B2B companies often have a lot invested in their websites, but still aren’t effectively using them in the pay-per-click marketplace. The Forrester's Marketing Effectiveness Survey, from Q2 of 2006, reported that only 59% of B2B companies surveyed are using search engine marketing. And while B-to-C marketers use 35 to 60% of their online spend to paid search, B-to-B companies only devote 20 to 45% of their online budget to search ads.
Pay per click marketing is an important source of potential leads for business-to-business companies because search engines are the #1 starting place for prospects as they enter their buying process – more so than the a vertical directory or industry portal that you’re so familiar with. For many companies, pay per click search engine marketing allows them to compete against their larger competitors on a much more level playing field. It’s also an essential way to educate, interact, and engage potential customers in a ‘pull’ environment.
Take advantage of these tips and tricks to get the most out of your B2B pay per click campaigns.
Steps:
1. Start with the best possible offer
2. Send traffic to the right place to increase leads at no extra cost
3. Choose the right source of traffic for your business
4. Focus your ad copy around the offer
5. Select your keywords wisely
6. Don’t forget to measure results
Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Never send traffic to your home page
Most B2C marketers have learned this lesson, and there have certainly been enough studies to prove the point, but approximately 75% of B2B companies still send search traffic to their home page instead of a relevant landing page. I recommend: Stop doing this, and you’ll likely see an immediate ROI improvement. A 2004 study from AtlasOnePoint suggested that the average B2B home page had a 6.3% conversion rate from PPC traffic, compared to a keyword relevant landing page with a 9.3% conversion rate.
Start with optimizing your offer
So much of the focus these days is on the nitty gritty aspects of PPC management, but we forget that in order for a customer to be willing to provide his or her personal information to your business, you have to provide a pretty good incentive. Common marketing collateral includes white papers, webinars, and demos, with white papers being the preferred reading material of 71% of B2B researchers. I recommend: Make sure to test offers against each other on the same advertising channel, since different offers may appeal to different audiences. KnowledgeStorm also has a great article on B2B content preferences to help you optimize your offerings (registration required).
Optimize your landing page to increase leads at no extra cost
Now that you’ve chosen the right offer, make sure your landing page doesn’t stand in the way of people converting. Keep your registration form as short as possible, since each additional field adds friction to the page. Remove excess navigation, and keep the page focused on a single goal with a prominent call to action. Test short copy vs. long copy. Headlines, images, and color are other top priorities for testing. I recommend: Landing page optimization is a huge topic which can provide excellent results with no additional marketing costs.
Optimize your page using these top tips from MarketingExperiments. If you have buy-in from the IT staff, you can get amazing results by using Google’s Website Optimizer tool to automate landing page testing.
Choose the right search engines
Your campaigns can only be as good as the traffic they solicit. 65% of B2B buyers source off a search engine when they are developing awareness at the beginning of their purchase cycle, so it’s important to appear in these results. Google is the preferred engine for 77% of B2B buyers, so it’s a must have. Yahoo may be a problem because they don’t have as effective of limitations in geography, so you’ll likely be paying for international leads. I recommend: You’ll find these great stats at SearchEngineWatch. Plus, don’t forget to look into the niche search engines and vertical directories which focus on business customers. See my other guide to B2B search engines for a good list.
Focus your ad copy around your offer
While flashy copy will entice the searcher to click, don’t forget your goal is to convert that visitor into a lead. Focusing at least one line of your ad copy on the offer will increase the relevancy of your page for those who click through. Doing so with a call to action also helps to prep the prospective customer for the action you want them to take. Don’t forget that the search engines will bold a word in your ad copy if it matches with the search query, so relevancy is key. Other top tips: Numbers help quantify your benefits, don’t hesitate to try out the word ‘free’ in lead gen campaigns, questions as titles create interest in your offer. I recommend: This is another area with lots of best practices and studies already done for you. Use the information to your benefit, and you’ll start out ahead of the game.
See these articles: MarketingExperiments' PPC Ad Copy Tested and ClickZ's Part 1 and Part 2 on PPC Copywriting Strategies.
Select your keywords wisely
Keywords in your pay per click campaign, are the equivalent of the demographic selections in your direct marketing lists. They shouldn’t be chosen without giving the task a little forethought. The most common mistake is to use too few keywords, which means your competition (and thus CPC) will be stiff. That’s no place to be if you’re just starting out and not using professional management. There’s no real rule of thumb, but I suggest aiming for a minimum of 500 keywords. I recommend: Review my guide on Negative Keywords, another essential part of keyword research.
Don’t forget to measure your results
Yes, it will take you longer to launch if you have to get your IT department involved, but it is essential to have the tracking data from the start. I know you have other priority things on you plate, which is why this gets pushed to the side time and time again. But having statistics for your campaigns will help you make future budgeting decisions. And since PPC is typically a high ROI area of marketing, you can get great stats to back up the program (and your hard work) in the future. I recommend: Google Analytics is one of the easiest to implement, but since it’s separate from the search engine accounts, it’s also easy to ignore the data. If you want the lowest common denominator, go with the conversion tracking systems built into the pay per click search engines. Sure, once you’re doing more business, there are reasons to use other systems, but this is a simple and integrated way to start out.
For more info please visit www.acquirelists.net
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Best Practices for E-Mail Opt-In?
A key aspect of any email program is the opt-in (registration) process. Experts debate what information should be captured during this process and how it should be used. The latest trend: Use profile centers to allow customers to opt in to the content they want to receive. That content is sent. No more, no less.
Great idea? I'm not so sure. Readers don't always know what they're missing. Relevancy is a moving target that can't be predicted.
Imagine This
It's Tuesday and you just got out of your weekly staff meeting. Your boss wants you to provide a POV on how wireless marketing will affect the business over the next two years. Problem is, the POV is due in a week. You don't have the slightest clue what to say.
Your first step is to go to the Internet. You hurriedly opt in to trusted brands and experts in the space. Lots of free research and white papers are waiting behind these registration forms and email opt-ins. You become a wireless expert. You open, click on, and read everything you receive. Your POV is done and ready to be turned in, when your boss pops in: "Looks like a change in focus. It's RSS now."
AARGGH! Back to the email registrations to become an RSS expert.
This change in perceived relevancy is equally applicable in our personal lives. Look at the person planning a tropical vacation. She switches to a ski-related destination at the last minute. As soon as she decides to switch, the best tropical vacation email content in the world simply goes unread.
Multiple Options
What's the answer? Rely on clients to change their preferences? Send unwanted content mixed with desired content? Ask poll questions inside the email? Or maybe devise propensity models to predict reader interests based on profile information?
I solicited some marketers for their advice on how they currently address this dilemma. Many looked at me as if I had six heads, but a few provided great insights. Here are some of the results:
Financial services. "We put three small partner ads in our emails every month and sell them as benefits of being email recipients. Every quarter, we track which types of offers do best and retain those while we test new partner offers. We don't personalize offers by customer, though."
Telecommunications. "We add in a section on one of our emails that's promoted as 'new offers.' If people click on those, we send an opt-in email invitation for that group's emails. It works well for us."
B2B high technology. "We change the main theme of our messages every month and lead with a story that we choose (kind of like a front-page news ad). This is followed by the customized selections our clients make."
Automotive. "We only send messages based on selected preferences, but every quarter we email the preference selections to our clients to confirm their interests."
Entertainment. "Are you kidding? We don't ask for content preferences. We send you what we feel is compelling for that time period."
B2B sales. "We tried asking people to opt in to business solutions -- and told them how many emails they would get about it -- and saw tremendous results in conversions. The problem was, once the deal was closed we didn't have a structure to cross-sell them."
What Should You Do?
There isn't yet enough research to back up any definitive best practice for the email opt-in experience or preference center usage. But look at your opt-in and profiling experience from a different vantage point to ensure it performs as it should.
Three questions to ask:
How much and what type of information do you request at opt-in? Is it enough to begin a dialogue with a client or prospect?
What strategy do you use to learn about other interests? How will you turn that into increased loyalty or sales?
When you realize your reader has stopped responding, how you do to reengage them with your brand?
Even if you don't review your opt-in process or preference center now, keep an eye on the topic. It's going to get quite a bit of attention.
Great idea? I'm not so sure. Readers don't always know what they're missing. Relevancy is a moving target that can't be predicted.
Imagine This
It's Tuesday and you just got out of your weekly staff meeting. Your boss wants you to provide a POV on how wireless marketing will affect the business over the next two years. Problem is, the POV is due in a week. You don't have the slightest clue what to say.
Your first step is to go to the Internet. You hurriedly opt in to trusted brands and experts in the space. Lots of free research and white papers are waiting behind these registration forms and email opt-ins. You become a wireless expert. You open, click on, and read everything you receive. Your POV is done and ready to be turned in, when your boss pops in: "Looks like a change in focus. It's RSS now."
AARGGH! Back to the email registrations to become an RSS expert.
This change in perceived relevancy is equally applicable in our personal lives. Look at the person planning a tropical vacation. She switches to a ski-related destination at the last minute. As soon as she decides to switch, the best tropical vacation email content in the world simply goes unread.
Multiple Options
What's the answer? Rely on clients to change their preferences? Send unwanted content mixed with desired content? Ask poll questions inside the email? Or maybe devise propensity models to predict reader interests based on profile information?
I solicited some marketers for their advice on how they currently address this dilemma. Many looked at me as if I had six heads, but a few provided great insights. Here are some of the results:
Financial services. "We put three small partner ads in our emails every month and sell them as benefits of being email recipients. Every quarter, we track which types of offers do best and retain those while we test new partner offers. We don't personalize offers by customer, though."
Telecommunications. "We add in a section on one of our emails that's promoted as 'new offers.' If people click on those, we send an opt-in email invitation for that group's emails. It works well for us."
B2B high technology. "We change the main theme of our messages every month and lead with a story that we choose (kind of like a front-page news ad). This is followed by the customized selections our clients make."
Automotive. "We only send messages based on selected preferences, but every quarter we email the preference selections to our clients to confirm their interests."
Entertainment. "Are you kidding? We don't ask for content preferences. We send you what we feel is compelling for that time period."
B2B sales. "We tried asking people to opt in to business solutions -- and told them how many emails they would get about it -- and saw tremendous results in conversions. The problem was, once the deal was closed we didn't have a structure to cross-sell them."
What Should You Do?
There isn't yet enough research to back up any definitive best practice for the email opt-in experience or preference center usage. But look at your opt-in and profiling experience from a different vantage point to ensure it performs as it should.
Three questions to ask:
How much and what type of information do you request at opt-in? Is it enough to begin a dialogue with a client or prospect?
What strategy do you use to learn about other interests? How will you turn that into increased loyalty or sales?
When you realize your reader has stopped responding, how you do to reengage them with your brand?
Even if you don't review your opt-in process or preference center now, keep an eye on the topic. It's going to get quite a bit of attention.
E-Mail Append: Opt-In or -Out?
If you do email marketing, chances are you've been approached by a vendor offering email append services. For those unfamiliar with email address appending, The Direct Marketing Association's (DMA's) definition:
E-mail address appending is the process of adding a consumer's email address to that consumer's record. The email address is obtained by matching those records from the marketer's database against a third-party database to produce a corresponding email address.A few years ago, I wrote a column on email appending. It was a hot topic at the time, and it remains one. I just helped a client evaluate proposals from some email append vendors and was surprised how little had changed from a few years ago.
How appends are marketed has always been one of my pet peeves. The focus is on quantity, not quality. Vendors will quote "match rates," the number of new email addresses you'll get. But they don't talk about how those email addresses will perform, in other words, their quality.
Get explicit opt-in from your appended email addresses. Opt-in assures the people you're sending to want to hear from you and hence boosts list quality. This is a dramatic departure from the opt-out process most append vendors adhere to, in which they assume anyone who doesn't respond wants to hear from you.
Most vendors have different pricing structures for opt-in and -out. Opt-out addresses can cost $0.06 to $0.20 per email address, while opt-ins often run $2.50 to $4.00 per address. The work involved for the append vendor is the same for opt-in and opt-out; the difference is how many email addresses you walk away with and what level of permission you receive from them. An opt-in process provides fewer names with a higher permission level; an opt-out process returns more names with a lower permission level.
It's interesting to see the rates vendors quote. On an opt-out process, most state up to 25 percent of the gross email addresses they match will opt out. For an opt-in process, the standard quote is 2 percent or less will opt in. If these hold true and the initial gross match returns 1 million email addresses, an opt-out process will net at least 750,000 addresses; an opt-in process would net only 20,000.
At $0.20 per name, the appended opt-out list of 750,000 will cost you $150,000; the 20,000 appended opt-in names, at $4.00 per name, would cost $80,000. This is where the quantity argument kicks into high gear. Sure, you pay more than twice as much for opt-out names, but you get more than 30 times as many names.
But wait. Consider how they may perform. If the append vendor is right and only about 2 percent of the gross list will be interested enough to respond to your opt-in, with the rest not responding at all, what makes you think future sends to this list will be any different? Shouldn't we expect that 2 percent to be responsive in the future -- and the other 98 percent to be non-responsive? You can talk about different offers, different creative, and so forth, but the list is a critical factor in any email campaign's success. Even if they're your current customers, they won't necessarily respond to your email.
And there's a cost to each send. If you pay a $5 CPM (define) to your email service provider, mailing the list of 20,000 opt-in email addresses will cost $100; the opt-out list will cost $3,750. A big difference, especially if we assume 98 percent of the large list will be non-responsive. You'd need to get a much larger revenue stream out of the larger list to break even, which is unlikely since the same core of 20,000 are your best bets for response in both cases.
I've seen appended email addresses not respond at all for too many clients. We identify a list segment that's performing poorly or not responding at all, and research shows they're appended names. It doesn't matter whether they're your customers, there's still a good chance they won't respond if they don't opt in.
Using this reasoning, the 20,000 opt-in email addresses are a far better value than the 750,000 opt-out email addresses. But even if you choose the opt-in list, I'm not sure appending makes sense.
That $80,000 isn't an insignificant amount of money. There are other ways to get email addresses. How much would a direct mail postcard to your house list cost? Or a note inviting people to opt in added to a bill, print newsletter, or other direct mail piece you're already sending? Appending isn't the only game in town. It's important to look at other ways to get the email addresses... and the opt-ins. Rarely is appending the most cost-effective way to go.
Why is appending still so popular? It's viewed as a quick fix, a way to instantly start an email marketing program. But as with many quick fixes, something's lost in the process. In this case, it's the response. And an email marketing program without significant return on investment is just an additional expense for your organization.
For more information please visit www.acquirelists.net
E-mail address appending is the process of adding a consumer's email address to that consumer's record. The email address is obtained by matching those records from the marketer's database against a third-party database to produce a corresponding email address.A few years ago, I wrote a column on email appending. It was a hot topic at the time, and it remains one. I just helped a client evaluate proposals from some email append vendors and was surprised how little had changed from a few years ago.
How appends are marketed has always been one of my pet peeves. The focus is on quantity, not quality. Vendors will quote "match rates," the number of new email addresses you'll get. But they don't talk about how those email addresses will perform, in other words, their quality.
Get explicit opt-in from your appended email addresses. Opt-in assures the people you're sending to want to hear from you and hence boosts list quality. This is a dramatic departure from the opt-out process most append vendors adhere to, in which they assume anyone who doesn't respond wants to hear from you.
Most vendors have different pricing structures for opt-in and -out. Opt-out addresses can cost $0.06 to $0.20 per email address, while opt-ins often run $2.50 to $4.00 per address. The work involved for the append vendor is the same for opt-in and opt-out; the difference is how many email addresses you walk away with and what level of permission you receive from them. An opt-in process provides fewer names with a higher permission level; an opt-out process returns more names with a lower permission level.
It's interesting to see the rates vendors quote. On an opt-out process, most state up to 25 percent of the gross email addresses they match will opt out. For an opt-in process, the standard quote is 2 percent or less will opt in. If these hold true and the initial gross match returns 1 million email addresses, an opt-out process will net at least 750,000 addresses; an opt-in process would net only 20,000.
At $0.20 per name, the appended opt-out list of 750,000 will cost you $150,000; the 20,000 appended opt-in names, at $4.00 per name, would cost $80,000. This is where the quantity argument kicks into high gear. Sure, you pay more than twice as much for opt-out names, but you get more than 30 times as many names.
But wait. Consider how they may perform. If the append vendor is right and only about 2 percent of the gross list will be interested enough to respond to your opt-in, with the rest not responding at all, what makes you think future sends to this list will be any different? Shouldn't we expect that 2 percent to be responsive in the future -- and the other 98 percent to be non-responsive? You can talk about different offers, different creative, and so forth, but the list is a critical factor in any email campaign's success. Even if they're your current customers, they won't necessarily respond to your email.
And there's a cost to each send. If you pay a $5 CPM (define) to your email service provider, mailing the list of 20,000 opt-in email addresses will cost $100; the opt-out list will cost $3,750. A big difference, especially if we assume 98 percent of the large list will be non-responsive. You'd need to get a much larger revenue stream out of the larger list to break even, which is unlikely since the same core of 20,000 are your best bets for response in both cases.
I've seen appended email addresses not respond at all for too many clients. We identify a list segment that's performing poorly or not responding at all, and research shows they're appended names. It doesn't matter whether they're your customers, there's still a good chance they won't respond if they don't opt in.
Using this reasoning, the 20,000 opt-in email addresses are a far better value than the 750,000 opt-out email addresses. But even if you choose the opt-in list, I'm not sure appending makes sense.
That $80,000 isn't an insignificant amount of money. There are other ways to get email addresses. How much would a direct mail postcard to your house list cost? Or a note inviting people to opt in added to a bill, print newsletter, or other direct mail piece you're already sending? Appending isn't the only game in town. It's important to look at other ways to get the email addresses... and the opt-ins. Rarely is appending the most cost-effective way to go.
Why is appending still so popular? It's viewed as a quick fix, a way to instantly start an email marketing program. But as with many quick fixes, something's lost in the process. In this case, it's the response. And an email marketing program without significant return on investment is just an additional expense for your organization.
For more information please visit www.acquirelists.net
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