Website's Influence on Buying Decisions

On Wednesday Hubspot put up a blog post/chart (below) about a new survey released by RainToday.com. 97% of survey respondents (which included more than 200 buyers of professional services) stated that websites had at least some measure of influence over their ultimate buying decisions. 97%.

This hopefully tells you something you've known for some time, that nearly all confirmed buyers will eventually make their way to your website (or your competitors) to gather information to help inform their buying decision. And that's not just product-specific data.

We know from analysis of the marketing and sales funnels that at the beginning of this journey, these prospects are first looking for educational content and thought leadership that first speaks to an understanding of business challenges, how that relates to their specific needs and then provides answers that help solve these challenges. Not until those questions have been satisfied do these prospects seek specific information on the vendor solutions that support these ideas.

This blog has spoken often about the need to have a website that provides compelling (and easily obtainable) content to prospects for each stage of the funnel they are in, as well as for their specific roles/pain points relative to their responsibilities to the overall decision chain. This only further supports that.

If you feel your website is not sufficiently content-optimized, it's not too big an elephant to start the changes needed right now. I'm sure you have sufficient content already in your site copy, your campaign offers and assets, etc. The keys are to get that content organized, updated and targeted, and get it on the site (and searchable). Simple SEO, such as keyword development and creating meta tags for your page titles, descriptions and keywords can be done in a few days. Paid search that supports those keywords can be done in minutes. Create a landing page/s that provide a path for prospects to gain further information from you while exchanging some of their personal data. Ensure that your blog is liked to your site and pump a steady stream of your brilliance into it. Link those posts to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. It's not difficult. There are prospects who are waiting to hear from you right now...

Real-time Search in Google

I'm sure many of you have read either yesterday or today about Google's new search enhancement whereby they are now including real-time search results from news sites, blogs, and social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, et al. You can sample this new feature by going here.... scroll down to the box labeled More Hot Topics, type in Obama.... then watch real-time posts from a myriad of sites spill down one after the next. Pretty cool.

Obviously this is great news (and has huge ramifications) for inbound marketeers, not the least of which is the importance of being able to serve immediate content in Google about your space, company and solutions. This now provides a channel for your timely and relevant brilliance to be found immediately by prospects, partners, customers and media.

You'll also have an opportunity to monitor and respond to mentions about your company and it's assets virtually real-time, as well as identify other openings where you can affect the conversation about your industry and its' solutions.

Yet another reason for evolving your marketing organization into a mini-publishing house to take advantage of the multiple channels to create content for your prospects and customers and further increase your awareness and build your relationships. More to come on this in the days and weeks to follow...

More SEO Tips

I've recently been helping out a friend with his new small business selling golf training aids (check out his site: http://www.athleticgolfswing.com/ the Pure Contact Connection is a winner!) and have been reminded about some areas of basic SEO that need some close attention, no matter the size of your business (I've even noticed this with global enterprise companies that have been on my radar).

I've previously mentioned the three initial areas that any website should address with regards to SEO - meta tags for title, description and keywords. Although having quality in-bound links to your site are probably at the top of the list with respect to getting crawled and ranked organically, your title meta is important and does factor into how Google and others index and rank you. Remember that the title should contain the most important searchable keywords or #1 most common search phrase that people would use to find your type of solution. Remember not to exceed more than 60 characters total in the title as most search engines may only display that number of characters in their search results.

Your meta description tag should provide a full, coherent, keyword-laden description of what your company or product does -- it's value proposition if you will. As well it should not exceed 150 characters in total to ensure it's fully displayed in any search results (this includes characters and any spaces).

These two things most people are on top of... where I see some issues is in keywords and their importance to your SEO. Due to SEO analysts finding ways to stuff keywords into web pages and trying to game the system, search engines like Google have attached minimal importance to them in indexing and ranking your site.

However that is not to say they don't play a role. Where keywords help you is ensuring that they are reflected in your title and description metas, BUT ALSO IN YOUR WEB COPY. Google looks for relevance in web pages, where keyword terms and phrases are populated throughout the site content/copy. And weave the terms into your copy in a coherent, organized way, creating a strong and compelling narrative.

Also -- since (hopefully) most of your website pages are each a little different and describe different aspects of your company or products, so too should your meta tags reflect those differences. Try not to repeat the same metas on every page, it won't help your rankings and in fact could probably hurt your indexing. Any keyword exercise you do should be for each and every primary page that you have on your site. Obviously there will be overlap in terms from page to page, but try to create the most pertinent terms for the page content you have, then reflect those terms in title, description and keyword metas, AS WELL AS your page copy.

You should see improved rankings result from these simple steps.

Article Marketing

Working closely with a few clients these past few weeks and just now coming back up for air (and some new blog posts)...

I was reminded recently that in the search for low-cost ways to market your company and brand, one area many companies overlook is article marketing. There are a number of online article aggregators like eZine, GoArticles and Articlesbase who are constantly on the lookout for viable content and are FREE to upload your stories. In turn it is free for people to download or link to your articles thus making your message available to a wide audience of readers. You'd probably be surprised how many companies/publishers look to these sites to provide them w/free, useful content that they in turn can use to power their own sites.

It's simple and quick to sign up for these sites and upload your stories. When you create your profile upon initial sign-up, you provide your name, a short bio, the article copy, a category and usually a sub-category. Preview, edit, submit, you're done.

This is an especially low-cost way to leverage existing articles, assets, copy that exists in your corporate silos and get some additional site traffic and brand building for your company and its' products. Give it shot...

Buyers Finding Sellers

In my recent white paper 'The 7 Secrets for Generating Quality Leads in a Recession' I talk about establishing an inbound marketing orientation -- the process by which prospects find your products and services rather you trying to find them. It doesn't have to necessarily supplant your current outbound marketing strategies (at least not yet :^), but it should at least run in parallel.

In a recent survey MarketingSherpa found out that 8 out of 10 deals were struck with prospects initially seeking out and finding the vendors they considered and the vendor they ultimately chose. The voluminous amount of information and data now available online has led to this sea change in the buying process (and the marketing process). The web is the first (and sometimes only) place prospects/buyers go to educate themselves to make informed buying decisions.

And it doesn't mean they necessarily go to a vendor web site, at least not in the beginning stages. The ubiquity of research sites, user reviews, blogs, online communities, social networks, et al allow these buyers to first stay abreast of new ideas, technologies and innovations, see similar challenges to problems they also have and then read up on how like ppl/companies solved their problems. All this before their first knock on a vendor's door (or website) and a demo of how their solution satisfies the buyer's needs.

The issue for forward-thinking marketers then is, how do we get ourselves included in those initial awareness/interest phases of the buying process? To help inform the prospect's understanding of the best solutions that may be available to him? And to make the connection between smart, helpful ideas and products/services that are built upon those ideas?

And the answer of course is to establish your company or brand as a business problem expert and as a credible and trusted source of useful knowledge, expertise and information. Marketers have always known that content is king, but these days, unbiased, educational, business-expertise, 'what-makes-you-an-expert?' content is where it's at. If you haven't yet, identifying and regularly communicating your core value in the form of your company thought leaders publishing those thoughts should be of paramount importance as you set up an outbound marketing strategy. The online channels to publish this intellectual property are defined -- blogs, share sites, social nets, company websites, podcasts, etc. Now your focus needs to be on consistently generating the ideas, education and answers that address and solve critical business issues and establish you as a trusted partner.

Foundation of Social Media Marketing

Ran across another article this week that affirms the three (3) primary aspects of a social media marketing strategy (SMM), which I thought I'd review here.

• Content - the information, data, thought leadership, thinking, ideas, solutions that a company communicates out (makes available) through various digital forums (blogs, websites, online media, online videos, ebooks, digital content syndication, webinars, RSS feeds, etc.)
• SEO - by tagging your content with appropriate keywords and by ensuring the development of more inbound links to your valuable content, you are making it possible for your prospects to find your brilliance
• Social Media - lastly, when that content, those links, cross the chasm into social media networks, they take on a new relevance and credibility. As the information is passed along, it takes on a greater value (the personal validation of the person passing along the information), is further amplified and more apt to reach viral status.
  

Robin Niefield talks about the intersection of PPC, SEO and social media in At the Intersection of Search and Social.

Interesting take by Augustine Fou in The ROI for Social Media Is Zero where he suggests that there really is no social media, but social networks that a company can only hope to gain entry to by making their products or services 'awesome' and talked about. What's key is simply providing a place where they can talk. And if you're paying for social media as media, you're probably doing it wrong. Make certain to read through some of the reader feedback/ comments at the end of Augustine's article, some great points made.

Content Value

I've spoken many times about the importance of establishing an inbound marketing presence (getting found by customers rather than you looking for customers) and the three linchpins of an inbound strategy (content creation, social media, SEO). This article today by Bryan Eisenberg on ClickZ 'The Value of Content Marketing' does a great job of recognizing and summarizing the types of content organizations should develop and how to go about creating content, determining what's valuable and prioritizing accordingly. Nice read...

Today's Cool Links - Mar 19, 2009

Several great articles/posts the last two days...

On MarketingProfs (premium membership req), in How One Company's Content Marketing Improved Qualified Lead Generation, Boosted Revenue 38% Kimberly Smith talks about the importance of content to help fuel their lead generation programs and increase conversions and lead quality. Specifically she discusses vendor-neutral content as establishing the company as an unbiased thought leader and expert on a particular topic. Prospects gravitate to information that educates and informs them about business challenges/problems, and the trust that ensues supports a value-based relationship between the company and the prospect.

In A Direct Marketing Revolution Gary Stein on ClickZ discusses how the Status Update feature on Facebook can provide a terrific opportunity to send email-like updates on anything into your company's Facebook followers.

Terrific MarketingSherpa case study on lead nurturing at Optimize a Lead Nurturing Campaign: 5 Steps to Boost Conversions and Warm a Cold List ... finding the right combination of relevant content and messaging frequency to make your lead nurturing campaigns resonate.

And finally, also on ClickZ some great tips from Dave Evans on Where to Get a Social Media Education... check it out.

Content Is STILL King

In doing some research for a potential new client, I've come across a number of tech websites that have the same issue... that of organizing their content in a product-centric fashion vs a customer-centric fashion.

With today's post from Hubspot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog The One Content Question Marketer's Should Ask I'm reminded that many companies, especially the tech co's I came across in my line of work, utilize their websites as brochure-ware and mostly provide information from the company's POV. In addition to being unengaging, boring and a tough way in which to be credible and relevant, it does nothing to support your goal of being recognized as a domain expert, a solver of problems, an innovator in your field. Which in turn will do nothing to support the chances of your content getting passed virally and getting you discovered as a leading voice in your industry.

This becomes especially important if you're trying to evolve your marketing presence as more thought leadership and being an expert in your business discipline. Inbound marketing runs on providing knowledge, ideas and content that make people smarter and better able to do their jobs. Your content should be in a narrative that speaks directly to customer needs, that frames your message in ways that speak to saving money and time, creating efficiencies and business process improvements. Help prospects define and understand the business problems they face, recognize their needs, satisfy their needs and do it in a compelling way that makes them feel like you're talking directly to them.

If you want your content to be discovered as highly valued knowledge, it can't be blatant sales pitches. You'll have zero credibility.