Taking My Own Advice

So here I sit taking my own advice! In last week's blog I talked about how to refresh yourself, how to better your mood and I closed with how the weather was beautiful and the temperatures were above normal. Well, I should have known better - we are still in February - and in OHIO!

I'm looking for that pick-me-up this snowy, Friday morning. I've had my morning shot of caffeine and usually by 9:45 I'm ready to dive into my day. But I am draggin' booty! It might be the weather, it might the result of a long week but either way I need to snap into it.

So I'm going to take a trip down memory lane and look at some pictures of my family on the beach. I am going to visualize my upcoming trip to the beach.

It's Friday morning, I can do this! I'm going to clear off these piles sitting here on my desk and I'm going to think of the beautiful spring weather that is to come. I am going to enjoy my Friday and make it a great weekend.

I wish the same for you! Enjoy your Friday. Make it a great weekend and until we talk again.

Debbi

Is Your Website "Off the Radar"? Rescue Your Site From Internet Obscurity

Okay, so you have a website. You've spent time and money getting this thing up. You've used all your creative juices to get the words just right. And you added some nice graphics to make the site aesthetically pleasing. Now what?

A website is of little use if nobody can find it. It's like having a storefront with no signage. A telephone book ad with no contact information. It's basically useless.

Mastering organic search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. (By "organic," I mean the "natural," as opposed to "paid/PPC," listing that appears when someone conducts a search on Google or other search engines. Optimal placement is typically within the first 20 listings or three pages.)

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) - the ability to increase your site's visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself - are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine. Don't let your site get lost in Internet obscurity. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website's traffic and optimization.

1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service. You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums. Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you're selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders. An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be related to the question you're replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be posted to the proper area/subject matter on the forum you're posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.

For example, when I was VP of Marketing at EarlytoRise.com I took an interview that the publisher had done with Newt Gingrich and repurposed it into a press release. I also uploaded comments about the interview to news-aggregating services, blogs, and political forums (with a back-link to the release posted in the newsletter archive).Within the weeks following the initial interview, website visits and traffic ranking more than doubled and conversion also showed a spike. Three months later, the release was still being picked up by the media and through syndication... and the website enjoyed residual traffic and back-links from this effort. These techniques and the others, including my SONAR Content Distribution Model TM I'm about to go into have helped increase traffic to the site nearly 80 percent with a monetization of more than 150 percent ROI.Which leads me to my next strategy...

2. Initiate a relevant inbound link program. Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they'd be willing to swap links with you - a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.

3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site. Upload relevant content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as EzineArticles.com, Amazines.com and others. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.

4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business. Make a list of your top 20 keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Search engine "spiders" crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages (the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom). You'll want to do the same for your tagging. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords. And your alt tags (images) should have relevant descriptions as well.

5. List your site in online directories by related category or region. This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic. Popular directories (like Business.com) typically have a nominal fee. But there are many other directories (like Dmoz.org, Info.com, and Superpages.com) that are free.

Most important, before you start your SEO initiatives, don't forget to establish a baseline for your site so you can measure pre- vs. post-SEO tactics. Upload a site counter (which counts the number of visits to your website), obtain your site's Alexa traffic ranking at Alexa.com, or get your site's daily visit average (from Google Analytics or another application) - and then chart your weekly progress in Excel.

Understand that it typically takes two to three months for a site to be optimized ... so be patient. You will eventually see results.

5 Steps to Social Media Leads with Content Marketing

One of my recent posts (“The Top-10 B2B Marketing Trends for 2011”) received a lot of great comments. The number one marketing trend for 2011, according to the 17,000 member B2B technology marketing group on LinkedIn, is the increasing integration of social media with traditional marketing tactics to drive qualified leads. John Cook’s comment to the blog post got straight to the point: "How do you accomplish this”?

Conversion Metrics More Important
This question is being asked more frequently. Now that a majority of B2B marketers have been experimenting with social media for a while, 2011 will be the year social media evolves from the experimental stage into a more mature practice. It will become an established marketing tactic that will be more tightly integrated with traditional tactics such as email, webcasts, live events, mobile marketing, and content marketing. And as social media matures, demands for proving social media ROI will inevitably increase.

A recent eMarketer study confirms that metrics for measuring social media performance are already changing dramatically to reflect this new reality. While site traffic is still the #1 social media metric, according to eMarketer, the #2 spot is now occupied by conversion metrics. To put this in perspective, conversion metrics ranked only #8 a year ago, rising from 32.6% of respondents using this metric in 2010 to 65.7% in 2011 - the most dramatic change for any social media metric in the survey.

Generating Leads with Social Media
Going back to the original question: how do you leverage social media to deliver conversions? How do you go beyond posting interesting and entertaining updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and beyond basic tactics like placing social sharing buttons on your B2B website and emails?

Capturing someone’s attention while they are in social media mode can be tough, but there are many great ways for B2B marketers to turn social media interest into qualified leads. One of my favorites is a content-centric approach. Remember that social media is all about conversations, and sharing interesting information with people you trust.

Nobody wants to be sold on social platforms. At the same time B2B buyers are actively seeking guidance and information on how to solve specific problems, how to evaluate available solution options, and to learn about peers’ experiences with a vendor. Filling this need for information with compelling, high-value content, a vendor can not only have successful social conversations with prospects, but also high-quality leads that fill the funnel. How?

Step 1 - Social Content Marketing
One way to generate attention and leads is to create compelling assets that attract your audience and provide a launching pad for further engagement with your organization. This can be an eBook or a great white paper, for example, that showcases your expertise, solves a specific problem, or fills a critical knowledge gap for your audience.

This content is then placed in your most effective social channels (ideally in response to a relevant post or question) in the form of a short, compelling message and a short link pointing directly to the asset.

Step 2 - Set your Content Free
The trick (and I know this is hard for many traditional marketers to adopt) is NOT to hide this premium content asset behind a registration form. But how do I get a prospect's contact information to nurture and further engage them, you ask?

Great question. Sure, you can ask for this information, but only AFTER you delivered value and established credibility with your free eBook (I am using eBook as a placeholder here, you may have other asset types that make more sense for you to share).

Remember your goal is to get your valuable information in front of the right target audience. After your eBook so impressed your prospects, they are now eager to learn more about what you have to say and how you can help them solve their specific problem (if they aren't asking for more, they may not be qualified and ready to engage, or maybe your content isn't all that compelling).

Step 3 - Embed Strong Calls to Action
To help buyers take the next step in their journey from problem to solution (ideally in your direction), you need to embed calls to action into your content piece.  This can be simple links placed within copy pointing to additional relevant content (for example, the sequel to your ebook or companion webcasts, videos, demos, self-diagnosis guides, competitive comparisons, etc).  Or it can be a well designed banner in the sidebar with a compelling call to action.

This call to action then links to a form page people have to complete before gaining access to the next content asset. Or it can link to a "content hub page" (for lack of a better phrase) where you present your most relevant and compelling content assets to the prospect in one view. I am a strong advocate of presenting content in the context of the buyer's role and buying stages. This allows buyers to pick and choose the right asset they are most interested in to continue their buyer’s journey and engage with you digitally. And always make sure to include your contact information (phone, email, etc) in case a buyer is ready to engage directly.

Step 4 - Make Content Assets Easy to Share
Also, make sure that your free content piece itself is easily shareable by prospects. Build social sharing buttons right into your PDF document, in the sidebar for example, to maximize sharing and viral effects. The effects of easy sharing and exposure to a much broader audience, by the way, will more than make up for your "loss" of registrations for the primary, free asset.

Step 5 - Nurture Leads Along the Buyer’s Journey
Follow-up content pieces, such as webcast #2 and #3 in a series of 3 webcasts, require the buyer to complete a lightweight registration form - as they enter your marketing system with lead scoring, routing, and nurturing processes. Ideally you have a marketing automation platform (like Eloqua, Marketo, SilverPop, etc) in place that lets you nurture your new prospects with content tailored to their demographic profile and behavioral patterns, and helps prospects move along the buyers journey with content mapped to each stage. Until the marketing automation system indicates that your lead is qualified and ready for direct sales engagement.

This is only one example of how you can use social media to drive lead generation. What tactics do you use to convert social media interest into leads?

More information

Survey Report “Social Media in B2B Marketing”

The Brave New World of B2B Marketing

How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

5 Steps to b2B Marketing Success

Pick-Me-Ups

There are so many times that I run from place to place, or work through the piles on my desk with such frenzy, that I miss events that are happening around me.

We all have things that refresh us. We have things that can change our moods almost instantly, but the challenge is not to be so busy that we forget to take advantage of those things that we thoroughly enjoy.

Seek those things that pick you up and better your mood instantly. What are they? They may be much simpler than you think. Come up with a few of them that are just the pick-me-ups you need on your busiest days.

Keep a few of these things handy or schedule them into your day and allow yourself a few minutes every now and then in order to stay refreshed. Not only will you be happier, you will have more enjoyment and a better frame of mind as you return to the rest of your day. Remind yourself to do this and chances are you will find that you are much more relaxed at the end of the day.

As for me, I'm going to take a quick walk and enjoy the beautiful sunshine and the above normal temperatures out there today.

Enjoy your Friday. Make it a great weekend and until we talk again.

Debbi

Stay Consistent!

Consistency is the gateway to great branding. Without consistency and the lack of guidelines your brand, product offerings, and overall organization can suffer. There is no better way to make sure your marketing efforts are received in a memorable fashion than being consistent.

This cannot be stressed enough. It not just about applying a logo in a consistent manner, and having the right PMS colors. It is about ensuring that all the messaging of all communications materials is pulling in the same direction. That it all “looks” consistent. Even the way the copy is written should be considered in the light of the brand messaging, the way the website is displayed and the quality of paper used in printed materials – all of these points should be consistent because of they are not, it will cause consumers to loose trust in the brand and it’s messaging.

Your message should be clear when reaching out to potential/current clients – making sure all marketing materials match in look, feel, and message is important for achieving this. Even if you are working with totally different campaigns or projects consistency and brand guidelines need to stay in place. You should be able to look at one piece to the next, one campaign to the other and recognize that as an offering from your organization.

Until next time,
Jeremy

Breaking Down the Silos

When we talk to bankers and credit union professionals from around the country, we often sit down with our client's business unit leaders. And what we often find is a series of banks within banks. For example, the mortgage department knows their products inside and out. They can tell you what money is available for first-time homebuyers or if there are any government programs that can help you with your down payment. They can quote you the 30-year fixed rate for an average credit rating with no problem-- but they likely can't tell you a 10-year CD rate.

Too often, institutions are operating in silos ... like mini-banks inside of banks. There are HUGE opportunities being lost in the branches with our existing customers.

So, what can we do about it. I think it falls on Marketing. Not "marketing" as external messaging (necessarily), but Marketing as an internal communication conduit.

I believe the sledge hammer to the walls of these silos is knowledge. We shouldn't expect all employees to know every aspect about every bank product ... but they MUST know the product exists, how to identify prospects and who to contact to help the customer out.

If you want to break down the silos you need to set up processes to:

• Know who each departments best customers are and what they look like
• Better communicate with the customer to identify their needs
• Have a process, not to refer, but to facilitate a conversation with inter-departmental experts

Want to learn more? Join our FREE Brown Bag webinar this Friday at 1:00 est.

Register for the free monthly series here

Take care,

Eric

Get Focused with Focus Groups

Our team just completed a week-long series of focus groups in Mississippi. We talked to both customers and prospects for a client in 3 different markets.

If you've never done focus groups before, they can be awfully handy! They allow you to dig into specific subjects in a way that you simply can't duplicate with quantitative research.

Do you want to know why someone chooses a checking account or who they'd go to first for a loan? What about price versus service? Would your market be willing to pay 10 basis points for the absolute best service in town? Great ... now how do they DEFINE service?!?! You can find it all out with focus groups.

Here area few tips:

• Conduct groups in all relevant markets. You'll likely find that perceptions and purchase criteria are different from market-to-market (and if they're consistent, that tells us something too!)
• Talk to both customers and prospects. Your customers will give you great insight into their experiences with you. Prospects can tell you why they're not currently banking with you.
• Be very targeted in what you want to learn. Identify 3-4 things that you MUST learn from the session and 2-3 other items that would be nice.
• Be very targeted in who you want to learn from. Do you need to focus efforts on a specific demographic? Recruit them. Want to learn what a specific competitor's customers think? Recruit them. Just note that the more narrow your target, the more expensive recruiting will likely be.
• Stay consistent. use a professional facilitator who can keep each session consistent so you can use data across all your markets.

Take care,

Eric

7 Infallible Ways to Increase Visibility, Traffic, Leads and Buzz!

A few years ago I led the marketing and business development efforts at top online publisher, Early To Rise. While I was there, I also wrote several articles for their ezine focused on marketing, entrepreneurship and business building. Below is one of those articles, but I recently updated it for this publication. The tactics are proven, powerful and worth mentioning again!

Whether you're talking about the articles you include in your e-zine or about your sales message, one thing is certain: Content is king. The written word has the power to educate and inform... as well as create buzz about your website, product, or service. That's one of my main tasks for my consulting clients - to circulate their e-zine articles through multiple delivery channels. Reaching potential subscribers thereby increasing readership and, ultimately, revenues.

I am a firm believer of leveraging all content - marketing and editorial. By circulating it in multiple channels - online, e-mail, print, direct mail, and so forth - you can reach your prospects through whatever medium they prefer. And for those who like to receive their information through more than one medium, your message is re-enforced every time they see it in another channel. I strongly encourage you to take this multi-channel marketing approach with your own online business.

Here are seven of the best and most cost-effective channels I've used at top publishers and for my consulting clients:

1. Paid Search Ads (Pay-Per-Click) Google and Yahoo are the Titans of the paid-search ad world, with nearly 70 percent of market share. But there are other search engines that have a loyal following, such as Bing.com (with 16 percent market share), AOL.com (with 9.6 percent), Ask.com (5.1 percent), Infospace.com (1.1 percent), and Lycos.com (0.9 percent). Pay-per-click (PPC) ads with any of these search engines is a cost-effective way to target prospects looking for your specific product and get broad exposure. You create a text ad, then bid on keywords (the words or phrases your target audience will be searching for) to determine your ad's placement. PPC paid search ads are perfect for acquiring new customers. That's because leads that come in this way are searching specifically for your information (via targeted keywords). This makes them highly qualified prospects.

2. Organic Search Results (Search Engine Marketing) Search engine marketing (SEM) has a nominal cost. Annual fees with search engine networks or directories typically range from $25 to $95 per year. Some consumers give organic search results more "credibility" than paid search ads. And because they "trust" the results of an organic search more, they are more likely to click on an organic link. A survey by Jupiter Research illustrated that 80 percent of Web users seek organic search results. Their rationale is that organic results are un-biased. The marketer didn't pay for that ad space. So the link's appearance in the search results is based purely on various search algorithms and Web crawlers. Your goal should be to balance your online presence with both paid ads and organic search results. You should also optimizes all your efforts by (among other things) making sure keywords are in all the right places. It's important for your writers/editors to work with your search marketers. This includes title tags, URLs, meta keywords, meta descriptions, and body content.

3. Banner Ads Running banner ads on other websites can be another cost-effective part of your online marketing mix. The pricing model for this is typically CPM - a specified price for every 1,000 impressions/views you receive (usually between $3 and $10).Your media budget for banner ads will vary by:
-website
-ad unit size/type (300 x 250 typically performs best)
-location on website (home page, inside pages)
-whether the ad is targeted to a specific page or is on every page of the site
-the time of year the ad is running

Online ad networks are a cheaper alternative. Their CPM usually ranges between $2 and $6, and they have a wider reach. Some networks to consider: Advertising.com, ValueClick.com, and FastClick.com. You can find a full list of sites here:
www.imediaconnection.com/resourceconnection/adnetwork.asp. If you're interested in how to get the best pricing for online advertising, check this out !

4. Reciprocal Ad Swaps or Editorial Contributions Some of your best resources will be your fellow publishers. This channel often gets overlooked by marketers who don't give it the respect it deserves. In the work I do for my clients, I spend a good portion of my time researching synergistic publishers and websites. I look for relevant connections between their publications (print and online) and my clients.

Swapping ads or providing guest editorials will save you money on lead-generation initiatives and give you added exposure to an external list source you might not otherwise have been featured in. Since you won't be paying for access to the other publisher's list of subscribers, you can get new customers for free. If you're writing an article, you can simply use an Editorial Note section for your byline and include a link to your newsletter sign up page. If you're running a text ad, then simply have content and link to your squeeze page. The only "cost" is allowing the other publisher to access your own list. It's a win-win situation. This technique also opens the door to longer-term joint venture opportunities.

5. Co-Registration Co-registration - or "co-reg" - is the practice of referring leads, subscriptions, or memberships in conjunction with another registration transaction, and usually happens after the fact.Co-reg ads use a CPL (cost per lead) payment model. You pay for the leads you capture. Your text ad and a small image of your publication appear on a webpage on another publisher's website after a primary transaction occurs. Your ad shares the page with other publishers looking to build their own e-mail lists with free subscriptions to their e-letters or free e-reports.

To make this work, I've found that you need to send special introductory "bonding" e-mails to the people who sign up for your newsletter before they get added to the general circulation. This helps them remember that they signed up for your e-letter. (So when it shows up in their inbox they won't think it's spam.) And it helps increase the potential that those subscribers will convert to paying customers.

6. Direct Mail Direct mail is still a consumer favorite - and another good way to get your sales message out. It can be especially effective used in concert with another effort, such as an e-mail campaign.

A recent survey published in DM News indicated that 70 percent of respondents preferred receiving unsolicited correspondence via mail vs. e-mail. As with any marketing medium, though, you can end up paying a lot. The most costly direct-mail packages are magalogs and tabloids (four-color mailers that look like magazines). However, 6 x 9 postcards, tri-fold self-mailers, and simple sales letters are three low-cost ways of taking advantage of this channel. Although 100 percent ROI (return on investment) is what you should aim for, many direct mailers are content with 80 percent. This lower figure takes into consideration the lifetime value of the names that come in from this channel, because they are typically reliable buyers in the future.

7. Print ads This is another channel that's gets a raw deal. One reason is because it can be costly. To place an ad in a high-circulation magazine or newspaper, you could shell out serious money. But you don't need a big budget to take advantage of print ads. If you don't have deep pockets, consider targeted newspapers and periodicals.

Let's say you're selling an investment report. Try using the Internet to research the wealthiest cities in America. Once you get that list, look online for local newspapers in those communities. These smaller newspapers hit your target audience... and offer a much cheaper ad rate than some of the larger, broad-circulation publications. You end up getting quality rather than quantity.

I once paid for an ad in a local newspaper in Aspen, CO that had a flat rate of less than $500. My ROI on this effort turned out to be more than 1,000 percent. How's that for a positive response rate!

The seven marketing channels I've just described can help you reach more customers... and eventually add dollar signs to your bottom line.

It's not too late to start this New Year off with a marketing bang. By leveraging the seven channels of multi-channel marketing, I'm confident you will be amazed by the results.

Welcome....to the future!

Greetings...

The future is here...are you ready for it?

Here is the test:

1. Do you wait to see if something "works" 1st, or do you dive in and test it?
2. Are your plans built with flexibility in mind...or do the plans crumble if things change?
3. Is your communication built on paper or is it alive from person to person?
4. Does your organization anticipate tomorrow or use yesterday as the starting point for today?
5. If you talked with 10 people from across the organization, do they at least have 2 similar ideas on where your organization is heading?

If you were able to answer YES to each of these five questions...congratulations, you are ready to capture the future as one nimble organization!  If you answered YES less than 5 times, you have work to do...but the future is still within your grasp.  The key is to GET MOVING TODAY!

It's Friday...the truest test is that will you make changes necessary to move you forward starting Monday?

Cheers!

Bruce

How to get more from your debit card

We all know we want to increase debit card usage and increase signature-based transactions but how can we communicate that to our customers? Have you done any research in your market to find out what will motivate your customers to not only use their debit card, but to use it as a signature based transaction instead of a PIN transaction?

We know that reward programs help. Other ways to add value are to offer insurance products, ID theft protection, shopping discounts, cash back benefits and other discount options for a nominal fee.

They say that over time, active debit card users display greater potential for growth and loyalty versus those customers who do not use a debit card. Active debit card users are also more receptive and attractive targets for cross-sell promotions, especially online banking and loan product sales.

Here are some ideas to make your debit card program more profitable:

• Instant issue debit cards at the branch level
• Target activation and utilization campaigns
• Promote debit cards as bill payment options
• Market the use of debit cards for internet purchases

How do you make your debit card program profitable? We would love to hear your ideas!

Make it a great Friday. Enjoy your weekend and until we talk again.

Debbi

Understanding Your Markets

Markets can differ in income levels, demographics, population, family size, brand awareness, product usage and more. All of your markets should vary in some level and getting to know the unique differences to your markets will better help you market to them.

If you are mass marketing a broad message to all markets, it is time to take a closer look. Try identifying how each of your markets differ in:

• Geography (region, size, population, climate, etc.)
• Demographics (age, gender, family size, generation, income, education, etc.)
• Psychographics (activities, interests, opinions, values, etc.)
• Behaviors (benefits sought, usage, brand loyalty, etc.)

Once you determine the differences in your markets, don’t be afraid to use the information! This market information will better allow you to target your market so you can better speak to that audience.

Best,

Jamie