Wow… I’m jazzed up after two days at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Lead Gen Summit here in Washington DC. It’s one of those conferences where you can’t take notes fast enough to get down the nuggets you want to remember. Great speakers. I’m gonna share a couple dozen of them with you. If you’re in marketing or sales for technology or complex sales of any kind, these will appeal to you. If you’re interested, the West Coast version of this conference is in San Francisco on Nov. 18 – 19. OK, here goes… #1 is from Sherpa’s Anne Holland. She cites Don Crowther’s search marketing tip: capitalize your URL in your Google AdWords text box. So, http://www.WordBiz.com not w,ww.wordbiz.com. Yup, that’s the same Don Crowther who’s presenting BlogWrite with me today at 1:00 PM Eastern…
#2 If you’re budgeting for anything, budget for SEO (search engine optimization). NOT paid search advertising. Anne reported that 73% of 2,000 marketers surveyed by Sherpa reported a lift in traffic to their sites when they optimized their sites through keyword-rich copy, etc.
#3 Everyone knows that the most important elements of a direct marketing campaign are your list, your offer and your creative. But have you determined whether your “offer” (a white paper, a book) appeals to the decision-maker you’re trying to convert? In other words, don’t just give away anything you have laying around. And forget the mugs and pens. One speaker used The New Yorker Book of Technology Cartoons in a successful campaign. From Chris Coleman, CMO of SecureWorks and author of the (very cool) The Green Banana Papers.
#4 The longer the phrase you use in selecting keywords (3 words or more) for your Google AdWords campaign, the higher the conversion rate. Particularly true for B2B. Makes sense. But means you have to dig deeper – and think harder – about those keywords. Also, 60% of clicks on search results are for organic listings; 40% are for paid. From John Tawadros who spoke for iProspect. May sound like nitpicky stuff but people were riveted by this guy’s presentation. (I was.)
#5 Beef up your site map page! Don’t forget it. The crawlers love site maps because they contain keywords and information about your entire site.
#6 Don’t use the words Click here as a hypertext link. The spiders are reading words and they’re more apt to notice a keyword phrase that’s part of a link. So, “Learn more… ” (one of my favorite phrases to link) isn’t effective. Link “More information about business blogs,” for ex.
#7 This next one had the audience in fits, me included. 200 – 300 words of visible copy works best on a Web page. A year ago, the wisdom was 700 – 800 words. So if you’ve got a lot to explain about a topic, break it up into chunks. One page (one unique URL) per sub theme. Still puzzling over exactly how to do this. Tips #5 – #7 from iProspect’s John Tawadros.
#8 B2B sites are in the Middle Ages when it comes to “converting” visitors to a desired action. They just don’t get it when it comes to understanding the objectives of their Web site… and how to match the content and calls to action to the buying process of their visitor prospects. Verbatim from Future Now Inc.’s Jeff Eisenberg.
Get 13 more gems here.