B2B Marketing Fast Fixes

The slowdown across some sectors of the economy is forcing B2B marketers to pull back on spending, yet continue to produce great results (or else). With that in mind, MarketingSherpa last week presented their Top 10 B-to-B Marketing FastFixes: How to Generate & Nurture More Qualified Leads. Here are the highlights from the webinar.

Revisit SEO

Technologies, needs and customers change over time. If your website is still optimized for the same keywords as 18 months ago (or longer), now is a good time to re-validate your key search phrases. Start by looking in your analytics program to identify the top phrases prospects are using to find you.

Next, run those phrases through a keyword tool to find similar phrases and their relative search frequency. Finally, make sure your site is well optimized for those phrases that are both frequently searched and most relevant to your prospects.

In addition, since those phrases resonate with your prospects, make sure to incorporate them in your copywriting and SEM programs as well.

Speak Up

Speaking engagements are an excellent source of high-quality leads. When budgets are tight, focus particularly on local gigs to minimize travel-related expenses. To spread your reach without breaking the bank, seek out opportunities to be interviewed for podcasts by well-known traditional and social media types in your industry.

Optimize Ads for Content and Search

MarketingSherpa recommends setting up completely separate accounts for search and content network ads. At the very least, keep the two in separate campaigns. Why? The environments are completely different—in search, people are looking for relevant ads. They are on a search page and are going to click on something based on the results of their search. Your ad is competing only against the other search results.

On the content network, people are doing other things, such as reading articles, so ad copy has to be punchier and more action-oriented to get someone to click away from the page they are reading.

Also, on content networks, investigate the sites your ads are showing on, particularly those sites which are drawing the best results. This research is excellent for finding new sites for PR, direct advertising buys or blogger outreach.

Test Their Knowledge

Quizzes are a relatively inexpensive, easy and fun way to collect leads. People love to be tested on their knowledge, particularly engineering and IT audiences. In addition, you can mix in "research" type questions that can be used to collect information for later production of a research report / thought-leadership piece.

Small companies can use tools like SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo or Zoomerang to create quizzes. Larger enterprises and government agencies may already have an enterprise survey management application such as Vovici or Kinetic Survey in place.

Quizzes can be promoted through PR, blogger outreach, AdWords, home page promotion and through company email.

Give Your Knowledge Away

Studies have shown that dropping registration barriers for content such as white papers, webcasts and podcasts significantly increases the exposure to your materials—according to MarketingSherpa, by about a factor of seven on average.

Still, many marketers are reluctant to do this; "If I give away my white paper, how will I ever capture the lead?"

The answer, again according to MarketingSherpa, is to offer some knowledge of value free and then ask for contact information once you have the prospect's interest. For example, Red Hat software has provided no-registration-required webcasts. At the end of each webcast, prospects are presented with another offer (such as a whitepaper download or live webinar registration) which does require them to provide contact information.

Love the One You're With

Maintaining and even increasing sales during an economic downturn isn't just about generating new leads, but also moving the prospects already in your database along in their buying process. In round numbers, 80% of the leads in your database are people who aren't immediate prospects, but do have longer term potential.

According to MarketingSherpa, about 10% are mid-term prospects who could potentially be converted to more immediate opportunities. The remaining 70% are either long term prospects (who could be converted to mid-term prospects) or influencers (who could help immediately with lead generation).

Follow-Up is Crucial

When you manage to capture a precious lead, handle with care. Make sure your auto-responder email is engaging and interactive. And follow up with a phone call quickly—if you are slow in responding to a sales opportunity, prospects assume you'll be even slower to respond once they are a customer in need of technical assistance or inquiring about a billing issue.

IT staff in particular work all hours and expect fast response. The first vendor to respond to an inquiry—particularly if that response is fast, within the first 30 minutes or so after contact—has an inordinate chance of winning the business.

Use Plain Old Snail Mail

With email burnout increasing and ever-tightening spam filters in place to keep out anything that smacks remotely of marketing, email promotion is becoming less effective. Although physical mail obviously costs more, it can help your offer stand out. First, the medium has become less crowded as more marketing dollars have shifted online. Second, it shows the prospect that you're willing to pay to get their attention; they know as well as you that email is easy and virtually free, while postal mail requires greater effort and expense. Third, it offers unique creative possibilities (and people will almost always open "lumpy" mail, curious about what's in the package).

Evangelists, Branding and Measurement

A few final points from the webinar:

• Few companies do a good job at reaching out to evangelists in their industry, such as bloggers. Flag evengelists in your marketing database, court them properly and you'll both increase your credibility and generate more pre-qualified leads.


• Even in a downturn, branding is critical. A CEO isn't going to download your whitepaper. But the CEO may very well be asked to sign off on a final purchase, and is likely to question a purchase from a vendor he or she has never heard of. PR, brand advertising, and speaking opportunities are all great ways to go beyond lead generation and increase brand recognition with C-level executives.


• Measure the right things. Particularly in a downturn, it's crucial to have metrics that demonstrate the value of marketing to sales and the business. Tracking the right measurements will not only protect existing budgets (and maybe even make room for small experiments), but also ensure that you are focused on the highest value-added activities for the organization.

Again, you can download the Top 10 B-to-B Marketing Fast Fixes slides here.

Update: the audio from the webcast is now available here.

*****

technorati tags: MarketingSherpa, Top 10 B-to-B Marketing FastFixes: How to Generate & Nurture More Qualified Leads, SEO, SEM programs, speaking engagements, b2b lead generation, search and content network ads, blogger outreach, SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, Vovici, Kinetic Survey, Red Hat software, snail mail, evangelists, branding, metrics

del.icio.us tags: MarketingSherpa, Top 10 B-to-B Marketing FastFixes: How to Generate & Nurture More Qualified Leads, SEO, SEM programs, speaking engagements, b2b lead generation, search and content network ads, blogger outreach, SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, Vovici, Kinetic Survey, Red Hat software, snail mail, evangelists, branding, metrics

icerocket tags: MarketingSherpa, Top 10 B-to-B Marketing FastFixes: How to Generate & Nurture More Qualified Leads, SEO, SEM programs, speaking engagements, b2b lead generation, search and content network ads, blogger outreach, SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Zoomerang, Vovici, Kinetic Survey, Red Hat software, snail mail, evangelists, branding, metrics

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

What Works Now in B2B Lead Generation, Part 2

Part 1 of this review of MarketingSherpa's just-released 2008 B2B Lead Generation Handbook discussed the dramatic changes in B2B marketing practices over the last decade, why SEO and SEM have become critical components of any successful B2B lead generation strategy, and why B2B companies should consider hiring an integrated marketing-PR-online agency to help with these programs. Here are a few more nuggets of wisdom mined from the report.

Blogs and Microsites Can Help with SEO—Eventually

Creating a blog or topic-specific microsite can supplement SEO efforts by providing a venue to share thought-leadership content, in a more casual tone than a corporate site, free from content management or other technological constraints that may apply to a company website. However, as the MarketingSherpa report points out, "This is NOT a short-term strategy. Getting a brand new URL ranked for important keywords can take six months or longer...If you launch a new site for SEO purposes, consider it a permanent part of your online presence."

This is because, as the report notes, it takes time to build external links and a significant body of content, which are critical to establishing credibility with both search engine spiders and human readers (and why persistence is one of the most vital components of effective business blogging).

YouTube and the Paradox of Video Quality

Online video is hot for many reasons: it's engaging, portable, re-usable and increasingly searchable. MarketingSherpa's report provides useful advice for incorporating video into B2B lead generation plans, such as best practices in properly tagging corporate videos uploaded to YouTube.

However, the report authors' advice that "B-to-B videos should employ high-quality, professional techniques to reflect your brand and convey authority" is...not exactly wrong, but too simplistic.

This is where the paradox of video quality comes in. For small companies trying to establish and expand a brand presence in the market, high production values are critical. That's because the objective of a company in this stage is to look bigger than it actually is, and convey a level of credibility that it hasn't yet earned across the market place. It's also more critical the higher the level at which a company sells into its customer organizations (e.g. C-level vs. IT staff) and the larger the target customer organizations.

Ironically, however, the best approach for large organizations may be just the opposite; the "homemade look" that MarketingSherpa considers inappropriate for B2B videos can help to make large corporations seem more human and personal. Microsoft's Robert Scoble became legendary for this, and in this interview with Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews, he talks about how a large corporation like P&G could use very informal video to communicate with their market:



The importance of polished production values also depends on who a company is trying to reach with its message. Software developers, for example, will generally be far more interested in a video perceived as "real" advice from another developer, even with fairly low production values, than a glitzier production perceived as more "commercial." So the key is not so much to produce beautiful video as to produce it in a way appropriate for your objectives and audience.

The Most Interesting B2B Content

B2B marketers don't always understand what kind of information their prospects are looking for (which creates a fabulous opportunity for those who do get it). According to MarketingSherpa's research, B2B marketers believe that case studies, top 10 lists of ways to improve business, and new research on some aspects of an industry are the top three most interesting types of information, with case studies five times as interesting as research.

Their prospective buyers, on the other hand, view case studies, new research, and how-to guides for better using a product or service as the top three, ranking all fairly closely.

B2B marketers and their buyers agree, however, that interviews with analysts or executives on the state of an industry are the least compelling types of content.

It's Always About Your Prospective Customer (Not You)

Finally, the critical importance of relating the benefits provided by your product or service to your customers' interests can't be overstated. While B2B products can't be marketed in the same manner as clothing, sports cars or soft drinks, emotion still plays a vital role in B2B buying. There has to be rationality in the decision, of course, but that doesn't mean any B2B buying decision is purely rational.

Understanding what these emotions are, and shaping communications to address them, is what separates effective B2B marketing messages from self-absorbed noise. The researchers at MarketingSherpa have elegantly encapsulated these B2B buying emotions:

"Prospects are interested in content about themselves, their income, their industry (as defined by them, not you), their department, their organization, their daily working life and the future of their career. Content becomes must-read (or must-view) by appealing to one or more of these top five job-related emotions:

A. Safety—keep your job, keep your company safe in a risky time, safeguard your department, avoid looking foolish, pick the most careful course of action, peer-vetted, proven, time-tested.

B. Ease—make your job easier, save time, reduce stress, how-to, assistance, help, quick-and-easy, simplify.

C. Greed—salary increases/bonuses, wealth, profits, rewards, more of something, stockpiling.

D. Power—power to convince a boss or committee to agree with you; power to get your budget passed; powerful insights that can change one's direction for the better.

E. Ego—knowing or proving you are better than other people; being recognized as outstanding in the company of your peers."

There you have it. Once again, the MarketingSherpa B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook exectuive summary is available here.

*****

technorati tags: MarketingSherpa, 2008 B2B Lead Generation Handbook, SEO, SEM, blogs, microsites, YouTube, online video, case studies, buying decisions, safety, ease, greed, power, ego, Robert Scoble, Fodney Rumford, FaceReviews

del.icio.us tags: MarketingSherpa, 2008 B2B Lead Generation Handbook, SEO, SEM, blogs, microsites, YouTube, online video, case studies, buying decisions, safety, ease, greed, power, ego, Robert Scoble, Fodney Rumford, FaceReviews

icerocket tags: MarketingSherpa, 2008 B2B Lead Generation Handbook, SEO, SEM, blogs, microsites, YouTube, online video, case studies, buying decisions, safety, ease, greed, power, ego, Robert Scoble, Fodney Rumford, FaceReviews

tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

For Marketers, What Recession?

News reports about the "R word" have certainly abounded since the beginning of this year. Articles and blog posts written to help marketers adapt and shift tactics in light of the economic slowdown have also proliferated, with Recession: The best thing for SEO from Brian R. Brown , Building Brands In A Recession by Cory Treffiletti, Marketing Tactics in a Recession from the Marketing Safari blog, and, more recently, A low-cost plan to elevate your brand by Alan Ruthazer as just a few examples.

Problem is—and I hate to say this for fear events could somehow suddenly prove me horribly wrong—there doesn't appear to be any recession, at least certainly not from an online marketing standpoint. Sure, it's a difficult time if you're in the business of building new homes and a very tough period for anyone with "mortgage" anywhere in their corporate description, but the damage seems relatively contained.

Statistically, of course, the U.S. isn't actually in a recession. The 0.6% GDP growth reported in the first quarter was pathetically anemic, but it was growth nonetheless.

Another interesting data to point to follow is the Career Classifieds from MarketingSherpa. MS publishes postings from both employers and job seekers. This is how the number of new open positions relative to the number of job searchers has looked over the last nine weeks:

If marketing were really in a recession, one would expect the blue line in the graph above to be plunging while the purple line shoots skyward—which is exactly what happened back in 2000. That clearly isn't happening today.

Okay, so it's only one indicator and time may yet prove me wrong, but marketers are often the first people to get pink slips when the economy heads south. The fact that that doesn't seem to be happening right now is news to be celebrated. And perhaps we'll start seeing articles and blog posts with titles like "How to Market During an Almost but Not Quite Recession."

*****

technorati tags: R word, economic slowdown, recession: The best thing for SEO, Brian R. Brown, Building Brands In A Recession, Cory Treffiletti, Marketing Tactics in a Recession, Marketing Safari blog, A low-cost plan to elevate your brand, Alan Ruthazer, 0.6% GDP growth, MarketingSherpa, How to Market During an Almost but Not Quite Recession

del.icio.us tags: R word, economic slowdown, recession: The best thing for SEO, Brian R. Brown, Building Brands In A Recession, Cory Treffiletti, Marketing Tactics in a Recession, Marketing Safari blog, A low-cost plan to elevate your brand, Alan Ruthazer, 0.6% GDP growth, MarketingSherpa, How to Market During an Almost but Not Quite Recession

icerocket tags: R word, economic slowdown, recession: The best thing for SEO, Brian R. Brown, Building Brands In A Recession, Cory Treffiletti, Marketing Tactics in a Recession, Marketing Safari blog, A low-cost plan to elevate your brand, Alan Ruthazer, 0.6% GDP growth, MarketingSherpa, How to Market During an Almost but Not Quite Recession

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2007: Miscellaneous Marketing Stuff

From advertising to white paper syndication to voicemail, here are a few of the best marketing-related newsletter articles and blog posts from 2007 that simply didn't fit into any other category. Check out these stories from the penultimate entry in WebMarketCentral's Best of 2007 series.

AdBlock Plus Threatens the Online Revenue Model by The International Herald Tribune

What could have been the story of the year in interactive marketing turned out instead to be pretty much of a dud. Noam Cohen wrote here about AdBlock Plus, a free Firefox plug-in that "makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No highly targeted Google ads based on the search terms you've entered." It's not clear whether the idea fizzled because the program didn't always work properly or because online advertising simply isn't that all that annoying to people, but the whole short-lived uproar seemed to just disappear.


"Right or wrong, do something" by iMedia Connection

Michael Estrin writes in praise of marketing experimentation—trying out non-traditional tactics in order to break through the clutter of advertising and create positive impact for brands. Pointing out that "With average job durations of 18 months or less, chief marketing officers at major brands don't last all that long these days," Estrin argues that marketers need to break out of traditional thinking and try new approaches, such as corporate blogging, which is making "the shift from talking to consumers to speaking with customers." Quoting Tim Mapes, CMO of Delta Airlines, Estrin notes that such approaches do entail risk: "big ideas often require big failures. If you have 10 big ideas, eight of them are probably going to be absolute failures. But that's actually good. You want those failures. Only the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world actually do it. We need a lot more crazy people."


Get Your Meta On with One Dozen Metasearch Engines by SEO Scoop

DazzlinDonna reviews 12 metasearch engines—sites that compile search query results from several major search engines and combine them in one place. Her list includes established metasearch sites such as Dogpile, Excite, HotBot and Mamma as well as lesser-known but interesting entrants like Clusty, Kartoo and Myriad.


What’s the Deal with All the Boring Voicemail Greetings? by Marketing Genius

In this short but thought-provoking post, blogger Emily Bennington asks why almost everyone uses the same, obvious, boring voicemail greeting, when this could be used an opportunity for differentiation. Good question!


The ultimate guide to advanced searching within Yahoo, Google and MSN by HybridSEM

In this must-bookmark post, John Satter details advanced the advanced search qualifiers available from the major search engines, such as Google's allintext (confines the search results to pages including all the query terms you have specified in the text of your page), allintitle (shows all results containing all the query terms you specify in the title) and location (pulls only articles from the location you specified) operators. Using these qualifiers can make searching much less frustrating and more productive.


4,000 Ads a Day, And Counting by Search Insider

After establishing the problem: "the average urban dweller is exposed to between 3,000 and 5,000 advertising messages every day. That means...you’re presented with an ad every 14.4 seconds. That’s every 14.4 seconds, every minute of every day you’re alive," Gord Hotchkiss suggests a solution—cut out the middle man and have advertisers pay consumers directly for their attention. Interesting concept.


The Five Biggest White Paper Mistakes by The Content Factor

Paul McKeon details the most common mistakes made in authoring white papers, including overselling, poor formatting and lack of illustrations. A short but useful reminder, particularly for B2B technology marketers.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools
Best of 2007: SEO Keyword Research Tools
Best of 2007: News Articles on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Google AdWords
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 1)
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 2)
Best of 2007: Website Design
Best of 2007: Blogging for Business
Best of 2007: Marketing Research
Best of 2007: Interactive PR
Best of 2007: SEO Copywriting
Best of 2007: Strategy and Branding
Best of 2007: Web Analytics
Best of 2007: Web 2.0 Sites
Best of 2007: Cool Online Tools

*****

technorati tags: white paper syndication, AdBlock Plus, Noam Cohen, Michael Estrin, SEO Scoop, DazzlinDonna, metasearch engines, Clusty, Kartoo, Myriad, Emily Bennington, HybridSEM, John Satter, Gord Hotchkiss, The Content Factor, Paul McKeon, B2B technology marketing

del.icio.us tags: white paper syndication, AdBlock Plus, Noam Cohen, Michael Estrin, SEO Scoop, DazzlinDonna, metasearch engines, Clusty, Kartoo, Myriad, Emily Bennington, HybridSEM, John Satter, Gord Hotchkiss, The Content Factor, Paul McKeon, B2B technology marketing

icerocket tags: white paper syndication, AdBlock Plus, Noam Cohen, Michael Estrin, SEO Scoop, DazzlinDonna, metasearch engines, Clusty, Kartoo, Myriad, Emily Bennington, HybridSEM, John Satter, Gord Hotchkiss, The Content Factor, Paul McKeon, B2B technology marketing

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Strategy and Branding

The first step in crafting a marketing plan is to determine overall strategy, and among the first questions to ask when thinking about the strategy are "What do I want my brand to stand for?" and "What are best ways to communicate my brand message?"

Here are a collection of the best online articles and blog posts to help you think about the big picture and answer the big questions about brand-building and marketing strategy.

All-in-One Guides: Marketing strategy by TechTarget

A comprehensive guide for B2B marketers with advice on everything from preparing a marketing plan and using marketing automation technology to designing and executing effective marketing campaigns.


Marketers Can Buy Buzz by MediaPost Online Spin

Max Kalehoff of Clickable presents some interesting findings on the (highly positive) correlation between media spending and word-of-mouth "buzz." While the research was focused on commercial packaged goods, the findings likely apply across a broader range of B2C and B2B products and services. The bottom line, according to Kalehoff: "traditional media strategies are not dead, and buzz tactics can’t necessarily live on their own in a vacuum. Neither is right or wrong, but they are both part of a complex communications and customer landscape."


Small Business Marketing Rules of Thumb by Smart Marketing

Blogger and author Jay Lipe offers three highly useful "rules of thumb" for small business marketers in this brief but valuable post.


Trash Talk & Delete Buttons: A Candid Letter from Your Prospective Customer by Selling to Big Companies

Jill Konrath, blogger and author of Selling to Big Companies (the book and the blog) lays it on the line here with a post written from the perspective of your target customer: "In your well-intentioned but misguided attempts turn me into a 'prospect,' you fail woefully to capture my attention. I'm going to be really blunt here: I could care less about your product, service, solution or your company." Ouch! Fortunately, she also serves up guidance on how to effectively cut through your prospective buyer's clutter of emails, phone calls and endless meetings: "Occasionally a savvy marketer or seller captures my attention, gets me to raise my hand asking for more information and even entices me to request a meeting. What are they doing? They're completely focused on my business and the impact they can have on it."


A Little Advice On Presenting and Selling by MediaPost Online Spin

In this excellent companion piece to the post above, Cory Treffiletti advises sales people and marketers to do a bit less talking and a little more listening: "The best presentations are simple; they are the ones where you talk little, listen a lot and provide solutions aimed at meeting the challenges of the person you are talking to."


Quit using Email to train your leads to ignore you by Marketing Interactions

Marketing strategist and blogger Ardath Albee lays out a detailed, step-by-step guide to creating an effective email marketing campaign, as opposed to the spam-like programs too often created even by marketing pros who should know better. "The (marketing emails) that really irritate me are the offers that get sent repeatedly with the exact same messaging. If it doesn't catch my eye the first time, why would they think I want to see the same thing 5 more times in two days?" Follow the advice in this post and you'll avoid that fate.


Rethink your brand Saturn by The Origin of Brands Blog

Best-selling author Laura Ries tells the painful story of how General Motors first successfully launched then just as successfully screwed up the Saturn brand, and how the proper marketing and product strategy could have given the tale a much happier ending. As Laura astutely diagnoses, GM's problem was on the strategic side, not the creative: "In 1994, the S series Saturn outsold the Civic by 7 percent. In 2004, the Civic outsold the S series replacement (the Ion) by 197 percent. In 2002, Saturn tapped Goodby, Silverstein for some new advertising. Sales continued falling to 212,017 in 2004, its worst performance since 1992. Despite the poor sales results, Goodby’s work won lots of advertising awards and accolades and did plenty to reaffirm the shop as one of America’s premiere creative agencies. But it did nothing for the Saturn brand." A cautionary tale for almost any company.


Selling the Benefit: Duracell by Marketing Genius from Maple Creative

Blogger Skip Lineberg praises a Duracell campaign that creatively and effectively focuses on product benefits in crucial situations—such as in heart monitors and fire alarms—to differentiate a commodity product.


Can you buy customer loyalty? by Loyalty Marketing Blog

Jonathan Treiber makes the case that customer loyalty can't be bought, only earned. Coupons, promotional pricing and discounts can help induce trial, but over the long run, superior customer service is what produces customer loyalty. "Providing active customer service is a way to listen to your customers’ needs and solve their problems (before they occur). This, in turn, will build customer loyalty over time because your customers will know that you are focused on meeting and exceeding their expectations."


Never Give Another Lead to Sales by Marketing Interactions

In another interesting post, Ardath Albee very correctly points out that "Sales doesn't need leads, they need opportunities," then goes about providing a strategy for effectively linking marketing activities to sales processes to increase revenue.


Time To Plan by THINKing

The brilliant Harry Hoover outlines a process for developing a marketing strategy for the new year, taking into account audiences, messaging, and a review of communications plans.


Search and the Pareto Principle by Search Engine People

Blogger Jeff Quipp demonstrates how the 80/20 rule applies to planning and execution for SEO and SEM, for example, "20% of content is responsible for 80% of site traffic and/or links."


Organic SEO vs. PPC? by WebProNews

A bit tactical, and somewhat elemental, this article presents a video discussion between SiteLab Executive Vice-President Dana Todd, a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies Conferences, and Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney Media Group. Dana sums it up best: "everybody can benefit from organic SEO...(each form of) Advertising has a completely different place in your media mix. We would never recommend...that you do one or the other; you always do them both wherever possible."

Previous articles in this series:

Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools
Best of 2007: SEO Keyword Research Tools
Best of 2007: News Articles on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Google AdWords
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 1)
Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 2)
Best of 2007: Website Design
Best of 2007: Blogging for Business
Best of 2007: Marketing Research
Best of 2007: Interactive PR
Best of 2007: SEO Copywriting

*****

technorati tags: brand-building, marketing strategy, TechTarget, Max Kalehoff, Jay Lipe, Selling to Big Companies, Jill Konrath, Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee, The Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Loyalty Marketing Blog, Jonathan Treiber, Harry Hoover, Jeff Quipp, WebProNews, SiteLab, Dana Todd, Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney Media Group

del.icio.us tags: brand-building, marketing strategy, TechTarget, Max Kalehoff, Jay Lipe, Selling to Big Companies, Jill Konrath, Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee, The Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Loyalty Marketing Blog, Jonathan Treiber, Harry Hoover, Jeff Quipp, WebProNews, SiteLab, Dana Todd, Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney Media Group

icerocket tags: brand-building, marketing strategy, TechTarget, Max Kalehoff, Jay Lipe, Selling to Big Companies, Jill Konrath, Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee, The Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries, Marketing Genius from Maple Creative, Skip Lineberg, Loyalty Marketing Blog, Jonathan Treiber, Harry Hoover, Jeff Quipp, WebProNews, SiteLab, Dana Todd, Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney Media Group

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Best of 2007: Marketing Research

How is online consumer behavior changing? Which SEO tools and techniques produce the best results—according to the experts who use them? Does advertising on social media sites really work? What do marketing professionals need to know about online video? Get the answers to these questions and more from this collection of some of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on marketing research.

There’s Still Room on the Web for Small E-Tailers by bMighty.com

Writer Fredric Paul cites a study showing that smaller web-based retailers have an opportunity to take share from more established sites by implementing solid SEO. Many larger e-tailers (and B2B vendors as well) have left the door open to more nimble competitors by failing to search optimize their own sites: "only 20 of the top sites were considered 'well-optimized' while another 20 qualified as 'moderately optimized.' On the other hand, 34 were 'nominally-optimized,' and 27 showed 'no signs of optimization.'"


The 18 Mistakes That Kill Start-Ups by Paul Graham

After pointing out that the single mistake almost universally responsible for the failure of start-up companies is "not making something users want," Paul Graham goes on to detail the "list of 18 things that cause startups not to make something users want," including picking a marginal niche, relying on a derivative idea, launching a new product or service too early, and "not wanting to get your hands dirty." Graham provides an excellent list of strategic mistakes to avoid for any start-up enterprise.


People Do Read Online -- Who Knew? by Marketing Interactions

After citing research showing that online readers are more likely to read an entire story, or a least a significant portion of it, in an online source than print, blogger Ardath Albee drives home the key takeaway from the research for marketers: "People want to read content that has benefit to them...a story about how their lives will change if they use your products, or even better, why they should disrupt the status quo and bother at all, in the first place."


Creativity & You by THINKing

Blogger Harry Hoover comments on the results of study into the roots of creativity. The good news is that we all have more creativity within us than we probably give ourselves credit for. Among the keys to unleashing that creativity are training, practice, and most importantly self-confidence.


Most Searchers Have Two Words for Google by Search Engine Watch

In this brief article, Enid Burns quotes research showing that two-word searches are most common across the major search engines, accounting for nearly a third of all searches. Searches using four or more words collectively account for about 26%. For SEOs, particularly in the B2B space, it's important to point out that although multi-word searches are less common than for shorter phrases, searchers using longer search terms usually have a much better notion of specifically what they are looking for, and—if they are potential buyers—are likely to be further along in their buying cycle.


Best SEO Resources, Practices & Conferences : Reader Poll Roundup by TopRank Online Marketing Blog

Search guru Lee Odden provides a mega-post detailing the results of 14 separate online polls tallying the votes of SEO professionals on questions such as how many conferences they attend each year, which online communication and networking tools they use most frequently, favorite keyword research tool, and best search marketing newsletter.


The writers of the MediaPost blogs also frequently do a great job of covering online research findings. Here are some of the best marketing research-related posts from MediaPost bloggers last year.

Happy World Internet Day by MediaPost Online Spin

Seana Mulcahy provides a brief history of the Internet, some interesting statistics, and her list of favorite web research-related sites.


Pure Viral Marketing - A Pipe Dream? by MediaPost Online Spin

Max Kalehoff notes research showing that viral marketing campaigns aren't like a pyramid, where you tell 10 friends, who each tell 10 friends, who each etc. until the entire planet has seen your content, but more like bouncing a basketball--if you throw the ball against the ground, you'll get a big first bounce, followed by a series of successively smaller bounces. The key to viral marketing success, therefore, lies in getting as big a first bounce as possible.


Advertising On Social Networks: Risk or Reward? by MediaPost Online Spin

Seana Mulcahy observes that while social media offers a powerful way to reach prospects, traditional advertising probably isn't the way to do it. "Web users do not view social networking sites as a place to buy products and services." Instead, marketers should view these sites as medium in which to track user feedback on their products and services, offer valuable content, and build relationships with prospects.


Generation Net-Obsessed by MediaPost Online Spin

This post provides some interesting statistics and observations about the "net generation," 16-to-29 year olds who have "grown up with computers, video games, the Internet, instant messaging, online music and the like." It provides that top ten themes of research on this generation, and not surprisingly notes that "77% of the net generation could live without television but could not live without Internet access."


Just An Online Minute… Web Video Watchers by Just an Online Minute

In this short but informative post, Wendy Davis provides some interesting data on who's watching online video, what type of content they watch most frequently, and how frequently they watch.


Online Debate #2 Today, As Survey Delves Into Who's Watching by Online Media Daily

Citing research into the use and consumption of online media for political campaigns, Les Luchter finds that although "traditional media reigned as the overall choice...for getting 2008 campaign news, with 86% planning to use TV and radio for info about the candidates, and 63.5% planning to use newspapers and magazines," online sources are becoming more important, and the demographic group most likely to tune in to online debates may surprise you.
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