SEO for B to B is another story

Like the differences between fast food and gourmet restaurants, businesses selling to other businesses (B to B) require a different SEO strategy. You need more thoughtful content beyond “Do you want fries with that?”.  Content is key. B to B SEO must be pertinent, expert and on-going. Content editing, creation and link-building for the business buyer requires a thorough understanding of often technical information at the core of technical/industrial company offerings – which is why so many B to B marketers either a) forgo essential search engine optimizing altogether, b) try to do it themselves with mixed results.

Forgoing a concerted SEO effort is risky, even for highly specialized marketers. You leave money on the table, especially if competitors are nipping at your heels.
Most B to B marketers then have two choices. DIY do it yourself SEO can work if you have a skilled communicator, writer, image editor, website editor, social (& other media) maven dedicated to the task. Larger B to B companies can justify a dedicated house-SEO function or department. Smaller companies are hard-pressed to justify even a part time SEO position. And tacking SEO duty onto other staff functions is asking for tepid results. Better to hire a pro with proven writing, editing and SEO planning experience.

How to outsource B to B SEO

Specialized B to B Marketing Services firms are out there! We may be outnumbered 100 to 1, but we are available and affordable. We are builders & champions of an industrial or technical client’s value proposition, producing brand-building content everywhere it matters. We have experience asking the “dumb” questions that enable us to craft written and visual content, while augmenting a client’s capabilities. But, like any relationship, an SEO client must be prepared to:

• Assess a fit – Can we work together?
• Share marketing goals, strategy
• Core dump – impart vital product/service information
• Develop an SEO blueprint
• Be available for questions, reviews, media opportunities

Content is king, and so is target market distribution. We create, search optimize and place: posts, press releases, articles, white papers, videos, broadcast spots. These can be re-purposed for whatever media channels your customers favor: social media, websites & website blogs, tweets and other sharing forums. We can help customize a Content Marketing strategy that best works for you.

Short Cuts to a Great Website - Video notes worth sharing.

"Short Cuts To A Great Website" graphic animation video has been developed by EJW Associates for managers tasked with renewing or redoing a web presence. Time-strapped, budget-minded, multi-tasking executives will get a concise (~6 min.) overview covering the essentials of website planning, development & maintenance. Certainly, those are important, but the video also addresses branding considerations with marketing notes.

Self promoting interjections are minimal, even informational for viewers looking to outsource website production - part or parcel. On balance, target audience viewers will be presented with bullet-outline format advice on Strategy, Information Architecture, Design, & Building a website. Plan to pause frequently for screen capture, take notes, or share to help with your team's quest for website success.

Spoiler alert: There are no shortcuts, but the video breaks down development and marketing tasks into manageable milestones. 

Think about us here, in our creative playpen…

We poked heads up over daily projects to survey our B to B customers earlier this year. Clients rewarded us with some insightful responses. In our 2016 Client Marketing Survey we scored a proverbial 30,000’ view of client priorities. Thank you for helping us focus! How do their priorities compare with yours?

2016 Client Marketing Priorities

Top 5 client marketing priorities:

• #1 & #2 (tied): Sales Leads & Better Client Communications (73%)
• #3: Website Design & Functionality (64%)
• #4: Building Market Awareness (46%)
• #5: Improving Brand (36%)

Proceeding down the marketing priorities list:

• Customer Education, More Social Media, Website hosting & management issues, keeping projects on track (~25%)
• Learning what does/doesn’t work, getting more outside/inside marketing help (18%)

Lowest marketing priorities:

• Addressing concerns about “Not messing up a good thing” (9%)
• Keeping up with customer demand (0%) Not on any client’s radar.

Then, we drilled down to discover where clients may be looking for help…

Where Clients Need Help in 2016

• Advertising - All want creative and content help (100%), but not everyone is looking for planning and management assistance (20%)
• Website - Almost all (88%) are looking for website design help, followed closely (62%) by 3 other ongoing website-related priorities that include: adding site functionality, content, and SEO.
• Branding - A third (33%) want help in all areas of logo design & branding, including how they apply their brand in the form of Logo Use Manuals, and unifying their brand across multiple channels.
• Brochureware - Who says print is dead among business to business agency clients? Half (50%) will be looking for design & creative help. A third (33%) feel they need help with content and production.
• Direct Marketing, print and/or digital - Half (50% will be needing assistance in all areas of direct marketing, including sign, content, production.
• SEO - A third (33%) want help in all areas of Search Engine Optimizing, including creative, content and ongoing management.
• PR - (75%) seek writing, imaging and distribution help.
• Trade Shows - Less than 20% (18%) completed this question, but those who did acknowledged they needed help in booth design and booth production.

We've always got your back! For marketing, advertising, PR and general lead acquisition and client retention marketing services give EJW Associates a shout.

Zombies encounter sweetness & light in the garden of marketing roses, Part I.

Marketing happens with or without proper attention. Markets respond to well targeted offers made by well-positioned sellers who properly and consistently present their value proposition in well planned media and sales campaigns. That mouthful means It’s up to you to determine whether or not they respond to your marketing, or your competition’s.

If you’re one of the good ones, you’ve taken control of the marketing function to reduce costs for lead generation, customer retention efforts, customer support & market communications - even as your marketing program effectiveness and ROI skyrocket. You and your now accountable colleagues are hailed as heroes bathed in sweetness and light in a garden of marketing roses. Truly, it happens!

More often then not, though, marketing is treated as a necessary evil, and an unprofitable byproduct of the business core. It may not even be a budget entity. In this case marketing becomes a catch-all for everything that is not sales or production. This is Zombie marketing that may be known from its dilution of responsibilities and its nonexistent accountability for all manner of will-nilly marketing projects rehashed from earlier efforts, or developed unplanned and as-needed (or late to never!). 

Anecdotal evidence of what happens with Zombie marketing over time includes: brand confusion, sales/profit stagnation or loss, and erosion of market share.

Frustrations mount over time along such Zombi highways paved with adequate, if not the best of intentions. Piddling 1,2 & 3 star customer experiences become the norm. Fewer and fewer prospects turn into fewer and fewer new customers. Existing customer orders fall off and nobody knows why. Zombies rarely get burned for going with the flow. This is especially true in the business-to-business selling world with extended sales cycles involving lots of influencers, decision makers, and procedures where death can be from a 1,000 hard-to-track cuts.

You know who you are. Perhaps your company has grown, along with the number of hats everyone wears. Marketing - what is that? We’ve made it this far, haven’t we? 

Even so, the “things” of marketing that need doing somehow manage to get done sooner or later in some way, shape or form. Piece meal marketing projects may be shared or divided among Sales, Operations, IT, Division Management, or even Secretary hat wearers. He or she gets today’s marketing hat who drew the short straw to shepherd a much needed website, PR, ad program, or any one of a number of sales support productions, i.e. videos, brochures, presentations, or events. 

There’s hope. You acknowledge such random Zombie acts of marketing aren’t ideal. You realize management by reaction; this is marketing in pieces is unsustainable. Competition is nipping at your heels. You’re hearing more and more customer suggestions, if not complaints (and on social media, no less!). Department heads are screaming. Morale is sinking into fatalism. You want to turn this grayness into sweetness & light in your very own garden of marketing roses.

You get a glimpse of a bigger marketing picture. You start asking pointed questions. How do each of these Zombie marketing things you’ve just been throwing into the mix: Work for a common corporate goal? Get prioritized? Account for effectiveness? Promote a consistent brand? Work together to gain new customers? Keep existing customers coming back?

You’ve reached the end of my attention span for this exciting episode of Zombies encounter sweetness & light in the garden of marketing roses, Part I.

Look for Zombies cured by sweetness & light in the garden of marketing roses, Part II in the near future.

Those anxious for a more personal solution to a Zombie Marketing issue may contact the author, Emil Walcek, at:

EJW Associates Inc

1602 Abbey Ct

Alpharetta, GA 30076

advertise@ejwassoc.com

770-664-9322

www.ejwassoc.com

DYI Market Research - Tips for making it pay

http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/kaden1.asp

As with all things digital, the tools for marketing research and marketing surveys are easy. Expertise for ensuring productive results is harder to come by for b to b marketers. First red flag, be careful what you ask to avoid rabbit holes that waste time, effort, and lead to dead ends. You will be caught like a deer in headlights with too much survey information. So will customers facing a too-complicated survey. Focus before beginning any survey! Ruthlessly winnow survey questions to get fewer answers that can have more impact.
Market Research Surveys can help marketers reduce risks, improve customer service, successfully develop new product or services, and gain new customer sales. Help formulating a survey strategy that includes defining a goal, questions, sample size and analysis will ensure an actionable result. For more information: EJW Associates Marketing Consulting Services and special OLI Marketing Consulting Offer.

How long has it been since you're company's last reality check?

http://www.manta.com/resources/tip-of-the-day/swots-it-all-about/

Everything from future sales & profits to market share & branding starts with a SWOT checkup - ideally guided by a dispassionate third party.

__________ - Art or Science?

Even before screens (BS) and blogs, it was not uncommon to run across article headlines with the alluring "-Art or Science?" phrase. Article content that followed was usually a disappointment then, and, as I peruse business feeds today, not much has changed. Authors in the blogosphere continue to tack this academic challenge onto subject headlines as if the phrase is forever fresh. Oh, the banality!

Readers, steer clear. Writers, think twice. It’s easy to rationalize such a headline hit. After all, there is an art or science in just about every subject. See for yourself how desperately effortless it is to fill in the blank before Art or Science with whatever: Marketing, Sales, Accounting, IT, Website Design, Programming, Management, Dog Sitting, etc.

A cynical plot, naiveté, or writer laziness?
Like moths to flame consumers of content are mysteriously compelled to break things into conflicting parts. Writers know contradictions attract, so such a headline phrase is pure gold. If we can divide something we're on our way to conquering and understanding. Or, at least be thoroughly entertained with the conundrum. That's the theory.

Don’t get me started on a whole raft of antonymical, kissing cousin, cheap-trick headline phrases that bombard us around the clock:

… Right or Left Brain?
… Heart or Mind?
… Form or Function?
… Style or Substance?

To illustrate, let’s plug the word Marketing into our “Marketing - Art or Science?” headline. Challenging, right? It invites us to really get in and slice and dice. Here's the rub: in the space of a 400 word blog post it is virtually guaranteed that the content cannot live up to these type Academic promises. Knowing this, the calloused among us have learned to skim right past such headlines.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Deep Thoughts. Academic headlines matched to suitably in-depth content have their place: Say, among target readers who also study the meaning of life and other such theoretical dilemmas. On the other hand, a writer delivering anything less after such a headline should expect banishment to the trash heap of the Interwebs, his or her work identified with the ever expanding belt of noise encircling the Internet, and a tarnished brand. You don’t want that, do you?

Problem number 2 with "-Art or Science" or other such theoretically challenged posts: consider the result, even if the article content did by some miracle deliver on the headline’s academic promise with relevant, reasoned content. On a practical level, what possible outcome can the answer to the question have on a CMO (chief marketing officer), or other manager’s work flow today, or ever?

Managers want to be hit with management solutions, i.e. My busted budget, the website update, vendors on the wrong track, Jane home sick and I don’t know how our trade show will go on, sales folk beating me up for new product promotions and brochure documentation, etc.

Bloglanders heed this message. May this be the last blog post you read headlined by the question “-Art or Science?”!

To all blog authors young enough not to have been taught cursive writing in school: save this low hanging fruit of a headline phrase for the leisure class reader. Or, do it justice in an academic context. But, please spare those of us in the business world!