How firms are using blogs to develop a steady stream of quality sales leads, month after month

Most leads generated from corporate blogs each month come from old blog posts.  This archive of blogs helps firms to build a regular, consistent level of sales leads that are of high quality and very cost effective.  Businesses new to blogging just have to invest in building up their library of blog material in order to achieve the same benefits.

The corporate blog is having a transformational impact on the lead generation process of many companies.  Research has already shown that sales leads from blogs and social media are 60% cheaper to generate than those from sources like telemarketing and trade shows.

Evidence now exists suggesting that corporate blogs can be very effective in providing a consistent level of high quality leads over a prolonged period of time.  A sample of blog-using organisations has revealed some impressive observations:

This presents firms with a tremendous opportunity to transform their lead generation process for the better.  By investing in good quality content that’s relevant to your audience, you can start to even out the peaks and troughs in lead generation that are so often experienced by sales teams across the country.  Furthermore, this steady stream of leads can be produced at half the cost than has traditionally been the case. 

Generating leads from blogs takes time.  You need to start today

With the bulk of blog leads coming from old posts, it’s important to build up a library of blog material.  Clearly, this takes time and money.  It has been estimated that it takes, on average, three hours to write a single blog post, so you need to have the resources available to devote to blog creation.  If your existing headcount doesn’t have the bandwidth or skill set required, consider outsourcing the task to an external copywriter.

Make sure you create blog posts that are of high quality, and relevant to your customers.  This is not the place for your sales pitch.  Instead, you should inform how products and services like yours solve problems.  Additionally, you could comment on the implications of a new item of industry news, or perhaps illustrate how your customer could save money or improve efficiency by following certain guidelines or actions.

You could use your existing marketing content as the basis for creating blog posts.  By writing a post that focuses on one of the benefits of a product, you can then include a link within the post that goes to your website where your sales brochure can be downloaded.  That’s how your web traffic can increase.  If you have created your landing pages appropriately, you’ll also be able to drive visitors to other pages on your site and ask for readers to follow you on Twitter and other social media platforms.

It’s this interconnected capability of digital media like blogging, social media and the web, that’s transforming lead generation strategies.  New digital channels like these are moving away from being seen as experimental.  Indeed, for many industries, digital lead generation techniques are now viewed as mainstream.  

For firms yet to fully embrace corporate blogging, the key is to start building up that archive of blog material as soon as possible.  Then start promoting on your website as well as on Twitter and social media platforms.  Collectively, as your library of blog posts increases, you should see a corresponding increase in the volume of quality sales leads, month after month.

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Freelance copywriting and blog ghost writing for SMEs

How SMEs can improve success rates selling to large enterprises

Understanding the information that prospective buyers look for at each stage of the buying cycle can help firms correctly structure their content creation strategies. SMEs can now plan the content required that will help them win margin rich orders from large enterprises.

Respected publisher IDG undertook some analysis of the way IT decision makers in large enterprises used the web when they wanted to buy new products and services.  That analysis offers some really valuable insights into the way large enterprises buy in general.  It means you can now organise your sales and marketing content in a way that will attract and engage these buyers and influencers.  

In short, by following a few simple guidelines, you can significantly improve your chances of making sales to firms with larger than average cheque books!

The IDG analysis tracked the information decision makers looked for at each stage of the buying cycle.  The cycle as such is usually depicted as a five step sequential process. It starts with identification of the problem, moves on to evaluation and selection, until a purchase decision is reached.  Typically, the process looks like this:

IDG tracked 1025 decision makers to identify what materials they looked for in each buying stage.  The findings suggest that some content can be used across a number of different stages.  

This means you don’t need to create lots of articles, whitepapers and case studies to address each individual stage, at least not to begin with.  Instead, just ensure that the content you do create serves the information needs of your web visitors at each stage of the buying cycle.  Here’s a summary of what prospects are looking for based upon the IDG analysis:

Need:

• Articles and whitepapers on trends, strategies and different technologies
• Case studies and blogs of real examples.

Your prospects are looking to relate their own situation to one that might have been experienced by someone else. By comparing symptoms, your prospect goes through a sense-making exercise – trying to determine if his/her problem is a common one, whether there is an easy solution or if their situation is something more complex and unique.  At the end of this stage, prospects will have defined the nature of the business problem/need.

Technical requirements:

Having rationalised the problem/need, if your prospect is serious about resolving the problem, their attention will turn to understanding the different options available for a fix.  They will be looking for:

• “How to…” content
• Relevant whitepapers, articles and blogs
• Case studies and interviews with firms that have had similar problems.

Prospects will be looking to develop a deeper understanding of the problem, options and related consequences.  In this stage, they will begin formulating a short list of the different solutions that seem worth exploring in more detail.

Evaluation:

Each option identified will be quickly assessed for suitability.  Those felt to be most appropriate to your prospect’s specific circumstances will be investigated further.  They will search for:

• Product tests and reviews as well as industry news coverage
• Product demonstrations and literature
• “How to” content, whitepapers, articles, case studies and blogs
• Expert assessments
• Buyers guides and peer comment

Prospects will mentally start drawing-up a short list of preferred solutions.  The experience in gathering and reading through literature will influence which vendors are likely to be shortlisted for the next stage.

Short-list selection:

At this point in the process, decision makers are starting to take a more formal approach to information capture. Buyers look for:

• Product tests and reviews
• Product descriptions and technical details
• Expert research, reviews and interviews
• Supporting independent technical and industry commentary
• Buyers guides

Prospects are now building an objective comparison of options and identification of risks.  Price and other associated costs will come into play as preliminary business cases are formulated.

Recommend and decide:

Prospects are now looking to finalise a robust business case that suits their needs.  Bias may have already been introduced based on the experiences with candidate vendor web sites and downloadable materials.  They will be looking for:

• ROI tools
• Supporting case studies and testimonials
• Expert commentary
• Up to date product descriptions, roadmaps and technical information
• Most recent product tests and reviews
• Articles and whitepapers about future trends

Prospects at this stage are looking to justify the investment they want to make to internal stakeholders.  Given that personal reputations can be affected if large investments go wrong, prospects are looking to include content that is highly trustworthy and reliable, or offers a low risk exit option.

What comes out of this analysis is the need for you to create high quality, relevant content that meets the needs of buyers at each stage of the purchase process.  You can directly influence the creation of articles, whitepapers, case studies, blogs, ROI tools and product literature.  Just be sure that each item addresses the needs of prospective buyers wherever they are in the buying process.  Your ability to influence review writers and experts is a much harder task, and often requires a large dose of luck!

Given this knowledge, you should be able to review your sales and marketing literature and make plans to re-align existing content to each stage of the buying cycle.  You need to identify any gaps in your library and get them filled with suitable content.  Make this a priority for your marketing team or outsource the task to a professional copywriter.

The trick then is to test and keep the content up to date.  Testing is important as you’ll want to ensure that each item of content created is as effective as it can be in winning new business.  Simple A/B testing over time will help you to ensure this is the case.  

Keeping content refreshed is important too.  You need to continually look at what competitors are producing and ensure your content minimises weaknesses whilst playing to your strengths.  Good copywriting will again be a key ingredient in bringing you success.

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Freelance copywriting and ghost blog writing tailored to SMEs

Reduce the cost of your sales leads and gain an extra three hours per week

Digital marketing techniques are having a profound impact on small business performance.  Now you can publish blogs that generate new sales leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional techniques, and free-up more time to run your business.


Small businesses are responding to the challenging economic climate by consciously reviewing the techniques they use to generate new business.  The trend is away from traditional techniques like exhibitions and outbound calling and more towards blogging and social media.  What’s more, this change appears to be having a positive impact on profit margins too!

Savings of up to 60%
Research published by Hubspot in 2012 reveals small firms are reallocating up to 21% of their marketing budget towards blogging and social media.  These firms are finding that digital techniques can generate new business at a lower cost per lead.  Some 52% of respondents felt blogs produced leads at a lower cost than traditional techniques whilst 45% claimed the same for social media.

Aligning blogs and social media to “Inbound” marketing, and tactics such as trade shows and telemarketing to “Outbound” marketing, Hubspot calculated the average cost per lead based on respondent input.  

They found that the average outbound cost per lead came to $346 whereas the value for inbound leads was $135 – a massive 60% difference!  Given the current economic environment, it’s no wonder small firms are re-allocating marketing budget towards blogging and social media.

Hubspot also asked respondents to rank blogging and the main social media channels in order of lead generation importance.  

All channels scored 60% or more in terms of their usefulness in generating new leads.  Even more revealing was that 25% said blogging was “critical” in terms of importance and a further 34% ranked blogging as “important” as shown in the diagram below.

Chart 1: Importance of blogging and social media to new lead generation activities:

The hidden costs of social media and blogs
Whilst digital techniques are proving to be more cost effective than traditional lead generation methods, they still have associated costs that can have a big impact on small business performance.

The sheer time and effort required to maintain a social media presence or create a quality blog is proving too much for many small business owners.  Research elsewhere indicates that it takes three or more hours to create a single blog post.  If you wanted to create and publish, say, three posts a week, you’d need to find an extra day on top of your already busy schedule.

You may be like a number of small business owners who want to spend less time managing social media and blogging; a third of SME’s feel this way.  Understandably, you need to devote more time to running your business.  However, if you stop publishing blogs you’ll be back to relying on traditional lead generation techniques and the consequent impact on your bottom line. 


The opportunity cost of your time
As the owner of a small business you’ll be stretched trying to cover all the different aspects of your business.  This makes you best qualified to act as thought leader.  You’ll also be ideally placed to interpret an item of industry news and highlight the implications for your audience.
  
However, if you don’t enjoy writing or don’t feel you have the right style or approach, you will end up spending longer than is necessary on the task of blog writing; that’s wasted time that could be invested more productively elsewhere in your business. 

What’s more, the material you publish is going to directly impact how your business brand is perceived by existing customers and prospects alike.  The content has to be relevant and engaging, yet still include a subtle call-to-action. Plus, your audience will view typos and mistakes as badly as those found in a glossy sales brochure; blogging and social media for businesses demands higher standards than for personal use.

Unless you enjoy writing and creating charts, graphs, etc., you may be better off handing the task over to someone in your business able to focus fully on the job, or outsource the task to a professional.  You’ll then be able to stay in control of the message by reviewing and influencing content before it’s published. 

If you were to allocate the task of publishing just one blog post a week to someone else, not only would you be generating leads at a lower cost than traditional methods, but you would have an extra three hours a week to devote to running other parts of your business!


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Ghost blog writing and outsourced marketing for small businesses

How small business agility, innovation and a network of professionals can lead to success in niche markets

Small businesses can often out-manoeuvre larger firms when addressing new market opportunities. Their ability to act and implement quickly are key areas of advantage.  Going one step further and building a network of supporting professionals, means you can often create an entry barrier that makes it difficult for larger firms to compete.


An inspiring story recently served as a refreshing reminder of how the odds can be stacked in favour of agile small businesses.  The key word here is agile.

Model Sounds UK was conceived and born in just three weeks and has gone from zero to a projected first year turnover of over £100,000.

Mark Thatcher, the MD of Model Sounds UK, became frustrated when he couldn’t find a solution to a problem concerning his model boat hobby.  So he patched something together himself that seemed to do a good job.  Thoughts soon extended to the sales potential as it was clear from Mark’s initial research that he’d found a gap in the market.

Mark quickly moved to set-up a functioning web site with his wife, and the Model Sounds UK business commenced trading just three weeks after the concept was developed in July 2012.

Mark started the business with less than £1000 and sold 53 units on his first trading day.  Six months later, unit sales had exceeded 800 units and channel distribution was showing promising expansion. 

This is a great illustration of small business entrepreneurship.  Larger organisations normally require new ideas to be formally approved in advance by at least one senior manager.  Such firms are locked into a planned programme of activities.  Procedures must be followed to ensure all necessary compliance and governance rules are met, otherwise their insurance cover could be compromised. The need to “manage” gets in the way.  This is why larger firms tend to be less agile.  Smaller businesses are able to be more innovative and can act faster. 

Innovation in small firms means having the right mind-set.  Successful entrepreneurs often consciously look for new ways to improve an existing product or service, or look for gaps in the market.  This conscious approach is a skill that small business owners can develop.

If you make a point of looking for market gaps or new ways to improve the items and processes you use every day, you will soon have a steady stream of ideas worthy of evaluation.  The majority will fall by the wayside.  Others will look more promising.  

As a small business owner, you will be better placed than a larger company to quickly refine an idea, build a prototype and take it to market.  It may not be a new business opportunity like the Model Sounds UK example; it might be an enhanced product offering or an improved service.  The outcome will help to differentiate your position in the market, and to do so before a larger competitor can act.

What you will want to do is make sure that you allocate tasks and processes in the most efficient manner. This will help to keep costs as low as possible and so create an entry barrier that larger firms will need to address when they finally start to react to your initial market advantage.  

So, for example, if you need to generate market awareness and leads quickly and cheaply but don’t feel your skills are in the area of blog writing or social media engagement, outsource the task to a professional at the outset.  It’s pointless developing a new idea, only for it to lose early mover advantage because you decided on a DIY promotion strategy; one that doesn’t communicate the key messages or lacks professionalism.  The same goes for technology support, logistics, parts sourcing and all other aspects of the value chain.  

By building a network of small business professionals for each of the areas that are outside your core competence, you’ll be giving your innovation a better chance of success.  Small business owners empathise with each other and will often work that bit harder to be part of a small business success story.


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Outsourced marketing tailored to small businesses

How small businesses are winning new customers by blogging

Blogging and social media generate new leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional marketing tactics.  They convert into sales too.  This post looks at how small firms can produce the right level of blogs without taking business owners away from their day job.


Digital marketing tactics are fast becoming mainstream.  They have gone beyond the experimental stage and are challenging traditional techniques like exhibitions, trade shows and direct mail in terms of lead generation performance.

Not only do digital techniques have a cost per lead that’s typically 60% lower than traditional tactics, but the lead quality seems to be just as good too.

Recent research published by Hubspot looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques. Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO.  Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows and more traditional activities.

The findings highlighted a shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards inbound digital tactics.  This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business keeping a close eye on your bottom line.

The research found that inbound digital techniques like blogging and social media had the lowest cost per lead.  The average lead cost for traditional tactics was $346 which compares to a figure for blogging and social media of just $135 – a whopping 60% difference!

Looking at blogging and social media platforms, respondents claimed success in acquiring new customers from the following:

65%  LinkedIn
55%  Blogging
43%  Facebook
40%  Twitter

Hubspot went on to look at the lead-to-close rates to identify the most effective channels for lead conversion.  This revealed the following metrics:

15%  SEO
15%  Direct traffic
 9%   Digital links / Referrals
 7%   Paid for Search
 4%   Social Media
 2%   Outbound calls

So, leads arising from SEO and via the web generally, had a higher conversion rate than outbound calls (15% versus 2%).  It’s not entirely clear what actually falls under the terms “Direct traffic” or “Referrals”, but links from blogs and other published articles probably fall into the latter.  Equally, one suspects that the results from nurture activity targeted at direct mail respondents or trade show visitors may fall under “Direct Traffic”.

In terms of blogging itself, the research identified a high correlation between frequency of blog posts and the ability of the technique to generate new business.

At first sight, this diagram could be a very scary one for small business owners: the more you post, the higher the probability of generating a new customer.  However, evidence suggests that a third of SME bosses want to reduce the time they spend creating blogs or participating in social media.  A couple of observations should help calm the nerves!

Firstly, you don’t need to post multiple times a day to benefit from blogging.  You stand a greater than 50% chance of winning new business if you just post once a month.  Publish more frequently and your chances of success will be even higher.

Given that it takes around three hours to compose a blog it’s no wonder that the time and effort involved appears onerous.  Posting once or twice a week will get you near to a 70% success rate, provided the posts are of quality content and relevant to your audience.

That’s the real challenge;  devoting the time to create quality content that is relevant to your audience.  The higher the quality, the longer it will take to create.  That can be a big problem when you’re also trying to run the rest of your business.

What’s to be done?  You can’t stop producing blogs as they are a highly cost effective method of generating new business.  Equally, you probably can’t afford to devote over three hours to produce every blog post.

Ideally you’ll have someone in your organisation able to take on the role of blog preparation. Alternatively, you’ll need to outsource the task to a professional or accept that it’s something you’ll have to continue to do yourself.

Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate has become an essential part of your marketing activity.  The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget away from the more expensive traditional techniques in favour of more cost effective digital tactics.  

Hubspot research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably US).
57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
Industries included professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.

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Copywriting and ghost blogging for small businesses

How blogging and social media can improve your bottom line

Firms can reduce their cost per lead by up to 60% by adopting blogging and social media over more traditional marketing techniques.  The problem for small businesses is how to create quality content without compromising business performance.

Recent research published by Hubspot highlights the extent of the shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards digital tactics.  This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business, as digital communications can have a significant impact on your bottom line. 

Whilst the research is US based, the findings are still relevant for the UK and Europe. The research looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques.  Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO.  Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, tradeshows and more traditional activities.

In truth, the Hubspot definition for outbound tactics can be challenged.  It’s probably better to consider techniques in relation to their interruptive impact on the target audience.  Inbound represents tactics where the audience are in control of when they engage with your business.

At the other end of the scale would be outbound phone calls / telemarketing which represent perhaps the most disruptive tactic when engaging your audience.  In between are a range of other techniques reflecting different degrees of audience disruption.

The Hubspot research found that inbound tactics featuring low on the audience disruption scale also had the lowest cost per lead.  This is reflected in the chart below which shows that blogs, social media and web leads from SEO enabled traffic, head the list. 

The research also found that, on average, the outbound lead cost was $346 compared to just $135 for an inbound lead.  That’s a massive 60% saving on average lead costs.

The inbound digital marketing techniques that were most successful in generating new business for B2B firms were:

* LinkedIn      65%
* Blogs           55%
* Facebook   43%
* Twitter         40%

The research does not say if any of these tactics were combined when generating new business leads but the overall trend is still impressive. 

However, a separate report highlights that many SME owners find the effort required for social media and blogging too onerous.  Some 33% of SME owners want to spend less time on this area.  Yet, if they stop, they know it will directly impact their lead generation performance.

If you run a business and recognise the value blogging can contribute, you have essentially three options:

1. Write the blog posts yourself
2. Allocate the task to someone in your organisation 
3. Outsource the task to a professional 

Which option you choose will largely depend on your budget, the capability and bandwidth of your staff and the extent to which you enjoy writing.  

Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate is fast becoming mandatory in order to maintain business awareness.  The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget towards more cost effective digital tactics.  They have moved on from being experimental fads to mainstream marketing tactics. 

Traditional lead generation tactics will no doubt continue to play a key role in your lead generation programme.  However, you should seriously consider how much of your budget should be allocated between traditional and digital channels for 2013.

Hubspot Research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably in the USA).
57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
Industries included professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.

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Freelance copy writing and marketing support for small businesses

The biggest marketing challenges for small businesses – and how to overcome them.

A survey has highlighted eight major challenges facing marketing teams.  SME’s need to acquire new skills to overcome these challenges and succeed in today’s digital climate.

Recent research by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Act-On Software (see details below) asked small business marketing decision makers what they felt were their biggest challenges.  The response is illustrated in Table 1 below. 

Whilst the research identified responses from SME’s considered “successful” relative to those less successful, the differences between the two groups were broadly similar. They are represented in the table below as an average from all SME’s in the research.

Table 1: Biggest marketing challenges for SME marketing decision makers:

So what can small business marketing decision makers faced with these challenges do to overcome them?  A few thoughts on each follow.  Whilst not exhaustive, hopefully SME’s can take something from these comments to move things forward in their business.

Increasing sales from existing customers:

Assuming SME’s already have strong relationships with existing customers then the task facing them is to maintain visibility with key stakeholders and continue to build credibility whilst keeping an ear to the ground for any new order opportunities.  Personal networking is a proven technique here but SME’s may be limited in terms of the number of contacts they can effectively network with.

Another option is new media.  Being visible on relevant digital and social media platforms can indicate to customers that your business is keeping up-to-date with the changes in the business communications landscape – a perception that might then extend to the rest of your business.  That’s a positive, as few customers will remain loyal to suppliers they consider slow to adapt in the current economic environment.

Of course, being visible on social platforms means producing effective content in sufficient quantity.  It’s an opportunity to demonstrate understanding of industry issues and be seen as an organisation with high industry competence.  Owners of SME’s must task their marketing teams to develop editorial programmes, then create and distribute this content.  It can be a very cost effective way to be top of mind with existing customer contacts when they are ready to place new orders.

Converting more leads into opportunities:

Usually, the problem here is that the enquiries or leads generated are not yet ready to buy.  That’s always going to be the case.  Depending on the demand generation tactic used to produce the lead in the first place, a firm could have hundreds of names to sift through to identify what’s about to turn “hot” and what needs to be kept warm or placed at the bottom of the pile.

This can be addressed in a number of ways.  Firstly, make sure that the leads generated are of required quality right from the outset.  It's better to have fewer leads but of high quality than masses of poor quality names. It’s faster to identify and work upon those that will generate business and means staff will be more productive.

Once you have enquiries of good quality, it’s a case of building a dialogue with each one, providing them with relevant information depending on where they are in the buying cycle and tracking subsequent behaviour.  Lead scoring plays a role as can marketing automation in sophisticated environments. 

Clearly the right content needs to be in place at all stages of the process.  Each item of content should be designed to dovetail with the sales process, to get to BANT qualification stage and, consequently, a sales opportunity that can be forecast.

Differentiating from the competition:

This is often a problem for small businesses.  Resolving it requires something of a strategic review, taking an objective assessment of competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, value chain and industry trends.  The trick is to emphasize a strength that has perceived value to customers – ideally one that competitors would find hard to replicate.  This usually manifests itself around the area of service, skills / competence, or experience.

Once the strength has been identified, all sales and marketing materials should be aligned to emphasize the advantage to existing and prospective customers.  Here again, carefully crafted content needs to be developed and distributed using the media channels most appropriate to your audience.

Closing more deals from existing leads flows / Accelerating the lead to revenue time:

This is linked to “Converting more leads into opportunities” above.  It’s all about improving lead management and opportunity management performance.  

One of the reasons closure rates may be poor is because the sales people involved are spending too much time trying to nurture “leads” that are not yet ready to buy.  Lead nurturing and scoring activities should be implemented by your marketing or inside sales team to deliver qualified leads to target carrying sales staff.  These should be leads that meet an agreed "sales qualified lead" standard. 

This will do a couple of transformational things to your business.  First, sales staff will be focussed on converting a smaller number of qualified leads, which will automatically improve the conversion metric (as conversions will be measured against a lower base of leads). 

The second consequence is that, for your marketing or inside sales team to provide the volume of qualified leads to sales, they will become more focussed and expert in filling the funnel with higher quality enquiries in the first place and then developing the most effective nurture activities.  Use external support to fill any gaps in knowledge, skills or expertise until you have this well-honed internally.

Raising awareness:

This is often a problem for SME’s because it can mean high expenditure.  Exhibitions, advertising, direct mail, teleprospecting can all provide excellent results but the cost can be crippling.

New digital and social media channels offer a realistic alternative.  Indeed evidence from the Forrester Consulting report suggests some 50% of SME’s have tried digital and social media awareness tactics and found them to be successful.

However, here again the small business marketing team needs to be flat out creating carefully crafted content in sufficient quantity to not only increase recency and frequency of visibility, but also to ensure the content is engaging.  It needs to present the firm's differential advantage as well as keep prospects coming back or “following” for future content releases.

Driving more traffic to your web site:

This is a big subject!  Apart from the obvious SEO activities and the inclusion of web details in outbound email addresses and printed literature, prospects need to be stimulated to visit your site.

Blogs, newsletters and PR articles should all point back to specific landing pages on your site.  The trick is to know what content to put into your blog, newsletter or press release in the first place.

It can be opportunistic: a new customer win or order deployment, or maybe a new product introduction.  Some content can be planned, perhaps a piece of commissioned research or a whitepaper on an emerging industry trend.  The planned material should also allow you multiple opportunities to distribute and communicate with your audience, especially using social media channels.

Any content a prospect is likely to find valuable should be hosted on designated landing pages on your web site and all outbound communications and content must be created with this in mind.  Material appearing on social platforms should have share buttons enabled too.

Generating new leads:

To some extent this heading has been addressed by much of the above.  The importance of effective and appropriate content creation cannot be overstated.  So, perhaps here we should mention the demand creation vehicles.

Understandably, SME’s tend to rely on the tried and tested traditional mechanisms to generate leads: personal contact, exhibitions and events, advertising, PR, email and direct mail.  Increasingly they are adopting new digital and social media platforms too.  When they do, they tend to use the following content types:

·         Case studies and testimonials

·         Videos

·         Whitepapers

·         Webinars

·         Research reports

This is based on research conducted by by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute entitled “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America” .  This report  also noted the emerging trend of using infographics and e-books too.

Implications for SME’s:

The marketing challenges cited by small businesses are all surmountable.  The issues typically involve finding sufficient time, budget and human resources to do the job well.  In many ways it requires changing the way you and your team work. 

Owners of small and medium sized businesses will need to ensure their marketing teams acquire the skills required to succeed in a digital and social world. That’s in addition to what they do now.   

Another option is to use external content providers to help build an initial content campaign and help transfer skills to the internal teams at the same time.  Acquiring the content marketing skills for today’s changing business environment has become another priority for owners of SME’s.  Those quick to adapt are likely to secure an advantage over the rest.

(Source of data: : “Driving SMB Revenue in a Tough Economy”, conducted by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Act-On Software (download the full report from the Act-On site).  Sample: 208 SMB marketing decision makers based in North America.  An online survey conducted between August and September 2012). 

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Outsourced B2B content marketing and lead generation for small businesses

Freelancecontent creation support for busy marketing professionals

Social Media: Make sure you’re using the right platform

New entrants into the social media arena offer additional opportunities to reach segmented audiences.  But which are best for your business?

Do you know which social media platform is best for your business?  Research undertaken in August 2012 by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute  provides some useful insights.  Whilst the survey base was B2B enterprises in North America, it’s likely that the UK and Europe will follow similar trends.

Some 87% of respondents claimed to use social media to drive content awareness.  As tracking and moderating social media feeds can be a drain on the time of key people in the business, it’s useful to understand which platforms warrant the most attention. 

So who’s tops and, perhaps more importantly, what are the trends?

B2B Social Media Trends

Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are pretty much equal with around 80% of respondents claiming to use them (up from around 70% in 2011 suggesting the trend is entrenched but maybe plateauing). 

One interpretation of this is that businesses are playing safe and posting to all three so that they don’t miss out.  If this is the case then we can expect a fourth to be joining the top tier soon in the shape of Google+ which shows clear growth.

The interesting trend is the appearance of many new entrants.  This could be the start of some serious fragmentation in the social media world.  Some of the strongest starts are among platforms that are “graphically” oriented.  It will be interesting to see if Instagram, Foursquare, Vimeo and Pinterest start to align more with particular industry types and whether they start to take share away from the likes of YouTube.

Of course, any trend towards more graphically oriented sites will require businesses to produce images and videos of suitable quality, and in sufficient quantity, to maintain a competitive presence.  This would mean diverting budget into a new area which, given current market conditions, might be a bold move for some.

If your business offering lends itself to graphical formats it may pay to create some appropriate assets and test the water.  These new formats certainly look set to attract new visitors over the coming year, but whether they generate sustainable business remains to be seen.

In the meantime, if time is limited, it looks like posting to at least one of the top three platforms will see your content distributed amongst the largest audiences actively using social tools.

Search for: 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks – North America, Marketing Profs, Content Marketing Institute.

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Social media could be about to consign cold calling to the bin

The adoption of social media is reaching a tipping point that may have a profound impact on the way businesses generate sales leads.  The logic is compelling and firms need to get access to new competences to compete in the future.

The use of search engines and social media looks to have reached a tipping point and is set to change significant parts of the business landscape.  One key area is around the way firms find new sales prospects.  Many predict that social media will make cold calling obsolete.  There’s much to suggest this is a logical conclusion.

Whilst cold calling has proved an effective way to generate new business in the past it does have a few drawbacks:

•       It’s a disruptive tactic (the caller interrupts the prospect) which can lead to negative perceptions
•       It is increasingly being regulated
•       It can be a slow and expensive process to generate quality leads.

So, is calling a list of customers and prospects to “discover” the one in “n” that has sales potential in the near future, still an efficient sales tactic?

Technology has changed the landscape. 

Prospects are increasingly using a search engine or a Social Media platform to start the search for information when they have a business need.  They want to stay in control of the buying process and undertake as much of the groundwork themselves before engaging a sales person.  Technology enables them to do that.

Consequently, in order to be in a position to engage positively with new prospects, organisations need to have search engine optimised content in blogs, articles, PR releases, newsletters, trade reviews and other web enabled formats.  Our prospect needs to be able to click on this content and the embedded links to find the information he or she is looking for.  They will typically go through a behavioural process shown in the diagram below:

When cold calling, the caller interrupts the prospect to try and discover if they have an imminent business need and then tries to control how the prospect goes about the buying process.  Today, prospects and procurement professionals are likely to be more resistant to any steering from a sales person – they want to be in control instead.

The good news is that organisations can embrace this change. 

The phone call still has a key role to play – to qualify inbound enquiries and accelerate sales opportunities in addition to the usual active customer account management function.  

Those same telephone agents are also ideally placed to monitor and engage in the social media dialogues and “chat” or “call-me” requests.  Only now, those inbound enquiries will be from from prospects who have actively decided to engage with your business, and so are more likely to have high sales potential!

The generation of new sales enquiries will increasingly move towards the Search / Social Media environments.  Firms will need to take great care in producing content that not only can be found in a search but also engages prospects, satisfies their information needs and encourages them to stay involved (perhaps clicking the “Follow” button or sign-up for newsletters, RSS feeds or alerts, etc.).

For sophisticated organisations using marketing automation systems or businesses unable yet to embrace the many new applications available, the key task will be to develop content that:

•      Ranks highly in relevant search results
•      Engages prospects and prompts them to click for more information
•      Aligns content to the prospect’s specific information needs at the right moment in the buying cycle
•      Has embedded links to foster an on-going dialogue.

This is the core task that firms will need to focus upon to generate new leads in the future.  Marketing professionals need to orient their skill sets towards effective content creation, and owners of small and medium sized businesses need to plan for all future content to be search friendly as well.

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How small businesses can significantly increase PR visibility...with a little bit of extra effort

Press releases can give small and medium sized firms great exposure and help fuel rapid growth.  What’s more, recent research suggests they can significantly improve their chance of high visibility by working a bit harder and creating a fully supported press pack.

Using relevant trade press remains a reliable way of raising awareness and communicating your latest news amongst your target audience.  However, it appears the days of sending out a text based news release alone may soon be over.  Recent research suggests that including multiple media support with the text version can increase visibility up to ten fold! 

Before we look deeper into this, we need to be clear why using the press is critical for most SME’s in the first place.

Research presented by Nicholas Holmes recently found that over 60% of business owners had not spoken with a journalist in the last twelve months, many fearful of the outcome!  In reality, journalists, especially those covering niche markets, are keen to build relationships with business owners. 

Journalists recognize that they are more likely to get genuine information along with knowledgeable industry insight “…direct from the horse’s mouth…” rather than relying on agency spokespeople.  The natural passion for the subject that comes from a business owner can often inspire journalists to produce compelling coverage that can work wonders for a firms’ visibility.

So, how do you get noticed by a journalist in the first place?

Build firm foundations

Obviously, before you craft your press release, you need to be clear about your messages, not just about your new news story, but the “corporate” messages too.  Be clear about the strengths you want to emphasize but also be sure to have a clear position on how to respond if challenged about a market threat or business weakness. 

Use staff and colleagues to generate a list of positive and negative questions about your business and the industry.  Make sure the questions reflect the views of end-user customers, channel partners, competitors and pressure groups.  Building and maintaining this list, and formulating responses, will help enormously when it comes to drafting the press release itself and, perhaps more importantly, will help to build your confidence about engaging with the Press.

Draft your press release

Jerry Brown provides some valuable guidance on this subject.  Taking Jerry’s input, I see the steps involved as a series of hurdles.

Hurdle 1: Getting the journalist to read beyond your headline:

Stick with one key headline message.  It must be clear, concise, obvious and interesting to your audience as well as your target journalist (who will spend just a few moments scanning your headline before deciding if it is something he or she can use).  Writing the headline is harder than you might think which is why external PR or marketing support can really add value if your time is limited.  It is often the last part of the release to be written but the first hurdle to be cleared.

Hurdle 2: Getting the journalist to read the first main text block:

This is often referred to as a “nut” paragraph.  It is a really brief overview of your story.  What is the subject, why is it important to the audience, and how will a reader be better off after reading it?

Hurdle 3: Getting the journalist to read the main body text:

This is the story itself.  The who, what, when, where, how and why.  Always keep in mind the audience you are addressing and be clear about why this story is important to them; how will the information in the story help the reader?

Include one or two quotes from people directly involved in the story.  Keep the length of the release to two pages where possible.  

Remember to include a boilerplate as a final paragraph.  This needs to be a concise description of your business and include your contact details.  Avoid any sales pitch! This is all about communicating news, raising awareness and generating some inbound activity.  The selling should only start when readers react to your published article – the inbound activity.

But, there’s a problem!

So, you have laid a solid foundation and jumped the hurdles to get your press release in front of relevant journalists.  Alas, evidence suggests you now have another hurdle to jump, and getting this one wrong could hurt!

Hurdle 4: Getting your journalist to accept your article over others:

PR Newswire recently studied its press release data and found that text only releases are losing out to those submitted with multiple supporting media assets like videos, photos, slides and downloadable files.  It appears that including multiple assets with a text based release can increase published visibility by up to ten times!  The impact appears to apply as shown in the chart below:

Chart 1: How including different content assets can improve press release visibility:

It appears that including additional content assets along with the text based release helps journalists (and the publication’s design team) present news in a more visually attractive way.  It’s easier for them to present interesting and engaging content in their publication.  They don’t have to go and find visually stimulating material to support an editorial piece, it’s all provided for them. So it's not surprising that PR submissions containing multiple content assets are being considered ahead of many text-only submissions. 

Small business owners and in-house marketing professionals who do not employ a full-time PR agency will now need to create supporting content when they develop press releases and articles or risk missing out.  Relying on text alone to get visibility is going to be more of a challenge in future.

Marketing teams need to plan for the inclusion of the PR element of a campaign right up front as an integral part of the content marketing plan.  What's more, they will need to acquire the skills to develop and create a range of supporting content assets. Either that or use external support to help create the required content on time.

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