Marketing Trenches

Whether you live in the Baltimore/Washington area like we do, or have only heard about it on the news, everyone knows we’ve been hit here by record snowfalls.  I saw yesterday that Baltimore just passed Syracuse NY for first place as the snowiest city in the U.S. this winter.

While technology has allowed me to continue working on just about everything I would in a normal day, some of the down time “snowed in” got me thinking about how people might use some of that down time to address items on the “marketing list” (you know, that list some people never quite get to).

With that mind, I went back through some of our posts to highlight 5 pretty tangible and actionable items you can think about, evaluate and improve right away.  And while I tried to avoid the “clip show” format — Didn’t you always hate when sitcoms did those episodes that were just recycled material? – It did seem to work best in this format.

So here you go – 5 Marketing Fixes for a Snowy Week.

1). Fix Your Core Messaging:

We all know how important it is to have a clear and consistent message – But do you have a messaging problem?

Your Marketing Message in 30 Seconds

2). Diversify Lead Generation:

In an ideal world, you are managing multiple buckets of leads, each bringing a different volume, a different quality, and a different set of metrics.  But are you putting all your eggs in one basket?

Buckets of Leads

3). Convert More Visitors to Leads:

Make sure you are getting the most from your online visitors.  Tune up your contact forms and landing pages by looking at 5 common problems.

Better Contact Forms = More Prospects

4). Improve Your Search Marketing:

Writing ad copy for pay-per-click ads, particularly for Google AdWords, is an extremely challenging task.  Are you getting the most from your paid search campaigns?

The Most Challenging Copywriting Job in the World

5). Update Your Website:

Your company may have all kinds of exciting things going on - new customers, partners, upcoming events, etc.  But if from the viewpoint of the random website visitor, you’re not doing much lately it may not be worth taking the next step to get in touch.

Keeping the Newsroom Fresh

Implementing these 5 fixes will help you to upgrade your marketing — And give you a reason to avoid that snow shovel.

Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow@willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

I was speaking with a few colleagues the other day about the different benefits of social media as a whole, and blogging in particular.  The folks in the room had varying levels of social media involvement, from no involvement at all to heavy involvement.  Each of us discussed what we hope to get out of social media, why we blog or might consider it, and how businesses can benefit from blogging.  The discussion went on for some time, covering the wide ranging benefits from SEO opportunities to more frequent customer touch points and everything in between.  After a while, it quieted down a bit and somebody asked me if they had missed anything on the list.

Skip the First Meeting

While our blog serves many purposes, one of them I hadn’t heard mentioned by the group was one of the things that I find most useful.  Having a well planned blog and social media presence, with what we hope is interesting and insightful content, allows us to Skip the First Meeting.

So what do I mean when I say Skip the First Meeting?  Unfortunately, despite how well you may try to vet things ahead of time, inevitably in our business you run into an opportunity that 5 minutes into that first meeting, after you’ve sniffed each other and gotten a bit more of a sense of your businesses –  you both know isn’t a fit.  You don’t think alike, you don’t value the same things, really whatever those components may be.  Of course generally by this time somebody has ordered food, or driven out of their way, or fired up a PowerPoint or laser lights show, or something else entirely, and it’s too late to do anything but spend the next 45-60 minutes or more there despite you each knowing this isn’t going to work out.

Now, we often head this meeting off at the pass.  We’ll send a contact or prospect a link to our blog ahead of time, and also encourage them to connect with and follow us on social networks, and ask them to read through these pieces ahead of time before scheduling that first get together.  By doing this, we make much more efficient use of their time and ours.  We try to convey the idea here that we want to be involved in strategy and planning and believe in taking a holistic view of marketing, and that shines through in our posts.

When we discover the poor fit, we each save ourselves the time of an unproductive meeting where we just won’t be a fit for each other (although sometimes we do miss those laser light shows).  And just as importantly, for those that could be a fit, we’ve fast forwarded over the glossy part of the first meeting and are digging right into the important and meaningful parts that are usually saved for a second meeting.

So while there are probably 100s of reasons to blog and to get involved in social media, if it works for your business you may want to try to Skip the First Meeting.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

A colleague of mine often says “Your website should be as good as your best salesperson” – which for many organizations is easier said than done.  Those of you who read this blog regularly know we always advocate looking at your overall marketing strategy, your web marketing strategy as a set of that, and your website itself as a piece of that.

In addition to looking at the big picture, sometimes it helps to slice off a few clear and actionable improvements you can take.  Some organizations have never done all 3 of the steps outlined below, while for others this is a chance to get back to basics and make sure you haven’t lost site of these 3 keys.  Here’s 3 key steps you can do to make your web presence work harder.

1). Take an Honest Look at Your Search Presence

We all know that search engines play a huge role in the web — In fact, 80% of online session start with a search  engine (via  PC Magazine).  So, even if you are doing everything you can to get the word out on your brand and website in other media, if you don’t have a significant presence in search you may be sunk.  Since search is where people go first when they go online, you need an effective search strategy — both paid and organic — to make sure that you will be found.  So take an honest look at your search presence, look with a keen eye and really re-evaluate everything.  Once you ahve done that and reformulated your strategy (or confirmed it was right all along), start working on keyword testing in paid search and SEO (learn more in a  previous post The Obvious Yet Underused Way to Build an SEO Program) and continue to monitor and adjust as you go, utilizing your analytics systems as a guide for what’s working and what isn’t.

2). Segment Your Audiences and Match Their Expectations

Too often we see campaigns where all visitors are sent to the same generic homepage, which may not speak to a segment’s particular needs.  One of the things we love about the web as marketers is it is trackable and customizable. So, for example, if you are a bank and know you have a prospect looking for CD rates, make sure you take them to a page about CDs.  If they are looking for mortgage refinancing make sure you take them to a page about refinancing, not new loans.  Utilize targeted landing pages and microsites in order to better match the prospect’s expectations and you’ll see much better results (see our previous post Microsite or Landing Page? to learn more on when to use landing pages and microsite ).  While these examples seem obvious, I’m constantly amazed by how many organizations aren’t doing them.  This feeds right back into #1, if you match your customers expectations when they come to your site, your campaigns — whether search, social media, print, or anything else — are just about guaranteed to perform better.

3). Optimize your Conversion Opportunities

So you’ve knocked down items 1 and 2 – what’s next?  Well, some people still think getting traffic to your website and getting a few leads is doing the whole job.  Getting visitors to your website is really just the first step, what we really want to do is convert those visitors by making them take your key actions.  That generally means converting them to leads by an activity such as filling out a form, converting them to customers by an activity such as an online purchase, or sometimes by an activity such as viewers of key information like using a retail locator to the nearest store.  By reviewing your analytics, you can develop a baseline for your conversion activity.  Then, begin to test different variables against this baseline, including copy approaches, offers, calls to action, imagery, landing pages, form fields and other variables.  By understanding and continually optimizing your conversion opportunities you’ll get much more value out of your marketing activities.

Whether you are new to online marketing or a seasoned veteran just circling back to make sure you are still doing the basics right, these 3 steps will make your web presence work harder.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

When I explain our business to people, I immediately get hit with questions.  And I love questions — it shows people are paying attention, interested and engaged (or at least somewhat good at pretending to be).  So questions are always good.  Sometimes what I hear, though, is somebody really looking for us to confirm a myth for them.  A few of those questions seem to come up time and time again and are easy to spot.  Here my Top 5 right now:

1). Why should we be on Twitter?  I don’t care what you had for breakfast.

Well sure, I don’t care what I had for breakfast either, or probably what anyone else had for breakfast.  Just like any other communications or content channel, there are folks using this channel well and some using it not so well.  We have already published a few posts on good ways you might use Twitter already (Read more on Measuring Social Media ROI, and on Five Ways Professional Services Firms Can Use Twitter) so I won’t go into detail here again.  But, just keep in mind most of the same people who think Twitter is about telling people what you had for breakfast thought bloggers were just a bunch of people living in their parents’ basement and would never have an impact.

2). I should just put my whole marketing budget in PPC search, that will be my most effective marketing right?

Maybe – but it really depends on your marketing objectives, industry, goals, products, services, and everything else.  PPC Search is great for many businesses, but it usually isn’t a magic bullet, but rather part of an overall plan.  Often we find PPC is a testing ground for a more informed Search Engine Optimization (Read more on The Obvious Yet Underused Way to Build an SEO Program)  and that we run the two together, or that PPC search doesn’t meet your goals.  My advice – Never put all your eggs in one basket.

3). Why should we have our marketing team do anything with Social Media?  We have an intern here that can get us up to speed.

I seem to be hearing this one more and more often now.  While your intern may be ahead of you on the social media front because he/she has more friends than you do on Facebook, that doesn’t mean they are the right person to handle strategic marketing.  Having extra help in managing your online presences is great – indeed it can be time intensive — but make sure you have the right strategy and a plan in place that you can then engage people (including maybe the intern) in helping to execute.  And, like with anything else – Make sure you bring in the right help to generate that plan if you aren’t equipped to do it yourself.

4). Why would I use landing pages for our campaigns?  That’s why my website has a home page.

We’ve talked about when you should use a landing page vs. a microsite in more detail before (read Microsite or Landing Page?), but it’s important to understand a landing page can speak to a specific audience and ask for specific actions, while your home page by nature has to be much more general in nature.  Utilize landing pages for campaigns when appropriate rather than pushing everything to the home page and your conversion rates will increase.

5). I just need to reach a bunch of people, can’t I just buy an email list?

(Preparing for backlash from list brokers…awaiting angry emails…OK, let’s go)

In all my experience I have never seen a client have great success with a “bought” or “rented” list.  There are opportunities to engage folks via email, but where I have seen success is in mailing to those that have truly, clearly opted in to hear from you, and from placements in relevant emails that follow this same principle.  Your results may vary, but if nothing else you are tempting fate on a huge spam backlash, blacklisting, etc.  I think you are most likely to be successful with many other strategies and tactics before this one.

What are the misconceptions you run into most frequently?  Feel free to submit your own in our comments section below

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  Follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Over the past 2-3 years we’ve seen an explosion in the number of software solutions that promise to automate corporate search engine marketing efforts, particularly in the category of pay-per-click search engine marketing.  These software solutions range from terrible to superb, but all have one thing in common: they can’t provide the level of service necessary to launch and consistently grow a successful search engine marketing campaign.

Some of the folks that peddle these solutions promote them as “turnkey” or “completely automated” or “self-optimizing”…ugh.  That’s just not true.  Don’t get me wrong here, you can use one of these solutions to launch your PPC campaign in as little as five minutes.  You may even experience some nice initial results, and see some “automatic optimization” of the campaign occuring in the first month or so.

However, you cannot use any of these automation platforms - by themselves - to achieve long-term success and constant improvement in your campaigns.  This isn’t like buying a Yellow Pages advertisement where your primary decision is whether to take the half-page ad or the quarter-page ad.  This isn’t a traditional media buy, where the goal may be to drive the most eyeballs at the lowest price using creative that reflects your company’s brand or offer in the most appropriate way.  Search engine marketing campaigns contain a whole lot more moving parts - landing page development, ad copywriting, conversion tracking, integration with web analytics and CRM systems, bid management…you get the point.

A good SEM campaign ties right back into the corporate marketing plan that every organization should have.  Can an automated solution interact with your Marketing Director to discuss which leads, from which keywords, are converting into sales?  Can an automated solution help you refine your SEM strategy?  Can an automated solution identify the slight nuances in keywords or keyword phrases that are only recognized by category experts?   No, no and no.

Search engine marketing is a service.  Software products are very helpful, and can and do help companies and agencies manage campaigns more efficiently.  They should not, however, be considered as stand alone solutions for your search engine marketing campaign management.

Had a discussion with a professional services firm today regarding a problem they’re experiencing.  The problem revolves around a very simple yet often overlooked page on the typical company website - the contact form.  This company recently redesigned their website, and while site traffic has been rising, their lead volume from these site contact forms has been declining.  As a matter of fact, the numbers from their web analytics package were pretty staggering - in the last month alone, 476 page views of the contact page, and only 3 form submissions.

While we looked under a bunch of rocks to rule out other problems, one look at the contact page told me everything I needed to know.  Here are the problems, and the prescribed medication:

Problem #1: The page is waaaay too crowded.  Lots of links, lots of imagery, lots of reasons to leave.

Solution #1: Treat someone sitting on your contact page like someone sitting at your cash register ready to make a purchase, except in this case remove the Snickers bars, the US Weekly and the Chapstick display.  Remove all clutter other than the essentials.

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So your boss just dropped the following task on you - you need to cut marketing spend, and you also need to figure out how to make that spend work better from an ROI standpoint.  If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone.  Marketing department heads are getting hit with that same task in every type of organization. 

The better news is that this task is really not that difficult, especially if you are using the appropriate tracking mechanisms.  The potential solutions to this problem are endless, yet the implementation can seem complicated.  Here are 3 basic places to start:

1. Assuming you know which marketing vehicles are your most efficient performers from a lead generation or customer acquisition standpoint, cut out the poor performers for the time being and focus on the top performers.  If search engine marketing drives leads at half the cost of direct mail (without sacrificing quality of course), then cut direct mail and focus on search engine marketing.  If your affiliate program drives new e-commerce customers at a $20 cost per acquisition while your email marketing program drives new e-commerce customers at a $75 cost per aquisition, cut the email marketing and focus in on the affiliate program. 

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I’ve addressed this question three times in the past week, so it finally registered on my blog-worthy radar.  Microsites and landing pages are certainly related.  Close cousins, yes.  Siblings, no. 

Landing Pages

Let’s start with the landing page.  Landing pages are typically one-page creations.  They focus on one particular offer, and specifically on getting the visitor to take advantage of that particular offer.  Sometimes called lead capture vehicles, landing pages are used primarily for direct marketing programs - pay per click search engine marketing, direct mail, print advertising, etc.  Well-designed landing pages are critical to the success of these campaigns, and the savviest of marketers use and test hundreds of different landing pages in order to optimize conversion rates. 

For visual reference, here is an example of a Gold’s Gym landing page touting their 7-day free membership:

Gold’s Gym Landing Page

Microsites

Microsites, sometimes called minisites or sitelets, typically consist of a cluster of web pages and are used for a variety of purposes: 

• Large consumer goods companies may use microsites to independently market a new product, because the primary company website may leave the product underexposed. 
• A newspaper may use a microsite to cover a time-sensitive and popular event, such as the upcoming presidential election or the Olympics. 
• A business-to-business software company may use a microsite to provide prospects with deep information on a product, information that cannot be handled via a landing page. 

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