to reserve it for later.
You must get your business listed on Google Places with a logo and spiel about your company
http://www.google.com/places/. This is my big tip for the future: Google places will be BIG so if you
can, get some customers to recommend you and build your presence here.
You should also set up a personal page on Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/, join some groups
from your industry. If you already have a Linkedin profile, a Facebook account and tweet often you
can use Hootsuite to aggregate all the information that floods in.
Whether you embrace the social media networks or not I thoroughly recommend you write a blog
and make videos.
If you are new to the blog game, simply start by identifying 2 or 3
key blogs in your industry then just listen to people chat.
Technoratti and Alltop are good free tools for finding relevant
blogs.
First listen to the tone of voice and kind of information from both
the blog writer and then the response posts from the network. When you are
confident and see an opportunity to contribute, jump in but only do so if you can add value and
NEVER sell! Try to make friends with the writer as they have already built a network and you may
need their help building yours.
Writing a blog can be as simple as a paragraph a week and is great for encouraging (forcing) you to
gather the content for your business to use later in brochures, ads, sales presentations, books etc. It
helps you fine-tune your message and practice your pitch (Free R&D) and is terrific for helping Google
recognise you and put your site higher up the search
results. It is terrific for building your network of prospects,
customers and advocates. Finally it helps position you and
your team as experts. I recommend you put it on your site
as a subfolder (ask your IT to help and mention “wordpress”) and ALWAYS include a share-this button
to encourage word-of-mouth, you can get this from http://sharethis.com/
You can also blog using video (vlog). Talking to a camera in the privacy of your office is not that hard
and it often makes a huge difference to the people at the other end. Firstly it’s entertaining and easy
to watch a video as opposed to reading pages on your monitor. Secondly it helps with credibility, if
you know what you are talking about it will come through. But here’s the clincher… invite friends and
associates to talk with you or better yet, about you. Video testimonials are trustworthy and
believable.
Email open rates may be on the decline as some professionals speculate however, if used right it can
still produce excellent results. It is cheap and easy to use, flexible and fast.
Whether emailing your clients about a new offer or special, or prospecting from a list or sending your
newsletter you need to be able to plan and measure the results.
MailChimp is an excellent resource for
managing your email campaigns.
MailChimp makes it easy easy to
design exceptional email campaigns,
share them on social networks,
integrate with web services you
already use, manage subscribers and
track your campaigns.
5. Detection
Finally use your CRM and google analytics to measure everything. Always measure against your
objectives, mentioned in the Plan section above to ensure consistency across your organisation.
Sounds easy but think carefully about the wording of those goals, “quality” leads means leads that
convert to sales or convert to referral. “Valuable clients” are those with a lifetime value that
outweighs the expense of servicing them and investment in attracting them. “Growing clients” is
usually a good measure of loyalty. You can measure this growth in various ways and all are
important; growing the frequency they spend with you, the amount they spend, the number of
products or services they purchase, the share of their spend with you over competitors, the times they
refer you, etc..
The more you know the better decisions you make and we all know that means better ROI!
Assuming that the main objective of your online strategy is
to drive prospects and customers to your website, then
contact you via email, phone or visit, then Detection (or
measurement) of your online success is best driven by
Google Analytics (as mentioned in the Website section
above). Here you can find out how many people are visiting
you and where they came from, what they do when they
get there and where they go after. What time of the day
they came and how long they stayed on each page they
visited. There is so much information here that you can be confident that all your future web design
decisions will be founded on fact not personal preference.
For the heavy social media user, you could look at HowSociable,
Backtype and Social Mention - free tools for viewing your impact
across the networks. Social mention gives an indication as the
nature of the chat, positive or negative, and allows you to set up
alerts to your email address for real-time tracking.
So now that you know everything you need to know to RAPIDly improve your brand presence online
and increase your leads and sales on a budget… go for it!