With budgets tight and sales yet to bounce back, most companies are accustomed to (tired of?!?!) trying need to do more with less. But instead of sitting around bemoaning your shrinking budget and skyrocketing lead generation goals, try getting off that pretty tuchus and seeing what kind of marketing gold you might be sitting on.

One of the most overlooked veins of gold at most organizations is the “email list.” In a surprising number of companies, this list is dutifully compiled and then left in a dusty corner. No one seems to own it, and worse – no one seems to know what to do with it.

Old clients, current clients, prospective clients – it doesn’t matter. If you’re not doing all you can with that list you’re leaving prospects on the table. There simply is no better resource for dirt cheap lead generation out there. So, what should you be doing with your list?

Newsletters – Keep your email circle of friends up-to-date with the latest news about your company, your products and your industry. Keep it brief and to the point with links to deeper information on your website if necessary. Avoid fancy graphics and pictures that need special permission from the user to download.

Email blasts – If something big goes down – a new product release, a sizzling industry story, or a big “oops!” you need to explain, keep your email circle informed with a proactive email blast. Keep blasts to a minimum to decrease your unsubscribe rate.

Surveys – Surveys can help you get even MORE marketing gold from your customer base. It also brings participants into your inner circle and helps them feel more a part of the “family.” Offering a drawing for a gift certificate will help encourage folks to participate.

I once heard tell of a company that had an email list that had grown from various sources over a period of years, and was spread across several departments that rarely communicated with each other. They had NEVER it used for anything. Once they decided to start using it – to send out a series of newsletters, emails, and surveys – the response they got was amazing. Their open rates, click-through rates and participation rates were through the roof and their unsubscribe rates were remarkably low. It turns out that their email circle was just dying to get involved, and all they had to do was ask!

You have created the perfect white paper.  But you can’t drive leads or close sales if your target market doesn’t notice it.

Luckily, grabbing your prospect’s attention is as easy as spending some focused energy on your title. And once you understand the formula, it takes almost no time at all to transform your paper into the sought-after gem it deserves to be.

To understand how important titles are to the success of your white paper, imagine that you have created a white paper about your company’s newest software offering. It is designed for improving throughput in a manufacturing plant. Your preliminary title reads:

 ABC’s new software positively affects throughput for manufacturing plants

So far this title sounds very professional and seems pretty focused. But try to imagine how it sounds to your ideal target. A little self-serving? A little dry? Delving into what your prospect wants to hear can help you craft the titles that will grab their attention.

Step One: Identify the problem

Business executives buy solutions to problems. When creating the title for your white paper, ask yourself “What’s in it for them?”

In our example, it sounds like we have identified the problem: a need for better or faster throughput. But let’s dig a little deeper. What does a manufacturing company get when they have better throughput that they are not getting now? If they can produce more units with the same number of employees, they are lowering their costs and therefore increasing their profit margin. That’s way more exciting than “throughput.”

Step Two: Identify the prospect

No one wants to waste time reading about a solution that is not relevant to them. Again, in our sample title, it seems that we have identified “manufacturing plants” as our target, but we can be even more specific. The IT director is the person who is likely to making the decision on software purchases.

Step Three: Identify the solution

Our solution is a software product. But there are a lot of software products out there. If look closer, we can also identify that it is a user-friendly software product that requires little technical savvy and that it can be implemented in less than a day.

Voila: The perfect title for your perfect paper

Now all you have to do is put it all together:

 A manufacturing IT director’s guide to user-friendly software solutions that can begin increasing profit margins today

Following these three simple steps will help your white papers stand out and help you get more return on your white paper investment.

I don’t have to tell you that times are tough these days. We are all pretty tired of hearing it. It can be frustrating when management cuts the marketing budget during tough times, but sometimes that’s the reality. Whether you’re facing a slashed budget or rolling in the dough, there are three fairly easy and mostly free things you can add to your marketing efforts to drive more leads – even when times are tough. If you aren’t doing these already, it’s time to jump in.

Start a blog

Blogging gets people involved with your brand, gives you an opportunity to address customers on a more personal level, and gives some serious kick to your Google search rank. If you have never blogged it may seem intimidating to start one from scratch. Don’t worry, nothing could be easier.  There are nearly unlimited free resources available online for the beginning blogger.

Wage a PR campaign

Press releases have long been recognized as an excellent way to get free exposure for your brand. These days they can also help with your Google search ranking, providing both inbound links and juicy keywords. Make a plan for putting out press releases and stick to it. Once a week is great, but once a month is fine, too. Once you write the press release, you can release it using several online services, for example, PR Log lets you post press releases for free. (http://www.prlog.org/) Put together a list of local and national publications that deal with your industry, and email the story to the editors of those publications as well. Then be sure to post the release in the “news” section of your website.

Get social

Yes, I mean social media – Twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn and the rest. While it seems like social media has been hyped to death over the last few years, it is still growing as a great way to connect with prospects and customers. Not every social media outlet is going to be right for every company, so do your research and put your heart into the ones that make the most sense for your brand.

A shrinking budget is no excuse to be a shrinking violet; it is simply a call to put more effort into low cost and free lead generation. Who knows, maybe you’ll even stick with it once the economy turns around…

Have any great ideas for cheap and free marketing? Share ‘em here!

If you know anything about SEO, you know it’s a big, complex subject with a lot of elements that feed into that final rank. Even better, the rules vary from engine to engine and they are constantly changing.  Today I am going to give you the 411 on a few quick and easy fixes you can do (probably today – or possibly tomorrow if you have to get your designer involved) to plug up some common SEO holes. 

Finding your SEO blind spots

There are a couple of sites that offer this service, but the one I use is http://whois.domaintools.com/ . Go there now, and type your web address into the big empty box on the landing page. I’ll wait.

Look at the first section, called “Front Page Information.”  For a sample, I picked Visa USA, just to show you how even a really big company with a lot of money to spend on SEO can miss the “gimmees.”

What to look for

Here we can see that Visa has pretty low scores on relevancy for all of their meta data. What this means is that the search engine matches the websites reported (meta) title, description, and keywords against their actual site content. A poor score alerts the search engines that Visa might be stuffing its meta data to mislead searchers, and negatively affects its rank. I am sure that Visa is not doing that, so we can only assume that their meta data is not up to snuff.

The two other lines we are going to worry about today are the “Links” and the “Images.” Links are how many internal and external links you have in your site. The more of these you have, the better, especially the outbound links. Images are literally the jpegs and gifs that make up your website. Alt-tags describe the picture for your visitors, in case it doesn’t load correctly.

The Fix

Most of these fixes can be done very easily with a simple html editor. You can read a pretty good article about creating and adding your own tags here http://www.fg-a.com/MetaTags.htm.  If you don’t “do” your own website, gather your changes together and send them to your web designer.

Meta Keywords: Visa fell victim to a lot of mistakes in their keyword selection. The first being that they seem to think potential customers are going to type “more people go with visa” or “print advertising” into Google when they want a credit card. The second being keyword overload: trying to fit every conceivable search term into the keywords, instead of focusing on the top six. Once you have the right keywords selected, you will use them to rewrite the meta description and the meta title.

Meta Title: Visa went with their company name and tagline for the title of their website. This is good branding, but not necessarily good SEO. So that the search engine will consider the title more relevant, they have two options. That can either add their name and tagline to the footer of each page, so that the search engine sees the terms being used throughout the site, or they can change the title to reflect their improved site keywords.

Meta Description: This is the text that will show up under your website on an organic search. Visa went with a very conversational sentence here. The problem is that if they don’t repeat many of these words regularly throughout the site, they will get dinged. The easiest fix for this would be to re-write the description to be keyword dense.

Images: Alt-tags are one of the easiest fixes. Click the image (inside the web editor) and select “properties.” The alt-tag box will be empty. Write something in it. Use a keyword if you can. If you are going to do this yourself, consult the help section of your editor for more exact instructions. Otherwise, throw it over the wall to the web designer.

Links: The search engines love links. Internal ones are good, external are even better. Links should be made on keywords whenever possible. For example, “Find out more about Visa credit cards.” Instead of: “Visa offers a wide range of credit cards. Find out more.” Go through your website page by page and look for places where you can link keyword terms to other pages within your site. Also look for places where you can link out to other sites for more information or complementary products and services.

These five fixes won’t guarantee your site will be at the top of the list, but they are the basics that will get you headed in the right direction.

Have any more easy SEO tips? Share them in the comments section!

The other day I received an auto-follow message from someone I had “followed back” on Twitter. I usually ignore auto messages, but this one had a link to something that looked interesting to me, so I clicked on it. The link was bad. I messaged the original sender and asked if there was a mistake. He replied with the correct link, which I opened. I was fascinated by the offering, it was actually a business SaaS (software as a service) product that I have been meaning to look into but haven’t yet. Talk about a perfect social marketing pitch by this guy.

So what’s the “fail?” Well, it turns out that the website is either under development or having a problem, because when I went to check into pricing, the link didn’t work, and when I went to the contact form there was a message under the form that said (not kidding) “The submit button doesn’t do anything, so stop clicking it.”

Because I was so interested in this product, I actually made the effort to get back in touch with the guy to let him know I was having problems with the website. His response? <crickets chirping>

If you are going to use social networks for marketing, it can’t be a half-baked effort. Taking your prospect half-way down the path and then leaving them hanging is worse than never reaching out to them in the first place. If you are going to foray into social media you need to be prepared to follow-up, follow-through and check your account religiously. Anything else is just a fail.

If you don’t have the resources to support a full-time online community director or some such other fancy new media title, there are plenty of social media freelancers who will lovingly foster your presence in online communities. (I am not one of them, but if you want to get in touch I can send you some contact information.)

Have you had any remarkable marketing experiences with social media? Share them here!

So maybe you’re a start up with limited funds, or maybe you’re one of the growing number of larger companies with no internal marketing department and a limited marketing budget. Whatever the reason, when you suddenly need a new brochure for the upcoming trade show, a website makeover, or you’re launching a new product and need to update all of your marketing collateral and send out a press release too – who do you call?

The most well-known option is a marketing agency. A full service agency might have anywhere from 3-30 people on staff and can provide the full range of marketing services from branding to concepting right down to putting the finished product in your hands. Of course, all that overhead has to be recaptured somewhere. That is why agencies command a hefty fee for services, and many will only take on clients with an extended monthly retainer contract.

Now let’s say you just don’t have that much need, or you have a one-time project that will require a lot of heavy lifting and not much after that. Or you don’t want to contribute toward the rent on those fancy downtown offices. There are options out there that can give you just what you need for a lower cost AND with more personalized attention. You can hire freelancers to take care of every aspect of your project from start to finish.

I know what you’re thinking but…

Some common misconceptions abound about freelancers:

It is easier to just hire an agency because they will provide all the services and manage the project with one point of contact.

If you want one-stop service from a freelancer, ask. I personally have a network of freelance marketing and branding strategists, designers, photographers, public relations specialists, social marketing consultants and even a packaging designer and printer that I can coordinate for a completely turnkey project. Most freelancers do.

The agency will have better, more experienced talent.

A lot of agencies keep the core staff to just project managers and outsource all the creative to freelancers. I work for several agencies in this capacity. The only difference between hiring me or the agency is that they tack on a 50-100% premium on my regular hourly fee when they send you the bill.

An agency will be more professional, and more accessible:

Freelancers are running their own one-person business. That means they are heavily invested in their relationship with you and highly motivated to give you the best possible results. Even if you would be a small fish for an agency, you are probably a big fish for your freelancer. My biggest clients are around 300 people. My smallest are around 3. All of them are equally important to the success of my business so I make sure they all get great service and attention.

Have you had any experience hiring freelancers in your business? Or do you currently use a marketing agency?

I do a lot of work with start-ups and so I run into this issue frequently. They either have a limited amount of time, money, or both, but suddenly have a trade show coming up and they need something to give to prospects. Or they simply need to start creating marketing materials, and don’t know where to begin.

The following are ”must-have” pieces of marketing collateral:

1. Website: It seems almost too obvious to mention, but the website is the place to start. If you already have a website, you need to look at it critically. Is it customer focused, professionally designed, and easy to navigate – or was it hastily thrown together just to “get something out there?” I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have an inviting and informative website. After all – you are hoping all those trade show attendees will eagerly check you out after the show – don’t turn them off before they get started.

2. Company and product /service literature: For those on a very tight budget, a two-sided sales slick with an overview of company offerings and a boilerplate about the company can be a suitable amount of information to hand out to overwhelmed trade show attendees. For those with complex offerings and a larger budget, a series of two-sided solution/product briefs tucked into a well-designed folder along with a one page company overview and a business card will do the trick nicely.

3. In-depth research and information: If there’s still time (and budget), the next step on the collateral ladder is creating information-rich documents that take the prospect further down the sales cycle. These include white papers, case studies, and relevant third-party research. Case studies are particularly helpful when prospects might have a hard time envisioning how a solution will be implemented and what they can expect from it. White papers are great tools for establishing thought leadership and providing in-depth information on the benefits of your solution.

Don’t forget your hook

Collateral alone is not enough to make sales. You need to have a strategy for how to use it. What can you offer the prospect that they would deem valuable enough to give you a chance to win their business? What you come up with will depend on your product, your market, and your prospects.

 If you have developed white papers and case studies, don’t just freely hand them out – offer to send them via email to prospects who request it. When you don’t have a white paper to offer, you can get a little more creative. As an example, a client of mine (who didn’t have time to revamp any collateral before the trade show) recently offered green energy show attendees a free initial assessment of whether their property was an appropriate candidate for solar or wind energy. Because they were offering something of real value to the prospect, they had a very high sign-up rate.

What are your must-haves for the trade show? Do you have a no-fail hook you’d like to share?

I have been hearing the same complaint for a long time now: people don’t read anymore. Especially on the web.

As a professional writer, I found this information more than a little alarming. So I did a little research and found out what I suspected all along – people do read, but only if they want to. So how do you make them want to?

Understanding how people read web copy

The truth is people DO read web copy. And marketing brochures, and even white papers (12 whole PAGES!?!?!?!?), and they do so eagerly if you make it worth their while. They just don’t read them the same way they read – say – Wuthering Heights, the newspaper or Tweetdeck.

News flash! When someone lays eyes on your website, they know you are trying to sell them something. The question they immediately try to answer is: Do I want to buy it? Your copy needs to help them answer “maybe” as quickly as possible. (“Yes” comes a bit later.)

If you make it hard for readers to instantly see what’s in it for them to read further – guess what? They won’t.

So what’s the secret to web copy that gets read?

Your website is only the first step in the sales cycle. Try to think of it as getting a date with an attractive stranger you meet at a cocktail party. Try to be something you’re not and they will see right through you. Talk too much and you turn them off. Propose marriage and they run away screaming.

The purpose of the website is to grab their attention, pique their interest, and let them know how to get more if they want it. (You do have links to case studies, press releases, solution briefs, and white paper registration – right?)

Make your heads and subheads work for you – Leave clever word play for journalists, and the suspense-building for novelists. Titles and subtitles are the first things web cruisers read, and they use this information to make a snap decision about whether to read more. Your title needs to lay it all on the line; don’t be subtle. Subheads need to clearly point readers to places in your copy where they will want to stop and stay awhile.

Be clear – PLEASE, I am begging you, do not start out your conversation with your customers by saying “we are dedicated to achieving maximum effectiveness by providing state of the art implementation of IT with leading-edge technology that enables businesses to achieve faster ROI.” What do you do and why do you do it? Tell them.

Keep it short  –  Web copy should be 3-4 short paragraphs. Fewer on the home page. If they want more they will keep digging. Just make sure you have more available (case studies, white papers, solution briefs) when they want it.

For an example, try the following:

Kiss IT downtime goodbye

Stop annoying your employees and driving away customers

Paragraph 1 (Paint a picture of the pain your prospect is experiencing)

Guaranteed 99.999% uptime

Paragraph 2 (Introduce your company’s offering and how it eases the pain)

Paragraph 3 (Back it up with some proof of expertise, figures, qualifications, examples,  etc.)

Want to read more? Find out how great .0001% downtime feels for one of our clients.

Ready to experience it for yourself? Contact us for a free consultation.

Ready to learn more about great web writing?

Contact me to discuss your upcoming web project.

Remember AOL?

Ten years ago, Internet marketing was relatively new territory, and most businesses approached it the same way they have approached terrestrial marketing for generations: build a storefront and start advertising. During these early days, the standard online presence was a brochure website, and the main method of attracting customers was through banner ads and listings with the major portals like Yahoo, Lycos, and AOL.

But by the beginning of the new millennium, savvy online consumers had begun to reject anything that seemed like advertising, while at the same time flocking to the Internet as a source of information and a platform for socializing. Marketers started to realize that to attract customers they would have to offer something different.

Realizing the promise of the internet as a superior marketing tool

By using electronic tracking combined with direct customer feedback, businesses have been able to fine-tune their marketing efforts to reach customers with targeted offers based on their demonstrated preferences (think Amazon.com “If you liked X, you may like A, B, C, D and F too”). This shift to more targeted messaging resulted in more effective and relevant customer interactions, and was the beginning of realizing the promise of the Internet as a granular marketing machine. It also served as the opening lines of a two-way conversation between customers and companies.

Welcome to the Web 2.0 community- time to jump right in

Today that two-party conversation has evolved into a dynamic community discussion. Instead of shouting out advertising slogans from ivory towers, smart marketers have begun listening and participating on the ground level. Banner ads have been replaced by Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. The old portals have been replaced by Google, and mastering search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) in order to rank high on the search results is a key skill for Internet marketers to master.

For businesses to remain competitive online, they will have to be ready to surf the rising Web 2.0 tide and transform their marketing strategies as the community conversation evolves.

If you’re feeling behind the times when it comes to Web 2.0, not to worry. There are plenty of professionals who specialize in various aspects of online marketing and can get you up to speed in no time. Need a blog? Hire a professional bloggers to keep your corporate blog fresh and interesting. Web site not ranking high on the engines? There are hundreds of companies and individuals who can help you implement an SEO strategy to get you to the top of the list. The key is to jump in and get started. And there’s no time like the present.

Contact me to get started.

A tight economy means you need more focused marketing efforts

In a tight economy, doing more with less is the reality for product marketing managers. Many companies slash marketing efforts that focus on branding and name recognition and get back to basics – lead generation. In recent years, white papers have emerged as a staple in the product marketer’s toolbox, largely due to their reputation as powerful lead generation tools with an attractive cost-benefit ratio.

 In fact, the power of an effective white paper to connect with prospects and produce abundant, quality leads is unparalleled. According to the TechTarget 2008 Media Consumption Benchmark, “80.5% of buyers find white papers to be either very effective or somewhat effective in the decision making process, more so than any other marketing tool.”

 Why white papers fail

Even so, some white papers simply fail to generate leads. And no one can afford to spend precious resources on efforts that return lackluster results.

 When white papers don’t perform as expected, the quality of writing is usually at issue. According to a recent MarketingSherpa report, the main reason white papers fail is their readability factor; “the topics are uninteresting, titles blah, and content far too salesy or just plain dull.” 

 Many organizations make the mistake of thinking that a white paper is just another data sheet, or just another product brochure, and turn this critical piece of writing over to an engineer or junior marketing copywriter.

 The problem for product marketers is that, in a market saturated with marketing messages, a poorly written white paper is not only a waste of the time it takes to produce it, but could end up turning off prospects and sending them running to the competition.

Outsourcing costs less and produces better results

Creating white papers that command attention and deliver leads is a highly specialized skill. A professional white paper writer charges from $4000 to $7000 for a white paper depending on the market and their experience level. While hiring a professional writer may, at first glance, seem like an unwarranted expense, when you look at the numbers it starts to make a lot of sense.

Tasking an internal employee to write a white paper when they are not practiced at it can take their time and focus away from more business critical projects for a considerable period of time. The deadline tends to slip as other initiatives pop up and take precedence, and soon your white paper is not only poorly written, it’s late to market and has cost the whole team in productivity and added stress.

By outsourcing your paper to a professional, you get a compelling white paper with a greater ability to attract leads, much faster and without the drain on your internal team. Still think it’s not worth it? Ask yourself this – how many solutions do I have to sell to recoup the investment? Now, in this economy, can you afford not to?