Marketing Strategies for Lead Generation

What is in a SEO Report?

Many companies contact MatchedMarketing because they need assistance optimizing their websites. This service helps the company have better results in ranking their site for their desired keywords on search engines like Google.

Because this is a new type of service to most, it is important that we explain what the company will receive in a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Report. Here is a list of the primary elements for which we will write recommendations:

1. Page Title – this is the name of the page as it is identified by Google. It appears at the very top of your browser and is the blue link text that is used to identify your page on the list of search engine results, see the example below (the page title is purple because it has been clicked in the past).

In the SEO report we provide a recommendation for each of your page titles using your selected keywords.

2. Page Header – the page header refers to the text that is used at the top of your page to introduce the content on the page. In the example below, the header is “Marketing Campaign Management.”

Search Engine crawlers give extra attention to the words that are in larger font at the top of you pages, and at the top of each section of content on the page, so we make sure to recommend keyword-rich headers for each of your pages.

3. Meta Description – the meta description is another place where we want to include keywords on a website. Search engine crawlers pay attention to the words that are used in this data to help them further understand what your page is about. The meta description recommendation for each page is also included in the SEO report. See the two lines of text below the page title in the image below to see an example of a meta description.

4. Meta Keywords – each SEO report from MatchedMarketing also includes 8-10 keyword suggestions to include in the meta data of each page known as the meta keywords. While we don't believe that the search engine crawlers give much weight to these keywords when factoring them in the ranking algorithm, it is still an area that allows us to include keywords and should be set up properly.

5. Page URLs – many companies do not realize that the words used in the url strings of each of your pages are also reviewed by search engine crawlers. MatchedMarketing SEO reports provide recommendations for the correct way to utilize keywords in these URL strings. For example, in the following link you'll see that we used keywords in our Internet marketing page and separated the words with a dash using the most SEO-friendly format: http://www.matchedmarketing.com/internet-marketing/

6. Other SEO Recommendations - In addition to providing suggestions in each of these areas, MatchedMarketing also looks at the content of the entire page and provides recommendations for bolding keywords in the text, adding keywords to content that may be lacking, hyperlinking keywords and alt tags for photos that allow search engine crawlers to interpret the image.

It takes a good amount of time to review each page on your site, and we also provide assistance in making the actual changes in the HTML code of the pages. These reports are very valuable for new websites and improving existing sites. Read our white paper on "Integrating SEO Into Your Marketing Plan" for more information on developing a complete SEO strategy or contact us today to get started!

Using a Twitter or Facebook Page as Your Company's Website

This year I've seen a couple of small businesses using their social media sites to promote their business, even when they didn't have a website of their own for the company. This is a pretty interesting approach and it seems to have worked well for those that have tried it.

There are many reasons why someone might decide to direct traffic to a Twitter page or a Facebook page instead of a company website:

1. Maybe the company's marketing budget is small and they can't afford to invest in a website design they would be proud to promote at this early stage.
2. The company may need to build a presence online quickly and have found that their website won't be ready of months.
3. It's possible the company simply finds it easier to maintain a social media site instead of a website.

Websites are usually critical to a business, especially now that many consumers search for products and services they need using search engines like Google. The website allows you to provide full details on your business' offering, introduce your team members, collect email addresses from newsletter sign ups, registrations, subscriptions, etc. However, starting to build awareness your business with a social media page is a pretty good idea for small companies trying to maximize a small marketing budget.

If you decide to direct traffic to your Facebook or Twitter Page, you have the ability to:

• Communicate special company sales, discounts and promotions.
• Broadcast company updates for public relation purposes.
• Connect with your consumers by engaging in conversations on these sites.
• Provide short educational messages that help others understand your industry, product and/or service.
• Post images of products your company sells online.
• Build a following of fans of your business that will be ready to receive more messages from you on an ongoing basis.

While I still strongly believe that your business needs to have a primary website for which you may direct traffic, measure visitors and fully explain the benefits of your business, beginning with a Twitter and/or Facebook presence is a great idea for a quick start with internet marketing. And remember, maintaining your communication on these sites should continue in conjunction with your new website once it is up and running.

Top 10 Lead Nurturing Tactics

With Internet marketing, our first effort is focused on building awareness, then we try getting people to come to our website, and then we want to get the visitor to convert into a lead. A lead could be defined as someone that subscribes to receive our newsletter, downloads a white paper, registers for a webinar or fills out a form to request additional information from our company.

The main goal is to entice the visitor to like what they see on our site enough to make them want to give us their contact information. But what happens once they have done that? If a lead filled out a form that told us they were interested in your newsletter, do you let the lead sit there, send them newsletters and just hope that they call you someday to buy something you're selling? Converting a lead to a buyer will require more work, nurturing that lead to speed up the process.

Here are 10 Tips for Lead Nurturing to help you build your plan:

1. E-mail your leads. If they have opted in to receive communication from you from the first form they completed on your site, you can send them special promotion messages, discount offers, in-store sale information and more. Read our blog article to help you monitor the appropriate frequency of your e-mail marketing messages.
2. Contact your leads through snail mail (direct mail). If you are collecting a mailing address on your lead generation forms, you might want to send the leads postcards, personalized notes or letters, or maybe promotional items to help them keep your company top of mind and encourage them to make a purchase.
3. Use social media to connect with your leads. Depending on your type of business, it might make sense for you to find your leads on social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and request to connect with them there. Then you will have another avenue to communicate with them more regularly.
4. Create white papers and distribute. If you create a white paper that further describes an element of your business, this could be a great excuse for you to follow up with your lead contacts. Send them the white paper via email as a free giveaway.
5. Develop a print or e-mail newsletter. Again, this is just another form of communication that gives you an excuse to reach out to your leads and stay in touch.
6. Record a webinar. You can send an e-invitation to attend a live version of the webinar, and then you can also record the webinar and e-mail out the recorded version to all your leads. This also gives you an opportunity to further sell your leads on your product or service. 
7. Send a handwritten note. So few people send handwritten notes that it now gets exciting to the person receiving the message. Consider using this personal touch to follow-up with your leads.
8. Invite your leads to an event. If you market your business on a local level, you might be able to invite your leads to a networking event or something social that will help you connect with them more closely and hopefully bring you closer to a sale.
9. Mail the lead an interesting book. Sending promotional items branded with your company's logo can be great, but it is sometimes easier and less expensive to find a book that relates to your industry and could educate your leads on why they should do business with you.
10. Send a text-only, personalized email. Many companies using e-mail marketing to communicate with their leads are spending too much time and money creating graphic designs of emails with artwork that may not be viewed on all email browsers. Try sending a personalized email with text only to follow-up with your leads.
    

These are just a few ideas to help you get started in building a lead nurturing strategy. You'll want to consider outlining a plan for when you implement each of these tactics, how many days after you first received the lead, and then how many days after they got the second form of communication from you, and so forth and so on. Regardless of how you outline your communication plan with your leads, the most important thing is just HAVING a plan. You will find that a little bit of effort in this area goes a long way in improving your lead conversion ratio.

What Percentage of Revenue Should be Spent on Marketing?

Marketing consultants are often asked to determine what is the proper amount of funds that should be put towards a marketing budget using a percentage of revenue. Recently, Marketing Sherpa released a report showing the various levels of marketing budgets for Small, Medium and Large organizations. Interestingly enough, the small organizations (those with less than 100 employees) are spending on average 5% more of their revenue on marketing than the large companies (those with more than 1000 employees) according to this report. Why do you think that is?

There could be many reasons for this, but one of the biggest factors to take into consideration is that 6% of a very large revenue number is a lot of money, and could be enough to keep a business top of mind with their buyers, while the smaller companies need to spend quite a bit more of their revenue to even make a dent in the marketplace.

Regardless of what other companies that are similar in size to your business are spending, the best way to decide how much to spend on marketing is to measure your marketing efforts. Make sure to track the return on investment for each marketing dollar you spend, and make adjustments to spend more money in areas that produce better results. It amazes me how few companies take the time to do this the right way.

MatchedMarketing emphasizes the importance of measuring results in all of our marketing campaigns, and that is one of the reasons why a majority of our business is Internet marketing. With Internet marketing, almost all of your marketing efforts can be easily tracked to show you where leads are coming from, and how much it cost you to generate a conversion (purchase, registrant, sign-up, download, etc.). This allows us to then make decisions on how to spend marketing dollars in the future that are based on data, rather than opinion.

What can be challenging is that often we find that people believe that they can spend less money if they focus on Internet marketing. While it is true that marketing and advertising on the Web is typically less expensive than traditional forms of marketing (TV, print and radio advertising), there seems to be a misconception for just how much less expensive it can be. For the most part, the expense with Internet marketing is the TIME investment, so some companies may look to load up their staff with Internet marketing responsibilities, or management will take it upon themselves to tackle. It is important to look at the cost of your time (or your staff's time), per hour, before deciding that handling your marketing in-house is the right way to go. In addition to that, you'll want to consider the knowledge level your team has with Internet marketing and how much time it will take them (or you) to complete an online marketing task vs. someone that is experienced in Internet marketing.

Ultimately, when developing your marketing budget, you might want to follow the guidelines outlined in this report from Marketing Sherpa to decide on a number to start, but to really make sure you choose the RIGHT number, make sure you are measuring all the investments and their return to help you allocate funds in the most optimal way for genereating leads for your business. And when you count your spend (investment), don't forget to factor in the cost for your staff's time if they are completing marketing projects for you as well!

Do I Need Optimization for My Website?

Recently I met with a company that was looking for some assistance to get their website fully optimized. As we sat down to talk about their goals, they told me that they did not believe that search engines would be a lead generator for them. They thought it was more likely that their customers would come to them because of something they read in their e-mail marketing pieces, or from a referral, or some other direct connection made with their sales representatives. With that perception, it was clear that the optimization services they had originally requested was not really the kind of marketing help they wanted.

It could be that she was wrong about the Web being a lead resource for her business, however, it is important to understand what SEO does for a site before you invest money in an SEO plan. The primary purpose of optimizing a website and working on increasing page rank through off-page SEO efforts monthly is to help increase visibility for your business on search engines. When we do this work, we are trying to help you appear at the top of search results on sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing when someone is typing a search, looking for a product or service you provide. If you think it is unlikely that someone will consult Google to find someone that is in your line of business, SEO is not for you.

However, keep an open mind before drawing that conclusion and deciding on the best lead generation efforts. If the reason you do not believe in investing in SEO is because, A: you've never gotten a lead from the Internet before; or B: because your competitors don't even have a website; or C: because you are already listed at the top of a Google search for your product or service and your competition isn't even close, then you just might actually be getting into the SEO competition just in time.

Here are some reasons to consider optimizing your site:

1. Maybe the reason you've never gotten a lead from the Internet is because your business can't be found when searching Google for your product/service. Developing a presence online could push your website to the top of search engine results and bring you leads you never expected.
2. If you're competitors don't promote their business online, you could be the first to capture leads in that area. Better to be the first than have to work to catch up later.
3. If your website is already ranked at the top for a search of your product or service on Google, that could change overnight if your competition decides to invest in SEO. It is important that you maintain that top ranking placement with ongoing SEO efforts to keep your competition well behind you. Make them work HARD to take over that top placement.
   

Search engines have become a very popular and acceptable way to search for products and service providers. Sometimes individuals consult Google just for references on your company, or testimonials from others that have purchased a product you sell or used a service you offer. You'll want to make sure that the information that is read on the Internet about you and your business/industry is what you WANT your prospects to be reading, so be sure to at least consider contributing to building a Web presence. SEO might be exactly what you need to build more leads in your sales funnel.

To learn more about SEO, read our white paper on How to Integrate SEO into Your Marketing Plan.

Understanding the Basics of Google Analytics

When I first dove into SEO and started trying to measure results from my internet marketing campaigns, I will admit that I found Google Analytics reports to be a bit hard to understand. As a numbers junky, I became fascinated with all that could be tracked in these reports, however, my first interaction with Google Analytics left me feeling a bit overwhelmed and challenged at finding the answers to my data questions.

If you have spent some time trying to read your reports in Google Analytics and have the same feelings, you might want to take a closer look at this article with tips on how to  “Overcome the Google Analytics Learning Curve in 20 Minutes” written by Danny Dover at seomoz.org. He does a great job of summarizing basic tips he learned from attending WebShare’s Google Analytics Seminar.

You might also want to take a closer look at HubSpot's Internet Marketing Software which provides very basic analytics reports that are easy for a novice to read and help you get started in measuring your internet marketing campaigns. HubSpot is a fantastic software that gives you training wheels on handling your SEO efforts yourself.

The other alternative is to hire an Internet marketing consultant to read, track and interpret your analytics for you. Once you get a taste for what can be measured, you will probably start asking more in-depth questions that might require more internet marketing analytics expertise from someone that uses these reports on a daily basis. As with any form of marketing data, looking at the numbers is not enough, you'll want to be able to draw conclusions from the data that will help you improve your marketing efforts.

There are many other tools available for tracking online marketing results, some that offer an easier way to ready your reports and cost a small fee, and others that get much more advanced and allow you to track many more forms of data that can be quite costly. For most, Google Analytics will provide enough information for you to make educated decisions about how to market smarter, and because it is free, it is usually a top choice tool. One thing to remember, choose one analytics platform to measure results and stick with it. Don't try to compare one report from one tool to a another report from another tool. That will only leave you confused, give you inconsistencies and leave you feeling as though all the reports may be inaccurate. Using only one tool will allow you to start to see trends and, whether entirely accurate or a bit off, it should still help you to get an overall understanding of what is happening month over month, week after week with your online marketing campaigns.

Top 20 LinkedIn Groups For Business Promotion

For companies looking to market to other businesses, or professional individuals, I strongly encourage you to take a look at LinkedIn Groups. They allow you to network with other professionals without leaving your home/office, they can be a resource for helpful tips from industry experts, and by posting answers to questions or submitting your own topic of discussion in these groups, you can gain credibility and attract more visitors to your website.

When you join a LinkedIn Group, you can decide how often you want to be notified when someone posts a question, discussion topic or piece of news in the group. I have my settings pretty high to where I am alerted several times a week on the group's activity. Some may choose to be alerted immediately a comment is posted, or only be alerted once per week of all the groups activity. You can also completely turn off your notifications and simply log in to LinkedIn at any time when you want to see the recent activity.

Because LinkedIn is a well respected social media site for business professionals, it may not be the best platform for companies looking to sell personal items direct to consumers. Facebook and Twitter are better sites for those topics of discussion. However, if you sell to businesses, you definitely want to consider using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool.

Recently LinkedStrategies posted an article on their blog listing the Top 20 Recommended LinkedIn Groups for Business, which is a great resource for those that want to start joining groups, but aren't sure where to begin. Their qualification criteria for choosing the top 20 is very fair. They note that, “numbers [of members] don’t matter as much as quality,” and I totally agree.

Once you do start joining these groups, you'll start to get a feel for which are right for you, which have too much spam and which ones have strict rules on posting. Take some time to just observe before joining in the discussion and you will be sure to find LinkedIn Groups a valuable online marketing resource.

Photo courtesy of NickStarr

10 Time-Saving Tips for Social Media Management

If you have been learning more about social media, you know that it can be incredibly valuable for growing your business. You've probably also realized that, while inexpensive, it can take a tremendous amount of time...and time is money! At MatchedMarketing, we recommend that even small businesses looking to generate leads from the internet attempt to “be social” for at least 1-2 hours per day. Companies with a highly-competitive market will require even more time.

First lets talk about why you should spend time on social media. For the answer, remember these three C's:

• Connect – You want to use social media networks to build your own personal network. Treat the time you spend on these social networks the same way you make time to attend chamber events, tradeshows and seminars.
  
  
• Credibility – It is important that your prospects see that you “know your stuff.” In the traditional world of marketing, you would have accomplished this goal through public speaking, writing a book or making presentations. You do the same on the internet through posting articles on your blog and e-books on your site.
  
  
• Capture – In terms of building your presence online, it is probably important to you that your website rank high for certain search results. By spending time on social media, you will not only find that your comments are now indexed on search engines like Google, but you will also be building links into your site which are a tremendous factor in search engine rank.
  

Now lets talk about the main point of this article, how to really maximize your time spent on social media. Here are 10 tips to help you save time on social media activities:

1. Bookmark your favorite blogs so you can quickly find good places to comment and generate ideas for article topics you want to add to your own blog. Search for blogs that accept comments by adding “comment” to the tail end of your keywords blog search.
   
   
2. When you write a blog, keep it short, 250 words is fine.
   
   
3. Skip the picture. Blogs that have photos may get a better response, but if you are spending hours looking for the right image and it prevents you from blogging again, it is better to skip this step. You'd benefit more from having three blog posts with no pictures, than one with a great picture.
   
   
4. When in a pinch for blog content, choose an article you found interesting and just write a summary of the article as your blog opener, then link to that article to give your reader more information.
   
   
5. Use onlywire.com to bookmark your blogs on multiple sites all at once.
   
   
6. Use HootSuite to set up and schedule your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter status updates for the week.
   
   
7. Use other tools like Ping.fm (similar to HootSuite) that can be accessed through your cell phone for updating on the go!
   
   
8. Set-up a private Twitter list to watch what your competitors and favorite Twitter people are saying and ReTweet their messages when in need of good, quick status updates.
   
   
9. Search LinkedIn Answers on LinkedIn for a topic you know a lot about and answer questions to build credibility and find prospects.
   
   
10. If it's easier for you to express your knowledge verbally rather than writing it, GREAT! Get a video camera (maybe your computer has one built in) and record yourself speaking for less than 3 minutes and post the video on YouTube, then write a 1-3 sentence opening summary and post the YouTube video's HTML code into your blog so visitors can watch your message instead of reading.
    

There are many more great tips we could share for ways to save time with your social media, but the best time saver of all? Hire MatchedMarketing to manage your social media for you! We work best with small to medium-size companies and would love to help you get started on your way.

Remember, the best way to find clients is through building your network connections. Use these time-saving internet marketing ideas to realize more internet connections with less effort.

 

Photo provided by Aaron Geller

Blogging: Making Time Instead of Excuses

You know that old saying, “do as I say, not as I do?” Well, it is important to remember as you read this article. As a small business owner, it has been very difficult for me to make time to update my blog. Although I am very aware of how important blogging is, and how beneficial it can be to growing my business, I've been putting it at the bottom of my priority list. At the top, of course, are all the activities I need to complete to take care of my customers. Luckily, I've had enough business to keep me so busy that the priority list is a very long one. At least that is my excuse as to why this is the first article I've posted in quite some time.

But this article is not about sharing sad stories about how we are all too busy to maintain our blogs. This article is meant to help you, and me, get back on track to keep an active blog as part of our regular routines. The truth is, when we say we “don't have the time,” what we are really saying is, “I don't see this as a necessary priority.”

For that reason, I want to remind us why blogging is so valuable and important:

• Blog articles attract prospects to your website. By titling your blog using keywords, the article is more easily found on search engines and will drive traffic to your site from those looking for more information or answers on a topic you address.
  
  
• Blogs are a great way to gain credibility. Writing educational articles help your audience to see you as a knowlegeable resource in your field. It gives you a chance to show off your education and/or experience in a certain area.
  
  
• A blog can help you build links into your site. Inbound links are a key element in algorithms search engines use to decide page rank. Once your blog is written, it can be bookmarked on all the available bookmarking sites and it can be shared among the internet community where others may choose to link to your article as a resource from their site. You need to create and provide valuable content so that you have the potential for others to link into your site.
  
  
• The blog gives you an opportunity to increase your ranking for keywords. Fresh content on your blog is a factor in page rank with search engines, so adding more and more articles helps you to appear as a valuable resource to search engines for keywords you use in your content.
  
  
• Blogging may help you stay ahead of the competition with your knowledge. Often times it requires a bit of research to complete an article. If you are blogging often, you will be learning often.
  

So each time you are making that “to do list” for the day, try to push your blogging back up to the top. All of us could use more customers and blogging is a great way to attract that new business. I promise to do the same moving forward!

Pricing for Advertising - Print and Web

Recently I've done some research for clients on advertising for their business. One was very interested in print advertising and one needed information for placing banner advertising on specific content-based Web sites (not Google Ads or ads on search engines). What was interesting to me is that although there were obvious differences, there we also many similarities in the offerings. Here are some of the similarities and differences I found with print and Web advertising:

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

Although the pricing for print often started higher, when looking at CPM (Cost Per Mille), the pricing was similar for print publications and online resources. Those that had many readers and more demographic information about their readers could charge a higher CPM than those that had a smaller set of viewers and no demographic info.

Pricing Based on Target Audience

Another factor in the price for an ad in print and on a Web site was how targeted the content was. Interestingly enough, for the highly-targeted print publications, often their pricing was less per-thousand readers than their broader-reaching publications. Online it seemed to be the opposite. The more targeted your content was on a particular niche market, the more valuable the ads were seen and these targeted sites charged more for their ads.

Packaged Pricing

Both print publications and Web sites based on content were offering packages for advertising with them. There were print publications that created packages that included online ads, and similarly, there were Web sites that packaged print ads with online ad prices. Both also offered advertising in their e-mail marketing messages.

Options for Reaching Customers

When looking at the packages, the Web sites offered more options for different ways to reach their readership than the print publications. Some of the additional things the websites were offering were social media mentions, video reviews and inclusion in press releases.

It is important to mention that the most glaring difference between print advertising and online advertising is the ability to prove that your message was actually viewed. If you buy an ad in the paper, and that paper is mailed to all their subscribers, it's still possible that the publication was never opened, or that the section holding your ad was completely skipped. With online advertising you are paying for every time your ad is on a page that was actually SEEN (pay per impression/page views). This can all be tracked with analytics. The other benefit with advertising online is that there is no additional cost for color ads!!

Are you seeing the same similarities and differences in your research? If your company sells ads on your Web site, what other benefits do you explain to consumers when asked why they should spend their marketing dollars advertising on your site?

Photo by Ed Yourdon.