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OpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included Chris Pirillo, Brian Clark and myself. I caught up with Brian before he gave his presentation to give us a little preview. John P. ended up using the video as the segue between Brian and I as we changed microphones.

Watch as Brian talks about the importance of planning content and understanding its purpose in order to be effective with blog copywriting. He also mentioned that traditional media is still doing some things right and we new media types would do well to identify what those things are and use that insight for our own publishing and content marketing efforts.

I think Brian’s presentation on content planning and editorial was a perfect setup to the marketing of content presentation that I gave afterwards, but of course I’m biased.  Of course you can find a cornucopia of copy writing and content marketing advice at Copyblogger.

My next and last post from OpenCa.mp will include a summary of my presentation along with the actual PPT deck embedded within the post.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Brian Clark Interview: Copyblogger on Content Marketing with Blogs | http://www.toprankblog.com

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At the OpenCa.mp conference in Dallas this weekend I was able to re-connect with Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and the Gnomedex conference (We’ve interviewed each other in the past). We both jumped out of the same airplane with the Army Golden Knights last week and are also speaking today about blogs at OpenCa.mp.

I caught up with Chris to talk about his take on SEO and social media.  He had pretty strong opinions about people who are too aggressive and not always relevant in the social connections they’re making.  This is what he had to say:

You can find Chris online by Googling “chris“. How’s that for the effect of links on search engine visibility?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Chris Pirillo on SEO & Social Media @ OpenCa.mp | http://www.toprankblog.com

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The first content session I’m attending at OpenCamp is by Gio, aka Giovanni Gallucci, a longtime search and social media marketer based in Dallas. The topic is “Blackhat SEO” and the room is packed!
The session was cut a bit short due to technical difficulties with getting the conference started and Gio took it in stride and was both entertaining and informative – the right mix for a morning tech crowd.

Gio says “Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process. In other areas of marketing and life in general we encourage automation in order to maximize efficiency and get a leg up on our competitors”.

According to the conference session description, the nature of this session doesn’t allow liveblogging or tweeting, which i think is a load of crap, so I’ll liveblog it anyway.

Speaking of liveblogging, I am writing this on an iPad and the brilliant WordPress app deleted the first version, so I am writing now from memory on a notepad app.

The session is basically about what Gio does on a daily basis for his SEO clients. Based on insights from Woopra analyticz Gio says these are 5-6 social media sites you need to focus on to drive traffic and affect your search visibility:

- Media sharing: YouTube and Flickr
- Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon
- Social Networks: Facebook & Twitter

When you undertake your social media marketing efforts, don’t let “little people” and naysayers hold you back. Gio gives Cali Lewis as an example with her growth of online shows and current success with GeekBeat.TV

As far as as Geolocation services like Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrrl, etc Gio says these are cute and fun, but that there’s not much measurable social media marketing value to them. (If you don’t buy that, check out Mashable.com for FourSquare case studies)

We’re 15 min into the presentation and thee’s no black hat SEO yet

YouTube lists are unreal for driving search traffic. Organize your individual videos into lists and optimize them. Find other videos that are highly trafficked and add them to lists that include your own videos. If you’re not creating video, you’ve got to get started.

Tools: tubetoolbox.com (Now we’re getting into the automation and almost black hat stuff). With YouTube ToolBox, Gio says you create a message in 2-3 sentences, mail merge their username and then create multiple versions of the message with different content and the same call to action. Then you can schedule the sending of messages to YouTube users that have been harvested at the rate of about 20 messages per hour. Something like: Hey “username” I saw that you commented on a video about XYZ and wanted to let you know about another similar video and would love your opinion.”.

I have to note, using automation tools like this must be done by someone that REALLY knows what they’re doing or you will suffer consequences. Managing risk vs. reward is important and for the record, my agency doesn’t use automation in this way.

The key to getting YouTube videos ranked high is activity on YouTube. with Flickr, you can add comments with a link back to your content.

Take advantage of current events. Gio shows a video of ComicCon geeks talking about how comic are not geeky anymore. Thee’s some irony to a code geek making fun of comic book geeks.

When going somewhere offline to get photos or video for content, blend in. Gio tells a story of buying a cowboy getup to blend in at a rodeo or maybe it was somewhere else like that where there was a concentration of cowboy types.

Keep it fresh. For example, make a presentation the day you give it.

Tool: tweetaddr 3.0. Using this tool makes it appear as if you’re communicating with Twitter via a web browser (when you’re not and actually using an automated follow tool).

“Can’t is not an option”. Gio gave an example of a how a school with only 200 kids earned 68,000 votes on a list of top schools.

“Show up and just get it done”. If you look like you’re supposed to be there, no one will bother you. (Regarding collecting content or promoting online content in the offline world).

Tool: Bookmarking Daemon – Put in your social boomarking accounts and it will randomly pick your content and promote it.

According to the room monitor, that’s all the time we have. You can find out more about Giovanni on his blog: Blog.gallucci.net and get a copy of his social media manifesto at: gallucci.net/smm

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
OpenCamp Blackhat SEO with Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Army Strong Stories is a program to draw attention to the real life and experience of being in the Army through soldier stories communicated via media socially. Recently Greg Swan of the Minneapolis Public Relations firm, Weber Shandwick, that is behind the Army Strong Stories campaign contacted me with a compelling opportunity to create my own Army story: “Would you like to go skydiving with the US Army Golden Knights?”

Who are the Golden Knights? In 1959 13 men joined together to form the Strategic Army Corps Sport Parachute Team, to compete in the communist dominated sport of skydiving. The team performed so well that on June 1, 1961 the Army maded them an official parachute team and the Knights (men and women) have been wowing audiences at air shows ever since.

Greg is a well known “social media guy” and works with the Army account for his agency. At first I was uncertain about the jump, but after looking at the competitive skydiving team’s website, YouTube channel and blog, I decided it was worth checking out.

One thing Greg didn’t know when he invited me was that I spent several years on active duty in the military. We later discovered I was stationed on the same base in Alaska as his Grandfather. My experience as a small town kid from Minnesota being exposed to a completely different world of the military allowed me to grow and mature in new ways.

My short experience with the Army exposed me to structure, challenge and reward in combination with raising my awareness of teamwork and a sense of purpose that was instrumental in the development of  things like character, integrity and confidence – All essential for success as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Also, without the Army college fund program, I would not have been able to afford a University education. So, while it was by no means a career for me, my personal experience with the Army left me a different person, better in many ways, than before I joined. It is with that backround and my interest in the Army Golden Knights’ use of social media that I accepted the offer to jump from an airplane for the first time in my life yesterday.

Disclosure: The U.S. Army paid for my transportation and accomodations in Addison, Texas where the jump occurred and I agreed to write a blog post however I wanted.

Meet the Army Golden Knights

The competitive skydiving team of men and women that make up the Golden Knights are the best of the best skydivers in the world.  These men and women have many thousands of jumps under their belts and participate in competitions all over the world, making them truly unique individuals and part of a very elite group.

I watched videos on YouTube of the Knights in competition as well as the tandem jumps I would be taking. These videos included VIPs like President George W. Bush, celebrities like Vince Vaughn and well known Digerati like John Pozadzides, CEO of Woopra. This gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect. As a marketer, I’m fully aware of how effective video can be at telling a story, but being able to watch videos of the Golden Knights do what they do was equally impressive as it was confidence building in that I would be in good hands.

The Golden Knights Use of Social Media

The Golden Knights have an official website as well as a blog, YouTube Channel, Flickr, Facebook & Twitter. Several of the Knights also maintain their own Twitter accounts and blogs.  The content published on these social channels gives potential candidates great insight into the life of a competitive skydiver.

• Official site
• Blog
• YouTube Channel
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Facebook

The Knights are a publishing entity like no other I’ve seen. On the day of our jump, nearly every Army Golden Knight had still and/or video cameras on their helmets. SFC Dave Herwig was busy all day editing videos as they came in for uploading to YouTube and posting online.  The Knights clearly see content and engagement as the key to getting the word out and social media channels are a perfect distribution and community building platform to that end.

Skydiving with the Army Golden Knights

I was not jumping alone of course, there were several other digerati types like Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis, Trey Ratcliff, Dave Curlee, Scott Ellis, Vi Kim Vu, Frederick Van Johnson, George Ruiz, Jay Batson, Pelpina Trip, John Pozadzides, and Giovanni Galluci jumping as well. Our itinerary called for us to get breakfast and meet early in the morning at the hotel and walk over to a soccer field area where the jump would occur.

For more photos, I’ve put some up on Flickr and Facebook. When the Army and Weber Shandwick share the video taken of my jump, I’ll post that here as well.

I have to say, this experience was a blast. The men and women of the Army Golden Knights are true professionals and it was a priveledge to have the opportunity to do a tandem jump with them as well as learn more about what they do.

Thank you to Greg Swan and Carolyn Sullivan from Weber Shandwick for making the offer. Thank you to the U.S. Army for having me along and for all that you do for our country. Thanks to the organizers of OpenCa.mp as well for such a great event.

Here’s a pre-jump interview Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.TV did with Mike and Dave of the Golden Knights that will give you even more info about the Knights and the event:

Next up: Speaking of which, OpenCa.mp and all the WordPress, Drupal, .NET and Joomla! education you can shake a stick at is where I’ll be this weekend. I’m presenting a session on Social SEO for Blogs after Brian Clark and Chris Pirillo give their presentations on blogging. It should be a great event and be sure to watch for a few liveblog posts on some of the sessions.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Army Golden Knights: Jumping in to Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Dave Roth works as Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo. That means Dave is a Search Engine Marketer that works for a search engine. I’ve known Dave for several years and we finally decided to do a video interview. Watch the interview below to learn what a search marketer that works for a search engine does, especially the challenges and opportunities in communications on search marketing performance in a large company.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, we couldn’t talk to someone like Dave at Yahoo without mentioning the transition of search results to Bing over on the Yahoo site. What does this mean for SEO? What does it mean for Paid Search?  What’s the fate of Site Explorer and where does it fit within Bing Webmaster Tools? Is SEO good or bad for search engines? How much of a signal does social media provide search engines? We discuss these topics and more.

Thanks Dave!

Blog: Industrial Strength SEM
Twitter: DaveRothSays

The video is available in 480 and 780 formats as well, just click on the size drop down.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Video Interview: Dave Roth of Yahoo | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Last week the West Coast Search Engine Strategies conference moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.

As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.

Networking events were popular, but of course anything with free booze and thirsty smart search marketers equals popular. Networking opportunities like the black hat / white hat brings an interesting mix of people together. There were specialized training sessions as well and a full exhibit hall. I thought the hall closed a bit early, 3pm, but hey – if the vendors want to go home, let them go home.

I talked to Mike Grehan, VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies, who said the conference programming mix was well received. On the launch of Connected Marketing Week, Mike says,

“I’ll borrow the motto from the UK special air service: Who dares wins!”.

Mike’s partner in crime, Matt McGowan, who is Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, had a few things to say about the event:

“The Connected Marketing Week “test” has now been proven.  While all of us @ Incisive Media were pretty sure it would work out (remember, it was past and prospective attendees who asked us to do this) we never really did know how it was going to play out until now… the response from delegates, sponsors and speakers has been resoundingly positive.

Most of the partner events in their own right had strong attendance with @ 200 people registered for 140Conf,  100 for IAB, 100 for the E-mail and Search Marketing workshops, almost 100 for OMS and just about 6,000 for SES SF.  We plan to build on this year’s success and we hope to see you at the 2nd addition of Connected Marketing Week in SF in 2011 (with many of the same partners and a few surprises) if not before!”

TopRank Online Marketing had a great experience at SES San Francisco with a mix of liveblogging, speaking and moderating 3 sessions as well as plenty of networking. I gave two new presentations: One for a long running session on Blog and Feed SEO and another for an all new session called Content Marketing Optimization that I gave solo. It was a full room and such great attendance was very much appreciated.

Here are a few of the blog posts published by other search engine marketing bloggers on the presentations given by TopRank plus one post from Yahoo.

• aimclear blog – Think Outside the Blog: Tasty Tips for Feed SEO
• PageTraffic – SEO Through Blogs and Feeds — SES San Francisco 2010
• Bruce Clay blog – Content Marketing Optimization SES San Francisco
• Search Engine Roundtable – SES SFO: Content Marketing Optimization
• Yahoo Advertising Blog – Lessons-from-ses-day-3

One of the great things about attending industry conferences is the opportunity to connect with our current clients and meet new companies to work with. Both PRWeb and Marketo exhibited at SES San Francisco:

Quite a few of the software and technology companies that exhibit at shows like SES are the kinds of companies we work with at TopRank Marketing, so spending time at the exhibit hall is very productive for multiple reasons.

In the spirit of our conference liveblogging schedule post for SES San Francisco, check out the nifty Flash thingy below made by Thomas McMahon to navigate to all the liveblog posts Mike Yanke and Adam Singer put up during the week. Congrats to SES for a great show and to Mike and Adam who did a great job covering the event for Online Marketing Blog.

What’s up next? I’m looking forward to speaking at the next SES, which is in Hong Kong, on “The Business Value of Social Media”.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
SES San Francisco 2010 Wrap-Up | http://www.toprankblog.com

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More and more website owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content.  For example, if you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue?

What happens if you syndicate content through RSS? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This Search Engine Strategies San Francisco session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Moderator:
Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc.

Speakers:

• Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
• Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.
• Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

What can happen with duplicate content?

It lowers the indexation count on Google, which means the best converting pages might not appear in search results.

Web pages from your shared-content partners’ sites may actually end up getting better search visibility.

What duplicate content does to a searcher, is they end up seeing duplicate pages over and over again which translates into a poor user experience.

How do you deal with duplicate content?

1.  Information architecture, site navigation and page interlinking

• Are URLS linked to consistently?
• Are the links labeled consistently?

2.  Robots.txt file

• Are you preventing the web page from being spidered?

3.  Robots meta tag

• If articles are shared across the network of sites, are you implementing noindex, no follow appropriately?

4.  Canonical tag

5.  Ensure redirects are good (301s)

6.  Use of webmaster tools

The idea behind all of this is consistently.  Don’t say one thing in webmaster tools and then submit a sitemap that says the opposite.  Be consistent with search engines and they will reward you.

Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.

What does duplicate content look like?

There are two camps when it comes to duplicate content.  The first is the malicious, bad kind of duplicate content.  The second is the good kind that serves a purpose.

Good:

• Find content on different URLs
• Print
• RSS
• Blogs
• Forums
• Retail site with products in multiple categories

Bad:

• Same content and multiplied across your site
• Blatantly stealing content from other sites

What are the consequences?

There are no specific penalties, but you may notice your organic search visibility slipping.  I.E. – content could get filtered into their supplemental index.

Learning’s and best practices

1. Determine if you have duplicate content

2. Leverage resources

• Talk to other departments
• Consult with your agency
• Research industry sites
• Review webmaster forums
• Talk to industry peers

3. Be proactive

• Write unique page content
• Identify authority pages
• Be aware of engine updates
• Manage syndicated content

4.  Manage syndicated content effectively

• Allow ample time for your content to get indexed
• Require links back
• Require condensed versions
• Use generic meta data

And don’t forget not to freak out, there are always solutions.

Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

As opposed to the other presenters who shared how to fix duplicate content, Michael discussed how to make it work for you.

There are some circumstances duplicate content is a good thing if you use it as a weapon.  When you syndicate content, many will take it “in whole.”  Use this as an opportunity to gain links, especially if the sites picking up your content are more trusted and authoritative.  Try to set up arrangements with people in your space (blogs, magazines, etc.) so they will pick up your content.

How to potentially outrank someone for their own content:

• Take content or a data feed that someone else has legally syndicated or allowed to be re-used
• Place that content on a different domain
• Build in-links with very keyword focused anchor text to the content
• If you can build more trust than the original website, you may be considered the originator in the eyes of Google
• This is a very common tactic in shady/aggressive affiliate industries

Why I love web scrapers

Most web scrapers are stupid.  They search for keywords and leave whatever links they find in posts in place.  You should use this as an advantage by linking to yourself with high value focused keyword anchor text in every post.

As long as you offset these low value links with high quality links this works to your advantage.  Always insert links back to the original website and/or original page.

Further, change the anchor text, link and surrounding text of links inserted after your content (i.e. from something like Yoast’s RSS footer plugin) every 3-4 months so you’re getting different links to different parts of the website.

Takeaways:

• Look for opportunities to syndicate your duplicate content, gain attention, trust and links
• Refine your copy to target more keywords
• Be on the lookout for people who may be reusing your content who aren’t helping you
• Allow your blog and RSS feed to be syndicated with self-referencing and keyword focused links to commercial pages.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Solving Duplicate Content And Multiple Site Issues | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Thanks to Ray ‘Catfish’ Comstock for providing the title of this post with his opening remarks during the session.  Joining Comstock on this panel, moderated by Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.:

• Crispin Sheridan, SES Advisory Board & Sr Director of Search Marketing Strategy, SAP
• Bill Hunt,  SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
• Guillaume Bouchard, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting

As a good writer and analyst, I have to ask ‘why’ for even the most obvious problem posed.  So why is enterprise level Search Engine Optimization (SEO) not for the weak? The obvious answer: a lot of people, a lot of content.  Enterprise is difficult because management of a lot of content and people is difficult to scale.

A recurring theme at the SES sessions I’ve attended this year is the importance of communicating SEO in a language that non-search professionals (high level executives) will understand.  TopRank CEO Lee Odden even offered the presentation ‘Selling Search to the C-Suite.’

Let’s identify the problems a C-level executive may have with a fairly basic statement that illustrates the positive results of an SEO campaign:

“Our SEO efforts have helped decrease bounce rate 40% over the last 90 day from visits generated by organic keywords.”

• What is bounce rate?
• What do you mean by ‘organic’ keywords?
• Why are you not talking about revenue?

Let’s say the same thing a little bit differently:

“SEO recommendations made to our small business software page have helped decrease the amount of traffic that immediately abandons this page by 40%.  As bounce rate has decreased, the amount of visitors who have converted to sales has increased 75%.”

A great line from the movie Adaptation (which I am probably getting wrong) is ‘Get them in the third act.  No matter what else is wrong with your story, you’ll win if you can get them in the third act.’

Communicating a direct effect on revenue is a great capper for any communication with a C-level and a great way to get buy-in for other SEO tactics you KNOW you need to implement.  For example:

• Cleaning up duplicate content
  The more duplicate content we have, the fewer results search engines will show from our site.  Fewer webpages basically means we have fewer salespeople online.
• Creating content
  There is a huge gap in content for this topic between our site and our competitor’s site.  Here is a graph showing all our potential customers that are going to our competitor’s website.
  
• Internal linking
  Every link we add to our pages is like a ‘vote’ for this content to search engines.  Every vote ranks us higher and puts us in front of more customers.

You may notice that many of the tactics described above match recommendation shared in previous posts.  Ultimately, SEO best practices are SEO best practices.  All enterprise adds is the need for prioritization and the need for buy-in.

And the path to both is the path to revenue.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Enterprise Level SEO Is Not For The Weak | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Websites and landing pages face very real trust issues – for consumers they can be a scary and uncertain place. Before people will take a desired action, their concerns and anxieties must be addresses. But how can you do this on landing pages when you only have seconds to establish trust?

Tim Ash, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization , shared how to effectively use the Four Pillars Of Trust and optimize your online conversion goals.

Tim started by reiterating what we know – it’s not about technology, it’s about people. If you’re going to transact with anyone it’s all about building trust.

We can’t function without trust, we are social beings. If we are going to cross the street, we have to trust that people driving cars will see the red light. Trust is critical, it’s the glue that holds everything together.

People weren’t designed to be in mobs, we have our “tribe” of a few dozen people that we trust and it breaks down in crowds.

Users understand “cheesy,” unprofessional sites vs. authoritative looking sites. So your site has to communicate authority instantly.

Four pillars of trust:

1. Appearance

We judge a book by its cover. Appearance is very important and a stand-in for fitness. Standards are rising in web development and it’s not okay to have a site which looks like it’s designed in 1998. There is a level of appearance and professionalism that is required in web development. Have 5 random people look at your homepage and answer: “is this clearly professional or not.”

Don’t get disqualified based solely on how you look. Focus on:

• Professionalism of design
• Sparseness and neatness
• Organization and clarity

2. Transactional assurances

I don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am. Surveys say people are less and less afraid of getting online, but still 70% of users abandon shopping carts. It’s an issue of trust.

Include trust symbols and don’t bury them below the fold. If you’re paying for them, leverage them appropriately. Relieve point-of-action anxieties before they arise.

• Forms of payment and deliver
• Data security and privacy
• Policies and guarantees

3. Authority

We trust outside experts who provide a layer of authority. The trappings of authority are enough, such as uniforms or appearance. By association of authority figures or brands, that can transfer to your brand as well. We’ve seen authority symbols (such as “as seen in X or Y media outlets”) increased conversion rate by 40%. Figure out a way to leverage authority on your landing pages to boost conversions significantly.

Borrow trust from better-known brands such as:

• Reviews and awards
• Marquee clients
• Media mentions
• Trade associations

4. Consensus of peers

We don’t care what everyone thinks, we can’t possibly. We care by what our peers think. Are a lot of people taking the same action and have a positive outcome? Great, but are you sharing it with other users? Show specifics that are relevant to users.

Support automatic compliance by demonstrating social proof:

• Use objective, large numbers
• Likeness

Key takeaways

Take off the rose colored glasses and realize your website is ugly. The next step is to get to work and start to improve landing pages to increase conversions.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – Tim Ash Keynote | http://www.toprankblog.com

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What’s the quickest way to catch a fish? Offer the right bait.

What’s the quickest way to get a B2B marketer to an SES session? Title it ‘B2B Marketing Tips.’

What’s the quickest way to get you to read this post? By diving right in to the top 5 tips shared:

1. Your conversion goals must become more sophisticated**
   Yes, probably even yours.  For the simple reason that you should always be testing and always be experimenting with something new.  The keywords that convert today may transform into completely new derivations tomorrow.  Always be tracking and always be testing.
2. Segment transactional from educational keywords*
   Keywords that drive sales tomorrow will rarely match the keywords that drive inquiries today.  Your transactional keywords are your bottom of the funnel phrases that represent a user closest to the buying cycle, while educational keywords are top of the funnel phrases used by someone looking for more information.  Third party tools and research can help identify what keywords lead a user down the path to a sale, while looking at repeat visits in analytics can help identify keywords that are educational.
3. Build custom strategies for transactional and educational keywords*
   Build different marketing strategies for different keywords. Working with transactional keywords?  Put as few barriers between the prospect and the sale as possible.  If you are working with educational keywords, developer softer offers via landing pages that freely provide information to hungry users.
4. Start conversations in social networks via member profile targeting**
   As business professionals flock to social networks like LinkedIn, these same professionals can be reached via member profile targeting.  Target users with paid social campaigns by their likes, interests, workplaces and industries.  The offer needs to be nothing more than the invitation of conversation.   Bonus tip? Headlines with questions tend to generate a robust response rate.
5. Don’t fear the multi-tier landing page***
   It can fly in the face of everything we believe to create a landing page that features multiple steps.  Some companies, however, have reported campaign response boost of more than 80% by transforming landing pages featuring one form to multi-tier pages that direct users to a landing page specifically targeted to their needs.  And the best part about these inquiries?  Once received, they are practically sales-ready.

Thank you to the panel of this session, to whom the tips above have been attributed:

Moderator:
Patricia Hursh, President, SmartSearch Marketing

Speakers:
Lauren Vaccarello, Sr. SEM Manager, Salesforce.com*
Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager, LinkedIn**
Scott Brinker, President & Chief Technology Officer, ion interactive***

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
B2B Marketing Tips From SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com

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