Moderator
Rebecca Lieb, Editor-in-Chief, ClickZ

Speakers:
Patricia Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing
Brad Bower, ClearGauge
Paul Slack, CEO, WebDex

[L-R Patricia Hursh (SmartSearch), Paul Slack (WebDex), Brad Bower (ClearGauge)

Brad Bower, Senior Director - Business Development, ClearGauge

Keyword selection is very important - consider your buy cycle.

Less traffic -> smaller sample sizes -> more difficult to do analytics

Buying ads on targeted sites is a good strategy since broad advertising through search can lead to a lot of unqualified clicks.

Examine your buy cycle and put a dollar amount on different activities.

Discussed their work with Catepillar.

Paul Slack, CEO, WebDex

One of the lessons is how keywords in the B2B world can have many other meetings outside the B2B world.

Typical Cycle: Client uncovers a need -> Research Solutions -> Short List of Vendors -> RFP -> Make a Decision

Gear your web site for the influencer.
"An influencer catcher".
Target your site for the early steps - research and vendor selection - to get more business.
Use calls to action, comparison matrix, webinars, trials, demos, white papers, product pages, spec sheets, newsletters and in general solutions to problems.
Search terms are often 4 or more words.

Gear your web site for decision makers
Their search terms are usually 2 or 3 words and include the company or competitor name or industry segment
Less likely to respond to a call to action.
Buy general search terms to reach these people if you don't rank organically.
Use more graphical calls to action.

Define your customer's current cost per acquisition, cost per lead. (CPA = CPL * closing rate) - always check the numbers with the bigger bosses. Put it all in writing upfront because later you'll be able to come back and show you're far more cost effective than their current strategies.

Patricia Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing

Think beyond the click - pre-click and post-click...

Forrester study showed search marketing was the #11 strategy for B2B marketers, but search marketing and "emerging online tactics" are the top two upwards trends. The money for online initiatives is coming from traditional channels.

Find prospects -> Drive them to your web site -> Convert them to leads -> Measure ROI
(first two are pre-click, second two are post-click)

Map your visitors needs to your solutions. Identify visitors. Assess their needs and pain points. Associate their needs to your solutions. Identify steps to action.

Offer action options. Don't have too many, but don't just have one action. For exmaple, let's say you sell software - don't just offer a download, but also offer things like webinars and self-guided product tours. Doing this increased clients leads by 30% for one client.

Simplify registration forms. There's a huge drop off if you request phone number. Don't have "page 2", "page 3", etc... Keep it really simple. But you can do optional page 2s... Conversion rates go way up as you reduce the number of required fields. Better to follow up with a robust e-mail.

Test your landing pages. General look and feel, page layout, images, messages, action triggers, names and descriptions of downloadable assets, registration forms.

Q&A

They don't feel microsites are a good idea - "better to have a big battleship than an armada".

Often marketers aren't the best ones to come up with the best keywords for a site.

If you're up against a big branded customer, bid on the keyword, make it clear in the ad that you're an alternative to the branded product, and then bring people to a page that compares the two products.

Try to figure out the difference between the keywords that lead to leads and the ones that lead to sales - they may not be similar.

Tags: B2B, online-advertising, SEO/SEM, SES-NY
Categories: Content Development, Marketing