What Web Marketing can do for you in 2017.

Web Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) accelerate business growth. 

That's what Web Marketing and SEO can do for you in 2017.

It's a new year with new marketing challenges; revenue growth, margin growth, market growth, resources, and more are high on the list for any professional B-to-B marketing and sales person.

One marketing need is crystal clear - - since good leads feed the business, marketers need to start FEEDING the BUSINESS.

Isn't this the same challenge as last year? And the year before?
Indeed it is.

So what are you going to do about it? 

Whatever else, don't forget these lead generation tools:

1. Web Marketing is a prime weapon in your arsenal for lead generation.
2. A prime component for effective Web Marketing must be Search Engine Marketing.
3. At the very heart of Web Marketing must be Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

I've been employing international Web Marketing and Search Engine Marketing strategies and tactics in my lead generation plans for over 13 years. Web leads have played a strategic, tactical and crucial role in helping grow multiple technical B-to-B business lines in both revenue and profit.

Our web marketing efforts have been producing quality lead generation volumes which have worked beyond anyone's wildest dreams way back in 2003. I'm accomplishing these results with only part of my work time devoted to web marketing... I still must deal with all the other marketing tasks which can easily fill up a day.

While I cannot divulge financial details, one of the business streams I supported received over 10,000 qualified web leads globally in one year alone. That business enjoyed superior revenue, profit, and profit-margin growth. Web leads are feeding that business. Just one person, myself, is managing the content, SEO, and campaigns which attracted and generated those 10,000+ leads, and on a part-time basis in terms of my total work time.

There is really no excuse to not work and engage with SEO on a regular and systemic basis. Web leads are by far the number one source of quality leads, from my experience.

Sanity Check: Web Leads are essential, but they're only part of an optimal mix of healthy lead generation. Outstanding leads are also generated from Referrals, Trade Shows, Advertising, Conferences, White Papers, and more. They must all be utilized. But Web Leads are the high volume and high quality lead generation source, if Search Engine Marketing principles are applied.

So what are you going to do about 2017 quality lead generation? 

My suggestion is: 

Get busy with Search Engine Marketing. Make it a priority.

A Thank You Note to My Competitors (which I hope they never read)

Six Reasons to be Thankful to Your Competitors

Are you running over your 
competitors, or are they running
over you?

For success in B-to-B marketing and lead generation not only are your actions important, but what your competitors do.... or don't do.... or haven't a clue to do, make a big difference. That's why we should extend a tongue-in-cheek 'thank you' to some of our competitors. They can often make our job easier, without even knowing they are being so accommodating. We can divert 'their' quality business leads to ourselves with impunity.

However, to put this into perspective, we should never be complacent about our competition, for therein lies the road to defeat and ruin. A short list of reasons to be thankful, below, really serve as a list of dangers we all need to be aware of, for we are all capable of harming ourselves in this way.

Reasons to be Thankful to our Competition:

1. Poor Focus on Web-page Layout and Clutter:
Producing web-pages which surround and bury the core value content, the really important information a visitor is looking for, is a common practice and self-defeating. The "money content" is subdued, stifled, and trapped in a suffocating waffle of links, images, fluff and other content... the core content is diluted both for the reader and (happy days for us) search engines bots when they crawl their pages, resulting in lower organic search engine rankings.

2. Poor Web-Page Content:
Writing good concise, precise web-page content which targets a key product or service niche (or sub-niche, or sub-sub-niche) is an art and a science. We should thank competitors who launch web-pages with lousy content, especially if they are proud of the result. They just made our job a lot easier to whip them in search engine rankings. I could write a book about lousy web content on competitor webpages. In fact, many intelligent people have written books on how to improve web-page content for SEO. We should be thankful so many people appear not to have read them!

3. Poor Website Structure and Navigation:
A good webmaster is worth a lot, and should be cherished. A good webmaster who understands B-to-B and has a burning desire to rank high in organic search results is worth their weight in gold.... 24 karat investment grade. Having a mediocre or distracted webmaster can  harm a website's overall performance for lead generation. Having a mediocre or distracted webmaster plus poor content and navigation can be a disaster. There are so many things which can go right or go wrong depending upon the organization, resources, support and talent on offer.

4. Competitors behaving badly at Tradeshows and Conferences:
We should be thankful for competitors who suffer from self-defeating habits regarding trade-shows and conferences. Just a few of the event-wins (for us, not for them) are:
a. Not Being There (they skipped or overlooked a key industry event)
b. Being There but Missing in Action (Their booth is empty, delegates nowhere to be seen)
c. Being There, but Indifferent (They are deathly bored at their booth, glazed eyes, negative, non-engaging, don't mingle with attendees, reading, and are wall-flowers)
d. They brought the Wrong Message (They don't tailor their message to the event and market niche, and use a "one size fits all" approach, they brought the wrong people to the event)

5. Outsourcing Paid Search Campaigns:
Hiring an outsider to run Adwords and other paid search and content campaigns is another area for we should be very grateful to the competition. If the search targets are technical and niched, then tasked, informed and focused personnel inside the company will usually be far more nimble, proactive, knowledgeable and cost-effective and efficient than using an outside Ad Agency or consultant. Quality will be higher and wasted clicks and costs reduced by keeping this key marketing lead generation tool in-house. Another big competitive mistake we love is for them to run a one-size-fits-all ad across numerous market niches, with a landing page which is either not focused or requires the visitor make heroic efforts at navigating to a webpage which is relevant to them.
An ideal result for a competitor using Adwords, from our perspective, is for them to waste a lot of money on poorly managed campaigns and then decide it was all a mistake and completely shut the campaigns down... their new-found cost control is then applauded by their finance guys, while we, their competition, enjoy the happy competitive result of stealing their leads, paid-search marketing nirvana for us!

6. Competitors don't exploit Social Media:
If our competitors do not understand nor encourage Social Media marketing, then they aren't blogging, tweeting, posting, "liking" their company, letting others "like" and forward their web-pages, and otherwise promoting their brand, products and services to a huge potential audience. This is a big and inexpensive marketing opportunity for your company to exploit. Since your competition have left a large Social Media vacuum, fill that gap with your offerings. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and more are all opportunities to get in front of your prospective clients in a positive way. If you competitor hasn't figured that out, so much the better.

These "thank you" notes to the competition also serve as a warning to our own marketing and lead generation efforts. Objectivity, modesty, vigilance, and humility always serve us well. Overconfidence, pride, arrogance, ignorance, and hubris are marketing dangers to be avoided at all costs. A question we should frequently ask ourselves: "Are WE making our competitor's jobs easier?" If so, immediate remedial action is needed.

There are many other things for which we can be grateful to our competitors. We must make sure they don't have too many reasons to be grateful to us in return.

B-to-B Web Marketing Should Help Sales People Sell

Connect with Erik Holladay on Linkedin.

B-to-B Lead Generation: The Rise of the Web.

Lead Gen Revolution: 

Dramatic change to Business-to-Business (B-to-B) lead generation in just 10 years.

Over the last decade, promoting technical services to businesses has been transformed, going from mostly 'physical' tactics like sales rep cold calls, trade shows, print ads and stamped mail shots to new technologies including dynamic websites, paid search, organic search, banner ads, social media, and email campaigns. 

Various web experts are saying that in 2010 around 58% of all B-to-B leads were web generated in the USA. That number is expected to rise to 75% in 2015. Already, 80% of buyers said they contacted the vendor, presumably most of them referenced the web for research. Only 10% of buyers came from traditional cold calls. These figures state what we now take for granted: the web has radically changed how a business does business with another business.

I am very lucky and privileged to have been a full and deep 'brick-and-mortar' web marketing player in this unique period of human history - when the business world became wired and went global. When marketing began to transform from 'analog' to 'digital'. Back in 2000, business websites were rather simple, static, 'brochure-ware webpages', not really written nor geared to this novel new way people could find and scan (not read) information on the web. Most people had only thin copper wire connectivity to the web. Broadband was expanding but a rarity. Worse, many sites were not search-engine friendly  because search engines like Google and Overture were not a big factor in search engine traffic.... yet. Remember those disastrous 'framed' content management systems?

I had the pleasure of seeing my first web-leads generated in 1998, they came from extremely qualified customers who were technology savvy, early adapters - - they saw and understood the fantastic potential of the internet, and also appreciated it as extremely cool. They were the customers who kept asking me why we didn't have a website. After months of advocating and pushing, I secured agreement and resources to get the new site built. And surprise! We started to get visitors, and real live leads. That first web-lead in 1998 was very exciting, the beginning of a dramatic shift in lead gen, and a big surprise to skeptics and doubters. 

How did the clients find us in those pioneer days? Promotion. Mostly because I insisted we have our URL domain and an email address printed on business cards, ads, listings, and promotional giveaways. Promotion was our primary way to build awareness of the site, search engines were not an important factor back then. I first heard about Google in 2000, and my first impression was that the name was pretty funny. Little did I know that because of Google, I would spend literally thousands of hours working on webpages, Adwords and Analytics to generate tens of thousands of B-to-B leads a year.

Once Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN (AKA: Paleolithic Bing), Copernicus, and many other search engines became popular, lead generation from B-to-B websites really took off. I am honored to have been involved in the exciting, early stages of this revolutionary change.

Organic and Paid search became extremely important for generating leads. A potential customer could now find that needle-in-the-haystack with relative ease - - you being that needle, that lucrative niche service, for example, if you did your job right!
                                        
The customer now controlled the lead generation process, to your advantage. If you took the initiative in, say 2003, with fresh web content and innovative paid search, and your competitors were oblivious (and most of them were), you could enjoy a near-monopoly on key search terms and web leads.... an enviable situation which is still possible today if you are dedicated, creative and focused.

Twitter Infiltrates Business-to-Business Marketing

Twitter Trends Spotted for Business-to-Business. Sysomos issues June 2009 Report on Twitter Users and Habits across the world.

I looked at Twitter in the past as a purely social media gadget used by teenagers and young adults... not a serious marketing and promotional tool for grown-up B2B businesses. I opened a Twitter account in 2008 to research this new web product and measure any potential it had for B2B... slim pickings back then, and I stopped looking at my Twitter account.

But now, Twitter B2B users are starting to Tweet to real business and potential customers. Things are changing for Tweeter and B2B as marketers and others realize the growing Tweeter user population brings great potential value in spreading short, easy to digest messages, often linked to a key webpage. This very young trend should grow into the next decade.

This year I observed hundreds of attendees, for the first time, use Twitter at a large, major industry conference. They were being kept up-to-date on conference news and activities before, during and after the event with real-time 'Tweets'. That was my Eureka moment on Twitter... time to take it seriously and grow with the B2B trend now happening.

Look at some major businesses using Twitter to update customers, employees, potential customers and others: Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, three General Electric B2B divisions, Apple Computer, Google. The WSJ and FT Tweets actually serve as Headline News Feed Services.

And did I mention that Twitter (so far) is free to senders and receivers? For small business owners, this communication tool can be a great way to get your message out... the only cost is your short amount of time needed to send out a Tweet.

The young may an overwhelming majority of Tweeters now, but they will grow older, mature and become tax paying citizens with real jobs making real business decisions... time is on Twitters side.

Marcus Aurelius, one of the 'good' Roman Emperors, said "Observe constantly that all things take place by change." When it comes to web marketing and technologies, this wisdom is timeless.

Here is an excellent and detailed global Twitter-user demographics and habits report prepared by Sysomos Inc researchers Alex Cheng, Mark Evans and Harshdeep Singh, called "An In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World" . If you are remotely interested in learning more about Twitter, take a look!

You can follow my periodic blogs on Twitter, where I have a small but growing group of 'followers': https://twitter.com/ErikHolladay . I only started to seriously use Twitter in the last few months, it was that one B2B conference (attendance 50,000) which was the catalyst for me to see change was coming!

Twitter is only going to be as good as a company makes it. I attended another massive industry conference recently... they too set-up a twitter account but never used it during the conference... missing an audience of over 70,000 attendees. They even announced that they're focused on 'reaching out to the public' with a Social Media campaign... but someone forgot to "Tweet". Twitter will be a hit and miss learning curve scenario for everyone in B2B.