John S. Wolfe

Tying it all together” was the title of Bill Leake’s talk at the May 20 Online Marketing Summit in Phoenix.

But marketing today has so many facets that a professional must be adept at many to implement a successful campaign.

“There are many roads to Rome,” the CEO of Apogee Results said. “And once you figure it out, it will probably change.”

Bill Leake

His aim was to share 10 takeaways that audience members could implement in the next week.

1. Define the objective
   

   Companies need to align their sales and marketing efforts and invest in a strategic plan.

2. Implement end-to-end tracking
   

   Manage lead generation and measure results. Consider a program like salesforce.com to tie web analytics to the company’s CRM system.

3. Offer compelling content
   

   The trick to better placement on Google is to mix new content with old links. So have a plan for producing new content. Some companies use social media (comment boards, photos) to create their content, which Leake sees as a form of recycling. Companies also need to know the likes and dislikes of the customer in order to provide the information he or she seeks. Finally, companies have more success when they teach, not sell.

4. Mine your existing assets
   

   Don’t be afraid to re-use what you have. The old content can spur new discussions and seed new content. One “white paper” on a current topic can be used as a blog post, a radio or web interview, a video, a conference presentation or as part of an e-newsletter. If you are a Twitterer, tweet at least three times a day and then pick out the most interesting tweets to expand into blog posts.

5. Give your Search Engine Marketing a facelift
   

   Is your company on auto-pilot? Is your search performance flat? Don’t just sit there!

   1. Do Google searches on your targeted query
   2. Improve your Google score by testing various ad-copy words and page designs
   3. Add negative keywords – words that don’t apply to your products (like “free” or “open source”) – to draw attention and comparisons
   4. Make your ads more specific; in this way prospects will be of a higher quality for conversion
   5. Consider new tactics, like changing the day of the week or time of day for activitiy

   Leake then offered some advanced SEM strategies:

   1. Integrate paid search and earned media (like online articles, press release mentions and third-party blogs)
   2. If you have a “channel” of content use it – and reach out to partners to fill it. (Think of a cooperative.)
   3. Partner with others to create a “learning” website
   4. Employ event-driven results with customized landing pages for special promotions
   5. Use SEM traffic with web analytics to create customer lists

6. Increase, start (but don’t stop) investment in SEO
   

   Maintaining an email list of your best prospects is probably the most effective retention tool. But SEO is valuable and is often the best at measuring the return on a marketing investment. He noted that Google is getting more sophisticated with its search results, offering SEO for videos, books, maps, news, and images. Companies like jigsaw and hoovers offer analytics tools.

7. Assess your website’s effectiveness
   

   Qualitative: What are the industry’s best practices? Which customer personas do you want to chase (and which ones are comfortable letting go)?

   Quantitative: What are your analytics for page views? Consider using a test of two web-page designs – A and B – to determine which attracts better prospects. Assess multivariants – but not a lot of them – to determine what elements work well together.

   Customer personas fall in four categories:

   Logical
   

Emotional

Quick decisions Slow decisions

Know which is your best prospect and how to serve him or her.

8. Move past online conversions

A lot happens beyond the web. Conversions initiated by the website may result in phone calls, chats, and in-store visits. See the big picture.

9. Nurture non-sales-ready leads

In a world with many leads, 20 percent are usually followed up on. Of those, 70 percent are usually disqualified. Of those disqualified leads, 50 percent tend to buy a product anyway. The advice: Keep your hook in the water.

10. In most cases, don’t focus on “lead” scoring (yet), Leake said.

“Everyone knows the 80-20 rule,” he said. “This is an advanced tactic to filter leads.” But don’t make impulsive decisions. Leake cited a case in which a financial firm was deciding which search-engine to use for marketing, Google or Yahoo. The marketing chief’s hunch was Google; the actual data of results showed that, while Yahoo generated fewer leads, the ones that it did provide were worth more to the firm than the Google leads.

In the end, Leake advisers companies to know their customers. Some customers may be coupon clippers, with no loyalty to the product.

Use specific codes or keywords for website specials to identify customers and their decisions.

Build your email list of customers with incentives to sign up.

And make the phone number on the website bigger! “It offers a better chance for upsells,” he said.