Q2 Marketing Blog – Technology Marketing, Public Relations, Brand Consulting

Business to Business Marketing Category

Web marketing: Customer Acquisition Vs Cheap Sales Tactics

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

We all know how important customer acquisition is these days—for our clients and for ourselves. But some companies are getting carried away and making a big online marketing mistake.

Many are getting caught up in optimizing their websites for lead generation and sales conversion. And they’re forgetting there’s much more to a website strategy. Effective websites must also serve existing customers and create a brand perception of trust and credibility.

Tags: customer acquisition, effective websites, Lead Generation, sales conversion, web marketing, website strategy
Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Sales and Marketing, Web site development | No Comments »

8 More Reasons Why Collateral Still Matters

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Marketing materials are an important part of the sales process for most B2B and B2G companies. But not all companies, even the ones selling high end services and solutions, meet the challenge. Here is part two of the recent article, 8 Reasons Why Collateral Still Matters.

Tags: collateral, marketing materials, sales process
Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Messaging & Positioning, Sales and Marketing, Technology Marketing | 1 Comment »

IT Spending to Rise 6.6% in 2010, Says Forrester

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Forrester Research predicts IT spending will rise 6.6 percent in 2010. This is a stark contrast to 2009, where IT spending fell 8.2 percent in the U.S. and and 8.9 percent overall in international markets.

Hardware and software investments will drive the rise in spending, with software projected to rise 9.7 percent.

Read more from Nasdaq.com. Here’s to a strong tech marketing 2010!

Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Economy, Industry Trends, Marketing Research, Recession marketing, Research and studies, Sales and Marketing, Technology Marketing | No Comments »

Make Quantification Top Priority for 2010

Friday, January 8th, 2010 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Make marketing measurement a top priority for your company in 2010. This New Year’s resolution should be near the top of many marketers’ to-do lists. Everyone agrees that this has to be done. But rub is in the quantification methodology. Just how do we do it?

Over the years, we’ve received many questions about how to implement and improve marketing measurement to demonstrate marketing results. In fact, I just had this discussion with a federal defense contractor yesterday.

It begins with a solid plan and setting benchmarks and measuring against them.

Here are some resources to help you:

6 Tips for Establishing a Formal Measurement Process (One of our most popular entries!)

4 Essential Tips for Building Quantifiable Marketing Programs, from MarketingProfs

8 Ways to Build Quantifiable Programs

Last, but far from least is our most popular downlaod,Q2 Marketing’s Nine Step Marketing Quantification Process. It will help make your resolution a reality!

Happy quantifying!

Tags: marketing measurement, marketing ROI, measurable marketing, quantifible marketing, return on marketing investment, RMOI
Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Industry Trends, Measurement, Technology Marketing | No Comments »

5 steps to successful and measurable white paper marketing

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

In technology marketing, the virtues of white papers are well known. But the deployment strategy too often goes off course. When this falls short, measurable results are sure to follow.

A successful white paper distribution strategy really only requires five steps:

1. A marketable topic that provides important content to potential buyers.

Just because your engineers are excited about a technology doesn’t mean this topic will generate enthusiastic readers. Research your topic and make sure you’re really filling a market niche and supplying needed content. If this step is not dead on, how can the program be successful?

2. Structure and content that delivers on the promise of valuable information.

This step can do one of two things. It can build on the credibility of the company that develops the white paper. Or it can damage your company’s credibility if the reader goes to the trouble to download your data, only to find the information is poorly organized, badly written, and/or hopefully week on good content. There’s a middle ground in there too, but that falls short of motivating the prospect to do business with you.

3. Visual appeal that contributes to the positive perception the reader has of the company.

White papers are marketing pieces and should fit with the overall corporate brand. Charts, graphs, screen captures and other visual depictions should be handled by an experienced graphic designer, as should all parts of the white paper. Not everyone who can design a white paper should design a white paper. After all, you want this document to be read by your audience. Visuals are important.

4. A distribution strategy of reaching potential buyers, customers, etc.

Writing the white paper is the easy part. Really. As difficult as it can be to extract important information out of your subject matter experts and convince your C-suite and peers that you’re not giving away trade secrets at every turn, the most difficult part of any white paper strategy is distribution. Take the time and allocate the budget to do this step properly. Before you embark on developing the white papers, research white paper search and syndication services like bnet, techtarget, knowledgestorm and more, as well as more niche-focused services. Also consider the white paper as a pull to an advertising or direct mail campaign.

Also, determine how you will continue to nurture those leads once they are in your pipeline.

5. Benchmarking and measurement methods to determine and define success.

Before you begin, determine what success looks like. Realistically. Is it the number of qualified downloads, qualified additions to your marketing database, inbound leads, search engine optimization, synergy with a PR program, etc.?

Posted in Advertising, Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Direct marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Search Marketing, Technology Marketing, White paper marketing | No Comments »

Building brand a loyalty a recession marketing must

Friday, July 10th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Customer loyalty is another casualty of the recession. Buyers, including your customers, are aggressively hunting to spend only on what appears to be the absolute best decisions with their budgets. This is true in any economy, but at no time is it a greater reality than now. This poses a threat to pretty much everyone, and the tech sector is no exception.

We recently discussed two of the best ways to build brand loyalty:

1. Say thank you.

2. Remind your customers that you’re great

Let’s spend a little more time on number two. Reminding the buyer why they bought from you in the first place, and all of the virtues of your product or service is absolutely critical in this economy. The first and most important question is: does your company deliver exceptional products or services? If the answer is yes (and let’s hope it is!), how are you communicating that?

Down times are the absolute best times to both build brand loyalty and aggressively communicate the values of your brand. How do you do this?

It’s essential for you to communicate why your business is the superior choice to the many competitors you probably have. If your customers (or prospects) can find it cheaper, there’s a good chance they’re looking for it right now. How can your marketing messages head off that threat? Make sure you’re communicating why it’s a better investment to spend a little—or a lot more—and work with you.

Dropy by next week for a discussion on the best tools for carrying out this objective.

Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Customer retention, Economy, Industry Trends, Sales and Marketing | No Comments »

Q2 Marketing Cited in Slideshare’s Content Marketing Predictions for 2009

Monday, June 22nd, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Slideshare’s Content Marketing, Social Media and Marketing Predictions for 2009 cites research commentary from Q2 Marketing. Find the presentation, full of great resources, here:

http://www.slideshare.net/ambal/clickdocuments-content-marketing-cheat-sheet

Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Economy, Industry Trends, Marketing Research, Online Marketing, SEO, Search Marketing, Social Media, Technology Marketing | No Comments »

Last things you need before you begin to blog

Monday, June 15th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

This series grew out of my heartfelt conclusion that B2B and B2G blogging isn’t for everyone. Sometimes I get the sense that non-bloggers feel guilty about not yet joining the fray. Conversely, a hearty helping of business-to-business bloggers that, it turns out, have very little to say, have jumped in. The series began by highting the four attributes a would-be blogger absolutely must have:

Strategy
Discipline
Desire
Content

But, from there it grew. Because in addition to these, skill and content targeted to audience are essential, as we explored in part two. But wait, there’s more. Here are our final two attributes you need if you’re going to blog. At least for now.

7. Patience. You aren’t going to experience a groundswell of traffic to your site overnight. You probably won’t experience much traffic for the first number of months. Patience is a prerequisite. This ties into the discipline mentioned earlier. Know that this requires a big picture, long term perspective. We all want thousands of unique visitors each day. But remember one qualified inbound lead as a direct result of your blog has greater value than one thousand passive readers.

On readership, promoting the blog is an entirely different story. A story for another time.

8. Metrics. All good marketing is about metrics and blogs are no exception. One of the single greatest assets of web marketing is measurement. Google Analytics, which is free, will give you great data on traffic to your blog, most popular pages, time on site, referring sites and more. Use this information to understand the types of topics of most value and interest to your readers. When quantifying the value of your blog, refer back to your strategic objectives and make sure your goals are in alignment with your initiatives. And the most important metric of all: are you getting qualifed leads?

Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Economy, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Social Media, Technology Marketing, Web site development | No Comments »

Two More of the Most Important Things You Need to Blog

Thursday, June 11th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Earlier this week we examined the four most important things you need before you blog. To recap, they are:

Strategy
Discipline
Desire
Content

Those are the absolutely essential ingredients if your blog is going to make any impact on your business. Most don’t, according to Technorati’s State of the Blogsphere. According to this September 2008 survey, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs they track had been updated during the previous three months. This means 95% of blogs have been abandoned.

So to avoid an abandoned blog, or spinning your wheels to no avail, here are two more of the most important things you need before you blog.

5. Desire. Blogs aren’t high prose, but you have to like to write. You must have at least a modicum of aptitude for conveying the written word. And you have to want to push out to the world information, trends and issues that are hot in your industry. Being naturally inquisitive and generally excited by your industry and its goings-on will go a long way. And having a finger on the pulse of trends and developments is an absolute necessity if you’re going to attract initial and repeat visitors.

Think of it like going to the gym. If you hate it, or you’re just ambivalent, you won’t keep doing it. It’s better to dedicate your time to other efforts.

6. Content targeted to audience. Part one identified content as critical, but an effective blog extends beyond that. If your blog is going to help you drive business and reach other strategic objectives, your copy must be aligned to your objectives. I talk with bloggers who are disappointed that their consistent and well-conceived efforts are not driving traffic to their blog, sales leads, or even significant traffic to their corporate web site.

Often the culprit is less the quality of the blog and more the relevance of the content to the business. There is no shortage of things I’m passionate about and could blog about, from politics and religion to martial arts, fitness and a variety of business topics. But my Examiner column and Q2 Marketing’s Technology Marketing Blog are focused on strategic marketing for one of our most significant market sectors: B2B and B2G tech firms. If you’re going to get results, ensure your blog is equally targeted.

Check back soon for two more things you need before you blog.

Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Social Media, Technology Marketing | No Comments »

Blogging? Do you have the 4 most important ingredients?

Monday, June 8th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Business-to-business blogs are everywhere these days. But that doesn’t mean that blogging is really for everyone. Maybe it’s a fit for your and your business. Maybe it’s not. This article highlights the four most essential attributes needed before blogging. We’ll review even more in part two. If you’re missing any one of the four below, regroup and consider if blogging makes sense for you.

1. Strategy. We hear all the time that executives are told they need to blog. They feel this overwhelming urge to keep up with the Joneses and their blogs. But what is too often missing from these recommendations is the strategy behind the blog.

This is true with any marketing activity. It’s not enough to produce a brochure for its own sake or build a web site for the sake of having a web site. How will the blog help you close sales, boost your credibility, fuel search engine optimization, or create awareness for your products? Start here because the next three attributes are irrelevant without a sound strategy.

2. Discipline. Be honest. Are you the type of person who bounces from one thing to the next? Or are you the type who can stick things out and stay the course? Blogging must be consistent, as we all know. Some advise for a daily posting. I think that makes sense if you’re a social media professional or professional blogger. For the rest of us, two to three times a week is a better and more realistic goal.

If yours is going to be a multi-author blog, you’ll need an accountable project manager to build the schedule and keep contributors on track. Contributions should reflect the strategy you’ve carefully planned.

3. Desire. You have to like to write. You have to want to push out to the world information, trends and issues that are hot in your industry. It’s like going to the gym. If you hate it, or you’re ambivalent, you won’t keep doing it.

4. Content. Not all industries lend themselves to B2B blogs. That’s not to say you have to be Guy Kawasaki to create and nurture a blog that people will read. But generally speaking, determine the theme of your blog. Will you cover specific industry verticals? Will your approach be skeptical? Will you provide actionable tips readers can use to help build their own businesses? And importantly–what’s stand-out about the way you will provide information to your world?

Come back later this week for other essential ingredients for a blog that drives revenue for your business.

Posted in Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Technology Marketing, Web site development | 1 Comment »

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