1. Content Marketing

Content marketing continues to be on the rise and has become a staple of many a successful B2B marketing plan.  If you are not creating compelling fresh content for your online presence on a regular basis, then starting now is great step towards building the groundwork for forwarding your cause and moving up the organic search ladder.  The content on your web presence is vitally important and without being well thought out and executed, and then continually grown with fresh information, just results in a wasted opportunity.

 Content should:

• Have cohesive messaging and a consistent brand. Everyone in your organization should be on the same page as far as approach and how you portray your team. Defining your messaging sets you apart.
• Be Magnetic! The content that you create should be enlightening & engaging. Your content is the currency to developing a relationship with potential prospects.
• Be planned strategically with specific keyword use in mind. Keyword research executed by an SEO specialist preferably with domain market experience that can identify optimization opportunities is a must.  Not all content such as blogs and articles can be keyword rich but utilizing them where you can will work in your favor.
• Be added regularly. In house knowledge and insight is great to have in your content but outsourcing content creation to industry experts is a widely accepted solution to continually adding fresh new content to your web properties.

 Content can be in the form of:

• New industry, product or solution focused pages.
• Blogs, articles, whitepapers, case studies, eBooks or guides
• Webinars & videos
• Shorter length tips or features snippets aimed at the bust attention span challenged executive.

2.  Marketing Automation

With the lack of quality indicators in lead generation efforts, “The more leads the better” philosophy seemed to be prevalent. This has at times resulted in an abundance of leads that overwhelmed the sales department distracting them from the actual task of selling. Of course, the marketing department bears the brunt of the blame for supplying less than stellar leads and wasting valuable sales time. Third party online marketers with no domain experience are notorious for generating the big numbers that often end up eating up resources and producing nominal results.

Marketing automation platforms have spent the last few years maturing and many companies are now adopting this technology and taking their marketing efforts to the next level with lead scoring, segmented nurture email campaigns and online campaigns. While learning and managing these powerful tools is often complex at the outset,   they are enabling us to identify the sales-ready leads sooner and add the earlier stage, lower scoring leads to a well thought out nurture program until they advance to the later stages of the buying cycle.

With marketing automation software, managing a large number of demand generated leads becomes, well, manageable, allowing your seasoned sales staff to focus on the deals that are happening now and identifying the prospects that should be closely monitored coming down the pipeline.

The leads that you garner from enriching your web properties with valuable content and utilizing lead capture strategies can now be leveraged, qualified and closed more efficiently through marketing automation software.  Multiple market surveys amongst technology partners show a rising trend in companies shifting their marketing budgets from traditional marketing methods to content marketing and marketing automation. Consider these strategies as you grow your marketing plan.

It became apparent a number of years ago that partners, on average, do great work in putting in complex business systems under very stressful circumstances and happy customers were more than willing to pass the word.  Almost all of these referrals (up to 50% of all new closed business) were generated without any additional effort from the partner.  The downside was that many partners where exhibiting behaviors that were “anti-referral” and thus reduced the potential for attracting new business.

Here are the top 7 things we have found partners consistently do or believe that prevent a higher percentage of business from being generated by their loyal client base.

#1 – You Assume You Have Mindshare

Since you did great work at the client’s site, you assume the client will recommend you to their contacts or colleagues without any additional effort on your part.  The trouble with this belief is that your clients are just as busy as you are and most will forget about your work in a very short period of time.  It’s all about frequency of the reminder.  Each of your employees should be asking throughout your client’s organization and throughout the year for referrals.  Consider them human “fridge magnets” that keep your company top of mind.

#2 – It’s The Job of Sales

Most employees don’t think it is part of their job to market on behalf of the firm.  There are a lot of reasons why this is believed, none of them are valid.  It’s everyone’s job.

#3 – You Believe You Only Have to Ask Once

Asking can be hard and often comes with a fear of rejection.  It is neither difficult nor is there much chance of being rejected.  Remember that mindshare is important and the message needs to be delivered at a reasonable frequency to be effective.

#4 – We’re Too Busy Now

A lot of us put out the message, either consciously or not, that we are too busy.  We are always in a hurry and the stress levels are high.  As a result, most of our clients think we don’t need the work.  Some clients will get protective of your services thinking that if you get a new client there will be less time for them!  Stop acting so busy and let your clients know, there’s always room for one more great client like them.

#5 – It’s Not Part of Everyday Business

This reason is related to #2.  Most of our employees haven’t been asked to do this type of work and have therefore not incorporated it into their daily activities.  Now’s a good time to change that behavior!

#6 – But I Don’t Know How to Ask

Either the timing was wrong or I just don’t know what to say, are common phrases used by consultants that can’t seem to get the words out.  Don’t sweat it.  This is normal.  Create your own words, find the right people to ask and the rest will happen.  Practice with someone else and make it a habit.

#7 – It’s Scary

Most of us fear rejection.  This is completely understandable.  What is worth noting here is that when we ask for a referral, we shouldn’t be expecting an immediate answer.  Great if it happens, but your primary job is to make the “ask” and pass the message that we are open for business.  You are the human fridge magnet.  Keep it as simple as that and the results will happen.

SALESWORKS has rolled out a program designed entirely for Partners to turn their businesses into a referral engine. Learn more about what the Referral Program can do for your business: http://www.salesworks.com/store/sales-referral-program-kit/

With the exception of the past couple years, the ERP/CRM sector has been blessed with a long growth run that produced a predictable stream of engaging prospects looking to either implement or change their business systems. Then all of a sudden the quality leads stopped coming. So what happened? A lot happened; and it will get worse, not better, moving forward.
Buying psychology and buyer behavior have significantly changed over the past 2-3 years, with prospects increasingly preferring a self-serve/trial engine experience over a direct sales conversation. This change has radically impacted how and when prospects engage with partners, effectively pushing their personal contact out to the end of their buying process; when they need a price. So we now have active buyers with funded projects that are reluctant to raise their hands and engage in a mutual discovery process (which is where we have historically established differentiation and bias).

But there’s more. In addition to many prospects engaging with us later and later in their buying cycles, partners and software publishers are intercepting prospects earlier and earlier in their research process through the intelligent use of SEO, SEM and gated forms. Low-level researchers who exchange their contact information for intriguing whitepapers are subsequently interrogated by increasingly desperate sales professionals driving a BANT (budget, authority, need and timing) agenda. And when the answers to a predictable set of self-serving qualification questions are found lacking, the prospect is summarily dismissed or discarded (followed shortly thereafter by a barely supressed “this lead is crap”).

So instead of receiving a predictable stream of quality leads from our vendors/publishers we must now contend with a reduced number of legitimate prospects that are increasingly allergic to sales professionals, and a larger volume of early stage researchers that can’t satisfy the most basic qualification criteria. What’s worse is that this trend will accelerate as trial engines become easier to navigate and social media continues to drive greater transparency into product capabilities and shortcomings.

Many ERP/CRM sales professionals have neglected their prospecting, networking and referral activities over the years and are now facing anemic pipelines as the quantity and quality of leads has declined. Now is not a time to sit and wait for a software publisher to point the lead hose back in your direction as those days are gone forever. Develop your own personal marketing campaigns through LinkedIn, prospect industry events, non-competitive referral relationships (and others), then dedicate 60-90 minutes each and every day to building and nurturing your own prospects. And if the leads still turn out to be crap……well, at least then you have every right to complain, because they were yours.

In the B2B sector referrals have been underutilized. There are countless excuses as to why referrals won’t work, but what about the reasons why they will? When someone comes to you  on the recommendation of a colleague, they already have an expectation that you can help them. The sale becomes that much easier because your credibility has already been established. Who wouldn’t want this kind of lead in their pipeline?

The thing is, not a lot of businesses in B2B are actively asking for referrals. The key to success in gaining these warm referral leads is to know how to get people talking about you, and this can be a steep hill to climb when you don’t know how and where to begin.

If you’re going after referrals it’s easy to make these top 3 mistakes:

1. Asking Once
   You ask for referrals once, and when nothing comes through you close the book on your attempts at generating referral leads. Asking for referrals isn’t a passive activity. Your request won’t stay top of mind forever.
2. Desperation
   Asking too many times and through improper methods. You don’t want to come off desperate and if you breach the idea of referrals when it isn’t warranted you will have missed out on an opportunity down the line.
3. Poorly Communicating Your Business
   When asking for referrals you give too little or too much information about what you do. If you’re asking contacts outside of your work environment for referrals you need to provide them with enough information about how you can help their network, or else they won’t tell anyone about you.  Similarly, don’t overload them with minute details of your business that they’re unlikely to understand.

Don’t fall victim to these mistakes! Discover the step-by-step process of successfully attaining referrals.

SALESWORKS has developed a referral methodology specifically for the B2B environment that takes away all of the guesswork. Learn more about what the Referral Program can do for your business: http://www.salesworks.com/store/sales-referral-program-kit/

If your company is acquired or merges with another organization, often times you will need to migrate one website over to another. There are several options available, but they aren’t all equal.

1) Individual 301 URL Redirects

For best results, set up 301 redirects from each of your existing pages to their corresponding pages on the new website.

http://www.old-domain.com/microsoft_nav.htm

should be 301 redirected to

http://www.new-domain.com/microsoft-dynamics-nav.php

This will maximize SEO and the customer experience. Links pointing to your current NAV page will now point to the new website’s NAV page in the eyes of Google.

2) Wildcard 301 Redirects

The second best option is to  setup a wildcard 301 redirect which redirects all traffic (and links) from your old site to the new homepage.

Additional reading: http://www.stepforth.com/

3) Domain Registrar Redirection

A last resort is to redirect at the domain registrar, with either a 301 or a 302 redirect. You need a 301 redirect (permanent) in order to preserve link juice; a 302 redirect (temporary) will not provide the same results.

Additional reading: http://www.domaininform.net/forwarding.html

Question: Did I move my domain correctly?

You can use a tool to check the server headers after the redirect is in place.

If you did it correctly, when you look up any URL on your old server you should see this: SERVER RESPONSE: 301 Moved Permanently

If not, you could be losing out on SEO link juice.

But there’s good news. Although finding and evaluating potential link building partners isn’t easy, there are opportunities to automate components of the process. Sure, all link building campaigns require a human touch (it’s hard for a computer to send personalized outreach emails, unless you have C-3PO on staff), but other elements can be aided by a computer.

To help you, here are 5 tools to automate the link building process so that you can focus what you do best: becoming a human link building machine.

Backlink Data Mining

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a user friendly tool that displays data on authority, links and anchor text. It also allows you to run comparison reports on page metrics, subdomains and root domains.  This is great for identifying link metrics and determining the quality and value of potential link partners.  Open Site also enables competitor comparison reports, so you can determine where a competitor is receiving its inbound links.  In most cases, there will be an opportunity for you to obtain links from these same sources.

Browser Extensions

SEO Quake

SEO Quake is an analytic SEO-tool for Firefox and Google Chrome that helps obtain information within a variety of parameters for any site you visit, including page rank, Google index, Alexa ranking, and others. With one human-powered click you can assess the value of a backlink for each search result while never leaving the site. .  For advanced users, you can also create your own parameters.

SEOMoz Toolbars

Another toolbar add-on, the “MozBar” provides access to many on-page SEO factors at a glance.  Available for Firefox and Chrome, it analyzes detailed metrics like page and domain authority, and inbound links and even enables customizable searching. It also highlights no-followed, followed, internal, external links, and keywords; and can compare link metrics for Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Databases and Link Prospecting

BuzzStream for Link Building

BuzzStream’s link building tool focuses on link building functionality from prospecting to tracking, reporting, relationship building and management.

Key features include the following:

• Link Prospecting
• Link Reporting and Tracking
• Contact Management
• IMAP Email Integration
• Buzzmarker – Link Bookmarking Tool

One of the best features of BuzzStream is its Buzzmarker – Link Bookmarking Tool, which automates the task of visiting each page in a website and compiling data.

Once installed, visit any website and click the Link Buzzmarker extension:

You’ll see a window like this pop up:

Within this window is all your pre-compiled prospect information, including contact info, social networks and even metrics (i.e. page rank).

Within its web app, BuzzStream provides further value by enabling users to prioritize prospects, set task reminders (i.e. to send follow-up emails), identify the Relationship Stage (e.g. Not Started, Attempting to Reach, Link Accepted, Link Rejected, etc.), and even research prospects with up to 20 keywords and keyphrases.

It provides an easy-to-use interface for managing partnerships from its Link Partners tab:

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a Twitter research tool that allows you to search Twitter bios for specific keywords or URLs. Let’s say that we are building links for a CRM website. Go to Followerwonk and search for “CRM”. You will receive a long list of Twitter names that include “CRM” in their bios. Sort these by friend count, follower count, or relevance and gather as many link prospects as possible that fit your market.  You can also download your results in CSV/Excel format.

This is by no means an exhaustive list and merely scrapes the surface of the number of tools available to help you automate your link building activities. But hopefully it will give you an idea of where to start.

Note: Use of these tools requires an individual user assessment to determine their suitability. Salesworks does not recommend using these products without conducting your own due diligence.

Many times, email marketing is the primary form of marketing aB2B organization pursues – but does it perform?

Email marketing takes about a quarter of a marketing department’s time, but the sad reality is that B2Bs have an open rate of roughly 24%, and a click through rate of only 2%.[i]  So should you abandon email marketing? NO! But there are tips that can make your email marketing campaigns more effective.

1. Content is key. Be a thought leader with a compelling topic; if you write it, they will come…
2. Sharing is caring! Not only will quality content increase your click through rate, it also has a better shot at being shared on social networks. Include buttons for easy sharing at the end of your email.
3. Less is more. Keep copy short and to the point, and make sure your best stuff is near the top.
4. Draw them in with a short, intriguing subject line. Convey your superior knowledge in 55 characters or less to have a better chance at enticing readers to open your email.
5. Scrub that data! Clean up your database and segment your lists – this will allow you to target and personalize your messages.
6. Timing is everything, so hit them where it counts. Avoid first thing Monday morning – no one’s had their coffee yet, and they’re still mourning the loss of the weekend. Tuesday between 10 am and 1 pm is best, but tracking metrics will be your best insight into finding out what times work for your business.
7. Don’t overload your audience! We’ve already established the abundance of messaging out there, so pick ONE point and stick to it. Having half a dozen call to actions (CTAs) will not make your message more effective; if anything, it will kill any potential your campaign has.
8. STAND OUT! Make sure your CTA is impossible to miss and above the fold. Who has time to scroll?
9. Optimize your message for mobiles. With 79 million US consumers checking their email on a mobile device, if you’re ignoring this segment of the population you’re missing out.
10. Test it! Try A/B testing to find out what kinds of layouts create conversions. Every business is different; best practices in one industry won’t always work in another, so always test.

Got all that? The biggest takeaway: people are completely overwhelmed in today’s content driven society. If you want to stand out keep it simple, compelling, and make your call to action so obvious that it would be seen from space. And if in doubt, test your options.

Now what are you waiting for? Scrub those lists and get your click through rate up!

Some interesting facts about Facebook:

• Over 500 million people had a Facebook account at the end of 2011.
• More than half of users log in every day.
• The average user has 130 friends.
• Over 700 Billion minutes a month are spent on Facebook.
• Over 250 million users interact with Facebook across 2 Million websites.
• 71.2% of the U.S. web audience is on Facebook.
• 750 million photos were uploaded to Facebook over New Year’s weekend.
• 48% of young Americans said they find out about news through Facebook
• 200 million people access Facebook via their mobile phone.

Facebook is being used by 1 in 13 people and that means that it’s being used by your target audience!

Facebook is an easy way to gain new clients, connect with existing customers, promote new products and market sales offers.

The key for B2B companies on Facebook is value. Facebook allows you to create a compelling dialogue with users while communicating in a manner that isn’t possible through traditional promotional means.

Establish yourself as a resource: People can visit your website and learn about your business. Or they can check out your blog and find out about relevant industry developments and topics in the news. Adding this content to your Facebook page will establish your company as an industry expert and humanize your brand.

Engage with your audience: A Facebook page for your business is another way for you to interact with the people who are already buying and using your product or service. Your existing customers bring a breadth of knowledge about your products; their testimonials can also help to sway potential new customers in your favor.

Build relationships: Establish an easy rapport by encouraging and answering any questions your users have. Show them that your B2B business is there for the long haul by keeping customers satisfied and loyal to your brand. If a negative comment pops up, deal with it sincerely; understanding and addressing a problem goes a long way in stemming negative commentary.

Show your softer side: The stats on Facebook users are nothing if not compelling, and people are used to interacting with the site in a casual and informal manner. This is the time to let your brand personality shine through and create (or repurpose) fun and informative content for users.

Share the love: Facebook is built around the concept of sharing, and this concept remains firmly in place for B2Bs. Post interesting industry related videos, pictures or jokes; as your fans share this content your brand establishes meaningful connections with potential customers.

Show your talents: Post bios of your industry experts or staff members. Putting a face, or team, behind your brand increases trustworthiness and transparency.

Push the boundaries:  Why stop at just wall interactions when you can use the many applications that Facebook offers to diversify. Set up a promotions tab to endorse special offers and support lead generation, or use Facebook shopping to boost sales.

So is Facebook a valuable tool for B2Bs? Yes! It enables personalized interactions, a customized consumer approach and a casual forum for addressing common questions or problems. Set up your B2B Facebook page and capture some of the success that B2Cs have long benefited from; it’s there for the taking!

• Search Engine Optimization
• White papers, webinars and podcasts
• Blogs & Social Media

In case you looked at that question and weren’t too sure what can be labeled inbound marketing, here’s my version of the definition:

Inbound marketing is creating incredible content so that when your customers find it they are so impressed that they share it across their social media networks.

Before you start thinking of how best to stretch your existing resources across inbound marketing channels, let me remind you that with the plethora of information currently available online, magnetic content is key. I’m now going to assume that you’ve accumulated some captivating assets that reflect exactly what your buyers are searching for.

How do you go about repurposing content? Let me count the ways!

White Papers 

• Chances are you have a variety of white papers at your disposal. Find one section, rewrite it if you need to and create a blog post with the call to action being the white paper download.

Case Studies

• Turn case studies from one industry into a white paper highlighting the main successes of each company.

EBooks

• Put an except up on your blog from your eBook, encouraging readers to download the full copy.

Webinars

• Take the notes from a slide deck and write a blog post or white paper.
• If you have a very active Q&A session, publish it in a blog post and promote it through your social media channels.
• Post the slides from your webinar on SlideShare, then sync that SlideShare content to your LinkedIn account through the integrated app.

Podcasts

• Get a transcript of the podcast and depending on the length, create a blog post or white paper.

Blog

• Easiest blog post possible: list (and link to!) blog posts for the previous month.
• Take 5-10 blog posts that are relevant to each other and repurpose it into an eBook.

Social Media

• Always add links to your content on your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.
• Expand your content’s reach by joining industry related groups on LinkedIn.  Include a link to your content when replying to posts.
• Take a poll on your social media sites (both LinkedIn and Facebook have polling features) and publish the results in a blog post as industry insight.
• Give active twitter users a hashtag during a webinar or event. The do a search and turn the tweets into a blog post.

Other Creative Ways

• Training new employees by doing a step-by-step demonstration? Capture it! Put it up on YouTube and add it to your resources page. You can also transcribe the training session so you have written instructions – turn them into a series of blog posts about ‘tips & tricks’.
• Create a ‘kit’ of information. You’ve got blog posts, videos, and whitepapers that all pertain to one vertical (e.g. manufacturing). Bundle it up, put it behind a form. Your customer will be thankful that they don’t have to search your site for all of the relevant information.
• Is your CEO doing a speech that includes industry or company news? Record it! You can turn it into a podcast, a gated article or even a blog post.
• Ask your sales team to keep track of frequently asked questions; make a blog post or put it up on your site in the FAQ section.
• Take pictures from your company outings and humanize your business. Give your organization a personality by sharing this event on your social media channels.
• Did you make notes at a conference you attended? Is it industry news? Turn it into a blog post.

Brainstorm! Use these and other ideas then map it out to create an editorial calendar. That way you know you’ll have enough spacing between similar content so hold your readers attention. Also, don’t forget to track it all with analytics and set Key Performance Indicators (KPI) so you can see which content performs best and what to focus on in the next quarter.

We’re always here to help, so contact Salesworks at sales@salesworks.com to discuss optimizing your inbound marketing efforts.

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If you’re not convinced that it’s in your best interest to watch this webinar, keep reading…

Buying behaviors have changed in the last 10 years; if your approach to sales hasn’t been adapted to keep up with the shift in buying mentality, then your business may be suffering as a result. It may sound simple, but the truth is, one of the best things you can do to succeed is enhance your relationships with your buyers.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you truly understand how your buyers think and act?
• Are you capturing your buyers early in the buying phase and educating them about your products?
• Are you able to maintain a relationship with buyers if they are not ready to purchase yet?
• Is your messaging consistent between Marketing and Sales so that your buyers don’t get confused?

If you answered ‘no’ to any one of these, or even if you’re not 100% sure that it’s a ‘yes’, then there is room for improvement. Don’t leave it to chance, hope is not a strategy!

There was once a time when buyers engaged in a conversation with suppliers at the beginning of their buying phase, when they were looking for information about how your product could meet their needs. Now you don’t always get to speak for yourself right from the start. Buyers come to you knowing exactly what they want and they’ve already determined how your product matches their requirements.

When a buyer’s research phase begins they turn primarily to the internet to get their questions answered. They want to know about what you can do for them, but they’re not planning on picking up the phone anytime soon. You need to give them what they’re searching for, but first, they need to find you.

Have you optimized your online processes?

The first thing to help you get noticed by buyers is to identify and select the right keywords for what you are selling.

• Find “Pain based” and “Pain Solution based” keywords
• Use PPC to get instant traffic
• Use SEO and Link Building to improve organic rankings
• Use Remarketing campaigns to re-capture visitors

To keep buyers interested in your offering you need to select the right offers to display on your site.

• Develop vertical specific, informative content
• Use forms that require registration

When you have their attention, qualify the lead! Implement lead scoring to identify sales-ready leads so that you don’t miss an opportunity. If a buyer is not ready to make a purchase, don’t let them get away. Chances are they are early in the buying phase and gathering the information that will help them make a decision at a later date. Provide them with the information that they are searching for by nurturing your leads. Develop automatically triggered marketing campaigns to send your leads resources.

If you’re convinced that your business can do better but don’t know where to begin, your next step is to consider a Mini-Review of your website.

The review should identify:

• If your website is targeting “Early Buyers”
• If you are set up to capture “Early Buyers”
• The effectiveness of your nurture process
• Recommendations to streamline your processes and improve your lead flow

Another noteworthy step is to explore your internal procedures. If communications break down between departments, your bottom line can suffer. Determine if your marketing to sales hand-off is efficient and if the messaging is aligned. Buyers receive more information than ever before; your organization does not want to create frustrations where they need not be.

Watch the ‘Know Your Buyers, Grow Your Leads’ webinar to get more information about how buying behaviors have changed and how you can make this shift work in your favor.

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Contact Enzo DiMichele at any time through email enzo@salesworks.com or call 604.617.6767 to find out how Salesworks can help your business grow its leads.