Acquisition Marketing

Low Cost Acquisition Marketing Through Blogging

Thursday, March 4, 2010 by Frank Dale

I just caught up on a few back "issues" of the eMarketer daily email. The article "Leads for Less with Social Media" got my attention. The article provided some data that syncs up with our customers' experience using Compendium's enterprise blogging software to acquire leads. The customer acquisition cost is lower than any other marketing tactic.

When you couple this with the higher than average conversion rate for leads generated by blogs, you have one of the most powerful marketing tools available. Many of our clients double the conversion rate of their website for leads generated by their corporate blogs.

This happens because blogs synthesize two powerful elements. First, blogs (especially Compendium powered blogs) make it easy to acquire targeted leads because most blog traffic is driven by search. Search engines deliver prospective customers that are specifically looking to solve the problem your blog page addresses. If you talk about coats and a searcher is interested in microwaves...the searcher will be directed to a page about microwaves. This means corporate blogs are really highly targeted landing pages. Second, the content on a corporate blog can be much more powerful because a blog benefits from peer-to-peer credibility. If the reader can relate to the author, which is much easier to do on a blog page than the typical webpage...the reader will find the content credible. Credible, relevant content is valuable content from the perspective of the searcher. If you provide value to the searcher, the searcher is going to provide value to you.

If you would like to learn more about Compendium's enterprise customer acquisition platform, visit our site or sign-up for a free demo.

Blogging for Customer Acquisition Part 2

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Frank Dale

I talked to our CEO, Chris Baggott, a few weeks ago about some of his experiences building ExactTarget. Chris was a co-founder and CMO at ExactTarget, which provides a wealth of relevant experience for us to draw on at Compendium. Specifically, we discussed a few of the epiphanies that came out of his eponymous email marketing blog. His email marketing blog has great content and still wins search for the term email marketing best practices to this day.

What I found particularly interesting was the way Chris and ET’s marketing department leveraged the content from his blog. Chris is a smart guy and he puts a lot of thought into what he writes. But Chris will be the first person to tell you that some posts are better than others. Why does this matter? It matters because people come to you to help them solve a problem. If you are not answering the questions that matter to the prospective customer, you lose the right to continue the conversation.

Chris and the marketing team at ET understood the fundamental principle of business.

Provide value to the customer to receive value from the customer.

They also knew that new visitors to ET’s website at that time tended to be interested in fundamental best practices for email marketing. Chris collaborated with his marketing team to take his best posts and turn them into a series of emails for new subscribers to the ET list. The series of messages they created is often called a lifecycle marketing campaign. The campaign provided readers with many of the best practices they would need to launch a successful email marketing initiative. New readers got to see his best stuff on getting started at the time it mattered most…when they were just getting started. This win for the prospective customer led to wins for ET. Great idea, but how does this relate to search marketing? I am glad you asked.

Search Engine Marketing and Segmentation

One of the tougher parts of any lifecycle marketing campaign is deciding where to start. Marketers solve this to a certain degree by placing the individuals into groups also known as segments. A segment is simply a rough grouping of individuals with similar characteristics, preferences, or behaviors. Segmentation makes a lot of sense because it helps us speak appropriately to people with similar interests instead of providing one message for everyone. But with search marketing, we can go one step further. We can speak to individuals or at least much smaller segments than we can traditionally.

Search lets us “target” individuals because we don’t have to artificially place them in groups. The searcher self-identifies their respective interest by choosing keywords that describe the problem they want to solve. This makes it much easier to provide content that is relevant to the prospective customer. But what I find particularly interesting is the way search helps us identify segments. Typical segmentation efforts depend on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, which you use to predict future behavior. Traditional segmentation efforts are great, but they can also be very expensive. What if we could run hundreds of low cost, potentially high return experiments at once?

When you combine an enterprise blogging solution like Compendium with the benefits of search marketing we can “test” a much larger array of messages than we can in other mediums. A Compendium customer can target hundreds of combinations of search terms, while also testing the content associated with the search terms. A review of your analytics data should provide insight into viable segments for additional marketing efforts. The data analysis can be fairly simple. Look at the top ten or twenty blogs based on the number of visitors delivered to your website. Then analyze the behavior of the cohort from each of the twenty blogs. Look for patterns on your site. Which pages did they visit and in what order? How many converted from each cohort? The data will help you start to identify the problem each group wants to solve. You will most likely find that several groups have the same behavior once they get on your site. You simply acquired them based on subtle variations in the way they think about the problem you solve.

The key is that with a solution like Compendium you can acquire lots of customers based on the way they think about the problem you solve. Once they are acquired, you can place them in a segment based on similar interests. This can be done by either using predefined landing pages that guide the segment members through your site in the order that is most likely to please them or you can give them an opportunity to sign-up for a lifecycle messaging campaign that addresses the problem that is relevant to them. Either way we can do many of the same things that a more expensive segmentation effort will accomplish, but at a much lower cost…and potentially a lot faster. Just one of the many benefits of our search marketing software. If you would like to learn more about our enterprise blogging platform for search engine optimization, check out this whitepaper or sign-up for a free demonstration.

Blogging for Customer Acquisition Part 1

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 by Frank Dale

The problem with most blogging programs is that they “bury the lead.” In other words, they make it difficult for the reader to find the content that is most relevant to them. You may have great content, but if the reader can’t easily find it…it doesn’t matter. If they can’t find it, it effectively doesn’t exist. Simple but true.

The Invisible Blog

A typical corporate blog presents information in reverse chronological order. If you get a lot of repeat visitors, this is completely acceptable. For the overwhelming majority of blogs repeat visitors are in the minority. A quick glance at your blog’s analytics report will tell you that most of your traffic is made up of first-time visitors. The majority of first time visitors are referred by search engines. In fact, if you are reading this right now you most likely found my blog through search. If you didn’t find this blog through search…“hi mom.”

So what does this mean for corporate blogging programs? Well, if you are blogging to be a thought-leader it is time to reorient your worldview. Thought leadership makes sense in a world that has lots of loyal readers. Unfortunately, that world has a pretty tiny population. Your company as great as it may be does not live in that world. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a corporate blog. A blog is one of the easiest ways to get lots of fresh, relevant content onto the internet. You simply need to understand what a blog should do for your business.

Why the First Time is the Best Time

A successful corporate blog has lots of first-time readers. This contrasts with many blogs that have zero readers. First-time readers are actually ideal because they almost surely arrived at your door from a search engine. This means they came to your blog looking for the answer to a specific problem. A problem you can solve. This makes the first-time reader a potential new customer. Your job is to make your blog easy to find.

Unless you are blogging with Compendium, the average person is unlikely to find your blog. This happens because the majority of blogs are not optimized for search engines, which is like having an unlisted number and wondering why no one calls. In part two, we will look at search engine marketing’s ability to target micro-segments. If you would like to learn more about our enterprise blogging platform for search engine optimization, check out this whitepaper or sign-up for a free demonstration.

Enterprise Social Media and SEO

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Frank Dale

At Compendium we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of enterprise adoption of social media tools. This is an email I sent to our sales team last night that shows why we are so excited.

Team,

This article shows that the Fortune 100 are beginning to adopt social media. A couple of key passages:

“A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.”

“Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation. Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts."The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?”

This is great news for Compendium, because we solve a major problem….we give the marketer control over the conversation in a secure, scalable environment. The administrative control we provide coupled with platform security make marketers feel comfortable sharing the content creation responsibility with more people than ever before. Companies with few blog posts all have one thing in common….only one or two bloggers. We solve this problem in a way that works for the marketer and the company. Final takeaway, this trend is not just happening in the US…it is a global movement.

Cheers,

Frank

In a global market, you can't afford to fall behind the competition. Check out our new whitepaper on Third Generation Corporate Blogging to learn more about the best customer acquisition strategy available.

Blogging is for SEO, Not Old People

Saturday, February 6, 2010 by Frank Dale

I read an article today in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Blogging is for old people, Pew report finds.” The title references the author’s conclusion after looking at Pew’s study of the millennial generation’s internet usage patterns. If I ran a consumer-to-consumer blogging service, I might be concerned. If we are talking about B-to-B or B-to-C blogging, the Pew study data does not apply.

Blogging is still very much about communication. It is just not primarily focused on C-to-C communication anymore. Blogging is now in its third generation. We have moved past blogs dedicated to cats and into an era of blogging for customer acquisition.

Business blogging works, because it is an easy way to provide relevant content that search engines love. Search engine providers like Google and Microsoft need to provide relevant results to keep searchers happy and loyal. Blogs are particularly good at providing relevant content, because blog content is topical and easy to update. It’s a great match, because the incentives are aligned for the search engine provider and the blogger. Bloggers provide topical content that search engines use to keep searchers happy. Search engines provide bloggers with prospective customers already interested in the product or service the blogger provides. We know this because the searcher specifically entered keywords corresponding to the topic that interested them. You don’t type “business blogging software” into a search box for fun. At least I don’t. You search based on your interests or needs.

Millennials may not blog, but they will certainly read blogs. We trust search engines because they help us solve problems. When you use a search engine to solve a problem, you are looking for a relevant, credible answer. If the best solution to your problem is found on a blog, you are going to visit that blog not a random twitter page. At Compendium we know this is true, because we use our own corporate blogging software to acquire customers. If you would like to learn more about blogging for search engine optimization, you can download our free whitepaper on Third Generation Blogging.

Business Blogs Are Highly Targeted Landing Pages

Friday, February 5, 2010 by Frank Dale

When I meet people they often ask me where I work. I could say “I work at a high-growth, SaaS start-up that serves online marketers and social media experts.” If they are still interested, I could tell them more about our corporate blogging platform for search engine optimization and social media. Generally unless the person is a marketer or a tech entrepreneur that shares my passion for both topics…we are going to end up talking about something else.

Those interactions got me to think about the way we position Compendium. This is a fantastic company with an innovative product. We turn the marketers that use our product into stars. How can someone not be interested in what we do? As an operations person that is interested in efficiency (and a former business development guy), I had to find a better message. After much thought and reflection…actually probably only two minutes. I came up with something that I think this is a good start:

• Compendium clients use our software to create lots and lots of highly targeted, search optimized web pages

At a high-level that is what we do. We help our clients get found in organic search and communicate to potential customers that are already interested in what our clients do. That last piece is the important part. We connect our clients with people that are already interested in what they do. That makes Compendium one of the best acquisition marketing solutions on the planet. For now, that is going to be my answer to the usual “so what do you do” question. If you want to learn how Compendium can help you, we are happy to answer questions and provide some initial coaching. This whitepaper on the value of Third Generation Business Blogging is a great start.

Blog Marketing Content (Part 3): The Buyer’s Journey or How to Know Where Blogging Fits into Your Marketing Program

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Frank Dale

Buying is a process or in Hugh Macfarlane’s words a “journey”. If you understand that simple concept, you have an opportunity to benefit by being part of that process. Customers go through stages from being unaware they have a problem, to acknowledging the problem, to searching for a solution, and finally purchasing a solution. As a marketer your job at the highest level is to accomplish these three things:

•Understand the need your customer is trying to meet (What job are you being hired to do?)
•Understand the buying process your customer employs to meet that need
•Design a marketing and sales process that aligns with your customer’s buying process

If you understand your customer’s buying process, you can begin to see where blogging fits into that process. For many companies blogging provides the most value after a potential customer already knows they have a problem. This is because the majority of potential customers find corporate blogs via search. At the point the potential customer gets to your blog, they are already aware that they have a problem. We know this because they entered a specific set of search terms in an attempt to find a solution to that problem.

If you understand the potential customer’s buying process, you can write content that answers the questions that are relevant to the buyer at that point in the process. The best source of content will be conversations with your customers. Ask customers what they thought about when they evaluated your product. For example, what information did they look for to decide whether or not your product was credible? Was it a customer testimonial or analyst recommendation? When you understand the process your customer uses, you can then tell your story from the perspective of the customer. You can answer the potential customer's questions by telling them what a current customer wanted to achieve and describe how you provided that outcome.

Your goal is to provide enough value from the customer’s perspective that the customer is willing to take the next step in the their buying process. If you provide value and understand the buying process, the customer will click on your blog’s call-to-action and proceed to the next step. It really is that simple. If you would like to learn more about how corporate blogging can help you acquire customers, check out our free whitepaper on blogging's role in SEO and social media.

Blog Marketing Content (Part 2): Understanding the Customer, the Marketing Equivalent of Blocking and Tackling

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Frank Dale

Before the advent of the internet (and now mobile marketing), marketers spent a little more time trying to actually understand the needs and motivations of potential customers. Don’t get worked up over that statement, because I think some marketers still try to understand the customer…it’s just that the majority don’t really try. They confuse behavioral data (click-through) with deep customer knowledge.

When you look at the output of most marketing programs, I think this is pretty clear. How many times have you come across a marketing communications piece that described a solution based on the product feature-set instead of the outcome the solution provides? If you read the description for a coat, did it describe the fabric or instead what the coat will do for you (i.e.: how the coat will make you feel)? Features exist to provide outcomes and experiences.

As Clayton Christensen likes to say “what job are you being hired to do?” If you want to write content that helps the prospect get closer to purchasing, answer the question the prospect has in mind. This is true whether you are selling brownies or corporate blogging software.

Blog Marketing Content: It’s About the Customer (Part 1)

Friday, January 15, 2010 by Frank Dale

We get a lot of questions about blog content at Compendium. Customers want to know what they should write about on their corporate blogs. The answer is deceptively simple: Answer the question your potential customer had in mind when they landed on your blog post. I realize that is easier said than done, but stick with me and I will show you how to do it. Before we get into content, we need to remember that blogging for the majority of companies should be primarily about customer acquisition.

The vast majority of blogs have little repeat traffic, which means if someone finds your blog; it is most likely through search. This is actually a good thing, because it means they arrived at your blog looking for an answer to a problem. You just need to provide some information about the solution.

So, how do you know what to write about? We will get into that in my next post. For now take a look at our whitepaper on corporate blogging to learn how blogging can help you acquire prospective customers with an intent to purchase your product or solution.

How to use blogging and web analytics to acquire customers.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 by Frank Dale

In marketing the ability to adjust to the changing needs of the market is a job requirement. Ideally, a marketer should be able to track changes in the factors that motivate potential customers on a monthly or quarterly basis. A marketer should know which attributes matter to the potential customer. For instance, do your potential customers prioritize ease-of-use, design, or return-on-investment? In practice tracking changes in the prioritization of attributes that drive customer demand can be cost prohibitive. At least that used to be the case until the invention of web analytics.

A web analytics platform provides a marketer with a list of keywords used by searchers to find your website. The keywords that lead searchers to your site will fall into one of two categories. The first category will be relatively constant month-to-month and year-to-year. Keywords in category one correspond to attributes that define your product or service category. For instance, if you are a cell phone service provider “call quality” is an attribute that will matter to potential customers every year. As a marketer you need to consistently position with attributes in keyword category one in mind. We will call keywords in group one “primary attributes”.

Keyword group two is made up of search terms that fluctuate based on changes in the market. This group deserves special attention for two reasons. First, terms in this category can become primary attributes, which makes early identification particularly important. Second, terms in category two represent customer acquisition opportunities driven by short-term trends. The marketer that is able to recognize the trend and respond to the change the quickest is most likely to win the available business. This is the type of agility at the heart of the OODA loop proposed by John Boyd.

If you have a corporate blogging solution, like Compendium, you can use the information from your web analytics solution to respond rapidly to changing demand represented by keywords in category two. For instance, if you notice an increase in search traffic coming to your site from the terms “Jack Donaghy” or “Negotiation Furniture” you could quickly blog about the collection of 30 Rock DVDs on offer. The blog content will help drive organic search traffic for the selected terms to your site. Potential customers in the market for master negotiating advice would then be more likely to buy from you instead of a competitor that also offers 30 Rock DVDs.

Blogging provides an easy, inexpensive way to capitalize on search trends. Most importantly a corporate blog gives the marketer the power to respond quickly to changes in the market without the waiting for IT resources. Even mature markets go through short-term trends that provide customer acquisition opportunities. A corporate blogging program provides a rapid response mechanism that lets the marketing team capitalize on both short and long-term acquisition opportunities. To learn more about corporate blogging visit Compendium’s website and check out our Blogging ROI toolkit.

How to grow revenue when consumer spending slows.

Thursday, December 17, 2009 by Frank Dale

The Wall Street Journal is the latest to publish an article about changing consumption habits in America. Consumer saving is on the rise after decades of high consumption rates. When consumer savings increase, spending declines. Marketers are understandably concerned.

It is unclear whether or not the shift to higher saving rates will be long lasting or a short-lived but understandable reaction to the economic downturn. The question for marketers is simple "How do I increase revenue when spending is down?"

Fortunately, if revenue growth is your mission, the answer is simple...invest in an effective search marketing strategy. What makes search marketing the solution? Good marketers understand how to change consumer behavior to benefit the marketer’s cause. The traditional marketing funnel starts at the top with "Awareness" moves along to "Interest" or "Consideration" and ultimately finishes with "Purchase." A good marketer understands what question or concern the consumer needs to satisfy at each step in the process.

The greatest challenge is often acquiring the prospect at the top of the funnel. Marketers typically spend 90% of their budget on customer acquisition. 90%. Prior to Compendium I worked for a retention marketing services provider. We were very much aware of the split between retention spending and acquisition spending. The problem with most acquisition marketing strategies is that a lot of that money is wasted.

If the greatest challenge in marketing is customer acquisition and most of that money is wasted, how can a marketer acquire customers effectively? The answer is search marketing. Search was recently named one of the decade’s ten best marketing technology innovations by Advertising Age. Search made the list because it acquires customers when they are ready for a relationship. An internet search is someone raising their hand and shouting "I am interested in this product or service and want help buying it from someone." It is much easier to sell to someone that wants to buy than it is to convince someone they first have a problem…and by the way your solution is the best one for them. Investing in search works because it allows you to reach people that are interested in what you have to say. No more wasting money on people that don’t care about what you have to offer.

The best way to win search is to blog. A blog is a fast, simple way to get content onto the internet. Don't worry about getting help from IT or mastering HTML. Just write and hit submit. Simply talk about the need your customer wants to solve and how you solve it for them in plain, everyday language. Blogging provides an almost real-time method of speaking to your customers at the moment that matters the most to the customer. Blogging is not simply a great search marketing strategy; it is one of the best marketing strategies period.

Blogging allows you to speak to people that want to hear what you have to say in a language and format that a consumer can appreciate. That is what makes blogging one of the best marketing investments available. Want to learn more? Visit Compendium's website and check out our free Blogging ROI toolkit. It provides an easy way to understand how blogging can help you grow revenue at an acquisition cost that can’t be beat. So stop spending money on people that are not interested. Spend your time with people that care. If you can do that, you will always be able to grow revenue no matter what the state of the economy might be.