They surveyed people considered to be B2B “buyers,” meaning the types of folks that a B2B marketer would target.  What I saw in the data, which I’ll summarize in this post, was a great reminder that if you are executing well on “the basics,” you’re in a much safer place and can confidently experiment with all the new “bells and whistles” that you could put in your marketing emails (e.g. video, social networking, fancy graphics, etc.).

Let’s look at the top 4 features respondents ranked for what they would find useful from B2B marketing emails.  I think you’ll agree that there is nothing fancy or high-tech about them:

#1 “Provide Links to Relevant Content” – This is perhaps the most basic concept in all of email marketing, but remains the most crucial.  Relevance rules on the Web; if you’re not convinced, just think about what a small startup named Google has done with ‘relevance.’    In terms of application, it’s key to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes as much as possible.  If you tease them with a bit of content, and ask them to click to ‘learn more,’ the landing page on your site better be 110% relevant to what they just read!  Do a quick audit of your next upcoming email blast and look for places where you link to your homepage.  Are there more specific pages on your site that are more relevant?  If you’ve linked to the most relevant page, is the “scent” of that relevance reinforced with imagery, headlines, bolded phrases, etc.?  We’ve been writing about the importance of scent from the driving point to the landing page since at least 2006.

#2 “Ability to Navigate from Within the Email to More Detailed Content” – Even your most loyal customers or your most ‘Late Stage’ prospects are still going to scan your email before they commit to reading it.  Make it easy on prospects by providing a Table of Contents that anchors down into the details of the email’s articles.  MarketingSherpa does this with their newsletters, as a matter of fact [click screenshot to enlarge].  This is a relatively easy feature to include in emails, and the survey respondents are definitely asking for it.

#3 “Highlight Keywords and Points” – OK, maybe this is the most basic thing you could possibly do to improve your emails!  Use visual cues (highlighting, bolding, etc.) to give key content some extra prominence.  This is essentially “Writing for the Web 101″ stuff, but I’m surprised how many B2B marketing teams get lazy about this point.  Remember back to #2 when I said that people are going to scan before they commit to reading?  Here’s another way to persuade them to actually read.  If they actually read, they may click through, and if they click through, they may convert.

#4 “Better Organization” – This survey choice is worded a bit vaguely, but I interpret it to mean that your B2B emails should have a beginning, middle, and end; they should have clearly-delineated sections that use clear headlines and sub-headlines; all the “read more” calls to action should look the same; the formatting should be clean (even with images blocked).  The list of small details goes on, but #4 essentially is asking for the same thing as numbers 1-3.

These four “basic” requests from B2B prospects all follow a common theme: Reduce the ‘mental overhead’ required by the recipient.  We’re asking for a lot from our prospects (whitelist, open, scan, read, click, browse, convert).  In return, they simply want us to save them a bit of time, and make their lives a tiny bit easier.  It’s not so much to ask in return for conversions and sales!

Now, I’ll paraphrase all the features of emails that respondents essentially de-prioritized:

• more interactivity
• more graphics
• advanced customization
• less content
• advanced delivery timing,
• and social networking links.

It would’ve been useful to have asked respondents about “video” in emails, but I guess that’s a feature you’ll have to experiment with yourselves.  The lesson is that ONLY after you’re solid and consistent on the top 4 features should you start testing the effectiveness of the rest of the more ‘advanced’ email features.

In B2B email marketing, as in life, you have to lay a strong foundation and get the basics right before you start adding on additional features.

Good question!  Many people assume that optimizing for higher conversion rates in the Business to Business (B2B) environment always ends up decreasing lead quality.  We at FutureNow don’t believe that for one minute, though.  If you’re responsible for a B2B lead generation site, lead quality should be of equal importance to lead quantity.

Let’s face it; if your efforts at conversion rate optimizing decrease the quality of leads, your sales force will let you know about it!  They’ll be in your office/cubicle/face very quickly pointing out how they’ve got less qualified leads to work with, and increasing quotas to hit.  In B2B marketing, the main goal is to feed good leads that are far along in their buying process.

Let’s look at some reasons why conversion rate optimization tactics (when applied haphazardly) might decrease lead quality:

1) Shortening lead forms. It’s common sense that removing fields from your lead forms will likely increase conversion rate, but could easily decrease lead quality by not “qualifying” prospects.  For example, many lead forms ask a question about whether the prospect has a “budget” in place.  Those that don’t have an approved budget are considered low-quality, and are disqualified or de-prioritized.  Removing fields like that from your lead forms should always be tested, and the test data should always be compared against any changes in lead quality.

2) Pushing traffic into the funnel too soon. Sometimes improving your calls to action, headlines, copy, and navigation can combine to funnel more traffic into your lead form, raising your conversion rate.  But if the prospects who convert didn’t do as much up-front research, they may end up as lower quality leads.  For example, if I’m looking for CRM software for my team of 5 salespeople, and you only work with teams of 20 or more, I’m a low-quality lead.  If your efforts to increase conversion rate leave out that very important constraint, I’ll end up a lead that you don’t want!

3) Not being transparent about your pricing. Some B2B marketers don’t disclose pricing on the website (occasionally at the request of Sales).  This tactic could affect conversion rate, but you’ll find that many leads are simply filling out a form so they can find out pricing.  Many of them don’t have the budget and aren’t high-quality leads.

4) Over-promoting with gifts and incentives. I once worked in B2B marketing for a not-very-smart software company that offered the incentive of a free flash drive in addition to a white paper if they filled out a lengthy lead form.  Can you guess what that did to the quality of leads?  The worst part was all the low-quality, early stage leads calling to complain when they didn’t get their free flash drive within 6-8 weeks

So, yes, Conversion Rate Optimization could potentially decrease lead quality if not done carefully.  Now, let’s look at some reasons why CRO, properly executed by a data-driven marketing team, can actually increase lead quality at the same time as increasing conversion rate:

1) Marrying conversion data with lead scoring. Since the ultimate goal is more high-quality leads, you have to carefully test and tweak every pixel and every letter of your lead form, THEN go back and analyze lead quality data to make sure you haven’t altered the quality.  There aren’t any elegant, automated ways I know about of doing this, so you have to be willing to sit down with different data sources and compare, or sit down with Sales and hear their feedback on a regular basis.

2) Letting prospects nurture and qualify themselves throughout your site. Instead of putting a lead form on a landing page, try educating the prospect first, giving them more information that’s relevant, nurturing them, THEN asking for some contact info.  It’s hard work making sure every prospect can get the content/answers they need to graduate to the next stage of their buying process, but it’s one way to move the needle on both conversion rate and lead quality.

3) “Opening the kimono” in regards to pricing. While this is somewhat controversial among old-school B2B marketers and salespeople, being transparent about your pricing can increase your lead quality.  This doesn’t mean you have to have your pricing in 57-point font on your homepage.  But, if your prospects are looking for pricing and don’t find it, you may end up with no leads at all.  Figure out what kind of website behavior indicates lead qualification, and use that data to decide where to reveal pricing.

A few additional posts that are relevant to this topic are Melissa Burdon’s recent post about asking for the lead too early and my two-part review of Steven Woods’s book on B2B marketing and lead quality, Digital Body Language.  UPDATE: Also relevant to the “quality vs. quantity” concept is MarketingSherpa’s recent article “Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-generated Leads.”

If you’re familiar with FutureNow’s process or are a frequent grok reader, you’ll already know that our process involves not only designing effective marketing efforts for each stage of the buying process, but also involves identifying what the conversion points are for each stage of the buying process. However, for those who are not familiar, let’s review:

Early stage visitors are qualified as someone who has only begun their shopping process and may not know exactly what they want, nor are they convinced that they want to purchase from you. At this stage it’s important to answer visitors’ questions and not push them towards anything that says “Buy Now!” Offering these visitors comparison among your own products is also helpful so they can narrow down what they’re shopping for.  An example of a search term an early stage visitor may use is: “car insurance.”

Middle stage visitors are qualified as someone who has decided upon the product they’re searching for, but are not convinced yet that you can provide them with what they need. They may be shopping to find the best price or the best company to fill their needs. An example of a search term a middle stage visitor may use is: “comprehensive and collision auto insurance.”

Late stage visitors are qualified as someone who have decided upon the product they’re searching for and know who they want to purchase this product from. These visitors are yours to lose. Even though they’ve already decided upon purchasing from you, there are still barriers that may make these visitors lose confidence, such as a confusing checkout process, expired product assurances, and slow loading speeds. An example of a search term a late stage visitor may use is: “Progressive comprehensive and collision auto insurance”

Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, let’s get into the meat of this subject. At each of these stages, you have the opportunity to convert these visitors to move to the next stage of their buying process. This doesn’t mean that they necessarily became a sale or a lead. This simply means that you’ve identified the point of interaction at which a visitor has demonstrated to you that they have been persuaded to go from the early stage in their buying process to the middle stage. This micro-conversion point may be the action of “landing on a page” or “signing up for a newsletter.” Identifying micro-conversion points for each of these stages of the buying process is key because they tell us the paths we’re trying to guide visitors through. The two most important parts of graduating prospects from one stage of the buying process to the next are:

1. Getting qualified traffic

2. Getting visitors to complete the lead generation or customer information form

So, how do you improve these two key parts? Let’s start with getting qualified traffic. This may require an over-haul of your keywords. First, write down every one of your marking efforts (PPC, radio ads, print ads etc.) Now it’s time to start digging. Eliminate any efforts that cost you more than you’re making in return. Look at who else you’re competing with for the same traffic and evaluate if/why, they’re getting a larger portion of the market that you are. Are your keywords too specific? Too general? Does your scent trail leave visitors at a dead end? Look through your analytics data, are you using content targeting that is bringing in the wrong type of visitor? If you’re getting 30,000 visitors a month, but none of them are qualified, you might as well be getting zero.

Lead generation forms are my personal nemesis, mostly because I feel I’ve been betrayed by them before. We all have had the experience where, as visitors, we fill out a customer information form, only to begin receiving random emails from a source you’ve never heard of, or asked a legitimate question about the service only to have it go unanswered. To put it simply: lead generation forms have a bad reputation. However, they’re a major win in terms of a micro-conversion so they need to be optimized to their utmost potential. Here are a few tips I regularly use when optimizing customer information forms:

1. Assurances: Let your visitor know that you wont sell their information to email/phone solicitation lists. For extra points, you can give them the option on how they’d prefer to be contacted.

2.  Let them know how long until they’ll be hearing from you. Having a 24-48 hr window for response is typical. (And, not just some automated response that says “Thanks, we got your inquiry, we’ll be in contact with you soon!”)

3. List your phone number near or within your customer information form. Many people (myself included) have been so put off by the use of lead generation forms that they no longer want to involve themselves with them. Having a note nearby that says “Want to talk to someone now? Call us as 123-456-7890″ this way you won’t lose a visitor simply because they fear the form.

4. Let them know what they’re getting. Is this a form for more information? To answer questions? Or, by filling out this form have they begun the purchasing process? Have a title to your customer information form that tell the visitor why they should fill it out, and what they’ll achieve by doing so.

Still want more information? Check out these great posts from Kevin Lee, and Dave Young.

In this post, I’ll wrap up by covering some of the benefits you can get if you learn to observe and leverage DBL, as well as some of the author’s ideas about the future of sales and marketing as marketers start to adopt the DBL approaches.

Benefits of DBL

If you understand DBL, and can leverage the data points it provides, you’ll be in a much better position to effectively nurture early and middle stage leads.  This is crucial since the majority of leads in your database are probably in these two stages.  We at FutureNow spend lot of time working with clients to optimize their sites for early and middle stage buyers, so this was great to read.  We also encourage B2B marketers to design marketing efforts intended to “graduate” their prospects from one stage of their buying process to the next.

In addition to more effective lead nurturing, DBL allows for much more accurate lead scoring, which is of huge value to an organization.  Most B2B sales and marketing teams seem to only have 2 lead scores: “hot” and “disqualified.”  The lead is either worth calling on the phone, or they’re thrown away.  This obviously can lead to frustration on both sides of the Sales/Marketing fence.  By tracking and monitoring DBL, you have a lot more data to use in scoring leads so Sales knows which ones are “hot,” and which ones simply aren’t ready to buy and can be nurtured.

Woods uses example lead categories of:
1.    Inquiries – usually some contact information captured online
2.    Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – Marketing has vetted as qualified for Sales
3.    Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) – Sales agrees to follow up with the leads
4.    Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – Sales agrees the leads are qualified to be sold to
5.    and Deals – closed business

The above categories can set an organization up for a very disciplined, data-driven approach to their prospect pipeline.

DBL is also a tool that helps teams get away from the usually-broken “lead source” model. Woods eloquently argues against the traditional model on page 185:

…the prospective buyer is not suddenly “driven” to make a purchase because of a well-crafted marketing campaign or elegantly worded collateral documents.  Rather, a purchase is the culmination of a well-choreographed series of messaging, campaigns, and collateral that–over time–collectively guide the prospective buyer through education and discovery processes that are driven by their own internal interests and business goals.

Best of all, DBL allows for a new, improved way of measuring marketing performance. We all know that measuring marketing effectiveness at driving revenue (as opposed to just leads) is challenging, even with all the fancy data we have at our fingertips these days.  This, I think, contributes to the fact that CMOs have some of the shortest tenures in all of the corporate world.

DBL can be used to understand, track, and prove “the conversion of prospects from one phase of their buying process to the next.”  If a nurture marketer’s goal is simply to find prospects and convert them over time through a succession of buying stages, it becomes much easier to plan campaigns, segment the data, and make wise marketing investments.

Looking Towards the Future

Given that I’m an analyst, one of my favorite parts of the book was Chapter 10 where the author starts to talk about a new breed of “Analytical Marketer:”

Marketers are beginning to capture, store, and process unprecedented volumes of data and will need people with management capabilities and skills to model, prototype, and design processes.

Woods goes on to argue that organizations must change to meet the demands of DBL: executives must understand why DBL is a worthy investment, skill sets have to evolve or be brought in, data cleansing must be a priority for IT and analysts, and marketing organizations have to become more process-driven instead of relying heavily on “creativity for creativity’s sake.”

In the end, though, the author ties it all back to that core concept of realigning to the buyer’s buying process–using DBL to understand their needs, and providing the marketing that will help them move themselves through the buying stages at their own pace.  And, being there top-of-mind when they decide they’re ready to raise their hands and ask to be sold to.

Finally, those of you in Early Stage who perhaps aren’t persuaded to buy the book could visit the Digital Body Language blog to learn more.  I’m sure Steven would be happy to nurture you for as long as you need

I’m going to attempt to summarize, review, and add some commentary as it pertains to how we at FutureNow use this concept of ‘digital body language’ to increase the marketing effectiveness of lead generation sites.

First off, I would say that the title of this book really hooked me.  I wasn’t quite sure what the author meant by ‘digital body language,’ but ‘deciphering customer intentions in an online world’ is exactly the challenge that us Persuasion Analysts love!

Next, since it’s a book review, I feel I should provide some critique.  The publisher, New Year Publishing, should have done more quality control reading before pushing this book out the door.  I realize that business books often have more editing errors than, say, non-fiction books, but there were too many in this book.  Entire sections of text were repeated, the illustrations didn’t always match up with the text, etc. And, I felt that the numerous case studies in the book, while illustrative, didn’t have as much quantitative data as I would’ve liked.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s learn more about what Digital Body Language (DBL going forward)  is about.  The book is roughly broken into 4 sections:

1. How the landscape of B2B, complex sales, and marketing has changed because of rapid developments in the Online world
2. What Digital Body Language is, and how this new concept came to light
3. The benefits you can get if you learn to observe and leverage DBL
4. The future of sales and marketing as marketers start to adopt the DBL approaches

But before we get too deep, who should read this book?

• B2B Marketers who sense the shift that’s come because of the Web, but want to adapt and deal with it better
• Marketers moving from an offline background to a more online working environment
• Developers who want to better support their Marketing Teams
• Web Analysts who want to hone their analysis skills in regards to B2B marketing
• Sales Leaders who want better synergy between their sales teams and their Marketing counterparts
• Anyone interested in CRM as it pertains to Marketing and Sales

How the B2B Landscape has Changed

At its essence, the thesis is that the process for marketing and selling in the B2B environment has been changed by the Internet.  It’s not even a “sales process” anymore; it’s all about the “buying process” and how you align to it.  Hmm…reminds me of how I learned that concept from another good book written by FutureNow’s co-founders back in 2006.  While it’s perhaps not the first time this thesis has been written about, I still like this description from page 118:

Marketers can no longer simply devote their efforts to blindly pushing a prospect through a seller-defined sales process.  Buyers no longer tolerate that outmoded thinking.  Instead, today’s marketers must provide appropriate ways to enable buyers to take self-directed actions consistent with their buying interests.  The marketer no longer leads.  He follows the buyer…

We sometimes forget, but the marketing world has changed drastically over the last 10 years…

• Media and technology have changed: Through increasing prevalence of search, email, blogs, video, and peer networking, the quality and accessibility of informational content has improved.  It’s this improved information B2B buyers are using to educate themselves on possible solutions.
• B2B buyers have changed: They rely much less on salespeople, trade shows, and industry analysts.  Their buying cycles are much longer, and buyers are much more savvy at using the Web to self-educate.  Buyers now avoid Sales & Marketing in the early stages of their buying process.  Research is done online, privately, and peer-to-peer.
• B2B Marketing has changed: Marketing assets have become more track-able, efforts are more accountable, business intelligence is better, and there’s much more content out there to help “nurture” leads.  Marketers are much more responsible for intelligence and nurtured leads, as opposed to just ‘demand generation.’
• B2B Sales has changed: Sales organization must increasingly produce more with less, with less face-to-face interaction to learn from.  Sales used to be about doing a sales presentation, gathering intelligence, and “reading the room” for non-verbal cues.  Sales must now rely much more on Marketing’s delivery of motivated leads.

What is Digital Body Language?

The next chapters in the book delve into what DBL is and why it matters in the context of B2B marketing and complex sales cycles.  DBL is a means of data collection and analysis that is intended to deliver on the promise of ‘nurture marketing.’ The book’s stated goals of nurture marketing are to stay on the prospect’s radar, present relevant content, keep the conversation going, and monitor DBL for any changes that indicate the prospect has moved to the next stage of their buying process.

The phrase is a play on the fact that in the “old days,” a salesperson would rely heavily on the body language of those he was selling to.  The salesperson could read the room and figure out who held the purse strings, who was the internal champion, who had major objections, etc.  Because the Web has taken so much of that away, companies must now rely on the digital version of that body language, made up of things like:

• What buying stage the prospect is in (FutureNow assigns Early, Middle, and Late, while the author breaks it down slightly differently)
• What solution/product the prospect has shown interest in
• How interested the prospect is (based on the recency, frequency, and depth of online interactions)
• Role (not necessarily Job Title, but the true role the prospect plays in the decision making committee)
• Information-gathering preferences (Do they ignore email, but visit the blog?  Do they do lots of keyword searching?  Do they watch your videos?)

Next week, we’ll continue by exploring what the implied benefits of Digital Body Language are to both Sales and Marketing teams, and talk about Wood’s vision for the future of marketing under this inevitable model.  Stay tuned!

But did you know that traffic generation and website optimization aren’t mutually exclusive? There are tactics that will help you accomplish both goals at the same time, and one FutureNow Partner recently spoke to me about a tactic that’s working well.

Our Partner is a software development firm that specializes in web-based applications and good old web development and design. They are currently gaining leads and sales by being very active with their marketing mix: radio, billboards, PPC, SEO, etc. They identified that there is a clear separation between their leads based on the lead’s motivations and, more importantly, their budgets. Some leads are looking for a small and simple web site with a custom design, with an approximate $500 budget. Other leads are looking for very complex web sites with a lot of tools and capabilities with a much higher budget in the $5000+ range.

The marketing team recognizes the difficulty in trying to effectively speak to these very different segments on a single site. Even using landing pages, there is the possibility that one type of visitor may be turned off by content they read that was written for another type.  (FutureNow has a whole methodology for writing copy and mapping out buying paths for different types of visitors on a single site, but this takes a focused expertise and experience.) On top of trying to speak to all types on their main web site, this company creates completely different buying experiences on separate micro-sites for each segment. This drives more targeted and qualified traffic to these micro-sites. The micro-sites speak more directly to the segment and therefore move them through their buying process more effectively, without possible distractions from content that doesn’t speak to their motivations and needs.

They generate the smaller budget leads via radio ads. These radio listeners are driven to a micro-site in order to follow through on the messaging from the radio ad.

They also generate leads who are primarily interested in finding a web design/development firm in Utah via PPC ads with keywords such as “cheap web sites utah.” They send these visitors to a different micro-site and speak to their interests of a local company that can meet their web design needs.

As you can see, they send these very different prospects down customized buying persuasion paths based on the buyer’s motivation and need. By doing this, they are driving more targeted traffic to sites that have been more effectively optimized for a particular segment.

You can segment your traffic by the different products or services that they are searching for.  Or, you can segment your traffic by the different problems they are experiencing, or solutions they are looking for.  Are you driving all traffic to specific landing pages, or simply a single homepage on a single web site? Are you optimizing your site based on different motivations? These are good questions to ask yourself in order to get started optimizing your primary web site.

On top of optimizing your primary website, you should consider the micro-site tactic in order to drive more targeted traffic to your company and quickly turn this traffic into leads or sales. This tactic is applicable to multiple online business models; whether you’re e-commerce, lead generation, or a brochure site.

Note: Micro-sites are entities that can become part of your overall marketing strategy and shouldn’t be created and then forgotten about. Along with your other marketing efforts, micro-sites need to be continuously optimized and improved.

Are you ready for the challenge?

So the natural thing to do is trim non-performing words and phrases in order to increase the efficiency of your PPC spend.  And that’s exactly what one client did, except rather than increasing his efficiency, he dropped his sales by 30%.

Why?

Because, depending on what you sell, lots of people buy on their second, third, or umpteenth visit to your site, rather than the first visit.  Those visitors are building confidence in you as they move through their buying process.  But most systems don’t (or can’t) track user behavior over multiple visits.   So when those early and middle buying-stage keywords shown up as non-converters, they get cut.

The shame is that not everyone is able to track the following sales drop off, which may not occur for days, weeks, or months, back to the act of cutting those keywords.

Trading away Dennis Rodman as a Non-performing Player?

Would you trade Dennis Rodman for non-performance?  Of course not, right?  Rodman’s defensive stats alone tell the tale.  At his prime, Dennis was pulling down a truly astonishing 18.7 rebounds per game.  For reference, the previous year’s league leader in rebounds (David Robinson) averaged 13 per game.

But if the only stats you looked at involved scoring, you’d get a different picture. Comparing Rodman’s 8-9 points per game against other star players’ 20 or more points per game, you’d likely have been misled into trading Rodman, only to find yourself wondering why you started losing games and everyone else’s scoring stats went up against your team.

Think of your assisting keywords terms as the Dennis Rodman’s of your PPC campaign, except you’ll get all the assists and none of the off-court shenanigan’s.

There’s plenty of other ways myopic analysis can leading you astray

A recent eConsultancy post discusses how Google’s default window for tracking cookies can distort traffic data.  Left in its default cookie window setting, Google Analytics (GA) will classify visitors as “search”-driven traffic for six months following a single search based click through to your site – regardless of how they got to your site previous to that search or how they might arrive at your site following that search. Here’s an example of how this might skew your results:

Let’s say you’re driving traffic to your site via radio ads and that a listener, after hearing your ad, types your url directly into his browser.  Later, he comes back but this time, he types your business name into Google and clicks through on a displayed search result.  Following that, he visits your site three more times via bookmark or directly typing your URL into his site. That’s a total of 5 visits.

Question: How many of those visits would GA classify as search-driven?

Answer: 4 out of 5.

GA would count the first search-based visit and then all of the remaining 3 visits, despite the fact that the following three visits didn’t use search and may have taken place several months after the initial search.  Multiply that by all your visitors/visits, and you can see how your understanding of what drives traffic to your website might be distorted in favor of search. And under the impression that your traffic was mostly generated by search and not, say, your radio ads, you might be tempted to cut them from your ad spend.   Obviously, the same thing could apply with e-mail campaigns, magazine ads, etc.

Bringing Clarity and Orientation to Web Improvement Efforts

Any experienced Web Analyst or Website Optimizer could extend this list of “gotchas” and “classic mistakes” almost indefinitely.  It’s just not that uncommon for an uncareful analysis of data to lead online marketers either to analysis paralysis or sub-optimal optimization strategies.  Is it any wonder that 70% of businesses collecting wed data fail to act on their analytics data?

Obviously this issue has been central to Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Web careers since the beginning.  It’s why they helped found the Web Analytics Association; why they published The Marketer’s Common Sense Guide to eMetrics, Call to Action and Always Be Testing; why they created Persuasion Architecture; and ultimately why they’ve built the OnTarget program.

The central theme amongst all of these issues is bringing clarity and actionable insight to Web improvement and online marketing efforts.  They are all answers to the business owner who feels confused or disoriented by the data he’s given and want’s a clear direction toward more sales/conversions and improved website performance.

So, if you find yourself struggling to make sense of your online marketing data, or frustrated by non- or counter-productive optimization efforts, ask yourself: are you giving credit where it’s deserved?  Or do you need help achieving greater clarity and actionable insight from your optimization efforts?

1. a serious or respectable drama or film classic,
2. a romance or chick-friendly movie for the wife,
3. and some guilty pleasure action movie or low-brow comedy.

Guess which movie gets watched last or returned unwatched?

You betcha, it’s usually the drama/classic.  Oh the shame!

The thing is, unless I had added the high-brow movie to my “menu,” I’d likely have forgone the guilty pleasure of the action flick and just picked up the semi-respectable romantic comedy to watch with the wife.

Seems like recent scientific research shows it’s not just me and not limited to movies, either.  Apparently, diners given the option of salad are 3 times more likely to order french fries than if salad wasn’t on the menu.  Kind of counter-intuitive, when the healthy option spurs more unhealthy behavior.

But when you think about it, it kind of makes sense.  The fact that you thought about ordering the salad – and intend to order the salad at the next meal – helps you justify the french fries now, just like renting Touch of Evil helps me justify actually watching X2.  ‘Cause aren’t we all interested in eating desert now and working out later?  Would drinking be nearly as popular if the hangover came before the high?

So how can this apply to your business? Lots of ways, I’d guess, but the 2 that come to mind are as follows:

1) Charging the self-aware more money for the privilege of being restricted to the straight and narrow.  Chip and Dan Heath have an excellent article on this very strategy in the last issue of Fast Company.  People want to offload responsibility and even choice in order to circumvent their own “desert first” tendencies, and they’ll often pay you to help them overcome their own worst tendencies.

2) Front loading the exciting stuff while reassuring prospective customers that the good-for-you stuff is available/on its way. Amazon Prime is so incredibly seductive because 2-day shipping is within most people’s impulse-buy time horizon.  And it’s justifiable because, hey, shipping is free, and I’m sure I’ll get around to actually reading these books at some point, right?  And thus my antilibrary grows.

If you sell services, give some thought on how you can implement these techniqes, both from a business strategy and a web copy standpoint.

Here’s a few business examples:

• Sales results slide a bit, but aren’t really bad enough to push management into real action.  They look around at some of their sales training and sales recruiting options, but sit on that information as long as times are moderately good.  Then, when a competitor starts stealing away key accounts or the market starts shrinking it suddenly becomes time to buy sales training.

• A company’s e-mail hosting requirements grows increasingly more complex.  The in-house hosting becomes shaky at best and the IT manager knows it should be outsourced.  He takes a look at his outsourcing options, but he’s got about 10 other higher-priority items on his to-do list.  He might putter along like this for a year before suffering, say, a 2-day e-mail outage.  Now the IT manager/company is really in the market for outsourced exchange hosting.

What I’m talking about are precipitating events – the kind of things that move a someday/maybe aspiration into a firm resolve to buy.

Now here’s the deal: most companies involved with B2B and complex sales know (or at least the sales people know) exactly what their top 5 or so precipitating events are, but most B2B websites utterly fail to address any of the primary emotional concerns and questions of an individual or organization experiencing such an event.

As I’ve said before, B2B sales are far more emotional and personal than most marketers want to admit.  Failing to take into account how a precipitating event would effect your prospects emotions and concerns can utterly kill the sale before you’ve even acquired the lead.  My thoughts on exercise might look quite a bit different after a heart health scare than before.  I might well be less concerned about regaining my lost (and largely notional) athleticism than just plain fitting enough basic cardio into my routine so as to not end up a “dangers of sedentary lifestyle” statistic.

Think the very same thing doesn’t happen with organizations and the decision makers within them?

And if you want to go one step beyond the basics of relevant copy, you might even want to consider how you could take a visitor in the “faint signal” and someday maybe stage and seed them with messaging and a recall cue associated with likely precipitant events.  But that’s for another post…

For now, figure out your precipitative events and see how many concerns and questions your website leaves unaddressed and unanswered.

In fact, whenever I work with B2B and complex sales clients it’s a sure bet their website won’t:

1) Adequately address the multiple decision-makers and influencers involved in securing the lead

If a sales manager needs to justify a training expense to his CEO and CFO, wouldn’t it help to provide your inside champion with messaging and tools to help him make his (read “your”) case?

It’s usually good to have sections of your website and messaging designed specifically for those secondary decision-makers and influencers that need to sign-off on the decision of your inside champion.  As an analogy to the consumer world, would you really want to construct a website that sells engagement rings without providing content and messaging for the prospective fiancee?

2) Have planned (and tracked) conversion points for visitors who are early in the buying process

To keep with the consumer analogy, let’s say you’re considering having a pool put into your back yard.  Assuming that one of your local pool suppliers/installers had a website with valuable early and middle stage content, how many times might you visit their website before actually contacting them and becoming a lead?

• You might come to them early on when doing preliminary research regarding what type of pool you wanted, what size, shape, depth, etc you should look at, what kind of associated expenses and purchases are involved, etc.  Reading this stuff might take 3-5 or even 15 different visits.  How would you know if any of these visits are successful?  How could you measure or get a handle on your Website’s influence on such a buyer?I’d normally suggest having a goal for these types of visitors.  Maybe it’s downloading a pool planning or pools for dummies report/PDF.  Maybe it’s playing with an interactive pool builder or pool cost calculator.  Whatever it is, having a trackable (and helpful) event for these early stage buyers helps to track your Website’s success in attracting and engaging

• Moving to the middle stage of the buying process, you might touch the site again when you are closer to buying and constructing a short list of potential contractors/installers.  This time you might drill down into why you should do business with them and not someone else, reading up on their installation timelines, the skill of their install crew, etc.You may or may not feel like filling out a lead form at this point.  But a valuable and well-merchandised free download titled something like, “10 Questions to Ask Any Pool Contractor,” might look far more attractive to you – especially if you only had to provide a name and e-mail (rather than the lead forms more detailed info requests) to get it.

• And then at the late stage of your buying process you might look at the site a third time to fill out the form or get the phone number to actually buy the pool. What a waste if the pool website only had the lead form as a conversion point, without ever providing (let alone tracking) any of the early and middle stage downloads and conversion events.  Questions would go unanswered, and prospective buyers would go unengaged / go somewhere else.

Needless to say, the exact same patterns of behavior occur for B2B sites as well.  And yet most B2B sites don’t have defined content and conversion points for their early and middle stage visitors.  Your prospective leads are going to go somewhere to get their questions answered, shouldn’t it be on your website not your competitors?

3)  Have metrics/analytics capable of tracking visitor behavior over multiple visits.

While early and middle stage conversion points help a Web analyst/website optimizer get a better handle on a sites overall success in engaging early and middle stage buyers, it still leaves them guessing at the big picture, simply because they can’t track a lead generation or sale all the way back to that prospect’s first visit to the Website.  This can be crucial for gauging the real success of a PPC campaign.  Key words that might look unprofitable (because they target earlier stage buyers) might be spectacularly profitable – but only after the 8th (or 20th) visit to the site.  Unfortunately, if you can’t track visitor behavior over multiple visits, it’s difficult to get a handle on real – vs. false- measures of keyword performance.

While I love, love, love Google Analytics / Google Ad Words, this is exactly one of these tools shortcomings.  And it’s one reason that we insist that our OnTarget clients install our software in addition to GA/GWO: OnTarget can bracket visitor behavior through keyword entry and track individual visit behavior over multiple visits.  It’s a wish-list come true for us Future Now Persuasion Architects and can be a positive boon for our On Target clients.

So there you have it: start matching your B2B and complex sale website to the real complexity of your sale.  I’ll be writing follow-up posts with exercises and steps on how to do this, but in the meantime, would it be too forward of me to suggest you sign up for On Target?

Have you ever received great advice from a consultant but couldn’t implement it?

A recommendation is just advice, no matter how excellent, until you implement.

It’s only when you implement a recommendation that you reap the rewards.

Even when you know the advice is great you can get consulting indigestion.

You, the client, in consuming the advice can be the log jam or the hero of every consulting engagement. It’s rarely the consultant that makes the difference. If you choke or get indigestion then consulting leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Just-In-Time Optimization

We have always tried hard to screen for toxic clients with unrealistic expectations. Our NPS scores are excellent and our client successes speak for themselves.  Nevertheless, the most common lament among our clients isn’t about us it’s about them. They simply don’t have extra resources or time to implement everything we recommend.

We could ask our customers to change or we could change.

We chose to change!

Instead of providing you with a gut busting all-you-can-eat buffet we’ll provide you only the healthiest tastiest morsels of advice that you can actually consume and we’ll do it for much less money.

Think of it as just-in-time optimization. You tell us how much time and resources you can devote and we’ll prioritize our recommendations based on how much impact it will have towards reaching your goal.

You get analysis and recommendations without the considerable expense of having to hire an analyst.

We’re Not Crazy

Well at least we’re not dangerous, except to your competitors.

OnTarget, our new software-as-service model allows us to automate a great deal of otherwise costly consulting tasks that don’t provide as much value to you.

With OnTarget you get:

1. Our expert analysis of your online lead generation and sales efforts;
2. The best recommendations you can actually implement with an estimate of time & resources required;
3. Pricing based on your ability to implement (starts as low as $1,000 a month) so that you achieve the highest return on investment of your time, money & resources.

We are launching the OnTarget program this week. We will be busy revising our website all week but you can preview the OnTarget service description.

If you want to know more or want to inquire about our reseller program please contact us.

Marketers are often measured by the number of leads they generate. Sales people are measured by sales. Marketers don’t want to be held accountable for sales because they aren’t actually selling. Sales people criticize “poorly qualified” web leads. This all leads to a lot of tension.

The Consequences of “Low Quality” Leads

In fact, in a survey conducted by Omniture and InsideSales.com they set up aliases, such as John@xyzcompany.com, and completed the lead or request information form of 700 different companies, several different times. Then kept track of their lead response and nurturing strategies and found:

• Average email response time: 19 hours, 31 minutes
  *Optimum response time should be within the first hour

• Average phone response time: 36 hours, 57 minutes
  *Optimum phone response time should be within the first five minutes

• How many companies even responded?
  *Only 47.3 percent responded via email, and just 7.5 percent responded via phone!

Web-generated leads decrease effectiveness by over 6x in the first hour according to InsideSales.com.

Obviously, there is a huge disaster in the making. Marketers have potential customers who indicated some level of qualification to buy from your company and sales people who practically refuse to respond. In the end everyone loses out.

Five Steps to Solving the “Lead Qualification” Problem

1. Identify which sources of traffic generation are creating improved qualification rates and ideal close rates. You need to have the analytics and a CRM / sales workflow system that helps you close the loop from marketing all the way through the close of the sale.

2. Identify which offer types improved qualification rates and close rates. Understand your personas and what actually matters to them. Spend time testing and refining offers and generating additional content that you can prove matters to your prospects.

3. Improve your method of qualifying and capturing leads. Test your lead forms to find the right balance of questions that keep the quality and lead count up. Use a platform that enables you to capture web activity (pages/content viewed, tool/calculator interactions) and include that information in the customer profile for sales. This usually involves tagging content to identify its value in the sales and buying process. Content tagging is so simple when you use Persuasion Architecture.

4. Improve your method of distributing leads. Often times the delay in getting form submissions responded to is your internal process of routing leads to the appropriate sales person. This should never be a manual process considering you lose a leads effectiveness with in the first few minutes. Think about it, the last time you submitted a form on a site, when did you want the response to your inquiry. Now! So do your prospects. Use a platform that will automatically distribute leads based on the profile of the customer you have collected through their visit(s). Distribution is often based on geographic region, company size, product/service they are interested in, etc. Either you can have the prospect fill this out in a form or most of this information can be collected and gleaned by web activity.

5. Improve your lead response time. When marketing aligns with sales using effective content planning, integrating the customer buying process with the company’s sales process, distributing leads that have not been turned off by your processes (and horrendous forms), providing sales people with details that matter to them about the prospect’s interests and motivations and then distribute those leads effectively, their isn’t a salesperson who wouldn’t want to respond to that kind of “qualified” prospect right away.

Do you need help generating more qualified leads? We are here for you.

In fact, his last e-mail was so good and applied so well to most lead generation websites that I thought I’d share it with you directly:

“…Leach recruited the BIGGEST OFFENSIVE LINE in college football (bet it’s bigger than most pro teams as well). These guys make the offense that Leach runs possible. They wear down defensive lines, protect the passer, open up running lanes … but guess what … THEY DON’T SCORE. They only make it possible to score.

I think great websites similarly open up the door of possibility but no matter how big the website is … and how many bells and whistles it has … there is a lot more to scoring points with the customer.  You still need to do all the other things right.

Southwest Airlines is aggressive online. I print boarding passes through the website.  I get my seat assignments through the website. I also get regular email offers from them. Sounds hunky dory but the Website AIN’T the reason I am booking flights. It is the cost, convenience and great service Southwest has been delivering to ME for a long time. The WEB just made my ongoing relationship with them even easier.

Amazon isn’t just a website … they do an incredible job of shipping my books to my doorstep … and yep, they send me customized emails about new books on subjects I read.

UPS lets my company do all its shipping on line … but it is the guy in the brown truck who picks up my packages on the day I want to ship that I am interested in … the UPS website is merely a tool.

The same concept applies to your clients. The WEBSITE is an extension of the business … it ain’t the business. The Man-Giants for Texas Tech don’t score … they make it possible for Graham Harrel and Michael Crabtree (i.e., the SALES TEAM) to connect and put points on the board  … the defense is the OTHER stuff we do that people may not notice (like delivering really awesome service).

I think that more and more energy is being put into websites (the Offensive Line) … and it is vitally important … but you still have to have a sales force (QB & Receivers) and combine it with excellent core service & products (Defense). Put it all together and you can win a National Title.

t”

Yet while Tom was taking this from a somewhat negative light by asking “are your company’s QB/receivers up to snuff?”  I was taking this from the opposite perspective of, the better the offensive line blocks, the more successful the rest of your offense will become.

More specifically, clients with lead generation sites are always more than happy with the increased number of sales leads we can create through Website redesigns and optimization, but that’s not what the rave about.  What they’re usually blown away by is the increase in lead quality and reduction in sales cycle time.

Why?

Because most clients weren’t thinking about – and therefore weren’t expecting improvement in – that aspect of lead generation when they hired us, so success on that front is more of a WOW for them.  And also because those factors can be even more important in bottom line success than increasing the raw amount of leads.

Of course, when you really focus on the fact that the website itself won’t complete the sale, it becomes second nature to ensure the sales team gets the best possible hand-offs and the most protection from time-wasting tire kickers “sacking” your QB.

So if you already have a solid sales team, the question I’d ask you is: how good is your offensive line, and how much more could you be scoring with a better one?

Lead generation sites fail to convert for three basic reasons:

1. Visitors don’t understand the value they get in exchange for giving their information.

2. They are informationally challenged and collect too little, too much, or incorrect information.

3. You haven’t established trust and set proper expectations of what to expect when doing business with you.

Obviously, each is interrelated and flow from one to the other. There might be a few more reasons, but for now, these three culprits are enough to start you identifying specific problems on your site and determining action items for optimization.

Keep in mind, more leads may not be what you need. You may need more qualified leads, and a properly planned Web site should help the visitor qualify herself.

We’ve worked with several companies that have seen a decrease in the number of leads, but increased sales and optimized the sales team time and closing ratios because the quality of their leads was improved.

Exchanging Value: My Name for Your Service

Many sites offering “free” whitepapers, case studies, or resources in exchange for some visitor information do a poor job of merchandising their downloads. Your downloads contain valuable information. Treat them as such.

Stop thinking of these downloads as free. You’re asking for something extremely valuable to both you and the visitor, their contact information. To get this valuable information “merchandise” your downloads better. Show the visitor the value of what they’re downloading. So when they fill out the lead form, they feel they’re making a good exchange, valuable information for valuable information.

Include thumbnails of documents.

Let them know what they’ll learn from the download.

Let them know what they can do with the information.

List everything what’s “in it for them” in the download.

Let them know what will happen with their information. Will you be calling them? (More on this, below, under “Establishing Trust and Expectations”.)

If you offer a free trial or demo period, provide clear information about what they are getting. Is it a fully functional trial with a time limit? What happens when the demo runs out? Will you offer them support during the trial? (Sounds like a good way to win over a potential customer doesn’t it?) Disclose system requirements before they begin the sign up process.

Track the number of “bogus” e-mails you get, either bad e-mail addresses or e-mails from Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail. If you get too many emails from lucilleball@yahoo.com or elvisp@hotmail, rest assured that visitors don’t see value in the offer and the exchange.

Beware, sometimes these tactics will cause a drop in the number of leads, but rid you of junk leads. You have to determine if this is an acceptable trade off (it almost always is).

Help for the Informationally Challenged

Information, information, information is all around us. Some is useful, sometimes it’s hard to find what’s useful, and some information is just plain not helpful at all.

One approach to determine if you have info problems is to examine time spent on page. Often times I work with sites that have low time spent on main content pages but their FAQ page gets more visitor time. This may indicate that visitors aren’t finding information they need elsewhere. If a visitor relies on your FAQ to get information, it reduces trust. Why aren’t these frequent questions answered frequently (or linked to) on key pages like home and service/product pages?

Often sites put up so much information that visitors cannot find the piece of info they seek. This occasionally indicates an information architecture problem, but more often indicates that the visitors’ needs and motivations aren’t addressed in the content.

Another key issue often neglected is that often the person doing the research on the Web site isn’t the decision maker. She’s trying to gather, sort, and print (you do make it easy to do that, right?) information to give to the person making the decision. Are you making your site easy to understand for this person as well?

There really are no easy solutions to get your information in order. First begin to establish a persuasive framework, building personas then planning each persona’s interaction or persuasion scenarios with your site, and determining what information they need and when and where they need it on the site.

Establishing Trust and Expectations

Visitors must trust you. If they don’t, they don’t become leads or often they become bad leads. Visitors may even fill out a lead form if they mistrust you. Sometimes they are just going through the motion of getting proposals and pricing and are planning on buying from your competitor. You might have the better solution for them but the site or the lead process doesn’t instill enough confidence to take you seriously.

Most visitors who aren’t confident simply won’t contact you. They fear harassment from the sales team. Or sometimes your site is ineffective in communicating the values of the visitor and they bail. Again, this is a tragedy especially when you consider they could be in the market to buy what you sell.

Other times, visitors are in early stages of the buying process and an overly aggressive lead form will cause them to tighten up, assuming you’ll push them somewhere they don’t feel ready to go. Here are some things you can do to help instill trust.

Include information about what it’s like to work with your company. Let them know when you will contact them. Assure them that you will only help them determine their needs and not pressure them.

Ramp up your About Us page.

Ask as few questions as possible in your lead form. Don’t force them to give you all types information or endure a stack of intimidating drop downs.

Include short, friendly lead forms in several places on the site (not just your contact page). This will help you track where they filled out the form and better inform you what they might be interested in.

Tell them exactly what will happen when they send their info, tell them how soon they will be hearing from you. If possible give them a choice of how and when they prefer to be contacted.

Some visitors like to be prepared for the call. Provide a checklist of information they might need to have handy when they speak with you.

Some visitors prefer to call. Provide the phone number near the lead form.

Now go get some leads.

. .

Originally seen on ClickZ.

Editor’s Note: Want more tips on lead-generation? Join Bryan on June 3rd in Manhattan at the Call to Action seminar.

1. Indicate which fields are required by using asterisks next to these required fields. Ask yourself if the non-required fields offer enough value. If they don’t, remove them from the form. This could potentially make all fields a requirement — and if that’s the case, the asterisks would be overkill — which brings us to our next point.

2. Only have them fill in required fields. Asking for too much information on a web form is like proposing marriage on the first date. We would all like to know our customer’s age, work title, phone number and address, but if you don’t absolutely need it, then remove it from the form. This will make the form shorter and less likely to frustrate the impatient, fast-paced visitor who may not feel comfortable exposing their personal info. Don’t let this be the reason why visitors are dropping off.

3. Clarify what you expect them to do. Doostang gives the visitor a dialog bubble explaining each field when the visitor clicks to fill out a field. This removes any potential confusion as to what information is being requested and could lead to a reduction in errors taking place if a field is filled out incorrectly.

4. Offer reassurances when asking for personal information. Your visitors are concerned about privacy and security issues. You can offer a link to a privacy and security page so that the visitor can click to read and gain confidence.

5. Clearly state what the visitor will get by filling out the form, and do it at the very beginning of the page. Tell them what the benefits are. There should be no question as to what they’ll expect once they fill the form out.

6. Don’t ask people to submit. Call to action buttons should clearly state the action they’re about to take. Use colors and shading that make the button stand out effectively and, please, try to not use the word “submit” — it’s generic and misleading geek-speak.

7. Offer contact information somewhere on this page and/or in the top-right corner of the site (on every page). Give the visitor a phone number and a “Contact Us” link. If they don’t feel comfortable filling out the form, persuade them to call and speak with you directly.

Do you have any other suggestions to add to this list?

Let’s say Mr. Smith finds a bike that meets the requirements and asks, “How much does it cost?” and the store clerk avoids the question. Instead, he responds by giving Mr. Smith more technical info, then makes him fill out a ridiculously long form (like the one mentioned in Holly’s recent B2B post). Do you think he’d stand for this? Or would go to the next bike shop instead?

Some people are stuck on improving their online conversion rate with tactics–like button testing–alone . The problem is that, in order to really boost conversion, you need to sell in the way that the customer wants to buy. And that requires answering their questions and concerns in the order they’re likely asked.

B2B sites seem especially stubborn about listing price, but they omit at their own risk. Answering this would-be simple question is a critical step toward helping visitors gain the confidence to take action.

It’s usually companies that aren’t competing on price who want to keep price a secret. If a company doesn’t compete on price, they’re probably competing on quality; customer service or other factors. So, why avoid the question? Tell the visitor what your price is, even if it’s higher than your competitors’–just explain WHY it’s higher. If you don’t compete on price and your visitor is shopping on price, then that visitor isn’t your customer. Give him what he came searching for and sell him on your unique value. If that doesn’t work, don’t shy away from sending him elsewhere. That level of confidence is contagious, and often results in higher conversion, anyway.

Here’s an example of a site that asks you to fill out a form of very personal information in order to get a quote. The only price listed here is “…mailboxes can start as low as $6.00 per mailbox,” but this doesn’t give the visitor context for how much he’ll need to spend according to his specific situation. He’d much rather see examples of different customers and what their service packages look like, along with (at least) ballpark pricing.

Here’s another example of a site that asks the visitor to contact them in order to get a quote. It’s understandable that in some industries you can’t give the visitor the exact dollar amount for a product/service. Still, the visitor should be able to get an idea of a price range or the price that one of your previous customers paid in order to get an idea of the price they’re really looking at.

We suggest clearly featuring price next to each product/service, with a Call to Action immediately nearby. If the price is custom, give estimates and show previous customer examples so the visitors sees what he’ll get for the money. In a lot of cases, we even recommend showing a comparison chart that allows visitors to easily view your price, feature and benefits right next to those of your competitors. If your price is higher, no big deal–just explain why you’re worth it.

If you hide your price, you’re losing customers. It’s that simple.

OK, I made up that last one, but it really was that bad. The even scarier thing is, I’ve seen hundreds of forms like it.

When someone does a search and lands on your website, they might have some familiarity with you if you’re a well-known brand. Or, more likely, they have little-to-no awareness as to who you are and what you do. Basically, you’ve just met. So, why ask for so much personal, sensitive information on this first meeting? Are you proposing marriage when you should be asking him/her out for coffee?

Part of the problem is, the only way many B2B or lead generation sites measure success is by the number of people who fill in a lead form. That’s a pretty big step. Many visitors to your site won’t be ready to make that kind of a commitment to you yet. So, do you just write them off? Do you consider that a failed conversion?

Don’t forget, there are other micro-conversions to consider. Your visitors might agree to a cup of coffee, or a short “date” to find out more about you. Examples of these types of conversions could be as simple as someone taking the time to read your ‘About Us’ page, or watching a short product video, or signing up for your newsletter. These are conversions. You should be planning and measuring them.

When trying to measure the ROI of your website, you need to take into account the ways you engage prospective customers when they’re earlier in the buying process. Yes, some people are ready to start some sort of relationship with you; meaning, of course, that they fill out the lead form. (You’re only asking for the least amount of information, right?).That’s a measurable success. But don’t forget those who were engaged enough to spend some time on your site, gather information, watch a video, download a whitepaper, sign-up for a newsletter, and so on.

All these micro-conversions indicate your visitors are at least engaging with your brand. They may only be willing to commit to a cup of coffee right now, but that’s an encouraging first step!

Several of the B2B panelists recommended this report by Enquiro. (Notice the wonderfully short registration form ) I haven’t read it yet, but it got high marks from the panel. Let me know what you think!

Anyone with kids knows the routine when you impart your wonderful child with a bit of wisdom.

“Son, do you want to get hurt?”
“No, Daddy”
“Then please don’t jump on the bed!”
“Ok, Daddy”

Simple, right?

Then, about 8 minutes later, comes that ear shattering scream. Your son is curled up on the floor, clutching his thick head, sporting a fresh bump from a nasty tumble. Seems he was jumping on the bed.

Our faithful are likely tired of hearing the same conversion rate rants from us. For the rest, it’s not until after they take a tumble that they decide jumping on the bed is a bad idea.

Jon Miller at Search Engine Land posted a great article describing why B2Bs are typically unsatisfied with PPC agencies, wherein he makes a bold suggestion that B2Bs should abandon PPC agencies altogether. Here’s a nice little nugget from the post:

You know your business better than the agency. One of the most important skills for PPC success is picking the right keywords that your prospects actually use when they search – something you know best. Also, when determining rankings, Google and now Yahoo! care as much about the relevance of your content as they do about your bid (aka “what you say is as important as what you pay”). This means a good understanding of your business and your industry is at least as important as being a search “expert”. Over time, the balance of power between business knowledge and SEM knowledge will shift even further towards business as Google continues to find ways to reward relevant content and discount search agency tricks.

While Jon makes a stunningly accurate diagnosis, his suggested treatment is questionable:

The main value provided by agencies is expertise with SEM, and as I’ll explain, you can bring much of that expertise in-house by using the right kind of pay per click management software. A technology solution can create the best of both worlds: the control and business knowledge of doing it yourself, combined with the SEM best practices and techniques of an expert.

We love technology as much as the next guy, it makes life easier. But in-house technology and SEM best practices will likely still leave you dissappointed. Sure you’ll save their fees, and possibly see some incremental gains but unless you embrace a persuasion methodology, you are just jumping on the bed.

How do you find the right keywords? How do you ensure your prospects are being presented with relevant scent from the ad to the lead form? How do you optimize and measure every variant? What if you don’t have any ‘experts’ on staff?

By giving non-marketing experts a methodology for maximizing demand generation, Persuasion Architecture™ and Persuasive Scenarios are proven to solve this dilemma.

Bryan Eisenberg touched on just one aspect of B2B demand generation last week’s Clickz column.

Sure, it’s hard work, but the only thing harder is ending up with knot after knot on your head.

“An innocuous question can hit you where you live. I should have expected one day someone would ask me, “How do you measure your ROI for that?”

If I’m conducting client training on measuring, testing, and optimizing performance, clients have a right to ask about my own practices. The “that” she referred to is nearly 300,000 words we’ve published online for free over the past two years. I promised her I’d discuss it in this column.

How does someone who writes “ROI Marketing” justify publishing so much content for free? Do we charge for advertising, rent our list, or bombard those names with commercial offers? No. In fact, Jeffrey, my brother and partner who handles such things, estimates we’ve invested about $100,000 developing free content for our newsletter, free whitepapers and other publications. How do we measure its ROI?

We know one side of the equation: the investment. The money has been spent. What did we get in return?” keep reading…

That was from Bryan’s June 2002 ClickZ column, The ROI of Free, where he explained how we calculate the return on all the free content we create. He even said we would double down and did we ever. Since 1999 we’ve published almost two million words for free.

What made me think of this subject today is Chris Garrett’s interview with my friend Sean D’Souza. Sean sums up his response to a similar question with: “Give the ideas. Sell the System.”

I like Chris’s blog. Want proof? You may notice that mine was the first comment. Chris has the interview and links to Sean’s Psychotactics.com.

Do you ever get annoyed when a business’s online communications are as poor, if not worse, than their offline customer service? One of the most sacred promises of the Internet is that we have the power to chat with total strangers, regardless of how fragmented the information or disproportionately strong the opinion, to piece together the bigger picture about a given experience anytime, anywhere. Access to third-party information is always a good thing for any current or would-be customer; it’s the quickest way of saving ourselves the time, money, and opportunity cost of a bad decision. Besides, most customers take information from peers with a grain of salt. So why should business be afraid of online transparency?

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 136

Online sales are growing, but the Internet still influences a lot more sales offline than it does online! Think Persuasion Architecture is simply for sweaters and backpacks?Maybe you know WebEx? It’s a great business solution for powering online meetings , web conferencing, teleconferencing , conference calling, and video conferencing services. They don’t do shopping carts. The basic sales goal on the WebEx site is to persuade the customer to contact sales. In short, the WebEx site is a persuasive lead-generation tool.

To demonstrate the power of Persuasion ArchitectureTM, we worked with WebEx to modify an existing scenario for free trials. We identified six personas and created a new free trial persuasion scenario.

We increased lead revenue for that scenario by 7 figures.

You can pick your jaw up off the table now. It’s within your power to do this too!

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Read the entire newsletter: Volume 135

As marketers in today’s landscape, we must walk a different path. No longer will our product-centered, mass-market habits serve us well. The interconnectedness of emerging media means we must focus on the customer and create persuasive systems that have at their core an understanding of human motivations. Our unfolding experience economy makes this demand on all of us.Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? presents Persuasion Architecture as a set of big principles. Sometimes, the scope can seem daunting … it can feel like sitting in front of a great big feast of roast elephant with your little knife and fork. How, you sensible want to know, do you go about eating an entire elephant?

A perfectly sensible answer? One bite at a time!

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Read the entire newsletter: Volume 134

To reach out and persuade decision makers, remember: decision makers are people. Treat them that way. Sell them that way.

They have identifiable motives, needs, and preferences. They have hopes, dreams, and goals. Their buying habits as consumers compared with their buying preferences as business decision makers may not be as different as you think.

Here are a few practical tips for making your B2B online communication efforts less stiff, more human, and a lot more persuasive.

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…

Okay B2B folks. Time to see the light. Time to challenge your perceptions of industry differences – when it comes to online persuasion, B2B is not substantively different from B2C. You sell; they buy; you’re most effective when your selling process pairs up perfectly with their buying processes. Whatever you’re doing out there in cyber space, you get that relationship right and you’ll persuade brilliantly.Getting stuck on superficial distinctions you think should define your practice of conversion is a big mistake. It’s a great big Forest of Persuasion out there – every possibly variation on selling and buying – and, believe it or not, every tree I’ve ever brought to your attention has come from the same forest! B2B folks who out of hand dismiss B2C examples as irrelevant truly risk missing the forest for the trees.

If you don’t have traffic and don’t have goals for that traffic, you don’t need to pay attention. Everybody else cosy on up, ‘cause this pertains to you.

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Read the entire newsletter: Volume 106

What if your company has a complex business-to-business (B2B) product offering? And what if specific customer needs, budgets, and personalities drastically differ? Simply accounting for a visitor’s buying-cycle stage doesn’t suffice.

We suggest using personas to help manage a complex sales process, an array of product service offerings, or both. There’s no better illustration of this than our own newly crafted personas. They’re the ones we’ll use for our company’s upcoming site redesign.

A Little Background

Our firm offers an array of services and deliverables, including content, training, copywriting, one-time conversion assessments, redesign services, and long-term consulting relationships. We also offer licensing options, allowing larger companies to employ our software and methodology using in-house teams to do the work.

Our clients range from small up-and-coming startups to multimillion dollar companies. We take on some short-term clients and offer some aspects of our methodology ô la carte.

Continue reading my column at ClickZ…