b2bRelevance » Attract

Selling SEO During an Economic Downturn

Justin King — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:52:44 +0000

My friend and colleague Chris Boggs just posted a great posting on selling SEO during an economic downturn. As B2B marketers, there is probably little that we can do in 2009 more importantly than optimize our organic search. Chris’s approach is to those on the agency side selling these types of services. Chris is without a doubt one of the top 5 SEO consultants in the country, and I have the privilege having him involved in my pursuits at Rosetta.

Here are a few of Chris’s recent suggestions for selling SEO:

Some level of introduction is needed – “Level-setting the room will ensure that people are at least aware of the primary tenets of SEO, and reinforce the decision made by prior “converts.”"
Make SEO a program not a project – “SEO should always be an ongoing project. It has been said over and over, but you can’t “set and forget” SEO, especially when competing in crowded industries or verticals”
Take advantage of Q4 – Q4 money exists for marketing departments to spend so that they get a similar budget in 2009. “This year, you should really think outside of the box, and send at least some of the money towards ramping up your SEO efforts.”

For B2B marketers, SEO is one of our foundational tenets. The ROI on SEO is always incredible and with over 80% of research occurring online, how you position your organization online is critical.

Business-to-Business Marketing in a Recession

Justin.King — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:10:21 +0000

Very appropriate post today from Marketo. In addition to the below great points, I would add that we need to make sure we are addressing the real needs of our customers, and find ways to engage with our customers in a relevant dialogue. This last week has been a week of conversations around “How do we engage with our customers in a meaningful and relevant way”. These are good first steps and I love that my customers are starting to think that way – here are some other strategies as well. I realized this week, that it is important to have a level setting conversation a couple of times a year with our customers. This conversation should be looking at the original objectives, measuring how we are doing, and brainstorming about new ideas.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, as many are contemplating survival techniques. We have seen marketing budgets shrink considerably, but luckily businesses continue to move into interactive marketing so our plans remain steady.

Here are a couple great tips from that Marketo post.

What does all this mean? It means that now, more than ever, marketers need to:

Maximize conversion of their advertising dollars into prospects by optimizing their landing pages.

Stop wasting leads that aren’t yet sales ready and start using lead nurturing to build relationships so that when they are ready to buy, you’ll be positioned to win. In a recession, new prospects are less likely to be looking to purchase right away — which means they are less likely to want to talk to a sales rep. Lead nurturing is even more critical in a recession to ensure you convert the precious dollars you spend acquiring prospects into revenue.

Use lead scoring to identify the best leads and help the sales team prioritize where they spend their time

Prove the impact their marketing activities have on revenue and pipeline

What kind of conversations are you having?

Social media case study: Acuvue Facebook viral application

Justin.King — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:40:14 +0000

We (Rosetta) just launched Aucuvue’s viral marketing campaign through Facebook. For those of us with a stigmatism, these contacts (you can get a free pair) are amazing. Check out the campaign and let me know what you think. Click here to go to the Facebook application page and become a fan.

A practical example of creating a relevant dialogue

Justin.King — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:25:26 +0000

I have been working with a major brand that sells specialty tools to contractors (plumbers, electricians, etc.). They are planning on launch on a new product, and my agency Rosetta is putting together the product launch plan and digital marketing approach.

Partnering
We are working with the companies traditional agency of record, as they have no true interactive marketing capabilities. This has been an excellent process, of which I would like to dedicate another post to.

Research
Together with the traditional agency, we did quite a bit of customer research, talking to prospective customers, conducting online surveys, and talking to editors of trade magazines. Through the research we found that the customers of this new product had some significant challenges in front of them.

the economy is affecting their business tremendously especially with the slow down of new residential and renovations
green and energy efficient is on everyone’s minds, but most don’t know how to take advantage of it
because of the economy, contractors are trying to find new ways to sustain their businesses

What we found
In our quest to be relevant, we also faced challenges. What was easy to do for the client was to create a microsite with the typical features | benefits | case studies information. As I probed deeper and deeper, we kept asking the question what does your customer care about. The answer was simple – the customer wants to be able to make more money in this down economy. They are not sophisticated enough to determine ROI – they just care about the R (Revenue). Therefore our content that we provided needed to be focused around solving this core problem of making more money for the contractor.

Lead generation
The goal for the product launch was to create a lead engine that could attract prospective buyers and in the end create sales-ready leads that were ready to be engaged by a salesman who could close the deal. To get those leads, we knew we had to give the contractor something of value so that we had the right to ask for a name and email address (simple forms for landing page optimization). Going back to our research, we decided to create white papers and eBooks around “How to make more money in a down economy”. We are now going to tailor those to each primary segment and personality profile that we have identified. So we will have “4 ways for HVAC contractors to heat up your business in a down economy” and elements like that. The information is simple, not product focused and has a lot of value – no marketing propaganda.

What’s next? We are now working on the nurturing approach to turn them from leads to sales-ready prospects.

Creating a relevant dialogue is critical. Here are a few practical strategies to keep your content relevant.

What are your company’s primary web site domains?

Justin.King — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:04:26 +0000

A number of client meetings and biz dev discussions over the last couple of weeks has prompted me to ask you the question above “What are your primary domain names?”. I keep getting answers about the companies dot coms and even their microsites, but they all look at me in confusion when I tell them that Google.com is the “other” primary domain.

Investment and time needs to be equally split between Google.com and your .com. People spend the time and effort to use Google to find relevant information and it is the gateway to most (if not all) your traffic. Understand it, invest in it, spend time in it, love it – okay, going a bit overboard…

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