Why it’s a mistake

This move translates into risk for a number of reasons. First, visitors to your site have expectations of what they’ll find upon arrival. If you don’t have what they want – or need – they’ll be disappointed and leave. And your chances of getting them to come back are pretty slim. Moreover, if the visitors to your site vanish without completing a conversion action, was it really worth it to bring them there in the first place? At that point, what will you have accomplished besides wasting time and money, and creating a poor brand experience for a lot of potential customers?

How to build your content strategy

Smart B2B marketers won’t let this happen. Instead, they’ll follow the below six-step plan to build an effective content strategy.

1. Define your goals and objectives

   Building a solid content strategy first requires gaining an understanding of the purpose your site. What is it intended to accomplish? Are you selling products? Promoting services? Providing information? However, keep in mind that these goals and objectives might differ page by page. Considering that, it’s critical to outline the goals for the overall site and the individual sections/pages. Once you have clarity on this, it will make it much easier to construct your strategy.

2. Assess the competitive landscape

   The next step is to identify what your users are seeking online, and gain an understanding of why they are looking for it and when they need it. It’s also important to identify the other companies that show up in the search results on similar content. To do this, you must first identify as many related keywords as possible, and leverage free search engine tools (and your search agency partners) to quantify search query volume for each. This data will help you establish appropriate content themes.

3. Take inventory of your content

   Once you know your target themes, you need to do a full assessment of everything on your website, including textual content, video, images, press releases, etc. This is critical because each of these forms of content could tie to certain keywords within the search engine results. As you review your content, consider whether it is relevant to the themes you identified in the previous step. In addition, assess whether it aligns with your understanding of how people are looking for your products/solutions. Ultimately, this step will help you ascertain whether you currently have sufficient content that will enable you to “win” on certain keywords/themes in the search results.

4. Make smart decisions

   Next, look back at the first three steps and determine your “must win” themes.  However, be mindful that winning isn’t everything. Given that, you must also determine secondary themes: areas where you still want to be found in the search results, but that you recognize that you won’t be able to dominate, and as such, will limit your efforts accordingly.

   For example, if a large B2B office supply company wanted to win on the following keyword phrases: “HP Color LaserJet Printer” and “laser printer comparison,” but was forced to choose between the two, my money says that they would pick the first one every time.  Why? Because the searcher who uses that term — in this case most likely an I/T or procurement person — is much closer to actually making a buying decision. Considering that, this company might be best served to make the latter term a secondary area.

5. Integrate or die trying

   Integration is no longer an option for marketers; today, it’s a must do. In fact, research shows that 67% of search engine users are driven to search by an offline channel. Moreover, 39% of those offline-influenced search users ultimately make a purchase from the company that prompted their initial search. What does this mean for you? Don’t build your content strategy in isolation. Instead, walk down the hall and talk to your marketing peers in affiliate, display, and email marketing to understand their upcoming initiatives.

   Likewise, share your most successful keywords and ad copy with them so they can capitalize on those successes as well. In addition, make sure that your online content strategy supports your company’s offline efforts. Ideally, the key areas you identified in the previous steps need to be aligned with the other groups within your organization.

6. Execute

   Once you’ve completed the above steps, it’s time to ask yourself a few questions: How much content needs to be modified or created in order to support the strategy? Do you have sufficient internal resources to make this happen? If the answer is yes, it’s time to sit down with the appropriate teams to share your hard work, plans, and needs. If the answer is no, you need to start identifying and evaluating potential partners to help you develop and deliver the necessary content to “win” in the areas you previously identified.

Driving relevant traffic to your website is important, but don’t get ahead of yourself. Make sure you have the right content in place first. If you follow these six steps, you will be well on your way to not only being found in the search results, but also to fulfilling the needs of your prospective customers once they land on your site.

Understanding the value

B2B marketers should leverage content networks because they are an effective means to get in front of an audience where they are spending their time—reading articles and visiting news pages—and not just in search results.  According to ComScore’s Media Metrix from February 2009, there were 192,187,000 unique users online. Of those users, 70% visited news or informational websites. That sounds like a heck of an opportunity to me as content networks will allow you to place relevant ads on a number of those websites. Moreover, according to Google, their content network reaches “80% of global internet users—making it the world’s #1 ad network.” And that’s just Google; Microsoft and Yahoo both have content offerings as well.

The big difference

While content networks represent significant opportunity, B2B marketers need to realize that there are some inherent differences between search and content networks.  For starters, search is frequently referred to as the “ultimate form of permission based marketing.”  This is because its engagement process involves someone raising their hand and actively looking for information related to a particular keyword.  In essence, they are “pulling” the information from advertisers.  But the content network’s engagement process is different.   Most of the time someone is reading an article on the web where an ad is shown based on the article’s content.  In this model, users have ads “pushed” at them. Given this “push – pull” difference between the two channels, marketers need to be mindful that content networks need to be approached differently than search.

Witnessing their power

The key advantage of content networks is that it provides marketers with the ability to reach decision makers at that moment of relevance when they might not even realize they have a need for what you are offering. Here’s an example.

Last week I caught up with my close friend Michael.  He works for a large software company, and was recently promoted from I/T Specialist to I/T Supervisor. Over lunch he gave me a run-down of his new responsibilities, which included evaluating all expenditures, cutting costs, and spending smarter and more efficiently.  And while he hadn’t planned to shake things up so soon, Michael ended-up changing his company’s current computer hardware provider after only a few days in his new role.   Why the sudden switch?  The economy certainly had a lot to do with it—and his new boss was eager to see change—but the real driver was a content network.

How so?  Michael participates in a handful of tech blogs, forums, and social networking groups, which is not surprising because as a techie he is more apt to pay attention to what other techies have to say about products, services and experiences instead of what the manufacturers have to say.  And one day while reading an article in one of his favorite forums about some new PCs that IBM was introducing, he saw an ad to the right of the article. It was for corporate discounts on PCs and accessories at PC Connection, a leading I/T solutions provider.  Though he had never heard the company’s name before, he was curious, so he clicked on the ad. 

When all was said and done, he had placed a call to their corporate sales department, established an account, built a relationship with a dedicated account manager, and placed an order that had been sitting on hold due to costs on his end. In the end, he saved 20% over the original estimate provided by a different vendor.  And while Michael wasn’t specifically seeking a new hardware vendor, or actively looking for information on purchasing computers, he was presented with an ad that was indirectly related to the article he was reading, and ultimately it caused him to make a purchase.  

Things to keep in mind

Given the inherent differences between search and content networks mentioned earlier, you can imagine how their performance metrics also differ.  For example, the click-through rate’s (CTR’s) in your search campaigns will almost always be higher than they are in your content campaigns. Again, this has a lot to do with people’s mindsets when they are presented with your ad.

But how you leverage content networks will largely depend on your goals.  For example, a B2B marketer with a strong brand and very tight ROI or ROAS goals may choose to allocate more money to search than content.  Conversely, a B2B marketer with some flexibility on ROI who is looking to increase brand awareness might have a stronger allocation of their budget in content. 

Fortunately, the search engines have changed their models to provide pricing that aligns with the needs of their advertisers. At a bare minimum, marketers should test the value of content networks and determine how they can work for their business. In this economy, if you are able to secure a dozen additional leads, than I would say you are onto something.

Overall, B2B marketers should leverage content networks to complement their existing search efforts.  By tapping into the power of these networks, B2B marketers can have their brand and messaging seen by many people who otherwise would have only seen their competitors.  Smart B2B marketers will start thinking of search and content networks as a classic combo.

As your customers and prospects muddle their way through this economic debacle, chances are that they need assistance.  Given that, now’s your chance to help them when they need it most.  But first you need to engage with them, and help them understand how your products/services can address their needs.  Below are 4 tips on how B2B marketers can boost their engagement efforts.

Leverage your #1 asset

For some reason, marketers underestimate the value of tapping into their existing customers for valuable information.  This is a big mistake.  As a B2B marketer, you need to capitalize on what your existing customers can tell you.  Reach out to them.  Ask them about the specific things that keep them awake at night.  Is it pricing?  Quality?  Shrinking demand?  This is the very information you need to better speak to your prospects.

Use this information to customize your content, ad copy, landing pages and overall offering.  If your customers indicate that quality is a primary concern, then perhaps you can provide testimonials, satisfaction guarantees, or feature product/service reviews prominently on your landing pages.  If they express concern about pricing, then identify incentives that will mitigate their concerns.

Tap into social media

But beyond reaching out to existing customers, you can also gain tremendous insight about what’s on their minds – and on the minds of your prospects as well – by leveraging social media to monitor online chatter.  When used this way, social media essentially becomes a powerful market research tool for B2B marketers to leverage. 

Tapping into this information could potentially provide you with insight into a looming problem, or help you learn about new products or services that your prospects or customers want/need, or reveal interesting information about your competitors.  Savvy marketers will capitalize on the findings such online monitoring reveals, and use it to enhance their engagement efforts. 

Provide incentives

As a B2B marketer in this economy, it’s important to recognize that as prospects work their way through the purchasing funnel (from awareness to interest to consideration to hopefully buying), many will get caught in the consideration phase.  This is where they will be making pricing comparisons between you and your competitors.   Given that, incentives—free shipping, free returns, rebates, etc.—can be an effective means to differentiate yourself from the competition and help you win over your prospects. 

But before you implement an incentive, ask yourself if it is worth a fraction of profit to give up a little bit of margin to add one into your marketing initiatives.  In addition, remember that the key to using incentives is to make sure that both the messaging of your offer and your incentive is consistent and conveyed on every piece of marketing “real estate” at your disposal.  In other words, be sure to leverage ad copy to not only show what it is you offer, but to also articulate that you are offering it at a discount. 

Tell them what you have—don’t make them guess

To best help your customers and prospects, specify what you’re providing; don’t make them work to figure it out.  It’s important to avoid generic messaging as it can dissuade users from clicking on your ad or from taking a call to action, and in some cases, it can drive up your costs based on relevancy and click through factors that the engines use to determine quality scores. 

Instead, if you have a product or service that helps address your customer’s and/or prospect’s needs, then say so.  Tell them in your ad copy and incent them to click. Tell them when they get to your site, and incent them to buy or express interest.  Remember, search is the ultimate form of permission-based marketing, so capitalize on it as such.  When someone conducts a search, it equates to a potential customer raising their hand, actively seeking a solution/answer to their problem. 

They say that timing is everything.  I tend to agree.  There’s no better time to help someone than when they are in need.  Smart B2B marketers will use the above tips to boost their engagement efforts and in the end, help their customers and prospects when they need it most.

Why last year’s allocation won’t work

While it may have worked for you in the past, basing your 2009 budget upon the previous year’s allocation is ill advised. In fact, in this economy doing so is sure to lead to failure. I’d be willing to bet that if you spent any advertising dollars on TV or print in 2008, that you – like many others – are thinking about shifting some of these dollars online. Why? ROI of course! In many areas, digital continues to be more cost efficient. Considering that, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that many of your competitors are already making the shift in an effort to reduce costs and improve ROI.  If you don’t re-evaluate your marketing spend, not only will your competitors leave you in the dust, but your ROI is also sure to suffer.

Avoiding the dangers of isolation

Moreover, formulating your search budget in isolation – without really factoring in the impact of other channels – is a dangerous proposition at best.  Instead, you have to think holistically and strategically across the entire marketing mix, as search has the potential to boost the efficacy of all of your other channels and improve your overall marketing ROI.  For example, according to recent iProspect research, two-thirds of online searchers are driven to perform a search as a result of exposure to some offline channel, with both television and word of mouth influencing over one-third.  Clearly, it is paramount to understand the influence of other channels when carving out your search budget.

Taking action now

If you made either/both of these budgeting faux pas this year, it’s not too late – you can make the necessary changes now.  What you need to do is strategically carve-out your search budget from your overall marketing expenditure to ensure that you have sufficient coverage to capture the demand that your other marketing efforts will generate. Doing so will allow you to protect the investment you’ve made in these other channels, create a more holistic marketing plan, and in the end, help you get a leg up on your competition.

Key considerations

Below are three areas that underscore why search needs to be carved out from your overall budget, and why you may want to revisit yours.

1. Increased costs:

This year it’s highly likely that you’ll need to plan for increased costs due to a number of factors such as increased competition within the paid search auction.  Additionally, as you look to expand your campaigns and efforts with new keywords, it can inherently drive up your costs. But don’t get too worried about it because they can be minimized. The good news is that the engines are getting more sophisticated at ensuring relevancy within their algorithms. This can actually work to your advantage as the stronger your ad copy and landing pages, the easier it is to keep costs down.

To capitalize on this, make sure that each keyword you bid on is relevant and targeted to the ad copy and the landing page. However, be mindful that if you don’t focus on showing relevant ads and landing pages, it can cause your costs to increase.  You also need to pay attention to the auctions and monitor your competition. As more and more advertisers enter the auction, the influx has the ability to drive up costs. To combat this effect, identify opportunities to write more compelling ad copy, or offer more appealing calls to action over your competitors. Doing so will help mitigate the rising CPCs that result from more advertisers entering the auction.

2. Learning from the past:

Past performance can inform future decisions, yet all too often history has a way of repeating itself. Why? Because people don’t look at the data that’s right in front of them.  This is a huge mistake, as there is just as much – if not more – to be learned from your failures as there is to be learned from your successes. Given that, take the time to review your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to understand what’s been working and what hasn’t, then work to identify areas of testing.

This not only includes the three components just mentioned, but also testing expansion into new engines, new programs within engines, and contextual and site targeting within the major search engines. This will help you set aside the necessary 2009 funds. And don’t be afraid to re-test. I have seen B2B clients run a test that netted a poor performance, and two years later they still deem that particular engine or offering a failure. This is another big mistake as the search landscape is extremely dynamic, and engines are continually improving their offerings. If something didn’t work two years ago, it makes sense to try it again.

3. Honing in on the right opportunities

As a B2B marketer, you probably spend a lot of time working with your media planning agency to understand your target audience and how/where they can be reached. Well, search is no different. In your planning, think about where your prime customers are spending their time online, then identify how you can best reach them. For example, running a national campaign within the major search engines sounds like a great strategy because it will allow you to achieve significant volume and reach.

However, keep in mind that search is not TV. It isn’t necessarily cheaper or more effective to run a national campaign than it would be to target your audience locally. In search, you can set-up a geo-specific campaign and market your products in 25 of the 50 states quite easily and effectively. Given that, take the time to really think about what’s right for you. For instance, it might make sense for you to think beyond the major search engines, especially if your customers are spending time within social networking sites or are using vertical search engines such as Business.com. Don’t limit your playing field. Work to identify the right opportunities and plan accordingly.

While revisiting your overall marketing budget doesn’t sound like much fun, it could definitely be worth your while. Remember, search has the power to boost your other channels’ performance and improve your overall marketing ROI, but only if its allocation isn’t lacking. Smart marketers will take the time to carve-out their search budget from their overall marketing expenditure and build a holistic marketing strategy.

The Opportunity

Inherently tech savvy and mostly in their twenties, Generation Y (Gen Y) now represents a large part of today’s workforce. And that spells opportunity for B2B marketers. Yet how many of the business-to-business ilk are capitalizing on it? My guess is few. After all, half the battle of seizing an opportunity is first recognizing it exists, and in many ways, Gen Y is a B2B marketing opportunity hidden in plain sight.

Capitalizing On It

While Gen Y may share some similarities with other generations, this group is unique in that it requires marketers to not only think differently, but to also speak to them differently. Given that, B2B marketers need to re-think their strategy in order to effectively reach this audience where and how they will be most receptive to hearing the message.

For example, Gen Y’ers tend to do their homework, and are extremely well educated on the companies they work for, and they expect more from their employers overall. In fact, they expect to work somewhere fun and exciting, where they can promote or work with a great product or service. As a result, they focus on quality and speed, and often look to over promise and over deliver. Consequently, social networking, testimonials, and targeted creative provide marketers with effective means to reach this audience.

When planning and executing your marketing initiatives — especially your search campaigns — you should consider this group separate and distinct. Specifically, you need to modify your approach. How so? It comes down to three key areas: identifying where they spend their time, speaking their language, and then selling them on how you can help. Let’s take a look at each.

Be Where They Are

To effectively tap into the Gen Y market, you need to be where they are. Given that, it’s imperative to gain an understanding of the sites they frequent and the opportunities for you to connect with them. And social networking sites and blogs might be a good place to start. For example, are they twittering? Or on Facebook? Or perhaps spending time on YouTube, MySpace, or LinkedIn?

Research shows that social networking sites reach 69 percent of the total online audience, and that 76 percent of all 18- to 34-year-olds used a social network in the past month. Moreover, a study by Forrester Research shows that Gen Y leads the way on social computing activities (43%) and blogs (28%). With 18 visits per person, per month, at 27.4 billion minutes, and a total of 64.9 billion page views, it’s easy to see why social networking sites and blogs offer marketers considerable opportunity to reach this audience (Source: comScore Media Metrix, May 2008; eMarketer, February 2008).

Ultimately, you need to cast a wide net across different sites and opportunities. Don’t just rely on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Instead, look beyond them and identify any site where your customers are communicating. Then talk to your customers and listen! More often than not, they’ll tell you where they spend their time online.

Speak Their Speak

Once you know where your Gen Y audience is online, you need to speak their language. Let me start with an example.

Perplexed and more than a tad curious, I stopped a colleague in the hall to ask what he meant when he ended his email with “LMK.” His response was telling. He looked at me like I was crazy, and then he told me that it meant “Let me know.” Of course it does; shame on me for not knowing. Need you ask what generation he falls into?

Be it emoticons to express moods and feelings, or acronyms to save time and energy, it’s safe to say that Gen Y has taken efficiency to a new level. In some ways, they have a language of their own. So what’s a marketer to do?

To start, choose your keywords appropriately as they can make a big difference; they should definitely be words that your audience will relate to. For example, if you are a PC hardware reseller, you might traditionally target keywords that include cost specific adjectives like “cheap,” “discount,” or “affordable.” And you might even include feature/benefit descriptors like “low maintenance,” “guaranteed,” and “light-weight.” However, are you forgetting product comparison keywords to account for the fact that many Gen Y’ers rely on what other consumers have to say about these products and their experiences? Considering that, be sure to include customer testimonials and reviews. And remember that the same logic holds true for your messaging. Be sure it resonates with your audience and includes information about product comparisons and testimonials.

Now Sell Them!

You’ve successfully captured demand by focusing on the right keywords and using the right messaging. Once your targets are on your website, it’s time to sell them!

Specifically, you need to tell them about the benefits of your product/services as Gen Y tends to be more self-focused. In addition, they think they know more than they do, and are extremely self-confident. However, they don’t know what they don’t know, and that in itself represents opportunity.

Take advantage of your landing pages and be sure to incorporate a clear call to action, along with specific product features and benefits. If you can include testimonials on the page as well, then great. This generation tends to weigh others’ reviews and opinions pretty heavily, especially when making decisions on behalf of their respective organizations.

Additionally, when possible, show product comparisons. Gen Y’ers won’t want to say “I don’t know” when their boss questions their recommendation or purchase. They will need to know as much information as possible in an effort to support their purchasing decisions or recommendations.

So whether you refer to them as Gen Y, Millennials, or even Echo Baby Boomers, one thing is for sure: They represent a large part of today’s workforce, and ultimately spell opportunity for B2B marketers. But to effectively reach them, you’ll need to adapt your approach. In doing so, you’ll soon realize that Gen Y is a B2B opportunity not to be missed!

Andrew Wheeler is managing director of the Chicago office for search engine marketing firm iProspect, and can be reached at a.wheeler@iprospect.com. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Wrong.

The fact is, those fundamentals are only part of the equation. There is another key component entirely. Namely, analytics. Or more specifically, tracking, and understanding the quality of a visitor. In fact, not only are these other elements fundamental, they also take on increased importance for the B2B set. Why? Because of the complexity of buying cycles for this market.

Let me explain.

When it comes to search, there are many similarities between marketing to consumers and marketing to businesses, such as the need to understand your audience and speak their language. However, when it comes to buying cycles, the similarities end.

In fact, B2B buying cycles are inherently complex. Consequently, marketers need to be mindful that prospects can be in very different phases within the buying cycle. And because it’s your job to put yourself in the prospect’s shoes and think about what they need, tracking and understanding the quality of a visitor can be instrumental in helping you do just that.

Tracking: why digging deep on keyword data matters

To be sure, tracking offers marketers a myriad of benefits, not the least of which is keyword data. It’s a rich source, and analysis of it can yield highly valuable information that is both immediately actionable, and has the potential to significantly impact campaign performance. It can also help marketers avoid shooting themselves in the foot.

For example, many marketers hastily ditch keywords that appear to be non–performers. This is a mistake. Instead, they should take a closer look at their tracking data. Here’s why.

A few years ago, comScore conducted a study that quantified the number of searches leading up to a purchase, by category. For example, the research revealed that computer hardware buyers searched an average of 4.9 times before ultimately making a purchase.

The implication of this finding should be obvious. Just because a keyword doesn’t yield immediate conversions, doesn’t mean it’s not contributing. It could very well be highly effective at moving a prospect through a particular phase of the buying cycle.

To capitalize on this behavior, marketers need to leverage tracking to better understand their customers and prospects. The first step in doing so is to make sure you don’t discount the keywords with a sub–par conversion record. In fact, before you remove a keyword that isn’t producing conversions, or reduce a bid, thoroughly review the query reports that are available through the search engines and/or your search vendor.

Regularly reviewing these click chain reports will help you understand the searches your customers actually conducted and that ultimately led to their executing the call to action. Then use this data—whether manually or with a bidding agent—to ensure that certain keywords maintain their positioning regardless of their direct conversion value.

And as you review these reports, pay attention to your inclusion window. This is the time allocated for a click and the subsequent conversion event to happen in order for it to be considered a result of a particular paid click.

It is critical to appropriately set your inclusion window within your tracking solution; otherwise the learnings gleaned from the data will be faulty. For example, if someone types a keyword, and then sees your ad and clicks, but doesn’t immediately convert, and then comes back to the site 10 days later and converts, it would not count as a conversion against the originating paid search click unless your inclusion window was set to 10+ days.

Quality of visit: assessing the value

Now, let’s turn our attention to the quality of a visit and how it factors into your paid search success equation.

To start, let’s get personal. What’s the value of a visitor to your site? (Play annoying game show music now.) Okay, time’s up. The answer is, of course, that it depends.

Yes, it was a trick question—but the point is that there’s never just one definitive answer for this. The value of a visitor to your site should depend on the action they take while there.

Yet all too often, B2B marketers routinely identify a call to action, implement a tracking pixel, and plunge forward with their PPC campaign with little regard to the differences in value.

Why is this? Especially consider the complexity of the buying cycle, and as noted earlier, that prospects are in different phases of it. For instance, some visitors may want to register for email updates or free white papers while they are researching their options. Others might want to look up product specifications or use product comparison widgets as they edge closer to making a buying decision.

Given that knowledge, each specific call to action on your site should have an assigned value, dependent on what it provides. Consider registrations—they actually capture user information, so naturally, they should receive a higher value than other actions where the visitor remains anonymous.

Essentially, what you want to do is create a quality index. Why? Because having a clear understanding of the value of a visitor can help you shift your marketing dollars away from the keywords that don’t perform strongly to those that do.

To accomplish this, first identify all of the different actions a visitor can take on your site. And be thorough. Then rank them in order for the value they hold. Next, assign values to each action based upon what it delivers for your business.

Once you have your calls to action indexed, use a tracking system to capture these actions that occur as a result of paid search activity, and incorporate these values into your optimization efforts. Lastly, use this information to inform your bidding strategy.

The bottom line is that while keywords, ad copy, and landing pages are fundamental to paid search, alone they won’t add up. Tracking and understanding the quality of a visitor are also essential to your paid search success equation.