Our Daily Articles: Complete Index 2008–2020

Beware that SEO company on the phone

I assume many of you are members of LinkedIn, the professional networking site (if we know each other, please feel free to link to me). There’s a good section on this called “Answers” where you can get advice from other members, and I’d thoroughly recommend visiting this occasionally and helping out where you can, because it establishes you as an authority in the field. A recent question was What do you look for in choosing an SEO company? and that’s something I’m taking quite an interest in at the moment.… Read More »Beware that SEO company on the phone

A refresher on sales letter writing

Sometimes I link to articles in this blog almost as a way of bookmarking them for myself. Now, I’ve got whole books on writing sales letters, and I’ve even read one or two, but once you get to whole-book-levels of detail, you can’t see the wood for the trees. Here then is Ron Brauner’s Blog on 8 Ways to Improve Your Sales Letters. Nothing revelatory, just good common sense in a two-minute read, and all the better for that. Just like a good sales letter, I guess.

If you don’t… someone else may

Domain names are really cheap, in marketing terms. This morning I registered a “dot co dot uk” for two years for less than ten pounds, and I’m sure there are even cheaper places if you shop around. It was for a domain name I don’t need at the moment, but I expect to find a good use for it quite soon. The main reason to get it, however, was to ensure nobody else did. Have you got domain names registered for all of your main product lines? You should. If… Read More »If you don’t… someone else may

Don’t assume we’re all alike

Most of you won’t be redesigning your company website any time soon, and even then, if you’re part of a large corporation, you may get little or no input to the exercise. But it’s worth understanding the fundamentals of on-screen design, and an easy-to-understand article called What is the best screen resolution to use for your website? on the E-consultancy blog is a well-written guide if you want to understand one of the most basic decisions behind how a website looks. I’m writing this on an iMac with a huge… Read More »Don’t assume we’re all alike

Remember what your email is for

Jakob Nielsen has been one of the gurus of internet usability since the early days of the net. Even now, his websites sacrifice design flourishes for the sake of clarity, and look oddly simplistic. But they get the message across, and when Nielsen writes something, it’s normally worth reading. He’s just done a report on email messages, and although the $119 report might well be too in-depth for most of us, the summary article, Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages, on Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox is worth looking at. Nielsen says that… Read More »Remember what your email is for

Double-u double-u double-u

In WWW or Non-WWW, That is the Question on Industrial Search Engine Marketing, the question is asked: Is http://www.mysite.com better than http://mysite.com? – and there’s a good discussion which you might like to read. But there’s a more fundamental question which everyone should ask, right now: does my own website work for the alternative way of typing in the address? For most of us, that means, if the “www.” is missed off, does it work? It ought to, because many, many people now just bash the last part of a… Read More »Double-u double-u double-u

A “marketing programme”? A what?

Here’s a nice article which claims to be for very small businesses but which could, I think, teach much larger ones a thing or two. Taking Baby Steps in Marketing: Or Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time on Branding & Marketing gives you a way of creating a marketing programme for next year, even if the idea of having a “marketing programme” is something you’ve never had the time to entertain in the past. It gives you a few questions to ask yourself now, as well as a… Read More »A “marketing programme”? A what?

Can I help you, sir?

“If you sold Widgets, and a Widget-buying customer walks into your store, can’t find any Widgets on her own, and when she asks what aisle they’re in you remain silent, would you fire yourself?” Has your website got a site search box on it? No? Then you’re missing a big opportunity. There are two types of people who will use it: compulsive searchers who will always pick this route over any form of “navigation”; and visitors who couldn’t follow your navigation and expect search to be there as an alternative.… Read More »Can I help you, sir?

Put your Microsoft Paint away. Now.

I remember writing over ten years ago “beware the corporate redesign, because it often tells you the company has run out of ideas”. But in this age of branding, it’s worth considering creating an “image” for even the most basic product lines; just don’t spend too much time and expense on it. A professional logo on a product and its sales material isn’t pretentious, it’s something the product ought to deserve. That said, do the product justice. Please don’t design the logo yourself in Microsoft Paint. Get a graphic designer… Read More »Put your Microsoft Paint away. Now.

Careful with that Axe

One of the articles I referred to last week suggested the economic crisis hasn’t reached many of our businesses (although that wasn’t the point of the article), and a reader here emailed me to ask “what planet is that guy on?” I’d actually run a seminar a few days before, attended by marketing managers from UK industrial companies, and I have to report the outlook was – perhaps surprisingly – upbeat. I guess it just depends on what business you’re in. It’s not boom time for readers in the construction… Read More »Careful with that Axe

A personal welcome

I’ve got a bit of a thing about landing pages. It really annoys me when I click on an ad and sloppily get taken to the front page of the advertiser’s website and dumped there. When I turn up at a company, I want someone to meet me in reception and usher me straight through to my meeting. Don’t you? So when someone clicks through to your website for a reason – which you’ve defined in the ad – they expect to get the information they require without any more… Read More »A personal welcome

A checkup from Dr Google

Not all of you are joining us on the Insider Programme (although if it’s marketing budget time, please have a think about it for January). On the programme, we hope to identify all the areas for improvement in your existing websbite as well as taking you onwards and upwards. But I’m a nice guy, so from time to time here I’ll still be pointing you towards DIY ways of analysing your websites as they stand. After all, the ideas are in the public domain anyway! In How To Diagnose Your… Read More »A checkup from Dr Google

The other way around

Another one of those articles which might seem like it’s for the anoraks, but skim through because it highlights an important point. When you write a web page, I hope you’re always thinking about trying to “optimise” your site in the search engines for a relevant search term or two, by means of the words you write in the body copy, the title of the page, etc. But what if you have a search term which could be written back to front (e.g “widgets for working” or “working widgets”) and… Read More »The other way around

The reasons to rip it up and start again

Yesterday I touched on the subject of why online marketing might be something to concentrate on during a recession, and why budget restrictions might mean it’s time to “rip it up and start again” when it comes to business marketing plans. Today’s article goes much further into that idea, and if you’re looking for a well-written argument as to why you should leave all those years of old-school marketing techniques behind, this is it. 6 Reasons You Should Invest in Internet Marketing During the Recession on the Inbound Internet Marketing… Read More »The reasons to rip it up and start again

Web marketing in layers. Yes, like an onion.

I did a seminar for marketing managers on Friday, and if I’d had time, I’d have loved to have gone into this article, The 8 Layers of a B2B Web Marketing Plan, on the WebMarketCentral Blog, because it really nails how to go about marketing your company online. You can take it as describing “just” your web marketing activities, or it could be the basis of your entire marketing activity if you’ve decided to move your marketing strategy to be fundamentally online-based. I know of more than one manufacturer where… Read More »Web marketing in layers. Yes, like an onion.

The limit to what a human can take in

Today I want to draw your attention to one of my favourite business-related blog posts of all-time. It’s nearly three years old, but it’ll still ring true in thirty-three years’ time. And it’s to do with making slide-show (e.g Powerpoint) presentations. In The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint on How to Change the World, Guy Kawasaki draws on his experience of being “presented-at” for years. As an editor who’s sat through far too many interminably long press conferences, I can thoroughly sympathise with him. And here’s what he suggests: 10 slides,… Read More »The limit to what a human can take in

Something for the weekend

Right, here’s an article which you can read and then think about over the weekend (if I sound pushy, it’s because I feel strongly about this one!). The article is even worth reading a couple of times to make sure you’ve got the message. And the message to take away is: “Forget demand generation. That is so 1995. Instead, focus your efforts on demand facilitation.” The article, Focus on facilitating demand, not generating it, from BtoB magazine, points out that buying behaviour has been transformed in the past few years,… Read More »Something for the weekend

Don’t respond like a robot

What do you send your customers when they buy a product? What about potential customers who’ve just requested a datasheet? Or people you’re thanking for having entertained a sales call? In 10 crucial elements for great transactional emails on iMedia Connection, author Wendy Roth says: “If I sent you a present, you’d send me a thank-you note, right? Not just to say thanks (even if you hated it), but also to let me know it got to you safely and because we’re friends. So, when people buy from your online… Read More »Don’t respond like a robot

Can you cope with the criticism?

Guy Kawasaki on How To Change The World is usually worth listening to, and last week on the AmEx OPEN forum he posted a nice piece called The Art of Customer Surveys. Now, we all know we have to listen to our customers (and equally importantly, potential customers), and we all know surveys are a good way of sounding them out, especially as they’re so easy to do. But Kawasaki points out there are many dangers in surveys, not least their self-selecting nature. I don’t think these are reasons to… Read More »Can you cope with the criticism?

What’s the Chinese for “SEO”?

As if there wasn’t enough to be thinking about anyway when it comes to tuning up your website, many of you probably have to think about non-English speakers. One company I’ve been talking to about our Insider Programme tells me it’s in the process of developing its website into twenty-six languages! And guess what? There are different considerations in different countries when it comes to search engines. The top five mistakes in foreign language website optimisation are outlined in Multilingual SEO best practice on Dave Chaffey Internet Marketing. I can’t… Read More »What’s the Chinese for “SEO”?

You don’t stand out by being bland

You’re not one of those people who fills their press releases with marketing-speak, are you? No, of course not. You’ve read Dilbert for years, and you laugh in the face of people who talk about leading-edge, state-of-the-art solutions. Except that …well… if you do, you’re in a tiny minority. I know from an exercise in analysing the first 200,000 press releases which came into the Pro-Talk network, when I worked there, that words like “solutions” occur in the majority of press releases. Have you ever heard a customer ask for… Read More »You don’t stand out by being bland

Advertising: powered by inertia

I regularly look through the trade mags which have made it well past the date by which they were supposed to have been blown away by the internet. About half of those which I worked on in the decade or more I was a print magazine editor have now disappeared, but others seem quite healthy (and I’m glad, because a lot of old friends work for them). However, when I study the advertisements which keep them going, I do get the impression that the majority are placed by people who… Read More »Advertising: powered by inertia

Start with the little things

Lots of people have said to me over the summer, “Chris, I love the idea of learning how to make my website work harder on your Insider Programme, but my company website is run by our American/German/Japanese (delete as applicable) parent, and all we do is to upload product information and news relating to the UK. So there’s not much we can do to improve the website, is there?” If that rings a bell with you, it’s time to think again. Firstly, I’d say the design of a website (the… Read More »Start with the little things

What type of mailings pay dividends for you?

I mentioned not neglecting “snail mail” the other day, and in Direct Mail Versus E-mail: You Decide on the BeRelevant! blog, the strengths and weaknesses of the two methods are discussed. Of course, in the end, it all comes down to return on investment. You do know the return on investment figures for recent mailing campaigns in your business, don’t you? Of course you do.

Some ideas for “good content”

We all know that getting good content on your website is a massive help in drawing people towards it. But what is “good content”? It’s easy to say, but harder to define. As ever, we give you a lot of help in this direction on our Insider Programme. However, there are some super tips in a fine article called Marketing Content Salespeople Actually Use on the Marketing Interactions site. This piece is primarily aimed at making you think about how to write content which helps your sales team, rather than… Read More »Some ideas for “good content”

Tricky landing ahead

Designing Better Landing Pages is an interesting article from the Accelerating IT Sales blog. Few industrial companies get “landing pages” right. Many don’t have specially-designed “landing pages” at all: the web page which site visitors “land” on as a response to advertising or Google searches is just the page which most closely relates to the product concerned. Lots of companies just send everyone to their front page. What a wasted opportunity! For example, if you were sending out invitations to customers to an event, would you tell them to RSVP… Read More »Tricky landing ahead

Keep on keeping on with Google

Someone asked me recently what position in the Google results I would classify as “good”. Sadly, it’s very high. As you go down the page, clickthroughs drop dramatically (and sorry – if you’re not in the top ten, i.e on page 1, you’re toast). An article on Conversion Rate Experts called Why Rank #1 in Google shows quite graphically where people look on the Google results page, and shows how important a no.1 spot is. The number of people bypassing the AdWords ads at the top of the page has… Read More »Keep on keeping on with Google

There Will Be Video

The time was when making a video for your business was a special event, and probably involved bringing in an expensive professional production company. For that reason alone, many marketing professionals have never been involved in making a corporate video at all. Now things are very different. If your company isn’t already churning out videos, I predict you will be, in the next couple of years. Videos work, the quality expectation of viewers is now much less exacting, and the equipment needed is available to everyone. You may be doing… Read More »There Will Be Video

Happy with your site? Think again.

This is quite an advanced article today, but it’s the sort of thing you’ll be taking in your stride after you’ve been on our Insider Programme for a while (and please think about joining, it’s a genuinely great investment). In Six Mistakes B2B Marketers Continue To Make With Organic Search, Search Engine Land takes you past elementary “optimisation” of a website for search engines, and looks at the things many people continue to get wrong even after they think they’ve got their site all sorted. Likely errors include not having… Read More »Happy with your site? Think again.

Try using snail mail again

No, seriously, bear with me. In Fast fixes for B2B marketing in a sour economy on the B2B Web Strategy Blog, author Bill Gadless says that in a downturn, leads are harder to come by and taking noticeably longer to close. So it’s time to take a critical look at your marketing and fix some of those deficiencies that could safely be ignored in the good times. Five specific ideas are highlighted (including why you might think about trying snail mail again), and there’s a link to a much more… Read More »Try using snail mail again

What to put in your company blog

You probably don’t have a company blog. Whilst the number of companies producing them is expanding massively, they’re still rare in industrial circles. And that’s a real missed opportunity. Blogs provide some wonderful opportunities to publish content which would never sit comfortably on your main website – and they also get a surprisingly large following amongst your customers and (more importantly) potential custoners. Why do I go to the effort of writing this one every day? Because it keeps the name of my business in front of you, and from… Read More »What to put in your company blog

Content ideas for your email newsletters

I recently pointed you towards some good email newsletter production advice – now here are some good ideas about content. In 12 Content Ideas for Your Email Campaigns on the BeRelevant! blog, there are some nice suggestions which I might not have thought of – but which might just work well.

Search engines: page 1 or bust

Lots of people monitor their position in the Google results for various search terms which they’ve identified as being important. But whilst you want to be as high as possible, is there a position below which it doesn’t matter where you are? Yes, and for most of us it’s number 10, because the vast majority of Google searchers never click to the next page. In Why I Think SERPs Should Go Beyond 10 Results on Search Engine Guide, the author argues that the search engine results pages (the “SERPs”) need… Read More »Search engines: page 1 or bust

Why you should use a two-part lead form

One of my favourite articles of the month coming up. It’s possible that your website is for customer support alone, and it’s possible that you have an online store, but my guess is that the primary objective of your website (you do have an objective, don’t you?) is lead generation. So let’s look at improving a lead generation website. In 5 Simple Tips for Lead-Generation Sites on FutureNow’s Marketing Optimization Blog, author Bryan Eisenberg gives you some food for thought, with one tip standing out for me: use a two-part… Read More »Why you should use a two-part lead form

Is the Google AdWords “Content Network” any good?

The article I’m linking to today was written at the start of the year, but the trends it observes will probably be even stronger now. But first let’s keep to basics. Are you using Google AdWords? They’re the small ads which appear at the top and on the right on Google results pages, and on many third-party sites like the site I used to edit, Engineeringtalk, and thousands of others. Let’s just say now, unequivocally, that if you’re in UK B2B marketing, you should be using AdWords. If you’re not,… Read More »Is the Google AdWords “Content Network” any good?

Press releases: things have moved on

Do you still write your company’s press releases the same way as you did ten years ago? Or if they’re written for you by a PR consultancy, have your writers changed their approach over the past ten years? If not, it might be time to change your writers. The fact of the matter is that before the web became the main target for press releases, you had to write them to appeal to journalists and editors. Now you have to write them to appeal just as much (if not more)… Read More »Press releases: things have moved on

Is technology putting your customers off?

Seth’s Blog is always good for articles which make you go away and reassess your outlook to marketing and customer relations. In Old marketing with new tools he says we use technology to do less for our customers, when we should be using it to do more. It’s a good point, and something all of us (including me) are probably guilty of. It’s amazing how little individualised care we give to high-value customers because we’ve become so used to mass-communication tools. But if this is a general problem (and it… Read More »Is technology putting your customers off?

Keeping your website “search engine friendly”

Here’s a nice little article on the Industrial Search Engine Marketing blog which is worth going through. Quick Site Audit! Is Your Site Search Engine Friendly? gives a small selection of elementary things which your website should and shouldn’t have if it’s to be “search engine friendly”. If you think you might not be conforming to the article’s suggestions, get the problem fixed and you’ll undoubtedly see more traffic from Google. Some of the points may seem quite technical, but throw this at your website designers if you’re unsure and… Read More »Keeping your website “search engine friendly”

How to get a successful newsletter produced

Does your company run an email newsletter for your customers? I’m sure you do – it’s just about the most cost-effective sales and marketing exercise available to you, and has been for many years. But if you don’t, or if you produce one only half-heartedly, have a read of 3 Steps to Regular Email Newsletters on the BeRelevant! blog. In this article, the author suggests that a successful newsletter needs a timetable, an owner and an easy method of contributing at a time of the contributor’s choice. What you simply… Read More »How to get a successful newsletter produced

The Insider Programme launches today

It’s a big day for us, because today Business Marketing Online unveils its flagship product, the Insider Programme. This is a combined educational and consultancy service for industrial and technical companies in the UK, where we’ll show you how to increase your website traffic as well as convert a higher proportion of visitors into name-and-address sales leads. I won’t describe it in depth here, I’ll just direct you to our Insider Programme information page and our Insider Programme explanatory video which do a pretty good job of explaining it all.… Read More »The Insider Programme launches today

Data sheets: not good enough, I’m afraid

Here’s something where we in industry might learn from consumer websites. Many of these found long ago that “reviews” (or at least more descriptive pieces) worked far better than dry spec sheets in selling products, or at least getting response. Yet your average industrial website continues to reproduce data sheets, and that’s it. Now, of course you need to have data sheets on a website. Customers need them. But they’re not enough. You need to sell the products too. I suspect the real reason that products often get no more… Read More »Data sheets: not good enough, I’m afraid

What people are searching for, and where

One or two people commented on the post about GoogleTrends for Websites to say that they didn’t realise such useful tools were available, so presumably many of you may not have come across Google Insights For Search either. This is introduced comprehensively in the article Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Insights for Search on Occam’s Razor so make yourself a mug of coffee and have a read. This tool is a fascinating insight (of course) into what people are searching for, and where.

Another day, another browser

You thought Apple’s PR was good, but when Google launches a product – today it was a new browser – it can pick up equally massive coverage (the front page of the BBC website, to name but one example). So why is a new browser (the application you use to look at the web with, like Internet Explorer, or Firefox) of any real importance? Here’s why, and here’s how it affects you. If you have a decent web stats/analytics program running, you’ll probably be able to see that 80% of… Read More »Another day, another browser

How do you compare to your competitors?

Google Trends for Websites is a relatively new – free – offering from Google which allows you to track the clickthroughs from Google to any site on the web. This means you can compare how you’re doing against your competitors, which is always fun. Unfortunately, you have to get a certain amount of clickthroughs to register on the graphs, which might not make it very useful for lower-traffic sites, such as many industrial companies. However, a really good, in-depth introduction to Google Trends for Websites appeared on the Occam’s Razor… Read More »How do you compare to your competitors?

Give that email every chance of survival

A lot of your marketing emails never get to the recipient. Fact. There’s no point in bemoaning the crudity of some of the “email filters” which people have in place; they exist, they work badly, and we just have to get on with it. However, we can at least do as much as possible to reduce the number which get swallowed up into black holes set up by some work-experience kid in your customer’s IT Department. As Editor of Engineeringtalk for over eight years, I probably sent out 15 million… Read More »Give that email every chance of survival

Using Surveys to Make Decisions

I’m going to bang on until I’m blue in the face about this subject, because I will never, ever understand why so few companies survey their customers before making decisions which will affect them. Surveys are fast, and if you already have your customers’ email addresses – free. Yes, of course there are caveats about the responses (you only get them from people who like filling in surveys, and these might not be representative of your customer base as a whole) but the results are infinitely better than just going… Read More »Using Surveys to Make Decisions

How to focus on those keywords

The first thing to do when trying to improve your site’s performance in the search engine results is to work out what words and phrases you’re trying to improve it for. These search terms are called the “keywords”. Determining what these should be is not as obvious as you think, and we’ll be covering that right at the start in our Business Marketing Online Insider Programme. Once you’ve done this, you need to work on making those keywords prominent on your pages. Three Ways to Give Your Keywords Prominence on… Read More »How to focus on those keywords

Focus on what you want the visitor to do

Increasingly, experts are suggesting that you focus on getting your website visitors to do the one thing you want them to do, rather than impress them with the breadth of options you offer. Having built up a successful online publishing venture myself on precisely this principle, I find that most gratifying. Analysts amongst you will be interested in a recent study which compared the ability to “find a camera which you like” on the Argos, Comet, eBuyer and Currys websites, discussed in Argos beats competition with user-friendly web design on… Read More »Focus on what you want the visitor to do

Take a step back from your website

Ever wondered if maybe you can’t see the wood for the trees on your website? You should have done. Looking into the subject, I found this great post from earlier in the year on the Search Engine Marketing Exposed blog. Why would someone come to your site, how will they find you, why would they stay, and why would they come back? Simple questions to ask, hard ones to answer. But you should. Read Four questions every web site owner needs to answer for more.

A better marketing email

Creating an email marketing campaign? Components of a Successful Marketing Email from the B2B Marketing ROI blog gives you a nice checklist of things to consider. According to the article, subject lines, email content, formatting and timing are the key factors contributing to open and conversion rates. You’ll have to do some Googling to get some in-depth advice on each subject, but it’s a good place to start.