An excerpt from Marketing Sherpa’s report:

“One of the most challenging obstacles to marketing is the time span from lead generation to sales conversion. These long sales cycles put pressure on marketers to streamline the lead nurturing process… We also wanted to know what percentage of leads at each stage of the pipeline were likely to advance to the next stage. We found that on average, nearly four in 10 leads move from initial inquiry to being sales-ready and the same ratio advance from sales-ready to qualified prospect.”

This should serve as encouragement to not give up too soon in your marketing efforts, and to put more emphasis on lead nurturing. This report is focused on B2B, however, the same advice would serve for B2C, although the sales cycle should be shorter, depending upon the service or product being offered.

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I’m wondering how SEO didn’t increase traffic for 39% of the websites. Poor quality of optimization would mean a lower amount of traffic, but even so…

Very Effective SEO Objectives by Primary Market

SEO has proven to be an effective tool in achieving a number of important marketing objectives, making it a universally-beneficial marketing tactic for a wide variety of organizations, regardless of their objectives.

As you can see, increased website traffic is rated as the most effective objective for SEO and increased brand or product awareness is also rated extremely well. However, increased website traffic and awareness are soft metrics that lead to an improvement in bottom-line metrics such as increased online and offline sales revenue.

We feel the effectiveness of SEO in these bottom-line metrics is undervalued because of difficulties in achieving closed-loop tracking from website traffic source to online or offline sales revenue, or low efficiencies of conversion optimization of websites.

B2C organizations are the most likely to perceive SEO as an effective tactic in achieving an increase in lead generation and online sales revenue. This is an indication that these types of organizations are more efficient in closed-loop tracking from website visitor source to leads and online sales revenue generated.

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Here are six ways you can make use of the online environment to increase your brand’s exposure.

Optimize your site
The number one tactic for online success is making sure your site is search engine optimized – after all, what’s the point in being online if no one can find you? To this end, there are a number of items to tick off your checklist. First off, it’s always best to have a local domain for each local site, preferably hosted in the target country, rather than having sub domains off your main site for each individual market. This is for credibility with your audience, but also because search engines rank local sites higher for local searches.

Naturally, you should make sure to have your keywords prominently displayed in headers, intro paragraphs and as META tags – but even more important is to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for your audience. This is especially true if you have sites in multiple languages – directly translating keywords rarely results in the most popular search term.

Research your keywords for each market with a keyword tool like Google’s, then incorporate a mix of the most popular keywords and more specific, ‘long-tail’ keywords of up to three words – for instance, if you’re selling car insurance, you’d want to use both ‘car insurance’ and something more specific, such as ‘affordable car insurance USA’.

Lastly, make sure your site is regularly updated with new, relevant, original content that’s useful to your visitors – search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated and able to recognize sites that are static or cheat with ‘copied and pasted’ content, so if your site isn’t of genuine interest to visitors, it’s going to get the cold shoulder from Google.

Play the media game
A tried and tested method of getting your brand and message out there is to maintain a steady stream of press releases to news agencies detailing the latest developments in your business and industry. Similarly, it helps to be involved with the blogosphere’s RSS feeds, blogging both on your own site and writing guest posts and articles for relevant industry blogs and publications.

The aim of your articles should be to drive traffic back to your own website, but to do this they should be useful to the reader, authoritative and also entertaining. If you’re tackling localized audiences in different countries then it’s important to do your research beforehand to find out what the most popular and credible media outlets are in each local market.
In a similar vein, you might consider signing up as an expert on an advice site such as Yahoo Answers – if you’re able to answer a specific question related to your industry in the most detailed way, your answer will be the top pick, earning you instant free exposure.

Social Media
Having a company presence on social media sites allows your company to interact immediately and directly with consumers, developing a personalized relationship with the people keeping you in business. In the case of instant-meme networks like Twitter, you can communicate new developments immediately to your followers and see the news spread organically across the web.

However, it’s important to make sure you’re using the right social network for your target audience. A bit of quick research is all that’s needed – for instance, if you want to enter the market in Hong Kong, then setting up a profile on blogging community Xanga.com is your best bet, or if you’re (bizarrely) looking at a joint marketing campaign targeting Brazil and Estonia then Orkut.com is your site.

Pay-per-click: AdWords
The bread and butter of online marketing, AdWords (also known as pay-per-click advertising) are a simple way to make sure your company’s website achieves high visibility across Google and other relevant websites, and while you should always try to climb the rankings organically with clever SEO techniques (e.g. link-building), putting aside some budget spend for an AdWord campaign is a fast way to gain online visibility.

Banner Ads
If you’re going to spend on banner advertising, it pays to make sure you’re placing your ads with the right websites for your target audience. Clothing company American Apparel is an excellent case in point for clever banner ad marketing – by carefully selecting the hippest Western music and youth culture blogs for their banner ads, the company has created a culture in which earning an American Apparel ad on one’s blog is a sign of credibility, rather than the blog giving the ad credibility.

Stay in touch
Once you get visitors to your site, make sure you stay in touch with them. Encouraging visitors to sign up for a regular e-zine or e-newsletter (in the relevant language, of course) with news and special offers will boost return traffic and your potential for future sales.

About the author

Christian Arno is Managing Director of international translation services provider Lingo24, specialists in the localization of marketing collateral.

Thanks Christian for this great guest post! ~ Kay

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It makes sense that the highest objectives achieved are to increase brand or product awareness and reputation, but I find it interesting that “increased sales revenue” sits at the bottom of the chart.

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How do you know if your web site is doing well for a large number of keywords, both top tier and long tail?

How do you quantify the results of the huge amount of effort you’ve put forth?

You gone to a lot of hard work to include quality content, optimize the site for both visitors and search engines, develop a quantity of good quality links to it, and have made every effort to make it a respected site in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google.

Has all your work paid off?

Advanced Web Ranking is a software application by Caphyon that I have used for 5 years to help measure how my clients’ (and my own) websites are doing in the SERPs. I will tell you right now this is a sponsored article, however I NEVER recommend anything that I don’t believe in.

Visual Results

My clients absolutely love the ranking reports I send them from the results I get from Advanced Web Ranking. It gives them a visual of how well our SEO efforts are doing via the current website ranking for each keyword, and it’s exciting to see how a specific keyword advances from month to month.

As a keyword rises in search engine ranking results, reports give it an awesome green + along with the number of places it has gone up, and that gets my clients (and me) really excited and happy. Conversely, if a keyword is dropping in rankings, it’s indicated with a red – sign, and although that can be a bummer, it’s also a call to action to work on that particular keyword phrase.

Below is a screenshot of one of the pages of an actual ranking report I ran for a client.

If you’re running reports for clients, you can personalize your reports by adding both your and their logos.  Reports can be exported in HTML, PDF, Excel (XLS), XML, TXT, and CSV formats, and printed or emailed directly to clients.

Search Engine Friendly

I typically choose the Google search engine, of course, and a couple of others. I like it that if my client is located in another country I can check the rankings that show up within that country’s search results. There are over 1,000 search engines available to pull from, located all over the world, so it doesn’t matter if you’re in the USA or Guatemala or the South Pole. These are constantly updated by Caphyon to ensure that results are always correct (it seems like almost every time I use it there’s an update).

Because AWR uses human emulation technology, when a report is run the search engine requests are indistinguishable from a web browser. (Sometimes Google will demand that I complete a Captcha on my personal searches for the remainder of the day following a run, but it’s a small price to pay.) You can use multiple proxy servers to decrease the update time, which can take quite awhile if the list of keywords is extremely long.

In addition, you can check the position of your keywords in Google through the Google AJAX API, and by using more than one Yahoo API key.

Keywords

Speaking of keywords, you can easily import a list of as many keywords as you want, from a website, a .txt file, Google Suggest or Wordtracker. I get quite a bit of use out of the Keyword Research Tool that’s built right in. The keyword builder feature will help you create compound keywords, starting from the individual words you provide, which will save you a lot of time when you’re setting up a site’s keywords within their profile.

Check Out Your Competitors

Add your competitors’ URLs to the run and you can directly compare your rankings with theirs. Target the keywords you want, get to work, and over time you’ll (hopefully) be able to watch their rankings drop while yours increase. You can also get a visibility overview of your site compared to theirs.

I Could Go On and On…

But I won’t – there are so many features available with this software, and you can learn more about them from the product’s website, where they describe them better than I can.

But I’ll tell you this – once you’ve tried the 30 DAY FREE TRIAL you’ll be so impressed you’re gonna want it! Yep, a 30 day fully functional free trial – so here’s my suggestion: download the software, set up your profile, add your keywords and run the program. Work on your site optimization and build some inbound links. 29 days later, run it again (set it up to run automatically so you don’t forget) and see if you’ve made progress. It gets addictive when you start seeing a site get increasingly better search engine rankings, and with the program starting at $99, not too expensive even if you use it only for one site.

Advanced Link Manager Bonus

When you download the free trial, you’ll also get a 30 day trial of Advanced Link Manager. I haven’t used this software yet, but with it you can the check the link popularity for your website:

• find out who links to your site and what keyword they use
• track the status of your links over time
• discover where your competition is getting their links

A feature in the Enterprise version that has me interested is the Webpage Analyzer, which not only helps you find new ways to improve page optimization but also helps analyze competitor and potential link partner pages.

For each analyzed URL you can quickly gather information including:

• domain age and page rank
• meta information (title description, robots, keywords, author)
• the number of outbound and onsite links

Keep Track of Paid Links

Got paid links, you bad boy or girl? If so, you can monitor them using this software, and get warning emails if a link is taken down. That alone could save you a bundle of money over time.

Link Building Made Easier

The ability to run a variety of link management reports for yourself and/or clients is impressive and offers a way to get a handle on this part of SEO. Since link building is the most time consuming, tedious part of SEO, anything that will help manage links and find more quality links this quickly and easily is a boon.

If you download the free trial and try out the program(s) I’d love to hear your opinion. Just leave a comment below.

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No one wants to lose a website due to copyright infringement, but Mark over at The Niche Store Builder had that very thing happen. If you are using a copyrighted name in your domain name you’ll want to read his article I Lost a Site Due to DMCA Violation – Trademark Infringement!

A couple of his guidelines include:

• If you have a site about foreign cars and it has the word Honda in the domain… you are are in violation! If its foreigncars .com, and you have Honda’s on it, you will not likely have an issue!
• If you have a domain named “CheapMacs.com” and it has Apple computers… problem! CheapComputers.com with Apple computers, no problem! If you are a company that sells “Miniature Apple Cart Stands” that are commonly called “MACS”… and you sell them at CheapMacs.com, again, you will likely have no problems, since you are not representing or infringing on the mark.

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Don’t let this happen to you. I found a guide written by Brittany Lynch, former Google employee, that explains what Google is looking for and how NOT to get banned from Adwords. The best part is it only costs $.01 – for real. I paid my penny and downloaded the guide, and it contains valuable information on what Google is looking for when you place ads.

Get it quickly – distribution is limited: Adwords Big Ban Report.

Update: The first 200 at 1 cent were sold out, and the price for the report  is now $7. If you’re using Google Adwords that price is still super low and worth spending to make sure your ads are not at risk.

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Endorsements must be honest, with true experiences related by the endorser. They must also be representative “of what consumers can reasonably expect to achieve.” I love it that advertisers can no longer use the disclaimer “results not typical” – like when the 350 pound woman loses 200 pounds in 3 months. Really?

The guideline that is causing all the online hoopla is the one that requires material connections, including free products or monetary compensation, must be disclosed. This is going to affect blog reviews of products and web sites, make-money-fast-online testimonials, and acai berry weight loss claims (see 350 lb woman above).

To help you make sure you’re in compliance, here is the exact wording:

• Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions and true experience of the endorser. If paid actors are used, this fact must be disclosed.
• Endorsements may not contain any representations which would be deceptive, or could not be substantiated, if made directly by the advertiser.
• Endorsements must be representative of what consumers can reasonably expect to achieve. Any claim made by the endorser must reflect the opinion or experience of a significant proportion of consumers. Disclaimers like “results not typical” are no longer sufficient.
• All material connections between the advertiser and the endorser (including research or medical organizations) that consumers would not expect must be disclosed, including free products or monetary compensation.

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Today I came across a poll that asked which you put on on a sandwich first, the peanut butter or the jelly. My first thought was “Peanut butter, of course!” But wait…how many people actually put the jelly on first? As it turns out, just over 1%.

Those are people operating “outside the box” – whether they actually think that way, or are just copying how Mom used to make pb & j sandwiches, they are not following the norm.

6 Barriers to Creative Thinking

What prevents us from thinking more creatively and coming up with new ideas? There are 6 barriers:

1. Negative Attitude – focusing on the negative aspects of problems and wastefully expending energy on worrying
2. Fear of Failure – not wanting to look foolish or be laughed at
3. Stress – being overstressed makes it hard to think creatively
4. Following Rules – mindlessly conforming to accepted rules and limitations
5. Making Assumptions – restricting creative thinking by relying on past experience and not asking questions
6. Over-Reliance on Logic – relying strictly on logic instead of utilizing imagination, intuition, and humor

Changing Our Thinking

One way to effect a change in thinking is to consider options beyond common sense and standard rules. Ask “Why” and “What if” questions. Brainstorm with a friend or write down every crazy thing that comes into your mind, no matter how off-the-wall it is, to solve a problem. Then be willing to try something completely different – squelch the impulse to say “That won’t work.”

Setting a Goal

Join me in setting a goal for the day – to rethink the things we do by rote, doing them differently even if it doesn’t “make sense.” It will take some effort to even realize there are options, but it will get your brain firing, resulting in more creative thought.

Here are some ideas:

• Eat something different than your usual for breakfast.
• Take a different route to work, even if it is longer.
• Go to lunch with someone you don’t know well.
• Ask that person’s opinion of something you’ve been considering.
• Instead of saying (or thinking) “no” say “I’ll think about it” – then do so.

Steve Jobs Says

“It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.”

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As soon as the new furniture is placed just so and the boxes unpacked, the welcome mat will be set out and visitors to the blog will be redirected to the new address.

This is an exciting time for me. Effective August 1st I will give up the agency life and begin life as Buzz Marketing Pros, my new online marketing and SEO business venture.

Please stop by, browse around, and if you decide you can use my services, let me know.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Newsletter – if you’re part of my RSS feed subscriber list you still have to sign up to get this monthly newsletter, and you’ll love the special SEO tips included in it.

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A lot of online marketers are totally missing a huge segment of potential customers. Keep in mind this group has $2.3 trillion in disposable income and in 2004, people aged 50 and older spent an average of 47.6 percent of their family’s budget on “nonessentials” (Bureau of Labor). These numbers are staggering for online marketers.

I came across a blog (and site) that talks a lot about marketing specifically to Baby Boomers; it has a lot of valuable info on it that you can take away for marketing your products.

Vim, Vigor and Vassolo makes some interesting points that need to be considered when marketing to Baby Boomers:

1. Every Baby Boomer thinks he or she can make a difference
2. They care about others
3. They care more about substance than trendiness
4. Boomers don’t feel old and expect to live forever
5. They’re confidant and know who they are
6. They want to feel fully alive and connected
7. They’re willing to pay a premium for quality
8. Baby Boomers expect r-e-s-p-e-c-t

If you’re a young marketer that assumes the world of ecommerce looks like you, you need to realign your thinking.

If you’re selling your own products, give some thought as to how they will appeal to the Baby Boomer segment of the population.

By targeting the people with the most money to spend you’re bound to increase sales and ROI.

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There, I said it. My inspiration is the blog article I just read by Sonia Simone, The Complete Flake’s Guide to Getting Things Done. Yes, she wrote it last year, but I only just read it, and it spoke to me!

So I say “Thank you Sonia, for clarifying my flakiness to me and giving me direction!”

Maybe you’re a flake too. Does this describe you?

Are you smart and motivated and passionate, and have lots of cool things you’d like to get done, but somehow when it comes to doing them, you just…don’t?

Are you great at ideas but lousy at execution? Talk a good game but don’t get any results? Spend a lot of time thinking about where you want to go, but not much time actually moving your ass down the road that would take you there?

Okay, enough free stuff – now you have to click over to her site and read the rest from there. It’s worth it. There are a couple of book suggestions and a software program to help you focus your flaky tendencies.

One of her tips is to do something in the next 20 minutes. So I did. Here ya go!

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You can achieve this in a year when the country is in a recession and offline advertising spending (newspapers, radio, TV) will be cut back 5-16%. Conversely, Internet advertising will increase by at least 9%, which is less than previous years but still on the plus side of the equation.

Back to that great great sales conversion increase…the new formula is:

Display Ads + Search = Increased Sales Conversions

Display ads, whether on- or offline, will increase brand awareness and foster more engagement – such as visiting your web site.  Options include graphic ads on relevant sites, postcard mailings, email advertising, and of course newspaper, radio, and TV if they are in your budget.

Top organic results coupled with pay-per-click (PPC) ads have proven to be a winning combination for online businesses.

Coupons = Motivation to Buy

Good business practices in 2009 include offering low prices, great deals, and coupons.

“Free Shipping” was the mantra of the holidays. Since the average amount a consumer spends is predicted to decrease quite a bit this year, to entice purchases the trend for 2009 will be digital coupons.

87% of money-conscious consumers now prefer to shop at retailers that offer coupons. With the advent of the iPhone, Google Android and other touchscreen smartphones (see Is Your Web Site Mobile Phone-Friendly?), consumers can use their cell phone to look for deals and coupons right at the point of purchase.

The coupon site RetailMeNot has become huge, with reports of over 5 million unique visitors per month. They offer a Firefox extension, gadgets, widgets and more; as consumers search the web they can instantly be notified of an available coupon for the site they’re visiting. If you have an online coupon to offer, it’s free to add it to the site.

Are you ready for 2009? Your marketing plan needs to include meticulous site SEO, inbound links, good deals to attract buyers, digital coupons, display ads, and PPC. It sounds expensive, and it can be, but with hard work and lots of research you can do it for less money than you may think.

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CommentLuv has made this cool contest available to all its registered blogs – and YOU can be an SEO Diva winner.

Here are the rules:

1.  You must be registered at CommentLuv.com and have your site URL registered and verified.
2.  You must also have a profile description entered at CommentLuv.com.
3.  You cannot spam.
4.  You do not need to have CommentLuv installed on your own site. It would be nice if you make a  post about winning the prize on your site and link back to the SEO Diva.

How to win an instant prize:

-  Leave a relevant comment on one of SEO Diva’s blog posts.

-  If you’ve won, your last blog post will come back as a prize notification and glorious fireworks will explode above your computer (okay maybe not).

-  Click on it and you’ll be automagically whisked over to the PRIZE WINNERS CLAIM PAGE.

Keep in mind your comment MUST be relevant and say more than “Great blog.” I will delete anything that smacks of spam and then I will smack your hand, so beware!

Update: I finally got a list of the prizes. Sorry, no boats or bicycles, but they include:

• Cash ($10 – $25 USD)
• 2 GB Memory Cards
• iPod Speakers
• Vmoda Headphones

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I didn’t have time to endlessly click on other blogs so they would, in return, endlessly click on mine. Traffic increased in a big way during my clicking days, but so did my bounce rate. All in all, Entrecard was a bust for me.

Now I’m checking into 125 Exchange, a new, free banner advertising program for blogs. It’s simple enough to use – create a 125 x 125 banner ad for your blog, upload it to their site, place their code on your blog and smile. You can choose categories, countries, and times to advertise. You can also test up to 3 ads.

Here’s the deal:

125 Exchange does only one thing. Places your 125 x 125 banner ad on other blogs, and places other blogger’s ads on your blog. It is all free for blog publishers, and the fresh traffic for your blog can be noticeable.

When you register, your account is automatically credited with 5,000 banner ad impressions. While you are working-off your initial 5,000 banner impressions, you also start replenishing the supply of free advertising available to you. Every three times someone clicks on a member ad on your blog, you get two visitors from clicks coming from someone else’s blog (3:2).

They have some strict rules, which I like – you don’t end up with junky looking ads for weird or useless blogs on your site. The rules include the following:

* Your ad must look professional.

* Blogs only. Your blog must have at least 20 posts and be recognized by Compete.com.

* You can only promote your blog or your services.

* All banner ads must be displayed above the fold on your blog.

* Your blog must not contain adult or other inappropriate content.

No risk, no expense, no clicking until you grow a blister on your finger…sounds good to me, so I’m giving it a try.

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