When I speak with small business owners and marketers, one
of the persistent obstacles to creating a blog presence often are expressed as
two key points:
1) We
don't have time to write regularly.
2) We
don't have the ability to write regularly.
That seems like a non-starter, right? If you find this
is your situation, please think again, as you are missing a key opportunity -
since, as mentioned in an earlier business
blogging article, YOU are the expert in your field.
Vehicles, Blog sites and Web sites
Think about what you do every day. And bare with the
drama but... you likely get into a multi-thousand-point vehicle powered with
explosive gasses, you head down the road with other similar vehicles, risking
life and limb to get to and from work, the store, home, and road trips.
Driving a car is a pretty risky thing with special attention and skills
required to avoid disaster. But we all do this regularly, and one reason
why is because we HAVE TO. Another reason is we get real advantages from being
able to transport ourselves here and there. In short, it is worth it and
necessary. The same thing can be said about creating a blog-based
presence for your business. In fact, to stretch a metaphor even
further - let's think of your standard minivan as somewhat akin to your main
web site. So if your www.company.com
is a minivan, what of your blog? Ahh, truly it is a turbo-powered sports
car!
You need your regular web site to represent your business,
your products, who stands behind the business, investors, contact information
and the like. You don't always change content on it super-quickly, you
just need it, above all, to be accurate, current, reliable, somewhat attractive
and optimized
for getting found online. Okay, so we might question whether a minivan
is attractive, but you get the idea! You need your primary web site to
take you places and live up to the expectations and needs of a broad
audience. But is that enough? In order to be
competitive, and get found online, a blog site can provide you with the more
nimble capability to present your products and related knowledge, maneuvering
in ways that your minivan web site can't.
-
Drive traffic and
generate leads: blog sites are built with search optimization in
mind. You can use your knowledge (and hyperlinks!) to create a
high-octane traffic-driving machine. That's one major way your blog is
supposed to function! Increasing conversions
is key to building your business, and your blog can play a crucial role of
increasing interested and qualified traffic.
-
Engaging and Building Connections: blog
sites are created to be interactive. Each article is an opportunity to share
information, get feedback and engage in dialog with those customers, prospects and
industry experts who care about what you care about.
-
Test Drive Ideas: A blog site can also be
an opportunity to share ideas about new or possible initiatives. This can
be invaluable interaction about future directions.
Here's an experiment to
try: take the name of your own industry, for example, "draperies."
Google it: "Draperies
and blogs." Results: what your
competition is doing. So it could be that while you've been functioning
using the ol' minivan, your competition has been zipping-by using their own
speedier on-line vehicles. Yikes!
Again the good news is that the
technology part can be quite easy. Low technology barriers
to entry for the blog sphere are a fact.
And we know your blog site can be well positioned to contribute to your
business growth. Given this, it seems that the old excuses will fix
themselves!
Four or five years ago if you said to your web guru, "let's make a
site map!" You'd probably end up with a quaint-looking single web page that had a list of links and categories indexing your site. You can still find these from time to time. As it turns out, Apple still has one, go figure. As you may recall, this was yet another alternative to a search engine, to help visitors find your content. Not your grandfather's web code, the "site map" of the 21st century, however, is something a bit different but with the same goal of helping visitors find your content, albeit in a bit more "high tech" fashion.
It's XML not HTML
So we are talking
XML sitemaps. These sitemaps are
somewhat similar to the old-fashioned kind, they are a list of links and web pages, but in a special structured format, one that Yahoo! and Google know how to scoop right up. It takes search engines time to spider through your regular site menu, and you've just given them an easy shortcut, and they like you for that. Also, these files include time stamps and change frequency, this meta data also tells search bots how frequently they should revisit your site to check for updates. Pardon me while I sample a bit for you:
You are probably thinking, "yikes, does my techie guru have to keep that stuff updated?" The answer is yes, but the good news is really that no one need keep up your entire sitemap manually. There are many tools out there to generate these for you. Really -- don't ever even think about coding it manually!
Creating Sitemaps
If you are using blog software like Typepad or Wordpress, it's typically a
built-in feature or an easy
plug-in. Many hosted services like
Hubspot provide this automatically, but if not, there is software that will generate the XML tags for you. After which, just upload the "sitemap.xml" to the root of your site. That's right, search engines are looking for "sitemap.xml" in the root of your web site. So when you are done, you should see: www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml which will yield a file that looks somewhat like the paste-in above. Google has
a fabulous listing of sitemap resources, something I've returned to again and again. If you do have access to a web guru, he or she may want to look at programmatically automating using any of those items list in the "Server side programs" grouping. However, most running a small static site, without the benefit of automatic generation of sitemap.xml, may find any of the "Downloadable Tools" or "Online Generators" useful. In the past, I've had pretty good luck with
GsiteCrawler, but don't take my word for it, try others and see what works for you. Also don't forget: if you are managing a static site, you'll want to submit your sitemap to Google via "
Web Master Tools," a service that is a MUST for marketing and web professionals alike.
Sitemaps and SEO
It can take many days for a search engine to locate all the pages in a large site. Especially if your site employs Flash or fancy javascript drop-down menus. By creating a sitemap you can do quite a lot to address this challenge. But, having the sitemap in hand is also a chance to analyze your site in terms of Search Engine Optimization and your
marketing keywords. So, once your site map has been generated, take a good look at it. Do you see any of your keywords as part of the URL's? Your marketing keywords should be part of your web link schema, and if not you are missing an opportunity. Think of it this way, if you've never seen that web page before, does the URL at least give a
hint of what the web page is about? So the quick lesson here is that site maps should be presenting the search engine with your most important marketing keywords, as they will also contribute to your ranking and to the goal of
helping visitors find your content.
If you have been paying attention to SEO principles, and your 
site's keywords, and your Google ranking - give yourself a pat on the back! A lot of the battle of marketing on the web is simply getting found. If you are at this point, you may well be asking, "okay, so what's next?" In order to realize a return on investment for your efforts, you need to actually convert those web clicks to sales leads. It's not magic, it's a combination of building the right landing page, and then measuring, testing again, and measuring.
The Obvious Offer is Key
Don't kid yourself, there is precious little time to catch the attention of a prospect. In a matter of a very few seconds, your visitor must determine whether they are going to take action or whether they will contribute to your bounce rate. Is your offer clearly visible? The entire approach of building your page must take this into account. As a result, the featured offer should be the most obvious item on the page, above the fold. Don't overuse graphics, or you can run into the over-stimulated "Las Vegas effect." Simply remember that you have a fleeting chance to get the focus of a short attention span, so use these images judiciously.
Highlight Value Points
We've already answered the question: "What do I get?" Next we need to make the short and sweet "value points." It is much shorter than even the proverbial elevator pitch, much shorter. Bullet points that clearly relate some clear message that your targeted audience will understand and value. Keeping things concise and understandable is, in fact, quite challenging. But if we were asking someone to download some new "Widget for Cleaning Windows," we might point out:
See clearly through your windows like never before
Allows window cleaning without usual streaks
Easy application
Keeps windows clearer longer, less work
This is really about enough! This is truly one of those times when less is more.
Effective Elements of Call to Action
Don't Distract: If you are linking from a landing page to a form, be sure and link both text and images, and of course they all need to point to the same offer. And while you may have a standard menu or navigation for your site, bear in mind that your offer page serves a very specialized purpose. Consider removing that standard navigation, sidebars and such, as you want to avoid extraneous links as much a possible. We want to feed the funnel, and if we present the visitor with a network of pathways, we are defeating our own business purposes.
Minimal Field Requirements: We've all seen it happen: An offer form designed by consensus with dozens of fields and drop-down lists from which to choose. This is definitely what we don't want. Figure out what you minimally need. The user experience is just as important as the business need and if that user feels hassled by multiple questions, your own results will suffer. The rule is simple: ask for the minimum information you need to fulfill the business objective. Pay special attention to see whether your required fields make sense. Hopefully you can get away with something like: name, email, and perhaps phone number --whatever you need to be able to contact them. Consider linking to a clear privacy policy, particularly if you must ask for phone number details.
Measure and Test
Well, hopefully you've been using some kind of web analytics tool to measure traffic. Google Analytics is a free and powerful tool, so there's really no excuse. Plus, having web analytics in place is critical in getting to the next step: measuring and testing what works with Google Optimizer. Think of Google Optimizer as kind of a subset of Google Analytics, more specialized, but dependent upon it. The combination of these two products gives you the ability to see abandonment rates, what versions of a landing page work best, and even what other pages on your site are of interested to those key constituents who convert. Consider the A/B test: Say you have your standard version of your "Widget for Cleaning Windows" description (A), and another that includes a couple of customer testimonial quotes (B). Do the quotes truly add value to your offer? Run the A/B test, and Google optimizer will randomly present one or the other version of the form to your prospects. In addition, Google Optimizer will present you with a running tally of which version is the most successful at converting visitors.
Building landing pages is a combination of trying different approaches, testing the results and simply doing more of what is the most effective in feeding the funnel. The approaches that work require some common sense approaches and some real discipline around focused messaging and value propositions. With the kind of tools now available for measuring and reporting, you can substantially improve your marketing efforts.
photo credit John Smith's, UK
A quick background on Inbound MarketingThe truth is, that while more traditional marketing tactics and outbound-type campaigns still do have a place in the B2B
marketing mix, it's to a much lesser degree. Email marketing done right, for example, is still an effective way to nurture existing leads and contacts that have already opted in to receive your content. But, as far as getting new prospects, there's been a massive shift toward inbound marketing (getting found by potential customers).
David Meerman Scott describes inbound marketng best and recommends that marketers "publish their way in" (via blogs, social media, etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where marketers used to have to "buy their way in" (via paid advertisements, direct mail, list rentals, etc.).
So, the first place to start is to
turn your website into a lead magnet. To help get you started, we put together a
website optimization eBook that'll walk you through the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). The main goal is to show you how, with a little bit of effort, you can start to adjust or revamp your website to drive more traffic to it and begin making your Internet efforts more profitable -- without investing a fortune.
For those who are looking to enhance the marketing of your company website or feeling the pressure to increase website and online marketing performance, this eBook was put together to help get you started.
Learn how to:
- Quickly turn your website into an optimized, lead generating tool that gets your company found by qualified prospects.
- Implement effective natural (organic) search engine optimization (SEO) tactics in a few easy steps. If your site isn't receiving enough traffic, it might not be properly optimized.
- Apply keywords to your website and some best practices.
- Use linking to your advantage. Explains link popularity, PageRank and the importance of getting more links to your site.
Once you've had a chance to go through the eBook, let me know what you think by commenting on this article. There will be several more eBooks in this
Internet Marketing Essentials series so we want to provide only information you'll find useful.
Many B2B companies know that they should be incorporating an ongoing social media campaign into their arsenal of tactics to generate leads and sales. But, as a business owner or marketing professional, half the battle is trying to get your head around the social media wave, the crushing amount of information about it, where to even begin, and how to make it all fit into your marketing plans.
The great news is that being successful at Internet marketing does not need to be as complicated as others may sometimes make it out to be. It will, however, require some start-up time and dedication to get a solid working plan in place. Here's the thing. The key to effective and profitable Internet and online marketing requires an integrated approach, utilizing the right tools and applying them with consistent effort.
This 4-part series brings you up-to-speed with some practical things you can do to confidently get your results-driven website and Internet marketing campaign off the ground.
Part 1 - Fix the Foundation: Is your current website optimized for getting found? The first eBook of the series will help you quickly turn your website into an optimized, lead generating tool that gets your company found by qualified prospects.
Part 2 - Capture and Convert: Now that your website is optimized, is it set up to convert qualified prospects into leads? This eBook will outline ways to build great offer landing pages and calls to action that are optimized for converting traffic to leads and customers.
Part 3 - Spread the Word: Now that you've got a killer website and tools for converting, it's time to start promoting through social media channels and blogging -- delivering only meaningful content along the way. This eBook will give you the basics for why you need social media, how to get social media traffic and specific examples on how to set up your campaigns using some of the biggies -facebook, twitter, etc.
Part 4 - Analyze, Measure, Test and Pivot: Use analytics and tracking tools to measure the effectiveness of your efforts so you can confidently do more of what works, and less of what doesn't. This eBook will arm you with some of the best practices and and tools (some new, some older yet really effective) for measuring performance, tracking and reporting on your efforts.
For those of you who are looking to enhance the marketing of your company website or feeling the pressure to increase website and online marketing lead generation performance, this series will help get you on the right track.
What else do you think future Internet marketing Pros need to know?