5Ms of B2B Online Marketing

The CXO forum sponsored by the Silicon Valley Association of Start-up Entrepreneurs was held recently in San Francisco. In today’s post I quote some excerpts of the presentation given by Srihari Kumar, CEO, LeadForce1. While his presentation was more focussed on the need for Marketing Automation and how companies can gain from this growing phenomenon, what caught my attention was his slide on ‘The 5Ms of Online Marketing‘. These are 5 techniques, that are core to the success of any online B2B marketing campaign.

5Ms of B2B Marketing

1. Map

Before starting any online marketing campaign it is important to map the channels you plan to use for your promotions. All sites and blogs are not equal. Click-throughs and conversion can be dramatically improved by using mediums which offer high value, are influential in your space and have a proven track record. Be it any aspect of marketing – advertising, PR or Buzz generation-  this activity is a must to ensure, you derive more value out of your campaign and your investment.

2. Micro- Segment

One size does not fit all and the same applies to the marketing channels you choose. Campaigns which are tailor made with a specific channels (website, blog, Social network) in mind are more successful. Here tailor made means taking into account the specific attributes of a site you plan to use – like its traffic, site demographics, site popularity, campaign sentiment, campaign focus, catch phrases used etc. Such defined campaigns record higher conversions because they appeal to their target audience – employing a medium and a tone they can identify with.

3. Motivate Social Magnets

As in the offline world, the online world also has its set of influencers who over a period of time have garnered a huge following of people who believe in their expertise, their word. These include, a number of bloggers, tweeters, journalists, social activists etc. in every business or industry space you can probably think of. These are people whose personal opinion makes a lot of difference to the decision taken by their huge list of fans. It pays companies to develop a relationship with these influencers over a period of time just like they would with the media offline. If these inluencers believe in your product or service and write about it using their creative channels, it can make a huge difference to your Brand’s online equity.

4. Moderate

All online marketing campaigns need constant monitoring. You need to get involved, stay involved and show that you care. Respond to any queries and responses on a regular basis. Resolve issues. Also constant monitoring helps you keep track of your campaigns, change its feel and tone as per the reader responses – ensuring you keep the momentum and show your readers that you are paying attention to what they think. Keep updating your readers on the developments – keep them engaged through the life of the campaign – only then can you expect to succeed.

5. Mechanize

Set alerts, notifications etc. to ensure you are in tune and upto date with the status of your marketing campaigns. Automate the process if possible but avoid surprises and action immediately where ever your intervention is required. Ongoing analysis of the data at hand is essential to derive definite action steps for future implementation. Such data should also be used to gain insight  into the reaction of your readers and to decide the fate of the campaign.

The 5Ms precisely put down the wireframe of building a successful B2B online marketing campaign. Reaffirming the need for campaigns which focus on customization and reaching out to that niche audience than going mass with their offerings.

15 Easy & Useful Backlink Building Techniques For B2B Companies

Building Backlinks

In the realm of online marketing google page ranks can play a big role in making or breaking your brand image. It is no surprise that the Internet marketing space is full of experts and companies who promise to increase the number of your backlinks and in turn your google page rank.

Getting backlinks for your website or blog is a long and tedious process which requires some strategy and planning.

Wonder why I am discussing backlinks on a PR blog, well because from my experience, when it comes to online marketing, building backlinks is equal to doing Public Relations and vice-versa.

Like Public Relations building quality backlinks help build credibility for your site, win you some advertising real estate on another site and help you direct traffic from another site to your site.

Similar to  public relations – for a backlink (read coverage) to be valuable – it should come from a credible site with a good Page Rank. The content or the website should be relevant to what you offer, and the anchor text provided should clearly mention what your site is about.

A good google page rank not only increases your ranking for search but also helps with branding – since it signifies that their are others who value what you offer as content.

Unlike B2C companies building backlinks for a B2B companies can be a herculean task. But the advantage is since there are not many players in a specific industry it takes lesser backlinks than a B2C website to get a good page rank.

Below are some ways of building backlinks for B2B websites -

1. Directory Submissions

Find relevant directories in your industry with Good Page Rank – at least 4 and above – submit your website and company details to that. People looking for players in your industry usually visit these directories to check out their options and your offerings.

2. B2B Search Engines

It would be a good for B2B companies to submit their details to B2B search engines like  - Business.com, Zibb.com, knowledgestorm etc. in addition to your regular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN

3. Whitepaper Submissions

Most B2B companies come up with Whitepapers on their industry as a means of establishing thought leadership. You can submit these Whitepapers to good PR sites like – http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/submitpaper.aspx?tag=content;col2

4. Case study submissions

Yes, now you can submit your case studies too. What better way to showcase, your abilities. Research – you will find many more sites like http://techrepublic.com.com/ which allow you to submit case studies.

5. Bookmarking

Bookmark your website pages on the various well-known and well ranked bookmarking sites. Bookmark your press releases, bookmark any news coverages you received, bookmark your articles etc. These may not directly give you backlinks but will help in increasing the value of your original link. Apart from getting you more traffic from these popular sites.

6. Article Submissions

Writing articles with links to your web pages and submitting these to popular article submission sites like Article base, Ezine articles will get you some good backlinks, especially since the content is something you can write around your offerings and hence relevant.

7. Event Listings

Are you hosting a Webinar, or any other events – research –  their are plenty of event listing sites, list your events there. Not only does it give you backlinks it also bring you traffic.

8. Submitting Corporate Presentations

All those interesting Corporate presentations you create to pitch to your prospects, submit them to sites like Slideshare.com. It not only helps your site with backlinks but can also bring you some good leads.

9. Getting jobs listed on University sites

Research and find colleges and universities who link degree students and alumni to job opportunities. Links from .edu sites like these are considered authority building links.

Obviously the first thing to do is get used to publishing your job vacancies on your site, and then telling potential linking partners about them. PS: Never take these jobs off your site – just mention “Role Filled” and strike out the text.

10. Partner Linkback

Do you work with certain vendors or have other partners in the industry, add them to your partner list and give a link to their sites, ask them to reciprocate in a similar fashion. You can send across a similar request to others you work with as well – resellers, distributors etc.

11. Testimonial Links

B2B companies can speak to their service providers and suggest writing a testimonial for the service provider website in exchange of a link back for your company. (Choose which sites you would like to go with if the list is long based on their google PR). OR  create a blog post, article or content page with a list of your “favorites (vendors)” ranked in a particular order, then email each of the mentioned sites and tell them that they’re welcome to use a “testimonial” quote you’ve written about them and also link to the “rankings” page. Companies love to link to anything ego-boosting.

12. Create Link Baits

Get a survey or research done and publish the report on your site – approach bloggers in your industry with your findings and request them to linkback to the report if they wish to publish the data.

Similarly you can create content around – something relevant to your industry. A list of 10 things every person from your industry show be ‘aware of’ or ‘beware of’ etc. If the list is interesting, you will find many people who would like to link to it. Remember to publish this content on your website for them to linkback.

13. Corporate Blog

Ensure your corporate blog is on the same domain as your website. Run a blog popularity program. Like submitting the blog to blog directories, rss feed directories, do blogger roll exchange etc. It will help in getting backlinks for your blog, increasing its page rank and thereby the page rank of your home page.

14. Competitor backlink analysis

Actually this is the best place to start working on your backlink plan. If any of your competitors have a website with a good page rank – analyze their backlinks and see if any of those sites where their link is present is relevant to you(which is most likely since you are from the same industry). See how you can approach these sites and get your company listed there as well

15. Press Releases & Blogger reachouts

Press releases are a great way of building quality backlinks. You need not spend big money every time for a press release, make it a point to come out with a press release every month. You can issue it using cheaper wire services like webwire.com’s webpost  services or you can just go with a list of free press release sites – some are researched and  listed here by Big News . You can also reach out to Bloggers who cover your industry space with some relevant and exciting story angles. Write-ups from them will not only amount in a good PR Coverage but also a quality backlink and good Google PR..

If you can think of anymore, please feel free to add here..

In the realm of online marketing google page ranks can play a big role in making or breaking your brand image. It is no surprise that the Internet marketing space is full of experts and companies who promise to increase the number of your backlinks and in turn your google page rank.

Getting backlinks for your website or blog is a long and tedious process which requires some strategy and planning.

Wonder why I am discussing backlinks on a PR blog, well because from my experience, when it comes to online marketing, building backlinks is equal to doing Public Relations and vice-versa.

Like Public Relations building quality backlinks help build credibility for your site, win you some advertising real estate on another site and help you direct traffic from another site to your site.

Similar to  public relations – for a backlink (read coverage) to be valuable – it should come from a credible site with a good Page Rank. The content or the website should be relevant to what you offer, and the anchor text provided should clearly mention what your site is about.

A good google page rank not only increases your ranking for search but also helps with branding – since it signifies that their are others who value what you offer as content.

Unlike B2C companies building backlinks for a B2B companies can be a herculean task. But the advantage is since there are not many players in a specific industry it takes lesser backlinks than a B2C website to get a good page rank.

Below are some ways of building backlinks for B2B websites -

1. Directory Submissions

Find relevant directories in your industry with Good Page Rank – at least 4 and above – submit your website and company details to that. People looking for players in your industry usually visit these directories to check out their options and your offerings.

2. B2B Search Engines

It would be a good for B2B companies to submit their details to B2B search engines like  - Business.com, Zibb.com, knowledgestorm etc. in addition to your regular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN

3. Whitepaper Submissions

Most B2B companies come up with Whitepapers on their industry as a means of establishing thought leadership. You can submit these Whitepapers to good PR sites like – http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/submitpaper.aspx?tag=content;col2

4. Case study submissions

Yes, now you can submit your case studies too. What better way to showcase, your abilities. Research – you will find many more sites like http://techrepublic.com.com/ which allow you to submit case studies.

5. Bookmarking

Bookmark your website pages on the various well-known and well ranked bookmarking sites. Bookmark your press releases, bookmark any news coverages you received, bookmark your articles etc. These may not directly give you backlinks but will help in increasing the value of your original link. Apart from getting you more traffic from these popular sites.

6. Article Submissions

Writing articles with links to your web pages and submitting these to popular article submission sites like Article base, Ezine articles will get you some good backlinks, especially since the content is something you can write around your offerings and hence relevant.

7. Event Listings

Are you hosting a Webinar, or any other events – research –  their are plenty of event listing sites, list your events there. Not only does it give you backlinks it also bring you traffic.

8. Submitting Corporate Presentations

All those interesting Corporate presentations you create to pitch to your prospects, submit them to sites like Slideshare.com. It not only helps your site with backlinks but can also bring you some good leads.

9. Getting jobs listed on University sites

Research and find colleges and universities who link degree students and alumni to job opportunities. Links from .edu sites like these are considered authority building links.

Obviously the first thing to do is get used to publishing your job vacancies on your site, and then telling potential linking partners about them. PS: Never take these jobs off your site – just mention “Role Filled” and strike out the text.

10. Partner Linkback

Do you work with certain vendors or have other partners in the industry, add them to your partner list and give a link to their sites, ask them to reciprocate in a similar fashion. You can send across a similar request to others you work with as well – resellers, distributors etc.

11. Testimonial Links

B2B companies can speak to their service providers and suggest writing a testimonial for the service provider website in exchange of a link back for your company. (Choose which sites you would like to go with if the list is long based on their google PR). OR  create a blog post, article or content page with a list of your “favorites (vendors)” ranked in a particular order, then email each of the mentioned sites and tell them that they’re welcome to use a “testimonial” quote you’ve written about them and also link to the “rankings” page. Companies love to link to anything ego-boosting.

12. Create Link Baits

Get a survey or research done and publish the report on your site – approach bloggers in your industry with your findings and request them to linkback to the report if they wish to publish the data.

Similarly you can create content around – something relevant to your industry. A list of 10 things every person from your industry show be ‘aware of’ or ‘beware of’ etc. If the list is interesting, you will find many people who would like to link to it. Remember to publish this content on your website for them to linkback.

13. Corporate Blog

Ensure your corporate blog is on the same domain as your website. Run a blog popularity program. Like submitting the blog to blog directories, rss feed directories, do blogger roll exchange etc. It will help in getting backlinks for your blog, increasing its page rank and thereby the page rank of your home page.

14. Competitor backlink analysis

Actually this is the best place to start working on your backlink plan. If any of your competitors have a website with a good page rank – analyze their backlinks and see if any of those sites where their link is present is relevant to you(which is most likely since you are from the same industry). See how you can approach these sites and get your company listed there as well

15. Press Releases & Blogger reachouts

Press releases are a great way of building quality backlinks. You need not spend big money every time for a press release, make it a point to come out with a press release every month. You can issue it using cheaper wire services like webwire.com’s webpost  services or you can just go with a list of free press release sites – some are researched and  listed here by Big News . You can also reach out to Bloggers who cover your industry space with some relevant and exciting story angles. Write-ups from them will not only amount in a good PR Coverage but also a quality backlink and good Google PR..

If you can think of anymore, please feel free to add here..

7 Must Haves For Any B2B Website

Optimizing the company website for quality content is an integral part of any online Marketing or Public Relations initiative. Especially in the case of B2B clients, for whom websites are a significant source of generating quality leads.

In this post, I put down my 7 must haves for any B2B website. These might seem basic but let’s admit there are many websites out there which can do with some revamping.

Make your homepage contextually rich

Ensure your homepage clearly spells out what your product or service is about and the problem or challenge your product/service is trying to solve. Since this is the page, you would be promoting the most (in your press releases, collaterals, promotions etc.) it is important it has enough dough to hold your visitor’s attention. However, do not go overboard, you only need to showcase your offering, get their attention and lead them to other pages for more detailed information.

Have pages that address your target audience directly

B2B Companies know exactly whom they would like to reach out in a potential Company when pitching for business – it could be the CIO, CMO, CTO or the CEO. It pays to ensure your have some pages on your website which directly address these decision makers, enumerating how your product/service offering can add value to their business. Following website http://b2banalysts.com/new/services/cios.html is a great example of this method – it directly addresses each stakeholder and explains in detail what it can do for them.

Showcase your Analyst Relations

For any B2B company nurturing analyst relations is often more important than building media relations. Analysts are the voice of the industry – the experts and how they view your Company and its product/service offering is often significant in creating a good image for your brand within the industry. It also helps in building confidence in all your stakeholders. So, work on your analyst relations and don’t forget to showcase those positive reports on your site. These testimonials from the industry experts will ensure you a better rating among your competitors.

Customer Testimonial and Case Studies

Recommendations from your customers are the biggest endorsements you can get for your product/service. Ensure it is part of all your website pages. The visitor should not miss on all the good things your customers have to say about your company. Also don’t forget to put up case studies or success stories on your website – it helps a potential lead to identify with a real life challenge your product managed to solve and he is better equipped to take a more informed decision.

Demonstrate your product offering

‘Those who see usually believe’ – Offer a free demo of your product/service for anyone who visits your site. If that is not possible – at least have a video demonstration or a corporate presentation in place – which clearly in a step-by-step process showcases your product and the solutions it offers answering the hows, whens and whats of the process.

Corporate Blog

In the age of social media, it is essential for B2B companies to have a Corporate blog as part of their website. A blog helps in establishing thought leadership; it helps in showcasing every aspect of your product/service the way you want to. It acts as your personal PR machine – while building credibility and following for your company. As an effective mouthpiece for the company, it allows discussions on many aspects of the company, its offering, its people etc. which may otherwise be impossible to showcase on a website.

Social media – Follow Tabs

Social Media is here to stay. There is no point in ignoring something that is constantly changing the way we do business. Hence, create a Linkedin profile for your company, a twitter account and a company page on any other social media platforms, you feel fits your business requirements (remember it makes sense to be present on those social networks which is frequented by your target audience). Add a ‘follow us’ tab for each of these networks on your website. B2B companies thrive on business networking – social networks just add another dimension to this age old business strategy.

There are many other areas like adding Whitepapers, event details, industry updates etc. which if worked upon can add a lot of value for both your website and its visitors. However, the above 7 are essentials, without which, your website is incomplete and by my standards – ‘unfit for business’.