Are Keywords Also Your Key to Success?

Last time, we discussed the importance of knowing your website traffic sources and using Google Analytics Traffic Sources Overview. This week, we’d like to take our analysis of where our visitors are coming from one step further. We want to know what exactly our visitors are searching for on our site and how they are finding us.

This seemingly unimportant detail can actually help you optimize your website content on specific keywords commonly used to find you.  Utilizing this information can advance your search engine placement or ranking and thus increase your visibility and boost website traffic/performance.

A good idea is to check this section of your analytics every month and develop a list of 5 keywords you would like to try to improve by contouring your website content, titles, URLs, and image names.

Finding successful keywords is easier than you think. All you have to do is look at the number of visits each keyword brings in along with the bounce rate and percentage of new visitors. A lower bounce rate indicates that users find what they are looking for on your site. Let’s take a look at some of our current stats below:

Above, were our top 5 keywords this month. Number 3, “watt mmi” provided us with 11 visits and had a 0% bounce rate. This may seem like a great keyword to enhance, but if you look at the percentage of new visits you will see that this keyword did not provide us with any new traffic. Therefore, this term did not make it on our list of keywords we want to improve over the next month.

Now, let’s take a look at a keyword we did find valuable and worth improving.

“Automated marketing software” only provided us 1 visit, but we think this term has great potential. Not only did it have a 0% bounce rate, but it also attracted 100% new visitors who visited 6 pages on our site. This is also a term used by many of our competitors and if we can incorporate this keyword into our website content, we can expect our search engine rankings to increase.

As our company continues to grow and transform, we intend to use this information to help guide us as we expand and adjust our website and marketing strategy. If you haven’t done so already, we suggest you check out your keyword statistics for yourself and this will hopefully give you a better idea of what your visitors are seeking and provide you with some idea of what needs modification in your marketing plan.

8 Sales Tips Every Fundraiser Should Know

1. Think Long-Term. If you want to build a long-term fundraising program, consider engaging monthly donors.  Monthly giving clubs creates loyalty and consistent giving.  Recruit donors to make modest monthly gifts instead of a single annual donation at the end of the year.    Donors can choose to have $10, $25, $50, $100 or more withdrawn from their checking or credit card account monthly. This type of program removes the stress for both the donor and the fundraiser.
2. Encourage restricted giving. Restricted gifts have the effect of engaging donors more than unrestricted gifts do because donors know where their money is being spent.  Many times donors decide that they want to take more active roles in a particular donation after fully understanding the impact of their gifts.  It creates an emotional investment.
3. Have your elevator pitch ready. Salespersons often refer to their elevator pitch as a short but compelling 30-second description of their product or service.  It helps them get their point across quickly and peek the interest of their prospect enough to set up a warm appointment.  Whether written or communicated in person, fundraisers need to put their message in a short, succinct, 150 words or less, format that will compel and move potential donors to action.
4. A picture is worth a thousand words. Respect your donor’s time and get rid of the jargon.  Who understands it anyway? Make your case with pictures and less words.   Show them where their money is going instead of telling them in a 30-page document.
5. Hire more help. Just because you are a non-profit, doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do more with less.  Each fundraiser you hire means more money in your bottom line to run the programs necessary to make an impact.
6. Reward your staff. Your successful fundraisers need to be treated well or else they will move on.  A business will give their top salespersons raises for their contribution to the company.  Why not encourage and congratulate your top fundraisers with a raise?
7. Impulse is powerful. Donors are like impulse buyers. A person will donate to a cause when it makes them feel better about themselves or helps them avoid regret about not donating.  Consider designing a call to action that primes their feelings.  Be clear about what can happen if they do not donate.
8. People will do as their friends do. Giving is social. Donors will donate if they know others who are doing the same. Consider personalizing your fundraising campaigns with stories of other donors who are giving.  Make sure the profile of the donor matches that of your target.  Another idea is to ask current donors to “spread the love”’ and share the information about your organization and their donation with their friends.

ROI of Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is an important tool when it comes to converting sales-ready leads for both new and existing prospects. By implementing a lead nurturing campaign into your marketing strategy, you can increase the conversion of prospects from your existing database to sales-ready leads by 2.0-3.0 times. Typically, 0.4% of prospects from an existing database will become sales-ready before nurturing. Utilizing a lead nurturing program can increase your prospect to lead conversion rate to anywhere from 0.8% to 1.2%.  This may seem miniscule at first, but if you have an existing database of 10,000 prospects, it is the difference between converting 40 leads without nurturing to 100 leads with nurturing, which can lead to significant revenue gains.

In addition to generating more sales-ready leads, a strong nurturing program can also impact the number of deals your sales team can close. In most cases, older leads account for approximately 33% of won opportunities without any nurturing. If a campaign includes lead nurturing, about 50% of closed deals will be from older leads. Nurturing does not usually affect the number of won opportunities from leads under 30 days old, but it does increase the percentage of closed deals that come from an existing database. This would mean that by nurturing leads you increase the total number of won opportunities. In fact, lead nurturing has been proven to increase the total number of closed deals by about 33%. Clearly, keeping constant communication with all leads can have profound effects on the number of opportunities won and thus increase your overall revenue.

 

Stop Sales Opportunities From Stalling Out

In any marketing campaign, there are certain points where prospects tend to stall out. Considering that of all leads that enter the sales pipeline, almost 80% of them are lost or ignored by sales, the importance of implementing an efficient lead handoff system becomes apparent. Using an automated campaign to pass a hot lead to sales can make the difference between a timely follow-up and no response.

Another tip in preventing lead stall outs is to establish a “service level agreement” in which sales commits to handling the lead in a timely fashion. This means that any leads that are not moved forward in the process, or backward, within a certain timeframe should be automatically recycled back to marketing. There are generally two types of lead recycling scenarios- one in which leads are automatically cycled according to a set of rules and the other in which leads are manually recycled by sales. Automatic recycling is useful in scenarios where sales are flooded with hot leads and cannot follow-up in a timely manner. Manual cycling is unique in the fact that sales has already had a conversation with these leads and knows more about their buying intent than those leads that lack any sales interaction. This allows for sales to indicate a specific timeframe in which the lead should be re-engaged. Both methods ensure that leads continue to flow and nothing gets “stuck” or lost in the lead handoff stage.

Hello? Who’s there?

While having a website is great for your business, knowing who is visiting and why you’re attracting them makes a big difference.

Last week, we went over Google Analytics Top Content.  This week, we’d like to discuss how Google Analytics can help you define where your website traffic is coming from.

Why do I need to know who is visiting my company website anyway? Time and money.

• Advertising – If you are pumping advertising dollars into search engines, online newsletters, or blogs, you can use this tool to learn what sources are most profitable and determine your ROI.
• Social Media – Many professionals complain that Twitter and Facebook is time consuming.  Use analytics to learn what your followers are most interested in and what posts or stories are directing them back to your website.
• Search Engines – Spending time, resources, and money on SEO?  Google Analytics shows you your search engine traffic and which search engines are referring your site most (both organic and paid searches).
• Word of Mouth – Perhaps you have been working on a WOM campaign and now visitors are searching you by name.   You can learn what words they used to search you or if most visitors are typing in your website directly to find you.
• Press Releases – It’s great to have the trade publications or magazines post your releases but what’s the effect? How do you know if people are interested in your content, services, or offers?  Analytics can show you whether or not visitors are clicking through to your web page for more information.

The one-page report is split into three different sections that can provide in-deph information on your website.

At the top of the report you will see a line graph that shows overall daily website activity.

Based on our website, traffic is highest on Mondays.  This makes sense to us because it correlates with our blog post and Twitter activity.  Typically, links and visits to blogs are highest on the weekdays because most bloggers or linkerati are looking for content to repurpose or link to from their sites.

The pie chart provides information on the percentage of visitors coming from either direct traffic, referring sites or search engines.

Direct Traffic: These are visitors who are typing in your URL on a web browser. Tip: Consider your marketing activity when evaluating how the direct visit was stimulated.

• Did you recently attend a tradeshow and gave out your business card?
• Did you recently mail a Direct Mail piece with your website?
• Have you purchased any advertisements?
• Do you have videos on Youtube?

Referring Sites: Visitors from referring sites are clicking on your link from another website.  Your company blog, press releases posted on other websites, Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin can impact the amount of visitors you are receiving.  Tip: Always provide links to your website on any material published to the web.

Search Engine Traffic: This is one we are currently working on improving. Google Analytics tracks the keywords that send visitors to your site, which search engines are referring you and what are your most popular keywords.  For example, if a visitor searches marketing automation and clicks on www.mmiedge.com from the search results, then we would receive data on that visit under Search Engine Traffic.

The most popular keywords are shown at the bottom right of the page.  Tip: Place the keywords for your industry throughout your website – titles, URL, content, and image names.

The most popular traffic sources are shows on the left.  Further reporting can be found by clicking on the links.

We can go on and on discussing the features and benefits of this report but we suggest you try it for yourself.  Sign up, spend a couple of days collecting data, browse the features and report back to us on what you’ve learned about your company.

Surviving Quota Increases in a Down Economy

With only 51.8% of reps meeting or exceeding their quotas (as compared to 58.8% the year before), companies continued to raise their sales quotas every year despite the grim economic forecast.  How will your sales team ever keep up? The answer is simple: change how you sell.

Your sales process plays a huge role in the success or failure of your sales team. A company falls into one of four levels when it comes to the processes they use to find, create and expand customer relationships.

• Level 1- Random Process: Your company may be perceived as being anti-process, though what you really lack is a single standard process. Every sales rep does their own thing their own way.
• Level 2- Informal Process: Your company exposes your salespeople to a sales process that indicates that they are expected to use it, but that use is neither monitored nor measured.
• Level 3-Formal Process: Your company regularly enforces the use of a defined sales process, and you conduct periodic reviews of the process to see how effective it is and then make changes based on that analysis.
• Level 4-Dynamic Process: Your company dynamically monitors and provides continuous feedback on sales reps’ use of your formal sales process. You also proactively modify the process when you detect key changes in market conditions (i.e. new competitors emerging, changes in governmental regulations, shifts in the economy, etc.).

According to a study conducted by CSO Insights, higher sales processes levels are directly correlated with higher performance levels. Therefore, optimizing your sales performance should be a top objective at any company. Improving processes and relationships will allow your reps to sell more effectively and since sales quotas are continually rising, enhancing your sales process may be exactly what your company needs in order to achieve success during such economically turbulent times.

 

Using Marketing Automation and Social Media Marketing to Fully Understand Prospects

Thanks to the rise of Internet usage among potential clients, buyers today are much better informed. Potential customers do their homework before they engage in the sales process and are constantly looking for relevant and educational materials. They conduct their research online; searching websites, discussion boards, blogs, and reviews. In addition, they exchange ideas with colleagues and friends. In fact, according to a SiriusDecisions 2010 Summit report, 51% of buyers cited peers as the most trusted source for initial research and 29% continued to consult them throughout the buying cycle. This confirms that social media marketing should play an integral role in your marketing strategy.

Automated marketing software can provide valuable insight into a company’s social media outlets. It can improve a company’s ability to listen to what people are saying about your company and your products, thus enabling the user to understand how social media is affecting their brand. Marketing automation tools can also help us understand potential buyers- what problems they’re trying to solve and when they’re ready to buy-by examining what they’ve looked at on a company’s website. This enables a company to deliver relevant content and establish trust with potential buyers. Timing is also a crucial element in being able to close deals. Analysts report that 60% of raw lead inquiries are disqualified by sales, primarily because they are too early in the process. Of that, 80% often end up buying from another company. In order to avoid that mistake, disqualified leads can be passed into a lead-nurturing program. This reduces the chance that sales will chase away leads that are not truly sales-ready and prevents competitors from successfully pursuing your prospects. Utilizing automated marketing programs is a great way to give your company credibility by respecting where the customer is in the buying process and connecting with them through appropriate communication channels.

 

ROI on Facebook “Social” Marketing?

Despite the buzz surrounding social media and importance of using social media to engage clients, most Facebook “social” marketing has little or no return on investment. Here are some reasons why investing in Facebook marketing may be a huge waste of money:

1.) Facebook is primarily used as a communication device between friends, colleagues, and family. It’s an easy way to get in touch with people. People relate to others on Facebook on very superficial levels, which is partially why it is such a popular tool. Very little effort is required to keep contact.

2.) The actual engagement ratio is close to 0. While bigger brand names may seem to get a good number of posts or “likes”, compared to the number of members in the group, this number is miniscule. For example, Starbucks has about 20 million members but only gets about 1,000 comments per day. This is about a 0.005 percent engagement ratio. Small companies typically get little to no interaction.

3.) In cases where this is actual engagement, there is no way to respond to the users. Companies cannot post on individual people’s wall, only on other companies. Even if you do receive comments, there is no way to process them in a meaningful way.

4.) There are way too many groups on Facebook. People experience advertisement overload. At first, people will “like” and join many groups but eventually they will start to ignore the mass requests to join or like a page.

This is not to say that there is no reason to have a Facebook page. It’s free advertising. But, it’s probably not the most effective marketing strategy. Paying Facebook to place ads, on the other hand, provides real and immediate results. This is probably the best way to spend money on Facebook. There are targeting features and it is much better to send people to your own landing page instead of worrying about all the management issues associated with Facebook fan pages. Therefore, it is in your best interest to really evaluate the value of Facebook fan pages before spending your time and resources on a marketing effort that will most likely not provide a ROI or have little impact on sales or brand perception.

Evaluating your website with Google Analytics

In the following series of blogs, we will document our experience using website analytics to monitor, review, and make informed decision on the content we post on mmiedge.com.  We’re using Google Analytics to gain about the information on our website and how visitors interact with us.  Today’s blog will focus on our experience using the Top Content feature.  Each week we will update you on a different feature in the analytics tool and how its helped us improve our website.

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Content is plentiful.

Consumers are actively searching the Internet for useful data when making purchasing decisions.  Knowing what information your website visitors are most interested in is a vital piece in your company’s marketing strategy.

Our company website, mmiedge.com, is constantly updated with new content.  We update the pages, move around buttons and images and link our social media activities to our site everyday.   Recently, we implemented a new marketing strategy and have seen an increase on our website traffic.

Where are our visitors going?  What do they find interesting or want to learn more about?

We turned to Google Analytics. If you are serious about your company website, you should too.  It’s important to review your website successes and downfalls periodically.   Insights from pages that rank higher than others allows you to begin creating and crafting better content to get more visitor activity.

The Top Content Report

In our opinion, the report is one of the most valuable reports in Google Analytics.  This report reveals what your website visitors are drawn to most.   It contains a number of valuable features including:

• Total Page views
• Unique Page/views
• Avg. time on page
• Bounce rate
• Top 10 pages on your site

Click on each page to delve deeper into the analytics and learn:

• How visitors are landing on this page
• The pages they click on next
• Which websites referred us most
• What keywords did visitors search before they landed on page

What we learned: It’s clear that our website visitors have come to our site to learn more about our services.

• Ranking 2^nd after the homepage is  the“MMI EDGE FOR SALES.”  We also noticed that most visitors click to view our demo after landing on the sales page.  Thoughts: It’s time to beef up our mmiedge.com/sales page to help visitors better understand our product.  We could also embed the video of our demo to the sales page in order to minimize the number of clicks.
• Ranking 3rd and 4th are two pages that further explain our product and services.  Thoughts: Visitors are interested in learning more about who we are and what we do.  Perhaps including a form that allows visitors to request more information from us is appropriate.
• Ranking 5th is the Profitability Comparison, a case study for the print industry.  Thoughts: Many of our website visitors are from the print industry and are looking for more information on how service can help their marketing and sales efforts.

We’re headed back to the drawing board to review our content and ensure we’re providing value to our visitors.  Now, it’s your turn.  Open up your website to Google Analytics (or any similar analytics tool) and learn how visitors are interacting with your company online.

B2B Marketing Strategies that Work

There is no one size fits all approach when it comes to marketing but some strategies lead to more success than others:

Test email subject lines

Testing subject lines on your emails requires little effort and can provide valuable feedback.  Test two to three subject lines on one email campaign and learn more about what compels your prospects to act.

Email a house list

Do not neglect your house list.  It’s your greatest asset. Shying away from sending them your newsletters or marketing offers is a bad idea.  Keep this list engaged. It can make a difference between a good month and a great one.

Blog

Frequent blogging on relevant subjects is an easy way to showcase your knowledge and specialties.  Optimizing your blog for search engines and see the traffic to your blog and company website increase.

Pay-per-click advertising

Get in front of the people who are searching for what you can offer.  Research keywords, think strategically and write compelling ad copy.  Avoid linking the advertisement to your home page or blog.  Instead, design an attractive and compelling landing page with an offer or resource to engage visitors.

Landing pages

Create unique landing pages for campaigns.  Driving traffic to a web site or a page provides no value if you aren’t collecting information on your visitors.  Landing pages provide an opportunity to interact with each visitor.  Have your prospects download a report, subscribe to a specific newsletter, or request to be contacted.