Welcome to what we like to call the New Wild West…online brand management.

Yes, we’re actually talking social media, which has officially become the new sheriff in cybertown.  And its arrival on the B2B scene has caused quite a stir…kind of like what ensued at the OK Corral between the Earp brothers and the McLaury and Clanton boys.  Lots of shots going off and when the dust settled, no one really knew who’d done what, and if it was truly effective in the end.

Social media has definitely infiltrated B2B marketing, but too many companies are scrambling to grab hold of the ever increasing opportunities presented without thinking them through from a business sense.  As with any marketing tactic, how useful will it really be if it’s not implemented properly, managed effectively and integrated with your other campaign elements?

So, how’d it happen?
Although Facebook may have started as a college networking source, it has evolved to be a functional marketing tool enabling companies to offer a captive audience information on its products and services.  And, when you get right down to it, if you don’t claim your company’s Facebook page, someone else will.  Are you willing to hand over your brand like that?

LinkedIn has made great inroads in aggregating people into highly sought after, user-driven groups that enable the sharing of common ideas and provide a forum to

Some emerging developments with Twitter are positioning this site to be a powerful force in tracking more of the sales ‘funnel’ (the steps from a first contact to the actual purchase), which will lead to better results tracking and give marketers more insight into how to tailor certain aspects of a marketing campaign.

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Articles, Online Marketing Branding, Facebook, Marketing, Media strategy, Social Media, Twitter, Web

The rapidly expanding spectrum of available online marketing tactics can be overwhelming. The best way to determine the most appropriate methods for your marketing goals, aside from asking the experts, is to have a basic understanding of what each method is capable of achieving and what each can’t do efficiently.

What is Paid Search Marketing?

When you use a search engine, chances are you’re looking at paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) programs without even realizing it. The ads that show up to the right of the search result list in Google, for example, are the paid placements that appear based on the keywords typed into the search.

When we searched for “EMI filters” in Google, the top three organic searches are Wikipedia, EngineersEdge.com and EMIFitlerCompany.com. However, the sponsored links at the right are EESeal.com, DigiKey.com and CoilCraft.com. These companies have paid for their ad to appear on (ideally) the first page of search results even though the company might not be listed on the first page of the organic results.

Read the post Google Instant and You! for more info.

So how is this helpful? You have the ability to increase the public awareness of your website in search results directed towards specific searches (and therefore searchers) related to your products and services.

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Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, Marketing, Paid Search, Web

There’s plenty of buzz – both positive and negative – about the new Google Instant (it launched September 8^th). To experience Google Instant, you have to go to www.google.com, not your browser’s tool bar, and perform a search.

For some time now, Google has “auto-completed” what we enter, provided it had some relevant search data pertinent to what we are typing. Well, Google Instant goes one step further and offers up complete search results, editorial and paid, as you type.

When we type an “a,” we get AOL, Amazon, Apple and Amtrak as immediate results. We typed “simon gro” and The Simon Group came up third in the search engine result page (SERP, as a search maven would say). Try it on yourself and see what happens.

We have two concerns with this regarding our clients’ online marketing programs – both for paid and organic search.

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Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, Paid Search, Search, Web

So, it has happened…online BtoB advertising has recently surpassed print advertising in overall revenue dollars. Even in the high-tech and industrial markets, where there is an older engineering demographic that prefers print, online advertising still makes up a significant percentage of media spending.

But this shift isn’t necessarily bad news.  As media data has shown, most BtoB pubs have two sets of readers: those that go online and those that still like to flip pages, and the overlap is very minimal.  Online advertising not only provides the exposure to the segments of our target markets that tend not to read print magazines, but also can generate pretty heavy-duty leads, depending on the publication…an integral feature we use in our comprehensive media analysis.

So, just like in the good old days of bingo cards (any of you youngsters know what they are?), we can measure our return on investment for a given advertisement based on how many readers respond for information.

And the news keeps getting better – more publishers are taking advantage of advancing tracking technology to capture more detailed prospect information.

When banner ads started popping up on the Internet, measuring results was limited to the number of times an ad was viewed on a website (impressions), and the number of times someone clicked on the ad and went to the advertiser’s site (click-throughs).

When e-letters started making their appearance, we received similar information – how many recipients opened the e-letter, how many bounce backs occurred and how many recipients clicked through to the advertiser’s website.

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Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, leads, Marketing, Measuring ROI, Web

Thought online advertising meant just web versions of print ads? Think again!

Although print advertising is still effective, it’s important to tap into the new world of online advertising, since this is the prime source of information for some market segments.  And, research from various sources (Nielson, MRI, eMedia Strategist, and our own analysis of media kits and publication data over the years) repeatedly shows there’s minimal overlap between people that get their information from the web and those that obtain it from print, so if you want to reach your entire target audience, you need to use both advertising channels.

Online advertising takes many forms – e-newsletters, banner ads, webinars, white papers, virtual trade shows, videos, podcasts, social media, pay per click…the list goes on.  With all the technology available, an advertisement can be much more than just words or an image.  Online ads can incorporate motion and sound—something a print magazine ad is incapable of doing.

Online Advantages
A major advantage to online advertising is accessibility.  Unlike print, where the ad reaches only a certain amount of people, online ads have virtually no limit and can reach anyone in the world around the clock. Long after the advertisement is posted it can continue to brand your product or company.

Online advertising also provides something print advertising could rarely deliver: information about the people who are actually responding…clicking on your ads, downloading your whitepapers and tuning in to your webinars. While print advertising can provide you with circulation data and readership details, it can’t provide the names and contact information for the last 10 people who really, actually viewed your information (though the amount of data provided varies by publication).

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Advertising, Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, Analytics, Facebook, leads, Marketing, Paid Search, Social Media, Twitter, Web

If you are not using Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on your website, you should be. It’s free and easy to use. It’s all transparent to those viewing your site, but provides you with a great deal of good information. After spending the money and resources to send potential customers to your website with various marcom tactics, measuring the effectiveness of those efforts is the next step in a strong campaign.

So, what information can you glean from Google Analytics?

Average Page Depth
There is a Content Optimization>Content Performance>Depth of Visit report that tells you the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. This report lets you see if your site architecture is working properly as well as if people are finding what they need and taking actions suggested by your content.

Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave from that page without going to any other page. Seeing bounce rates on home pages of around 50% are typical in our experience. This can be (most likely) that the visitor is not looking for what you have (perhaps a wrong click or misinterpretation of a search engine listing) or the visitor found what he or she was looking for, like a phone number or address (you always put your phone number and address on each page of your website, don’t you?).

Hits
Many people misinterpret a hit as being a visitor. It’s not. A hit is a request by the visitor’s browser for a file – a file of any kind. If you have an older site that was built in “slices,” opening a single page could deliver dozens of hits. These files can be an HTML page, an image, a video, a script or many other file types. This is important information for those analyzing traffic data, but other reports, including page views, new visitors and unique visitors, might be more useful for general business purposes.

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Articles, Online Marketing Analytics, Marketing, Measuring ROI, Paid Search, terms, Web

The ultimate goal of marketing is to gain new customers. You spend both money and resources to educate your prospects about why your products and services are the best out there. The problem is that most of the time, people seeing your ads or reading your whitepapers and press releases aren’t entirely ready to commit. They need guidance, encouragement. The application in your case study is really interesting, but they may not have that specific application right now.

It’s these situations that expose the weak link between marketing and sales; the gap that exists between broad marketing techniques and closing a sale. You’ve met your marketing communications goal by targeting the right audience and gaining interest, but you aren’t quite ready for the sales team to take over. You’re stuck in the “in-between” when there isn’t one specific person responsible for the next phase.

Often, leads are passed on to sales without a second thought about whether or not all critical data has been obtained. A sales person gets incomplete information or a contact that isn’t ready to move to the sales-side of the deal, so the sale doesn’t move forward. How can you turn an inquisitive reader into a real buyer?

Fortunately, when given some light, that “in-between” grey area of lead management can reveal tried-and-true steps to follow. Lead management can educate buyers, help you understand your customers’ needs and ultimately generate revenue when a comprehensive and effective strategy is used.

These simple steps can turn that weak link into one of your most effective strategies by coordinating efforts between the marketing and sales teams. One group or one individual just won’t have the time, or the knowledge, to take care of everything.

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Articles, Online Marketing Advertising, Branding, leads, Marketing, sales

The list of social media is virtually endless, with big names like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn dominating the landscape, and the infinite amounts of blogs on every topic imaginable.  All of these different social media sites have one thing in common; they never deject conversation, comments and feedback as many consumers feel email and other websites do. In fact, they encourage interaction.

B2B marketers should view social media as a new way to interact directly with customers, in addition to employing traditional marketing techniques to generate even more brand awareness.

Follower-Driven
Social media can take traditional electronic communications, such as email, to the next level. On Facebook and Twitter you can encourage customers and prospects to follow you and be on the look out for your news and product announcements to help generate buzz early on by providing useful content and pertinent updates.

Community-Based
A B2B blog can be another useful type of social media by surpassing the one-sided limitations of a mass distributed press release to provide different elements not available with traditional press release distributions.

A B2B blog can provide:

• A user-friendly environment
• Two-way conversation capability
• Increased SEO (search engine optimization)
• Daily exposure to unique users

And, B2B blog users do not need to be confirmed as “friends”, like on Facebook or a fellow “tweeter” on Twitter, or even on the PR or marketing firm’s exclusive e-mail lists, so many times this format is viewed as a less intrusive means of communicating on industry happenings and technology developments.  It can also encourage a good problem/solution community, where customers and the company alike can share information to make products and services better and align future development with specific industry needs.

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Articles, Online Marketing Branding, Facebook, Marketing, SEO, Social Media

If you look into the body of articles about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you’ll find a fascinating nerdy world of one-upmanship, brinkmanship…and maybe some guys playing electronic Battleship. You’ll read about algorithms, about burning URLs, social media and even automated keyword generators.

However, much of the world of search is geared toward consumers and IT B2B. If you are a typical B2B marketer, you’re probably facing less of a challenge than a manufacturer of an XBOX game trying to target 14-year-old boys. Chances are you have a good idea of who your customer is and efficient channels exist through which you can find your customers. But you still need to come up high in search rankings (ranking indicates how far down the list you are in the editorial or “organic” search).

Read the post SEM/SEO Glossary of Terms for more info.

What Is Your Customer Looking For?
When a potential customer types words into a search engine, what words is he or she typing? This is the most fundamental piece of the puzzle. You have to be on target with very specific keywords to win the search engine battle. Do you make ‘abrasives’ or do you make depressed center aluminum oxide abrasive grinding wheels for welding? Do you make ‘magnets’ or do you make NdFeB injection molded magnets? Do you make ‘sockets’ or do you make high-frequency center probe test sockets? You get the idea.

Here’s another example. If you google guitar (a favorite subject around The Simon Group), Google finds about 190,000,000 entries with Wikipedia, Gibson and Fender in positions one, two and three. That’s some pretty hefty search engineering…and Gibson and Fender should be commended. However, their effort is probably Herculean and very expensive.

But if I type in ‘archtop guitar’, we whittle the field down to 148,000 entries, with Wikipedia again leading the pack. Numbers two and three are archtopguitar.net and archtop.com. (Note Wikipedia comes in first twice so far…more on the use of Wikipedia in your marketing efforts to follow in an upcoming blog post.) But I’m a cagey customer. I don’t want just any archtop guitar; I want a ‘handcrafted archtop guitar’. For that, Google now gives me about 5,000 web sites from which to choose

Now we’re starting to get to the level where a midsized B2B company might have the resources to achieve significant ranking on Google and other search engines.

The more specific we can be in our keywords/phrases, the more focused we can be on optimizing for them. A typical Simon Group embedded computing client would have a web page optimized for “ruggedized conduction cooled VMEbus single board computer (SBC)” rather than just single board computer (or worse yet: computer).

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Articles, Online Marketing Marketing, SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the latest buzz phrase of the marketing world (we’re guilty of using it, too!), but did you know it is sneaking into the PR world as well? Not only should you optimize your website or your blog, you should also be optimizing your press releases for search engines.

A traditional news release with plain text will reach the editorial community on the date you release it, but what happens when a potential customer is searching Google for that great new product six months later? Unless your press release has the staying power to continually rank high in search engines, the chance of an older press release being found is slim.

This is where SEO comes in. Here are some important tips for optimizing a press release:

1. Use the important keywords in the title (words customers would search).
Headlines are the first thing a search engine and a reader will see. Putting keywords in the headline increases your chances of being found and people seeing the relevance of your news release to their search.

2. Keep the title to approximately 80 characters.
PR distribution sites will often use the headline for the title tag. Keeping the title short (while including keywords) ensures the keywords of your release will not be cut off and will be visible to search engines (and readers) at the first glance.

3. Effectively use keywords throughout the press release.
Using a keyword density check tool will help you determine if your press release includes too little, too many, or just the right amount of keywords in the text. Using too many words may seem counterintuitive, but it could actually hurt your SEO. Too few keywords hurt, too.

4. Use links in the body of the release.
Adding links in the body of the text will increase the chances of the search engines finding your release. And always start with http:// for the URL. Those seven little characters will ensure the links are active in the release whereas URLs starting with www. could be missed.

5. Include anchor text.
Try to link at least three keywords in the text specifically to an internal page of your site rather than just the homepage. These tagged phrases provide more SEO value to a release than just listing URL links in the text, since they appear as searchable terms.

6. Make sure your news gets out.
In addition to the traditional press list, news releases should be distributed more widely using outlets targeted for online media as well as submitted to a variety of online news sites that post content, both of which are geared at the end user, versus the editorial community.

SEO has changed the landscape of not only traditional marketing, but traditional public relations as well. Writing and distributing timely news releases with the editors, end user, and search engines in mind will dramatically increase the reach of each release.

Articles, Online Marketing, Public Relations PR, press release, SEO