I’ve learned a lot in my time in the search community, which has always been generous with its knowledge. In my continuing effort to give back, here are 10 important tips, from search marketing, to B2B marketing, and life at a startup.
Four years ago, I joined a relatively new company called Commerce360 – then a digital agency with a strong focus on search. The company was formed by two serial technology entrepreneurs, Lucinda Duncalfe and Craig Danuloff, with the explicit goal of finding a technology opportunity.
We were early customers of some second generation search technology, but quickly hit the limit of what existing tools could do. We had found our technology opportunity and made the switch to a software company.
Shortly afterward, I took over the marketing role and we rebranded as ClickEquations. In early June, ClickEquations was acquired by Channel Intelligence. Later this month, I’ll be joining H. Bloom as director of marketing.
I’ve learned a lot in my time in the search community, which has always been very generous with its knowledge. In my continuing effort to give back, here are the 10 key things I learned working at a search startup. It’s a mix of tips about search marketing, B2B marketing, and life at a startup.
When I started marketing ClickEquations, I knew very little about paid search – something of a problem when your product is for search marketing.
The good news is that there is a tremendous amount of training on search marketing and articles are constantly being written.
Thought leadership was a big part of how ClickEquations built a name for itself and for good reason. If you’re viewed as an expert, people are more likely to listen to you and trust your products and services. It’s time intensive, but cost efficient.
The online marketing community is small and your reputation can’t be bought. Reputation follows the 1000:1 rule. It takes 1,000 good deeds to build a reputation, but only 1 slip to destroy it.
I’m a firm believer in quality over quantity. There is just far too much noise online and we all have far too little time. Between one and four great posts per month is much more valuable than four to eight mediocre pieces of content.
Being awesome at sharing is key. People probably don’t want talk about your product most of the time. But, they are willing to share interesting information, things that help them do their job, or anything that helps them express themselves.
Don’t just tweet out your press releases. When you’re presenting, don’t just shill your products and features. Give value and you’ll get trust.
I was working on my friend’s PPC account and all of the basics were in place: tight ad groups, relevant copy, and good negatives. The numbers weren’t working though. So, I launched a series of tests for landing page variations. Within a month, conversions doubled and CPA dropped by 75 percent.
No amount of work before the click can save you from a poorly designed site that isn’t persuasive. Conversion rate optimization and landing pages are essential, not optional.
Before 2010, I had never spoken at a major conference. By the end of the year, I had spoken at eight. I’m consistently impressed that, in many ways, the search community is a meritocracy. If you put in the work, you can get ahead.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to start a blog. You have 100 percent control over the message and the list (your readers) is yours. Most people won’t bother to start a blog. Most people who start a blog will stop after a few months. If you start, persist and focus on quality, people will notice. These blogs can help:
Having a name, and articles to point to, helps in landing a speaking gig, but it’s not required. The trick to landing a speaking slot is to pitch early. Most shows plan their agendas at least 3 months in advance, and many are done 6 months in advance.
Shows typically go through two phases of planning: setting the agenda and picking the speakers. That gives you two opportunities to get selected. Pitch at both times and pitch early.
In a startup, cash is king. It determines what you can invest in, when you have to get funding, and under what terms.
The easiest way to cut costs is to outsource to online companies. In some cases, you trade off a little domain expertise and they require some hand-holding.
With B2B marketing, the sales cycle is always now, but buying cycles vary significantly. It can be 60 days or 2 years.
There is also a finite pool of people actively shopping for your product. But those same people are looking for education in their field – white papers, webinars, conferences, etc.
That presents two related problems:
The bridge for moving both types of leads to opportunities is lead nurturing (targeted email marketing) and lead scoring (prioritizing leads based on scores from fit and online lead activity).
Successfully implementing lead nurturing requires:
In B2C marketing, the shopping cart and landing pages are closest to the sale and even small improvements can provide big, quick wins.
The equivalent in B2B marketing is late stage content – collateral that addresses the specific needs of buyers who are close to a purchase decision.
B2B buying isn’t purely logical and, emotionally, it’s driven a lot by the desire to mitigate risk. Focus first on late stage content, including:
Those documents are the basic arsenal for any sales team. It’s the first thing they’ll need for any sales conversations and they support outbound prospecting.
For me, writing and speaking has opened a lot of doors. Professionally, it made it much easier to promote ClickEquations. I was able to connect with influencers and decision makers, which helped with PR and word of mouth.
Personally, it has given me a platform and name recognition that I can take with me now that I’m moving onto H. Bloom. Regardless of what I’m marketing or where I am, I have a way to stay in touch with the great and generous people in the community.
Job security has been replaced with skill and network security. I was fortunate enough to have several people in the industry reach out to me for potential positions. Companies and positions come and go, but a great network can make sure you always have options.
You can’t wait until need help to connect with people. In fact, it’s the opposite. You have to make a concerted effort to help people often and generously without expectation of anything in return. If you give, you’ll get.
As much as B2B research and buying is online, offline is still essential to B2B marketing. I’m specifically talking about events. Here are a few tips I learned from sponsoring trade shows at ClickEquations:
Trying to find great vendors and freelancers is really time consuming.
Word of mouth is still the best source for recommendations. First Round Capital, one of ClickEquations’ investors, smartly created an Opzi group for all of the marketers to share ideas in a closed community. LinkedIn Answers and Groups can be helpful to start the search, though it’s full of a lot of sales people and self-promoters.
I made a point of referring as much business as possible to my favorite vendors (like Felt Media) when I didn’t have work for them. That make it much easier to get on the calendar for smaller or faster projects.
Search has been a great industry to me and everyone I met was friendly and very willing to share. I hope to continue that tradition even as I move on.
I will continue to write for Search Engine Watch and on my own blog, Digital Alex and, of course, to tweet. I won’t be traveling or speaking as much, but I’ll definitely be at the New York shows and active in the local marketing groups. Come to the city and let’s grab a drink. I’d love to help.