January 09, 2001
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*** MarketingSherpa.com's B-to-B MarketingBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips for B-to-B Marketing on the Internet
Jan. 9, 2000 Vol. 2, Issue 2
Thanks for forwarding this issue to your friends! Tell them
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1. NEWS: Do "Call Me Now" Buttons Work for B-to-B ?
2. MORE HEADLINES
3. CASE STUDY: Anatomy of a Really Successful B-to-B Wireless Ad
Campaign
4. INTERVIEW: Search Engine Optimization Tips for B-to-B
Marketers from Web Mercs' Anthony Muller (Part I)
5. SPONSORED LINKS: Free offers for B-to-B MarketingBiz Readers
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NEWS
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* Business Marketers Test "Call Me Now" Site Buttons
More and more businesses are adding "Call me now" buttons to
their Web sites. These buttons allow a visitor to input the
phone number they'd like to be called at, and when they'd like
to be called by a customer service or sales rep.
Why would a B-to-B site add this feature? Unlike consumers, most
businesspeople aren't concerned with phone charges; and they
aren't using a single line for both phone and Internet access,
so they can make outbound calls even when they're online.
Diane Fraiman, VP Marketing for Sanctum Inc., says she added
the call-back feature to her company's contact page because,
"It's actually a very appealing thing. People don't want to
make the effort to search around your company's phone system
to find the right person to talk to, or be told that person is
on another line now can I call you back. They want to talk to
the right person, right now." Fraiman partnered with a "very,
very cool" business telesales firm, Sunset Direct, to power
the call-back. So far, she's been more than pleased with
results.
IBM is another company using a "Call Me Now" feature. Company
spokesperson Deborah Cohrs told us that IBM's been so happy
with results that they've placed the button on more than 500
pages throughout their site, including the Small Business
Center. Cohrs says, "It responds to our customers who,
according to IBM research, are looking for personalized help
more than 70% of the time. It is also efficient -- the call
centers have more than 2,000 sales professionals who are brand
specialists, each of whom generates an average of $5M revenue
per year at a cost that is 40% less to produce than that of
traditional face-to-face reps."
http://www.sanctuminc.com
http://www.sunsetdirect.com
http://www.ibm.com
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CASE STUDY: Intraware's Wireless Campaign
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* Anatomy of a Really Successful B-to-B Wireless Ad Campaign
CHALLENGE
Intraware, a provider of Web-based IT management
solutions, wanted to attract more buyers with substantial
budgets from the Fortune 1000 while lowering its cost per
qualified sales lead. This challenge was made more difficult
by the fact that it's hard to stand out in the advertising
noise in that particular marketplace.
More magazine space ads and ordinary direct mail campaigns
wouldn't do the trick, so Intraware asked digital
communications agency Lot21 to come up with a lower-cost,
higher-performing alternative. Barry Peters, Lot21's Director
of Emerging Media, shared the details with us.
CAMPAIGN
Peters knew IT professionals tend to be early
technology adopters. He says, "It wasn't necessary to go with
a wireless campaign per say, but when we looked at the usage
of handheld devices, we realized the demographic was IT
professionals for the most part." At the time (May 2000)
AvantGo's wireless realtime, updateable news service had about
500,000 users -- but the service had never carried ads on its
home page before. Peters knew he'd get two advantages from
being the first -- he'd probably get an unusually high click
through rate purely "due to the novelty of it"; and, he
figured he could talk AvantGo into selling him the space at a
low CPM because, hey it was an unproven media!
Next the team put together a creative plan. Peters says, "We
were very, very careful about how we presented the ads. A lot
of people just slap up a smaller version of their 468x60
banner. We didn't want to put a heavy graphic up. It's all
about the customer. We didn't want to scare away AvantGo's
customer by throwing a page of ads before their channel. We
all agreed the best way to do it is to put a bit of text up
there." The creative team brainstormed up five different,
short, phrases and tested them out on friends and colleagues
in a "grassroots focus group."
Two phrases won. One said, "Find out where IT pros go >>".
The second invited IT pros to win a years' salary. Both
clicked through to a second level, also with very short copy
explaining the offer; and then to a third page to capture opt-
in email permission.
Peters wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to
respond; and, he knew requiring people to enter their email
address on their handhelds would be enough of a pain that he'd
lose response. So, he worked a deal with AvantGo to pre-
populate the field. "When you get to that third level, you
only hit submit instead of typing."
Lot21 worked with Intraware's marketers to craft follow-up
email newsletters for responders. The sales department then
stepped in to convert the leads over its average 3-6 month
sales cycle, ending in December 2000.
RESULTS
Peters says, "The campaign brought in a mass volume
of highly qualified leads we didn't even expect!" In fact the
leads were so cheap and so qualified that Intraware saw a 97%
reduction in their customer acquisition cost. As of December
2000, Intraware had a total of 8,800 customers, including more
than 50% of the Fortune 1000.
Peters admits that these campaign results (and extra-low
costs) would be tough to duplicate today now that so many ads
run on AvantGo. However, he still recommends that B-to-B
marketers test wireless ads. He says, "It's not so mainstream
that you're getting college kids or what have you. You can
get into BusinessWeek, WSJ and that's where we're looking to
take our clients."
This Case Study's results also show that for the IT audience,
it can be worth being the first advertiser on the block to
test a new gizmo. And you can bet there will always be new
gizmos to test advertising on!
Simulation URL of original campaign first screen:
http://www.lot21.com/public/Intraware_frameset/launch.html
http://www.intraware.com
http://www.lot21.com
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Anthony Muller, Web Mercs
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* Search Engine Optimization Tips for B-to-B Marketers from Web
Mercs' Anthony Muller (Part I)
Everyone knows search engine optimization is one of the most
effective ways to drive highly qualified sales leads to your
Web site. But let's face it, for most marketers from creative
backgrounds, mastering optimization is like having to memorize
the postal regs manual. It's technical. It's complicated.
It's boring. And whenever you think you have it nailed, it
changes.
So when we heard that Anthony Muller, President of Web Mercs
is not only an expert, but he speaks marketing English, we
called him immediately.
Q: OK so what are the biggest misconceptions that lots of
marketers have about getting great search engine positioning?
Muller: The most common is the idea that you can get to the
top with words like "Web Design" or "Car Sales." You'll hire
some guru and he'll magically whisk you immediately to the
number one spot whenever somebody types in that word. Things
don't work that way. If there is somebody who can do that,
I'd like to meet them!
To get that one keyword up there, you'd need a lot of
information pages, a lot of separate Web sites ranked
importantly pointing to you, and you need a lot of visitors
coming to you already.
Misconception number two is, "Why can't I be all over every
search engine?" People think the guru can whisk them to the
top of every engine. While it's possible, you'd spend so much
money doing it, it wouldn't be effective.
There are hundreds of search engines, but only 20-30 main
ones, and just four-five of them account for 60-75% of the
total engine traffic. For example, Altavista gets about 17%
of the total search engine market and it equals roughly 40
million searches a day; as opposed to Lycos or HotBot which
each get 2-3% of the market. It would shock you to know Yahoo
only gets about 24%!
We take an electoral college approach to engines -- so we
target Altavista, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Those alone amass a
good 60% of the total market.
Q: What about Google? We keep hearing B-to-B marketers rave
about their ad results on Google.
Muller: Google is up to 8% and growing. They're very good --
the search results are very relevant. There are a few things
about Google that are kind of tricky. They have spam
detectors that weed out a lot of people, and also weed out
rookies who don't know what they're doing. It leaves the area
open to professional search engine marketers who know what
they're doing.
Q: A lot of people advertise themselves as search engine
consultants these days. How should we figure out which one to
hire?
Muller: You have to be careful when you go to these guys.
Some do mass emailings saying they'll get you "into the Top 10
rankings guaranteed." We checked those companies out -- what
they're promising is when you type in your domain name you'll
be in the top 10. Well I should hope so! You're the only one
out there with that domain name!
There are other people out there who will offer services but
don't have a lot of knowledge. For example some Web designers
offer to submit your site every month as part of their
service. That actually hurts your site more than it helps.
Once is ok, but other than that you could be risking your
ranking in some engines.
You want to hire people who can show you actual results from
past clients, proof of what they can do. You also want make
sure they get results without spamming. Spamming is using
devious means. That can get your domain banned for good from
search engines after a few weeks' good results. Then you
can't ever get engines to rank that domain again until you
write letters of apology ... there's this whole rigmarole.
Q: What "devious means" do we need to make sure to avoid so we
aren't banned for spamming?
Muller: There are a variety of things, including:
Invisible text -- for example when you'll put a paragraph of
black text on a black background.
Keyword stuffing -- when pages have one word repeated over and
over again in the text. Duplicate words in your meta tags and
titles are also considered spam.
Meta refresh tags -- when you do a search and you click on a
link and it looks like a page is about to load but another one
pops up and quickly jumps you to an unrelated page. The first
page is optimized for where the search was targeting, the
second is a redirect with no relevance to the first.
Trapping techniques -- when you go to a page and your back
button is disabled.
Now, bear in mind, not all of these are considered spam by
every search engine. For example Excite doesn't mind invisible
text but HotBot does.
Q: What about just using an inexpensive program like Web
Position Gold instead of hiring an expert?
Muller: We use Web Position Gold for link tracking. It's
excellent to track where your links are hitting. It saves a
lot of time and creates easy-to-read reports. The program
does have a doorway page generator (these are pages optimized
solely for a specific number of keywords you're targeting
search engines for) but it's an ugly page with a few words and
links on top, no graphics, nothing nice looking.
Creating doorway pages that are visually appealing is one of
the hardest things to do. Search engines can barely index
things that make Web pages look good like Java, Flash, image
maps, and other graphics. So you don't get ranked. Engines
unfortunately like ugly pages!
So I don't recommend using Web Position Gold to build your
pages. You need an expert for that.
By the way, if you don't need historical data showing how your
ranking has changed over time, you should try Agent Web
Ranking. It reports just like Web Position Gold in real time
only without history.
NOTE: Next week in Part II of this exclusive interview, Muller
reveals how much a good optimization consultant should cost
you; how long it will take to see real results; and, his
favorite tactics to get high rankings.
WARNING! If you are reading a pass-along copy of this
newsletter, get your own free subscription now so you will be
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Agent Web Ranking freeware:
http://www.aadsoft.com/agentwebranking/ranks.htm
Web Position Gold:
http://www.webpositiongold.com
Web Mercs:
http://www.web-mercs.com
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