Business to Business Marketing

Common Myths of Digital Marketing

October 7, 2015 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

As an ad agency owner, I speak to a number of prospective clients throughout the year. It’s very common for people to have misconceptions about the advertising business but in some cases, these issues are common myths. With that said, below are my replies to common myths to help understand our industry, services, and agreements:

Website Hosting is all the same!

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) and powers an estimated 24% of the internet. Contrary to popular belief, it’s important that you update most CMS’s for security purposes and that includes the themes and plugins. Only 36% of all WordPress websites are the most up-to-date version and that doesn’t include the plugins which means that the website is a security risk.

My Website Works for me!

Define “work”? According to Webster, work is: activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something. What function is your website performing for your business and do you have the metrics to prove it? Is it an online brochure or does it generate visits, collect form information, or drive sales? If not, can you truly say that it’s working?

Paid Search doesn’t work for my business or my industry but You ran it!

Let’s be honest, it didn’t work because you’re not a marketing professional, you don’t have the time, don’t know the AdWords or Bing Ads platform, you can’t code/program landing pages for your campaigns, and that’s just for starters. The AdWords and Bing Ads platforms are tools for your business, so learn how to use them or get a certified AdWords or Bing accredited professional to handle it for you!

I’m B2B, Don’t Need SEO or Digital Marketing, and My Prospects know me!

According to Google, 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process. So, you are missing an opportunity to differentiate your products or services from the competition. Purchasing a product or service is a human behavior, and those decision-makers are doing the research and are also the ones signing-off on agreements or purchases. When was the last time you saw just the company’s name on the dotted line or the signature on the check?

Every agency is certified for Paid Search, Really!

Depending on the source, there are an estimated 32,000 up to 55,000 advertising agencies in the United States. There are a few thousand certified AdWords Professionals but only a few hundred Google Partners within the United States. Each of the Google Partners have unique budget limits for new clients and individual industry expertise. So, not all agencies are certified for paid search and I would estimate that only 25% are Google Partners.

Don’t Need Social Media!

80% of small businesses use social media websites for monitoring and collecting information about competitors to their businesses (Source: Socialmediatoday). In addition, existing customers are discussing your products or services which leads to research, purchases, and product/service reviews. Many businesses are using social media as part of their customer service as well. I guess there is no need to collect information on the competition, promote your products or services, or listen to customers.

I use social media but I don’t need a content strategy

What’s the plan and how do you know if your posts are useful for your fans, followers, friends or connections? You’re talking but is anyone listening? Even worse, you’re the diva on social media that only talks about themselves, doesn’t share others social posts, or interact with others! Let’s identify your target audience and share information that’s useful to them. You might even be considered an expert and start discussions about your products, services or industry.

We’re using Email Marketing

So, you have a Constant Contact account but you’ve got no email marketing plan, no metrics to gauge success, limited integrations with your customers database, no automated follow-ups, and everyone gets the same generic email. Constant Contact encourages contact management, list segmentation, and other features. If you’re going to use email marketing, maximize your time and leverage the email platform to it’s full capacity to generate leads, sales and save you time.

The Ad Agency didn’t do their job

You paid for a website redesign project with hosting but making changes to the website, content, or security updates are not in the agreement. Now, you’re upset because you don’t know how to make changes and the website hasn’t been updated in months. Also remember that you updated the website for a strategic reasons so what metrics did you want to improve and were these metrics improved? Review the agreement and understand what it is that you are paying for. In many cases, there is a specific reason for the estimate from ad agency to ad agency and the devil is in the details.

5 Best Practices for Better B2B Website User Experience

August 19, 2015 by Mark Mapp 1 Comment

It’s generally a good idea to start your web design project using best practices, especially if you haven’t accumulated any data to support a specific design change, or direction. Remember that you shouldn’t end your design solely implementing best practice solutions; however, you should use the data feedback, by use of analytics, to optimize and improve user experience. Here are five effective best practices that can help you get started.

1. Make Your Navigation and Visitors Location on the Site Highly Visible

Users should know where they were, and where they are on your site. This can be accomplished using elements like breadcrumbs, page-headers, highlighted menu options, progress bars, thank you and confirmation pages. Not using these elements can cause an unhappy user experience when they try to navigate deeper into your website or try to navigate through a purchasing process. Always remember that creating a smooth and comfortable user experience is your ultimate goal when designing your B2B website.

2. Match Your Content to Real World Language by Eliminating Jargon

The language used on B2B websites should be familiar to the visitor rather than using industry specific terms or jargon. Using jargon, or language that is too technical to comprehend can create a disconnect with the visitor. To find out what words and phrases your website visitors are using it’s best to do a little keyword research. This will help you define how you go after potential customers or leads using language they are comfortable with.

3. Allow Total User Control and Freedom From Automated Processes

Simply put, eliminate anything that takes control out of the user’s hands. If not implemented correctly, elements such as popups, auto-play videos, and automatic carousels can cause lack of user control and freedom, hence creating a bad user experience. If the user doesn’t want to subscribe to a newsletter popup, or watch a demo video they should have a way of exiting or navigating away from that element without any complications.

4. Create Your B2B Website Using a Minimalistic Design Approach

For the past several years, taking a minimalist approach seems to be the most effective way to create a B2B website. In a study conducted by Google, it was scientifically proven that minimalist design are more appealing to buyers. In addition, an effective use of white space can clearly guide buyers to the important sections of information. Cluttered websites don’t effectively allow this to happen and that’s why it is best to focus on the important information visitors are looking for.

5. Offer Solutions and Help Documentation

If designed correctly, your website shouldn’t need much of this best practice solution. However, offering help solutions is a big plus. Help solutions such as live chat pop-ups, FAQ’s, pricing tables, and microcopy, which are little words or phrases that enhance the subscription or buying process that helps to reduce friction and get people taking action. Usually, if you submit a form without the required information being entered, you may receive a prompt in the form of microcopy letting you know that the information for that field is needed to submit the form request.

Conclusion

Whether you are creating a new website, redesigning, or just optimizing an existing one, utilizing best practices will offer a great peace of mind. Although the best practices mentioned aren’t actual principles or laws of web design, they provide a good starting point in most cases. Also, remember that these best practices are backed by data which support their effectiveness.

What other B2B website best practices do you recommend not mentioned in the blog? Please provide your comments below.

Successful Tips for B2B White Papers

August 5, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Pardot states that “86% of B2B marketers are producing content.” Your company may be part of this percentage, but are you creating the RIGHT content specifically for your customers? White papers at times get bypassed by blogs or other social platforms, but using them as a medium to inform clients about relevant information is a fantastic idea. One you will not regret. Forgetting about this form of communication and focusing more on the others can be a gigantic mistake for your company. When a white paper is executed correctly, it can be an incredible attribution to your company and impact it positively. Business can attract new customers and educate followers by writing white papers with these best practices. Before you begin, sit down with your team to create a strategy and set objectives of what your white papers will look like altogether.

Assure each white paper is written to capture attention

The most fascinating topic will be meaningless if the paper is poorly written. It will instantly lose your reader’s attention. Write in a tone that your audience will clearly understand and will want to continue reading. As Pardot says, these papers do not have to be “cut and dry.” Captivate their attention with humor, compelling stories, and quality content. Add personal character to your business’s white paper to allow a distinct uniqueness to set yourself apart from the rest. Other options include adding pictures, quotes, and sidebars. Being visually friendly is just as important as the content itself.

Gain quality content

After choosing a familiar topic that will be useful for your readers to gain additional knowledge, find ways to get reliable information to support what you already know. Content Marketing Institute suggests conducting interviews with other experts in the industry. Ask for the marketing material they are currently using and what their most popular or trusted resources are. Use dependable search engines, such as Google Scholar, and other well-researched white papers to complete your research. It does not matter whether your company writes a five or fifty-page paper as long as the content is entertaining and entirely relevant. Cushion your content with facts and quotes by respected professionals that pertain to the topic.

Educate, Do not sell

Customers, clients, and competitors read your white papers to become educated and to see what exactly does your company know. Your content is to educate and NOT directly sell your product or service. While reading it, they want to be intrigued. Displaying your company’s expertise without pushing a sale may bring in new clients you might not have originally thought of.

White papers can be an essential way to connect with your clients. It can be the first step in signing a new customer for your service. Entice them to contact your company personally. Spark their desire to work with you by writing a successful B2B white paper they will learn from and enjoy.

Check out our white papers! Contact us today or leave us a comment below to share your thoughts or receive additional information on our services.

Tips for your Business-to-Business Company Blog

June 17, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

The Internet is the main source of information for today’s generation. Businesses see this trend and take the initiative to write their own blogs of expertise. Providing quality content within your blogs will increase brand awareness which will help develop your business-to-business company as a leader in the industry. Pardot reports there are over 152 million blogs in the world as of 2014. Out of all of these, 43% are B2B companies competing with yours. What will make your business stand out amongst the rest? How will you build a relationship with your readers and prove to be a force in the industry? Consistency, creativity, and content all help you achieve successful credibility and viewership.

Scheduling leads to consistent maintenance for the blog

Maintaining a regular schedule for new posts not only allows your employees to know when their piece must be submitted, but it informs devoted readers when to check back to read about a new topic. In order to get new readers, you must promote your business’s blog. Setting up a HootSuite account, or any other social media management account, enables your business to assign future social media posts on several platforms at once without having to manually do it every single time. Keep reminding your followers to check out the post later that day and even a couple days later because they might have been offline during your first posting.

Become creative about how to attract new readers

Not everyone has the same schedule. Posting during the day may be ideal for your company, but not for your audience. Who is your audience? When is the most appropriate time to post to get the best views? A study done by TrackMaven stated there were more social shares for posts released between 9PM and midnight. Learn about your readers online habits and post when it is most convenient for them and not your company. These social shares boosts the possibility of someone finding your post. Outside of social media, you can also attract new readers by incorporating search engine optimization best practices inside each post. This will raise the chances of your company blog showing up in a simple Google search.

Share your knowledge and content through guest blogs

One of the best ways to bring more traffic to your blog is to ask to guest blog on other sites pertaining the same topics (industries, associations, etc). Create a list of respectable sites that your CEO approves of. This is an incredible way to become known to other business people who may enjoy the content on your blog. It will differentiate your company from your competition and reinforce your expertise in specific subject matter.

Measure the Performance of Your Blog & Evolve with Your Audience

It is useless to have a blog if you are unable to track how your blog is performing and how your company is benefiting from it. By setting up a Google Analytics account to track its performance, you will be able to track the click-through-rate, monitor who visits the blog, how long they stay on the website, and where they go after they read the blog. (Do they click on another tab or do they leave the website altogether?) This is all critical information to obtain to see what is and is not working.

There are several ways to build up your blog. Adding a personal touch to your B2B blog sets you apart from others writing about the same material. Find what your audience will enjoy, appreciate, and value the most for them to continue reading your company’s blogs in the future.

Start implementing these tips to drive relevant visitors to your site and start generating leads. Contact us today or leave us a comment below for more advice and information.

10 Business System Integrations for Better Marketing

January 23, 2013 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Everyone wants something for less, but as a business owner, you’re consistently trying to increase sales and improve profit margins. So, the question is: What are the most effective ways of achieving these goals? In my opinion, the integration of business systems or solutions is one of the most under-utilized elements toward achieving these goals. By integrating online business solutions, it allows your business and team to do less manual work while improving efficiencies and overall turnaround time.

Below is my list of top 10 online business solutions that should be integrated to put your business on the path to better sales turnaround time, identifying insights, and improving profit margins:

Web Analytics

Your web analytics solution needs to be implemented onto the entire website accurately. Many times I’ve noticed that prospects or clients have launched websites that do not incorporate tracking into their application, sales, or lead generation processes. In most cases, you should be okay with tracking into these areas as long as you’re not collecting personally-identifiable information. By tracking these areas, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to improve the process as well as your conversion rate (completion).

Search (SEO, PPC, & Onsite)

Search can be used to improve your conversion rate. A few of the easier elements to integrate are SEO, PPC, and Onsite search. An example would be to enable AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Site Search; however, there are other solutions that have these capabilities as well (Adobe CQ, Search&Promote, and Search Center+). By integrating these solutions, it will give you insights into what keywords or search queries are most critical to the conversion process and cut costs on ineffective keywords.

CRM Solutions (Salesforce.com)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions are important for all business types, but not every business integrates their CRM with other solutions. This can lead to inefficiencies as well as negatively impact response times and reduce sales volume. Through CRM solution integration, your business can more easily connect account records, automatically import prospects or leads, and segment prospects into different groups. An example would be the integration of Salesforce.com with email marketing solutions.

Billing & Invoicing Solutions (QuickBooks)

You can manage customer and client accounts without juggling separate databases. By integrating with your billing and invoicing services, you can automatically add new customers to your email marketing audience or estimates with CRM solutions. Going this route significantly limits the possibilities for errors.

Email Marketing Solutions

Email Marketing Solutions’ integration capabilities continue to grow through APIs and login authentications. With some email marketing solutions, you have the ability to integrate web analytics, search, CRMs, billing solutions, and a lot more. This also gives you the ability to implement automatic responses and send notifications directly to your sales team.

Publishing Solutions (Drupal, WordPress, etc)

Many CMS’s (Content Management Systems) allow you to leverage plug-ins that make it easy to add signup forms to your website. If you’re already gathering new subscribers with an online form, there are opportunities to connect it to your email audience in order to easily gather new audience members with the tools you’re already using.

Shopping Carts

By integrating shopping carts with your website or email marketing solution, you can grow your audience right from your shopping cart. With eCommerce plug-ins or applications, your online customers can subscribe to your mailings with a single click during the checkout process. You can also sort your audience using information from their purchase history to send them the most impactful messages.

Events Management

With event management integration, you can better communicate with your event attendees. Connect email marketing solutions to your event management account to gather email subscribers from your events. This integration makes it easier to automatically add new attendees to your email audience and sort your audience by attendee information.

Testing Solution (T&T)

Every business should be testing things like content, landing page variations, email subject lines, etc. With testing solutions, you can evaluate the effectiveness of content, landing pages, ad copy, and more. This integration can be completed between your Content Management System and the testing solutions. It makes it easier to get the right message and design in front of the right customers or prospects.

Project Management

My team uses a project management solution to help organize projects, but I would recommend that marketing professionals as well as business owners consider integrating a project management solution into their processes. No more sending documents, waiting for status updates, or looking for meeting information. Many project management solutions are now cloud-based with applications to integrate with Outlook, QuickBooks, and more. Helping your team to stay on track, stay on budget, invoice accurately, and deliver on your brand promise.

Let me start by saying that this list is not all-inclusive, but it is a start. The truth of the matter is that clients, customers, and prospects demand more from your business. They demand solutions to their problems or ideas for improvements. Your business can deliver more with less if you effectively use online marketing solutions and integrate them to work together. So what’s that mean to your business? It could mean more satisfied customers, better prospecting, improved processes, cohesion among online business solutions, internal solutions, and better information that will increase your likelihood for increased sales and high profit margins. Once upon a time, a business owner or marketing professional would need an army to effectively manage all of these tasks but with applications, plug-ins, and CMS solutions, you can get away with one or two really good people to manage it all.