Business blogging: why firms are turning to blogs to generate sales leads

Firms are turning to blogging as part of their lead generation process.  Not only do blogs allow almost complete control over the editorial content, but blogging can also produce leads up to 60% cheaper than traditional activities.  Firms just need to build an initial archive of material to start experiencing the benefits for their lead generation programme.

Image credit: Bigstock

In the US and, in all likelihood, in Europe too, businesses of all sizes are turning to the creation of blog content to help generate business. Heidi Cohen outlines some of the key reasons for this.  Businesses that are quick to understand the benefits will be better positioned to reap the rewards as industry in general embraces new digital marketing techniques.  Let’s look at the benefits.

A media platform you control

Unlike press releases which are exposed to the whims of editors, with blogs you have full control over the content that is published. Provided your blog is well written and not an overt sales pitch, you’ll be able to create marketing messages and calls-to-action exactly as you want them.  And, as blogs have the option for readers to leave comments, you also have a great way to interact with and influence your customers too.  It means you can demonstrate things like customer responsiveness, integrity and industry competence. In fact, your corporate blog can very much determine the customer experience and, being social in nature, word-of-mouth about a good experience can travel fast.

Integral to your search and social media strategy

The way most blogging platforms are created means you can write content that search engines will utilise for search queries. The more your blog site and content is set up for SEO, the higher your search rank and the greater the probability that your blog content will be found by the target group you are aiming at.
The social nature of blogs is a key ingredient that businesses need to understand too. The blog itself can highlight your industry expertise, customer ethos or corporate personality. Your task then is to extend your audience reach through other social media platforms.  Linkedin, Google-Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others, effectively become your advertising medium.  Building-up a following means you’ll be able to drive traffic back to your website. If you make that experience meaningful to your audience, word will spread quickly to others.

It’s a much cheaper and more targeted way to reach your audience than paying for space in traditional print publications.

Content that drives lead generation

With complete editorial control over your content, you are able to fully exploit links to other related content, no matter what part of the buying sequence your visitor is at.  So long as you have aligned your web content to the right buyer persona, you can create content that systematically moves visitors along the sales lead funnel process.

That’s not something you’ve been able to do comprehensively in the past. As Heidi Cohen highlights, your blog archive becomes an effective content management system.  Each item can have links that help your audience navigate towards sales engagement. What’s more, as most blog platforms have some form of analytics package, you can track and monitor performance to make the whole process very effective.

It’s time to take blogging seriously

As the digital marketing landscape evolves, more and more firms are recognising the potential of the corporate blog on business performance.  Not only can they create leads up to 60 per cent cheaper than traditional tactics, but with careful planning, blogs can become part of the lead generation process itself, helping you to nurture and qualify new business opportunities.  Being dismissive of corporate blogs could be a very costly mistake!

Blogging is fast becoming an integral and cost effective part of the marketing toolkit.  If you can’t find the time yourself to create blogs, consider making it part of an employee’s job description. Alternatively, hire a marketing copywriter to write them for you.  Once you have established an initial archive of material, you’ll be able to exploit the “linkability” of your content to generate high quality leads more consistently.

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Marketing copywriting for business professionals short of time

Whatever B2B lead generation tactic you use, it’s your web content that will convert leads into orders. Here’s why.

Many B2B firms allocate budgets to lead generation activities but fall short of their lead conversion targets.  That’s because they fail to provide the right type of web content that satisfies prospective customers when they come to shortlist firms as potential suppliers.  It’s a simple problem to fix.

For many firms today, the top priority continues to be lead generation.  Businesses large and small resort to outbound telemarketing: calling existing customers and old prospect lists to identify the few firms that have sales potential in the next few months.  It’s a tactic that works, but it can be expensive.

Some firms are having success with social platforms like Linkedin and some are generating a good volume of leads from their web site.  Their search engine ranking means they are getting plenty of traffic and converting some of this to high quality business.  But getting on the front page of search engine results is for the lucky few that have all the keywords and backlinks in place and have a strong social media presence.

For most B2B firms, it’s pre-emptive outbound activities that will continue to be important for most sales and marketing plans.  But it’s important to remember that this is just the first step in the process.  Almost certainly, once you have reached out to your customer or prospect, they will visit your website before they place an order.

Web content is fundamental to your lead conversion

As part of their “due diligence” process, prospective buyers will explore your web site to look for information that justifies placing their business with you.  They’re not just looking for details about how well your business is funded or how long you’ve been trading. They are also looking for evidence that your business is competent at helping them solve their problem.  In short, you need to provide web content that meets the information needs of potential buyers at each stage of what can be a complex buying process.

A typical B2B buying sequence looks like this:

You need to be aware of this sequence and ensure that the content on your website fulfils the needs of each type of visitor when they come looking for information.

The Content Marketing Institute published some valuable research in 2012 outlining what content formats work best for B2B firms.  You can see from the following chart the extent to which web-enabled content plays such a prominent role:

You need to fully understand the buying sequence for your industry and target audience.  This means being very clear about your target audience profile or, to use the latest buzzword, buyer “persona”.

For example, IDG identified the specific content formats preferred by IT decision makers.  They found that for the Problem / Need stage, IT decision makers looked for case studies and blogs that talked about problems similar to their own.  They are essentially looking to see how other firms solved the problem they were experiencing themselves.  In the Requirements Definition stage, these IT decision makers looked for “How to…” content as well as whitepapers, articles and blogs to help them understand the range of possible solutions.  Read more about the content preferred by IT decision makers here.

So, no matter what initial lead generation tactics you deploy, you’re unlikely to see many of these leads convert into orders unless you can satisfy the information needs of your prospective customers with suitable web content first.  Obviously, this content needs to be well written and carefully crafted to persuade potential customers that your firm should be on the shortlist: an overt sales pitch is unlikely to cut it.  For success in B2B markets, it is professionally written content, carefully targeted, that will bring you the most success.

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Freelance marketing content writing for overstretched marketing professionals

Key tips that will help you win business from large enterprises

Understanding how decision makers in large companies decide on a short-list of candidate vendors can be a big advantage for a small or medium sized firm.  This article explains the content they find most valuable, how important they find social media, and even when they want to be contacted.  Your window of opportunity is just six days!

Large enterprises (LE) represent an attractive sales target for small and medium sized businesses.  A recent study by IDG looked at how IT decision makers in LE’s go about making purchasing decisions.  The findings offer small firms a real opportunity to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right proposition.

IDG asked 1025 decision makers what type of information they found most valuable when searching online to solve a problem or when looking for a new product or service.  Here’s what they found:

Articles, reviews and case studies came top of the list, with brochures and other content likely to be on your website not far behind.  So, content is king if you want to attract the interest of large enterprise buyers.

Interestingly, IDG also found that IT decision makers appear ready to be contacted by a prospective vendor after they have downloaded two or more items from a web site.  Not only that, but they would prefer to be contacted within six days of making an additional download.

This represents a clear signal of interest that all firms will want to be aware of.  No doubt, as a small business owner, you will want to have this trigger embedded within your internal lead management process.  But how?

In truth, this is a real dilemma for many firms.  Unless you use some form of marketing automation system, you will need to “gate” or put a form in front of the download process.  The details on the form will identify who is downloading.  Consequently, using the form, you can track when a prospective buyer has downloaded more items from your website.

However, expert opinion suggests that putting any form filling in front of a download will significantly reduce the number of people that actually go on to make the download.  Instead, they will find other web sites where access to articles and case studies are unencumbered.  You will effectively loose that prospect.

The answer is to do the following:

• make your downloadable content free to access
• write your content in such a way that it compels serious prospects to complete a form linked within the content itself.

This will require a little creativity: perhaps a small promotion or access to a no-obligation ROI tool, etc.  The skill of the copywriter is the key ingredient.  Consider using a professional copywriter to create or edit your content if you don’t have these skills in-house.

How IT Decision Makers use Social Networks

The IDG study also identified the extent to which IT decision makers turned to social networks as part of their quest for information.  Not only do they use social platforms for networking and career enhancement, but many use them to discover, share and discuss technical information and seek answers to problems.

Linkedin was used by 72% of the IT decision makers surveyed, but the main purpose was for career progression.  When they wanted to find technical information, the top three platforms they turned to were:

• Twitter (59%)
• Google Plus (54%)
• Facebook (50%)

At least that was the case in May 2012 when the study was undertaken.  Interestingly, IDG also identified what decision makers claimed what they would use social media (including Linkedin) for.  Here’s what they found:

• 73% – to engage with a technical vendor
• 44% – to stay up to date with industry trends
• 38% – to find reviews and recommendations
• 35% – to find information to aid decision making

Clearly, if you are targeting IT decision makers, it’s important that you are visible on social media and that you can interlink content between your web site and social platforms.  As social media becomes more generally accepted, it’s likely that prospective buyers across all industries will use these platforms to find potential suppliers.  Some will use social platforms as much as they will use a Google search.  Indeed, having a presence on social media platforms is likely to improve your search engine ranking.

Many firms are not yet ready to fully embrace social media.  However, if you want to sell to large organisations, you need to ensure that your sales and marketing content is organised and freely available for when prospects come looking.  Having professionally written articles, case studies, blogs and product literature will go a long way in positively influencing your prospects and help to get your business on the short list.

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Freelance business copywriting and blog ghost writing for SMEs

How firms are developing a steady stream of quality sales leads, month after month

Most leads generated from corporate blogs each month come from old blog posts.  This archive of blogs helps firms to build a regular, consistent level of sales leads that are of high quality and very cost effective.  Businesses new to blogging just have to invest in building up their library of blog material in order to achieve the same benefits.

The corporate blog is having a transformational impact on the lead generation process of many companies.  Research has already shown that sales leads from blogs and social media are 60% cheaper to generate than those from sources like telemarketing and trade shows.

Evidence now exists suggesting that corporate blogs can be very effective in providing a consistent level of high quality leads over a prolonged period of time.  A sample of blog-using organisations has revealed some impressive observations:

This presents firms with a tremendous opportunity to transform their lead generation process for the better.  By investing in good quality content that’s relevant to your audience, you can start to even out the peaks and troughs in lead generation that are so often experienced by sales teams across the country.  Furthermore, this steady stream of leads can be produced at half the cost than has traditionally been the case.

Generating leads from blogs takes time.  You need to start today

With the bulk of blog leads coming from old posts, it’s important to build up a library of blog material.  Clearly, this takes time and money.  It has been estimated that it takes, on average, three hours to write a single blog post, so you need to have the resources available to devote to blog creation.  If your existing headcount doesn’t have the bandwidth or skill set required, consider outsourcing the task to an external copywriter.

Make sure you create blog posts that are of high quality, and relevant to your customers.  This is not the place for your sales pitch.  Instead, you should inform how products and services like yours solve problems.  Additionally, you could comment on the implications of a new item of industry news, or perhaps illustrate how your customer could save money or improve efficiency by following certain guidelines or actions.

You could use your existing marketing content as the basis for creating blog posts.  By writing a post that focuses on one of the benefits of a product, you can then include a link within the post that goes to your website where your sales brochure can be downloaded.  That’s how your web traffic can increase.  If you have created your landing pages appropriately, you’ll also be able to drive visitors to other pages on your site and ask for readers to follow you on Twitter and other social media platforms.

It’s this interconnected capability of digital media like blogging, social media and the web, that’s transforming lead generation strategies.  New digital channels like these are moving away from being seen as experimental.  Indeed, for many industries, digital lead generation techniques are now viewed as mainstream.

For firms yet to fully embrace corporate blogging, the key is to start building up that archive of blog material as soon as possible.  Then start promoting on your website as well as on Twitter and social media platforms.  Collectively, as your library of blog posts increases, you should see a corresponding increase in the volume of quality sales leads, month after month.

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Freelance copywriting and blog ghost writing for SMEs

How small and medium sized businesses can sell to large enterprises

Understanding the information that prospective buyers look for at each stage of the buying cycle can help firms correctly structure their content creation strategies. SMEs can now plan the content required that will help them win margin rich orders from large enterprises.

 

Respected publisher IDG undertook some analysis of the way IT decision makers in large enterprises used the web when they wanted to buy new products and services.  That analysis offers some really valuable insights into the way large enterprises buy in general.  It means you can now organise your sales and marketing content in a way that will attract and engage these buyers and influencers.

By following a few simple guidelines, you can significantly improve your chances of making sales to firms with larger than average cheque books!

The IDG analysis tracked the information decision makers looked for at each stage of the buying cycle.  The cycle as such is usually depicted as a five step sequential process. It starts with identification of the problem, moves on to evaluation and selection, until a purchase decision is reached.  Typically, the process looks like this:

IDG tracked 1025 decision makers to identify what materials they looked for in each buying stage.  The findings suggest that some content can be used across a number of different stages.  This means you don’t need to create lots of articles, whitepapers and case studies to address each individual stage, at least not to begin with.  Instead, just ensure that the content you do create serves the information needs of your web visitors at each stage of the buying cycle.  Here’s a summary of what prospects are looking for based upon the IDG analysis:

Need:

• Articles and whitepapers on trends, strategies and different technologies
• Case studies and blogs of real examples.

Your prospects are looking to relate their own situation to one that might have been experienced by someone else.  By comparing symptoms, your prospect goes through a sense-making exercise – trying to determine if his/her problem is a common one, whether there is an easy solution or if their situation is something more complex and unique.  At the end of this stage, prospects will have defined the nature of the business problem/need.

Technical requirements:

Having rationalised the problem/need, if your prospect is serious about resolving the problem, their attention will turn to understanding the different options available for a fix.  They will be looking for:

• “How to…” content
• Relevant whitepapers, articles and blogs
• Case studies and interviews with firms that have had similar problems.

Prospects will be looking to develop a deeper understanding of the problem, options and related consequences.  In this stage, they will begin formulating a short list of the different solutions that seem worth exploring in more detail.

Evaluation:

Each option identified will be quickly assessed for suitability.  Those felt to be most appropriate to your prospect’s specific circumstances will be investigated further.  They will search for:

• Product tests and reviews as well as industry news coverage
• Product demonstrations and literature
• “How to” content, whitepapers, articles, case studies and blogs
• Expert assessments
• Buyers guides and peer comment

Prospects will mentally start drawing-up a short list of preferred solutions.  The experience in gathering and reading through literature will influence which vendors are likely to be shortlisted for the next stage.

 Short-list selection:

At this point in the process, decision makers are starting to take a more formal approach to information capture.  Buyers look for:

• Product tests and reviews
• Product descriptions and technical details
• Expert research, reviews and interviews
• Supporting independent technical and industry commentary
• Buyers guides

Prospects are now building an objective comparison of options and identification of risks.  Price and other associated costs will come into play as preliminary business cases are formulated.

Recommend and decide:

Prospects are now looking to finalise a robust business case that suits their needs.  Bias may have already been introduced based on the experiences with candidate vendor web sites and downloadable materials.  They will be looking for:

• ROI tools
• Supporting case studies and testimonials
• Expert commentary
• Up to date product descriptions, roadmaps and technical information
• Most recent product tests and reviews
• Articles and whitepapers about future trends

Prospects at this stage are looking to justify the investment they want to make to internal stakeholders.  Given that personal reputations can be affected if large investments go wrong, prospects are looking to include content that is highly trustworthy and reliable, or offers a low risk exit option.

What comes out of this analysis is the need for you to create high quality, relevant content that meets the needs of buyers at each stage of the purchase process.  You can directly influence the creation of articles, whitepapers, case studies, blogs, ROI tools and product literature.  Just be sure that each item addresses the needs of prospective buyers wherever they are in the buying process.  Your ability to influence review writers and experts is a much harder task, and often requires a large dose of luck!

Given this knowledge, you should be able to review your sales and marketing literature and make plans to re-align existing content to each stage of the buying cycle.  You need to identify any gaps in your library and get them filled with suitable content.  Make this a priority for your marketing team or outsource the task to a professional copywriter.

The trick then is to test and keep the content up to date.  Testing is important as you’ll want to ensure that each item of content created is as effective as it can be in winning new business.  Simple A/B testing over time will help you to ensure this is the case.

Keeping content refreshed is important too.  You need to continually look at what competitors are producing and ensure your content minimises weaknesses whilst playing to your strengths.  Good copywriting will again be a key ingredient in bringing you success.

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Freelance copywriting and ghost blog writing tailored to SMEs

Reduce the cost of your sales leads and gain an extra three hours per week

Digital marketing techniques are having a profound impact on small business performance.  Now you can publish blogs that generate new sales leads at a lower cost per lead, and free-up more time to run your business.

 

Small businesses are responding to the challenging economic climate by consciously reviewing the techniques they use to generate new business.  The trend is away from traditional techniques like exhibitions and outbound calling and more towards blogging and social media.  What’s more, this change appears to be having a positive impact on profit margins too!

 

Savings of up to 60%

Research published by Hubspot in 2012 reveals small firms are reallocating up to 21% of their marketing budget towards blogging and social media.  These firms are finding that digital techniques can generate new business at a lower cost per lead.  Some 52% of respondents felt blogs produced leads at a lower cost than traditional techniques whilst 45% claimed the same for social media.

Aligning blogs and social media to “Inbound” marketing, and tactics such as trade shows and telemarketing to “Outbound” marketing, Hubspot calculated the average cost per lead based on respondent input.

They found that the average outbound cost per lead came to $346 whereas the value for inbound leads was $135 – a massive 60% difference!  Given the current economic environment, it’s no wonder small firms are re-allocating marketing budget towards blogging and social media.

Hubspot also asked respondents to rank blogging and the main social media channels in order of lead generation importance.

All channels scored 60% or more in terms of their usefulness in generating new leads.  Even more revealing was that 25% said blogging was “critical” in terms of importance and a further 34% ranked blogging as “important” as shown in the diagram below.

Chart 1: Importance of blogging and social media to new lead generation activities:

 

The hidden costs of social media and blogs

Whilst digital techniques are proving to be more cost effective than traditional lead generation methods, they still have associated costs that can have a big impact on small business performance.

The sheer time and effort required to maintain a social media presence or create a quality blog is proving too much for many small business owners.  Research elsewhere indicates that it takes three or more hours to create a single blog post.  If you wanted to create and publish, say, three posts a week, you’d need to find an extra day on top of your already busy schedule.

You may be like a number of small business owners who want to spend less time managing social media and blogging; a third of SME’s feel this way.  Understandably, you need to devote more time to running your business.  However, if you stop publishing blogs you’ll be back to relying on traditional lead generation techniques and the consequent impact on your bottom line.

 

The opportunity cost of your time

As the owner of a small business you’ll be stretched trying to cover all the different aspects of your business.  This makes you best qualified to act as thought leader.  You’ll also be ideally placed to interpret an item of industry news and highlight the implications for your audience.

However, if you don’t enjoy writing or don’t feel you have the right style or approach, you will end up spending longer than is necessary on the task of blog writing; that’s wasted time that could be invested more productively elsewhere in your business.

What’s more, the material you publish is going to directly impact how your business brand is perceived by existing customers and prospects alike.  The content has to be relevant and engaging, yet still include a subtle call-to-action. Plus, your audience will view typos and mistakes as badly as those found in a glossy sales brochure; blogging and social media for businesses demands higher standards than for personal use.

Unless you enjoy writing and creating charts, graphs, etc., you may be better off handing the task over to someone in your business able to focus fully on the job, or outsource the task to a professional.  You’ll then be able to stay in control of the message by reviewing and influencing content before it’s published.

If you were to allocate the task of publishing just one blog post a week to someone else, not only would you be generating leads at a lower cost than traditional methods, but you would have an extra three hours a week to devote to running other parts of your business!

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Ghost blog writing and outsourced marketing for small businesses

How small businesses are winning new customers by blogging

Blogging and social media generate new leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional marketing tactics.  They convert into sales too.  This post looks at how small firms can produce the right level of blogs without taking business owners away from their day job.

 

Digital marketing tactics are fast becoming mainstream.  They have gone beyond the experimental stage and are challenging traditional techniques like exhibitions, trade shows and direct mail in terms of lead generation performance.

Not only do digital techniques have a cost per lead that’s typically 60% lower than traditional tactics, but the lead quality seems to be just as good too.

Recent research published by Hubspot looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques.  Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO.  Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows and more traditional activities.

The findings highlighted a shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards inbound digital tactics.  This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business keeping a close eye on your bottom line.

The research found that inbound digital techniques like blogging and social media had the lowest cost per lead.  The average lead cost for traditional tactics was $346 which compares to a figure for blogging and social media of just $135 – a whopping 60% difference!

Looking at blogging and social media platforms, respondents claimed success in acquiring new customers from the following:

• 65%  LinkedIn
• 55%  Blogging
• 43%  Facebook
• 40%  Twitter

Hubspot went on to look at the lead-to-close rates to identify the most effective channels for lead conversion.  This revealed the following metrics:

• 15% SEO
• 15% Direct traffic
• 9% Digital links / Referrals
• 7% Paid for Search
• 4% Social Media
• 2% Outbound calls

So, leads arising from SEO and via the web generally, had a higher conversion rate than outbound calls (15% versus 2%).  It’s not entirely clear what actually falls under the terms “Direct traffic” or “Referrals”, but links from blogs and other published articles probably fall into the latter.  Equally, one suspects that the results from nurture activity targeted at direct mail respondents or trade show visitors may fall under “Direct Traffic”.

In terms of blogging itself, the research identified a high correlation between frequency of blog posts and the ability of the technique to generate new business.

At first sight, this diagram could be a very scary one for small business owners: the more you post, the higher the probability of generating a new customer.  However, evidence suggests that a third of SME bosses want to reduce the time they spend creating blogs or participating in social media.  A couple of observations should help calm the nerves!

Firstly, you don’t need to post multiple times a day to benefit from blogging.  You stand a greater than 50% chance of winning new business if you just post once a month.  Publish more frequently and your chances of success will be even higher.

Given that it takes around three hours to compose a blog it’s no wonder that the time and effort involved appears onerous.  Posting once or twice a week will get you near to a 70% success rate, provided the posts are of quality content and relevant to your audience.

That’s the real challenge;  devoting the time to create quality content that is relevant to your audience.  The higher the quality, the longer it will take to create.  That can be a big problem when you’re also trying to run the rest of your business.

What’s to be done?  You can’t stop producing blogs as they are a highly cost effective method of generating new business.  Equally, you probably can’t afford to devote over three hours to produce every blog post.

Ideally you’ll have someone in your organisation able to take on the role of blog preparation. Alternatively, you’ll need to outsource the task to a professional or accept that it’s something you’ll have to continue to do yourself.

Whatever option you choose, that actual task of building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate has become an essential part of your marketing activity.  The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget away from the more expensive traditional techniques in favour of more cost effective digital tactics.

• Hubspot research respondent profile:
• 972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably US).
• 57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
• Industries: professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.

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Copywriting and ghost blogging for small businesses

Why tracking marketing performance will be critical for every small business during the next few years.

Applying discipline and simple spread-sheet analysis can help small firms stay agile and ready to exploit new marketing ideas during challenging economic times.  This post and example will explain how.

 

Small business owners are facing up to the fact that economic conditions are going to be much the same until 2018.  The path to better times will be “longer and harder” than previously thought and many feel that more radical measures have yet to come before things become more stable.

Consequently, if you are the owner of a small business you will need to take a more disciplined approach to the way you generate new business.  You will no doubt spend a fair amount of your marketing budget on things like exhibitions, telemarketing, networking events, brochures and catalogues, web and other digital activities, etc.  But do you know which marketing activities are delivering results?

As social media reaches a tipping point in terms of business acceptance, do you know where you should be focussing your efforts to keep pace with the changing market behaviours?  You’ll want to be sure that your marketing budget is being spent on the tactics that deliver the most cost effective result.  That means knowing what is and is not working, now, so you can divert funds to test new marketing ideas.

Let’s take the area of “new media”.  Many small firms are now finding digital / web / social media marketing techniques very cost effective in terms of generating new sales leads – from existing customers as well as new prospects.  Most firms start their hunt for information to resolve a business problem on the web.

Organising your web presence so that enquirers can access the key information they are looking for, easily and intuitively, is an obvious first part of the process.  However, this nowadays needs to be integrated with your blog.  Blogs play a key role in shaping your brand perception as well as in educating and guiding your audience towards your product offering.

Overlaying this with social media interactions can help establish trust and instil confidence in your brand.  If you believe the trend towards digital communications will continue, you will need to divert budget away from non-performing marketing activities.  Allocate the funds instead to test and/or refine areas like social media.

The problem comes in deciding what part of your budget should be axed.  You need to objectively review your existing marketing expenditure and understand which marketing tactics are delivering value and which are failing.  One way of tracking this is to use a simple spread-sheet to monitor expenditure and lead generation performance.  Take a look at this post for a step-by-step example.

The spread sheet tracks new enquiries, leads and orders and links them to items of marketing expenditure.  As it’s a basic spread sheet, it can be easily updated and reports can be generated using filters or pivot charts to show the performance of each item of marketing spend like the diagram below.

Example pivot chart report from simple tracking spread sheet

Adopting this type of approach introduces discipline on a number of fronts:

• You easily keep track of each item of marketing spend
• You make a point of asking each prospect/lead what marketing tactic prompted them to get in touch (which you then record on the spread-sheet)
• You’ll be able to regularly monitor what techniques are working and what’s falling short – which will help you decide what marketing investment decision to make next.

You can see how effective this approach can be.  Obviously, adapt the headings to suit your specific business circumstances. If you outsource part of your marketing effort you can ask your supplier to report back using the campaign headings you’ve chosen.  If they track your enquiries and leads too, they can even maintain the spread-sheet for you and provide weekly reports.

Other software or marketing automation solutions should also provide this analysis. However, if you have yet to acquire this type of technology, then this easy spread-sheet option will prove to be a very cost effective alternative.

The important point is to take steps now to ensure you have the process and discipline in place to know what marketing activities are working and what is falling short. You need to avoid spending marketing funds in the wrong areas. Implementing close monitoring of enquiry/lead performance will become a critical aid to your marketing decision making in the challenging years ahead.

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Outsourced marketing and lead generation solutions for small businesses.

The online tools used by successful Professional Services firms.

A study links higher adoption of digital marketing tools to greater business success amongst professional services firms. However, it varies by sector with some industries slow to adapt. That’s an opportunity for those firms that can move quickly. They could experience rapid growth if they embrace online tools.

The survey sample consisted of 500 US professional services (PS) firms operating in architecture, engineering, construction, marketing communications, accountancy, finance and technology in late 2011.

Hinge, who commissioned the research, looked at the number of PS businesses that generated leads online and matched this to the relative success of those firms in terms of growth and profitability.

They found that the more successful firms tended to generate more leads from online sources than their less successful peers. Taking figures from the report, this effect is highlighted in the chart below:

To help interpret this chart; of those that generate between 80 to 100% of their leads online, 60.7% are from the “successful” PS firms in the research. Only 15% of high growth / profit PS firms do not generate any of their leads from online sources.

The report goes on to highlight the inbound response methods from online activity:

• 43.9% – direct e-mail
• 28.6% – web form
• 24.1% – inbound telephone call
• 3.4% – other

This probably reflects the call-to-action mechanisms that were provided to web visitors more than anything else but it does highlight that over a quarter are deploying web forms and generating sales leads as a result.

Hinge go on to look at the different online techniques that the sample used and how effective PS firms found them. It’s interesting to compare the rank order of techniques considered effective amongst PS firms to a similar study conducted in 2012 amongst small and medium sized businesses in general (i.e., not just PS firms):

The differences may allude to the different techniques required to be successful within different industries and professions. The SME audience are known to still be heavy users of traditional sales and marketing methods for lead generation. They are still experimenting with online tools. Having said that, over 50% of SME’s claim to be using all these methods.

If the professional services industry in the US can be aligned to that in the UK and Europe then these findings suggest that PS firms should embrace these techniques to improve lead generation and overall business performance.

Which professional service sectors perform best?
The Hinge report looked at which PS segments were using online techniques the most to generate leads:

This suggests that the majority of PS firms, especially those in architecture, engineering and construction, could achieve faster growth by focussing more effort on web lead generation.

Whilst traditional methods like personal networking, trade shows and exhibitions are still no doubt proven lead generation winners, the link suggested by the Hinge report about online adoption and business success really warrants close attention.

A common issue for PS firms new to online tools, is assigning management ownership internally and then finding someone suitably skilled to undertake the tasks. That person may not even exist in the headcount. What’s more, the management team may be unsure about the skills required to complete the task or the level of budget that should be allocated for this activity to be effective.

One solution to this would be to engage an external resource just to get things going. That external resource could set-up an initial online content marketing programme. Also, if agreed at the outset, the external partner could organise the programme to facilitate knowledge transfer and training to an in-house resource. Based on this research, the cost of the external resource should pay for itself from new incremental business.

Technology has changed the way firms do business. Digital technologies and social media communications have reached a tipping point and firms across all industries are now grappling with the impact of the changes on their business. Delaying the inevitable adoption of online marketing may prove to be a risky strategy.

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Part-time content marketing and lead generation support services for SME’s
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The biggest challenges for SME marketing teams – and how to overcome them.

A survey has highlighted eight major challenges facing marketing teams.  SME’s need to acquire new skills to overcome these challenges and succeed in today’s climate.

 

Recent research by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Act-On Software (see details below) asked SME marketing decision makers what they felt were their biggest challenges.  The response is illustrated in Table 1 below.

Whilst the research identified responses from SME’s considered “successful” relative to those less successful, the differences between the two groups were broadly similar. They are represented in the table below as an average from all SME’s in the research.

Table 1: Biggest marketing challenges for SME marketing decision makers:

So what can SME marketing decision makers faced with these challenges do to overcome them?  A few thoughts on each follow.  Whilst not exhaustive, hopefully SME’s can take something from these comments to move things forward in their business.

Increasing sales from existing customers:

Assuming SME’s already have strong relationships with existing customers then the task facing them is to maintain visibility with key stakeholders and continue to build credibility whilst keeping an ear to the ground for any new order opportunities.  Personal networking is a proven technique here but SME’s may be limited in terms of the number of contacts they can effectively network with.

Another option is new media.  Being visible on relevant digital and social media platforms can indicate to customers that your business is keeping up-to-date with the changes in the business communications landscape – a perception that might then extend to the rest of your business.  That’s a positive, as few customers will remain loyal to suppliers they consider slow to adapt in the current economic environment.

Of course, being visible on social platforms means producing effective content in sufficient quantity.  It’s an opportunity to demonstrate understanding of industry issues and be seen as an organisation with high industry competence.  Owners of SME’s must task their marketing teams to develop editorial programmes, then create and distribute this content.  It can be a very cost effective way to be top of mind with existing customer contacts when they are ready to place new orders.

Converting more leads into opportunities:

Usually, the problem here is that the enquiries or leads generated are not yet ready to buy.  That’s always going to be the case.  Depending on the demand generation tactic used to produce the lead in the first place, a firm could have hundreds of names to sift through to identify what’s about to turn “hot” , what needs to be kept warm and what is of no value.

This can be addressed in a number of ways.  Firstly, make sure that the leads generated are of useful quality right from the outset.  Rather have fewer quality leads than masses of poor quality names – it’s faster to identify and work upon those that will generate business and means staff will be more productive.

Once you have enquiries of reasonable quality, it’s a case of building a dialogue with each one, providing them with relevant information depending on where they are in the buying cycle and tracking subsequent behaviour.  Lead scoring plays a role as can marketing automation in sophisticated environments.

Clearly the right content needs to be in place at all stages of the process.  Each item of content should be designed to dovetail with the sales process, to get to BANT qualification stage and, consequently, a sales opportunity that can be forecast.

Differentiating from the competition:

This is often a problem for SME’s.  Resolving it requires something of a strategic review, taking an objective assessment of competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, value chain and industry trends.  The trick is to emphasize a strength that has perceived value to customers – ideally one that competitors would find hard to replicate.  This usually manifests itself around the area of service, skills / competence, or experience.

Once the strength has been identified, all sales and marketing materials should be aligned to emphasize the advantage to existing and prospective customers.  Here again, carefully crafted content needs to be developed and distributed using the media channels most appropriate to your audience.

Closing more deals from existing leads flows / Accelerating the lead to revenue time:

This is linked to “Converting more leads into opportunities” above.  It’s all about improving lead management performance.  Perhaps here we are more concerned about opportunity management.

One of the reasons closure rates may be poor is because the sales people involved are spending too much time trying to nurture “leads” that are not yet ready to buy.  Lead nurturing and scoring activities should be implemented by your marketing or inside sales team to deliver qualified leads to sales staff.  These should be leads that meet an agreed, pre-opportunity standard.

This will do a couple of transformational things to your business.  First, sales staff will be focussed on converting a smaller number of qualified leads, which will tend to automatically improve the conversion metric (it’s from a lower base).

The second consequence is that, for your marketing or inside sales team to provide the volume of qualified leads to sales, they will become more focussed and expert in filling the funnel with higher quality enquiries in the first place and then developing the most effective nurture activities.  Use external support to fill any gaps in knowledge, skills or expertise until you have this well-honed.

Raising awareness:

This is often a problem for SME’s because it can mean high expenditure.  Exhibitions, advertising, direct mail, teleprospecting can all provide excellent results but the cost can be crippling.

New digital and social media channels offer a realistic alternative.  Indeed evidence from the Forrester Consulting report suggests some 50% of SME’s have tried digital and social media awareness tactics and found them to be successful (see here for more details).

However, here again the SME marketing team needs to be flat out creating carefully crafted content in sufficient quantity to not only increase recency and frequency of visibility, but also to ensure the content is engaging.  It needs to present the SME’s differential advantage as well as keep prospects coming back or “following” for future content releases.

Driving more traffic to web site:

This is a big subject!  Apart from the obvious SEO activities and including web details in outbound email addresses and printed literature, prospects need to be stimulated to visit your site.

Blogs, newsletters and PR articles should all point back to specific landing pages on your site.  The trick is to know what content to put into your blog, newsletter or press release in the first place.

It can be opportunistic: a new customer win or contract deployment, or maybe a new product introduction.  Some content can be planned, perhaps a piece of commissioned research or a whitepaper on an emerging industry trend.  The planned material should also allow you multiple opportunities to distribute and communicate with your audience, especially using social media channels.

Any content a prospect is likely to find valuable should be hosted on designated landing pages on your web site and all outbound communications and content must be created with this in mind.  Material appearing on social platforms should have share buttons enabled too.

Generating new leads:

To some extent this heading has been addressed by much of the above.  The importance of effective and appropriate content creation cannot be overstated.  So, perhaps here we should mention the demand creation vehicles.

Understandably, SME’s tend to rely on the tried and tested traditional mechanisms to generate leads: exhibitions and events, advertising, PR, email and direct mail.  Increasingly they are adopting new digital and social media platforms too.  When they do, they tend to use the following content types:

• Case studies and testimonials
• Videos
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Research reports

This is based on research conducted by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute entitled “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America” .

This report  also noted the emerging trend of using infographics and e-books too.

Implications for SME’s:

The marketing challenges cited by SME’s are all surmountable.  The issues typically involve finding sufficient time, budget and human resources to do the job well.  In many ways it requires changing the way you and your team work.

Owners of small and medium sized businesses will need to ensure their marketing teams acquire the skills required to succeed in a digital and social world. That’s in addition to what they do now.   Another option is to use external content providers to help build an initial content campaign and help transfer skills to the internal teams at the same time.

Acquiring the content marketing skills for today’s changing business environment has become another priority for owners of SME’s.  Those quick to adapt are likely to secure an advantage over the rest.

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(Source of data : “Driving SMB Revenue in a Tough Economy”, conducted by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Act-On Software (download the full report from the Act-On site).  Sample: 208 SMB marketing decision makers based in North America.  An online survey conducted between August and September 2012). 

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Part-time content marketing and lead generation support services for SME’s

Freelance content creation support for busy marketing professionals