Gone are the days where we as marketers controlled who got what message and when. Today our prospective buyers use the Internet to get information from peers, associations, media and other third parties—think search engines, Blogs, community sites, social networks etc. They have specific business problems that they need to solve and are looking to minimize their risk when choosing both the type of solution and the vendor that will provide it.
If we want to play in this new world we must create content that draws prospects to us, and place it exactly where they are looking. Sounds simple right? Well although it’s not rocket science, successful content marketing takes strategic planning, smart execution and a sustained effort.
Stay tuned for our Five steps to content marketing success: A practical guide for B2B marketers!
I’m just wrapping up an SEO keyword research project and wanted to let you know about the great tool that SEOMoz has to determine keyword difficulty.
I used the Google Adwords tool to generate a list of relevant keywords and their relative search volume, and then ranked that list by relevance. I put the most relevant ones into the SEOMoz tool and got their keyword difficulty score. That score determines the difficulty factor of ranking high for a particular term for organic based on a complex algorithm that takes into account the domain authority of the sites ranking high for that term among other things. This is a different number than the ‘competition’ number that the Google Adwords tool reports, as that is referring to the competition level for paid search ads.
Thanks to Cyrus Shepard at SEOMoz for helping me to understand the different metrics. I now have a really good short list of keywords to present to the client. Once we have decided on those terms, we can optimize their Web site and external links plus develop a content marketing strategy to demonstrate domain authority and improve their search ranking.
On a related note…SEOMoz also has a ‘term extractor’ tool, which allows you to see what terms a particular site is targeting. Remember you’re looking for those golden keywords that are highly relevant, have good volume and are not highly competitive.
Last week I attended the webinar Live Landing Page Reviews by Point It. They provided a nice checklist of eight items for your landing page, and three core principles. Most of these have been covered in my previous post “8 Ways to Make your Landing Page Convert,” so I’ll cover some of the tidbits that could have slipped by you even if you were attending as well.
The bounce rates of your landing pages are vital to your success because Google can penalize you if they are too high. But how high is too high? Point It says: that depends on the type of keywords you are using. For non-branded, general keywords 65% to 75% is an acceptable range. For branded keywords the range is 15% to 20%.
“16-pixel text on a screen is about the same size as text printed in a book or magazine; this is accounting for reading distance. Because we read books pretty close — often only a few inches away — they are typically set at about 10 points. If you were to read them at arm’s length, you’d want at least 12 points, which is about the same size as 16 pixels on most screens.”
Your target audience doesn’t have to be older or visually impaired to appreciate you increasing the text size. In fact, if you do increase it, that will force you to edit down your content to get the important points “above the fold.” This helps you achieve another best practice which is make your text short and to the point.
The last tip I have for you is about Google Analytics. Hopefully you already have it, and are aware of the great functionality of Multi-Channel Funnels. Set those up and figure out how your campaigns, banner ads and keywords are effecting your conversions.
What are your helpful tidbits for landing page design?
I love the recent Blog post from Seth Godin about the danger of misusing the ubiquitous social media channels that are now available to marketers.
It’s really tempting to get out the megaphone and start blasting your messages across platforms, but if you do then you’re really missing the point.
I see so much shameless self-promotion out there in the social media world—both at the personal and company level, and for me that’s a real turn off.
Be sure you add value to the conversations you engage in online. Give good advice, be helpful, be an expert, be supportive. If you can’t do any of those things, then don’t engage in the conversation.
Way back in my marketing career I had the pleasure of working with Jim Simpson, who was then the CEO of Wall Data. Jim was a tough Scotsman and a brilliant business man, so when he spoke you listened. Jim would always keep his marketing team on track with the ‘so what?’ question. Here’s how a typical conversation went:
My imaginary copy line: “The RUMBA Office Notebook is an ActiveX / OLE container in which the user can keep their host sessions and other applications.” [Feature]
Jim: “So what?”
Me: “So you don’t have to spend ages combing your desktop for to find the other applications you need” [Advantage]
Jim: “So what?”
Me: “So you can save time and focus on getting your job done, instead of being a PC expert.” [Benefit]
Jim: “Okay”
New copy line: Save time and hassle with the RUMBA Office Notebook—a convenient way to organize your applications. Get one click access to your favorite applications by simply clicking on a Notebook tab.
The world has changed for B2B marketers.
