7 Must-Do Demand Generation Tactics. Marketing Automation. Demand Generation Tactics

Table of Contents Introduction Websites and Landing Pages Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Marketing Social Media Marketing Webinars Email Event Management

2 Introduction Demand generation requires a healthy mix of varied demand generation tactics covering the offline and online world. Here we list seven indispensable demand generation tactics you must try. Websites and Landing Pages A website is a fundamental starting point for all businesses. Think of it like this: In the pre-internet era, the predominant way for consumers to find businesses was through the yellow pages section of the local phone directory. Without a listing, businesses would be highly dependent on expensive print advertising or word-of-mouth recommendations. As a practical matter, not listing your business in the yellow pages in those times was unimaginable. And so it goes nowadays for websites. It s the modern equivalent of advertising in the phone directory s yellow pages. When you create a website, you need to enhance it in particular ways to drive more traffic to your Internet destination. You do that through search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM), to name a few of the available techniques. We explore them more thoroughly in subsequent sections. Website landing pages are a special type of page that serves a unique purpose in demand generation. It s an extension of a link or an advertisement that displays verbiage optimized for search engines and social media. Landing pages typically use

3 lead forms that are designed to collect visitor details as part of a CTA. There are two landing page flavors: Reference landing pages: This flavor promotes visitor interaction and can generate a lead. It provides useful information about products and services. A CTA will prompt them to leave information about their companies and needs that will help a site owner determine if the visitor is a potential lead. Transaction landing pages: This flavor is more direct. It has a strong CTA that prompts the visitor to purchase something immediately or very soon thereafter. A software upgrade offer is a typical example. Here are some guidelines for building effective landing pages: Use images frequently, especially for the CTA offer (e.g. the cover of a whitepaper) and for whatever you are selling. If you re offering a webinar, use the presenter s picture. Use good design sense, and make the page consistent with the rest of your web site. Keep text short and succinct. Get right to the point and don t waste words. Optimize for search engines (keywords, etc.). Display your privacy policy prominently. Minimize the amount of data you need to collect on forms. If appropriate, use CTA buttons to bring visitors to forms. Finally, remember to send a thank you note following the completion of a CTA. A little courtesy goes a long way.

4 You ll want to understand more about the usage of your web site. Although there is a multitude of free and paid analytics tools available, your first stop should be at the Google Analytics home page (http://www.google.com/analytics); or check out LeadFormix s online resources (http://www. leadformix.com/pdf/effective-bpa.pdf).

5 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Potential customers increasingly find vendors before vendors find customers. The invention of Internet search has dramatically altered the relationship between companies and prospects. The reliance on search engines has spawned a relatively new science: search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is, very simply, the process of improving the visibility of web pages in a search engine by gaming the system to display those pages higher in a list of search results than would normally be expected using an engine s default algorithm. This assumes of course that people, on average, have a propensity to explore or otherwise use links that are higher on a search result list, all other things being equal. The practice of SEO requires some knowledge about how any given search engine works. However, a common set of practices has emerged for all popular engines, along with a dedicated industry of consultants who specialize in delivering optimization services and measuring results. The usual opportunities for optimization involve: Better keyword usage Page design alterations, including HTML manipulation Links from other locations (so-called backlinks ) This is by no means an exhaustive list; and SEO science is always evolving. You should purchase this expertise from the outside if you don t already have it in your company.

6 To learn more, your first stop should be this page: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer. py?hl=en&answer=35291 Best practices include: Targeting the right keywords. Target groups of keywords because one will be insufficient. Choose long tail keywords. Assigning proper meta tags. The title (<title> tag is the most important place for one or more keywords. If you can use keywords in the URL, separate them with a hyphen (e.g., lead-generation. html ). Keeping URLs relatively short may also make your brand stand out for long tail search terms. The description is what users will see in search results, so make sure to include primary and secondary keywords in that tag. But exercise caution stuffing too many keywords into the description will cause the search engine to ignore the page entirely. Headings (<h1> and <h2> tags) are also important search engines use them to index the page properly. Developing appropriate content. Think about how you search for things on the Internet. If you are like the average user, you scan a page quickly and probably read only 25% of the content. You look for headings, bullets, hyperlinks, keywords and other visual clues to speed up the process of determining whether or not this page is useful; and if it is, you want to ferret out the needed information quickly. Textual

7 content needs to be simple, clear and as brief as possible. Less is more. In an era of instant gratification, long narratives and excessive detail will drive web traffic to your competitors. Building links. You enhance a site s ranking by building links to your pages from other Websites. These are also known as backlinks. Typical ways of doing this include: Practices to avoid: Directory submissions Blog and forum postings Social bookmarking Classified advertisements Article marketing Link exchange with relevant sites Link baits Flash without HTML. Web crawlers don t see Flash content, so make sure you also provide an HTML version. JavaScript menus. Web crawlers don t see JavaScript, so they cannot use such menus to navigate the site. Build a sitemap to ensure a crawler will get to all parts of your site. Search Engine Marketing Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is also known as pay per click (PPC). It s the predominant form of paid Internet advertising. There are three fundamental types:

8 Fixed price: Advertisers pay web site owners a fixed price each time a user clicks on advertisements on those sites. Advertisements are links to the advertisers pages. Bids: Search engines require advertisers to bid on keywords or phrases relevant to the advertiser s target audience. When searches using those keywords return results, the advertisements appear. Each advertisement is a link to an advertiser s page. Affiliates: This model enables revenue sharing between a web site that hosts advertisements and the advertiser. If a click-through results in a sale, the affiliate receives a percentage of the revenue. Advertisements on a web page can take many forms. There are too many to review in this document. The three largest PPC services are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adcenter (Bing). All use bidbased systems. Social Media Marketing Social media represents a set of relatively new channels to reach people and enable conversations, unlike more traditional forms of marketing. It feels more intimate than other types of marketing communications because the messaging is informal, shared, bidirectional and audience members choose explicitly to affiliate with a person or an entity.

9 The big opportunity is viral marketing, which means that enthusiastic prospects or customers tell other people about your brand, product or service. The credibility of positive recommendations from sources outside a company is extremely high and difficult to replicate in other channels. Creating a compelling stream of content is the key to success with social media. While the most-visited social media sites as of July, 2012 were Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, studies have shown that the most effective social platform for B2B demand generation is LinkedIn. Source: The State of Social Media Marketing, Awareness Inc., January 2012 These are the key steps required to be successful with social media.

10 1. Map the target audience to optimal platforms. After performing a classic marketing segmentation exercise, determine which social media sites are used most often by that target segment. Become familiar with how users at those destinations interact with those platforms, and pay particular attention to offers and promotions from other companies that appear successful. Don t forget to learn from examples that don t seem to work. Try to understand, overall, why participating companies seem successful. 2. Create platform-specific strategies. Define the objectives for each platform and how you will measure your progress for each objective. Each platform is different; therefore generalized objectives will not be useful. Find the key influencers on each platform with tools such as Technorati, Twitter Search or Google Blog Search. Build campaigns to reach out to these people. Measure progress and results objectively. Be prepared to shift resources to platforms which yield better results over time. 3. Create compelling content. Compelling content is the lifeblood of demand generation, and no more so than in social media. It can take a variety of forms, including articles, blogs, whitepapers, videos, webinars, slide shares, newsletters and tutorials. Focus on providing information that s useful for your target segment and refrain from unabashed product advertising. Ensure that what you provide is relevant and timely. Don t waste time on long narratives that stray from the central message(s) you want to communicate. You may need to alter your content to match expectations of a particular platform. Be cautious about mindlessly re-purposing identical content for all venues.

11 4. (Optional) Do sentiment analysis before you begin. You may want to know more about prevailing sentiments before you begin using social media. This means learning more about what people are thinking and feeling by using tools or services. It s impossible to make a general recommendation about whether or not this step is necessary, or to what extent to do such an analysis. If you perceive that the use of social media for marketing has substantial risk, this may be a prudent step. 5. Think dialog and engagement. The social in social media means ongoing conversations that build trust and relationships. If you commit to using this channel, do it well, or not at all. If you want to begin on a small scale, focus on a single platform while simultaneously ensuring the proper allocation of resources and time to sustain the inevitable conversations. Other hints: Use schedules and a regular cadence to set expectations and build a sense of predictability with your audience. When possible, be proactive with your communications rather than reactive. Use contests, games, quizzes and giveaways; but use them judiciously. Consider the impact on your brand as perceived by your target audience. Respond to comments and questions frequently. 6. Monitor and measure. Social media campaigns require the ongoing collection of subjective and objective data to understand what s working, what isn t, and if the results justify the investment of resources. The major platforms provide tools that make monitoring more efficient. Use

12 them. You should compile regular reports about activity, sentiment, attitudes and so forth for your team, and possibly for higher levels of management. They may be subjective and imprecise, but they are essential. Metrics are the objective side of monitoring. Some standard measures include: Blogs: Number of posts, responses, inbound links, conversion rates. LinkedIn: Number of followers, number of people who follow the followers, number of affiliated groups, how often the company page shows in search results, conversion rates. Facebook: Number of likes, fans, member profiles, shared links, clicked links, conversion rates. Twitter: Number of tweets, followers, inbound links, conversion rates. Video sites (e.g., YouTube): Number of views, times viewed, subscribers, inbound links, search page ranks, connections, interactions, referrals, group members. 7. Make it personal. Always remember that social media is much more than distributing one-to-many communications. It s also a series of one-to-one interactions that enable sustained relationships and promote trust. The people who represent your company on these forums need to be aware of rules and guidelines for appropriate tone, topics, ways of responding to criticism, and so forth. Your brand is at stake, and an inadvertent slip could turn into a big problem. You may not want to leave these decisions to a social media guru fresh out of college. To ensure better objectivity, create a separate team (distinct from those who actually use social media on your company s behalf) to monitor and report on interactions and attitudes on these platforms.

13 Webinars A webinar (web seminar) is a presentation or a discussion (or both) using web conferencing technologies over the Internet. The visual portion of the webinar (e.g., a PowerPoint presentation) is always transmitted and received this way, but the audio portion may use conventional phone lines or a VoIP capability that is typically part of every web conferencing tool. Companies that provide web conferencing services have assembled an impressive list of features on their platforms: Support for slide shows, including pointers and drawing tools; Support for streaming video; Support for displaying any kind of content or PC desktops; Ability to transfer control of the meeting to or from any participant; Shared whiteboards; Text messages between participants; Voting and survey capabilities; and Ability to record and replay the entire conference at a later time. Access to web conferencing tools is typically provided as a service from third parties. Some larger companies may host their own facilities for security or other reasons. The considerations for a good webinar are essentially the same as for an in-person seminar. The big difference is the degree of control the organizer has over audience participation. That power should be used judiciously because webinar

14 participants may tune out or otherwise become bored if the communication only goes in one direction for an extended period of time. On the other hand, if hundreds or thousands of people attend a webinar, it s difficult if not impossible to manage interactions. One-way communication makes more sense with very large audiences. One challenge with webinars is the need for a certain minimum network bandwidth between the host and any participant, as well as a personal computer that functions well. Over the years this has been mitigated somewhat by the increasing availability of broadband connectivity, but difficulties remain when crossing international borders or connecting with less-developed parts of the world. That challenge notwithstanding, webinars are one of the most important selling tools available to a company. Although they do not replace face-to-face selling, they have become virtually indispensable for linking businesses to potential and current customers. Email Email is a cornerstone tactic in an online world. It s not without problems, but there is no other communication medium available today that is as common and accessible. We use it to engage prospects initially and to sustain relationships. It s often a communication vehicle that supports other online and offline marketing tactics. For example: Webinar announcements Tradeshow registrations

15 Buy it now CTA (e.g., a disk drive on sale for the next three days) Thousands of excellent articles have been published about email design and best practices. We will not duplicate that content here. But there are a few critical things you must always keep in mind. Know the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. You have legal obligations pertaining to the use of misleading information, full transparency about the sender and consumer choice pertaining to receiving future communications. Ignoring any provisions of the law can have severe consequences for your business. Segment your audience. Understand your target segments and their needs thoroughly. Customize your content accordingly. Keep your contact list clean. Too many bounced messages waste your time and may label you as a spammer by some ISPs. Be succinct. Get to the point quickly and write clearly. Most recipients have relatively little patience with marketing messages because it s likely that they receive dozens or hundreds of them each day. You have a relatively short opportunity to capture and hold a reader s attention. Sell only when appropriate. Being genuinely helpful to a prospect can work much better than a hard sell, depending on the phase of the sales cycle.

16 Test on a small scale first. Experiment before making big commitments. Event Management In spite of the dramatic increase in availability and use of web conferencing tools and virtual meeting tools (including virtual tradeshows), in-person events and conferences are far from dead. In fact, just the opposite is true: Online services (for example, email and social media) have melded nicely with the offline world and enabled some unexpected trends. Event attendance, as well as event variety, is at an all-time high notwithstanding a difficult economy during the last several years. Take, for example, IT industry conferences such as Oracle OpenWorld and Dreamforce. For the most part, attendance has been growing substantially each year. Some recent attendance statistics for Openworld: 2009: 43,000 2010: 41,000 2011: 45,000 2012: 50,000 (expected) Dreamforce has a similar trend: 2009: 19,000 2010: 30,000 2011: 45,000 2012: 72,000

17 In a blended online/offline world, keep these ideas in mind: Human contact is still important. Not every potential customer wants or needs face-to-face contact, but the ROI for in-person events is generally very positive. It s in our nature to trust people and organizations more when we speak to them in person. An event is only one element in a relationship value chain. Your goal is (or should be) to create and sustain a long term relationship between your company and a prospect. An event is a great way to launch or reinforce that relationship, but never lose sight of the work that s needed before and after the event. Virtual events are a relatively new marketing tactic that has similar characteristics to events in the physical world. The big difference is that the destination is somewhere on the Internet and there are no lines at the bathrooms. Some try to replicate the entire convention experience with platforms such as Linden Lab s Second Life, but most are less sophisticated and take a pragmatic approach to engaging attendees. Though the cost savings are compelling, it remains to be seen if this way of convening is a long term trend.

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