81% of B2B Marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging

Read more: http://budurl.com/B2BMarketers

Well, who wouldn’t be challenged? There’s SEO and PPC. There’s managing the Twitterverse, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, blogging, plus monitoring your competitors and their key employees on all of the above. And on all the industry blogs and newsletters. Not to mention PR, trade shows, analyst meetings, branding and collateral, you know, the normal day-to-day marketing responsibilities.

Site optimization remains the most cost-effective marketing budget line item. Since ongoing SEO efforts and Google Analytics interpretation is so tough and so time-consuming, that’s an area you might want to look at outsourcing. It’s not as challenging if you have some help!

John Rasco

So, it was a pleasant surprise this past week to be super busy working on proposals and projects. I think some consistently positive economic news has generated a little confidence in the executive ranks, emboldening marketing folks to get going. Clients are now talking about branding and complete site redesigns, not just tweaks. That’s what we like to hear!

We always kick off the new year by looking at year-over-year stats for our clients, using Google Analytics to provide visual reinforcement for the gains of the past year. We’re really enjoying some of the bells and whistles in the new GA interface…one of the best is persistent dates and comparisons, which made these YOY comparisons a snap. (Googlers, please get busy on restoring email and PDF exports…our clients rely on getting these!)

Some of the new energy in the search marketing world is coming from Google+ and the emphasis on social search in their current direction. This should not have a significant impact on B2B marketers at present, but it’s a trend to watch. By all means, set up a Google+ page for your business, and learn about Circles, which is the clever organizational tool they’re using to help you filter your communications. Social marketing, whether it’s PR or your blog or now Google+, is creating links for your site in the biosphere of relationships and interconnectedness…your site needs to be an active part of the community
of your industry.

The continuing tweaks Google is making to the Panda release of their indexing shows more emphasis on freshness, on a positive user experience (especially page load times and engagement), and on quality. Sites with lots of ads at the top of the page are seeing their rankings go down. After all, a site visitor wants to see your content, not a bunch of AdWords ads. It’s always good when Google reinforces the message of quality…we’ve always been about quality content and thoughtful site architecture, so our clients’ rankings remain remarkably consistent, through change after change in the mighty Google algorithm.

The start of the year is a good time to revisit your web strategy. Have you opened up your site to mobile users? Are you migrating from Flash to HTML5, to the benefit of all those visitors using iPads or iPhones? How are you doing with your rankings? Are you missing opportunities because you’ve been complacent about reaching all the people searching? A fresh analysis of the Total Available Search Market™ right now can open up new possibilities for growth…and drive a brilliant 2012.

John Rasco

In an election year, I’m sorry to have to point out that the next version of this article is 12 long months away, leaving us only a few interim bright spots to enjoy: the Darwin awards, international Talk Like a Pirate day, and maybe your birthday. Oh, and don’t forget your anniversary!

Well, there’s also all the small victories of successful search marketing programs…and resurrecting the blog begins the process of improving our website’s relevance and boosting our own rankings. Marketers everywhere should resolve to add content as often as possible, as a simple, low cost way to stay in front of the “voters” who assist your financial race to the top.

RefreshWeb wishes you all a wonderful 2012.

Having worked in and run advertising agencies, one thing I miss about our focus on the research and analysis side of search marketing is the loss of having graphic designers as part of the team. Elliance has a portfolio which says they get to work with universities as a major segment of their practice, so they have a core clientele of really smart people. They also work in manufacturing (Rust Belt, after all), and with non-profits. They love storytelling, and create complete solutions. They look like really intelligent, passionate, educated marketers. And they’re also doing search marketing. Personally, I’d really like it if they were here in Austin. Professionally, I’m glad they’re very far away.

Part of the mix is a series of weekly infographics, with a focus on search marketing. Here’s a complete story in a single image…nice work, guys, and thanks for sharing.

An article in the new Fast Company explains that there is typically little, if any, accountability demanded of social media. And it’s interesting, in terms of actual prospects coming to your site, that the top metric most marketers are using is click-throughs, which shows you the dependence of marketing pros on paid search. While we understand the utility (and handy reporting) of PPC, we’d like to see lead gen and ROI as equally important.

After all, when you’re paying for clicks, and reporting click-throughs without disclosing bounce rates and time on the site, there’s very little real accountability. Since traffic is a direct effect of site optimization, we’re very glad to see that in the #2 position…because marketing drives traffic, and search marketing does it at less expense than any other medium.

Social media is an incredibly powerful thing with deep reserves of potential. There are most definitely people out there who have serious skills in utilizing it effectively to bring in revenue, strengthen brands, and respond to customers with agility. What so many people don’t seem to get is that those people aren’t social media experts – they’re marketing experts who use social media as one of their vehicles. If they weren’t marketing experts in the first place, they wouldn’t be able to do a thing with social media. It takes time, effort, failure, learning from mistakes and successes, and more effort to be an expert.

I’m not saying that people who say they’re Social Media Experts are malicious. Some are. Most of them are marketing people making themselves and their skillset more accessible to the people looking for it. Heck, I’ve been called one (which is funny to me), though it’s not a title I’d give myself. Do you need a social media expert as part of your marketing team? Maybe. But they had darn well better be a partner and advocate of the larger marketing strategy. How can they be effective if they aren’t on board with the vision, the message, the voice, and customer service? They absolutely must be honest about what to expect. A Facebook fan page will not be your salvation. Meeting up with your customers where they are and in ways that engage them will do wonders. That right there? That is a truly valuable asset to the team.

The most interesting change is the DOUBLING of the expectation that increased conversions are a reasonable measure of SMM effectiveness. In B2B marketing, there’s a tripling of the use of increased channel sales as a measure. It’ll be interesting to see how their marketing departments connect cause and effect on those sales!

To put all this in the proper context, consider this pull quote from the published results of the CMO Club Survey: “However, standard ROI metrics proved difficult to measure for many social efforts; only 40% of CMOs surveyed in 2011 successfully tracked ROI on their social initiatives.” Not saying it can’t be done, but it ain’t easy.

As of last Wednesday, Google is now showing the map itself over in the right-hand column, and the listings on the page MIX RESULTS FROM ORGANIC AND MAP LISTINGS. This is huge. Clients who weren’t very high on the map, but have great optimization, can suddenly find themselves #1 again. Happy days are here again for the SEO guys!

Previously, a Google search engine results page might show 2-3 ads at the top, then a map with 7 listings, and finally, the top organic listings. Historically, there were 10 organic listings on the page. Now, you see the ads, and then you march right in to the listings. Map listings will have a red circle with a letter, as well as a link to the “more info” on the map listing, and strong organic listings will have both…the title and description from the page, along with the address and phone number.

Caveat: Generally, these Google algorithm shifts throw everything into chaos for about six weeks, and then things settle back to normal. Hopefully, this is the new normal.