Today's Cool Links - Apr 15, 2009

In Three Lead Generation Tips From HubSpot's Lead-Gen Guru nice video from Hubspot's Prashant Kaw, who talks about the importance of conversion all the way through the funnel. Allows you to trace which channels provide you the leads that actually close.

This story on ClickZ Revive the Lost Art of Direct Response Copywriting Online provides some good tips in writing your direct marketing copy. It reminded me how important a good direct response copywriter is to the success of your campaigns.

Top Tips to Increase Marketing ROI from Industry Thought Leaders

I thought this was good post today on Marketo's site Increasing Marketing ROI: The Top 5 Tips from our B2B Thought Leaders on how to increase campaign ROI. It's consistent with what I've been discussing recently about the importance of inbound marketing (being found, creating compelling content), as well as the significance of lead nurturing, testing and integrating all your various channels to make sure they're working in concert.

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.

Today's Cool Links - Apr 8, 2009

In The Tipping Point: Understanding the Impact of Twitter Jason Burby on ClickZ talks about the ubiquity of Twitter and how it has crossed the chasm into the mainstream.

Also on ClickZ in Want to Be a Better Media Planner? Get Social Hollis Thomases discusses social networking ideas for media planners.

Yesterday on MarketingProfs Five Reasons to Change Your Registration Page (and Boost Conversions) Amy Gesenhues gave some great ideas in which to improve your registration pages. I'm an especially big believer in simplifying your reg pages, cutting out 'escape' links before you can get a respondent's data, asking only for incremental data as you take the respondent through the funnel (don't ask for everything at the first interaction) and lastly, making certain that you are not 'giving away' too much of your value for too little respondent data.

Email Deliverability Tools

Jeanne Jennings at ClickZ has a story out today on Two Free Email Deliverability Tools which help identify and address potential deliverability issues related to your sender's reputation. I've used both and they are effective.

Sender Score gives you in their words 'an indication of the trustworthiness of an email source and provides you with information about where that source stands in comparison to other email senders, and how it is likely to be evaluated by email receivers.'

EDS Alerts (from Email Data Sources) monitors e-mail sent from a specified IP address or domain name.

As Jeanne states, when used together both services can ensure that your emails are being delivered safely (and legally) from whatever ESP you might be using.

Sneak Peek of My Latest White Paper

I'm very close to finishing my latest white paper 'The 7 Secrets of Generating Quality Leads in a Recession'. The paper describes several key elements, new platforms and innovative ideas found in lead generation frameworks developed by some of the world’s most successful B2B companies and shares the best practices that enable them to consistently out-market their competition during tough economic times. In addition it discusses some of the challenges and issues to look out for in deploying these elements, enabling any size company to survive, compete and even flourish in any type of marketing environment.

It should be available for download here on my blog and on my website by early next week... keep an eye out!

Today's Cool Links - Apr 1, 2009

And no, this is not an April Fool's joke...

3 great social media articles this week all found on ClickZ:

• In Social Media 2009 = Search 2002 Gary Stein relates potential trends in social media to what happened when search burst on the scene several years ago
• In Social Media Integration Tips from SES NY Harry Gold provides some tips and tricks for integrating all the elements of search, social, online media, and Web site technology he came across from last week's Search Engine Strategies in New York
• Finally on a more personal level is Dave Evans' article on How Individuals Can Build a Robust Social Presence, describing ways in which you can create a personal social media presence and exploit the potential for yourself

And finally on a separate topic, in Top-Load Your E-Newsletter for Better Performance Karen Gedney on ClickZ talks about how one company nearly doubled their enewsletter open rate and CTR by top-loading their design with content and the table of contents. Screen grabs of the before and after are available in the article.