Increasing number of visitors

We have seen the number of visitors rising.
Alexa has ranked LEADSExplorer website now at 500,000 (497,914).
Thus in just over 3 months we gained 500,000 places.

Blogging and Content is our promotion

Is this because of our efforts like the blog and the content on the website?:
Or is this because the rest of the Internet world
- Is spending less on online advertising?
- Have decreased their efforts by producing less content?
- Are organizing less emailing campaigns?
All of this could make the all other websites sinking slowly away?

Our content is our promotion:
- Free to create
- Free to distribute
It seems to work as it effectively generates traffic.

Sources of traffic

Four main sources of our visitors:
1) The search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN: 50%
2) Bookmarking on StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Propeller: 12%
3) Comments on other blog posts: 17%
4) Direct hits: 17%

Other sources like directories, articles or references from other websites are lagging far behind as they all count together for just 4%.
Conclusion: free directories are not worth the effort.

The amount of direct hits is something that surprised us:
People actually enter www.LEADSExplorer.com directly in their browser or have our website bookmarked.

Please note:
- No emailing
- No advertising
 

Now we just need to convert visitors into leads into customers.

The killer demo kills the concept of your solution

Why should you demo your solution during a sales presentation?
The chances are you have:
- An unforeseen error
- A hiccup or a glitch
- A missing connection
- Been addressing the wrong problem
- Giving the function and features the attention, instead of the concept
And the demo falls apart. No interest. No trust.
Thus avoid all risks and don’t demo.

A demo can only increase:
- The number of questions on specific features and functions
- The chances to failure.
- The focus on convincing the decision makers

A demo addresses the problems of managers and users.
Not of the decision makers.
Your decision makers are from the C-Level: CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, VP Sales, VP Marketing
They are:
- Probably not completely aware of the problems your solution addresses.
- Usually far away from the daily tasks your solution is addressing.

Sell the concept and the benefits (for the C-Level)

You need to address matters that interest the C-Level:
- Tangible Benefits
- Intangible benefits
Not so much for the company, but for themselves if possible.

The concept needs to be outlined in just a few paragraphs.
In order to make sure they understand and envision the concept.

If you can sell the concept and the benefits of the solution and bring the trust.
Why should you take the risk to demo and get lost in translating the operational problems to the C-Level?

Problems with a demo:

- You talk instead of asking questions – your potential customers should be talking
- You are enthusiastic about your product demo, but you forget about the C-Level interests
- The managers will pose questions to you by the managers, not by the C-Level
- Managers are interested but they aren’t the decision takers
- The C-Level who possibly don’t understand or see the point of your demo
- Demos take too much time during the presentation for the C-Level
- You address problems the C-Level never has heard of
- You miss the to bring forward the benefits because of all the functions and features
- You will be explaining every feature, but forget to paint the whole picture: the concept
- Risks of failure of the demo

The killer demo is likely to kill your sales.

Getting the buy-in: afterwards

Getting the buy-in from the users or managers the solution is intended for has its importance.
You will have to demo to the managers in order to get their support, but that should be after you have convinced the C-Level of:
- The concept of the solution
- The trust that brings the company
- The vision of the future.
Reason:
Giving a demo of a complex product or solution will demand time, people and investment.
Thus you should be spending this money only after having convinced the C-Level.

When to demo?

- The needs are clearly defined
- The decision makers are known
- The decision process is agreed upon
- The C-Level are convinced of the concept and understand the tangible and intangible benefits.

First sell the concept with the benefits to the CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, VP Sales or VP Marketing.
Then organize a demo for the managers and users. It will be hard for them to kill your sales.

Meeting

An airplane cabin brings together business people in a small environment. Thus it is very likely these people have or could share common interests as business meets business.

These high in the sky accidental encounters could be very fruitful as both parties can have a long conversation on different matters and have the opportunity to sell each other their products or services. Maybe even plan getting into a partnership.
All looks rosy in the sky.

Of course the number of people to reach is limited to the passenger (or in the best case the 2 passengers) sitting to you. This decreases significantly the number of possible opportunities.

Chances for this type of meetings are higher in business class than in economy or in first class.
- Economy: more tourists and non executive level than business people.
- First: C-level officers who need to delegate the actions to their managers or executives.

Business mirages

Still have you ever wondered:
- How many times people get engaged in a conversation about their business?
- How many business relationships are build that last longer than the duration of the flight?
- How many people have contacted each again other after the trip for business purposes?
- How many business deals have started during a flight? Really?

How frequently these apparently interesting conversations or business opportunities end up in thin air?
As the business criteria or requirements on earth can be quite different than first presented in the sky, the likelihood of success is minimal.
Could it be that the plans made in the sky, stay in the sky like mirages?

What are your experiences with meeting people at 32,000 feet?

Forecast: Ad spend down 4%

According to Jack Meyers in 2009 ad spending will be down 4.0% (the report here)
The number is based upon assumptions and a has been build up by a forecast for every communication channel or media.
The numbers in the tables are interesting and proves the amount of work that has gone into the report.

Disruption

In times when changes are incremental, a forecast can be made upon previous years.
In times where a big disruption has taken place the changes are no longer incremental.
In the current situation, several big disruptions have taken place.

The current big disruptions:
- Credit crunch
- Bank problems
- Inter-bank lending problems due to missing of trust
- Governments printing money
- Companies running into problems due to all the above.
- Recession
- Shifting of powers in the world

Changes

There will be:
- Financial institution changes: banks owned by countries
- Financial power changes: Middle East and Asia
- Political changes: new US president, Sarcozy leading Europe
- Business changes: businesses going out of business, limited expansion for businesses due to lending
- Social changes: people will change their spending, lending and saving
- Technology changes: people and companies will select other solutions or products

Forecasting impossible?

With all respect to Meyers publishing LLC, but who will be still capable of making any forecast, when the parameters of any forecasting model have been changed completely, significantly and profoundly.
Would you?

Change is the only constant in life (except for the sun who shines every day).
And the change we are living now is larger than ever before.

Web analytics provide generic website data

In B2C by using website analytics (web measurement and analysis) the marketing department is able to define what the customers are looking for on the company website. This is based upon statistical data and averages as the number of visitors is high: thus enough data available.

However in B2B the number of visitors is low compared to B2C.
Moreover every visiting company should be treated in unique way as every potential customer has a high value.

When using a web analytic solution or service, it is not possible to know what your leads or customers were looking for when they found your website or returning to your website. This due to the fact these solutions provide numbers and statistics about all your visitors without differentiation.
The web analytic solutions consider all visitors equal in order to provide generic data about your website, whereas in Business to Business you need data for every company visiting.

In BtoB the visitors are unique

As a first step the visiting data should be split up over:
- Residential visitors
- Non-interested company visitors
- Company visitors

Knowing what your leads are looking for is an important factor in order to:
- Write content for your website or blog that draws in your potential customers.
- Contact the most interesting or most promising companies for lead generation.
- Eliminate not interesting organizations / companies.
- Engage your company website visitors.
- Nurture the leads and the customers that are visiting.

Method for BtoB website data by company

In order to improve over web analytic solutions, the first step is to know who is visiting your website. Who are the companies that are visiting your website?

Next you should classify the website visitors in one of these categories:
- Leads
- Prospects
- Customers
- Ex-customers
- Competitors
- Financial institutions
- Media (journalists, bloggers, …)
- Suppliers
- Consultants
- Individuals (residential Internet access)

Then you can define what leads or customers are searching for when they visited your website by:
- The search terms used.
- The pages visited.
- White paper downloads.

What is needed is a solution beyond web analytics, providing website visit data by visiting company.
Providing data and information by company that can be used by marketing or salesmen for contacting by cold calling or lead nurturing.

What do you know about your website visitors?
Who are they? What companies?
What are each of these companies looking for on your website?

Communication channels and media

A company can publish information and send out news using several different communication channels over any media:
• Press releases
• Blogging
• Micro blogging: Twitter / Plurk
• Commenting on blog posts
• Letters to the editor
• Online newsrooms
• Speaking at conferences
• Panellist on conferences
• Media kits
• Corporate web site
• Blogs
• White papers
• Webinars / demos
• Reviews
• Newsletters
• Article publishing on article websites
• White paper syndication
• Social profiles
• On-line forums, bulletin boards
• Editor of a industry magazine
• Trade shows
• Real world interviews
• Internet radio shows
• Podcasts
• Video

Although most of these are related to the Internet, the real world channels do have a high importance.

The use of these channels and the type of information can be very different in their content and have both purposes for PR or SEO.

Combining the communication channels

Every single channel has its own value and reach.

However by using several channels and media together, it starts acting like a vortex creating a much more important force or power. The result and impact is greater than the sum from every single communication channel.
People will find and encounter your brand or products on multiple occasions on the Internet and in real life. This is about branding, brand name and building trust. Trust just because your brand name of product names is becoming familiar to them.

On the Internet the search engines provide the service of aggregation of all the company information.
In real life people themselves need to aggregate the content and information.

Using all possible communication channels for different messaging will create a bigger power like a vortex for your company or products.
Thus don’t focus on just one channel, but try to be present in as many as possible and where you can make an impact.

What channels do you use currently?
What channels would you consider to add?

During a recession cutting costs is required, thus probably you will cut back on marketing spending too. Still history has proved that just during these times you have the best opportunity to promote your brand and products. Thus you need to investigate how to promote your products or services at a low cost.

1. Twitter – posting micro posts
There are for instance Twitter and Plurk
Micro posts are only 140 characters long and in case of Twitter can be send from your mobile too. Thus from everywhere.
The micro posts can generate followers that give you a wider reach. However Twitter is not mainstream audience yet. It is a limited group of early adopters which in many cases are mainly interested in promoting their own stuff.

2. Blogging
Posting regularly interesting content is hard work and requires inspiration and the gift of writing.
If successful, by blogging you can eventually reach many people. It will take time.
Blogs can scale very well as your audience can keep on growing:
- The RSS feed can get subscribers
- Your posts can get replicated or referenced on many more websites
All increasing your Internet presence: brand name, product- and solution names.

The search engines will index your blog posts quickly and thoroughly increasing the keywords related to your products and solutions, all linking directly to your website. This increases the findability and higher Search Engine Results Page.

3. Commenting on blog posts
Posting interesting and related comments will generate traffic but it doesn’t scale. It is piggy backing on the success of a well-known blogger in order to capture a part of his traffic.
The number of clickers will be very limited.
Additionally your blog post needs to be approved by the blogger, thus advertising like comments are not possible.

The ‘Nofollow’ tag stops the search engines following the link to your website.
However there are blogs without the “Nofollow” on comments, thus being more interesting to comment on. You can search for them on InlineSEO.com or on this Do Follow directory.

Seldom will your comments show up in searches, but occasionally they will.

4. Publishing articles on article websites
The content effort is similar to blogging, but it doesn’t require frequent postings like a blog. The disadvantage is there will be no subscribers or followers.
The content will be indexed by the search engines allowing finding your article, but not immediately your website.
Still the page rank of the article directory is important for the article getting found and this you can’t control as Pageranking will change over time.

5. Free eBooks
If you have written enough interesting blog posts, articles or a complete book, you can bundle them into one eBook and make it down loadable for free from your website requiring registration. This will not only increase your expert status, but will also create additional interest and you obtain email addresses.

6. White paper using free syndication
As only the title and a short summary is available to the search engines the chance of being found is limited. There is no direct link to your website as the link is inside the white paper pdf-file.
Thus people need to download the white paper and then find your content sufficient interesting or intriguing for visiting your website.

7. Press releases
Your press releases can be distributed by free services. These free services will have less impact than the paid services. Still using the free services a lot of impact can be made.
The additional benefit is that press releases can get into print media too if getting picked up by a journalist. This is something very unlikely for the other solutions mentioned.

8. On-line industry forums or bulletin boards
Participating in on-line industry forums or bulletin can generate interest in your products or solutions.
Links can be posted and these will get indexed.

9. Panellist
Taking part as a panellist at industry conferences will bring interest and a certain expert status. As a panelist you are not completely exposed and examined on your own content, but by the participation in the panel discussion.
The main problem is you need to get invited thus you need to do marketing about yourself for getting invited to a panel. This could be done by applying some of the other solutions.

10. Speaking at conferences
In order to speak at conferences you need to get an invitation or you have to pay.
Some conferences there is a “Call for papers” on their website or they send out an email asking for speakers.

If you manage to speak at an industry conference, it will promote you as an expert if you present well and have interesting content. If you are not able to present well and don’t have interesting content, you will be quickly classified as boring or not interesting.

11. Getting interviewed
In order to get interviewed by the media about an event or problem, you need to have status. Thus this requires have applied one or several of the other communication methods.
Getting interviewed for an industry magazine will bring inquiries.
Getting a radio interview will bring a multiple of interests.
Getting your head on national television will change your life for a while, thus the highest level of interest.

12. Editor
If you have a certain status as expert you can be asked to write for industry magazines or you just can apply for becoming a part-time editor. Writing articles that get published, will generate more name and fame for yourself and your company.

13. Audio podcasts
If you know how to tell and explain verbally and if you have interesting content or a great story to tell related to your products, you can make an audio podcast and put it on-line.
The problem is you need to promote your podcast as only the short summary is being indexed by the search engines. Thus there is minimal findability of your audio podcast.

14. Video
Making a video is feasible thanks to technology.
The content can be the same as the content for writing an article.
The difference with a video is you need to present your content that keeps the interest from the viewer.
Making yourself ridiculous is as feasible.
Putting the video on-line is no longer a problem Youtube.
Getting your video found is the largest problem as the content isn’t indexed in the search engines, but the short write up. And there is a lot of competition of all kinds of video. Thus how to stick out of the crowd with the short summary?

Generate interest

All of these can help to generate interest.
Some of them require daily effort and inspiration, whereas others require only efforts at certain times.
It is like a vortex as you probably need to mix several of them as they support each other and thus increase the interest.

If you know other marketing tactics or communication methods please let us know.

Interests of a VP Sales or CEO

If you sell a solution for improving or increasing sales you need to know what the interests are related to your solutions or products by the decision marker: VP Sales or CEO.
- More sales
- More leads
- More qualified leads
- Easy sales process
- Organized leads follow-up
- Better lead management
- Less missed opportunities
- Less expenses
- Convenient communication methods
- Higher margins
- Meet or exceed the quarterly numbers
- Have a backlog for the next quarter

Mindset of CEO or VP Sales

Are CEO’s or VP Sales actively searching on the Internet for solutions that improve their sales?
Probably not, as they are busy and occupied with day to day tasks and operational problems.

Their mindset is not to go Google on these matters or to find tools or solutions that could help.
Their mindset is on the market segment they have to sell to, finding customers, watching competitors and to manage their sales people in selling.

Approaching VP Sales or CEO

Directly:
- Cold call
- Direct mail, emailing
- Advertising, advertorials
- Press Releases
- Trade shows

Are these methods still effective?
- Cold calling a VP Sales or CEO is not hard to do
- Does your VP Sales or CEO read the direct mail he receives by post or email?
- Is your VP Sales or CEO still influenced by advertising or advertorials?
- Press releases can be effective if the content get edit by journalists as these are trusted parties.
- Trade shows and conferences require travel and time: thus less likely to happen.

Note: Cold calling stays an option, especially if you could cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest in your products or solutions on your website. As you also know the specific interest in one product or solution, you can start an interesting conversation with the VP Sales or CEO.

Indirectly
Addressing them directly is not feasible, then you need to communicate to the parties they trust or have a business relation with:
- Marketing agency, Web agency, PR agency
- Sales and management consultants
- The influencers in the company

Reaching these agencies or consultants might be easier as they are always looking for new business, thus actively searching and investigating.
The same applies for the influencers as they also are keen on finding new methods and solutions as it is in their nature and gives them the opportunity to be interesting.

These people you can reach by generating content and news:
- On your website
- White paper syndication
- Article writing for industry magazines (print or on-line)
- Blogging (a blog a day keeps trouble away)
- Press releases.
- Speaking at conferences

By reaching indirectly you need to have a clear benefit for those parties involved. Think about this benefit and define it before your engage into a conversation with them as they expect this.

Limited resources

As the resources of company are limited, you need to decide how to use the available capacity. Thus you need to decide where to spend time and efforts in order to get the VP Sales and CEO of companies interested when approaching them directly or indirectly.

Currently, as the service is still in Beta, we just blog and have content on our website.

How do you reach a VP Sales or the CEO of a company?

Bookmarking blog posts

Blog posts and stories can be bookmarked on Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Propeller, Reddit and several more for their:
- Content
- Information value
- Title
by registered people.
Although this is called social bookmarking seemingly to reference to consumer market, it also applies for B2B.

Website traffic

Getting a blog post bookmarked will bring traffic: from a few clicks
Getting a blog post bookmarked by a notorious bookmarker, will bring even more traffic: to thousands of clicks.
Notorious bookmarkers have a certain status and are trusted for their quality links by their followers and thus generate more clicks.

As an example Digg has 30 million users per month, but their member user base is only 3 million. Of those registered a significant lower number are actually Digging posts, news and articles. Thus a fairly low number of people are guiding what all the others are reading. And some of them are much more notorious than others.

This creates the problem of the taken link:
Once a link to a blog post has been bookmarked it becomes blocked for others to bookmark.
Thus if you have bad luck and your great blog post gets bookmarked by a “Nobody” then you will get much lesser visits.

Still a catchy title and good summary can propel the story forward, but your story has started with a handicap.

Voting blog posts

In most cases a bookmarked link by a notoriety gets more votes as they just attire more attention due to their trust status.
Those more votes will generate even more traffic over a longer time span.

Thus you need luck in the bookmarking game for getting bookmarked and getting bookmarked by leaders.

Warning:
In any case never ever bookmark yourself as you are probably a “Nobody”. Thus less clicks to your website, less votes and you take away the opportunity for a notorious bookmarker to bookmark.

More Marketing and sales during recession for success during upturn?
Do you need to increase sales and marketing efforts a recession or should you wait until the storm is over

During boom times

When the markets are booming, all companies increase their marketing and sales efforts.
However this has a decreasing increment: adding one more marketing campaign or one more salesman will not bring as much increment in sales as the previous addition.

Recession

When market is slow marketing and sales don’t bring much revenue.
As expenses a hard to justify, CEO’s and VP Sales will decrease spending on marketing and sales.

Could this is the best time to take market share as the others have decreased their efforts?
Most companies will try to cut down on costs, or even envisage restructuring the company.
Thus less costs giving less visibility.

Taking risk for better times

You need to commit to spend money on sales and marketing knowing upfront this will not generate significant revenue at first. Moreover you need to sustain the duration of the recession with all the expenses involved for branding.
During this time you will increase branding and awareness more effectively.

Once the recession is over, chances are you will get a larger market share.

Select your marketing channel(s)

If you decide on spending money on branding, how will you decide where to put your efforts?

You have to decide what will be the best value for money:
- Print advertising versus Online advertising
- Trade shows versus virtual trade shows
- Conferences versus Webinars
- Press releases versus blogging
- Advertorials versus paid blogging
- Publishing job vacancies in newspapers or job vacancies online
- Word of mouth versus Social media on the Internet

The questions are:
- What will your market be visiting or reading?
- What will influence your market decision makers?

Thus will you invest in marketing or wait until the recession is over?