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FUSION b2b TIP OF THE WEEK ARCHIVE

Easy Ways to Build Your Email List

Procuring email lists is both expensive and often inaccurate. The "home grown" list if often the most accurate and effective. Existing customers are your best future customers, so be sure to grab contacts from order forms, quote requests and warranty registrations. Next, offer a eNewsletter registration, training webcasts or RSS feed on websites, blogs and social profiles. Outside your company, check trade association member directories, trade publication editors. Do ask inbound telephone requests for their email address for valuable offers. Finally, centralize all contacts in a customer database.

Embed Your Video Everywhere!

With video hosting services such as YouTube, embedding video  to your website, blog, Facebook or emails is easy by simply copying and pasting HTML code. Why embed videos? Because videos have the highest click-through rates (CTRs) and social sharing. What’s more, videos support search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and brand engagement. Finally, YouTube has robust analytics such as video views, traffic sources, demographics and viewer location. Don’t miss out on this easy marketing tactic!

LinkedIn Company Page Drives Leads

Your LinkedIn company page can generate real sales leads! How? Using the Products/Services page, you can add thumbnail images of products/services or offers, and hyperlinks to website landing or registration pages! As a bonus, each hyperlink will add valuable back-links to your site!

Repurpose Your Print

That glossy capabilities print brochure or catalog should be leveraged across all electronic mediums for maximum exposure! Place a thumbnail on your website homepage that links to a registration page for immediate download. (Don't get too greedy with the amount of registration form fields). Next place a thumbnail and hyperlink on your LinkedIn company page under the Products/Services section.

You can also convert a PDF or Powerpoint on your personal LinkedIn profile utilizing SlideShare. Next, place as a PDF on your Facebook Page, ideally under a custom tab to be downloaded directly from Facebook, (e.g. Downloads, Resources). Don't forget to decrease your next print run by 50%!

Small Ads Deliver Big Leads!

No question that advertisings role in the B2B marketing mix is evolving to driving prospects to a registration page or microsite with offers that capture information for future marketing. One inexpensive ad placement option is classified ads in trade publications that often cost hundreds, not thousands. Small sizes and 1 or 2-color require strong headline hooks with simple web domains or 800 telephone numbers. Link here to our ad gallery for some samples!

Free PR Distribution Delivers!

Sometimes you get what you pay for. In this case, some of the free internet news release distribution services deliver top search engine results. Generally we use the free services for minor releases, but increasingly noticed placements thru Google Alerts and Radian6, along with top search results (although these results fade quickly after a couple of days). Now we use the free services for all releases. Check our Resources and Guides links for more info. For now, do check out 24-7PressRelease.com, PR.com,
Free-Press-Release.com and others!

Email Still Effective and Efficient Tool

Despite average (b2b) deliverability of 20%, Email is still an effective tool for marketing with some caveats. Do not email from your desktop (Outlook, Entourage, etc). Use an Email Service Provider (ESP) to improve deliverability, and to avoid being (email) blacklisted by customers. ESPs provide easy-to-use templates or the option to create your own html email design, robust reporting (opens/click-throughs/opt-outs), and list management tools.

Cost is minimal for Constant Contact, Benchmark, MailChimp and others. And email offers can link to registration pages to capture prospect information.

Are You Communicating With Your Sales Channel?

It would be hard to over-communicate with your sales channel, as most companies and brands under-communicate with sales reps, dealers or retailers. Some just communicate with sales reps, but no further.

Use both snail mail and email. Make sure your lists are cleaned up with correct names and addresses. Qualify your channel members for additional contact names. Ask channel members to add your email address to their address book to avoid filtering. Communicate new products, programs and promotions. Also, selling tips, case studies and success stories. Your are competing for attention, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Does Your Website Suck?

Now you can quantify how good or bad your website site is, even compare it to competitors using a Free Tool from Hubspot called the Website Grader. Link to http://websitegrader.com/ and enter your website address, along with addresses of other sites you wish to compare. After a couple minutes of computing, the tool will provide a report that evaluates your sites metadata, Google page indexing, traffic rank, inbound links, directory links and social media presence. And finally, issue a grade. You're gonna love this!

B2B Marketing in a Recession

With less marketing budget, but greater scrutiny of marketing results, what can B2B marketers do differently to survive, and even thrive in a recession? Move a portion of your ad budget to Free Publicity! Focus on lead generation via direct marketing, with emphasis on email. Segment and conduct market-specific email. Focus on selling more to, and retaining existing customers. Make sure your website is search optimized, and drive search with low cost, but high participation social media. White paper forthcoming

Google Alerts a Great Resource

Google Alerts are a inexpensive (FREE!) resource for monitoring your internet initiatives, and competitive intelligence. First is Google Alerts. First go to www.google.com/alerts. Next, type your company name, brand name, competitor, website address or other keywords you wish to follow into the Search Terms field. We recommend selecting Comprehensive for type of search, as this includes News, Blogs, Web, Video and Groups. Choose how often and enter your email address.

Do You Know Your Customers?

Sure every B2B marketer knows at least their top customers. But do you know them by name or just the name of their company? Customer retention is gaining interest in a slow economy. One of the most basic and intuitive tactics we recommend is contacting your customers, identifying key decision makers, and qualifying whether any additional decision makers or influencers exist. Next, qualify postal and email addresses. Even mid-size companies have multiple locations that may require your products or services. You may only have a purchasing or accounting PO Box, but what about engineers, CEOs? Ask about FUSION telemarketing.

Recycling is Green Marketing and More

Surely environmental responsibility is one of the hottest marketing trends, but this TIP is much simpler and very practical—recycle your marketing assets! That is, develop content and use it in many different applications. For example, create a How to Guide as a printed sales tool, deploy a PDF version on your site, or an email campaign Free download. Next, issue a news release announcing the Guide, and submit the Guide to "Guide" websites and directories, with back-links to your site. Of course the Guide can be a direct response offer in a traditional print ad. You get the point. In fact, make it point to not work harder in 2009, just smarter.

Improve Search Engine Results with Blogs!

Customers and prospects seek out blogs to help with buying decisions, and a relevant blog can be positioned as an online authority, making the impersonal personal. Once there, a potential customer’s information can be captured by signing up for an e-newsletter or registering for a consultation. With less than 15% of Fortune 500 corporations maintaining a blog, the medium is still embryonic. Why blog? It's inexpensive to start-up, and it can drive search engine results!