http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/b2b-marketing-automation-solutions.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/b2b-marketing-automation-solutions.html Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600 Problems and Solutions in the Marketing Automation arena

From WhatIs.com, marketing automation is defined as “the use of software to automate marketing processes”. This marketing automation software plays a very important role in helping marketers drive revenue and also improve accountability for their marketing mix. One downside of these fantastic-sounding software platforms is that they can be very expensive or require a huge amount of IT support. But that is the price to pay when making sure your marketing program stays superior, right?

A marketing automation firm located in San Mateo, CA called Marketo actually offers a pretty inexpensive marketing automation solution. Marketo’s Marketing On-Demand is a web-based solution, integrating Google AdWords and Salesforce.com with no up-front investment or heavy IT support necessary. And because of the free demos available on the site itself, you can learn how to use these products for your company in as little as 5 minutes.

Okay, so what exactly are these marketing processes we must automate?

Pay-Per-Click Management

So you think pay-per-click might be the right advertising tool for you? Great! But can you get over the intimidation of setting up a PPC campaign? Setting up your company’s PPC campaign can be a high-stress time, especially when you are unsure as to what to bid on words, how much you should spend each money or even which keywords would drive the most qualified traffic?

Finding pay-per-click software that can bridge the gap between driving traffic AND converting traffic into leads in a rarity. Marketo Search Marketing actually offers all of this to you to make sure you have all the tools you need for a successful PPC campaign.

Landing Page Optimization

Landing pages are an important part of any search marketing campaign for the following reasons

1. Search engines care about the relevancy of a landing page, so a well-optimized, highly-relevant landing page gets better PPC rankings (and more clicks) for less money.

2. A relevant and optimized landing page has dramatically higher conversion rates, meaning you get more leads for the money you put in to your campaign

With the landing page optimization software available with Marketo, you can publish AND test your landing pages. And if you are already using your own landing pages, you can begin testing them with Marketo’s software to see how they match up.

Lead Management

So you captured some leads, huh? Well, did you know that only 25% of leads generated by marketing campaigns are ready to speak with a marketing representative right away? Without the right capabilities, the other 75% of leads (potential buyers) tend to fall through the large crack between marketing and sales.

Lead nurturing (the process of building relationships with qualified prospects who are not yet ready to speak with sales) requires three things:

1. The ability to dialogue with qualified prospects through automated “drip marketing” campaigns

2. Lead analytics to understand and score the prospect’s interests and intent

3. Connections into Salesforce.com to automate sales tasks and track sales follow-up

Marketo’s lead management software understand that marketers cannot design static workflows that are hard to change, especially when marketing is ever-changing. By nurturing leads captured by your PPC campaign and optimized landing pages, you shrink the gap between marketing and sales to build up your revenue and brand recognition.

As you well know, marketing is a dynamic job that requires flexible, dynamic software to let marketers quickly and easily create and modify campaigns themselves. Because these solutions are easy to learn and manage, your up-front costs and need for IT support go way down, and you can’t help but increase revenue and accountability with your search marketing campaign.

--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. To learn more about Marketo visit http://www.marketo.com

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/grand-opening-of-minnesota-lakeshore-property-at-voyageurs-retreat-a-huge-success.html http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/grand-opening-of-minnesota-lakeshore-property-at-voyageurs-retreat-a-huge-success.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500 lakefront property at the new Gakiiwe and Moose Track Settlements at Voyageurs Retreat, a collection of lakeshore and lake access lots on the shores of Wynne and Sabin Lakes.

The event was held at the North Basin Park on Sabin Lake, one of six lakeside parks found at Voyageurs Retreat. The day was all about food, lakeside fun, and gathering with new neighbors. The nearly 60 event goers were treated to a fish fry, fun on the water with guided pontoon boat rides, kayaks and paddle boats, and the opportunity to meet and mingle with some new neighbors.

In addition to lakeside fun at the event, 12 new families fulfilled their dreams of owning lakeshore in Northern Minnesota and are now welcomed into the Voyageurs Retreat community.

Stunning lakeshore and lake access lots at Voyageurs Retreat are still available. These lots offer the peace, seclusion and unparalleled natural beauty of a classic northwoods retreat with amenities including hiking and biking trails, private lakeside parks, paved roads, public utilities and more! All this is just across the water from one of the premier golf and ski destinations in the Midwest, Giants Ridge® Golf and Ski Resort. Click here to find your perfect homesite.

To learn more about Voyageurs Retreat visit http://www.VoyageursRetreat.com
or contact a Naterra Land Specialist at 1-800-481-0127.

--
For over 25 years, we’ve been connecting people to nature and each other through land. We have built our reputation for doing everything we can to preserve the delicate balance between people and the environment. Our respect for the land also reflects the character of our company. We are known for integrity, openness and unquestionable honesty. Naterra Land grew from the passion of a young boy who loved the land. At 16, he purchased his first property with money he had saved from a childhood job. After earning his law degree, Phil Taylor turned his passion for the land into a way of life. In 1979, he began Taylor Investment Corporation, a land company built around the beauty of nature and supported by the guiding principles of respect, integrity, proactivity and achievement. On January 1, 2005 Taylor Investment was renamed Naterra Land. Phil’s love for the land and his high business standards have served him well over the years. Phil has guided Naterra to become a highly respected land company with offices in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Tennessee.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/timber-shores-on-castle-rock-lake-showcases-new-collection-of-lakefront-property.html http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/timber-shores-on-castle-rock-lake-showcases-new-collection-of-lakefront-property.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
On June 29th Naterra Land will be introducing the second phase of waterfront real estate at Timber Shores on Castle Rock Lake. Nestled on the eastern shore of Castle Rock Lake in central Wisconsin, Timber Shores features a nice selection of both lakefront property and wooded acreage . Each parcel has been carefully planned to take advantage of the terrain, while maintaining the natural beauty and privacy provided by the mature trees. All waterfront real estate being released on June 29th will include a boat slip on the lake. Off-water parcels are also available.

Homesites average over one acre in size and are completely filled with a great mixture of large white pines and a nice selection of hardwoods. Experience the feel of the Northwoods without having to travel the extra distance!

Timber Shores is still in the development stage, so this is a great time to take advantage of pre-development pricing! When completed, Timber Shores will feature over 9 miles of nature trails winding through the wooded acreage and along the lakefront, a private swimming pond with sand beach, underground power lines for unobstructed views and landscape and neighborhood design features and amenities designed by an award winning landscape architect.

As Wisconsin’s 4th largest lake, Castle Rock Lake offers over 16,000 acres of water with depths up to 36 feet for all of your favorite water activities. Enjoy fishing, boating, waterskiing, sailing, swimming or just take time to cruise the lake and visit the many lakeside restaurants.

This collection of lakefront property will be available for the first time on June 29th at pre-development prices. Call today to sign up for our Priority List and reserve your appointment time! 800-335-2420 Visit http://www.timbershoreswi.com.


--
For over 25 years, we’ve been connecting people to nature and each other through land. We have built our reputation for doing everything we can to preserve the delicate balance between people and the environment. Our respect for the land also reflects the character of our company. We are known for integrity, openness and unquestionable honesty. Naterra Land grew from the passion of a young boy who loved the land. At 16, he purchased his first property with money he had saved from a childhood job. After earning his law degree, Phil Taylor turned his passion for the land into a way of life. In 1979, he began Taylor Investment Corporation, a land company built around the beauty of nature and supported by the guiding principles of respect, integrity, proactivity and achievement. On January 1, 2005 Taylor Investment was renamed Naterra Land. Phil’s love for the land and his high business standards have served him well over the years. Phil has guided Naterra to become a highly respected land company with offices in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Tennessee.


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/three-strikes-and-youre-out.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/three-strikes-and-youre-out.html Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Why Marketing Automation Failed the First Time, and Why This Time Is Different

Matt Williams, a Golden-Glove winning second baseman, was a promising batter but couldn’t hit a curveball. He had potential but the wrong strategy. What did he do? He revamped his swing–and dramatically improved his batting average, not to mention his salary.

Chipper Jones was the star third baseman for the Atlanta Braves, but he knew the importance of versatility. So to expand what he could offer the team he switched to the outfield–and may have saved his job. He’s still playing for the Braves today, and he’s back at third base by the way.

What do these players have in common? They recognized the changing nature of their industry and did something significant to maintain their value, with significant success as result.

Just as baseball has evolved, requiring new strategies and techniques to stay competitive, marketing is also undergoing a dramatic upheaval, driven by the Internet and the rise of marketing accountability. In turn, this will lead to new players and strategies for success in marketing automation.

Marketing upheaval
The Internet has forever changed the way we interact with and market to customers. Web sites, email campaigns, Webinars and pay-per-click campaign management are just a few examples of this, not to mention blogs, podcasts, and user-generated content. You won’t find any of these tactics referenced in classic marketing textbooks from just a handful of years ago. But they’re all valuable channels for interacting with potential customers, and they can’t be ignored.

Another fundamental change to marketing departments is a growing call for accountability. Marketing is a significant expense for many companies (a good rule of thumb is between five and 10 percent of total sales), but unlike manufacturing, IT, etc., traditional marketing expenses are loosely structured and hard to tie to revenue–which is why many executives think of marketing as a cost center, not an investment. And that makes marketing budgets hard to justify.

Enter marketing automation
When any market experiences significant change, companies spring up to provide solutions. For that reason I expect we’ll see a rebirth of the marketing automation industry in the near future. This time around, however, things will be different, because it’s a whole new ball game out there.

As a category, marketing automation first emerged in the mid–‘90s in response to the explosion of data available about customers, the emergence of online channels, and the need to keep track of it all.

Marketing automation was first thought of as an extension of database marketing, and it later fell under the CRM umbrella. These solutions promised to bring companies closer to their customers, automate and streamline the marketing department, and deliver the holy grail of complete marketing accountability.

Unfortunately, while that initial promise had promise, the majority of these solutions failed to deliver–and most of the early marketing automation vendors ended up being acquired or shut down. Why? What went wrong with marketing automation?

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Strike one
In a stroke of irony, most first-generation marketing automation companies didn’t understand their own target audience. What do I mean by that? Early marketing automation companies didn’t understand that marketers aren’t techie people. The solutions these companies built were delivered using on-premise software and were extremely difficult to install and integrate. They also required ongoing IT support, which is rarely available to marketing departments.

First-generation marketing automation solutions were also expensive and often required up-front capital investment. The same can be said even for most of today’s on-demand marketing automation vendors. Although marketing departments have large program budgets, they just don’t have the budgets to buy expensive technology or huge annual subscriptions. Justifying investments for marketing is nearly impossible, because the department is nearly always seen as a cost center and not a revenue-generating asset. So while marketers can spend $20,000 for a demand-generation program or $50,000 for a tradeshow, they can rarely get those costs approved for software, no matter how promising.
How’s that for misjudging your target customers?

Strike two
While certainly helpful for executing campaigns, first-generation marketing automation companies overlooked the emerging need for marketing accountability at the CMO level. These solutions were focused on DOING marketing and didn’t provide the tools marketing executives needed to demonstrate the bottom-line impact of their programs–in a way that mattered to the CEO and CFO. Measuring, forecasting, planning–these are all essential elements that were MIA in the first wave of marketing automation solutions. What’s needed is a balance between the doing and the measuring. If a solution goes too far in one direction or the other, it simply won’t work.

Three strikes and you’re out.
While the first wave of marketing automation solutions helped companies to target and communicate with potential customers, this raised its own set of problems with privacy and interruption. Customers now have options for avoiding unwanted “push marketing,” especially from companies with which they don’t have a relationship. Today’s buyers seek out their own solutions, with 93 percent of all B2B buying cycles beginning in a search engine.

When potential customers actively seek out information about a particular product or service, they are more likely to make a purchase than, say, someone who happens to notice an advertisement in a technology magazine. So common sense says it behooves you to make yourself easy to find online. This is where search engine marketing (SEM) comes in. Search must be part of a complete marketing automation solution, because if marketers don’t make themselves easy to find online, someone else will. And if that happens, well, game over.

A NEW GAME
Marketing automation is still a great idea, but the first wave of companies that attempted to do it simply went about it all wrong. The new contenders out there must learn from the mistakes of the past. To succeed they must provide a solution in a way that makes sense for the way marketers think and spend money.

Fundamentally, this means marketing automation needs to be less like enterprise software and more like consumer software. And that means much more than simply providing “software as a service” or having a cool AJAX UI. It means selling like a web company, providing support like a web company, and pricing like a web company. In other words, solutions for the marketing department must be easy (and free) to test drive and trial. They need to be easy to use. They need to be easy to buy from existing marketing budgets. And they need to work without any IT support.

Today’s marketing automation solutions also need to reflect the latest techniques and trends in marketing, which means including search engine marketing as part of the equation. Doing this right requires a complete SEM solution, from keyword selection to bid optimization to landing page management. And the solutions must provide the measurement, forecasting and planning tools that marketers need to provide accountability to C-level management.

Winning the new game of marketing automation won’t be easy, but no one said it would be. The key is to keep your eye on the ball and anticipate the needs of your target audience. Otherwise you just may find yourself on the bench.


--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/ten-practical-trends-in-b2b-marketing.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/ten-practical-trends-in-b2b-marketing.html Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
What’s the latest thinking in B2B marketing? What techniques and trends are today’s best practice B2B marketers using to drive more revenue and demonstrate accountability?

Over the next 10 posts, I’ll share the top trends that are changing the practice of B2B marketing. I’ll discuss key best practices you should have on your radar, as well as practical tips for how to take advantage of the trend to improve your performance.

Update: Here are the Top 10 Practical Trends in B2B Marketing:

Embrace online channels: The internet has transformed best-practices in B2B marketing. As a result, spending on online advertising at B2B companies is growing at 25% a year.

Landing pages, landing pages, landing pages: Sending traffic to a landing page can improve conversions by 2X, and following best practices can raise them another 40%.

Test everything – but don’t over test: Testing is the best way to discover what works, but don't test too many variables or you won't get significant results.

Practice attention marketing – and make it measurable: Customers are adept at tuning out unwanted marketing. Leverage the internet and word of mouth to break through the attention barrier.

Help buyers research early in the sales cycle: Buyers use the internet to research before they engage with sales. By helping to educate the customer, you can establish your company as a trusted advisor that understands their problems.

Manage leads – don’t generate demand: Marketers who excel at managing leads (i.e. acquiring, scoring, nurturing, and routing leads) can more than double the number of marketing leads that turn into a sale.

Lead nurturing 101: 95% of the prospects on your site are not ready to speak with sales. Leads that are nurtured before going to sales buy more, require less discounting, and have shorter sales cycles.

Measure relationship depth: Track the number and quality of marketing interactions with each prospect company, so you know the next best marketing action to take.

Stop being a cost center: Help the CEO and CFO think of marketing as asset that drives revenue, not a liability that needs to be reduced, by framing the issue of marketing spending in terms of revenue and growth.

Invest in marketing automation: As marketing operations are become increasingly complex, marketers will need to find ways to automate key processes through technology.




--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/manage-ppc-spending-with-bids-not-budget.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/manage-ppc-spending-with-bids-not-budget.html Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Many companies take advantage of the Budget control in Google AdWords to limit their daily and monthly spending to their desired goal. What not everyone realizes is that this can result in higher cost per click (CPC) and fewer clicks! This is because the way that AdWords ensures you don't exceed your budget is by limiting the number of times your ad is displayed (which limits clicks).

Here's a simplified example to illustrate the point. Say you have only one keyword and it has the following monthly cost and volume data (hypothetical data):
Position Bid Clicks CTR CPC Cost
1 $11.39 1,600 4.0% $8.30 $13,280
2 $7.14 1,100 2.8% $5.20 $5,720
3 $4.52 800 2.0% $3.43 $2,744
4 $3.91 700 1.8% $2.95 $2,065
5 $3.27 600 1.5% $2.44 $1,464
6 $2.64 500 1.3% $1.94 $970
7 $2.03 400 1.0% $1.47 $588
8 $1.40 300 0.8% $1.02 $306
First, imagine you have a bid of $7.14 (since this is an important keyword, you want to rank high) and your monthly budget is $2,750. In this case, your ad will show up at position 2, but only $2,750/$5,720 = 48% of the time. This means you get 48% x 1,100 = 528 clicks. Your cost per click is $5.20, which brings your monthly spending in right under your budget of $2,745.60.
Now, imagine that your bid was $4.52, with the same budget of $2,750. Here, your ad shows up in position 3 but shows 100% of the time. Now, you get 800 clicks at a cost per click of $3.43 for a total cost of $2,744, coming in right under your monthly spending target.

Comparing these two cases, in the first one you were budget limited and got 528 clicks, and in the second case, you used your bid to achieve your spending target and got 800 clicks for the same cost. That's why managing PPC spending using your budget results in higher CPC and fewer clicks.

PPC Management Software Makes It Easier
Of course, it can be hard to estimate which bid will result in what cost, especially when you are dealing with 100s or 1000s of words instead of just one. However, this is exactly what we designed Marketo's pay per click management software to help you do. You simply tell the tool how much you want to spend each month (at the campaign or ad group level), and the software optimally allocates that spending across all your keywords to drive the most conversions and calculate the bids that will achieve that target spending. You can check this out yourself, and please tell us what you think.

Watch Marketo's Bid Management Software Demo.
Take a free 8 hour Bid Management Test Drive.
Sign up for a 30 day free trial.




--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.



Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/what.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/what.html Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500 June 06, 2007

What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing?

I believe social media has an inherent bias against the realities of B2B marketing. This is the topic of my new article "What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing", now available as part of Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column.

There’s no topic that bloggers like to write about and link to more than blogging itself. And because links are what people (and search engines) use to rank blogs, this creates the perverse incentive to write about social media more than other marketing topics, especially other B2B marketing topics.

I’m not saying that social media doesn’t play a role in B2B marketing, since it clearly has a big role to play in driving traffic, building thought leadership, and facilitating word of mouth referrals.

But to B2B marketers, social media is just one tactic in a portfolio of techniques that best practice companies use to generate awareness, drive leads, and nurture relationships. The reality of B2B marketing today is that more prosaic methods such as PPC campaign management, lead nurturing, customer case studies, and good old-fashioned PR still matter more than social media techniques.

What do you think?

Check out the complete article, What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing.


--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon\'s blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/better-b2b-landing-pages.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/better-b2b-landing-pages.html Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Have a call to action
If you ever need proof that pay-per-click is going mainstream for B2B companies, do a search for "ceramic ball bearings." The SERP is full of paid ads for this basic B2B product. A couple of the ads are pretty good, with offers like "buy affordable ball bearings, online wholesale prices, same day Shipping" or "lightest, smoothest & fastest ever. World Champions, free airmail."

Don't send clicks to the home page
The single biggest mistake B2B companies make in pay-per-click is sending clicks to their home page. Companies make this mistake for two reasons. First, it's obvious and easy. Second, they assume that since they don't know the prospect's intentions or buying stage, the home page allows the prospect seek out the information she is looking for herself. Three out of four B2B companies make this same mistake, directing paid search clicks to their home page or at best a product information page on their site.

Unfortunately, this leaves it as an "exercise to the reader" to figure out how to become a lead. Because each click is an opportunity to drop out of the conversion process, the result is much lower conversions. In fact, a 2004 report from Atlas OnePoint found the average conversion rate for lead generation sites that used the home page as a PPC destination was just 6.3%. In other words, almost 19 out of 20 of the clicks you pay for result in revenue for Google but nothing for you.

Create targeted landing pages
There is great ROI in having focused, keyword specific landing pages in terms of conversions, but they also help with your PPC ranking and CPC as well. This is because Google takes landing page relevance into account when establishing your "quality score". Also, using targeted landing pages tends to force you to have more focused ad groups, which leads to more relevant ads and even higher quality scores. Because quality score is as important as your bid when Google determines rank, the better your quality score, the more clicks you get and/or the lower your cost-per-click.

Tips for better landing pages
Of course, the 9.3% conversion rate for landing pages that match the theme of the keyword is just an average—you can always do even better. To illustrate this point, I put together a sample landing page that demonstrates some landing page best practices. This could be improved with further testing, but as a starting point it should get much, much better conversion rates than a company’s home page.
Here are some of the strategies I used to make a better B2B landing page:

Keep it simple. This goes for the form as well as the page. Enough said.

Remove the navigation. Every link you put on the page is an invitation to the customer to do something besides taking the action you want them to take. You've paid to get them to this page, so remove the distractions and make the conversion action obvious. Tip: test using a graphic element such as a big arrow to tell the prospect where to start.

Include reassuring elements. Every element on the page should serve only two purposes: 1) give the prospect reasons to convert and 2) resolve any concerns the prospect may have about converting. Clip art and visually appealing but generic photos of happy people don't play a role here. Some of the elements that work on my sample page include the logo and tagline (World leader in the manufacture of thin section bearings), the cover shot of the white paper (with title blown up to be readable), and the sample excerpt from the paper (in this case, the table of contents).

Give prospects a reason to share correct information. Your prospects will to lie to you to get your offer without risking their privacy. Don't believe me? The #1 name submitted on lead generation forms is Mickey Mouse. I have two tips to counteract this. First, ensure your privacy information is posted. Second, if your offer is a white paper or login code or anything else you can send, rather than fulfilling the offer on the thank you page, email them the fulfillment instead since it creates the incentive to share a valid address.

Why don't more companies do this?
Given the dramatic ROI of having multiple targeted landing pages, why don't more B2B companies use them? MarketingSherpa did a study and found that the single greatest obstacle to creating optimized landing pages is a lack of resources, and that the time of in-house web developers was the most difficult resource to get.

However, creating keyword-specific landing pages doesn't need to take much time given the right templates and tools. I made the sample landing page for this case study using our landing page editor in about five minutes. The key is not to get hung up on making the perfect landing page. Instead, create one OK landing page, clone it and customize it for each of your keyword groups, and then start to test and measure results. Only by getting started will you get begin to get the benefits of better conversions.

Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.


--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/four-stepsto-better-business-leads-from-search.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/four-stepsto-better-business-leads-from-search.html Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Without each of these following steps in place, a click is just a click, and a click by itself is a waste of time and money.
Optimized landing pages
A good landing page provides two main benefits to a PPC campaign. First, search engines like Google care about the relevancy of the landing page when ranking ads, meaning a Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.high-quality landing page gets better ranking (and more clicks) for less money. Second, a relevant and optimized landing page can have dramatically higher conversion rates, meaning you get more leads for your money. These two factors combine to drive dramatic ROI for landing page improvements.
Despite this, few B2B marketers use landing pages to their fullest advantage. According to Forrester Research, only about a quarter of B2B search ads take the prospective customer to keyword specific landing pages. The challenge is that landing page optimization requires building and maintaining dozens of landing pages, one for each ad group – and testing multiplies the complexity of the problem.
Lead analytics and scoring
Even if you do get a conversion, it turns out that only 25% of conversions are sales-ready. You need the ability to find these hot leads and pass them to your sales team as soon as possible, before they get cold or a competitor contacts them first.
You can do this with lead scoring, which requires two kinds of information: (1) demographic/behavioral and (2) lead source. Examples of demographic/behavioral information include title, company, and BANT criteria (budget, authority, need, and timing); examples of lead source information include where the lead came from, what kind of offer created the lead, and lead age.
Demographic and behavioral information represent the biggest challenge for online marketers. The most obvious way to get it is when the prospect fills out the registration form—but research shows that every additional field on the form reduces conversion rates. A more subtle problem is that the searcher is likely to be an influencer, not a decision maker, and asking certain BANT questions can be off-putting.
There are two main solutions. The first is called progressive profiling, in which you get to know a lead over time by asking additional questions each time you interact (kind of like dating). One quick way to do this is to ask the prospect for additional information on the thank you page after submitting the form. Prospects who make it this far have expressed quite a bit of interest so they may be willing to give you more data now that you've built trust by sharing useful content.
A second solution is to use directed behavioral segmentation. Rather than sending clicks to a single landing page, this approach uses a "landing path" – a series of pages that collect information based on how the prospect navigates.
Lead nurturing
If only 25% of leads are sales-ready, what do you do with the other 75%? Some of those prospects may be truly unqualified, but as many of 70% of them will eventually buy a product from you—or your competitors. Prematurely passing this type of lead to sales is a recipe for disaster. Since sales reps are compensated for driving short-term revenue, a long-term lead like this creates the impression that search-generated leads are no good. As a result, the sales rep is more likely to ignore the next lead he receives—which is why reps end up ignoring 80% of all search-generated leads.
The solution is to use lead nurturing, a disciplined marketing-driven process of helping qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready move through their buying process. Lead nurturing is not just sending a monthly email newsletter to your entire database, or calling prospects every few weeks to see if they are ready to buy yet. It is about progressively understanding more about the prospect's needs, and using targeted one-to-one communications to build your company's position as a trusted advisor.
The benefits of lead nurturing go beyond better sales-marketing alignment and higher win rates. Research shows that prospects that are nurtured buy more, require less discounting, and have shorter sales cycles than prospects who bought but were not nurtured.
Closed-loop measurement
Once the lead is passed to sales, the B2B search marketer's job is still not finished. Unlike B2C marketing, the time between the first click and a closed sale can be weeks or months or even years. Also, most analytic and search marketing solutions don't have automated access to the CRM system (such as salesforce.com) to know which leads become opportunities and ultimately generate revenue. This can make the process of measuring success and fine-tuning the search marketing campaign much more difficult.
There are two ways most companies try to solve this problem, both unsatisfactory. The first is to ignore it and measure PPC success solely on conversions. This is certainly easy to do because it is what the search engines support, but it creates a significant disconnect between marketing and the realities of what drives revenue for the business—always an uncomfortable situation. The second approach is to tie search marketing results to opportunities and revenue using manual analytics. In other words, generate a report in Google, another in salesforce.com, and spend a lot of time in Excel trying to tie everything together. I'm sure this scenario is familiar to many B2B search marketers. A better approach is to use analytics that automates this process by unifying your search marketing data with your CRM data.
Crossing The Click Chasm
For too many B2B companies, there is a chasm between the campaigns that generate clicks to a website and the activities that turn clicks into customers. This chasm creates lower response rates, inadequate lead follow-up, and poorly optimized campaigns. To succeed in B2B, search marketing needs to become an integrated part of a complete demand generation process that includes landing pages, lead analytics, lead nurturing, and closed-loop measurement. Only by focusing on what happens after the click will B2B marketers be able to ensure optimal results for their PPC campaigns.
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability.


--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/four-steps-to-better-business-leads-from-search.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/four-steps-to-better-business-leads-from-search.html Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 Without each of these following steps in place, a click is just a click, and a click by itself is a waste of time and money.
Optimized landing pages
A good landing page provides two main benefits to a PPC campaign. First, search engines like Google care about the relevancy of the landing page when ranking ads, meaning a high-quality landing page gets better ranking (and more clicks) for less money. Second, a relevant and optimized landing page can have dramatically higher conversion rates, meaning you get more leads for your money. These two factors combine to drive dramatic ROI for landing page improvements.
Despite this, few B2B marketers use landing pages to their fullest advantage. According to Forrester Research, only about a quarter of B2B search ads take the prospective customer to keyword specific landing pages. The challenge is that landing page optimization requires building and maintaining dozens of landing pages, one for each ad group – and testing multiplies the complexity of the problem.
Lead analytics and scoring
Even if you do get a conversion, it turns out that only 25% of conversions are sales-ready. You need the ability to find these hot leads and pass them to your sales team as soon as possible, before they get cold or a competitor contacts them first.
You can do this with lead scoring, which requires two kinds of information: (1) demographic/behavioral and (2) lead source. Examples of demographic/behavioral information include title, company, and BANT criteria (budget, authority, need, and timing); examples of lead source information include where the lead came from, what kind of offer created the lead, and lead age.
Demographic and behavioral information represent the biggest challenge for online marketers. The most obvious way to get it is when the prospect fills out the registration form—but research shows that every additional field on the form reduces conversion rates. A more subtle problem is that the searcher is likely to be an influencer, not a decision maker, and asking certain BANT questions can be off-putting.
There are two main solutions. The first is called progressive profiling, in which you get to know a lead over time by asking additional questions each time you interact (kind of like dating). One quick way to do this is to ask the prospect for additional information on the thank you page after submitting the form. Prospects who make it this far have expressed quite a bit of interest so they may be willing to give you more data now that you've built trust by sharing useful content.
A second solution is to use directed behavioral segmentation. Rather than sending clicks to a single landing page, this approach uses a "landing path" – a series of pages that collect information based on how the prospect navigates.
Lead nurturing
If only 25% of leads are sales-ready, what do you do with the other 75%? Some of those prospects may be truly unqualified, but as many of 70% of them will eventually buy a product from you—or your competitors. Prematurely passing this type of lead to sales is a recipe for disaster. Since sales reps are compensated for driving short-term revenue, a long-term lead like this creates the impression that search-generated leads are no good. As a result, the sales rep is more likely to ignore the next lead he receives—which is why reps end up ignoring 80% of all search-generated leads.
The solution is to use lead nurturing, a disciplined marketing-driven process of helping qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready move through their buying process. Lead nurturing is not just sending a monthly email newsletter to your entire database, or calling prospects every few weeks to see if they are ready to buy yet. It is about progressively understanding more about the prospect's needs, and using targeted one-to-one communications to build your company's position as a trusted advisor.
The benefits of lead nurturing go beyond better sales-marketing alignment and higher win rates. Research shows that prospects that are nurtured buy more, require less discounting, and have shorter sales cycles than prospects who bought but were not nurtured.
Closed-loop measurement
Once the lead is passed to sales, the B2B search marketer's job is still not finished. Unlike B2C marketing, the time between the first click and a closed sale can be weeks or months or even years. Also, most analytic and search marketing solutions don't have automated access to the CRM system (such as salesforce.com) to know which leads become opportunities and ultimately generate revenue. This can make the process of measuring success and fine-tuning the search marketing campaign much more difficult.
There are two ways most companies try to solve this problem, both unsatisfactory. The first is to ignore it and measure PPC success solely on conversions. This is certainly easy to do because it is what the search engines support, but it creates a significant disconnect between marketing and the realities of what drives revenue for the business—always an uncomfortable situation. The second approach is to tie search marketing results to opportunities and revenue using manual analytics. In other words, generate a report in Google, another in salesforce.com, and spend a lot of time in Excel trying to tie everything together. I'm sure this scenario is familiar to many B2B search marketers. A better approach is to use analytics that automates this process by unifying your search marketing data with your CRM data.
Crossing The Click Chasm
For too many B2B companies, there is a chasm between the campaigns that generate clicks to a website and the activities that turn clicks into customers. This chasm creates lower response rates, inadequate lead follow-up, and poorly optimized campaigns. To succeed in B2B, search marketing needs to become an integrated part of a complete demand generation process that includes landing pages, lead analytics, lead nurturing, and closed-loop measurement. Only by focusing on what happens after the click will B2B marketers be able to ensure optimal results for their PPC campaigns.



--
Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>