Black History

Every discussion I’ve had with manufacturers and industrial companies starts with “we need more leads” or ends with “we need results.” I understand and accept the fact that the main goal of industrial marketing is to generate leads. I have no issues with that but do these companies know what a qualified lead is?

That may sound like a dumb question to ask in industrial lead generation but in reality, you would be surprised by how fundamental and serious that question is. I’m not making this up or trying to be clever here.

Let me explain with three excerpts from conversations I have had in just the past few months.


Problems in industrial lead generation

Conversation #1: The US Sales Manager of a manufacturer of level controllers and control vales said to me, “We don’t talk to leads until we receive an RFQ/RFP.”

Problem: The buyer is already at the end of their buying decision by the time an RFQ/RFP is issued. He wants to compare bids from vendors based on price and lead-time. The manufacturer doesn’t want to sell on price because their strength is in providing engineered solutions. It is too late for the manufacture to start talking about their expertise at this stage because they have to conform to the exact bid specifications in order to provide a price and a delivery time.

Conversation #2: The President at a distributor of natural gas and compressed air dehydrators said, “My sales team can tell if a lead is qualified or not within two minutes of talking to someone.”

Problem: The sales team isn’t receiving enough calls or able to get in front of enough prospects to make that quick determination. As a result, sales are down and they need more leads.

In an era when the average business buyer only contacts a brand when he/she is 67 percent through the buying process, there’s every reason to make sure that you’re reaching prospective customers at every stage of their research, not just when they’re ready to buy. Otherwise, when buyers finally do start to contact vendors, you may not even be part of the conversation.

SEM offer strategy this is especially true for technology marketers, and doubly true for those in nascent or emerging categories, when much of the marketing challenge may consist of convincing buyers that they have a problem to solve in the first place. Smart technology marketers look to capture buyers early on in the sales cycle, then engage them in a consistent nurture campaign to build credibility, trust, and to position their solution favorably for when the buyers are ready to engage with sales.



It’s puzzling, therefore, why so many SEM campaigns in the high tech space focus exclusively on late-stage offers, namely trials and demos. Actually, I know why it is. One reason is a general (short-sighted, in my view) opinion of SEM as merely a tool to find prospects who are ready to buy. But the second reason is that technology marketers (and their sales counterparts) are impatient, have short term business horizons, and don’t want to “wait around” for leads to be qualified.

However, by limiting paid search (SEM) campaigns (and social ads like LinkedIn also) to prospects who are ready to look at a product, marketers do themselves and their companies a disservice. If you expand your SEM offer strategy to include early-stage content, yes – you’ll generate a mix of leads and not just highly qualified demo-ready prospects – but, if you have the right nurture strategy in place, you’ll end up with many more qualified leads, and a greater ROI, in the long run.

Started in 2008 as the world’s first open source video player, JW Player pioneered video on the Web and today has customers in 193 countries, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to individual bloggers. The company’s flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites with more than 1.3 billion unique monthly views.

JW Player LogoIn 2015, JW Player piloted a small-scale, in-house SEM program on Google AdWords to gauge the potential efficacy of using search advertising to drive qualified leads for its enterprise video platform. Though that pilot campaign didn’t yield any conversions, the company felt reasonably confident that, with the proper guidance and management, SEM could be a viable demand generation engine for the enterprise business.

JW Player contacted Spear Marketing Group, a leading B2B demand generation agency, for help. The company chose Spear for the firm’s experience with other B2B technology clients, and also for their unique, holistic approach to SEM, one that focused not just on driving clicks and click volume, but rather qualified sales leads at the lowest possible cost.



Spear’s engagement began with an audit and assessment of the pilot campaign, to gauge what learnings could be gleaned from the experiment, and also to help provide baseline data on which to project Cost Per Click (CPC) and potential ROI. The audit recommended some fundamental changes in strategy and application of SEM best practices across the board, including:

• Tighter ad groups to improve ad relevance and therefore quality score (decreasing CPC)
• Increasing the number of negative keywords to reduce consumer impressions and unqualified clicks
• Aggressive testing of ad copy
• Landing page improvements focused on promoting a specific, tangible offer to drive conversions

“Almost all our SEM engagements begin with some kind of audit and assessment,” commented Howard J. Sewell, Spear President. “Not only does it provide us data to help guide the new campaign and set realistic performance goals, but it also gives the client a clear picture of where we see the most opportunity for improvement. Often we’re pinpointing areas that haven’t even been considered, particularly in areas like landing page optimization and offer strategy.”

Given the modern data environment, improving your PPC results will increasingly rely on processing quality data. Going from good to great PPC performance involves collecting and processing bigger data sets and using machine learning to find and select the best bids. But, despite what you may fear, humans are an integral part of this process as well. Machines can’t do it alone.

You’re a talented search marketer, but you want to constantly improve, grow, and stay sharp on the latest techniques in digital marketing. Whether you’re the hands-on owner of a SEM program day-to-day, or you’ve stepped away to think more broadly about your digital acquisition strategy, the goal is still the same: turn your PPC channel into an efficient and predictable revenue driver. 

But, once you’ve started hitting the ceiling, it’s time to put more of your data to work.




Collecting More Data from PPC

I’m going to assume you’re a pretty advanced search marketer, so you’ve got your ducks in a row regarding your program structure. This means you probably have strong campaign build-out, highly relevant ad groups matched with ad copy and keywords that are tested, kept clean, and aligned with a good landing page experience.

You’re also probably driving some significant volume. If PPC is a truly pivotal channel–generating forty, sixty, or eighty percent of your revenue–you’re willing to spend a lot with search engines. Lots of dollars leading to lots of clicks and revenue.

When you’re spending tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of budget dollars on search engine marketing, you earn a valuable byproduct: data.

This data is a gold mine! Every click results in some set of actions on your website and some get further down the path towards revenue than others. Beyond that, every click is not only attributed to the keyword, ad, ad group, and campaign, but also to all sorts of attributes and dimensions that provide details about demographics, geographies, and habits.

The intricate customer journeys of the modern era make a “Conversion” in Google Ads worth less – and your own ability to track the path to revenue so much more meaningful. Your data tells a better story, you just need to capture it, unify it, and process it. 

Every digital marketer should strive to create campaigns with consistent and unique styles to set their company apart from the competition. What’s more, generating content with a unified style in mind is one of the best ways to establish to establish a strong brand identity in the digital world. And given the fact that many companies chiefly interact with their customers through digital media, developing a well-defined marketing “voice,” is a must for just about every business. To that end, today we’ll explore how companies across industries can create blogs, social media posts, and advertisements that share a common theme, message, and tone. (Plus, we’ll explain why it’s so important to stay on-point and on-message as much as you can!)



B2B vs B2C Content

What your business does on a day-to-day basis should have a major effect on the type of marketing content you produce. Obviously, B2B businesses should have vastly different strategies than B2C companies. To dive a little deeper: B2C businesses need to make content that energizes and excites their customer base and focuses on customer experience. They’re looking to inspire people to make snap decisions –– or even impulse buys –– and their marketing efforts should reflect that. Conversely, B2B businesses can write more in-depth, industry-specific pieces, since they often deal with niche audiences. You’re not going to convince someone to spend ten thousand dollars on lab equipment because of a catchy tagline, for example –– so it’s best not to even explore that route.

Don’t be Afraid to Stand Out

Every business owner should understand that what makes their company different, should also make it valuable. Don’t consider your company to be “small;” think of it instead as “agile.” Instead of “inexperienced,” be “enthusiastic.” The point is, whatever makes your company unique should be an asset that you consistently underline in your marketing work. Trying to cover up any supposed “deficiencies” in your writing will likely come across as desperate at best, and off-putting at worst.

Understand Your Place

If you’re ever going to create marketing content that engages your audience, you need to understand what your readers expect from your business. For instance, a party bus company can adopt a more carefree and relaxed vibe in their marketing content than a law firm ever could. Knowing how you fit into your customers’ or clients’ lives is critical in forming an effective brand identity. Alternatively, there’s nothing worse than company that’s tone-deaf online and makes inappropriate comments online. Remember: when in doubt, stick to what you know best. It’ll serve you well in the long run.

While we all have goals and objectives for lead generation, brand development, and customer experience as examples, the overarching challenge is making the right decisions to achieve them.

Goals become more complicated to achieve as evolving marketing technology continues to promise an opportunity to target more specifically and create unique customer experiences buyers demand.

B2B buyer personas provide a foundation for accomplishing the research and development of effective online marketing campaigns designed to achieve strategic marketing objectives.



What Are B2B Buyer Personas?

Buyer personas are fictional characters that represent types of users that typically use, evaluate, and authorize the purchase of B2B products and solutions.

In coordination with buyer journey mapping, personas help marketers conceptualize how target audiences may interact with an organization and associated solutions.

Here are additional definitions from around the web:

Ardath Albee & MLT Creative: “A buyer persona is a composite of different factors that affect your buyer and motivate him/her to buy. Your prospect’s buying cycle and buying decisions are situated within a larger context that must be understood in order to motivate his/her buyer behavior.” (source)
Adele Revella: “A buyer persona as an archetype; a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you market, based on what you’ve learned in direct interviews with real buyers.” (source)
For online marketers, buyer personas can provide direction in the channel-specific campaign development.

In this post, we will define how buyer personas can be leveraged for building more effective programs in B2B SEO, PPC, content marketing, and social media.

Your B2B PR strategy is a complex machine, with earned, owned, shared, and paid media components all working together. Today, we're focusing on the earned media portion of your public relations strategy.

What is earned media? It is the attention a brand receives through through media or other websites. It is called "earned" since it cannot be bought or owned. It is attained through media relations, such as press releases and pitches to journalists.

So how do you get it? A lot relies on understanding what's happening in the world of journalism and what that means for your public relations strategy.



Which begs the question...

What is Happening to Modern Journalism?

Cision, one of the most foremost resources for everything PR, has released its 2019 State of the Media Report. This report helps us see where media relations is headed and what PR tactics would be most useful. 

What does this Cision report have to say about the state of modern journalism? The intro puts it this way: "In this fragmented, dynamic media environment, communications and PR professionals have an opportunity to become even more reliable partners with their media counterparts. " Given the right PR tactics, PR professionals can succeed in firing up their media relations strategy.

Another study, Onclusive's 2019 Global Journalism Report gives us more valuable information about how we view journalism in the 21st century. Onclusive has based its report on an analysis of 2.1 billion pieces of editorial content between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019.  Its conclusion: "The world of journalism has never been as dynamic as it is today .... The numbers tell a story of an author ecosystem which is fragmenting across publication tiers, editorial topics, and content formats."

What makes today's journalism so different and powerful? The report refers to two key areas to which we may attribute this: digital media and self-publishing.

Where once it was easy to know which media to pitch, today given the proliferation of Tier 3 publications (the non-media elite), there is a virtual army of lesser known outlets to penetrate. Moreover, brands can easily publish their own content and get their name and ideas in front of more eyeballs by amplifying owned content with paid media.

Let's examine these two reports and the findings therein to see what we can learn, as well as pinpoint how it will impact modern PR strategies and tactics.