Today if a customer is dissatisfied with your product or service, they have many ways to vent their frustrations. The old adage that a satisfied customer will tell one person and a dissatisfied one will tell ten, needs to be revised in the age of Yelp and City Search. Today a dissatisfied customer will tell hundreds if not thousands of people about poor service at the click of mouse or a swipe on an iPhone.
Rule #1: Don’t ignore negative online reviews.
So what can a business...
Think you know everything about SEO and Google's Ranking Algorithm?
Here are five things you probably don't know:
From selecting a content management system to SEO.
In today’s highly competitive business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, having an effective website is a foundational part of any marketing program. Out with the old-school brochure-ware sites and in with the modern web platform that connects all aspects of your business.
Are you looking to attract the right traffic to your biotech website? Do you want to recruit the top scientists and engineers to work for your life sciences company? Looking for that next round of venture capital and need to stay visible in the VC community? Or maybe you need more leads for your newest bioinformatics tool.
If so, now is the time to make sure your website is fully optimized for organic search. Follow the best practices below and you will begin to improve your search...
Are you looking to drive more traffic to your bank's or credit union's website? Need more loan applicants? The most cost-effective way to accomplish this is to fully optimize your website for organic search.
Follow the best practices below, and you will begin to improve your bank's search engine results page (SERP) rankings. To win at the SEO game you need common sense, curiosity, basic analytical skills and patience. Below are DMZ Interactive...
Here are ten excellent examples of great B2B websites, 2011. If you thought B2B sites had to be ugly, boring and utilitarian, think again. The Top 10 B2B Websites listed here pack a punch by following many of the Web 2.0 design principles. Simply put, the basics are:
A business to business (B2B) website is a website that is designed for the explicit purpose of selling products and services to businesses and not retail consumers. The sites www.oracle.com, www.cat.com and www.uline.com are good examples of B2B websites.
On the other hand,...
The content management system is the foundation of an effective B2B website ecosystem. Selecting the right CMS system is not a decision that is to be taken lightly.
The evaluation needs to take into account the skills and experience of the team that will build the site and the level of functionality required. Here is a comparison of the leading CMS platforms. This is a high level overview of the key features. Since all the...
When you Google the term “social media audit” you will get over three million hits. If you take the time to drill into the recommendations of the top 10 results, you will see the same blather being proffered by various so-called social media experts and agencies.
For example, be consistent with your branding, have custom landing pages, monitor your...
One of the most cost effective ways to stay in touch with customers and prospects is with a monthly email newsletter. For companies that cannot afford the expense of a marketing automation solution, a monthly newsletter is good low budget alternative. If you are already sending out printed newsletters, STOP!
Email newsletters are extremely cost effective...
If you read the leading inbound marketing blogs you’ll notice that content is king when it comes to optimizing your B2B website for organic search (SEO). Consequently, the expert inbound marketing bloggers state that a blog is foundational.
Not only do you need to blog, you need to publish articles regularly. At a minimum, you should publish a blog article once per week. As...
Are you still using the plain vanilla “Contact Us” forms on your website to capturing leads? If so, it's time to consider creating custom landing pages for specific search terms.
What exactly are landing pages?
They are pages on your website that are designed for SEO and have forms to capture customer and prospect information. For example, let say you...
While generating leads from organic SEO is preferred since it is free, spending money on pay per click (PPC) advertising like Google AdWords is unavoidable for most B2B Marketers.
If you are new to PPC, Google AdWords allows you to pay for keywords and run ads at the top and side of the search results pages that match the keywords. Running a PPC campaign can be...
The key to website usability is to do all the thinking for the visitor. As usability guru Steve Krug likes to say, “Don’t make me think.” So what does that mean for you as a B2B website owner? It means you need to do the hard work.
It implies that you need to plan and organize your site in a logical manner that follows...
When you use a CMS as the foundation of your website, you need to select a user interface (UI) template for the site design. Most of the CMS platforms have bare bones templates that you can use.
However, for most businesses the decision will come down to either hiring a designer or buying a quality template. If your budget is tight, consider purchasing a Drupal, WordPress or Joomla design template from Templatemonster.com or one of the other online template...
Today, best-of-breed B2B websites use open source content management systems (CMS). These systems allow non-technical staff to easily update content and add new functionality without writing a line of HTML code.
They are modular and extensible. For example, adding a blog in most CMS’s is as easy as turning on a radio button. Adding Google...
Looking to build a great B2B website? The foundation of an effective B2B Website has five key components.
The Content Management System (CMS)
The content management system is the glue that ties it all together. A content management system is a software application that makes it easy to publish content to the web. All content publishing and management is performed via your web browser. Gone are the days of hacking HTML code with an HTML editor....
In the old dot com days, companies selected web designers by the size of their nose ring and the color of their hair. The more wild the better.
Today if you want to build a website without a lot of pain, you need a designer who truly understands web development with a Content Management System (CMS). They need to know CSS cold. They must know PHP in their sleep. Templates are their life.
Why do you need a CMS expert?
...
If you read any of the leading inbound marketing blogs you’ll see that content is king when it comes to optimizing your website for organic search a.k.a SEO.
First and foremost, the leading inbound marketing bloggers state that a blog is a must have item. Not only do you need to blog, you need to publish articles regularly.
So why not just use Wordpress or Blogger and set up a subdomain with a dedicated blog? That can...
Are you looking to show up on page one of Google search results? Then you will need to make sure your website is fully optimized for organic search.
Follow the best practices below and you will begin to improve your search engine results page rankings. Keep in mind, search engine optimization is not rocket science and you don't need a PhD do to it effectively.
To win at the SEO game you need common sense, curiosity, basic analytical skills and the motivation to put in the time...
So you have a blog, a Facebook fan page and a customized corporate Twitter page. You even have a few videos posted to YouTube.
So where is the ROI?
The answer lies in the type of engagement you are fostering. If customers are not posting comments on your blog and they are not embedding links to your videos in their Facebook wall and they are not even tagging your content with Facebook LIKES (thumbs up), the answer is:
You...
If you are interested in social media strategy, this video from Brian Solis is required viewing. Brian does a deep dive into the true meaning of social capital. Brian Solis content is always worthwile.
Brian Solis speaking at #TDC10 from Herb Kim on Vimeo.
Welcome to the brave new world of the socially engaged and connected consumer. Inbound Marketing 2.0 fully acknowledges the customer is in control. It takes the approach of pulling prospects to you instead of chasing after them.
It’s all about permission-based marketing and not old school interruption-based marketing. Interruption-based marketing is dead. Think about it; VCRs, TIVO, caller ID, do-not-call lists,...
According to an eVoc Insights study, 48 percent of consumers need to consult reviews before making an online purchase. Today, many consumers are turning to YouTube and other social media channels to find reviews.
In October 2009, there were more than 3.7 billion search queries on YouTube according to comScore.
Think Social...
Today I spent some time trolling through Marketing Director Job postings on Monster.com in the Boston area. It’s one my new business development activities. It’s absolutely amazing what you can learn from these job postings.
Most of the job posts focus on brand building, creating collateral and attending trade shows. Many also talk about the requirement of having a dynamic and fun personality.
However, very few...
You can learn a lot about how to use social media for your company by studying a company’s use of social media during a crisis.
The current PR crisis that BP is experiencing is a great example of both how to use social media and how not to use it. While there are numerous blog articles on the PR gaffes of BP and their clumsy use of social media, few drill into the details of what you need to do to avoid becoming another BP.
If you go beyond...
Today if you flip on the TV or have kids, you can’t avoid being bombarded by messages about social media. You’ll see anchors on CNN plugging their Twitter pages and ads for Tempur-Pedic mattresses pushing their Facebook page.
Just about every night CNN anchor Anderson Cooper mentions you can follow him on Twitter, news stories break about Sara Palin’s latest Facebook post or Lady Gaga’s latest outlandish publicity stunt....
One of the most productive sources of revenue for B2B marketers is their prospect and lead database. If it costs you $20 to acquire each prospect in your database and you have 50,000 names in your database, the value of this data is 1 Million dollars or more!
Consequently, if you are not actively mining this data for new opportunities you are missing out on a substantial source of revenue. However, mining your database is not as simple as sending out...
According to research from Brian Carol the author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale”, 70% of the visitors to your website researching your product will eventually buy a product from you or your competitors. Yet salespeople do not fully pursue around 70% of leads generated by marketing.
Wow!
So how do you take advantage of this startling piece of information? One of the first steps is to set up a lead nurturing...
Often there are many reasons for the sales team to criticize the quality of the leads generated by the website. If you're lucky, they may openly criticize the quality of the leads to management. On the other hand, they may do it covertly by not following up on the leads provided.
The attitude and reasons for criticism span from 100% legitimate to just plain old excuses. However, one of the most proactive ways to reduce the negative criticism of marketing...
