Lately, when we talk to prospective B2B clients, I see increasingly divergent views on B2B blogging. On the one hand, there are those who lust after success stories involving other social media (e.g., Twitter) used to drive high amounts of immediate, short-term traffic to a business blog. Many times, these people are so eager to jump into the promise and immediacy of Twitter, LinkedIn groups, and Facebook to drive traffic to a blog, that they give little consideration to developing the meaningful, valuable content required to attract interest in the first place.

On the other hand, there are those that tend to lump B2B blogging in with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, social-bookmarking sites, and the like. Many of these people are in niche B2B industries where the pace of adoption of social media vehicles is slow and the potential “crowd” is thin. When they consider blogging as a part of their marketing strategy, they see little promise. Sure, they say, maybe we’ll get 20 subscribers to our blog, but what good is that? We’re not going to get large amounts of followers on Twitter. We’re not going to get large amounts of subscribers to our blog. Social media just isn’t a good fit, whatever form it comes in.

Both groups seem overly focused on the short-term, either somewhat crazed by the potential of short-term gains or convinced that such gains aren’t possible, and as a result, dismissing the very idea of B2B blogging. Both groups tend to ignore the long-term, most valuable benefits of B2B blogging—search visibility and thought leadership positioning.

Earlier this month, Jeffrey Cohen of Social Media B2B, had a great post titled Blogging for the Future, in which he discussed the long-term search benefits of consistently creating relevant, compelling content optimized for search. Even a modest commitment of 2-3 such posts per month will yield 30 posts in a year—and each of those posts will consistently drive relevant traffic to your blog and your site every single month. Forever. And the beauty of search is that you’ll be meeting those visitors at the very time they’re interested.

In addition to driving traffic, those posts will also position your firm in terms of expertise and thought leadership. This enhanced search visibility and positioning can go a long way in reducing the perceived risk potential purchasers feel when considering alternative suppliers, strengthening your position and increasing the chances you’ll be on the short list of contenders.

Sure, this isn’t as sexy as creating a lot of social media buzz in the marketplace, but unless you’re blogging for the long term, I doubt you’ll be successful in the short term, anyway.

Running effective PPC campaigns in B2B markets is a competitive task that can be extremely expensive. That’s why it is so important for search marketers to run efficient campaigns that create maximum value for those high-cost clicks. So what can you do to be more competitive and increase ROI, even as these tough economic times are shredding your budgets?

Measurement. Better yet, effective measurement. Because, as we all know, you can’t improve what you don’t accurately measure.

If you’re like most search marketers, you’ve often wished for more insight into your campaigns than what AdWords alone can provide. You may also be looking for a ‘one-stop’ place to analyze all of your PPC data from all engines and efforts. Recent upgrades and enhancements to Google Analytics make both possible.

While those of us who rely heavily on Google Analytics (GA) are still getting up to speed on the new features released in October, it is important to get back to GA 101 and look at the features that can really give you the most bang for your PPC buck.

In this article, I’ll present four steps to improve PPC performance by using Google Analytics:

Before we continue, there are some assumptions and necessary steps for success. Most important, however, is that GA has been properly installed on the website pages that you are tracking. If you are unsure about this, please stop here and read this.

Another assumption is that you have used the GA URL Builder, or compatible application, to build your keywords for the other engines. More information on this is available within Google Analytics support documentation.

Linking your AdWords account to your GA account

The biggest benefit to using Google Analytics to measure you PPC efforts is its ability to have all of your data in one place. Linking your AdWords account to GA brings all of your PPC data to a single, customizable repository you can use for measurement and reporting.

Before you link your account, ensure that you’ve used the same Google Account email address for both your Analytics and AdWords account, and that the AdWords login email address has Admin access on the Analytics account. If you haven’t used the same Google Account, simply add your AdWords login email address to your Analytics account as an Account Admin.

• Go to Reporting>Google Analytics
• If you already have an Analytics account, click I already have a Google Analytics account
• From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down list, select the name of the Analytics account you’d like to link to
• Click Link Account
• Next time you log in to AdWords, go to  Reporting>Google Analytics and you should be linked up

Setting up your GA Dashboard

One of the greatest strengths of GA is the ability to customize your initial screen or dashboard view to display data that is most important to you every time you log in.

All GA reports have an “Add to Dashboard” icon in the upper left side of the screen. If you have a report that you use daily/monthly, click this button to add it to your front-page dashboard for easier access. The four fundamental reports that we will review should definitely be part of your GA Dashboard.

Setting up GA goals

As I said earlier, you can’t improve what you don’t accurately measure. And you can’t accurately measure your PPC performance without clearly defined goals or metrics for success. There are many factors that go into creating goals. You should consider the following issues when setting goals:

• Did you or the client help with these goals?
• Match types/Case Sensitive. Are they working?
• What are your conversion goals for the site?
• Do you have a good idea of what the user is doing while on your site to get to that goal?

Google Analytics is most powerful when you are tracking these additional steps as well as the goal itself. Be sure to get buy-in from your client or your boss before creating these goals. What you think is a good goal may not be right for them. You all need to be on the same page to prove the success of your campaigns.

Creating reports to measure success

The Google Analytics interface is full of pretty charts and graphs that can be intimidating to even the most seasoned search marketers. To turn that stream of data into useful and actionable information, you must create reports that give you the information you need when you need it. They can be canned GA reports or custom reports you create yourself. Either way, these reports will give you the ability to extract and present your successes and show you where there is room for improvement.

In Part two of this step by step guide, I will discuss four fundamental GA Reports to help you manage your campaigns.

To say that 2009 has been a challenging year for B2B marketers would be an understatement at best. Over the past twelve months, we have seen conversion rates drop as searchers do more and more research, but aren’t quite ready to do business.

While everyone is hopeful for economic improvement next year, there are measures that B2B marketers can take in their search campaigns to increase the chances of success. As you start planning for 2010, consider the following three tips on how to improve your search results.

Explore reporting options

Understanding your total revenue or acquisitions from search is paramount. Fortunately, there are two areas to explore to ensure you’ve captured it all:

Conversion window

Like most search marketers, you probably have a specific conversion window that you report on. However, given the economic climate, you might want to consider expanding it. Why? Because expanding your window will allow you to determine if more searchers are taking the desired conversion action, but doing so outside of the timeframe you are currently measuring.

In essence, expanding your conversion window could very well help you claim additional sales, and ultimately boost the efficacy of your campaigns.

Micro-conversions

While making the sale or gaining a new customer is a top priority, don’t underestimate the value of micro-conversions such as email or newsletter signups, and downloads, etc. Sure, it may take longer to convert these searchers into customers, but such micro conversions play a key role in fostering relationships with B2B prospects.

Because of that, some percentage of these searchers will turn into customers down the road. By tracking these micro-conversions to actual sales and customers, you can establish a value for each action. Doing exactly that will boost your search results and aid your search strategy.

Optimize to the ultimate conversion point

Many B2B marketers mine their engine and conversion data for information that will help them drive more sales. However, the conversion data that can help them the most is often not relayed in the conversion pixel or tag. Because of that, what the marketer usually sees is the activity that occurs on site, such as a new lead or a free trial. And while leads and free trials are important to generate, they are not the ideal data points to optimize to.

Instead, marketers need to optimize to the data on the backend, such as whether that lead or free trial resulted in a customer. This requires marrying your engine data with the ultimate conversion point, which is found in your CRM data.

Note that the rate at which leads and free trials convert into new customers will most likely vary by marketing channel and within search, whether by engine, campaign, ad group, or keyword. Having this information will help you allocate search funds so that you gain as many new customers as possible at the lowest cost.

Branded click path analysis

If a large percentage of your sales or customers come from branded searches – as it does for most advertisers  –  then it is important to perform click path analysis on those entering your website from branded terms. Doing so can help you boost your search results in two ways:

1. Click path analysis will allow you to review what products or services your visitors are purchasing. In turn, this information will tell you what products or services to focus on when creating a more effective user experience (in terms of messaging and landing pages).
   For example, if branded searchers tend to select products or services specific to one type of business, then you may want to test improving your conversion rate by allowing searchers to segment themselves on your site by selecting their business type or business need.
2. In addition, click path analysis can help you determine where abandonment is occurring on your site most often. This information can provide you with insight into where landing page optimization is needed most. It will also help you understand the intent of these branded searchers, which can be difficult to determine from just the branded search term alone.

Hopefully 2010 will bring economic growth and recovery, but most B2B marketers know that they can’t afford to wait and see what happens. Now is the time to look for ways to generate improvements in your search campaigns, and the above tips can help you do exactly that.

For B2B companies, exhibiting and participating in trade shows can be a significant expense.  TradeShow Handbook estimates that the average cost of exhibiting at a show is $10,000. This might be an underestimate if you bring in a full team of sales and marketing personnel to work the show. You can use this online trade show cost calculator provided by Meetings and Conventions Magazine to estimate your own costs.

That said, trade shows have proven to be a cost-effective method of generating leads and closing sales. Meetings and Conventions Magazine provides a quick summary of findings from The Center for Exhibition Industry Research’s study, The Cost Effectiveness of Exhibition Participation (a two-part study that can be purchased here – Part I & Part II).

The data indicates that the average cost of generating a sale from exhibiting at a trade show is $2,188.  This is 42% less than the $3,102 average cost of closing a sale.

Every trade show marketer’s goal is to maximize their investment in exhibiting, and lower the cost of lead generation and closing a sale.

There are a number of ways that you can use SEO, PPC, and Social Media to maximize your investment when exhibiting at tradeshows.

SEO your events calendar

If your Web site does not already have a section for Events, add a dedicated area for this content.

Use basic Keyword Research, Page Tagging, and SEO Copy Writing to frame the context of your Events section.  For example, if you provide data storage technology products and solutions, you may want to structure the main page to target the keyword “data storage trade shows.” You might use an HTML page title like “Data Storage Industry Trade Shows – Your Company Name”. The page heading would be either identical to the first part of the page title, or a variation of that. A summary paragraph at the top would mention that below is a list of upcoming data storage industry trade shows where Your Company participates.

You will have to keep the list of shows fresh. All too often, Events pages are left stale and list past events in the upcoming events area.

There is a way to leverage your participation in past trade shows in the overall section. Below the list of upcoming shows, you might have a section for recent trade shows attended. Each of the mentions of past shows should contain a link to a page dedicated about the show.

As with the main Events page, you should make sure to use appropriate keyword strategies and tactics for the pages for individual shows (e.g. Storage Expo 2009 Recap). Use the page to highlight any announcements you made.  More importantly, provide a write up of the key findings and announcements presented across the entire show. If available, use rich media such as video (consider embedding code for YouTube videos). Link to resources from the show organizer’s site.

You may want to add in a stream of social media content, such as a Twitter feed for discussions about the show (e.g. use the most-common hash# tag for the show as the keyword trigger for the feed). The Twitter feed content may go stale after the buzz is done, but it will provide rich content, and a valuable resource for visitors to connect with other people.

All of this rich data for past shows will likely generate inbound links to your site.

Using PPC to generate face time

Paid search advertising can be an effective method for facilitating appointment setting prior to the show.

Set up a Campaign for trade shows, and use Ad Groups for each individual show. Bid on keywords specific to the next show(s) where you will be exhibiting. You can also bid on more-generic keywords related to industry events (e.g. “data storage trade shows”).

Use the structure you set up for the SEO efforts highlighted above. Use this as your opportunity to set up a page for each specific show (you can transition the page from a Landing Page to generate appointments to the archived recap pages described above). The pre-show incarnation of the page should be targeted at encouraging users to contact you to visit your booth and speak with your booth personnel (you might want to indicate that a user can connect with someone other than/in addition to a sales representative, such as a product manager, engineer, industry expert, C-level officer, etc.).

Create compelling PPC ad copy that encourages users to visit the Landing Page. Mention the show by name, and set the expectation that you have something to announce, present, say, and so forth.

Use Social Media to highlight participation

There are a number of ways to use social media to promote your participation in the show, and to set appointments.

• Broadcast news and announcements through Facebook.
• Blog about the show before it happens.
• Find bloggers talking about the show and engage in meaningful commentary on their blogs.
• Participate in LinkedIn Groups to connect with people about the show.  LinkedIn can be an excellent way to set appointments.
• Participate in Twitter discussions about the show, making sure to use the hashtag# convention in your stream (e.g. #storageexpo).  Twitter is perhaps the most effective social media tool (currently) to make one-to-one connections and set appointments.
• Don’t forget to find niche communities and forums specific to your industry, and find opportunities to connect with people there.

The Search and Social Media tactics described in this article are just a few ways to maximize your trade show investment.  In the end, it will be your creativity that is the X Factor in generating cost-effective leads and closing sales.

As explained in my last article, search engines can tell you a lot about your customers. Specifically, I shared a few tools that enable marketers to identify buyer needs, emerging market trends, and competitive threats.

Today, I’ll cover another (free) tool that can help you understand your customers’ entire search process, and the best ways to capitalize on this data to improve marketing results.

Expand your keyword focus

One of the most common mistakes B2B search marketers make is researching only those keywords that are directly related to their company. A tremendous amount of time and energy goes into analyzing keywords associated with their brand, products and services.

Perhaps it is not intuitive to think beyond your own keywords. But, marketers should really be asking, “What else are my customers looking for, and how can I address their broader set of needs?”

Understanding the relationship between searches related to your company and all the other things your prospects look for – can provide some valuable marketing clues.

The search funnel

One of my favorite tools, the search funnel, is part of Microsoft AdCenter Labs. This type of tool shows what people searched for either immediately before (incoming) or after (outgoing) a specific query.

Here is what the Microsoft Search Funnel interface looks like:

Search funnel data

Let’s take a look at some search funnel data related to Verizon, a company regularly listed as one of the largest B2B advertisers.

By running a series of search funnel queries for outgoing searches, you can see that the most common search made immediate after a query for “verizon” is a search for “verizonwireless”. This makes sense. People start with the brand name, and then move to a search for the service.

Perhaps more insightful is the data for a search oerformed after “verizonwireless”. Amazingly, four out of five of the most popular next searches are for a competitive service. This type of data really verifies that prospects do indeed use search engines for product comparison purposes.

How can a marketer capitalize on this? Think about how to best meet peoples’ needs as they move through their search process. What about promoting a wireless service comparison chart in your PPC ads and on your landing page? This clearly seems to be what most Verizon wireless prospects are looking for. This type of marketing message anticipates prospects’ needs and will likely boost response and ultimately, conversion rate.

Another example

Let’s review some search funnel data for the popular small business accounting software, Quickbooks.

By looking at outgoing search data, you can see that people who search for “quickbooks” are also interested in these four things:

1. Learning about the parent company (Intuit)
2. Understanding the differences between various Intuit products (Quicken, QuickBooks, Quick Books Pro)
3. Finding where to purchase the product (Staples, Office Depot, Office Max)
4. Comparing Quickbooks to competitive software (Peachtree)

How could a marketer capitalize on this? My first thought is that the PPC ads and corresponding landing page for the keyword “quickbooks” should include items like: a table that allows people to quickly compare features and functions of various Intuit products, a competitive comparison chart, a retailer locator function, and a link to information on Intuit.

Capitalize on the search process

Searching is (usually) a process. This is especially true for B2B companies and firms with long, complex sales cycles.

Search funnel data can be used to anticipate needs, provide truly helpful information, and associate your brand with prospects’ needs as they move through the process.

Marketers must strive to learn more about how their customers search. In addition to keywords directly related to your company… what are your prospects looking for?

I’m just back from speaking at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summits in San Francisco and Boston, where I was giving a joint presentation with a client on SEO. As part of that presentation, we talked about the role and impact of corporate blogging.

The client is a professional services firm operating solely in the B2B space. Theirs is a complex sale with an average sales cycle of 2-3 months from first contact to the time work begins. There are typically multiple people from different parties involved in or influencing the buying process, and the average engagement is in the low-to-mid five-figure range.

We had already optimized the professional service firm’s website. Early last year, however, we recommended the client also start a blog, both for purposes of positioning via thought leadership and fulfilling the rest of the SEO keyword strategy we had previously identified. The company is now about 15 months into blogging. They post once each week, and there are seven professional staff members who contribute to the blog.

We made sure the blog was integrated with the client’s site, not a separate domain or hosted blog. We chose WordPress and made sure to integrate plug-ins that would give us the proper optimization options. Then we worked with the client to develop topics, B2B blogging guidelines, and help educate those who would be contributing.

The ongoing work is largely handled in-house, by the client. On a periodic basis, we review the posts and make or recommend changes, both in terms of editing content for readers and better optimizing individual posts for search.

The results have been far beyond expectations. Today, while the blog accounts for 32% of the landing pages on the site, it accounts for more than 53% of the client’s organic traffic. The number of unique keywords for which the firm’s site is found has nearly tripled since the start of blogging. The firm’s website is responsible for more than 50% of its new business. They no longer have need for full-time people dedicated to finding new business; the firm’s new business activity is essentially responding to requests for work, not identifying and nurturing leads.

It should be noted, though, while the business results are good, it’s clear the results aren’t just about search; the quality and quantity of B2B content plays an equal, if not larger, role in positioning the firm and generating leads.

While the site optimization and corporate blogging has been successful, there were three key lessons learned along the way.

Multiple bloggers helps address diverse keyword strategy

In B2B, there is a diverse lexicon for almost every industry. Typically, there is no agreed upon, commonly used language to describe things. A given product, process, or issue may have four or five very different words or phrases used to describe it. This makes B2B keyword strategy particularly complex.

Even within the same organization, people will used widely varying terms to describe the same thing. We actually found this to be a benefit when it came to corporate blogging. Simply by having a broad range of contributors to the corporate blog, we continued to identify important keywords we hadn’t previously considered or found during keyword research.

The key, however, is not to squelch that by shoehorning blog contributions into previously established keyword strategy. Instead, you should embrace that diversity. Instead of changing copy to reflect previously established keyword strategy, optimize B2B blog copy for the newly found keywords. Make sure other on- and off-page factors are optimized for these keywords as well. This way, you’ll constantly be expanding your potential for organic search.

Let people write about what they love

Non-marketers typically don’t like to blog. Marketers, on the other hand, sometimes make the worst bloggers. Oftentimes, the people your clients, customers, and influencers find interesting aren’t the marketing people. They like to hear from the people in the trenches.

This creates a challenge for many businesses. A great question asked by one of the attendees at the San Francisco B2B Summit was, “How do you get people to want to contribute to the blog?”

Our client’s strategy was pretty straightforward.

Ask your people what interests them. What issues are they passionate about? If they’re having trouble, help them brainstorm. People have little problem writing about their passions and interests; it’s when they get forced into writing something else that things slow down.

Then together make a list of those topics and issues and see how they align with the interests of your key publics. Make your selections from there.

Schedule things out. Work with them to identify when each post works into their schedule and the overall editorial schedule of the blog.

Give them generous deadlines. Get their agreement on the dates for each post. Remind them of the deadlines the same as any another item in weekly workflow meetings.

Schedule internal deadlines at least a week in advance of the scheduled post date. This gives you sufficient time for any rework, any copy and headline editing, any necessary copy optimization for search, and for loading, formatting and optimizing the rest of the post (e.g., URL, title tag, meta description, image selection and optimization, etc.)

Follow up the day after the deadline if they don’t email their post to you. You need to hold people accountable through follow up and by making their blogging contributions as important as their other responsibilities. Make it understood it’s part of their job description and overall role.

Organic landing pages are important (and often overlooked)

In a well-optimized site and/or blog, people land everywhere. Yet often we do little, from a usability perspective, to help them with their next step. Landing page optimization receives a lot of attention in paid-search strategy, but we seldom give the same time and effort to organic landing pages.

After a while, it’s easy to see what keywords drive organic traffic to a given landing page. The first thing to do is to make sure that page is actually relevant to the visitors arriving there via organic search for those respective keywords. Is it relevant content in response to their query, or are you merely getting lots of unintended traffic (and bounces) because you happen to rank well for a given query?

Assuming your content is relevant, what are you doing to help further guide and nurture the visitor’s experience? If you know organic visitors are arriving on a given page because of a fairly narrow set of keywords, where do you think you should be directing them next?

The keywords responsible for organic traffic to a certain page should give you some idea of searchers’ intent. Rather than simply avail them of your standard navigation, you should be providing specific on-page links to other content relevant to the most popular queries for that page. Strategically selecting and placing links to other relevant content—not just automatically generated “possibly related links”—will drive deeper engagement and generate more leads.

Business development is the life blood of any professional services firm, be it accounting, law, or architecture. Yet fostering new business relationships is far from easy for them. Given that, many often generate leads by positioning themselves as thought leaders. Fortunately, search can help boost these efforts.

Search can enhance your thought leadership efforts by helping you be present at every part of the buying cycle, from generating attention and interest, to capturing desire and creating action. For instance, optimized press releases and keyword rich blog postings are just two examples of how search can help you do exactly that. Ultimately, leveraging search to boost your thought leadership initiatives will help you maintain an online presence where your prospects are doing their research and regular reading, and help you remain “top of mind” with them.

Let’s look at how a law firm might benefit from using search for these purposes: after a successful litigation case, the firm issues an optimized press release. A reporter at a local business journal sees the release in the search results and writes a story about it. Shortly thereafter, the president of a mortgage brokerage reads the piece online. Given his growing fear of litigation by folks likely to foreclose on their homes, he launches a search for “unfair mortgage practices.”

Scanning the results, he finds an article on the topic that happens to be written by the law firm. Noting the firm’s name, he recalls seeing its comments in a few blogs he regularly reads. When he later queries “law firm St Louis,” the website for the practice appears at the top of the search results. Clicking through to the site, he fills out the “contact us” form and becomes a lead.

Clearly, search can boost your thought leadership efforts by helping you be present at every stage of the buying cycle.  Below are five tips to get you started:

1. Shift your advertising budget online. In order to be present at every stage of the buying cycle, you need to be where your audience is. Given that, marketers should shift their media buys from print to online because people are largely moving away from print mediums.

An obvious place to spend your valuable budget is on paid search campaigns. You can generate attention by creating content campaigns and create interest with enticing ad copy. To supplement this, create non branded campaigns that will capture demand during the “desire” phase of the buying cycle. Branded campaigns are also critical to ensure potential leads can find your organization. After all, at its core, paid search is a way to capture demand.

2. Fully capitalize on your thought leadership articles. Developing compelling content is not enough.  To increase the likelihood of your firm showing up at various stages of the buying cycle, you need to send your thought leadership articles to industry publications, promote them in optimized press releases, and post them on your website. In addition, be sure to follow SEO best practices during the writing process. For example, conduct keyword research and pick primary and secondary keywords that have significant search volume, but that are not too competitive. Ensure that these terms are included, intact, in your articles. That way, when searchers conduct queries for relevant terms, they have a greater chance of finding your articles, irrespective of where they live online.
3. Become a regular. Blogging is a great tactic to enhance your thought leadership efforts. However, you don’t need to create a company blog to benefit from it. Rather, it is easier (and less expensive) to become an active member of industry blogs and groups, such as on LinkedIn. Keep a list of five important industry blogs or forums, and every morning or afternoon, see what people are saying on these sites. Whenever appropriate, provide your thoughts on the topic without sounding too “sales-y.” If you become a regular contributor to these online resources, it will reinforce your perception as a thought leader, and your comments will appear on posts that people will be reading during different phases of the buying cycle.
4. Build an online tool. Building an online tool can be an effective means to enhance your thought leadership efforts as it creates additional opportunities for you to show up and engage with your prospects during the buying cycle.  Whether the tool is a Facebook application, an iGoogle gadget, or a widget hosted on your site, be sure to pick something that will be viral and serve as “link bait.” The more links to your site, the higher you will appear in the search results. Finally, if the widget is hosted on your site, make sure that the page it lives on is well optimized with appropriate meta data, and that it’s not in your robots.txt file, etc.
5. Leverage analytics: Once you have implemented the above search initiatives, you must use an analytics package to track the success of your efforts and optimize them. Also, by leveraging it on your site, you can see what type of services people are most interested in, and align your marketing/thought leadership efforts accordingly. For example, if an architectural firm sees that people are spending a lot of time on the Building and Zoning Representation page of their site, they might want to dedicate more paid search budget to it and highlight this topic in their thought leadership materials. Ultimately, the data revealed in your analytics will tell you where and what to focus your marketing initiatives on.

Positioning your firm as a though leader is an effective means to generate leads. However, search can help you boost these efforts and increase your likelihood of showing up at every stage of the buying cycle.  Smart B2B marketers will follow the above tips to get the job done.

B2B Internet marketers often struggle mightily with website content.

From an SEO perspective, content is a key component in any successful search program (more keyword opportunities, longer tail terms, freshness to encourage more frequent crawls, internal cross-linking opportunities, inbound link building materials, etc.).

The most common obstacles to content generation that B2B marketers express are time and money.

It would be too simplistic, and perhaps even inaccurate, to make the following statement:

Time + Money = Content

Even if it were as simple as combining some amount of time and money to create content, there is zero guarantee of creating Value.

Time + Money = no guarantee of Valuable Content

Content, for content’s sake, is a waste of resources. Adding loads of content, such as Glossaries and FAQ Sections, may add page weight to a site and provide opportunities for cross-linking pages and themes together. But, there is little-to-no value created for users (i.e. prospects). Poorly-planned Resource Centers and White Papers also offer little value.

What is valuable content?

By definition, it helps the user get to know your company and products better, and moves them closer to becoming a lead. Valuable content is also much more likely to resonate with those that might link to your site. The links generated (often passively) will also be of higher value in terms of relevance – anchor text, thematic relationships, semantic variety, trusted sites, etc.

The missing variable in the value equation is creativity.

Time + Money + Creativity = Valuable Content

At the risk of losing you, the reader, by using algebraic expression, you could express that time and money are variables that can range from zero to infinite as follows:

xTime + yMoney + Creativity = Valuable Content

The consistent, but intangible, variable here is Creativity.

Content types that are likely to add value to the lead generation/nurturing process, as well as adding value to SEO efforts, include:

• Articles
• Blog Posts
• Images
• Interactive Tools
• Video
• Webinars

Each of the above can help explain who you are, what you offer, why you are better, how you solve problems, etc.

Here are some thoughts on how you can use Creativity to reduce Time and/or Money in the content creation process.

Articles

A tactic that can work nicely here is an interview-style article. Someone in the Marketing department can put together a series of questions to pose to a Product Manager, Customer Service Manager, Lead Engineer, etc. Send the questions via e-mail and this makes it easier for the recipient to respond to the questions. Edit, format, and then publish. To prevent overloading any one individual’s time contribution, find a number of different people in the company who would be willing to participate in this way.

Blog posts

Just as with Articles above, you can use an interview-style approach to generate content for the blog. In the case of blog posts, you might expand your outreach beyond your own company by asking industry experts to participate. Keep in mind that while recruiting guest bloggers can save tremendous amounts of time, this type of content may not serve the goal of enhancing the lead generation/nurturing process (i.e. generate as much Value.)

A differentiating point of blog posts vs. articles is that blog posts do not typically require as much length/depth as an article, so you can break out the questions and responses into a series of blog posts (saving even more time.)

Images

In a Resources section of a Web site, or other relevant area of the site, you can use images of products in use – reporting interfaces, output generation, close-ups of product features, etc. – and create pages for each image (or, group images into pages by theme). Write a description of what you want the user to take away from the image they are viewing. Remember to name the image files using keywords, use alt tags with the images, and allow users to view the image in a separate page (i.e. provide an image URL.) These tactics are more likely to help you get your images indexed and found in search.

Interactive tools

Creating interactive tools can be time consuming and costly. Consider having higher-education student groups take on this task as a project for their class work. Or, create a contest where the person/group who creates the winning entry receives something of value.

Video

As with Interactive tools, you can limit the time and cost of production by recruiting students and/or creating contests. The videos do not have to be extremely creative to serve the purpose of creating Value. Product demonstrations can provide Quality Content that helps prospective customers move further down the sales cycle. You can consider breaking up product demonstrations into pieces. Breaking down the videos into smaller chunks will help retain users’ attention, and helps extend the life/use of the content.

Webinars

If you are already engaged in Webinar creation, making that content as accessible as possible on your site can generate search engine traffic and leverage the Time and/or Money you have already invested.

As with Videos, it can be highly useful to break Webinar content into smaller chunks. You can create “chapters” for the Webinar and place each one on a separate Web page. Create a brief synopsis of the value the user will receive by watching each chapter and use that content as a means of generating the search engine traffic you are seeking.

Creativity is limitless. Time and money are not. Leverage the creativity within your organization, and with partners of all kinds, and you can create Valuable Content that serves both your SEO and Lead Generation goals, while making the process manageable.

Forget about your SEO investment. Disregard your PPC budget. B2B marketers should be asking themselves, “Am I getting all I can from search engines... for free?” Consider this: searching is the second most popular online activity today — second only to email. In fact, comScore (August 2009) estimates that Google alone handles 304 million searches a day. Given this large volume of activity, search engines can tell you a lot about your customers.

Today, I’ll discuss several easy-to-use tools that provide meaningful insights into your customers’ needs, emerging market trends, and competitive market threats.

Market research at a price you can afford!

Web analytics tools provide insight into the people who have already found your website. Alternatively, search engines can tell you about the entire online population. In fact, this collective set of data can be viewed as a gigantic, publicly available research study; your very own focus group. And all at no charge!

Every year, marketers spend millions of dollars on research in order to determine how customers think; what they are looking for; and how people view a company relative to the competition. I propose that many of these insights can be gleaned from (free) search data.

Customer needs and terminology

One of the most interesting things you can learn from search engines is how people actually think about (and search for) your products and services. A very simple but effective tool is Google Trends. Marketers are able to analyze relative search volume, for multiple queries, in various locations, over time.

So, for example, a B2B network provider might want to determine the specific language used most often when prospects search. Perhaps the marketing department is focused on messages related to “high speed internet” but the sales force suspects that more people think in terms of “broadband services”.

A simple query in Google Trends will quickly indicate exactly what people are looking for. This chart shows relative US search volume for these two queries over the past 12 months. It also indicates major news events (the letters in the boxes) that might influence general interest and search volume.

We can quickly see that significantly more people are looking for information related to “broadband” than high speed internet. This knowledge can help marketers craft meaningful messages and run campaigns that are better aligned with customer needs and terminology.

The analysis can be further expanded upon by using numerous, free, keyword research tools. For example, the Google Search-based Keyword Toolallows a marketer to enter a relevant website URL or a target keyword and receive many more related search phrases.

Entering “business broadband” returns these additional search queries (and more) with relative estimated monthly search volume:

This data reflects how customers think and specifically what they are looking for. Marketers can utilize this information to better align marketing messages (both online and off) with customer terminology.

New market trends

Search tools can also be used to identify market trends and competitive threats. For instance, let’s analyze search queries related to the business networking service, Linked In. Take a look at search volume for “linked in” in the US from 2004 to 2009:

Virtually unheard of in 2004, and with only minimal interest in ‘05 and ‘06, the popularity of Linked In has skyrocketed since 2007. Any company even remotely associated with the business-networking industry should (at a minimum) be aware of, and hopefully capitalizing on, this phenomenon.

This example shows how search engines can provide early clues to changing behavior. Marketers must ask themselves how to best capitalize on this knowledge. What does the enormous popularity of Linked In mean to your business? How could you be using this service with respect to your marketing efforts, sales contacts, suppliers, partners and current customers?

Competitive threats

Lastly, search data provides insights into current and emerging competitive threats. Let’s compare the relative interest in various small business accounting packages. We’ll look at US search volume over several years for queries such as: Peachtree, QuickBooks, and Microsoft Dynamics.

At a glance, we can see that the QuickBooks and Peachtree brands have a similar level of search activity (with QuickBooks being slightly more popular). Microsoft Dynamics is significantly less popular and really didn’t become a competitive factor until mid-2005.

I recommend that B2B marketers use monitoring tools (a very simple option is Google Alerts) to keep track of news events related to current and potential competitors and periodically compare search volume to determine growing or waning market interest.

This type of analysis can be conducted on competitive company names as well as competing product and service brands. Search data can be analyzed for a specific city, metro area, state, country, or globally. Trends can be viewed across many years or behavior can be analyzed on an annual basis.

Mine the gold

Search tools provide insights into actual, real-time online behavior. B2B marketers who capitalize on this gold mine of knowledge can better align marketing messages with specific customer needs — thus, increasing response rate and improving overall marketing results.

What you can learn from the hundreds of millions of searches that take place each day?

When optimizing a website for search, it is critical to target the right keywords as they play an important role in its overall success. Given that, it’s not surprising that when a page on a website has a subpar performance in search, many marketers jump to change its keywords. But doing so could be a mistake. Let’s take a look at why.

Understanding the risk

If a page on your website is not living up to your standards for success in user engagement (bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, etc.) it isn’t necessarily due to your keyword strategy. In fact, it could very well be something else entirely, such as content, or inconsistencies between keyword strategy and content.

Considering that, it is important to first gain clarity about the issues affecting performance before prematurely changing your keywords. Otherwise, you might find yourself “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” when you toss keywords that seem to be underperforming.

Moreover, be mindful that changing keywords can greatly affect your visibility in the search results. Given that it takes a great deal of time and effort to achieve visibility on certain keywords, you need to consider whether or not any keywords changes are worthwhile.

Taking a closer look

Your web analytics program can help you best understand the issues negatively impacting a page’s performance. By examining your analytics, you will gain additional insight into how the visitors who come to your site through your targeted keywords actually perceive your page compared to the visitors who arrive through other means.

Armed with a newfound perspective on your search traffic, you’ll then be able to determine your best opportunities for improving your site’s user engagement, whether they be at the keyword or content level. Ultimately, you need to strive for alignment between the two.

Five tips to achieving alignment

Before you give up on a keyword that’s not living up to your expectations, first follow the below tips to reassess your content’s relevance to your targeted keywords. In doing so, you may find that the keyword you were about to discard may become one of your best just by tweaking the content on your page.

1. Compare user engagement by keyword

Looking at aggregate data rarely provides actionable insights. Instead, drill down to the keyword level in your web analytics to compare different groups of visitors. How much time are search visitors (who reached your site from the targeted keyword) spending on your page versus those who came from other keywords? Is there a keyword that is bringing down your user engagement stats? Conversely, is there a keyword whose visitors are highly engaged?

2. Consider visitors’ next steps

A low time on page doesn’t necessarily imply an unqualified user. If your analytics platform offers a click overlay (a feature that demonstrates where visitors click after visiting a page), take some time to analyze your visitors’ next steps. Are they moving closer to making a purchase, or stepping back a page in your site hierarchy? Once you’ve established common next steps, try to assess why visitors are opting for these paths over others.

3. Reassess your content

Think about the correlation between your targeted keyword and the content on the page. Are they in synch? Put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, and think about your intention when searching for the page’s targeted keyword. What kind of information would you expect to find on the sites that are ranking? Try to think about your landing page from the perspective of the people potentially involved in your B2B buying cycle – the CFO, the CEO, the CTO, etc – and ask yourself if your page is providing enough information for all of them?

4. Analyze the competition

If you’re convinced that your content is in line with your keyword strategy, try visiting a competitor’s site, especially if they are outranking you. How is their content organized? What kind of information do they offer that you don’t? Again, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher, and consider the competitor’s page. What about it would encourage you to send the page to a friend or colleague, or link to it from your website or blog?

5. Conduct a usability or landing page test

Web analytics can speak volumes, but few things offer more insight than a focus group, usability experiment, or landing page test. Directly asking your target audience about their experience on your website can help to clear up inconsistencies in your keyword strategy and content, and uncover new opportunities to improve your site. For example, landing page testing via Google’s Website Optimizer can help turn speculation into confirmation by actually presenting two different groups of visitors with distinct versions of your landing page so you can see which one is more successful at engaging visitors.

There’s no denying the significance of developing an effective keyword strategy. However, it’s important to remember that its efficacy is largely dependent on how it aligns with your site’s content. In the end, achieving alignment between the two will produce the best performance.