MarketingSherpa Blog

Here at MarketingSherpa we are always looking to bring you actionable tactics and interesting insights based on surveys of your marketing peers. You can pre-order our latest research — the 2012 Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report – PPC Edition. Better yet, you can even download the executive summary from the report at no cost.

The direct download of this excerpt is free and does not require registration.

In the executive summary you’ll find six charts outlining the key findings from our research, but one of the perks of working here at Sherpa is I get the chance to take an early look at entire report (and the rest of the 125 charts.)

During this sneak preview I found a couple of charts that highlight an area where many marketers can improve their pay-per-click efforts. Read more…

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.”

– John Kotter, professor, Harvard Business School

Are you a true marketing leader?

Does your marketing department have a well thought-out strategy with clear marching orders? Hopefully that question is a gimme, but here’s a harder one…

Have you set the strategy for your social media marketing?

Developing an effective and methodical social marketing strategy was the most frustrating challenge to social marketing effectiveness, according to the Marketing Sherpa 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report.

And for good reason. Social media marketing is a huge paradigm shift for most marketers. It is a change from the command-and-control days when marketers owned the airwaves and printing presses because they had the power of the purse.

Social media has democratized the means of communication. Now, every customer is also a publisher. And the best you can hope to do, as overused as this saying may be, is to join the conversation.

Social media strategy planning tool

Of course, that doesn’t mean that creating an effective social media strategy is impossible. And anything you invest resources in, even if you’re just incurring a soft cost like your own time, should have a plan of action designed to achieve a goal.

If you don’t know where you’re trying to get and what you need to do to get there, then why even bother? Read more…

Social networks used to be the wild west of online marketing. Pioneers launched first, asked questions later, and staked claims on MySpace and Second Life.

Today, most marketers set clear goals and plan before hitting the trail. Your goals will often dictate which networks and tactics to try. Knowing which networks have turned into ghost towns and which are the next Dodge City can also help.

This chart from the MarketingSherpa 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition shows which social media platforms have proven to be the most effective for inbound marketers.

Read more…

Update: All MarketingSherpa newsletter articles are now permanently open access.

Several weeks ago I had the chance to speak with Jon Miller, Marketo‘s Vice President, Marketing, and co-founder of the company. Our talk was extensive and covered Marketo’s entire marketing process and philosophy, and the main result was a MarketingSherpa B2B newsletter case study (members library).

Even though the story was extremely in-depth and revealing in covering the marketing automation company’s practices — so much so that when my editor tweeted the story he wrote, “#B2B Marketing Strategy: Revenue-oriented approach leads to 700% two-year growth http://j.mp/lWT7PS @jonmiller2 opens up the kimono” — not everything Jon and I discussed made it into the case study.

One result of the extra material I have on hand was a popular MarketingExperiments blog post on testing form field length, and a second result is today’s SherpaBlog post going into more detail about Marketo’s cost-per-lead across its prospect generation efforts.

It’s a prospect, not a lead

Even though “lead generation” and “cost-per-lead” are something of industry terms of art, Jon explained to me that Marketo has a rigorous naming system for its eight-stage buying cycle, or what it calls a “revenue cycle:”

1. Awareness

2. Names

3. Engaged

4. Prospect

5. Lead

6. Sales lead

7. Opportunity

8. Customer

For someone to move from “engaged” to “prospect,” they must visit Marketo’s website and either fill out a form or download content. At this point they undergo demographic lead scoring. Using this scoring, Jon says a prospect is, “the right kind of person at the right company.”

Marketo defines a “lead” how most companies might identify a marketing-qualified lead, so at Marketo “prospects” are in effect its traditionally defined leads. Confused yet?

This chart takes a look at Marketo’s prospect generation metrics for the last two quarters of 2010. You will notice above the line are efforts Jon pays some marginal cost for and each includes its cost-per-lead. Below the line are Marketo’s non-marginal-cost inbound marketing efforts.

Click to enlarge

Virtual beats traditional in trade shows

Virtual trade shows stand out in this list because they create the most prospects at the lowest cost-per-lead. In fact, the figure on the far right of this chart, lead-to-opportunity index, is calibrated to the virtual trade show statistics.

“For us, virtual trade shows work great,” Jon says. “You get the database really cheap and they become leads, too.”

He adds that pay-per-click advertising has a fairly high cost-per-lead, but they also convert to opportunities at a high level at the highest velocity (in terms of least days), and they almost double the closest conversion-to-lead figure. It is worth it to Marketo to spend the extra cost-per-lead money on PPC ads.

The worst overall performing tactic on the chart is the traditional trade show. These events have the highest cost-per-lead by a long shot and don’t offer a strong conversion-to-lead number, and the strong lead-to-opportunity conversion ratio doesn’t offset the weaker stats.

Based on this information from last year, Jon told me he plans on cutting back on traditional trade shows this year and is spending that money on traveling to captive event road shows.

Inbound rising …

One very interesting aspect of Marketo’s prospect generation chart is the performance of its non-marginal cost inbound marketing tactics. Across the board they meet, and often greatly exceed, the baseline lead-to-opportunity index. Velocity and conversion-to-lead also compare very favorably for most tactics.

And the cost-per-lead for these inbound efforts? Effectively zero.

What lead generation tactics do you find successful? Do you track the success rate and bottom-line impact of your inbound efforts? Let us, and your peers, know what you think in the comments section.

Related resources

Lead Gen Overhaul: 4 Strategies to Boost Response Rates, Reduce Cost-per-Lead

Custom Landing Pages for PPC: 4 Steps to 88% More Leads, Lower Costs

Lead Generation: How to get funding to improve your lead gen

Social Media Marketing: You value (and earn ROI on) what you pay for

Lead Marketing: Cost-per-lead and lead nurturing ROI

Search Engine Marketing: Finding appeal for your PPC Ads

Social Media Marketing Research: Rolling up my sleeves and getting social

I’ve been thumbing through the just-published MarketingSherpa 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition. This thing is so hot-off-the-press that my fingers hurt.

There is a massive amount of analysis in this book, but one theme immediately jumped out at me: SEO thrives on content, and content does not come easily.

Below we have some great advice for jump-starting your content creation, but first let’s look at a chart ranking the top SEO tactics used today.

As you can see, content creation sits comfortably on the top with 92% of SEO marketers saying it is at least somewhat effective and 50% saying it is very effective. Keyword research comes in second with 87% saying it’s at least somewhat effective.

The other side of the content-coin is that it is also one of the most difficult tactics to execute. Here (pulled from another chart in the report) are the three most-difficult SEO tactics:
1. External link building
2. Content creation
3. Blogging

These three tactics are as intertwined as DNA. Nothing I know of will generate more high-quality links on a consistent basis than good content that is published regularly. And more than 50% of SEO marketers use blogs to create content, according to the report.

Blogging results in six months

Even though creating content is the most effective SEO tactic, it comes in sixth in terms of popularity with 60% of marketers using it. This disconnection could be due to the difficulty of creating content, and I recently heard a great example of how to simplify the process and get started.

Marcus Sheridan, Co-Owner at River Pools & Spas, had some great advice at our recent Optimization Summit on how to dive into content creation (Dive! Get it?). Sheridan outlined the simple tactics he used to blog his company’s website into the world’s most popular swimming pool site in terms of traffic.

Here are tactics he suggested for establishing a traffic-building blog:

Tactic #1. Answer prospects’ questions

First, gather everyone in your company and ask them to list the top questions they’ve received from prospective customers. Write down a list of 50. Those questions are the titles of your first 50 blog posts.

“As a pool guy, as soon as someone calls us on the phone, what do they ask? What do they ask in every industry? — How much does it cost? That’s the first question all the time,” Sheridan said.

So Sheridan’s first blog read: “How Much Does a Fiberglass Pool Cost?“.

Tactic #2. No, really answer their questions

Some companies are afraid to answer questions about price or to directly compare their products to alternatives (which is another popular question). Sheridan urged companies to overcome their discomfort. Prospective customers are asking these questions, regardless. Who would you rather have answering them?

“We can’t be afraid to talk about anything that the customer wants to talk about; the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said.

Tactic #3. Two posts per week for six months

Once you gather questions from your team — keep everyone involved. Get them excited about writing a blog post to answer a question. Divide the work across the company and set a strict schedule.

“If you set 50 titles and you do two per week, then you have 25 weeks’ worth of blog content. Within that six months time, everything will start to change for that company and that business and the traffic they’re starting to get on their website,” Sheridan said.

Related resources

MarketingSherpa 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition

Optimization Summit: Tests with poor results can improve your marketing

Members Library – Optimization Summit 2011 Wrap-up: 6 takeaways to improve your tests and results

Being a reporter has its ups and downs. Thankfully, some articles are a pleasure to write. I was thrilled to publish our latest inbound marketing article featuring the YouTube video strategy of Orabrush, a brand of breath-freshening tongue cleaners.

Orabrush’s strategy has pulled-in over 35 million video views and powers the majority of the company’s marketing. Below, I’ve pointed out three key areas that I like about this strategy.

CMO as Chief Marketing Publisher

A central tenet of inbound marketing is that marketers need to think of themselves as publishers. Rather than buying ads in a media outlet, your brand builds the media outlet. You own the newsletters, blogs, apps, webinars — or whichever platform you select.

Jeffrey Harmon is CMO at Orabrush. His team is committed to consistently delivering the videos its audience enjoys and expects. This makes for a demanding publishing schedule, but that’s the life of a Chief Marketing Publisher. Deadlines must be met and quality must be maintained.

Another tenet of inbound marketing is that your content is not advertising — it’s rich information that interests your audience. Your brand and products can be included, but they are secondary. The content must give the audience what it wants while helping to achieve your marketing goals.

Orabrush does this by creating several types of video, as described in the article. The majority of videos are intended to engage and entertain — which is what Orabrush’s audience wants. Other videos are intended to encourage conversions while also entertaining.

This isn’t just for the LOLs

Orabrush’s videos are funny and they’ve built an audience. But at the end of the day, the company needs to sell tongue brushes. Harmon’s team is not trying to build an audience to sell advertising.

That is why Orabrush’s marketers have included calls-to-action throughout its videos and YouTube page. Viewers are encouraged to:
o Watch another video
o Share the video on Facebook or Twitter
o Connect with Orabrush on other social networks
o Visit Orabrush’s website
o Request a free brush
o Locate a nearby Orabrush store
o And more

You can see a great example of their calls-to-action at the end of this short video:

This approach applies directly to inbound marketing. The content is the main attraction. It is the reason Orabrush’s YouTube page exists. But while viewers enjoy videos, they’re encouraged to interact with the brand, visit the site, and try out an Orabrush.

Experimentation and research drive the ship

Orabrush has an elaborate YouTube page. The channel is part video-viewer, part landing page, part social channel. The design is the result of several years of research and testing by Harmon and his team.

Orabrush is not afraid to test new ideas, which is how it developed this strategy. Its YouTube page was not a modified best practice. The marketers built it piece by piece through rigorous testing.

Even Orabrush’s first forays into video were experiments. As mentioned in the article, Harmon first tested adding another publisher’s video to one of Orabrush’s landing pages. That video boosted conversion rates by 200%, and it served as the first step in the long journey to build Orabrush’s video strategy as it stands today.

Without its culture of experimentation and testing, Orabrush would not likely have such a powerful presence on YouTube. You can find out a lot more about testing and optimization at the upcoming MarketingSherpa Optimization Summit in June.

Enough already!

I could go on and on about why I love Orabrush’s video strategy (including that it came from a scrappy startup and that its marketers also engage in social marketing) — but I won’t.

The last point I will make is that Harmon’s team built this channel with a small team and a limited budget. There is truly no reason why any company could not do something similar.

Related resources

Inbound Marketing: Small business builds YouTube channel from the ground up, expands to 40 countries

MarketingSherpa: Subscribe to our Inbound Marketing newsletter

MarketingSherpa Optimization Summit 2011

Inbound Marketing: Brand-powered content hub grabs top Google rank in two months

Inbound Marketing: How to pull-in customers without pushing ads

Content Marketing: How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog

Content Marketing: Should you lure a journalist over to the ‘dark side?’

Email Marketing: Maybe it really is an inbound tactic…

When I was on the phone with Stacey Epstein, VP of Marketing, ServiceMax, I remembered some advice I heard when researching our first article for MarketingSherpa’s Inbound Marketing newsletter.

I spoke with a lot of great experts for that piece. On content marketing, I spoke with Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute. He mentioned that marketers should avoid publishing too many types of content and focus on about three that fit their strategies.

“But you have to do one really well,” he said. “You have to do an awesome blog or the best e-book program that’s ever been run; focus on what you can do really well, better than anyone else in your industry.”

That is exactly what Epstein and her team are striving for with SmartVan. ServiceMax launched the site in January as a content portal for the field-service industry (which is served by ServiceMax), to help companies that send technicians out of the office for service, installation, and repairs.

“We noticed there was a complete lack of resources for these people,” Epstein says. “The site is meant to be a place for field-service professionals to educate themselves.”

Site traffic has grown faster than anticipated. After a just a few months, SmartVan holds the top Google rank for the phrase “field service news” and about 15% of its traffic comes from natural search.

“It’s great for us to be ranked so high so quickly,” Epstein says. “I think it’s a testament to how little content there is out there. It helps validate that we’re helping to serve this huge need.”

Weave the brand into the content

Epstein has big plans for SmartVan and hopes to continually grow its traffic for several years. One key principle is to avoid selling ServiceMax too directly, she says. Otherwise visitors could write-off the site as a marketing channel rather than a trusted resource for industry news.

“We’re really trying to create a resource for field-service people that doesn’t exist today… We feel that we’ll have a lot more success in getting people interested in the site and wanting to be on the site if we don’t try to sell them.”

The team does plan to incorporate ServiceMax into the site, but will do so carefully, and mostly around content. For example, a ServiceMax webinar on how the iPhone is changing the industry will be mentioned on SmartVan.

Also, a company blog written by ServiceMax executives will soon be hosted on the portal. Epstein also plans to offer an email newsletter to help build a database.

“We’ll never have a homepage that says ‘SmartVan is brought to you by ServiceMax. Go see us now and buy from us,’ etcetera. That’s not our intent.”

Content creation: easier than thought

A website that’s designed as the go-to resource for a specific topic cannot afford to have stale content. When planning SmartVan’s strategy, Epstein wondered how her team would keep up with the demands of a daily publishing schedule.

But that challenge has been easier than anticipated. The team has partnered with LaunchSquad to help manage the site and has pooled content from a variety of sources.

“We found some great contributing writers who were super interested to join us. We certainly contribute content from ServiceMax. We have a couple of guys from LaunchSquad contributing, and we aggregate content from other sources,” Epstein says.

“Between all those different people, I’m actually blown away by the amount of content. We’re serving up multiple pieces of fresh content every day.”

Changes and hurdles on the horizon

Epstein has promoted SmartVan with a press release, an email to ServiceMax’s house list, and mentions in Facebook and Twitter. She’s hoping the site will continue to grow through word-of-mouth and natural search.

A key challenge to growth, she says, will be connecting the field-service audience and encouraging visitors to interact. SmartVan will soon offer social features in hopes of fostering engagement, but this will be a pioneering effort for the industry.

“Right now, this is not necessarily a super tight-knit community,” Epstein says. “Part of that is because there isn’t a lot that brings them together. There aren’t a lot of trade shows, and there aren’t a lot of online forums.”

But that challenge is also a huge opportunity. SmartVan could become a powerful marketing channel for ServiceMax if it continues to grow at its current pace.

“If we can succeed in building this community and creating a place where all these people can go, interact and get educated, it will by far outpace any other traditional marketing strategy that we ever could have done and at a much, much lower cost and with fewer resources.”

Related resources

MarkteingSherpa’s free newsletters

Inbound Marketing: How to pull-in customers without pushing ads

Content Marketing: How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog

Content Marketing: Should you lure a journalist over to the ‘dark side?’

Email Marketing: Maybe it really is an inbound tactic…

Members Library – Content Marketing: Microsoft crowdsources content ideas with a viral contest for new Windows Phone 7 platform

Inbound marketing is growing in B2B companies. Investments in webinars, SEO, social marketing and page optimization are all on the rise, as noted in this chart from MarketingSherpa’s new 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.

As inbound grows, more marketers are finding the right mix of tactics and channels for their companies. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but certain tactics are commonly reported as effective.

Below, we pulled stats from four charts in the benchmark report to highlight the most-effective tactics for B2B inbound marketing. Check out how the best tactics are interrelated.

Search engine optimization

• Most effective tactic: On-page content optimization

An effective SEO program is vital to an inbound strategy. Most B2B marketers research keywords and create great content about topics surrounding them. One of the most popular content platforms is the blog. Although blogging is not easy, many B2B companies have stuck with it (because it works).

Social media marketing

• Most effective tactic: Blogging

Blogging is the most effective B2B social marketing tactic. This ties directly to the popularity of blogs as a platform for publishing search-optimized content, as well as their ability to engage audiences.

Website optimization and design

• Most effective tactic: Using unique landing pages for campaigns
• Second-most effective tactic: Optimizing design and content for conversions

Inbound marketing can pull more visitors to your website — but visitors have to take action when they arrive. They have to download a report, subscribe to your newsletter, request to be contacted, etc. Otherwise the traffic is wasted.

This is why using unique landing pages for each campaign and optimizing them are the most effective tactics for B2B websites. The tactics reach into all facets inbound marketing and ensure your traffic is put to use.

You can find out a lot more about effective landing page optimization and design tactics at the upcoming MarketingSherpa 2011 Optimization Summit in June.

Pay-per-click advertising

• Most effective tactic: Creating highly-targeted ad groups
• Second most-effective tactic: A/B testing landing page content

Landing page testing is nearly tied for first as the most effective PPC tactic for B2B companies. This, again, illustrates that websites have to be designed to convert traffic that is generated by inbound marketing. Otherwise the traffic is wasted.

Related resources

MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report

MarketingSherpa 2011 Optimization Summit

Inbound Marketing: How to pull-in customers without pushing ads

Landing Page Optimization: Value-focused revamp leads to 188% lead gen boost, increase in personal interaction

MarketingSherpa: Subscribe to our Inbound Marketing newsletter

I’m a huge skeptic by nature. Moon landing? Pshh. More like a studio production in Houston. But, Karen Rubin really won me over with this talk at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit…

Our own Adam T. Sutton recently wrote about this topic on the MarketingSherpa blog – Email Marketing: An inbound tactic?

Skeptic that I am, I had Adam thoroughly tone down that post. I did not buy into email marketing as an inbound tactic.

“Bah, all vendors just try to show how everything they could possibly make money from fits into their branded word of the day. Now get me photos of that Spiderman!” I said in my best grumpy editor voice.

But, when Karen Rubin, Product Owner, HubSpot, spoke at Email Summit 2011, she said something that really made my ears perk up (about seven minutes into the above video)…

“Those house email lists, that’s really inbound marketing. When you think about it, those are people asking to hear from you. They want to get more information. So, you’re not interrupting them when you go in their inboxes.”

Inbound & Down

So, basically there are two opposing schools of thought circling around the Interwebs right now:

• “Email is dying” and on its way down
• Email marketing, at least when done right, is really inbound marketing – a hot and growing marketing tactic

Or perhaps both are true? List buying is dying, while house lists continue to be effective?

In your experience as a professional marketer, which statement do you think is the most true:

• Email is going the way of bell bottoms and Hammer pants
• Email marketing is a form of inbound marketing – hot, profitable, muy caliente
• Email marketing isn’t one thing – list buying is dying, but house lists are as profitable as ever (Kaching!)

(We welcome you to use the comments section and tell us which of the three statements you think is the most accurate and why)

Related resources

Optimization Summit 2011 – June 1 -3

Free MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Newsletter

Real-time Marketing: Crowdsourced video of keynote from MarketingSherpa Email Summit

MarketingSherpa’s 3rd Annual German Email Marketing Summit – March 21-22, 2011

Growing Email Lists with Social Media

The Role of Email Marketing in an Inbound Marketing World – Karen Rubin

Social media continues to have a profound effect on marketing, and the use of this channel for marketing purposes is rapidly evolving. This week marks the fielding of our third annual Social Marketing Benchmark Survey to determine exactly how this important new marketing channel has evolved and which strategies will work best going forward.

Last year’s study revealed how social marketing was maturing, resulting in a shift from tactical to strategic thinking. However, we found that most organizations, even those in the strategic phase of social marketing maturity, had not yet figured out how to measure the return on their social marketing investment.

Without the ability to prove ROI, social marketing budgets were, and in most cases still are, being driven by perception. What is the perception? As this chart shows, only 7% of the 2300 social media marketers responding to our last study thought social media was producing ROI and, as a result, were willing to budget liberally. While 49% thought it was a promising tactic that will eventually produce ROI, nearly the same numbers (44%) are much more skeptical and unwilling to invest more.

But social marketing has evolved significantly in the past year and many marketers are not only promising ROI, they are proving it.

So, in our new survey we examine how organizations are overcoming the challenge of social media monetization, and which tactics are most effective for achieving this important objective, in addition to the comprehensive coverage of social marketing topics in general.

To share your insights on social media marketing, please take our third annual Social Marketing Benchmark Survey. This survey is being fielded now and will only remain open through Sunday, February 6, 2011.

Related resources

Social Media Marketing: Turning social media engagement into action at Threadless

Measuring Social Media’s Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 tactics (Members’ Library)

Inbound Marketing newsletter – Free Case Studies and How To Articles from MarketingSherpa’s reporters

Social Marketing ROAD Map Handbook