• CONTENT MARKETING SERVICES
• CONTENT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES
• CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

Content Marketing Services

All marketing involves content—but not all content is effective marketing. You must provide objective information that is useful to your audience and relevant to the issues they are facing. Do this conscientiously and you will generate confidence and trust that leads to lasting relationships. As a nice bonus, you’ll also get lots of attention from Google, which increasingly focuses on content in its search algorithm.

As marketing platforms have evolved, so have the opportunities to attract business through content marketing. According to MarketingSherpa, a multimedia messaging strategy is the single most important strategy in getting your audience to engage. Start with a white paper and then repurpose its findings as short articles, social media posts, possibly a podcast or webinar. Or start with a blog, build a library of related posts, then publish a collection and share it with snippets that point back to your website. You have valuable information about your area of expertise, and you have an audience hungry to receive it.

Beasley, a content marketing agency, has been doing content marketing since long before there was a thing called content marketing. With so many technical companies spouting jargon and raw stats in their advertising, we advised our clients to address their customers as people. We provided tech guides and web resources that were so useful, a prospect would happily engage to access them by entering into a sales conversation. We’re an experienced, professional content marketing agency. Let us show you how to turn your stored knowledge and experience into content marketing.

SPECIAL OFFER:
Get a Free Reverse Sales Funnel Analysis!

The post Content Marketing Services appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

• LEAD GENERATION SERVICES
• CONTENT SYNDICATION SERVICES
• LEAD GENERATION STRATEGY
• LEAD QUALIFICATION SERVICES
• MARKETING OPERATIONS
• TELEPROSPECTING

Content Syndication Services

Content Syndication Services, also known as Content Distribution or a Guaranteed Leads Program (GLP) is an alternative way to fill the top of your sales funnel. Instead of running your own programs for business lead generation, you can ask Beasley lead generation services to bring you prospects generated through white papers or webinars that are promoted on the networks of reputable publishers.

There are a few caveats to this “sounds too good to be true” lead generation proposition. You need to define your business lead generation requirements very specifically to be sure there’s a good fit. These leads may not be familiar with your specific product, even though they’ve expressed a buying interest in a solution like yours, so you’re likely to work harder to qualify them. The qualification process will likely involve a teleprospecting call to further gauge their appropriateness and interest.

Because there are lots of questionable players in content syndication services and the distribution sphere, we recommend you let an experienced lead generation agency like Beasley to help you navigate to the best content networks and avoid the pain of paying for leads that aren’t valuable to your sales department.

SPECIAL OFFER:
Get a Free Reverse Sales Funnel Analysis!

The post Content Syndication Services appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The post Content Marketing appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Designing and writing a landing page is like setting a trap for your prospect, in a nice way. You want to entice them in, encourage them to go deeper, and once they’re inside make it virtually impossible to get out without taking the desired action.

Direct the prospect through creative design:

• Match the colors, font and other design elements of the ad that got them here so they know they’ve come to the right place. (This isn’t always relevant; for instance Google AdWords Text Ads are all text, so no formatting.)
• Use eyeflow design to pull the reader to one key image (usually a depiction of the offer) and place call to action copy next to it as soon as they reach the page.
• Repeat the call to action multiple times so it’s easy to respond when they’re ready.

Copy should be brief, but compelling:

• Be BRIEF in describing the offer, especially if they’ve already read about it in an ad or email that caused them to click through. Repeating what they already know will lull them to sleep or, more likely, bore them so they’ll click away.
• If it’s free, say so, multiple times. Repeat the selling proposition that brought them here. If you’re fulfilling Google AdWords ads, consider matching headlines to the keywords in the ad.


The Nomadic Systems landing page copies the design and color palette of the Nomadic website home page. But, omits internal links which would allow a curious prospect to click away without registering.

• Use bullets if you have room to highlight the benefits of the offer they’re about to accept. This is often done in a sidebar so it doesn’t get in the way of core selling content.
• Use benefit/reward language in buttons such as “Get my FREE report” vs just “SUBMIT”.
• Include testimonials and guarantees to reassure that there’s absolutely no negative consequence to taking the desired action.

And about that all-important OFFER:

You absolutely need an offer on your landing page because you’ve agreed to a quid pro quo. You’re going to “reward” people for their time in learning your selling proposition. Landing pages without offers are destined to be very poor conversion vehicles which don’t come close to paying for themselves.

An informational offer is usually the best way to incent people for business-to-business lead generation landing pages. These readers need information to do their jobs properly, so give it to them in the form of white papers, third party analysis, webinars, videos, fact sheets or all the above (since you never know what informational format is most appealing to a given audience). An info offer should actually be informative. Don’t promise a fact kit or industry analysis, and instead load them up with sales material.

“Freebie” offers include actual merchandise giveaways, either directly or through entrance in a sweepstakes. These are far less prevalent than they were at one time, because they tend to produce many unqualified leads (who responded for the giveaway, not because they are interested in your product). However, there are exceptions to every rule and a high-value offer, carefully targeted, will cause the right prospect to go to considerable lengths to get the reward.

Limited time offers should be used in addition to, not instead of, other offers. Especially if it’s a merchandise offer, the sense of urgency in a temporary discount or a today-only add-on item will give prospects a reason to make a decision. Even if it’s a webinar, you can let people know attendance is limited, first come, first served; if it’s an analyst paper perhaps you have authorization to distribute only a certain number and no more.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. We are 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 California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She also instructs online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. 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.

Our agency brings the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. We help clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post Creative Best Practices for Landing Pages: Plus the all-important OFFER appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The client is a large wide-area network (WAN) software optimization company, XYZ Software (not the real name). The sales process for this category of product is complex. It’s not made any easier by the fact that XYZ sells to IT professionals, who are extremely busy and difficult to reach. The pain point for these professionals is slow-running networks. But, isolating the speed issue is often difficult and easily trumped by fire-fighting situations that demand immediate attention.

XYZ Software had been IT marketing with email campaigns, webinars, pay-per-click (PPC), and trade shows. As is often the case, there was no process in place for tele-qualifying inbound leads or generating sales appointments or demos. This resulted in a large number of unqualified “warm” leads in the sales funnel. As a consequence they either dropped out of the funnel or remained in the funnel without further attempts to qualify them. Furthermore, Sales was not following up on the majority of leads because they were not sales-ready.

Turning “Warm” Leads into Prospects, then Customers

XYZ called us in to figure out how to turn more “warm” leads into prospects and turn more prospects into customers. Our recommendation was a multi-touch, multi-channel lead nurturing program. The program integrated a tele-qualifying process owned by Marketing, which resulted in Sales appointments and demos. We tested two offers: a Gartner Magic Quadrant report versus an on-demand webinar/seminar featuring a Gartner analyst. We also tested three lists.

1. The house lead file.
2. A rental list of the primary competitor’s customers.
3. Lastly, a webinar/seminar attendee list.

Later, as the program rolled out, we included webinar attendees and inbound responders in the lead nurturing program.

Test 1: a Gartner Magic Quadrant report.

Interpreting Metrics to Generate Revenue

As it turned out, both offers performed equally well, splitting nearly 50/50. All of the lists were productive. 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. The an average was 7.51. Webinar attendance outperformed the other outbound marketing techniques with an average of 2.5 touches, moving prospects through the buying process more quickly than other efforts.

Test 2: On-demand webinar/seminar featuring a Gartner analyst.

Implementing the Winning Campaign

We started out with campaign messaging provided by a product manager, but after a week of tele-prospecting, we realized the messaging was off. When conversion rates don’t manifest at a satisfactory rate fairly early, it’s time to make a change. We addressed this quickly, listening to prospects and revising the messaging to suit. Also, we provided more training to the tele-qualifiers, improving their product knowledge and training them on 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.

As part of the lead nurturing program, the calling team followed up with prospects by sending 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 dialogue with prospects. This helped to establish a sequence of nurturing by educating prospects on the viability of XYZ’s offerings.

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

Author

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. 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 California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. 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.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Executed a Meeting Maker Campaign for a Network Software Company appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The ABC Glove Corporation (not the real name) is a leader in the field of industrial gloves. The average value of a new customer account to ABC is high -— around $50,000 per customer per year. The target contact is a decision maker in safety, operations or purchasing within metal manufacturing industries.
ABC’s ambitious goal was to gain $2.5 million in incremental sales. The corporation’s marketing department tried everything: pay-per-click advertising, email, tradeshows and more -—-but could not acquire enough qualified sales leads to hit this target. ABC called us in to help them take a fresh and more productive approach that would result in more appointments for the sales department.

First, we identified the sales-ready “A” lead criteria based on their selling process and marketplace. Then we did some simple, back-of-the-napkin analysis of the needs of the lead-to-sales funnel. Based on the estimations of the vice president of marketing, we found that achieving an incremental $2.5 million in annual sales at $50,000 per sale meant they would have to close 50 new sales in a year. At a 20% proposal close rate, they needed 250 qualified sales opportunities in the proposal stage. At a 25% conversion rate (qualified sales-ready A leads to proposal rate), ABC needed 1,000 “Qualified A” leads in the sales team pipeline. And the conversion rate of marketing inquiry level (MQL) leads to sales-ready A leads is 10%. The bottom line: ABC Corporation needed 10,000 MQLs in the top of the demand generation funnel process to be able to hit their incremental sales target.

Why Wouldn’t Email Alone Work?

The VP of marketing estimated that on the high end, the available universe of contacts in companies in metal manufacturing was roughly 7,500. If ABC emailed all 7,500 and got a 1% inbound response, that would equal 75. If 50% of those leads filled out a form, that would result in 35 marketing-level MQL leads. ABC would have to email to this list at least 285 times to get the 10,000 marketing-level leads in the pipeline. (But it is unlikely that every email would result in a 1% inbound response as the response rates from this small audience would decline over time.) So email alone could not achieve the sales goals.

Multi-Touch and Multi-Channel Solution

Under the conditions of this small but highly valuable target market, we determined that ABC needed a much higher lead-to-sale conversion process to meet their sales goals. We recommended a multi-touch and multi-channel sequence of email and tele-prospecting. This would result in actual appointments being made for the sales department.

We normally recommend testing different approaches with a small sample of prospects to see which approach stimulates the highest response level. In this case, we tested two offers. A book about physical safety in the metal manufacturing environment versus the offer of a free pair of gloves. The VP of marketing suggested the offer of a free pair of gloves because in his experience, the prospect would request a sample pair in any case, so he felt this would short-circuit the process to some degree. We were less certain, as we have found in the past that a free sample sometimes feels like too much of a commitment early in the relationship. We also tested two lists, an in-house list versus a rental list.

The test showed that the appeal of the offer was about equal between the gloves and the book. (We went with the gloves for the roll out campaign). Both lists performed equally well.

The Multi-Touch Lead Nurturing Process Involved:

Initial email campaign.

• Initial call (left voice message or in some accounts we must be directed to proper contact).
• Call to engage new contact in the value prop and offers.
• Email to the correct contact, and or email content as requested to support our dialog.
• Call to complete the value prop and offer conversation, listen to needs and pain points and gather those critical data points into the lead qualification script-record, and if qualified, close on ABC sales rep appointment.

Marketing collateral for Glove Company campaign.

We often find it takes seven to thirteen touches to deliver a sales-ready lead. In this case, the average number of touches was 4.28. Why did our campaign for ABC require so few touches? The answer is embedded in our multi-touch best practices:

Have a good list (few incorrect contacts).

• Develop creative that captures hearts and minds and have follow up content and dialog to support it.
• Offer something of high perceived value.
• Optimize the value proposition delivery by adding tele-prospecting to the mix. This creates a personal relationship with the prospect. Remember: people buy from people, and prospects don’t share their qualifying pain points on lead forms.

We were able to generate enough qualified sales appointments to help them meet their additional $2.5 million sales goal, and we taught them how to sustain this level of growth year over year.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. 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 California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. 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.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Helped an Industrial Glove Manufacturer to Schedule New Sales Appointments that Resulted in $2.5 Million in Incremental Sales appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

This is a successful meeting maker campaign that includes an appeal to emotions, multiple touches, and a carefully designed offer. The call to action was to set up an appointment for Sales. We were marketing to engineers — always a tough sell because of their skepticism. We sought to persuade them to consider replacing a tried-and-true instrument with something they may not even have heard of. Our team did this not by leading with product features. Instead, we pulled on their 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.

Electrical engineers (EE) are the primary audience for this campaign. They think in a methodical way and demand proof of product claims. Engineers 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: Marketing to Engineers

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. Consequently, 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.

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 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:

Marketing creative focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover.

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.

The Campaign’s Focus

The centerpiece of the campaign was a direct mailing in a transparent tube containing a poster. An artist’s rendering as a constant reminder of the Curiosity Rover’s descent sequence was 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. In addition, we followed this up with an email on the same theme, and then began the telemarketing campaign.

Personalized direct mail envelope with Mars Curiosity Rover.

Twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the email delivery, the calling team began to engage email and direct mail recipients. As a result, this multi-touch process had the effect of increasing the number of contact presentations and shortening the lead generation cycle. And, 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.

Call-to-Action

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. At the same time we gained 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. Furthermore, 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.

Personalized email for Anritsu VectorStar with Mars Curiosity Rover.

In conclusion, 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.

Marketing collateral for Anritsu VectorStar campaign.

Laurie B. Beasley

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. 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 California. Laurie manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern California. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute. 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.

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. The company provides services in email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb, Morgan Hill, California. For more information, go to www.BeasleyDirect.com or call Laurie Beasley, President, at 408-782-0046 x21 or email lbeasley@beasleydirect.com.

The post How We Helped Anritsu Exceed Lead Goals 167% With a Meeting Maker Campaign appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

The Importance of Segmentation & Targeting.

Traditional public relations uses the media gatekeepers to get the message through to the audience. That means that you must segment your audience, determine which media best targets your audience, and craft the message. The message must appeal not just to the intended audience, but also to the media gatekeepers themselves.

In social media, the gatekeepers have been eliminated, allowing companies unhindered access to their audiences. This does not mean that you get to throw out the rulebook. In effective social media marketing the same old rules apply. Segment your audience, determine which social media will best target your intended audience, and craft your message to appeal to your audience.

Targeting Social Media

Not all social media will be equally productive. It depends on what you are selling, how you are selling it, and who your customers are. Just because Twitter is wildly popular doesn’t mean Twitter is the place to put a lot of time and attention if you are selling gynecological instruments. As Forbes Magazine put it:

“Social networks have been ‘played out’ in the consumer landscape for around a decade now. We are all used to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and others. It was inevitable perhaps that the business world would develop the networking and collaboration principles of social and evolve them into something that could a) serve users and b) be monetized. But simply creating one network for all business users is too broad a proposition. Train drivers don’t want to network with brain surgeons and landscape gardeners.”*

B2B Organizations and Social Media Marketing

This is especially true for the B2B organization. If you are promoting to IT professionals, there is Spiceworks. If you are a university professor who must publish and hopes to gain citations of h/her work by others, there is Academia.edu. For physicians, there is Doximity. The gynecological instrument manufacturer will do a great deal better on Doximity than Twitter, where they will be competing with 304 million other monthly users—most of whom are not doctors.

That being said, should you abandon Twitter, Facebook and the rest? That depends on your social media marketing resources and whether or not you are reaching people effectively through these social media streams. Twitter is still a productive place to promote events, white papers and the like. Facebook­­ for the B2B company may not be making much sense these days. People seem to be using Facebook for personal news and interests. So, if you’re a nail polish manufacturer or you’re selling cute puppies or kittens, it probably works wonders. Pinterest is great if you have a lot of visual interest (food, clothes, crafts). But, if you’re selling IT services, not so much. LinkedIn is really for individual professionals who want to network with similar professionals. You can get a LinkedIn business page (as you can on Facebook), but the jury is still out on the effectiveness of these pages.

None of these social networks will do you any harm (unless you do something stupid), but you need to determine on a case-by-case basis whether they are doing you any good. If not, put your resources into the most productive social media streams.

Targeting Content to Your Audience in Social Media Marketing

Crafting your message to appeal to your audience is still the basic #1 most important rule of communications. This is regardless of the media employed to deliver that message. At the same time, you have to be aware of the value of keywords in social media. This will assure that search engines will select and deliver the right message to the right person. It’s a balancing act—but that, too, is nothing new in marketing.

Here are a few rules to follow when creating content for social media

Have a valid keyword list

We have covered how to do this multiple times on this blog, and here are a few links to give you some ideas:

• SEO Audit Part 3: Content
• Best Practices for Copywriting in the Digital Age
• Boost SEO Effectiveness through PPC Testing
• Boosting SEO with an Organic Site Review

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer

What does the customer want to know? How can you make things better for the customer? Give away information that your customer values to build interest, trust—and eventually—desire to purchase.

Do not focus on your company or your product

Focus instead on the customer’s needs. No one cares that your admin had a baby, but they care very deeply when you solve one of their pressing problems.

Invite a conversation

This is easier said than done, but the objective is to get your customers involved in an interactive discussion with you and among themselves. An engaged follower is more likely to become a customer. How you achieve this depends largely on the nature of your business. Ask questions. Invite people’s viewpoints on critical issues in your industry. Have a contest with a giveaway. There are lots of ways to do this, and many of them do not involve spending money.

Does Social Media Work?

As marketers, we are always looking for ways to improve our results—and perhaps more important, prove our results. Marketing automation software developers have eagerly tried to give us what we want: lots and lots of numbers. But sometimes the numbers don’t actually mean a great deal.

What does it mean, for example, when 75 people re-Tweeted your post? It obviously means that more people potentially saw your post, but how does that translate to customer acquisition or sales? How many people actually read your post out of that number?

Social media occupies the same position as traditional public relations; when you’re doing it right, it works, but it’s hard to quantify how or how much. The most reliable way to know it’s working is when a customer says, “I saw your post on Twitter,” or “I follow your blog.”

Automated social media marketing software can help in this respect. Software that can take over the task of posting for you (although someone still has to develop content and load it in the queue) takes some of the sheer drudgery off your hands. And there are tools to analyze and refine your Twitter feed, for instance, getting rid of false or inappropriate followers and helping you to more accurately target your audience. Managing social media takes the same strategic mindset and hard work as any other marketing vehicle.

* The Specialized Vertical Social Network Cometh

* *The Author* *

Kathy Keenan, Social Media Marketing Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing

This post was authored by Kathy Keenan, Social Media Marketing Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing. Contact Kathy at kkeenan@beasleydirect.com.

Kathy brings depth of experience in business and high technology communications, having worked in public relations, marketing communications, and social media for clients ranging from semiconductors and networking equipment to consumer goods.

Prior to joining the Beasley Direct Marketing team, she worked as a senior writer/editor for Cisco Systems, Inc., developing thought leadership for C-level executives across industries ranging from healthcare to telephony. Before Cisco, Kathy worked for 10 years as a freelance writer and editor, working on marketing materials for a variety of clients.

Before becoming a freelancer, Kathy was CEO of Oak Ridge Public Relations, Inc., an award-winning PR agency in Silicon Valley, with clients such as IBM, Solectron, Philips Semiconductor, Bay Networks, Epson, and Xilinx. Kathy founded this company and managed it for 13 years.

Kathy was vice president of Tycer-Fultz-Bellack (now BBDO), formerly one of the largest advertising and PR firms in Silicon Valley. She managed a team of professionals who delivered strategic communications services to clients such as Informix, Exar, and Monolithic Memories. She started her career in PR at Acurex Corporation, an aerospace technology firm.

Kathy is a published novelist, writing under the name K.D. Keenan.

The post Effective Social Media Marketing: The Same Old Rules Apply 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.

* * * *

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.

Before there was such a thing as search engine optimization (SEO), copywriters were a wild and crazy bunch who sat around dreaming up ever-cooler and more creative ways to command the customer’s attention and drag him or her to the cash register.

Those good old days are gone forever. Now copywriters have to understand online copywriting, which includes keywords, understanding metadata, and abiding by the continuously shifting rules of search engines. It feels like the creativity and spontaneity of the profession are gone.

This may be true on one level, but it also opens up fresh challenges. Working with these challenges can be a creative activity as well. For some of us, however, a quick reminder of best practices for digital online copywriting might be helpful.

Important SEO Stuff Over Which Copywriters Have No Control

You can write the best copy in the world and it won’t be effective if the website for which you are writing is one of the Internet’s seedier neighborhoods. You can’t control this, but it is best to be aware of it. Here are some factors that cause search engines to downgrade sites, assuring that they will not come anywhere near the top of a search:

• Poor-Quality Content: Search engines parse the writing quality of content. If content is poorly written, not relevant, self-promotional to the exclusion of value to the customer, or unoriginal, the site will be downgraded.

• Poor-Quality Design/Graphics: Badly designed sites and sites with inappropriate or poor graphics are also downgraded.

• Irrelevant or Broken Links: Sites with links to unrelated sites or with lots of broken links raise a red flag.

• Un-curated Directories: Directories that are just a compilation of unrelated businesses or services, or with broken links are a warning sign to search engines.

• Lots of Banner Ads, Calls to Action, Frequent Popups: These also signal sites that may be less than savory places to hang out, and search engines don’t like them.

You might be writing for an entirely honest, well-intentioned firm, but if the website features any of the above problems, it’s going to be difficult to get any SEO traction with your brilliant copy.

Understand Domain Authority

Search engines give a higher ranking to sites that are rich in original content. It is also important that the content be rated high in quality and of specific interest and value to your customers.

This means that re-using content from other sites should be kept to a minimum compared to content that is original to your site. The content also needs to be consistent in branding, tone and use of keywords.

The more you adhere to these guidelines, the better your ranking will be (assuming there are none of the issues addressed above getting in the way). This is known as domain authority, meaning that your site has original, valuable, high-quality content to offer your site visitors.

Keywords

When researching keywords, think about and use the actual language that your potential site visitors use when looking for information on what your site offers. Remember that most people use a search engine because they are looking for a specific answer to a question or a solution to a problem, so finding a site they already know about is generally a secondary concern. Keep this in mind as you begin the keyword discovery process.

Step One: Leave Your Pre-Conceptions at the Door 

Yes, you are the expert on your site and what it contains, but remember that the rest of the world does not necessarily speak your internal language when discussing your products and services.

Step Two: The Storm of Brains

Sit your communications, marketing, sales and support team around a table and start throwing out ideas. Each group will bring its own unique insights into how people discuss your products and services, some of which will be a surprise to the rest of the table. At this point, there are no wrong ideas; encourage the outlandish and crazy to come up with the gems that will drive the traffic to your site.

Step Three: Mix It Up and See What Else Comes Out

You have your base keyword list. Now start pouring it into various online tools to see what you may have missed and to garner some potential traffic and competitive data. There are a number of excellent tools online that can help you with this. Most of these will come up with suggested keywords and keyword variations, as well as give you the traffic competition data.

Our favorites at Beasley Direct are WordTracker.com, Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner (requires a AdWords account), Keyword Discovery, Google Suggest (those fun little suggestions that drop down when entering a new search term in Google and Google Trends) for the latest hot searches and comparative data on your potential keywords.

Enter your base list of keywords into these tools and harvest the results. Use this data to compare the traffic potential to the number of other sites competing to appear for this word. The ideal is a highly relevant word to your product or service that has limited competition and good traffic. Remember the more sites with which you compete for a key word, the harder it is to achieve that rank.

Step Four: Time for a Haircut

Once you have the data in hand, you need to select the top 20 to 30 keywords for your site and start to assign them to individual pages and sections of the site, ideally selecting three to six keywords per page.

Step Five: Putting the Right Word in the Right Place

Now look at the pages, the file title, the page titles, headlines, picture/video captions and meta descriptions and start to work your selected keywords into the copy. (If your site is is missing this metadata, then it’s time to introduce this to your site along with your new copy.) Remember that well-written copy is essential to any successful site and you need to prevent your keywords from overwhelming your copy. People like copy that reads naturally; “keyword stuffing” just to get the keywords on the page can hurt your site more than help. See Figure 1 for examples on where your key words should appear on every page.

Figure 1: Using Keywords on a Page

Step Six: Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Keyword development is an ongoing process that reflects changes in your marketplace and the larger web as a whole. You cannot just set it and forget it. Set aside time on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to re-examine your assumptions and perform fresh research.

Using Keywords in Copy

Now that you have your list of key words, the temptation is to sprinkle them like salt over everything you write. This may not be the best approach—remember that quality of writing is also a key aspect of writing for the Web. Cramming in keywords to achieve “density” will not improve your writing, and may make it worse. In any case, search engines don’t give points for keyword density.

This may not work for you, but my approach is to write what I want to write. Then I eyeball the keyword list and make sure I have used the right ones at least once in every piece.

The title is perhaps the one exception. Using the right keywords in the title is critical. However, don’t sacrifice “people-bait” for “machine bait.” People will be attracted to an interesting title even if it doesn’t have just the right key word. Search engines don’t care much about creativity, but people do.

Use subheads with keywords if possible. Apart from organizing the page in the reader’s eye, subheads are another opportunity to send the right signals to search engines.

Incidentally, search engines are smart enough to understand synonyms, related language and grammatical variations. So the precise keywords don’t have to be used 100% of the time.

Graphics Count, Too

Once upon a time, copywriters didn’t have to worry about graphics, but graphics have become increasingly important in search engine rankings. Search engines evaluate how well graphics are used, how relevant the graphics are, and their quality. Try to assure that the graphics are original (if possible), that keywords are used where relevant in captions, and that there is keyword-rich, descriptive alt copy in the graphic’s file name.

Walk the Fine Line Between Too Short and Too Long

When it comes to copy length, the writer is caught between the machine and the man. People have increasingly short attention spans. According to a recent study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the human attention span is now eight seconds—one second less than goldfish. However, the average web page that appears on the first page of a Google search is 2,000 words. This poses a quandary for the poor copywriter. Write for the mayfly-mind of the human or the coldly analytical mind of the machine?

The best solution is probably to use as many words as are required to tell your story in a compelling fashion—and not one word more or less. Sorry not to be more specific, but the best length is probably between 300 and 2,000 words.

Get Your Content Out There

Getting your content on other sites is an important way to build your search engine ranking. It will help drive traffic to your site, it results in links pointing back at your site (be sure you have these links embedded in the text you send out), and it indicates to the search engines that others value your content.

In addition to using social media to distribute your content, look for re-blogging opportunities, industry forums, online magazines, newsletters, and so forth. Every content share boosts your domain authority.

For more information on how to research and use keywords for search engine optimization, read our free guide: Boosting SEO with an Organic Site Review.

****

Kathy Keenan, Social Media Marketing Manager

This post was authored by Kathy Keenan.

Kathy brings a depth of experience in business and high technology communications, having worked in public relations, marketing communications, and social media for clients ranging from semiconductors and networking equipment to consumer goods. She worked as a senior writer/editor for Cisco Systems, Inc., developing thought leadership for C-level executives across industries ranging from health care to telephony. Before Cisco, Kathy worked for 10 years as a freelance writer and editor, working on marketing materials for a variety of clients.

Before becoming a freelancer, Kathy was CEO of Oak Ridge Public Relations, Inc., an award-winning PR agency in Silicon Valley, with clients such as IBM, Solectron, Philips Semiconductor, Bay Networks, Epson, and Xilinx. Kathy founded this company and managed it for 13 years.

Kathy was vice president of Tycer-Fultz-Bellack (now BBDO), formerly one of the largest advertising and PR firms in Silicon Valley. She managed a team of professionals who delivered strategic communications services to clients such as Informix, Exar, and Monolithic Memories. She started her career in PR at Acurex Corporation, an aerospace technology firm.

Kathy is a published novelist, writing under the name K.D. Keenan.

The post Best Practices for Online Copywriting in the Digital Age appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.