1.  Give your web some personality.
   Many companies put website development in the hands of their IT department. Although they certainly play a big role, there should be a second set of eyes directing your look and message to the marketplace.
2. Take a message first approach.
   Don’t keep what you do best a secret. Make sure your value proposition is front and center. Narrow your focus and increase overall results by speaking specifically to your 80% strength and customer target.
3. Use an effective combination of Flash and HTML text in your web layout. Too much of one or the other can leave the viewer either frustrated with download time or bored from lack of effective design and text heavy layouts. A “picture is worth a thousand words” applies to websites too.
4. Optimize your site.
   Having a site without SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is like having a hot dog without the bun. Proper SEO can dramatically change your presence on the web through increased rankings.
5. Keep your news or blog category current.
   Having original news and/or blog content will increase rankings and customer interest, while copying others verbatim and having out of date entries can work against you. The more you update your site, the more reasons search engines such as Google will have a reason to visit.
6. Attention to detail is important.
   Use quality photos and well written and proofed text. Make sure your logo and tagline are reproduced consistently and correctly throughout your site and please avoid extended “under construction” postings.
7. Make your site customer centric.
   Make it easy to navigate. Tell your message quickly and concisely. Have applicable customer log-in portals front and center. For new visitors, the majority are looking for contact info so make it easy to find.
8. Benchmark your activity before and after.
   Use Google Analytics to better understand traffic demographics. Review regularly and make changes to your site based on the data received. Set targets to better capture your viewers’ attention and increase frequency and lengths of visits in the future.
9. Use a combination of push and pull strategies to increase your web presence.
   Don’t wait for business to land in your lap. Push out your information. Promote your website to customers and prospects.
10. Use one capable marketing provider. Your results will be more cohesive, cost effective and less demanding on your time. Taking a “too many cooks” approach (within your company and by using multiple vendors) could result in poor overall delivery and lack of consistency with your branding efforts.

 Lee’s quote for the day,
“To catch the big fish, your marketing needs to have the right hook, line and thinkers.”

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

Check it out while you can, it will disappear by tomorrow. Happy Gaming!

Let’s say we have a company named Bicycle Courier Services (BCS) that specializes in local delivery of small packages. So an ideal simplified website navigation menu for Bicycle Courier Services, that should be common throughout all pages, would be: About BCS, Our Services, Contact Us, Home. About BCS, would list all the information about the company, any mission statements, or associations that the company is part of. The Services section would list all the services in detail that BCS provides. The Contact Us link would list basic contact information, such as telephone numbers, e-mails, faxes, etc. And last but not least, the Home section would link back to the BCS homepage. Sounds pretty simple, but you would be surprised in the amount of sites that don’t follow this format, making themselves more difficult to navigate. If you follow this simplified navigation format, the most important parts of the site are easily seen and recognized by the visitor. You can obviously add additional sections to the menu, such as a Downloads area (to access Bill of Lading’s, Credit Application Forms, etc) in the future if required, but make sure to keep it simple and clear.

It wouldn’t make any sense for example to have the Contact Us link located somewhere at the bottom of the page, or in an obscure location, which believe it or not, some company websites still do. Make sure important links such as these are in a prominent and well seen location, unless that is, you don’t want people to contact you.

As an example, let’s say that we have a service announcement to make to our existing client base. With traditional e-mail, we can do this in one of several ways.

One method would be to actually write about the service announcement in the body of the e-mail, which makes it a relatively simple, but an uninspiring way of communicating your message. It’s hard to capture a reader’s attention with a simple text message, and if this message consists of several paragraphs of copy it becomes even less effective.

The other method would be to write up the announcement, and send it out as an attachment to the e-mail. While people e-mail millions of attachments every day, because of security concerns, some recipients may be weary of opening attachments especially when they come from people that they’ve had limited contact with. Some IT departments go so far as actually stripping the attachment from the e-mail before it arrives at its intended destination. Recipients may also not have the correct application installed in order to open the e-mail.

With an HTML e-mail, you can effectively tackle all the shortcomings of delivering your message via regular e-mail. By embedding your advertisement as an image, or a mini HTML web page, you instantly deliver a visually rich message, that the recipient can see instantly, and doesn’t have to do any additional clicking, or open up any other applications, in order to view your message. As a bonus, you can also track the amount of times your e-mail has been viewed by the recipient using your servers statistics software, or via Google Analytics integration, because all of the images that are within the e-mail are hosted on your server.

Now, unless you have a lot of experience in the design and implementation of HTML e-mails, it’s best if you start off with an existing pre-designed template. If you’re going to wing it on your own, SitePoint’s guide of How to Code HTML e-mail newsletters is a good place to start. If you don’t have time to do any of these two options, contact us to see how we can help with your HTML eMarketing campaign.