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Today I’d like to continue a discussion I started in my last blog post: “Marketing to the Human Psyche.”

To recap, neural scientists have discovered a link between social needs and survival, a link which could trigger prospects to react to our marketing efforts as if we were a rabid dog.

I know what you’re thinking: “The software we sell isn’t going to harm anyone’s social status. If anything, it will elevate their status when higher-ups in their organization see how much money, time, and/or resources our software saves them.”

That might be true, but before prospects buy your software, they need to buy your story, and logic won’t work if they perceive you as a threat.

There are some techniques –- i.e. qualities –- that a recent strategy+business article suggests can be used to keep the threat response in check. One such quality is certainty. As human beings we crave it, and when we don’t get it, the uncertainty registers as a gap in our brain, causing us to pause until the conflict is resolved.

As marketers, we need to understand that any conflict we create in the prospect’s mind will either slow down the sales process, or stop it altogether. To keep the momentum up, create the perception of certainty. Here are six tactics that will make prospects feel more certain about you and your product.

Certainty-Building Tactic #1: Case Studies

We always knew that case studies can sell, but maybe now we understand a little better why they work: Prospects that relate to the people in our stories gain a sense of familiarity about our product.

Since no two people are identical, however, we need to have a portfolio of case studies that address the industries, geographical regions, organizations, and types of people we serve.

IT folks working in a Windows shop will relate to stories about other Windows-centric IT folks working in similar-sized organizations, government workers will relate to case studies that highlight other government workers, and so forth.

Certainty-Building Tactic #2: Analogies and comparisons

If you’re selling a bleeding-edge product, try to create a sense of familiarity by comparing yourself to a product or concept that was once unfamiliar, too.

Remember when we feared online banking? Nowadays, we don’t give it a second thought. If you can relate your product to something else that once conjured up similar feelings of uneasiness, you’ll help prospects “see” that your product isn’t as far-fetched as one might think.

Certainty-Building Tactic #3: Slower, more manageable steps

Nobody wants to have their name associated with a failed project, especially these days when budgets and job security weigh heavily on our minds. Marketers that sell large-scale, enterprise solutions can create a sense of certainty by helping prospects visualize a path to success.

Here again, case studies work because you can tell stories about how other clients achieved success by breaking down a large project into manageable chunks that fed off incremental successes.

Another way to accomplish this is to develop product offerings that let people buy only what they need right now, while at the same time showing them how your product will grow with them. In effect, people don’t want to buy a super-sized meal when all they need is a mid-afternoon snack.

Certainty-Building Tactic #4: Your own skin

Put some of your own skin in the game by finding ways to show prospects that you believe in your own product.

Money-back guarantees, technical support, and training are just a few good faith efforts that will make them feel more certain about their decision to go with you and your product.

Certainty-Building Tactic #5: Communities

While case studies are great, you can’t ask questions, and there’s always the suspicion that the story glosses over less-desirable bits.

Marketers can eliminate doubts by building into their website a means by which readers can send an e-mail or chat with the people in your stories.

Of course, this requires a bigger investment on your case study participants’ part, so if that seems unreasonable, set up an online community where prospects can freely discuss you and your product with existing customers.

Certainty-Building Tactic #6: An online sandbox

Remember how you felt when you installed Microsoft Office 2007? Despite the fact that I had been using Word for 20 odd years(!?), Word 2007, I found, was extremely unfamiliar and frustrating.

Let’s not follow Microsoft’s lead. Many software companies already offer free trials, but even then, people have to take the time to install the software; a task which can quickly become a roadblock to the sale.

If your software supports it, why not create a sandbox online where people can play with your product? The sandbox environment can be an extremely powerful tactic because 1) it makes it incredibly easy for prospects to demo your product to other people in their organization, and 2) it gives you unique insight into how customers actually use your product.

Stay tuned for my next blog post on November 17th, where I’ll cover the second psychological quality that will keep the rabid dog response at bay.

Sue Anderson-Lenz
Marketing Lure, Inc.

“The best thing is to do the right thing.

The next best thing is to do the wrong thing

The worst thing is to do nothing.”

I have no idea who said this originally but it’s a quote I heard often from one of my more memorable bosses. If you think about it long enough it can give you a headache – because after all sometimes “nothing” is the “right thing”, but over the years I’ve found there’s lots of validity to this statement – especially in marketing.

And most of us are guilty of “doing nothing” to a certain extent. For example, here it is October and it feels like I haven’t done half the things I set out to do this year. I’ve even let my blog posting lapse inexcusably. Yep, like you I’ve been busy.

But enough about my excuse.

What about you? How is your marketing going?

Even if you’re incredibly well organized and have plenty of time to think about marketing, when you have a lot of options – and the wrong option could cost you a mint – it’s easy to get paralyzed by not knowing what to do. That this is a widespread problem is evidenced by the number of business leaders who ask us the question: “What should I do next?”

I take this question as a sign of good leadership. It means you’re determined to get the most sales & profits possible from your products or services – you don’t want to leave money on the table. You just want to do the right thing next.

Maybe I can help.

Here’s what I would do if you asked me to help you figure out what to do next.

First I’d take a look at your current situation.

1. How much traffic are you getting to your website right now?
2. How many visitors stay there and do something?
3. How many become customers?
4. What’s your current cost of acquisition – for trials and customers?

With this info in hand, I’d ask another question:

Do you need more traffic or do you need to more efficiently turn the traffic you already have into paying customers?

If the answer is “more traffic”, I’d look at what you’re currently doing to drive traffic to your site. How can we enhance that? I’d also look at what you’re not doing. Are you missing some big opportunities?

If the answer is “more efficient customer conversion”, I’d look for the weakest links in your process and test alternatives until we get the best results.

It’s really no more complicated than that.

So, if you’re wondering what marketing step you should take next, do one of two things.

1. Work yourself through the process I just outlined above, or
2. Call me – our phone number is 310-356-6060.

Most importantly, just do something.

Perry Marshall, long thought of as THE guru for Adwords (Google pay-per-click) marketing, has an interesting post on his blog titled “Sometimes Google AdWords is the least effective way to reach your target customer.” In it he mentions four situations in which other marketing tactics (email being one) can be more effective than search.

These four non-search marketing situations are:

Situation #1: When you’re a manufacturer selling parts in large lots to other manufacturers.

As an example, when running a campaign for just such a client, Perry found that a Google Adwords campaign produced mostly consumers wanting to buy the part in single or very low quantities. Not surprisingly the campaign didn’t pay off.

Situation #2: When you’re selling high-end equipment, software or services to high level executives and low level people are a waste of time.

I’d like to add an emphasis on the last half of that sentence: and low level people are a waste of time.

Often said low-level people are assigned initial research duty and it pays to be visible to them to get your name on the long list. We advise clients to be sure this isn’t the case with their product or service before completely abandoning the idea of finding value in search marketing.

Situation #3: When you sell a product or service that solves a problem people don’t even realize they have.

This is bsolutely true. If people aren’t looking for you online, you’re going to have to generate awareness and demand for the overall solution first.

Situation #4: When your buyers are beyond the intro phase, know where they want to go online and are spending time on subject-specific websites instead of searching.

I think this is more of keyword issue than anything else. The more specific your keywords, the closer to purchase your buyers will be. At that point maybe they have left search behind and are more easily found on an industry website. This is where the Google content network – handled correctly – can pay off.

A little testing will answer that question for you.

Over the past half-decade of helping clients attract more leads and customers with search marketing, I’ve occasionally spoken to people for whom pay per click or search engine optimization just isn’t the best approach. The most important question to ask and answer is a fairly obvious one: are my prospects searching for my solution online?

If the answer is yes, go with it.

Technorati Tags: search, seo, search engine optimization, ppc, pay per click, email marketing

I admit it, I wasn’t a big fan of social media marketing, that is, until yesterday.

Yesterday is the day I realized how much I can positively influence my 14-year-old, boy-crazy niece who lives 500 miles away from me, and yesterday is when I realized how much my 14-year-old niece is like everybody else us marketers set our sights on when we jumped on the social media bandwagon.

You see, both 14-year-old girls and potential customers want to be in control. My niece doesn’t like being bossed around by big sis or Mom. Likewise, customers don’t like being told what to do. Both want to make up their own minds — on their own time — even when it comes to subjects that are new or unfamiliar to them.

Lectures and any attempts to control will build walls that grow higher with time. Keep nagging, and they’ll eventually push back, ignore you altogether, or start lying just to get you off their back.

So what does all this have to do with social media marketing?

Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites create an opportunity where you can open up honest lines of communication between you and the public.

Sure, teenage girls might yell “I hate you!” when they’re being rebellious, and customers might post negative things about you when they’re frustrated with your company. In the long run, however, none of this matters. What matters is how you respond to their frustrations.

Horizon Group Management’s recent lawsuit response to a negative tweet is an example where the reaction could end up doing more harm than good. Absolutely I agree Bonnen should have shown some restraint when it came to her twittering about alleged mold in her apartment, but even if Horizon wins their lawsuit, what have they gained?

There’s now more than 9500 references on the Internet for “horizon mold tweet” yet Horizon continues to stand behind their decision to sue. My niece, on the other hand, is beginning to open up to me through Facebook.

Teenagers need parental authority, but we can’t just tell customers to “go to their room” whenever they have an issue with us. Maybe, just maybe, Horizon could have avoided the whole PR nightmare with a social-friendly response.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.  

What’s the most important factor of success in any search marketing effort? The right keywords. Without them, nothing else matters. And yet so many people just want take the first words that come to mind and call it done.

But you’re too smart for that, right?

Steps for discovering potential keywords are much the same regardless of whether you intend to use those keywords for organic listings (SEO) or paid listings (pay per click advertising). But the criteria for choosing the best words is different.

In this post I’m going to talk about choosing the right words for search engine optimization.

To state the obvious, you want keywords that attract the right people in the right numbers. There are five factors that affect this.

1. Relevance.

One of the most rewarding things about search marketing is its ability to put you in touch with people who are actively looking for you. No other marketing tactic does this as well. Keywords tell you exactly what the searcher is looking for. That should be you – or your product or service.

If the keyword isn’t relevant to what you’re offering, your listing might get viewed by a lot of people; but they aren’t going to click on it.

2. Popularity.

No surprise here. You need enough people looking for a particular keyword to make it worth the effort to get a page one ranking. Showing up on the first page of Google for a keyword with no search volume is like placing first in a race with only one contestant – so what.

This point is so obvious you might wonder why I even bring it up. It’s because nearly everyday I talk to people who are so obsessed with top rankings they don’t bother to look at the search volume. As Eric Gerds mentioned in a previous article on this blog, it’s easy to get ranked number one for Limburger cheese socks.

3. Used by your prospects.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when selecting keywords is to choose the words you would use to find your product. Since you are not your target market, that’s no good. Get out of your own head and into the heads of your customers and prospects to find the words they use.

You can find these keywords and phrases in a number of places. Start by asking your sales people, customer service and technical support staff, and anyone else who interacts with your customers. Talk to your customers yourself. Look at your web analytics. They’ll show you what words people have used to find you in the past.

4. Achievable.

Some keywords have so much aggressive competition you could kill yourself trying to get ranked for them. Don’t bother. Instead, add some qualifiers to the phrase and work on ranking for that. Search volume might be less but would you rather be in the top three listings for a phrase with 5000 searches or a higher than 200 listing for a phrase with 50,000 searches?

Here’s an example. “Credit card payments” might be tough. “Credit card payments online” is more achievable. (And potentially more relevant).

5. Profitability.

Ultimately, whatever keywords you choose must be those that drive traffic with the potential, desire and means to buy your product. This is another place your web analytics might be able to help you. Can you track traffic from specific keywords directly to a purchase?

You can also use pay-per-click advertising to find out if certain keywords have good potential. Run a quick Google campaign to see if those keyword phrases drive visitors who turn into qualified leads or buyers.

It takes some effort to find the right keywords, and it’s worth it.

Technorati Tags: keywords, seo, search engine optimization

Curious about how other business-to-business marketers are investing marketing dollars in 2009? Here is some info that will interest you. This comes from a study, “B-to-B Marketing in 2009: Trends in Strategies and Spending,” conducted at the end of 2008 by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research. The study surveyed 656 marketing management pros in a variety of business-to-business companies.

Competition hangs tough.

With a bad economy weighing heavily on everyone, b-to-b marketers seemed willing to tough it out. 25% planned to increase their budgets in 2009 and 41% said their budgets would stay the same. You could think of it this way: 66% of your competitors aren’t going anywhere. 

B-to-B looks online.

Almost one half of the marketers surveyed (47%) planned to increase spending on company websites and search marketing. This is a very good move and one that we recommend to our clients constantly – first get your website in shape and then get visible to the search engines. Interestingly, only 13% of these marketers said they thought company websites were an effective marketing tactic. I must assume this is because most b-to-b websites seriously underperform. (Read about the 7 critical components of a high performance website).

Beyond the website and search marketing, 42% of b-to-b marketers said they planned to increase spending on online videos, podcasts or rich media; 41% planned to spend more on webinars; 39% were going to spend more on email. And 36% were preparing to increase spending on discussion forums, social networks and communities.

Offline loses.

Not surprisingly, the tactics that most b-to-b marketers planned to cut were in the offline world – what we think of as “conventional” marketing. This is a trend that has been going on for a while. The percentage of marketers planning to make cuts in this area looked like this: print advertising (55%), TV advertising (51%), radio (48%), trade shows and conferences (43%) and sponsorships (40%). 

Some tactics were projected to maintain the same level of funding: blogs (58%) inside sales/telemarketing (54%) and public relations (53%).

What should you do?

I’ve given my 3 steps for accelerating marketing effectiveness in previous articles on this blog, and they’re worth repeating again. We know they work because we implement them for clients day in and day out with substantial and cost-effective results.

1. Fix your website. I have two things to say about this: 1) your website is a critical part of your marketing program – it’s either helping you or hurting you, and 2) unfortunately, chances are high it’s hurting you. 
   
   
2.  Get visible on the search engines. Prospects are actively looking for you. They’re going to find your competitors. Shouldn’t they find you too? As more and more of your competitors pour online, this may become more challenging but no less important.  
    
3. Nurture the leads that aren’t ready to buy yet. Nearly every company I talk with has a collection of forgotten prospects – those website visitors or inquiries that weren’t ready to talk to a sales person. Many will buy sooner or later. You already know who they are; now do your best to make sure they buy from you. While others spend money generating new traffic, you’ll be ahead of the game.

The steps I’ve outlined here are not only effective, they’re also measurable – meaning you can tell exactly what you’re getting for your money. If you want some help getting started or getting to the next level, check out the website development, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization and lead nurturing programs from Tatum Marketing. Or just give me a call.

Technorati Tags: b-to-b, business-to-business, online marketing, websites, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, lead nurturing, lead development

This is the third in a series of articles on building your own word-of-mouth link campaign. To start at the beginning read Looking Differently at Links.

Social Networks & Blogs

Social networks – such as Live Journal, My Space, Facebook and many others – is a complex topic and each one offers a great number of possibilities to promote your company.  The basic idea comes down to the fact that a lot of people come to these sites and hang out there regularly. Social networks and blogs are a great way to find a target market group, but remember – just like groups and forums – you need to contribute to the group, not just market to them. 

Social networks are considered separate from websites on the internet, especially in searches. How often do you see Facebook content come up on a Google search results page?  Additionally social network have their own internal search systems that provide results from within their own pages. This means that when someone is on Facebook and does a Facebook search they are only going to find information available on Facebook. An internal search won’t find a regular webpage. This is why many companies have MySpace pages to supplement their regular website.

There is much controversy about the value of social networks for companies – especially those providing business-to-business products and services. It’s true that placing a company on the social networks is not for every business out there, but it is something to consider – especially for specialty companies selling to the general public.

Online Magazines and Articles

There are an amazing number of online magazines and other outlets where you can post news and articles. Writing an article to be published and referenced by others is a tremendous source of buzz and can drive a great number of people to your website. 

Keep in mind that it takes more than just a single article to generate traffic through this method. It requires a steady output to see results.  And, your articles need to be more than just press releases for your company. Articles need to contain the sort of information people will use and want to share with others. 

The advantage of this system is that you only need to focus writing the articles. The distribution is done by other people. The challange is that you have to be (or hire) a skilled writer with something to say, and you have to find someone interested in publishing your articles.

E-mail 

I want to make it clear that I am not talking about spam. E-mail is a wonderful and very powerful promotional tool, but it can be easily abused. There are many good ways to use email without getting a bad name.

The most basic type of e-mail promotion is a simple electronic newsletter system, where people sign up for information and can cancel their subscription themselves whenever they wish. This tactic is used extensively by everyone from large well-known retailers, such as Borders and Sephora who send out graphically heavy html messages containing discounts and specials, to local quilt shops letting their customers know about upcoming classes with simple text messages. This is a very low manpower system that can generate an amazing amount of traffic and sales on your website. 

Even every day email can be used to generate links. I am shocked that anyone forgets one of the simplest things possible with e-mail: place a link to your website within the signature portion of your e-mails. The e-mail signature can contain everything from the sender’s name to business hours to the company legal statement. Think of the total number of e-mails that your company generates. Each one has the potential of being a small advertisement for your company. 

Are the sites and ideas I’ve mentioned over the last few articles the only places to pursue a word-of-mouth web campaign?  Of course not, but it is enough information to get started and to help you think about different ways of publicizing your business and your website on the internet. Time spent reaching out every day will snowball you into real success.

Technorati Tags: email, link building, word-of-mouth, seo

I’ve been talking about building a word-of-mouth link program and in this article I’ll take a closer look at places your potential buyers might hang out and what to do when  you find them.

Message Boards

Message boards are really old school; they predate blogs and other social networks. They began in the 1980s back in the beginnings of the internet, and they are still around and used by people to share information and socialize. Think of them as group blogs where one person makes a comment and others then respond to those comments. 

When you find a message board that attracts your target audience, start by creating an account with a link to your website. If the board lets members create custom signatures – a little text and maybe a graphic at the bottom of each message – go for it. That can be a plug for your website.

Once you are a member you need to participate. Read over the messages and comment on the topics being discussed.  If you have new information or questions of your own create your own posts. As people read your information they will discover you and your website. Warning: do not spam the board with advertising. At best it will be ignored. At worst it can create a negative impression of your business, as well as get you banned from the board. 

Yahoo & Google Groups

Like message boards, both Yahoo and Google have their own groups covering a wide range of topics. Find the topics which best suite your company and, just like on the message boards, go ahead and join in. 

Both Yahoo and Google limit the number of groups that you can join in one day, so it might take a week or more before you join all the groups you’ve picked out. Before joining any group make sure it is active. If no one has posted comments for over a month, then the group may not be worth your time. 

Yahoo Groups also has a place to post a permanent link in each group you belong to, once you are a member of the group. Like the message boards slowly comment and post information within these groups to build up a following and lead people to your site. 

Web directories

These are websites which are nothing more than a giant list of links with descriptions but they have the websites organized by subject matter. You should be able to request a spot in the directories without any problems. However, if the directory is not professionally run, the updating process may take a long time – so be patient.

Now do be careful because some web directories are nothing more than a scam. There are a great number of possible scams involving web directories and the most common one is insisting that you pay to have your link posted. Do not pay, no matter how low cost as you will not get a return on that investment and it could be a phishing expedition for your ID. 

There is an exception to this rule. It can be worth paying for a listing on a web directory that’s run by a membership organization such as the Better Business Bureau. With membership organizations there are benefits beyond the web listing that make them worthwhile. 

In the next article, I’ll look at social networks and blogs, online magazines, and email.

Technorati Tags: seo, word of mouth, link building

Sometimes it helps to look beyond our own industries to discover what marketing tactics others are using successfully. According to an OMMA research brief, a recently published Forrester report, called Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report, provides a good opportunity to do that. 

Amidst all of the data included in the report, two things have real significance for non-retail marketers.  Online retailers are using: 

1. Search engine marketing (SEM) for customer acquisition and 
2. Email for customer retention.

If you’re interested in the numbers, SEM is the marketing tactic most often mentioned as an effective acquisition tactic (83%). Search engine optimization is the second most frequently mentioned tactic (51%). And affiliate programs come in third (41%). Email is the most frequently mentioned successful overall marketing tactic (89%).

This is not terribly different from what we find successful in the non-retail world. While search engine marketing alone is rarely – if ever – the only tactic needed to acquire a new customer, it is by far the most effective and efficient way to start the process. Unless of course no one is looking for your product or solution, which is a different challenge altogether.

Business-to-business company owners and marketers often come to us torn between conventional lead generation programs – direct mail, email, or telemarketing – and online search or advertising programs. Our advice is nearly always the same: 

Start with search.

The reason is really simple. When people are actively searching for a product or solution like yours, you are relevant. You do not have to fight a bunch of noise for their attention. They are looking for you. Your only competition is the other marketers taking advantage of the search situation.

There is also a simple reason online retailers don’t find email marketing to be among the most effective customer acquisition tactics. When email is used for initial engagement, it faces a big list of obstacles. At the top of that list are delivery issues and competition from everything else in the prospects inbox. In the business-to-business world, this can literally be hundreds of other email messages. 

This is not to say that email isn’t useful. In fact, it often plays a major role in successful non-retail marketing campaigns. Not only can we use it for customer retention – as the online retailers do – we also need it for lead development. 

In the non-retail world, most purchases are multi-stage. You are not, for example, going to be able to use a search marketing campaign alone to sell an expensive software application or consulting relationship. We know that a high percentage of prospects (75% to 80% or more) are not going to be ready to buy when they first make contact with your company. Email is a great way to build and maintain an on-going relationship and turns those semi-interested visitors into real leads.

 So, you need both – search marketing and email – for an effective new customer marketing program. You also need a great website and consistent conversion optimization, but those are subjects for a different article.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, conversion, customer acquisition, lead generation

In my last article I talked about inbound links and how, rather than just putting links onto random websites, it would be better to create what I call a word-of-mouth link campaign. In a word-of-mouth link campaign, instead of just going for a large volume of links, the focus is on creating links that will drive real people to your site.

Let’s skip over Pay-Per-click campaigns and other forms of paid advertising and just talk about soliciting free links.  Links from unpaid independent people and web pages are worth more those you buy, and these can be generated by getting people interested in talking about your business and your site. 

In other words, you want to get a ‘buzz’ going about your website. And you want to get that buzz going in the right places. Just as a major studio that’s marketing an action movie isn’t going to advertise in a gardening magazine, you want to avoid wasting time on places that don’t attract your prospects.

So, the first step when starting a word-of-mouth link campaign is researching where your potential customers and clients hang out. These are websites, blogs, message boards and other locations where your potential customers go to look for information related to your subject.  

Start by looking at your bookmarked web pages and talking to co-workers and friends to find out where the latest and greatest information related to your site is located. Because this is your company and your own area of expertise it shouldn’t take too long to come up with an impressive list of different type of sites and groups. 

You can start your link building as soon as you find one one good spot. You don’t need to create a five page plan with every location detailed before you start.

Over the next few articles, I’m going to talk about the different types of locations where your target audience might be, and what to do with these locations once you find them. Briefly, here’s what I’ll cover:

• Message boards 
• Yahoo & Google Groups 
• Web directories 
• Social Networks & Blogs 
• Online Magazines and Articles 
• E-mail 

 

You are going to be sending a lot of emails out for this process, and you might want to create a new e-mail account just for your word-of-mouth link buildling efforts. Unfortunately, going through this process can generate a large amount spam in your inbox.  

Next week I’ll take a closer look at message boards.

Meanwhile, if this seems like a lot of work to you, you’re right! An effective link-building campaign is very time consuming but it’s critical both for generating direct traffic and for getting high rankings on the search engines. If you’d like some help, Tatum Marketing is a great place to turn. Check out our Search Engine Optimization programs.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, inbound links, link building campaign, traffic generation