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Engaging with today’s new breed of socially-enabled buyer, or Customer 2.0, has become increasingly difficult for B2B sales and marketing organizations. Traditional marketing tactics have become increasingly ineffective. Inbound marketing, which is focused on generating relevant content that results in “getting found” by customers vs. the other way around, has brought new life for marketing. Similarly, B2B sales organizations are adopting inbound selling (a.k.a. social selling) to drive prospect engagement in the latter stages of the buying process.
Getting found requires not only relevant content but also good visibility on search engines (which is where most customers begin their research.) Making your content visible to Google and other search engines requires SEO (search engine optimization.) SEO is often confused with online marketing and inbound selling, but is in fact a very distinct discipline. As we’ve explained in a previous post, the equation for getting found looks something like this:
SEO + Inbound Marketing = Getting Found (by search engines AND customers)
So without further ado, he are 20 key SEO terms that inbound marketing professionals must understand:
301 Redirect – A redirect is a technique for forwarding one URL to another URL. It’s a useful and dangerous tool to seamlessly forward visitors and search engine spiders to a new URL for one of several reasons including if a website needed to change its domain or a time sensitive page like a contest has expired and is no longer relevant. 301 redirects, unlike 302 redirects, also transfer PageRank and SEO value to the new URL.
Breadcrumb – A breadcrumb is a navigational trail used on web pages to display where the page sits in the hierarchy of the website. Each level of the breadcrumb is usually a link back to the referenced page. An example breadcrumb looks like this: “Home > Category > Product Page”
Canonical – Similar to the 301 redirect, URL canonicalization is an HTML tag to help eliminate duplicate copies of the same page on a website. Unlike redirects, canonical URL tags are only used for search engine spiders to signal that the duplicate pages have a single source.
Co-citation – Co-citations are links used to establish similarity between two web pages. If sites A and B are either linked to or cited by site C, then they may be related to each other even though they may not directly link to each other. For an example, say your blog about banking is linked to from 1,000 other websites that also link to WellsFargo.com. Search engines will use the existence of 1,000 co-citations to establish relevance between your blog and Wells Fargo.
CSS – CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is part of HTML code that outline the layout of different elements of your site such as your header, content area, widgets, etc.
Image Alt Text – Alt tags are used in the HTML code to describe images on a web page. Since search engines cannot see images, the use alt text along with other factors to determine what the image is and how relevant it is. An example of alt text: <img src="image24094.gif" alt=”Latest picture of BP oil spill“>
Inbound Link – An inbound link is a link from an external site to your site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site B would have an inbound link from Site A. To see how many inbound links your site or page has, use the Yahoo! Site Explorer tool.
Indexed Pages – Indexed pages refers to the number of pages of your site that search engines have found, crawled and stored in their index. A page cannot rank for a search term unless it is in the search engine index.
Internal Links – Unlike inbound links, internal links is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. An example would be if Site A added a link to the About Us page from the homepage of Site A. Internal links are valuable for SEO, although not considered to carry the same weight as an inbound link from an external source.
Long Tail – Long tail refers to uncommon search queries, generally phrases that are 3+ keywords in length. Popularized by Chris Anderson, long tail refers to the statistical probability distribution that there is a larger share of traffic to be gained by targeting the large number of uncommonly searched queries as opposed to the few, but wildly competitive and highly trafficked head terms.
NoFollow – A link element used in the HTML code of a link to tell search engines to not pass any SEO value or PageRank through the link. It was created to prevent spam in blog comments that the blog author could not control. An example of the nofollow code: <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount drugs</a>
NoIndex – Noindex is a HTML tag that tells search engine spiders to prevent storing the page in a search engine index. It can be used for private information that you would not want anyone to find through a search engine. Found in the <head> section of the web page, an example code looks like: <meta content=”noindex” />
Outbound Link – An outbound link is a link from your site to an external site. An example would be if Site A adds a link to Site B on its homepage. Site A would have an outbound link to Site B.
PageRank – Is a link analysis algorithm, assigning a numerical weighting for the total value and trust accumulated by your entire site (all pages) based on the quantity and quality of the links pointed at your site. Links are used by the search engines as the main factor determining trust, relevancy and the importance of a page and domain based on the quantity and quality of the links that point to it. Every link on the web is treated as a “vote” and that the more votes a page has, the more value its vote’s pass.
Robots.txt – Robots.txt is a protocol that determines the accessibility of specific pages on a domain to search engine spiders. The robots.txt file tells search engine spiders which pages to disallow any crawling or indexing before the spider even reaches the page. Try typing in any domain followed by /robotx.txt and see one for yourself: http://www.google.com/robots.txt
Spider – A search engine spider is an automated program, known as a robot or crawler, that navigates through the web, crawling and indexing content from sites into a search engine index.
Subdomain – A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. An example would be Money.CNN.com is a subdomain of www.CNN.com. Subdomains are treated as separate sites from the larger domain it’s a part of and do not carry over the SEO value from its parent domain.
Subfolder – A subfolder is a folder or path contained within a domain. An example would be www.google.com/adsense is a subfolder to www.google.com. Subfolders are treated as the same site as the parent domain and carry over all SEO value.
Title Tag – Title tags are HTML tags in the code of a web page that define the title of the page. Title tags are displayed in the menu bar of internet browsers and on search engine results pages with a short meta description snippet. They are one of the most important on-page factors for SEO.
WHOIS – WHOIS is a query protocol to determine who the owner of a website is. Many resources are available to search WHOIS records such as Network Solutions. Private registrations can be used to hide contact information for WHOIS records.
With new businesses implementing online marketing and blogging strategies every day, more and more business owners are now taking on the daunting task of online marketing, and they’re looking online for help on where to start. This can be a seemingly great tactic, albeit dangerous. The danger lies with the massive amount misinformation floating around. Because of that, I wanted to clear up five popular myths in order to help you avoid unrealistic expectations, expectations created by new businesses about the wonderful world of online marketing.
Thanks to Marketo for sparking my idea to take the opposite approach of their post.
And now, without any further ado, the list…
1. If You Build It, They Will Come
This common mistake is the inherent weakness of the “Content is King” argument. Creating content by publishing blog posts and articles does not mean search engines nor visitors will find your content. The truth is that even the best and most deserving content usually does not win because “Content + Marketing = King”. This is where search engine optimization and social media marketing have an effect on your success.
2. Creating a Twitter and Facebook Account Will Help Your Marketing Strategy
I’ve seen it a hundred times. A business wants to ‘get social’ and start focusing on social media marketing and interacting with their customers. So, they setup a Facebook profile page and a Twitter account and phew… that was hard. And now the traffic, customers and comments should come rolling in…yes? Wrong.
Leveraging social media for B2B sales and marketing success takes time, effort and some strategy. Expect it to take a little time, some research and learning on your end and a lot of tweets and updates to really get going (unless you’re a big brand). If done correctly, it can be a huge benefit to your marketing goals, sales objectives and your customer service.
3. Reading Online Tips and Techniques is a Substitute for Professional Help from Experts
The Internet is a large, large place full of great information. The problem is the percentage of content that is trusted, referenced, truthful and written by credible experts is particularly small. The fact is, what you read online is mostly opinion, made-up, you name it and should not be substituted for real facts or expert advice. Think of any medical website or advertisement and the message they throw in the fine print “This information is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional.” If you understand and follow that methodology to keep your body healthy, do the same for the health of your business and its marketing strategy!
4. Automate Everything You Can to Save Time
This is yet another classic mistake caused by efficiency overload. Some things can be automated. Other things should never be automated. Lead scoring, company research and sales intelligence, tracking search engine rankings are a few examples of aspects that automation can save a great deal of time. However, other aspects like search engine optimization, demand generation and conversion optimization to name a few should always be manual. Sure, there are tools you can use to help, but these tasks are more of an art than a science where automation has no place.
5. Being Successful Online Is Easy
Probably the biggest oversight that companies fall prey to is the misunderstanding that being successful online is easy. What may have worked in 1998 definitely does not work in 2010 and success is much, much harder now-a-days. Search engines and stiff competition have taken away most “fast-track” online marketing efforts. Yet, companies are still misinformed and, just to name a few, still:
…think that a “set it and forget” approach will work (Not so much. It takes real work!)
…want to spend as little as possible to get great results (When has this ever worked?)
…want #1 rankings in less than a month (LOL! Really?)
…give IT departments more control than they do marketing departments and SEOs
The B2B sales and marketing landscape is shifting, adjusting to the rapid advancements in social networking and online buyer behavior. From start-ups to multi-billion dollar organizations, the industry is facing the hard fact that traditional, old school methods of marketing have become largely ineffective. Traditional online marketing tactics are losing traction at increasing rates. It’s now all about trust and “heartfelt marketing.”
Traditional tactics are being replaced by new approaches designed to catapult prospecting and retention efforts into never before seen realms, connecting with customers while providing more transparent access to information. As part of this shift, marketing must focus on sales enablement, to help sales professionals better communicate with and understand whom they are selling to.
The dramatic changes in online buyer behavior are driving a need for adaptation – as the Customer 2.0 spends more time online engaged with social media and networks, they create more information about themselves and the products they use, which can really help sales organizations engage more effectively with this new type of prospect. The Customer 2.0 will always lead the way, but savvy Sales 2.0 professionals can keep pace with efficiency-driven solutions.
At InsideView, our sales productivity technology allows sales teams to gather real-time insight about their prospects and customers. Information is aggregated and organized from thousands of sites, providing any and all information about a company and the employees within, including new hires, employee transfers (or termination) and news. With this information, the sales and marketing teams can drive sales through social media, tapping into social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to keep pace and communicate with the Customer 2.0.
The fact is that “old ways” of marketing are dying.
The impact of mass marketing and mindless telemarketing is drying up. Those that will find a way to enter the same playing field as their (increasingly social) customers will thrive. Those that stick with archaic methods will wither.
Today’s post highlights blogs that are terrific resources to managing, maintaining and mastering the sales cycle. We’ve broken them out by three stages of the sales process that they specialize in – lead generation, lead management and lead nurturing /qualification. Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments.
Lead Generation
B2B Lead Generation Blog: Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, runs a blog about B2B lead generation, sales leads and marketing for the ‘complex’ sale.
Dig It: SalesDog.com is one of the Internet’s most visited sales-success sites, with insight from several of America’s leading sales experts, bringing practical selling tips and strategies to salespeople, sales managers, business owners and entrepreneurs.
The Virtual Handshake: A resource guide for Web 2.0 technology users, including blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, relationship capital management software and more.
Lead Management
Sales Lead Management Association Blog: Articles to help you become more successful in the lead management sales business process. The blog allows you to respond to posted articles, share your thoughts, opinions and ideas.
Sales and Sales Management Blog: Paul McCord, best-selling author, sales expert, coach and trainer, provides insight about sales and sales management issues, specializing in sales trends and topics including introductions vs. referrals, use of incentives and much more.
Lead Nurturing/Qualification
The Online Marketing Blog Network: The network brings together expertise from the sales and marketing online community, contributing news, ideas, strategies, commentary, insights, research and more
Inside Sales Experts Blog: Shares thoughts about best practices for sales, lead generation and nurturing and revenue generation, including trends, tips, models and metrics.
B2B Sales and Marketing Blog: Industry discussion about lead generation, qualification and nurturing, focused on providing ideas about global business-to-business sales support, growing the sales pipeline and increasing sales numbers.
For an expanded list of all-things-sales blogs, check out the Top 100 Blogs to Boost Your Sales Skills.
InsideView was founded to help business professionals take advantage of the convergence of social media and enterprise applications — or what we refer to as “socialprise“. For several years now our application has been helping you track key business events and relationships across thousands of traditional and new media sources. Today we’re happy to be adding one more voice to the mix with our company blog, The Inside View. The cobbler’s children have shoes after all.
This blog is intended to help you leverage InsideView applications more effectively, gather your product feedback, and stay informed about key industry trends. In the future we will regularly be posting about product updates, new features, tips & tricks, customer success stories, and the evolving business search and intelligence landscape. There’s plenty to discuss about the changing face of sales and marketing, information overload, new search technologies, and the emergence of socialprise applications. And we would love to hear your thoughts!
We have a great team here at InsideView with diverse backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives. You can expect to see many of our team members contributing to this blog. To get things started, I’m Marc Perramond, Product Manager here at InsideView. Lately I’ve been spending most of my time working on SalesView, our flagship business search and intelligence application. We first launched SalesView and the socialprise concept on March 18th.
If you’re not familiar with SalesView, it is a business search and intelligence application designed to provide sales and marketing professionals with real-time, relevant business insights that are aggregated from 20,000+ sources including subscription-based data providers, unstructured Web content, national and regional news outlets, trade journals, blogs, job boards, and social networks. For a better idea of what’s going on “under the hood” you can read about our platform here.
SalesView FREE is currently available as a mash-up for Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. We have also established partnerships to make SalesView FREE available for Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle On Demand, and Landslide Technologies. SalesView PRO and TEAM are available both as an integrated CRM mash-up and as a stand-alone Web application that compliments any CRM. If you’d like to learn more about SalesView, contact us to attend one of our weekly Webinars.
We consider your input an integral part of this conversation, so please don’t be shy with your feedback and suggestions about how we can make this blog most useful to you.
