Thursday, July 02, 2009

Does Branding Clash with Search Efforts? You Bet It Can...

Great article in BtoB's Hands On enewsletter...one of the best comments in this piece is: "These companies want to differentiate themselves and, with a normal sales message, I understand that. But this isn’t a normal sales message. It’s matching up searches."

It makes you think. Doesn't it?


Branding efforts can clash with SEM

Story posted: July 1, 2009 - 2:52 pm EDT
Source: BtoBonline

Ian Harris is CEO of Search Laboratory Ltd., based in Leeds, England, which helps companies’ search engine marketing and optimization efforts. BtoB recently asked Harris about best practices in search engine marketing.

BtoB: You’ve said that b-to-b companies spend too much time thinking of new ways to describe what they do in terms that prospective customers don’t understand. Can you elaborate?
Harris: Let me give you an example. We do some work for a big video conferencing company, and the marketing team there spends its time trying not to be a video conference company. What I mean is, they try to brand themselves as a “video communications” company, because all their competitors do conferencing.

They get so obsessed with this that they put it on their home page, title tags and paid search keywords. The problem is, their clients do not see them as a “video communications” company. Their clients want video conferencing, and that’s what they see them as.

Believe me, this is a common theme. Again, we do work for a few companies that do IT support and services, but without fail they brand themselves as something like “system care.” or “logi-care” or “integration change.” It’s like “IT support” is a rude word.

Read More.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Search Engine Marketing

The TAG Marketing society met yesterday to discuss the latest information regarding Search Engine Marketing. The moderator from NeboWeb and panelists from Prominent Placement and Sage Software did an excellent job. Some basic, strong reminders that were shared included: (1) The importance of a strong call to action, (2) Content is king, and (3) Test! Test! Test!

Of course, marketers should know these, but it is always good to be reminded -- and how often, do we sacrifice content, our call-to-action, or testing for expediency sake? Never, right?

Anyway, here are some really good tidbits that they mentioned will help the efficacy of your programs, and I bet you aren't using all of them:
1 - Make sure your press releases are search engine optimized. It is not that hard to make sure the most frequently used phrases in your space show up in the press release.
2 - Always make sure you put your URL on the outside envelope of any direct mail piece - it greatly increases traffic.
3 - Use IndexTools for metrics. It was recommended over Google Analytics, and it keeps Google from knowing what is and is not working on your website (meaning they can't as easily increase prices, when they don't have that information).
4 - Using new media tools on your website (e.g. FlickR, blogs, video, podcasting, etc) will increase the conversion rate and your search rankings. To do that, ensure that you optimize the content and create links back to your website.

All-in-all, another winning TAG Marketing society event with some good information to put into practice.

Until Next Time...

SJ

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