Facebook is one of the largest social media sites with more than 936 million daily users worldwide. With such a large user base, Facebook marketing strategies are a great avenue for marketers to promote their company’s brand, products, services, and build up a following of loyal fans. In fact, 42% of marketers report Facebook is a critical part of their business. A large part of successful posting and marketing on Facebook is accumulating the largest number of user interactions possible, such as views, likes, comments, or even shares. We’ll share how you can get the most out of each of your Facebook posts by optimizing the timing, content, and frequency of posts. (https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/)

Timing Is Everything

Every minute on Facebook about 510 comments are posted and 293,000 statuses are updated. Every day over six million likes are accrued by daily active users. One would think that with all this activity, any time would be a good time to publish a Facebook post. According to statistics published by Track Maven in their guide “The Marketing Mavens Guide to Facebook,” this is not exactly the case. (https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Most marketers post during the weekday, with Thursday being the most popular by a small margin, and then the number of posts drops nearly in half over the weekend, with only 9.04% of posts being published on Saturday. Post interactions, on the other hand, have a completely opposite trend. Facebook post interactions actually decrease during the weekdays and then increase sharply upward during the weekends. According to Track Maven, posts that are published on Sunday have 25% more interactions then posts made on Wednesday, making them significantly more effective.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Of course, you don’t want to only publish posts only on the weekends. Good Facebook marketing strategies maintain a healthy posting schedule throughout the whole week. So is there a best time slot to get the most out of the weekday posts? The answer is yes. The majority of weekday posts occur during the workday, 9:00am-5:00pm. The highest average peak of interactions, however, is found during after-hours from 5pm-1am with an average of 2.49 interactions. This means that posts that are made during, or close to, 5pm-1am are more likely to receive the highest number of views, likes, or comments.

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

Words, Words, Words

Now that you know the best time to publish a post, you have to write one. Since Facebook has no limit to how many characters can be in a post, the writer has the freedom to make a post as long or as short as they desire. Most writers go for the “‘simpler is better”’ approach, but is that really the best policy for Facebook writing?

(https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

More than half of all Facebook posts consist of fewer than 20 words. Posts that consist of fewer than 10 words were the next most common number. However, it may surprise you that posts with a word count under 20 receive the least amount of daily user interactions. What may surprise you more is that Facebook posts consisting of 80 words or more will receive twice the amount of user interactions than posts with a smaller word count. Several theories exist about why this happens, but most seem to agree that people are more willing to interact with a post that requires a time investment.

Call-to-Action

The goal of a call to action is to cause the reader to take a specific action that helps increase the viewership of a post. Track Maven examined four of the most common call-to-action words (Share, Please, Like, and Now) used on Facebook to determine how effective they were at increasing user interaction. All four of these call-to-action words increased the interaction of posts compared to posts that did not have a call to action, with Share garnering twice as many social interactions than the other three words.

When marketing on Facebook marketers must bear in mind there is a potential pitfall attached to using a call- to -action word. Facebook changed its news feed algorithm to penalize pages that engage in like-baiting. Facebook defines like-baiting as “when a post explicitly asks News Feed readers to like, comment or share the post in order to get additional distribution beyond what the post would normally receive.” (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/04/news-feed-fyi-cleaning-up-news-feed-spam/) The best way to avoid being penalized by this algorithm change is to use call to action terms sparingly, and find alternative ways to encourage interaction from readers.

What Is a Picture Worth?

Words are only part of creating an effective post. Most marketers prefer to add an image to increase the power of their chosen message. Facebook has one of the largest collections of online photos in the world, and as of February 2014 350 million photos (on average) were being uploaded to Facebook every day. Over 88% of all Facebook posts include an image of some kind, but does including an image in your post increase the frequency of user interactions? The answer is yes; posts that include an image saw 2.35 average user interactions per post while those that did not include a photo only saw 1.71 interactions.

 (https://trackmaven.com/resources/facebook-advertising-budget-report/)

How Many Hashtags Are Too Many?

Hashtags are a relatively new part of Facebook, with their use starting to pop up in June 2013. (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/06/public-conversations-on-facebook/) Facebook decided to make hashtags a clickable part of a post in order to allow people to indicate they were a part of a larger conversation or group, and find others who were posting similar content.

About 83.93% of posts do not include hashtags, so it is not the most popular addition to posts. However, posts that do include one or two hashtags saw a user interaction increase of 60%. Posts that had three or four hashtags also had a larger user interaction than posts without hashtags, but the percentage was lower than the posts with only one or two hashtags. Posts that included seven or eight hashtags experienced the largest amount of user interactions, but it is good to note that posts using a lower number of hashtags usually contain better content and do not need to rely on so many hashtags.

Putting It All Together

Posting on Facebook is one of the key ways a company can build and maintain a powerful social media presence. By planning a healthy posting schedule during peak viewing hours, and keeping in mind the different aspects of a post such as word length, image use, and additions such as hashtags, a marketer can greatly increase how much attention they get out of each of their Facebook posts.

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This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as an account manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com.  Elizabeth manages new client on-boarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post How to Get the Most Out of Your Corporate Facebook Marketing Strategies appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Twenty-five is a number with a lot of significance in our world. It is the atomic number of manganese, it is the number reserved for the player deemed the best “slugger” on a baseball team, and it is the name of the national board game of India. To the hardworking men and women of the Beasley Direct and Online Marketing agency, however, twenty-five carries a much higher level of significance.

A Walk through History

The Beasley Direct and Online Marketing agency was founded in 1990 by Laurie Beasley after a successful career as a marketing manager for Borland International. After leaving Borland, Laurie began to consult for other software and hardware companies who all recognized the need for an upgraded revenue model. This was rewarding consulting work; however, Laurie began to recognize that companies were having trouble executing the plans. Direct marketing is both science and art, and companies were struggling with both aspects. Eventually, Laurie decided to switch from just being the consultant who built models, to a full-service agency that built the model and executed it using database marketing.

In 2001-2002 the U.S. experienced the dot-com crash. Many agencies went out of business then, but Beasley Direct and Online Marketing thrived by adding a full set of services to help companies get their digital marketing programs up and running, including websites, email programs, and online advertising.

In 2008 the world experienced the Great Recession. Many more agencies went out of business during that year and the years which followed. The members of Beasley Direct jumped in and helped companies shift a heavy proportion of their marketing budgets to online, including search and social media.

Beasley Directs Growth along with Marketing Advances

Despite the challenges of the past, technology moves ever forward. With the arrival of the Internet, a huge shift occurred in marketing. To stay ahead of the curve, Beasley Direct added creative and technical services for developing websites and online advertising. As Internet marketing has progressed, Beasley Direct fought to stay ahead with the addition of sophisticated email and search marketing services, and more recently content marketing and social media services.

“Marketing managers must understand and use a wide array of tools…. We help clients avoid letting the tools replace or hinder good strategy, and to the relief of most of our clients, we help in the day-to-day optimal use of the tools.”–Laurie Beasley, President of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing

With all these advances in marketing technology, a huge need grew in the industry for training marketers to keep up and stay ahead of changes. To meet this growing need, Laurie Beasley created and managed a Certificate in Direct and Online Marketing at San Jose State Professional Studies, and then cloned this program at UCLA Extension, UC Santa Cruz Extension, UC Berkley Extension, and the Online Marketing Institute. Many of the Beasley Direct consulting staff members now teach in these programs.

What Does the Future Hold for Beasley Direct and Online Marketing?

“I believe the future of marketing will evolve with social media and the internet. Mobile marketing will continue to force innovation on marketers to keep their websites, search and social media effective for the mobile user. The introduction of mobile apps, kiosks, and third screen interactivity will provide many more avenues for marketing messaging and lead generation.”–Laurie Beasley

A Message to Other Marketers

“Marketing never stands still, and you need an agency that will keep you ahead of the curve. Beasley Direct has stayed far ahead of the learning curve, adding technical and creative skills to an ever-growing list of media channels.”–Laurie Beasley

With a future that includes wearable technology and a technologically desensitized population, the fight to stay ahead of marketing curves will never be over. However, you can bet that Beasley Direct and Online Marketing will be at the front lines, ready to provide absolute top notch services.

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Elizabeth Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing

This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as an account manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com   Elizabeth manages new client onboarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post Beasley Direct & Online Marketing Agency Celebrates Twenty-Five Years of Great Service appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

By John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, Beasley Direct Marketing

Client:        A law firm specializing in family practice.

Issue:        The client wanted to reduce cost per lead, which was more than $220.

Solution:    Segmented marketplace to reveal which segments were most productive; refined keywords used in online advertising; reworded ads; analyzed lead history to optimize ad placement.

Results:     Within six months, reduced cost per lead by about 50%; increased conversion rate by about 15%.

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A law firm specializing in family practice in New Jersey asked Beasley Direct Marketing to reduce its cost per lead and acquisition. The practice handled a broad range of issues, including divorce, marriage, child custody, naturalization, immigration and pre-nuptial agreements. When we started with the firm, cost per lead was more than $220. The law firm advertised both online and in print in local publications.

Our first step was to determine if the client wanted to target all types of business that it handled, or only specific segments. We discovered that, historically, the types of clients providing the most revenue at the lowest cost per acquisition were divorce, child custody arrangements and pre-nuptial agreements. Further analysis showed that the quality of pre-nuptial leads was poor (lots of people were voyeuristically searching for celebrity “pre-nups”), and this was dropped from the ad program. In the case of divorce and child custody, we were able to identify clients, segment by male versus female, and target those who were in the process or just thinking about it.

The overall quality of the leads coming in from the firm’s advertising program was poor. Quality scores tend to vary by market; similar click-through rates in two different markets may yield very different levels of quality. We did geographical targeting, aiming at commuters in the bridges and tunnels in the tri-state area, and we also developed localized ads to support the firm’s different offices, getting the ads in front of people who worked or lived in proximity to those offices. So instead of bidding on “New Jersey family law firm,” we bid on specific towns and regions. This was especially effective on the New Jersey turnpike corridor, where towns tend to run into one another. (Geographical targeting alone yielded a 10% decrease in cost per lead.)

We analyzed the language of the online ads and refined them with cleaner, less cluttered language (keeping in mind at all times the restrictions on lawyer advertising by the New Jersey Bar Association). We also looked at the list of keywords to identify those that had historically converted well, winnowing out the less-productive ones. We continue to do this on an ongoing basis.

We also looked at timing considerations. When we first started with the firm, it was running all the ads at the same price 24 hours a day and seven days a week, all year long. Examining their Google Analytics data, we were able to identify where they derived their most leads by time of day, week and year. For example, Sunday evenings from 10 pm to 1 am were highly productive times; apparently, the end of the weekend is a time when many people begin considering divorce. Another spike occurred just after lunch during weekdays. We also noticed that suppertime on any day and mid-morning and mid-afternoon during weekdays were not productive. This allowed us to pare about 30% off the cost of acquisition, simply by running ads only during the times of greatest productivity. The remaining cost reductions came about through keyword expansion and refinement and constant ad testing, which allowed us to drop losing ads and retain or develop ads that were proven winners.

The client wanted to try remarketing—the practice of identifying a searcher’s interests and targeting ads that follow that individual around the web. We were not in favor of this because the client sells services with many privacy concerns. For example, if a man has been searching for divorce lawyers and his wife uses the same computer, she may be able to discern from the ads she sees that her husband is contemplating divorce—information that, if true, should come from her husband, not the Internet. But we did a limited test, and actually saw a decrease in click-throughs and conversions, so the downside was greater than even we had anticipated.

In addition to abiding by the advertising regulations of the New Jersey Bar Association, the client also wanted to stay within the bounds of good taste and a genuine concern for clients’ privacy and wellbeing. This concern extended to which keywords we selected, as well as the wording of ads. Despite these restrictions, we were able to slash cost per lead by about 50%, while increasing ad productivity by about 15%.

Of course, this kind of process is never “done.” We continue to keep track of keyword productivity, ad scheduling and other data to assure the client’s promotional program is cost-effective and productive.

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This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, of Beasley Direct Marketing. Contact John at jthyfault@beasleydirect.com.

John has more than 18 years of marketing, sales and product development experience, and he brings a proven track record of successful campaign, program and product development expertise. His knowledge of search engine optimization and marketing, combined with an in-depth understanding of customer identification, market analysis and segmentation, allows him to deliver high returns on our client’s marketing investment for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.

Prior to working with Beasley Direct, John was Senior Client Services Project Director at ThirdAge.com, a first wave baby boomer lifestyle and community website. At ThirdAge he successfully led major client sponsorships for Fortune 100 companies in healthcare (Tylenol), financial services (American Century), technology (Intel & IBM) and consumer products areas (Revlon & Viactive). He was responsible for strategic and tactical goal setting, project management, new product creation and web site production. John previously worked in Channel Marketing and National Account Sales for IDG Books Worldwide, the publishers of the immensely popular “…For Dummies” book series. Additionally, he managed the wholesale distributor sales channel for Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

 John is active in local marketing associations, including the Direct Marketing Association, the Business Marketing Association and is currently serving on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association.

John has taught search engine marketing fundamentals extensively. He has led workshops for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association, Northern California Direct Marketing Association (DMAnc) and the Business Marketing Association. He also teaches Search Engine Marketing at UCSC Extension (Silicon Valley).

The post Case Study: Lowering Cost Per Lead/Acquisition with Data Analysis appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Poster of the Mars Curiosity Rover created by Beasley Direct Marketing for Anritsu’s VectorStar Campaign

by Laurie B. Beasley, president, Beasley Direct Marketing

Here is a successful multi-channel B2B direct marketing campaign case study that followed many of the guidelines we’ve been talking about, including an appeal to emotions, multiple touches, and a carefully designed offer. The audience was engineers—always a tough sell because of their skepticism—and we sought to persuade them to consider replacing a tried-and-true instrument with something they may not even have heard of. We did this not by leading with product features but with a pull on the heartstrings—reliving a recent event in which engineers were heroes because of the quality of their instruments and their work.

Background

Anritsu’s VectorStar Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) is used to measure microwave and mm-wave frequencies in design, testing and manufacture of electronic components where extreme accuracy is required. A new model leapfrogged the competition in features and performance, providing the opportunity to generate sales leads through a multi-channel marketing campaign. The primary audience for this campaign is electrical engineers (EEs). They think in a methodical way and demand proof of product claims. They require detailed specs and technical information to make a buying decision. They are not at all impressed by marketing copy and claims unsubstantiated by statistics.

The Challenge:

Anritsu’s predecessor company, Wiltron, invented the modern VNA tester in the late 1950s. While Anritsu continued to improve VNA high-performance technology, several well-funded companies have entered the market and developed similar versions of Anritsu’s products, taking the lead in sheer sales order volume. We needed to get Anritsu back on our buyer’s “short list”. Electrical engineers are process-oriented. If they are comfortable with a tool and that tool satisfies their requirements, it’s difficult to get them to switch. VNA testers start at $100K and have a long sales cycle because they are considered a capital equipment investment.

The B2B Direct Marketing Campaign Objective

Our goal with the campaign was to bring Anritsu to the table with new customers that the sales force had not yet penetrated, creating awareness of the Anritsu VectorStar solution and ultimately generating face-to-face consultation meetings with qualified firms. A consultation requester who met key budget, purchase authority, need and timeframe-to-purchase criteria was considered an “A” category sales lead. In addition, the “B”-rated leads are prospect contacts with proven interest that opted in to future communications, but were not yet qualified.

Creative and Multi Channel Direct Marketing Strategy

The creative focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover, which had made a spectacularly successful landing on Mars about the time this project began. Engineers are inherently interested in the accomplishments of other engineers and how they solved tough problems. The Mars Curiosity Rover landing was one of the toughest, with thousands of measurements and calculations that had to be coded into the landing and could not be altered during the “seven minutes of terror” during which the Curiosity Rover descended to the planet’s surface. To quote from our letter to prospects:

“As it descended through the atmosphere of Mars, the spacecraft carrying the Curiosity Rover fired its rockets 79 times, went through five configuration changes, and slowed from 13,000 mph to a standstill. In the final operation, a “sky crane” was used to gently deposit the Curiosity on the surface since retro rockets would stir up too much dust.”

We pointed out the extreme precision this required, and then made the transition to the reader: we think of the NASA and JPL engineers as heroes, but you are required to make equally exacting measurements every day. That’s why you deserve an instrument like the VectorStar.

Letter to prospects linking the precision of the Mars Curiosity Rover with the precision of engineers’ every-day problem-solving.

The centerpiece of the multi channel direct marketing campaign was a direct mailing in a transparent tube containing a poster with an artist’s rendering of the Curiosity Rover’s descent sequence on one side (NASA has done renderings but the client did not want to violate any potential copyrights so we commissioned our own) with Anritsu product specs at the bottom. Our hopes were that engineers would mount these in their cubicles, thus providing a constant reminder of the VectorStar, complete with a call-to-action. We followed this up with an email on the same theme, and then began the telemarketing campaign.

Twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the email delivery, the calling team began to engage email and direct mail recipients. This multi-touch process had the effect of increasing the number of contact presentations and shortening the lead generation cycle. Most contacts recalled receiving the direct mail piece or email. Many were familiar with the offering and willing to engage. Program metrics are indicative of the effectiveness of this process with the high volume of completed call scripts as partial evidence.

The call-to-action was a free gift when a prospect completed a VectorStar sales presentation. We tested two offers: an Anritsu-branded backpack (appealing because our target likes to carry lots of gadgets around) versus a VNA technical manual valued at $50. Because of concerns about accepting gifts, government and government contractors were offered only the book.

Additionally, all prospects that registered their contact information were immediately provided a free download link for a relevant white paper.

Because the price of the VectorStar VNA is $51,000 and up, we knew that repeated contacts—and often multiple contacts—within the same company would be necessary to close the sale. The goal of the multi-touch approach was to start the process by gathering as much information as possible while gaining initial commitment to enter the lead pipeline.

Results

Overall, the campaign was highly successful. Based on the sales CRM reports, the program generated over $2.8 million dollars in the sales pipeline during the three-month campaign window, and many high sales potential leads are still being nurtured.

The campaign had a specific goal of developing 69 “A” leads that were considered opportunities in the CRM system. Through direct response and follow-up calling we developed 115 leads, which put us at 167% of the goal. In addition, the Calling Team gathered 426 opt-in contacts for continued nurturing and development.

The VectorStar campaign shows best practices for an effective multi-part B-to-B nurturing campaign: start with a memorable contact sequence, then follow up with multiple touches that develop the prospect into a sales-ready lead. Because so many recipients remembered and engaged with the mailing and follow-up email, it was easier to get them on the phone and easier to complete an initial sales conversation. Because of this effective warm-up approach, calls were completed faster, allowing more contacts to be made within the allotted time and budget. The result: more leads and sales opportunities.

Appendix

A brief look at benchmarked targets versus actual productivity metrics in several key areas clarifies why the program was so successful:

The most telling metric from this group is Total Scripts per Hour, because it quantifies the calling team’s ability to engage prospects with the Anritsu VectorStar offering. This ability to engage prospects and their receptivity to Anritsu’s offer of a technical consultation was the basis for the substantial number of lead conversions.

Over the life of the initiative, 2,094 scripts were completed during 540 calling hours. This number exceeded program goal by 260%. To look at it from another perspective, when the program launched, the expectation was set that 810 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues would take place. In fact, 2,094 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues occurred. The additional 1,284 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues over the course of the campaign celebrate its success.

For more information on this topic and other, request our free Case Studies.

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Laurie Beasley, President, Beasley Direct Marketing

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc., a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, direct mail, and demand generation campaigns for over a hundred companies. Ms. Beasley serves as president of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. She manages the Online Roundtable for the BMA Northern California www.NorCalBMA.org. She is an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches in the Level 2 Certification program for the Online Marketing Institute. She frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the Online Marketing Summit, Interactive Marketing Week, DMA Annual Conference, and the Marketing Executive Networking Group.

The post Case Study: B2B Direct Marketing Multichannel Campaign appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

People are still people, even when they’re on the job and deciding what technical products to buy. In technical writing, when you present features, translate them into benefits that make an emotional appeal. Avoid industry buzzwords like “resonate” and “disrupt” in favor of simple language. If nothing else, this strategy will differentiate you and make your message stand out compared to marketers who only speak in jargon.

Another way to look at this is to keep it simple. Tell your complicated story in basic human terms that boil down to easily understood story lines. A copywriter might think it’s hard to know which of the technical specs is most important so they better include all of them. Or, this buyer will need a lot of information in order to justify the cost. But humans can only absorb so much information, especially when they may not have asked for that information in the first place.

Even if your prospect is the chief technology officer of a large company, they’re also a human being and will evaluate rationally, but ultimately make an emotional decision. At the end of the day they want to be praised for their good work, have a comfortable lifestyle because they’ve been promoted, and go home at a reasonable hour instead of having to solve headaches. Your job is to make the connection between your product or service and these fundamental needs.

Three Technical Writing Tip on How To Write Tech Copy that Gets Results

One of our copywriters shared his tips for writing tech copy that consistently gets outstanding response:

The first thing I believe about tech writing is that you need to understand the product—not necessarily on a programmatic level, but the problem it solves, and why it does this better than other options. I’m not a scientist but I love to learn how things work.

Secondly, I believe that technology buyers are people with the same personal motivations as those buying consumer products. They want to be secure, avoid conflict and achieve recognition, and in an indirect way, technical products help them do this.

Finally, I always ask to interview the sales team so I can understand the objections that are typically raised and the hot buttons that get prospects excited about the product. I go to CES most every year (and attended Comdex before that) and spend most of my time hanging back near kiosks to watch sales engineers do technical presentations.

I believe these steps are missing in a lot of the copy I read for technical companies that reads like a laundry list of specs. If I beat more than my share of direct marketing campaign tests, it’s not so much because I was a dramatically better writer, but because I was diligent in my preparation. As Woody Allen said, 80% of success is just showing up.

Get free Digital Marketing Case Studies.

Laurie Beasley, President, Beasley Direct Marketing

The post How to Communicate Complex Ideas in Simple Language When Writing Marketing Copy – Three Technical Writing Tips appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

In Part 1 of this series, we focused on local SEO (search engine optimization) and how to use it to improve your listings for local searches. Part 2 explored using PPC (pay-per-click) to boost local results. In this final installment, we cover the other ways you can optimize local search results for your business through citations, reviews, social media and local advertising. Please note that none of these are game-changers in themselves; they fill in the gaps and heighten the probability that your local customer will be able to find you more easily.

NAP Data Is Critical

We’ve mentioned the importance of NAP (name, address, telephone number) consistency before, but it bears repeating.

You must have a local number for best local results with search engines. An 800 number screams “national.” Using third-party tracking phone numbers to track how callers found you can be useful, but not in the context of local search. Search engines confronted by different phone numbers in different places for your business will discount your locality—that is to say, your business may not be perceived as truly local, and may appear lower down on the list of results.

Ensure that all your NAP data is consistent, no matter where it appears. This will help search engines to determine your physical location.

Citations

A citation is when your business is listed as a resource, but there may not be a recommendation or review. There might not even be a link back to your website.

Google gives citations a fair amount of importance in its algorithm for figuring out who’s important in a given business. There are many different kinds of citations:

• Sponsorships. When you sponsor a local charity, fundraiser, sports team, school program, etc., your business appears as a sponsor on the organization’s website (as well as in other materials). Think twice about sponsoring an organization that doesn’t have a website, because you don’t get the online magic of having links back to your site or at least a search engine ready to hand for customers.
• Current Relationships. Your customers, business partners or clients may list your business online.
• Social Citations. These overlap with sponsorships, and include local seminars, networking events, and so forth. If, for instance, one of your real estate agents is participating in a seminar for first-time home-buyers, but the seminar is sponsored by a bank, the mention of your business in the speaker lineup will be considered a citation by search engines.
• Job Board Listings. Listing your company on job boards falls into the citation category. For the purpose of local search, obviously local job boards are best for this.
• Directory Citations. The best directories are those with a list of specific services in your area—and they are also the most difficult. Some sites try to fool Google by creating a list of unrelated services but exercising no editorial review over it. They might be trying to boost their Page Rank, or they might be hosting advertising, but they’re not the best place to get listed because search engines (especially Google) rate directories according to their relevance and usefulness. The best directories are those with lists of related services where the directory is curated, with good links and—the best—reviews.

 Reviews

Getting a review on a legitimate site is helpful because Google and other search engines give a lot of weight to reviews—most sites that accept reviews make it hard to game the system with fake reviews. For Google, the most valuable place to get a review is on Google+. Even a “+1” counts. A +1 ranking is akin to “Liking” a Facebook page. The more +1’s you get, the more visible you are to Google. The relevancy of who gave you the review or the +1 is important; if you are a shoe store in Minneapolis and you got a +1 from a person in California, that won’t count as such as a +1 from a resident of Lake Elmo, MN. However, national review sites such as Yelp! or Angie’s List are location-sensitive and have local reviews.

Remember, reviews must be real reviews from real people. Google is extremely good at sniffing out fake reviewers; they tend to use the same language all the time, and review services or products that aren’t relevant to them. Don’t even think about signing up a service that promises hundreds of positive reviews: it’s a great way to get Google to downgrade your relevance.

Amazon scrutinizes purchase histories associated with reviewers. It doesn’t bar reviews from people who haven’t bought the product on Amazon, but these are given less weight. Amazon also doesn’t take down negative reviews—there’s too great a risk of being accused of pushing positive reviews and ditching the negatives, which would impugn the reputation of Amazon itself.

Solicit reviews from your happy customers. They’re by far the best source of good reviews. And don’t attempt to game the system, because it will come back to haunt you. A few years ago, we worked with a restaurant in San Francisco. The restaurant had been advised by a consultant to place reviews on a large, national review site and a leading national reservation service site. After three months of placing fake reviews on these sites, the sites figured it out. The review site banished them to a mention at the bottom of the results listing. The reservation service banned them completely. So don’t try to trick the system.

Social Networking Sites

Claim your listings for your company on Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp! and other social networking sites.  Depending on the site, search engines may not be able to crawl and give you “credit” in their results, but you can still increase your sales as a result of people finding your company page on the social network site.

Make sure these listings have the key information about your location, hours, services offered and contact information. Again, make sure your NAP is consistent across all of the social networking sites. These sites give you an opportunity to speak in a more informal, conversational way with your customers. They establish a community for customers and are another way your customers can contact you.

Social media sites are also a great place to post promotional and seasonal offers. If you are looking to drive people into a physical store, tie these offers to the actual visit. Try to post on a regular basis, even if it is just a brief paragraph about a local news item or a quick promotion. This regular posting will encourage repeat traffic from both customers and search engines.

Local Advertising

Do local online advertising if it makes sense in the context of your business. If the cost of advertising outweighs the potential benefit, rely on citations and reviews. But if advertising does make sense (and some services like Google AdWords are pretty cost-effective and allow you to control expenditures), it’s another little building block in the task of building local presence online.  It often will not help in your organic search listings, but the end result is driving local traffic to your site that you can turn into sales.

The Final Analysis

Cast a wide net. Get listed (with legitimate sites) wherever you can. Get real reviews wherever you can. You probably can’t have too many citations or reviews, as long as they are genuine. Use cost-effective local ads online if they make sense for your business. But remember: this is a process, not an event. You can’t just get some citations and reviews going and then walk away thinking, “Mission accomplished.” Reviews get old, directories fall into disuse, sites come and go. You must work at it over time to be successful.

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This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, of Beasley Direct Marketing. Contact John at jthyfault@beasleydirect.com.

John has more than 18 years of marketing, sales and product development experience, and he brings a proven track record of successful campaign, program and product development expertise. His knowledge of search engine optimization and marketing, combined with an in-depth understanding of customer identification, market analysis and segmentation, allows him to deliver high returns on our client’s marketing investment for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.

Prior to working with Beasley Direct, John was Senior Client Services Project Director at ThirdAge.com, a first wave baby boomer lifestyle and community website. At ThirdAge he successfully led major client sponsorships for Fortune 100 companies in healthcare (Tylenol), financial services (American Century), technology (Intel & IBM) and consumer products areas (Revlon & Viactive). He was responsible for strategic and tactical goal setting, project management, new product creation and web site production. John previously worked in Channel Marketing and National Account Sales for IDG Books Worldwide, the publishers of the immensely popular “…For Dummies” book series. Additionally, he managed the wholesale distributor sales channel for Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

John is active in local marketing associations, including the Direct Marketing Association, the Business Marketing Association and is currently serving on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association.

John has taught search engine marketing fundamentals extensively. He has led workshops for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association, Northern California Direct Marketing Association (DMAnc.org) and the Business Marketing Association. He also teaches Search Engine Marketing at (UCSC Extension, Silicon Valley.

The post Boost Your Regional Results through Local Search Marketing (Part 3): Local Online Marketing appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

In our final installment on how to develop and nurture sales-ready qualified leads, we will look at a second case study where a firm successfully incorporated a multi-touch, multi-channel marketing approach to boost sales. However, this case study is quite different than the previous ABC Glove case study. The product is a complex technology sale and required more fine-tuning of the strategy and tactics as the campaign progressed, as you’ll see in this case study.

The client, XYZ Software (not the real name), is a large wide-area network (WAN) software optimization company. The sales process for this category of product is complex—and not made any easier by the fact that XYZ sells to IT professionals at medium to large firms, who are extremely busy and difficult to reach. The pain point for these professionals is slow-running networks, but isolating the network speed issue is often difficult and easily trumped by daily fire-fighting situations that demand immediate attention. As a result, IT professionals may be so busy that they do not realize how poorly their network is performing until it goes down.

XYZ Software had been focused on top-of-funnel marketing with email campaigns, webinars, pay-per-click (PPC), lunch-and-learn events and trade shows. As is often the case, there was no mid-funnel process in place for tele-qualifying inbound leads or generating pre-qualified sales opportunities. This resulted in a large number of unqualified “warm” suspect leads in the top of the sales funnel that either dropped out of the funnel or remained in the funnel without further attempts to qualify them. Consequently, Sales was not following up on the majority of leads because they were not pre-qualified to meet the sales-ready criteria. (Figure 1 illustrates XYZ’s situation perfectly.)

Figure 1: Low-Quality Leads from Marketing Tend To Drop Out of the Lead-to-Sales Funnel

Source: Forrester Research

XYZ called us in to diagnose and figure out how to turn more “warm” leads into sales-ready qualified prospects and turn more of those prospects into customers. As we did with ABC Glove Corporation, we first identified the problem. Then, in this case, we recommended a multi-touch, multi-channel lead nurturing program that integrated a tele-qualifying process owned by Marketing. We tested two offers: a Gartner Magic Quadrant versus an on-demand webinar/seminar featuring a Gartner analyst. We also tested three lists: the house lead file, a rental list of the primary competitor’s customers, and a webinar/seminar attendee list. Later, as the program rolled out, we also included webinar attendees and inbound responders in the lead nurturing program.

As it turned out, both offers performed equally well, splitting nearly 50/50. All of the lists were productive, but because we tracked the metrics, we were able to determine that the webinar list outperformed the others.

We tracked the number of attempts to reach IT titles for each list. The number of touches required to convert a prospect into a sales-ready lead ranged from two to nine touches, with an average of 7.51. Please note this is significantly fewer touches than the 7-13+ touch range we have been saying are required. This is directly due to the recommended messaging and creative in a combination of multi-channel outbound marketing emails integrated with tele-qualification and tele-nurturing, which raises awareness and establishes a 1:1 personal relationship with the prospect. Webinar attendance outperformed the other outbound marketing techniques with an average of 2.5 touches from us, moving prospects through the buying process more quickly than other sources.

Because we were tracking all metrics, we were able to determine that the initial messaging wasn’t resonating with prospects the way XYZ thought it would. When conversion rates don’t manifest at a satisfactory rate fairly early, it’s time to make a refinement. We addressed this quickly, listening to prospects and revising the messaging to suit. We also provided more training to the tele-qualifiers, improving their product knowledge and teaching them different ways to overcome objections.

We also changed the messaging about XYZ’s prime competitor. Instead of talking about the competitor as such, we repositioned XYZ’s technology as a solution to problems encountered by users of the competition’s product—a subtle yet effective way to handle the objection and move the dialog forward in the qualification process.

As part of the lead nurturing program, the calling team followed up with prospects by sending relevant informational material such as white papers and case studies as well as invitations to on-demand webinars designed to refine the sequential touch points, improving the quantity and quality of dialogues with prospects. This peer-to-peer approach helped to establish a sequence of nurturing by educating prospects on the viability of XYZ’s offerings. Prospects then began to open up about their network problems, which made them more inclined to set up a consultation meeting with the field representative.

We cannot share the actual numbers that resulted from this lead development program, but we can say that the program is still in place at XYZ Software, and the competing company has experienced a loss of market share to XYZ as a result.

In summary, traditional outbound marketing programs are insufficient to develop and deliver sales-ready qualified leads to the sales funnel. Marketing must step up to the plate and take on the responsibility of tele-qualifying warm leads into qualified leads before passing these on to Sales. This is a paradigm shift for Marketing and will require Marketing to justify the resources required to add multi-touch nurturing and tele-qualifying to its functions. It also means that Marketing must become rigorous about tracking the metrics, because in these leaner times, nobody gets more budget until a strong case has been made for the ROI of such a step. The reward is a boost in qualified leads delivered to Sales (making Marketing of greater value to Sales), and increased sales conversion rates (of value to everyone). Multi-touch, multi-channel programs represent a way for Marketing to graduate from the position of being a necessary evil to become an essential and valued player on the corporate team.

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This blog was authored by Laurie B. Beasley, co-founder and president of Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc., and Tom Judge, vice president Strategy at Direct Marketing Partners.

Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern Californiawww.DMAnc.org. She manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern Californiawww.NorCalBMA.org. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institutewww.onlinemarketinginstitute.org. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

Tom Judge

Direct Marketing Partners (DMP) is a lead management and lead funnel tele-qualification services provider for B2B selling firms. Services include multi-touch peer to peer tele-prospecting and email lead gen campaigns with marketing automation and funnel metrics to optimize lead-to-sale conversions. Tom Judge provides strategic guidance for DMP clients and educational workshops on optimizing b2b lead-to-sales funnels for companies and at industry conferences. He also serves as the Vice President of the DMA Northern California Chapter, contributor at Sales Lead Management Association www.salesleadmgmtassn.com, and program chair for the Northern California Business Marketing Association Sales Lead Roundtable www.norcalbma.org. He is a former instructor on sales lead management at. San Jose State University and University of California professional development programs.

The post Why It Takes 7 to 13+ Touches To Deliver a Qualified Sales Lead (Part 6: Case Study) appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

By John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, Beasley Direct Marketing

Content Protection

The wonderful thing about content marketing is that you can reach thousands, even millions of people with your message. The downside is that thousands, even millions of people can steal your hard work if you don’t use content protection. You spent the time, effort and money to develop your word, image, video and audio files. You own the work, and it’s worth just a little more effort to protect it from the lazy cyber-shoplifters. They might want to pilfer your intellectual property (IP) for their own purposes.

Content protection isn’t hard. The hard part is remembering to do it. If you are putting your content on a third party site like Google Drive or FaceBook, review your terms of service (TOS). Yes, I know that most people just scroll to the end and click “Agree.” But, if you do that, you may be giving up your copyrights. For example, Google Drive’s TOS says Google can store, reproduce, or recreate any content on their server—even if you stop using the service. By contrast, the TOS for WordPress (operated by Automattic) contains the following verbiage: “By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog.” That’s not so bad, unless you object to having your blog promoted for free.

Protecting Your Photos

Whatever file type you are using, embed the copyright information into the metadata on the file. Image files have a set of metadata that was originally created for photographers. It transmits technical details like f-stops, exposures and who the photographer is. You can use this meta-structure to embed keyword rich descriptions, background information and copyright information. All graphics programs like Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Pixlrator and Appeture have a way to embed this information, usually called “Properties” or “File Info.” This is helpful if someone just steals your image. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows you to go to any of the third-party publishers and prove the image belongs to you via this embedded data. They will take your pirated material off their servers and notify the thief. This is usually enough to stop most individuals in their tracks (at least when it comes to your material). People steal content because they are lazy and fighting it becomes more effort than it’s worth.