I thought it would be a good idea to summarize a few tips and tricks that can help optimize eMarketing performance or enhance tactics. I preach optimizing the “micro” elements of an entire eMarketing strategy. These are just little items, but nevertheless can be helpful in your strategy. So here we go:

Pay-Per-Click

• Geotargeting: If you’re geotargeting a certain area of a market, I encourage local advertisers to also test a new campaign targeting the entire market (DMA). Reason? Many of your prospects surf at work. Depending on your product/service, you may wish to test a geotargeted campaign two ways: 1. Before 8a, after 5p, and weekends in your preferred market area, and 2. DMA between 8a-5p.
• Mobile: Start taking advantage of mobile marketing by utilizing Google’s Click-to-call feature. Create a mobile ad, utilize one key phone number, and when people do mobile searches, you ad would appear if you sponsor the keyword. Phone extensions will appear as clickable phone numbers beneath the main text ad, and will be visible to high-end mobile device users who access Google.com search, Voice search, Google Mobile App or Google Maps for Mobile from their phone. When the mobile device user clicks on the phone number, you will be charged the same as for a standard click on the ad.

Search Engine Optimization

• Metatags: When search engines index your site, the spiders and bots look at your page title tags (which carry the most weight) and page descriptions (metatags).  The title tag is the name of each page on your site that you see in the browser’s title bar.  The first 60 characters are the most important, so please include important keywords early in your title. Remember you want to be found for important keyword queries.  Keywords before company name in title tags please.
• Domains: Best seo practice is to get at least one of your primary keywords in domain or sub domain name of your website. You can use hyphens (-) to separate multiple keywords.
• Keywords: Choose precise keywords; look for those keywords that have a decent traffic count, yet lesser competition.  This task needs an SEO pro to analyze which keywords have a number of competitors.  For example if you’re a business coach, choose keywords like “executive coach” “leadership coaching”, etc.  Specific “long-tail” keywords give you a better shot at getting on that treasured first page.

Google Analytics

Event Tracking: Suppose you have a white paper PDF to download on your site, a webinar, a podcast, or some sort of activity that requires more than just a page view. Well, we can track those events.  Typical Google Analytics data tracks page activity. To track specific page events, we need to add additional code to the pages where the event may occur: The syntax for the _trackEvent() method is:_trackEvent(category, action, label). Additionally, when you create an event, you give each specific a value so you can weight key metrics. So not to lose anyone here, Google provides good detail on this important feature. Here are examples of events that can be tracked using this tool using examples for categories, actions, and labels:

1. View a video:  Category: Video, Actions: Play, Pause, Stop. Label: Widget Demo

2. Specs for a new car:  Category: Car Configuration, Action: Color, Label: White, Yellow, Pink

3. Download a specific white paper from a page with multiple downloads: Category: Download, Action: Click, Label: Widget Whitepaper

It certainly takes some planning and help with a webmaster to determine the specific events, parameters, and values that need to be coded within your web pages.

Facebook

I found this one recently.  Regarding Fan pages, Your default landing page is the Wall page.  It doesn’t have to be- if you wish to focus on a special tab with offers or perhaps your Info page, just change the setting-”Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else”:

Twitter

I like the search features.   Whether you search for a keyword “marketing”, or a hashtag phrase #marketing, save the searches, and add those saved searches into your RSS feeds.  I for one read my Google reader first thing every morning, and it’s nice to have important twitter searches complement my blog feeds. Here are my hashtag keyword saves:

Lead Capture

Web forms:  Whether it be using Marketing Automation or an email program, please use short web forms and capture the data that’s essential.  You can capture additional data later if those prospects have the opportunity to download more content.  Giving phone numbers or email addresses as contact methods limits your ability to capture contacts for database marketing.  At the very least, use fields NAME, EMAIL, PHONE NUMBER, FIRM.  Then consider TITLE, and if necessary, a radio-button or drop-down box to select INDUSTRY or COMPANY SIZE.  I’m not a fan of the MESSAGE free form field because you can’t initially segment audiences from that.  MESSAGE is good for a general inquiry, but not needed for a request for specific information or a download from a landing page.

The focus of this blog post was just to highlight some tips and tricks; future blog posts will cover these eMarketing tactics in more detail. More tips another day!

Advertising on Google or other search engines can be a very productive way to generate immediate leads to your website.

First, think about your website.  How much did you spend on it?  Do you have a marketing plan for it?  I’m a big believer in pay-per-click advertising (Google has made billions on it) only because it is the only online medium where you can target “warm leads” with promotional messages.  The key is to be as relevant as possible to a searcher, then make sure message stand out.  Consider other Internet “marketing” tactics.

a.  Search Engine Optimization.  It’s essential to be optimized so your websites and landing pages have the best chances of showing high on search engines.  Why have a website if you can’t be found easily? So once you’re optimized, your page description is compelling with keywords, and informational in nature; but not promotional.

b. Social Media.  Blogging, discussions, Twitter, LinkedIn; all can be an effective way to build brand and trust, but not promotional.

c. Banner Ad Campaigns, LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads.  These can be purchased through pay-per-click or cost-per-thousand models.  These channels can be effective in their on right, and ARE promotional, but you target demographics and interests.

Only with search engine marketing can you target those searchers most likely looking for you, and you’re providing their answer with a promotional message.  Pay-per-click seems to have a certain stigma with regard to effectiveness, but it does take work, effort, and perhaps using a professional to optimize your campaign.

If anything you should take away,  it’s this:

This is the most important concept and affects all other AdWords tasks. The statement above does start with Ad Content for a reason. When setting up an AdWords campaign, what you want to say comes first- that’s why Google calls them Ad Groups and not Keyword Groups!  By doing the ad first, it makes keyword research easier to categorize.  Keywords need to align with the ad content and if certain keywords do not, either they are not relevant, or you need to create a new Ad Group that will align with those keywords.  SEO focuses on keyword research first, so I understand that emphasis, but for pay-per-click on Google, ads come first.

So next comes keyword research, right? Well, no.  When ads are written, they have to be linked to an appropriate web page or landing page.  By appropriate I mean aligned by theme and ad content.  Remember, once a searcher enters a query, and your ad answers that query with a short promotional message, the landing page better answer that query with more detail answering the search query, or the searcher will leave feeling your website doesn’t have the answer.  (That’s called a bounce)

Now the keyword research starts.  I won’t go into detail on the “how” in this post because Google AdWords help sections does a good job of explaining that, as well as the multitude of blogs and books.  However, since you already (I assume) have your Ad Groups set by specific category or theme, and your landing pages align with your Ad Group themes, keyword research and organizing those keywords by Ad Group should be a little easier and more focused.  This research should also include “negative” keyword research as well, or those keywords or phrases that you don’t want your ad to show when a searcher does a query.  Why?  Because of the Google Quality Score. Read more about this important element here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215

Simply, Quality Score is an algorithm that combines Ad click-though-rate, ad and query relevancy, and landing page quality.  If any of these segments are not optimized, your quality score goes down, and that means your ad positioning suffers, and your cost-per-click increases.  Google rewards relevancy with better positioning at lower cost- remember that.  Negative keywords can be entered onto the Google platform as well as selected positive keywords.

OK here is an example of a good and bad execution:

Bad:

• Query: “Hotel Marketing Services”
• Keyword you sponsor: “Marketing Services”
• Ad Content Theme: “Utilize us for your marketing needs”
• Landing Page:  Generic Home Page covering your services

Comment:  The marketing firm doesn’t do marketing for the hospitality industry, so the firm will receive many wasted impressions that include the word “hotel” and who knows what other industries. The ad is generic, and so is the landing page. Clicks will be limited here; click-through-rate will be low; quality score will be low; ads won’t appear often, cost-per-click will be higher than it should be.  The word “hotel” should be entered as a negative.

Good:

• Query: “Software Marketing Services”
• Keyword you sponsor: “software marketing”
• Ad Content Theme: “Specialists in Software marketing”
• Landing Page: Discusses software marketing services, benefits of your firm, and a strong call-to-action with web form

Comment:  See how each element is aligned? You may have less impressions than the generic “marketing services”, but your ad aligns with the query, meaning more clicks, better click-through-rate, higher quality score, higher ad positioning, and lower cost-per-click.

AD COPY

I touched on ad copy in my last post; and poor ad copy is a pet peeve of mine.  Folks, this is advertising.  You need to stand out; obtain that precious click. You’re competing with other advertisers, optimized listings, images, videos, blog posts and tweets that appear on Google’s first page. You need to raise your hand- “pick me!”  Remember searchers are scanning for a message that attracts their attention and easily communicates a solution to their problem. Here’s my approach to effective ads:

1. Headline:  You have only 25 characters to grab someone’s attention.  This is an AD headline- it’s not your company name.  The headline is usually the best place to put an important keyword or ad content theme.  Let’s continue to use “Hotel Marketing Services” as an example of a query.

• Bad:  Travel Marketing; Marketing Pros (not relevant);
• Good: Hotel Marketing Experts; Better Hotel Marketing?

2.  Second Line:  Is there a key feature that separates you from competition?  What makes your firm special?  (Please, no outstanding service; it’s overused).  Make a list.  Remember you can test a couple of approaches; you’re not stuck on one ad. Second lines can be emotional or informational.

• Bad:  Hotel Marketing Services;  Internet Marketing Experts; Hotel Marketing Agency.  (Folks, we’re not duplicating SEO listings- this is advertising, let’s stand out)
• Good: We Focus on Hospitality; Targeted Marketing Planning;  Increase Occupancy Rates; Our hotel clients have grown

3.  Third Line:  In 35 characters the goal is to combine a key benefit with a call-to-action. Alternatively, utilize a special offer and action words.  Offers can be limited time; ads can be changed any time.  Are you having a sale? Promote it!  Again, make a list and test approaches.

• Bad: Hotel Solutions for You;  We Focus on Service; Serving Hotels for 35 years (so?)
• Good: Free white paper on ROI; 25% off Limited Time; Start growth today-learn more; Free Assessment-Call now;  Time to increase Profit- Visit Us; Our Service Builds Hotel Revenue

Not to pound the point, but if you do any offer; that offer better be front and center on your landing page.

Well, this finished part 2.  I look forward to your thoughts. My last post, http://www.nusparkmarketing.com/google-adwords-optimization-part-1/ discussed some advanced ways to optimize an AdWords campaign on Google. Stay tuned for future posts.

The utmost  importance of optimizing the entire “visitor-to-lead-to-sale” cycle as an eMarketing strategy cannot be questioned.

If you don’t pay attention to a specific micro element of an eMarketing plan, the entire strategy won’t work as well; you’ll lose leads and sales.  We speak to a number of companies who have fancy-designed websites; but they can’t be found on search engines; they don’t convert visitors into leads, and once those leads are generated, they aren’t properly nurtured into sales.

To demonstrate the point, here’s an imaginary interview with John Doe, a COO of a large IT company.

Congratulations on your website; it’s designed nicely.

JD:  Thank you; our creative team really made it look good. It’s been up for a year now.

I see.  What specifically do you sell?

JD: We provide technology solutions to the healthcare industry; when they need to outsource specific tasks, we’ll be there to provide comprehensive solutions. Our solutions help healthcare providers improve patient safety, reduce costs, improve healthcare efficiency and better manage resources.

So if I need your service, I should be typing into Google “technology solutions?” If I really needed your services I’d most likely type “Computer consultants for hospitals” or “electronic health records” Bear with me, but despite your claims, websites should be written for the buyer.  If I can’t easily figure out what those solutions are, I’m going to find someone else.

JD:  Well, you just have to dig a little further.

The average person doesn’t have that time; only 8 seconds to scan your home page or landing page and determine if you can solve his need.

JD:  Guess I need to review my website copy.

Looks like you have nice white papers on your site.  You must have spent a lot of time and effort to produce it.  How do you promote them?

JD:  Not sure actually.  I think we email our database.

You send to everyone?  Like advertising, content should be distributed towards target audiences.  Have you developed buyer personas?

JD:  All we have is our database.  We know who our buyers are?

Oh, do you have that research?  Does your marketing plan support that research?

JD:  Oh, we did some research 5 years ago.

Wow, things have changed; social media, the Internet, search engines.  You really can’t market based on older assumptions.  If you do, your mediums for marketing and messaging may fall short of expectations.

JD:  You’re right.

On your website, even if I were interested in your new white paper, your website is not capturing any data; so how can you build a database of prospects?

JD:  Well, we do allow people to contact us through a company email address and we ask them questions.

OK.  Do you think it would  be helpful if you at least captured a job title, and what a customer’s needs are automatically?

JD:  Of course.

I’ll introduce you to Marketing Automation.  By capturing data, from web form and website navigation behavior, you can easily tell what prospects are engaging with your website and content, and your salespeople can spend more time with those most likely to buy.  Marketing Automation does much of this for you; determines who the most likely buyers are, and automatically sends those leads to your CRM.

JD:  That kind of system would definitely help my sales team; they certainly spend too much time with tire-kickers.

Those tire-kickers may eventually become real leads if you nurture them with quality content, blog posts, written documents, or webinars.  Like any advertising, if you continue to promote quality messages  to target audiences, the prospect is more likely to buy.

JD:  It sounds like a good way to promote our white papers.

Yes!   Also social media.  Do you have a social media plan?

JD:  A plan? Well I think someone in PR tweets.

Well, that’s not a plan; that’s a tactic.  Your potential buyers utilize a number of channels for research; and some of that is learning from blogs and discussing issues on LinkedIn.  Need to have a plan, like any media strategy, to determine target audiences, channels, and proper messaging that’s relevant and engaging.

JD: Agreed.  Hmm, you’re overwhelming me; I thought our site was compelling.

That’s the problem.  Don’t think website strategy; think eMarketing strategy. Your website needs to do a better job of engaging audiences and becoming a lead generator. Your website can be your best salesperson!

JD:  I didn’t think about it that way.

Mr. Doe, you’ll be fine if you really understand the importance of what I’m saying and perform some strategic changes to how you do business in today’s electronic world.

Here’s some things to think about:

1. Prospect needs a solution; goes to Internet; searches for what you really sell. You’re not there; leads go to competitors.

2. Prospect is a member of a LinkedIn group.  Starts a discussion on a solution.  A competitor responds, offers one of his/her blog posts.  Prospect reads blog post, likes it, adds competitor’s RSS feed; starts to engage with competitor, eventually fills out webform, becomes a lead.

3.  Prospect does get to your website; but is confused by navigation;  not sure of his benefits, and leaves to go to competitor who has more engaging content.

I could go on, but I won’t.

JD: I get it. You’ve made great points.  Time to rethink what we’re doing!  Thank you.

Well, the above is somewhat exaggerated, but the point is, companies need to do a better job of optimizing all of the elements of eMarketing, and it all starts with an assessment on your value proposition, your uniqueness, and your target audiences- who they are, where they are, what makes them consider your products or services, and how they consume media and social media.

Google Pay-Per-Click, or also called AdWords, can be the most immediate method to generate traffic to your website.

For those who think it’s as simple as writing ads, bidding on terms, and being charged for only those who click, well, there’s much more to it, and there’s many tools that most AdWords novices don’t take advantage of.  Proper AdWords management takes a lot of work and effort, and if you’re not willing to give that effort, or take advantage of the tools, you’re setting yourself up for less optimal results. For the sake of this post, let’s just look at the search network; a future post will cover the content network.  OK-Let’s take a look at a few of  those “hidden” tools that can contribute to campaign optimization

You can track computer results vs. mobile phone results;  This is an option you can select or de-select.

You can track by day of week; Google allows you to adjust bidding by day if Thursday/Friday traffic is higher and you want to increase ad positioning on those days

As you can see below, I’ve increased bids by 25% on Thursday and Friday, but decreased bids by 25% on the weekends.

Under the campaign tab, there are column options showing these fields: Impression Share, Lost Impression share (Rank) and Lost Impression share (Budget).  These are not default columns but can provide some useful information from a campaign level:

• Impression Share: The percentage of times your ad is shown
• Lost Impression Share (Rank): Percentage of time your ads are not shown on the 1st page because the ad rank is too low
• Lost Impression Share (Budget): Percentage of time your ads are not shown because your budget is too low

So for the above, the impression shares are low because of a number of factors; the campaign is not 24/7, we’re only doing search and not the content network, specific keyword rank, etc.   The Lost Imp Share (Budget) shows that we’re mostly reaching our budget each day; the ad groups lost impression share are both under 10%.  By increasing budget 10% we can capture more impressions.  The Lost Impression Share (Rank) above shows that a large number of impressions are being lost due to ad position, and in this case I either have to increase bids or continue to work on improving quality score. The formula for ad rank is “Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score”.  For the above, our quality scores are generally good, but our CPC bids are low.  If I increase my bids, we can increase impressions because ad rank is increasing.

Under the Keywords tab, there’s an option called “See Search Terms” where you an see the actual terms that made people click your ad.  This is a great way to add relevant keywords to your campaign, or identify negative terms because people are clicking terms that you don’t sell.

Another hidden technique with regard to ad copy is utilizing “dynamic keyword insertion” into your ads.  The technique allows user keyword queries to be automatically placed into your ad headline or body copy.  Because the user query shows up in your ad, this technique can increase click-through rate and quality score, but you have to be careful that the query/keyword fits well in context of your ad.  The basic syntax goes like this- here’s a sample ad with the dynamic headline:

• {Keyword:Marketing Help}
• Learn more about our Services
• Full eMarketing Strategy & Tactics

“Marketing Help” is the default headline if the user query is longer than 25 characters.  When “Keyword” is capitalized,  the first letter of the query is capitalized. Likewise if “keyword” were lower case, then the query shows as lower case.  Here’s another example of an ad showing the dynamic insertion within the body copy :

• eMarketing Strategy
• If you need (keyword:marketing help}
• Contact us and we can help you

The above are just a few of the tweaks (among many) that can be made to optimize an AdWords campaign.  In a future post, I’ll continue with some optimization methods including more on bidding and keyword selection.  Between all of the settings available, bidding options, landing page optimization tools, conversion tactics, analytics integration, and ad copy testing, managing campaigns does take effort and time.  Not everything has to be done at one time, but focus on a specific area each day.  Fixing pay-per-click doesn’t happen over night, but consistent optimization efforts will pay off.

The challenge to any business is to optimize every little piece of the eMarketing flow from website visitor to sale.

By carefully tweaking the micro elements of the flow, the macro components work better; you’ll generate more leads, more conversions, more sales, increase market share, and be primed for the future.  Below is a diagram showing how the eMarketing flow works.  There are three phases of eMarketing strategy: Generate Traffic, Turn Into Prospects: Turn Into Sales.  Quality Content is the glue that hold the three phases together, because without content, eMarketing optimization doesn’t work.

Let’s review some of the above elements from a sales AND content perspective:

• Search Engine Optimization:

1. Sales: If your site is not indexed and highly ranked on search engines; that’s less leads, less quality leads, less conversions, less nurturing, less sales
2. Content: If your site is not written with proper keywords, and your meta descriptions and page titles are not keyword optimized, Google won’t match your site to a user’s query

• Pay-Per-Click:

1. Sales: If your ads are not relevant to keyword queries, your click-thru rate decreases, you’re paying for poor quality traffic, your site visitors leave, and you receive poor quality leads, meaning less sales and revenue
2. Content: If your ad isn’t written with a clear offer and unique benefit, you won’t get as many clicks, and your quality score goes down, then your ad positioning is affected as well as your average cost-per-click which increases when ads aren’t written properly

• Social Media:

1. Sales:  If you’re not engaging with potential customers properly by not participating in social media correctly, your credibility is reduced, and that means less quality leads, and less sales
2. Content: If you’re not contributing quality, problem-solving content and business-solution advice towards potential buyers, those buyers won’t engage with your brand as much, and will follow and increase their likelihood of doing business with competitors

• Website/Landing Page Design Optimization:

1. Sales: If the website is designed poorly from a usability, content, and navigation perspective, those potential leads will bounce from your site, not engage, and likely do business with competitors, and that means less web form submissions, less leads, and less sales.
2. Content: If your website/landing page does not easily explain what you do and the benefits of buying from you are not clearly visible, website visitors will leave

• Marketing Automation/Lead Nurturing

1. Sales: Once you do get a lead, if you’re not scoring them or identifying those most likely to buy as they go through the nurturing process, you won’t spend time with quality leads, and if you don’t do that, leads will leak from the funnel and buy from competitors, meaning less sales opportunities and revenue.
2. Content: If you’re not nurturing prospects with additional quality content, matched to their needs, prospects will not engage with you, and will buy from competitors. Quality content drives quality leads, meaning more sales, and more revenue per deal.  Marketing Automation systems work by managing content flows, measuring results, and optimizing the entire leads-to-sales cycle.

Think about this:

• Why have a website if search engines can’t find you?
• Why have compelling content if you’re not promoting it properly?
• Why have a lead generation plan if your website is not optimized for conversion and lead-capture?
• Why have an e-mail marketing plan if you’re not segmenting audiences and delivering content based on those unique buyer segments?

The bottom-line is, don’t fall short on any specific element of an eMarketing plan, or else leads and sales will be lost.  You have to invest in a strategic approach to optimize each element of the visitor-to-lead-to-sale flow.   There shall be no emphasis on any one phase.  The Marketing and Sales departments both benefit by full eMarketing optimization, including the implementation of a Marketing Automation system.  A brand new Mercedes Benz is meaningless if there’s no gas or roadmap.  Think about it.

Something I should take advantage of a little more; following specific tweets on my Google Reader.

If you use Google Reader (or other readers) as much as I do, here are 3 things you can do to combine Twitter with RSS feeds:

a. Follow Categories: Do a search for a category of interest with a hashtag, i.e. #b2b, Then at the bottom right of your Twitter home page is the RSS icon. Click it and you’ll be able to read category tweets on your reader.

b. Follow Tweeters: If you have a favorite tweeter, just click on his/her profile, and click on the RSS icon.

c. Follow keywords: Rather than a hashtag term, just use Twitter’s search box for keywords or phrases, and then follow the results of the query with RSS. You can also save these searches.

That’s the tip of the day!

We attempt to set the record straight as we simply look at Marketing Automation systems as compared to Email Programs

We’ve been testing a variety of Marketing Automation programs; the ones we like we have agreed to offer as potential solutions to our clients.  In this space, there has recently been a multitude of white papers, ebooks, case studies, and webinars pushing the technology, hoping a key executive finally says to the boss- “I suppose we should look into this.”   As he/she should.  I’ve been writing more about marketing automation recently, and I wanted to bring about few key points:

For Marketing People:

• Marketing Automation does not replace what you do; it enhances your value.  It does take work and effort to manage Marketing Automation systems, and if your company is not willing to assign the role internally, NuSpark Marketing will manage the platform and act as a conduit between your department and sales.
• Your job is to advertise and promote your company towards those most likely to buy, and thus offer your sales people the leads most likely to close.  Marketing Automation, by nature of its ability to track your marketing, email, and web activity efforts, will help you qualify “buy-ready” leads for your sales people through lead nurturing via quality content and lead scoring.  Standard email programs are limited in identifying hot prospects.

For Sales People:

• You have goals and quotas to meet.  It’s a competitive field you’re in, and you want to have the most intelligence you can.  Marketing Automation gives you that intelligence. By reviewing the activity of your leads via Marketing Automation dashboards, you’ll know if your quality leads viewed webinars, downloaded which white papers, viewed which pages on your site, and responded to which offers.  By knowing this information, you can customize your sales pitch and make it relevant; and that means enhancing relationships and more sales.
• Your time will be spent more efficiently as you will only be spending time with quality high-scored leads and not the tire kickers.  Once marketing and sales define the level of lead by lead score you wish to receive, you’ll only get those high quality leads to manage.  Marketing Automation will hold back the low-scored leads, and will nurture them with timely emails and content until their activity raises their lead score. Once that lead score raises to the defined threshold, you get them.  When you spend time with quality leads, your close rates increase, and your revenue per deal increases.

Here are some examples on how Marketing Automation differs from standard email programs (like Contact Contact, AWeber, or Campaign Monitor):

1.  MA identifies companies and individuals that visit your site or landing pages, and based on their behavior, starts qualifying them as prospects.

2.  When these visitors perform specific actions or fill out web forms, they are automatically scored; when the score reaches a certain level, they can be sent directly to a CRM.  Most systems integrate well with SalesForce.com, but also others. Those leads may also be routed to specific salespeople.

3.  When leads are captured, many MA systems automatically capture their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles for further intelligence gathering on contacts.

4.  Many MA systems track pay-per-click campaigns, and thus can correlate quality leads,  website behavior, and keyword entrances.

5.  Where email programs have nice email design modules, MA systems also include unique landing page creation modules. Landing pages are microsites that promote specific products/services with call-to-action web forms.  remember, websites need to be lead generators; not online brochures.

6.  Flexible lead scoring.  By determining weight levels of specific activities, prospects increase their score through ongoing lead nurturing (with MA) until a defined threshold is reached.

Here’s an example:  I set a lead grade of 50 points; meaning I don’t give leads to sales people through CRM until the prospects reach a lead score of 50.  Here’s what I assign specifically:

• Prospect fills out a webform:  15 points
• Prospect downloads a white paper on Technical Solutions: 15 points
• Prospect visits our blog page: 5 points
• Prospect enters a “gmail” or “comcast.net” email:  Subtract 10 points
• Prospect receives a nurture email and opens it: 5 points
• Prospect clicks on a link within the email to read or download more content: 20 points
• Prospect is a VP or higher (based on web form): 10 points

Again, once that lead performs a number of activities that total 50 points, he/she is considered a quality lead and then is sent to sales.

7.  Flexible Lead Nurturing Sequences.  By creating drip campaigns nurtured to specific lists via relevant content, prospects become quality leads vis lead scoring as described above. Here’s an example of how lead nurturing works with Marketing Automation:

First, it is important to make sure buyer profiles are developed before starting a drip nurturing campaign, because the content has to align with the prospect’s needs based on his/her persona and place in a purchase funnel (future blog post).  Two examples of profiles and specific content targeting those profiles:

• Profile A: Technical buyer; middle management; interested in specific case studies, webinars, podcasts, and blogs that help solve problems in his department
• Profile B: Executive buyer; upper management; interested in white papers and blogs that focus on overall ROI and revenue-generating issues and new processes.

Example of nurturing sequence for Profile A:

• You promote a webinar on targeted media and social media channels
• Prospect clicks to your landing page to learn more, and downloads the case study by submitting just name and email for now.  His computer receives a cookie.  His score is 15 points so far.
• Two hours later, he gets an email, thanking him for the download, and includes a link to a podcast on a similar subject.
• He clicks on the podcast link in the email. Add 5 points to the score.  His web activity shows he did not listen to the podcast yet.
• Two days later, he gets an email with the same podcast link as a reminder; he also gets a link to the latest blog post.  Again, he opens the email. Add 5 points to his score.
• This time, he clicks on the blog post link.  Add 5 points.
• On your site is a Resources Page, which he visits.  Add 10 points.
• From that he downloads another case study; this time the web form asks a little more information, like company name and job title.  Add 25 points.

The total lead score for this prospect is now 65 points; he’s engaged in the site and the content.  He’s a quality lead and now goes to sales to nurture the close.  By the way, if the prospect doesn’t download the case study, he’ll need to be nurtured again, perhaps a week or two later, with additional content until the lead score reaches the threshold.  Get it?

As you can see, Marketing Automation is so much more robust than standard email programs.  If you have a sales team, and sell a complex product or service, then Marketing Automation is the solution.   NuSpark Marketing is there for you to prepare how to implement the platform so that your company can close more sales rather than have those prospects leak out out of the funnel and buy from the competition instead.

To learn more:

Recent Blog Posts on Marketing Automation:

What It Is

Getting Ready

Here’s our website link to see some of the players and their demos:

Marketing Automation Demos

I’ve introduced marketing automation previously, and I now wanted to discuss essential steps for your company to prepare.  As a reminder, marketing automation is a platform to improve marketing and sales integration, increase revenue, decrease costs, and achieve better marketing ROI.  NuSpark Marketing‘s team of experts contribute to the transition.

By implementing marketing automation, your firm will

• Start targeting problem-solving content towards buyers throughout their purchase cycle
• Start lead scoring so that the salespeople create relationships with those leads most likely to buy
• Start lead nurturing through quality content and ongoing drip campaigns to push prospects into sales
• Start analyzing and measuring results of campaigns so that further refinements can be made
• Start integrating marketing campaigns into your CRM so that quality leads and sales can be analyzed by lead source

1. Get everyone on board

Our first meeting will be an introduction/assessment, and we’d have representatives from your marketing, sales, and IT teams, as marketing automation affects all 3 departments.  IT is not totally essential depending on the solution chosen and the state of your current customer database.  We’ll have a demo or two scheduled on appropriate solutions for your business.

2. Needs analysis

We’ll review any pain points you have; look at your current sales process.  Do you have buyer profiles developed?  Have you identified what the true quality lead is?  Is your website working for you as a lead generator?  Do you know what current tactics generate the most efficient leads and sales from a cost-per-lead standpoint?  We’ll be discussing all of these issues, and we’ll also review your current email marketing platform and share the benefits of marketing automation which includes ongoing lead nurturing email messaging.

3.  Costs

We can certainly prepare a proposal after our assessment that includes the cost of the platform, our consulting costs, and our content management costs, plus other needs we can provide, but it’s important to take into account that this does not ALL have to be additional expense.  Our proposal should consider the following:

• Your current e-mail platform costs.  With marketing automation, you won’t need your current system anymore (although there can be a short transition window)
• Your current advertising plan.  What sources can we eliminate or cut-back. Examples: Full page ads to half page ads; Reduce costs for pay-per-click if lack of quality traffic
• Your current PR plan.  Are the costs and the amount of trade shows showing ROI.  If not this is an opportunity for reduced costs. Are you getting the most our of press releases?
• Your current content plan.  If you’re still producing hard copy catalogs, briefs, reports, we can look at ways to reduce costs (paper stock, color, frequency) or transfer to digital altogether
• Other areas.  Are there other tactics and processes within marketing or sales that can be reduced or eliminated for cost savings?

4. Get Charged

You’ll be comfortable having us walk you through the process and act as your partners.  In order to make your “lead and sales” machine work to its fullest, all marketing tasks need to be reviewed, analyzed, and tweaked.  That means SEO, social media, landing pages, development of a lead scoring model, database management, CRM integration, and last but not least, development of a content mapping strategy (white papers, case studies, reports, webinars, podcasts, blog posts, ebooks).

This doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s a process, but will get your firm on the road to increased ROI, higher closes, and more revenue.  If you’re a complex product/service, you need to nurture your prospects throughout the buying cycle with quality content and marketing automation.  We represent many platforms and will recommend the right system for you.  In a future post, I’ll go through the steps and advantages in detail.

This week’s NuSpark Marketing Strategy show features Brett Hart, owner of his own e-commerce and custom programming company, Paradox Labs. He consults NuSpark Marketing clients on how to implement and measure e-commerce applications. We’ll learn much about the best ways to profit from an e-commerce website.  Please tune in to learn best practices.

Listen to BlogTalkRadio this Sunday July 11 at 6p ET.  Details here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nusparkmktg

As a business, there’s always a question on the effectiveness of banner ad campaigns (or online display) as a portion of an online media mix.  The doubters are aware of the low click-through (CTR) rates banner ads receive, the amount of clutter, the lack of creativity, etc.  However, any preconceived opinions on this medium needs to be turned around and thought of positively.  Billboards, transit advertising, sponsorships, and other forms of out-of-home advertising have never been chastised due to lack of business generated from these mediums. They are branding mediums; act as reminder messaging, and support direct response campaigns.  In many respects, banner ads need to be considered now in the same light, much like social media, whereby being seen or viewed multiple times can create increased action for products and services.  Traditional media planning uses terms like reach and frequency and not click-through rate or cost-per-click.  Yet, at optimal levels of reach and frequency, brand awareness increases, desire increases, and sales increase.

The above is true of a b2b message as well.  Some of the best, most efficient placements of banner ads can be had on vertical networks, trade press websites, and the Google content network.  Where pay-per-click targets people who “need” something, banner ads target audiences that are potential customers (if placed and negotiated properly).

Vizu is a company that understands the relationship of banner campaigns and branding.  Vizu uses audience polling and other tactics to tie digital campaigns beyond clicks and conversions to ore traditional outcomes that brand marketers have always searched for.  Key metrics they track are brand awareness, product preference, then purchase intent.  Their platforms support their clients needs of measuring digital campaigns and their effects on branding as a whole, and so far results have proven successful, especially with the measure in brand lift when online video is involved.  More information can be found on their website at www.vizu.com.

Here’s a study from IProspect and published by Emarketer showing user behavior from banner ad exposure.  Not the increase in search lift (27%) and direct traffic (21%). There are a number of studies that support the relationship between display and search, confirming that the combination increases product interest and branded search lift.

Here are a couple more studies from conScore showing the effect of online display and search by key business categories.  Each category shows a significant increase in search lift.

When we speak to clients and present digital media plans, we quote the above studies and summarize our strategy with these statements:

1.  Most online advertising is measured by “last-click” metrics, but at the heart of all marketing campaigns is the strategy leading up to the click, which is where banner ad campaigns and other online tactics come into play.

2.  Like pay-per-click ads, strong call-to-action creative with unique landing pages are essential to drive traffic from banner campaigns.

3.  URLs from banner ads need to be tagged so that Google Analytics can monitor site engagement and creative tactics

4.  Overall ROI needs to be measured from a campaign media-mix standpoint vs. individual tactics.  If you rely on ROI measurement from last click reporting, you’re not measuring the true value of marketing and the effects of reach/frequency as related to attribution.

Please let me know your thoughts.  Has this post made you rethink the value of banner campaigns?