We are focused on growing mailing lists as a clear goal during the #Covid19 #lockdown.
Here’s the detail of our campaign so you can copy it for your brand.
I’m doing quick updates on daily topics. Let me know what is helpful for you.
A challenge for a retail website selling B2B. Where and how to update SEO – should it be in ERP or should it be on the site? How to set rules?
The new “Off-Facebook Activity” tracker launched this week spits out a list of the apps and sites that share your activity with Camp Zuckerberg. The platform can see when you visit a website or open an app, or add an item to your shopping cart, just to name a few examples.
I just did a check on Facebook of all the brands who have set a tracking pixel for my website visits.
526.
Wow. I mean, really – that’s a lot.
These are the most recent brands tracking me with a FB pixel
If you want to check your own, here’s how.
Navigate to your Facebook activity list by clicking background information about “Off Facebook Activity” and on right side “What you Can Do”. There are also informational help tabs.
Where to click to find your off Facebook brand tracking
The old chestnut about “sales-ready leads” versus “marketing qualified leads” never ends – it just mutates like a virus.
Results of 2020 sales leader survey
My interpretation of this is:
For all in-house marketing managers, I’m running some training hosted by CCH Learning during February. I first ran this course three years ago and it remains the most popular I’ve ever done with them. Digital Strategy and Your Website.
Business websites cannot be static “set-and-forget” marketing assets. Recent changes to search and social algorithms affect your business. Learn how to work your website hard so that it pays back the investment to the business, brings in new enquiries and showcases the firm’s expertise and key staff.
This is a practical training webinar which will show you how to test your website’s effectiveness and give you a checklist of what you can do to improve key metrics.
Further, a business website MUST be the central hub for all your marketing activity. It needs close integration with other key marketing technologies which I’ll be teaching on this course.
Get yourself onto this course – the investment is a modest NZ$215 + GST and I know you’ll be glad you came.
My reviews from all the courses I have given reflect the client testimonials I get from direct clients.
My company provides mechanical designs and manufacturers and supplies products to a few companies in both the US and Europe. How do I increase my customers?
This is a typical “opening” question that I get asked when starting a new engagement with clients. B2B marketing needs to be closely integrated with the new business and new client acquisition process to be effective.
For a public question and answer, I gave some straightforward answers. The detail of how to apply these, is where my expertise will help you get it right first time.
Planning B2B sales and marketing plan
In Europe, there are a number of partnership sites for B2B. You could use these sites to post your offer or search for other offers and hopefully make a match.
Another approach is considering hiring local distributors who specialise in your industry. The advantage here is local distributors will already have a strong network to promote your products/services. Furthermore, local distributors would have thorough understanding of the local market, language, and business culture to close deals.
Go talk to your current customers. Ask them why they do business with you. They may, and most likely will, tell you something different than you’re saying to new prospects. Listen to what your current customers are saying and use their messaging to talk to the market. Ask them if they know other companies that could use what you have,
Go and join the professional trade bodies who represent the industries for your existing clients. Ask your existing clients what these are. Once you are a member, you will be able to see a membership list of other organisations who are also members
Plan outbound marketing to approach these companies and see if they want to also work with you.
Consider visiting the annual conferences and trade shows which these professional bodies run because you will then meet in person with prospects. Many people find it easier to sell their expertise face to face. You could consider doing a trade show stand as well where you can display your past work and the logos of your clients. This builds trust and can start discussions.,
In summary – you need to learn the process of B2B new business, you need a strategy for your new business development and then you need a regular tactical execution process to deliver the new business programme.
You may choose to hire an external advisor to help write the strategy, you could get an in-house salesperson to deliver the tactical execution as well, depending on the size of your contracts and how many you need to get in order to pay for their salary plus commission to make it worthwhile for the business.
I am asking this question a LOT at the moment. I ask it to myself, for my own businesses, I ask clients, I ask prospects.
One answer came from a professional services marketer. It serves as a good example for in-house marketers to challenge their thinking, to up-skill and to get insight from beyond the internal team in the business.
This is what she wrote to answer
Hmmm… It’s hard to tell. I cannot know if a speaking engagement got someone interested enough to ask their consultant to investigate our solutions and eventually get in touch with us and 2 years later… we have a deal signed. It is a complex process to sell our service.
Yes, it certainly is. Tracking and managing a diverse set of marketing tactics and campaigns over time takes discipline and forethought.
But where I felt this marketing manager was failing her business colleagues was around integrating the content creation, the speech-giving with marketing analytics and tracking data.
I challenge the assertion that you “cannot know” if a speaking engagement has any effect.
Let me make some suggestions:
Both of these create trackable events which (even if 2 years passes) can enable you to demonstrate results.
Any pass-on of URLs to second parties like consultants or colleagues is tracked too.
I use Google Campaign URL builder and also short link services like Bit.ly for this.
When did you last go and get training and invest in your internal marketing team? I fear many in-house teams do not get the attention they deserve. Hiring an agency or consultant is not necessarily going to improve the team skills – it delegates marketing activity to outsiders.
What could you do to invest better, to improve your team’s ability to run the strategy as well as the execution, to better understand what the agency / consultant is doing for you, so that they can brief better, to guide the marketing plan better, to adapt and adjust the marketing budget for new tech, for new market conditions (recession?) and above all, to stay in front of the competition?
So challenge yourself, is the marketing you are doing giving you the yield you seek?
Podcasts are seriously TERRIBLE at helping your website and brand SEO.
If you are a podcaster, chances are that you have a website page or category in which you list your episodes. But these pages do not perform well in natural search. Have you done a search in your own analytics for podcast pages? Have you done an incognito search for your own podcast in a search engine? Chances are that you were disappointed in the results.
I have done searches looking for past episodes of my podcasts and found that the name of the guest is often a good result for natural search – IF the person is looking for information about that guest. The rest of the time, it’s just been hard graft for precious little return.
The situation is not good at present for three reasons.
Luckily for us, Google has also noticed that its results need improving. As announced earlier this year, Google will start indexing individual podcast episodes into its search results. But there are caveats – you have to include the word “podcast” in the search string…. and it is starting (obviously) with already popular content from publishers with “authority” and prioritising US based podcasters [don’t get me started on where the centre of the universe actually is….].
Search results for podcast – that’s mine, RowingChat
The image is of a search I did today for “best rowing podcasts”. And halfway down the page are image link results under a sub-heading of Podcast.
And individual episodes show up higher in the page, as well as results from other distribution services like Stitcher. So far so good.
Custom 404 pages are a great sign to your readers that you are engaged with your website and want to be helpful.
Here is a sample text I wrote for a client
Oops! That seems to be a broken link.
Sorry.
If you have the time or inclination – please tell us the page it was on by sending us an email. [link Sendto: support@yourwebsite.com Subject: Broken Link on Website]
Maybe you are looking for something like
Add a lightly humorous image – something to show that you thought about it.
I have chosen a capsize image for a watersport brand, a broken stick for a gifts company and a sad looking person for a consultancy firm.
Get on it now….