The era of interruption marketing

In a world not so long ago, there were about six ways to get noticed or to get attention from the public or companies:
- Cold call using a huge staff of people
- Buy advertising: print, broadcast or online
- Beg journalists to write about your products or solutions
- Bribe journalists to write about your products or solutions
- Issue a press release containing interesting information or original content to get attention from journalists
- Getting into the news due to an event or hazard related to your business or products (even car crashes)
- Presenting on conferences

Observations:
- Cold calling, buying advertising and presenting on conferences only last as long the money supply lasts.
- PR agencies are good at begging journalists due to their contacts.
- Once you have bribed a journalist, you cannot beg them to write for free.
- Writing an interesting press release requires creativity and distributing was still not free.
– Hoping on an event or hazard to get press coverage is like hoping to win the lottery.
- Presenting on conferences needs: presentation skills, content and a room with an audience

This was the era of interruption marketing where coercion was not far as products and solutions could almost be imposed by the mass media to the public.

Content marketing benefits and challenges

Since the Internet became the default source of information for both consumers and companies, you can get noticed by publishing interesting or valuable or original content on the Internet.
Moreover content that has been published can be found long afterward: the long lasting effect of the free content on the Internet that your buyers want to consume.

All kinds of organizations (public, private, non-profit, individual) are becoming content publishers.

One of the problems related is the Internet noise all this content marketing makes as there is so much content available and published almost every second that even the search engines have problems keeping up to date.

Even if people find your content on the Internet through search or links, you need to grab, catch and keep their attention.
This can only be achieved by serving:
- Highly interesting or unique content
- Shocking content.
- Content generating emotions.
- Entertaining content.
or both.

Almost in all cases it needs to be entertaining.
The emotional content is entertaining.
Even the shocking content is a form of entertainment: shudder or shiver your audience.

Eventually in marketing we all will become entertainers bringing entertainment adjusted for each specific market segment.

That’s all folks !

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Search
You use search engines and go to the information.

Social
The information is presented to you by your network.

Search

Since many years we use search engines to find information on the Internet.
This gives you the power to find information at the cost of taking time to search the Internet.
You use the search engine to filter out the most likely links and then manually visit and evaluate in order to find the interesting of matching content.
The investment is made when you need it.

Social media

Social networks present you the interesting information through your social network.
Your contacts in the social network will filter out the information and that is being offered to you at no effort. Your contacts are your search agents: selecting and filtering out data.
The effort and investment is in the build up of your social network – long before your need or can use the information.

Content marketing

Content marketing can be used in both cases:
The information available on the Internet – including on your website – can get found and filtered by both the search engines and the people in social networks.
The difference is the ranking and the chances of getting presented.

For search engines:
Content marketing is aimed at getting found by search engines: hence the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keywords and Meta tags.

For social networks:
Content marketing is aimed at people as social networks are powered by people:
Hence the need to be remarkable, bring original content or valuable information.

Attracting search engines or people is quite different.
For example: the visual appealing content will attract and be remembered better by people than by search engines, especially if emotion is involved.

The end result should be the same:
Getting found and noticed by a possible buyer looking for valuable information in the content published.

Who is on your side? The search engines or the people in social networks?
Invitation:
Would you be interested in www.popupbooster.com Beta? For dynamic websites presenting relevant content – behavioral targeting.
Sign-up here

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The presence on the Internet presents a challenge for all: from large corporations over companies to sole-traders.
During different discussions with professionals who are helping us with our business, the subject of Internet presence was mentioned.
As we have experienced many different methods, options and alternatives for social media marketing, we have acquired a certain knowledge about it.

Hence we decided to write down our knwoledge in order to help people out, by writing and publishing: “Getting and improving your Internet presence” – a starters’ guide to social media marketing.

Getting Found on the Internet Like a Pro

Use it for your own purpose.
Distribute it to your friends and colleagues.

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One week ago we issued the press release “Web Analytics Are for the Webmaster, Whereas LEADSExplorer Is for Businessmen” using a handful of free press release distribution websites (find the list here).

Nothing special in our opinion as we previously have issued several press releases both using free and paid press release distributions.

However we were wrong: the press release went viral
At one moment of time (Sunday January 24th, 2010) Google (www.google.us) had 99,500 links as the press release has been republished by many:
- News websites
- News feeds
- Industry websites
- Blogs
- People on Twitter
- And other social media.

People and professionals found it interesting as all these links cannot be generated by bots because our previous press releases typically got up to 500-700 links.

The afterburner is:
- More hits on the website
- The increase of number of sign-ups for free trial
- Inquiries for partnership/reselling
- Brand awareness

This press release proves that interesting content can spread on the Internet almost virally:
- For a B2B press release
- Using free press release distribution

In order to succeed you need to:
- Catch the attention by using popular keywords
- Generate interest by controversy or challenging in the subject
- No need for paying for distribution

The challenge now is to prove we can do it again using a free press release distribution.

Update:
On Jan 26 2010 – The search on Google (www.google.us) had 192,000 links !

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When Oprah Winfrey showed on her TV show how to use Twitter to the world in April 2009, she probably didn’t realize she was actually killing her own businesses:
- The interruption-advertising (the commercial breaks)
- The product placement advertising (Kindle from Amazon)
- The TV-personality-referrer advertising (She advices you to buy)

Internet search for experience / reviews
Increasingly people search on the Internet for information, reviews, advices and remarks on products and services before they buy.
This information resides on company websites, review websites, forums, blogs, and other social media.

Oprah stimulated the use of Twitter by showing it to the world using the conventional mass broadcast media.
Due to the real-time search war that Twitter, Google and Bing have started, mainly in order to compete with Twitter, the social real-time search has become even more important.
People can find instantly up-to-date information, evaluations and experiences about products and services thanks to the real-time search capabilities and capacities of the search engines.

The change from TV to social media
Oprah stimulated the use of Twitter like no-one did before by pushing the Internet into real-time information.
At the same time she initiated the demise of her own business that is based on interruption-advertising, product placement advertising and the TV-personality-referrer advertising as people are now more influenced by the Internet.
Her website is not part of the social media and is clearly promoting products too obviously to be trust worthy on the Internet.

Oprah probably didn’t realize the changes that are happening in the marketing and advertising space when she showed Twitter to the (consumer) world.
She was killing her own business.

How is your business and marketing being affected or influenced by search engines and social media ?

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Content marketing is the new hype for attracting potential customers both in eCommerce and B2B.

Targeting audience with content marketing
Instead of presenting your market segment with interruptive impression-base advertising and unwanted post or emails, content marketing will attract the interested parties with content that is relevant and interesting for them.
This is like candy attracting many flies but not all flies are from the desired target audience.
Thus the content needs to be clear and relevant about the business or the offering and attracting the right kind of people. The headline plays an important role in this.
However do you know exactly what your target audience is and what they want to read about or what their (related problems are ?)

Even if you attract the right people the content needs to make them aware of your brand in order to remember it long afterwards.

Content needs getting found on search engines
You can put as much content on the Internet, but if it doesn’t get found in the search engines or no other links pointing to your content exist your content will stay unread.
Therefore the importance of the headline, the keywords and the first phrase that needs to be catchy too.

Just publishing written texts is no longer enough as people do want convenience and entertainment even for serious business: think video or at least presentations that create emotions or laughs.

Trust is a must
As trust is the most difficult to achieve on the Internet, having just one piece of content will not make you trustworthy or a trusted party. You mainly build trust by consistency, frequency, reliability and responsiveness.
Having a case study or client example helps to achieve credibility and trustworthiness.
The best is if your content gets appraised and referred by a third party: the more known the better.

Building awareness through content
The content needs to make people aware of your company, brands and solutions and in order to make it easy for them, there should be one item, one feature or benefit that they can easily remember and makes your offering irresistible.

If you can engage your content consumers by commenting or sending you emails, then you have moved an enormous step forward. Your potential customers are communicating with you.

Never forget the call to action:

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The purpose of emails, calls, webinars and meetings

Do you bring more value to the table than Google?
If so then you can send an email or have a call, a web seminar or a meeting!

If you as a salesman can’t bring more information to your probable customer then why should they take time for:
- Reading your email
- Talking to you over a call
- Participate in a web seminar
- Have a meeting?
Reading an email is less costly than having a call, which is less costly than participating in a web seminar. The costliest is having a meeting with several people at your office location.
Of course the time required to search on the Internet has a cost too but that is often ignored.

The sole reason people take time to have a call or a meeting with you is because you bring additional or structured information that they can’t find on the Internet or is difficult to aggregate from the Internet information.
It is your expertise and your (free) consulting that is required and makes the difference as in most case all information is available on the Internet: On-Demand information without the hassle of making an appointment.

Google, Bing and Yahoo are your competitors

The issue is about the time you consume from executives, managers and mid-level decision makers as their time is limited.
If they grant you time to have a call or a meeting or even reading your emails, they have to decide what their best investment is:
- The Internet information using Google, Yahoo or Bing: apparently free
- The email, call, webinar or meeting with you
- The email, call, web seminar or meeting with your competitor

What is the most beneficial for their company and themselves?
Why waste time with you or your competitor?

If they are capable of getting the same information directly from the Internet, your next request for a call, web seminar, meeting or opening your email will be ignored.
Thus you need to bring value with every communication you make.
You need to bring a scoop – a first – a new point of interest – an additional benefit.

Your information, expertise and consulting should make the difference

Google & Co have raised the bar for your sales efforts and no longer is your first competitor the salesman of the typical competitor: it has become Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The problem is: Google, Yahoo and Bing are open 24 x 7 from anywhere
Your prospects can search on the Internet from anywhere and anytime: while you are asleep, during the weekend, while you are on holiday, …
While you will only be available a certain business hours at at certain places.

The Internet search is not solely used during the initial selection process, but also during the entire buying process.

You have to compete with Google as your main sales competitor and bring more adequate, problem-matching or problem-solving information than what is available on the Internet for free.

In order to compete with Google, you have to bring the art of understanding people, their business problems, internal politics and pains in an organization, your consulting and convert or translate all the issues or problems into solutions (preferably fitting your solutions) and define goals for results.

How well do you compete with Google?
How much information can your customers find on your solutions on the Internet?
How competitive are you compared with Google?
What do you bring additionally to the table?

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E-commerce: consumer

Consumer goods have been available on the Internet since the early beginnings of the Internet: e-Commerce was all the hype during the Internet Bubble. The website were and are about consumer goods and consumer web services (in many cases related to the action of buying consumer goods).

Online selling Internet BtoB services

Since a few years during the Web 2.0 era a new breed of e-Commerce sites have emerged: web services for businesses.

Previously all business to business services required a physical presence of a sales rep. or even a sales team in order to sell.
As the Internet has infiltrated business and web services are being promoted and provided over the Internet without human interaction or interference this change of trend just has happened.
In order to enable selling business to business the web services have become specialized or specific services with a minimum of functions and features.
Instead of promoting a complex ERP system with (too) many functions and functionalities (for buyers to fully grasp) solutions with only one or two business processes are being offered: CRM, collaboration, invoicing, lead generation or cash management.

The process of marketing and sales can be completely automated as:
- The marketing message is less complex due to the limited number of business functions
- Marketing is done using the Internet presence: website, advertising, blogs, reviews, and email campaigns (spam)
- Companies are identified while visiting the website
- Selling is limited to answering emails and providing a sign-up page with a payment scheme.
No man to man interaction required except for the email conversations.

Online marketing

As the current method of getting a solution for a problem in a business is mainly started by a search on the Internet, the Internet presence is most important.
The online marketing consists of:
- The website with content related to the problems the business service solves.
- The well positioned advertising of companies
- The social media marketing – even for BtoB
- The email campaigns

All the online content has become more important for the decision than any other marketing channel for attracting interested parties which are the potential customers. They will visit the website if the vendor throughout the entire buying process.

In order to attract Internet buyer-searchers the content and multiple presences on the Internet are king.
Both Outbound and Inbound marketing have theirs place. However there is a bias or preference towards Inbound Marketing as:
- Inbound marketing is always active instead of the on/off functionality of Outbound marketing.
- Inbound marketing has a broader reach.

Selling by a salesman is not really required for these web service providers.
The persuasion by the content and the presence on the Internet have become more important for engaging the potential customers.

No death of a Salesman for complex solutions

For solutions offering just one or two business services or functions the death of a Salesman is near.
However in all cases with greater complexity of the solution provided the greater need for human interaction by salesmen: discussions, interactions and meetings.
If the service is too complex the Internet is not yet convincing enough.
Still all decision makers and buyers will visit the website of the vendor during the entire sales process.

The online B2B Sales currently is only feasible for relatively simple and straightforward solutions and services limiting to one or 2 business processes only.
The question is how far the bar will be raised: up to what level of complexity people in business will buy without human interaction?

Currently most companies are still selling the traditional way.
The question is how long will this traditional selling last as the Internet has become ubiquitous and will move up the ladder of complexity of business services offered?

Has your BtoB sales already been affected by the Internet?
Will the Internet kill the salesman?

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If you need to increase your visibility of your company, products or solutions at no cost then a press release is on of the best solutions.

Benefits of a Press Release:
- The search engines will index it – improving the SEO of your website
- Journalists might read it and re-use if it contains interesting news or information
- Potential customers can be reached
- Long lasting impact: can be found and retrieved from months to years later

Read the many tips you can find on the Internet and the write an interesting press release containing:
- a title: between 80 and 150 characters (best 80 characters)
- a summary: up to 200 to 250 characters long
- a message body: starting with location date
- a company summary

Keep at hand:
- Company address
- Telephone number

The cost is in the time you need to register for each of these web services and all the copy / paste you need to do. Don’t under estimate the time this will demand, especially the first time.

PageRank: the importance Google gives to the website.
Alexa rank: the lower the rank – the more people visit the website.

PR - Alexa
8 – 258  Scribd.com
7 – 2,611  Betanews.com
6 – 1,118  Docstoc.com
6 – 1,794  Prlog.org
6 – 27,142  PitchEngine
6 – 29,333  Directionsmag.com
5 – 1,987  Free-press-release.com
5 – 6,962  Pressreleasepoint.com
5 – 11,274  Pr.com
5 – 18,678  Pressbox.co.uk
5 – 21,729  Clickpress.com
5 - 25,307  Openpr.com
5 – 25,938  PR-USA
5 – 27,734  Freepressrelease.com.au
5 – 45,375  Ukprwire.com
5 – 46,609  Sbwire.com
5 – 713,443  Mediapitch.ning.com
4 – 8,354  Pr-inside.com
4 – 9,647  1888pressrelease.com
4 – 11,477  Transworldnews.com
4 – 16,245  24-7pressrelease.com
4 – 17,376  Bignews.biz
4 – 24,513  Freepressreleases.co.uk
4 – 25,307  Openpr.com
4 – 25,333  Pressmethod.com
4 – 26,961  Free-press-release-center.info
4 – 48,186  Usprwire.com
4 – 51,712  Free-news-release.com
4 – 61,789  Malebits.com
4 – 78,862  Przoom.com
4 – 86,008  Prfree.com
3 – 6,112  Ideamarketers.com
3 – 17,846  I-newswire.com
3 – 24,963  Live-pr.com
3 – 26,184  Pressexposure.com
3 – 27,594  Prurgent.com
3 – 29,964  Information-online.com
3 – 30,573  Theopenpress.com
3 - 35,270  Mediasyndicate.com
3 – 48,527  Pressabout.com
3 – 84,557  Prcompass.com
3 – 171,663  Newsreelnetwork.com
3 – 994,358  Media-press-release.com
2 – 27,255  Seenation.com
2 – 28,425  Newdesignworld.com
2 – 37,739  Pressreleasecirculation.com
2 – 43,603  Prwindow.com
2 – 45,095  Postafreepressrelease.com
2 – 135,614  Publicitywires.com
2 – 338,310  Free-news-distribution.com
2 – 429,492  Buzznewzz.com
1 – 27,453  Newsalbum.com
1 – 1,092,018  Pressbot.org
0 - 1,986  Free-press-release.com
0 - 2,608  Betanews.com
0 – 17,859  Bignews.biz
0 – 23,510  Businessportal24.com
0 – 35,715  Techprspider.com
0 – 45,523  Prfocus.com
0 – 48,023  Prmac.com
0 – 51,602  Exactrelease.com
0 – 62,091  Bizeurope.com
0 – 80,786  Ezpress.info
0 – 86,008  Prfree.com
0 – 189,012  Pressreleaseforum.com
0 – 195,376  Pressbox.com

Some web services (like PRLog) will generate a pdf version. Save it for use with Scribd.

How many press releases did you publish lately?

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The Research of Business Technology Purchase Process

Google has commissioned multiple research agencies to run analysis on the importance of Internet search and search advertising in purchasing decisions across a variety of verticals including B2B by MillwardBrown.
The result of this technology survey is a presentation “The Role of Search in the Business Technology Purchase Process” available on DocStoc (Downloadable).

As the business of Google is search and online advertising, the focus is of course on the search and not on the B2B website. Still Google was not identified as sponsor of the research making the research more valuable.

Although this research focuses on technology purchase (Enterprise Application Software, Security Software and Storage for Servers), it should be a good indicator for all B2B purchase process decisions as the companies involved were from both medium sized (338 less than 1,000 employees) and large companies (555 more than 1,000 employees).

MillwardBrown have split up the B2B purchase process into 3 parts:
- The Research / Engagement phase
- The Consideration / Comparison phase
- The Purchase phase
The goal was to see how the different resources compare during these phases.

The Research / Engagement phase

Search engines win as first choice in the research / engagement phase: thus people in Business to Business will first search on the Internet using a search engine when looking for a solution.

Even for the total choice search engines are second (57%) just behind the manufacturer’s website (60%).

Thus after finding your website on the search engine, your website is utmost important and the clicks, pages viewed and visit behavior must be analyzed by company.

Leaving behind:
Colleague, IT consultants, Content website, Magazine/ Trade publication, Manufacturer’s sales rep, Trade show, Online retailer, Local retailer, Community websites, Email newsletter and Blogs.

This information certainly questions the effectiveness of many marketing channels, especially email marketing and blogs.
- Email newsletters have very low impact: who reads them anyway? Not the decision takers.
- Blogs might be good for brand name recognition and to reach further than any advertising, but blogging will not sell your solutions or products.

The Consideration / Comparison phase

People will consider different offering and compare vendors and their products.

Even in this phase the manufacturer’s website is the most important influencing factor as it is weighted with a 12% higher importance than the sales rep!
All the efforts done by the sales rep have lesser impact than the static website.

The most amazing is the lead position of the Manufacturer’s website (59%) over the Manufacturer’s sales rep (47%).
Whatever the sales rep declares the website will be used as primary source of information and to verify the sales rep.

Others like IT consultant (34%), Colleague (39%) and Search engine (40%) are lagging behind.

The E-mail newsletter (7%) closes the list.
Ever wondered why you send all these email newsletters? Al the efforts and the risk of getting black listed as spammer.
Wouldn’t it be better to have a great and engaging website, knowing exactly all of the companies visiting your website and track them throughout the sales cycle?

The Purchase phase

During the phase the Manufacturer’s website is still #3 with 44% after the sales rep (58%) and the online retailer (43%) which seems logical as the price needs to be discussed and the order needs to be issued.

Again Community websites, Email newsletters and Blogs have hardly any influence.

Conclusion

Throughout all the phases the website plays an important role, even when the sales rep is already having meetings at the company.
Therefore it is utmost important to be able to reach out as early as possible to your website visitors: there for you need to:
- Know what company is visiting
- Their interest
- The increase or decrease in visits
- The level of interest during the entire sales process.

Forget about your email newsletter marketing and enhance your website with a web service that reveals the company names of your website visitors.
Use the visiting and interest information throughout the entire sales process as the employees and decision takers of your potential customer are visiting your website over and over again.
Your money will be better spent with no risks (spam) and without interrupting people.

Do you still send out email newsletters or do you already track companies visiting the website?

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