SWEET FACT: According to the report, Social Strategy for B2B Marketing 2011 (Global Web Index), B2B decision makers are the most socially engaged in the world when compared to average Internet users. It’s important to go beyond looking at social media as just a brand awareness exercise to seeing it as a valid lead generation channel.

What are some of the reasons you need a social media strategy?

• There are distinct principles to reaching a Business to Business audience.

• B2B must go beyond having a mixed bag of tactics that alone are meaningless.

• Social media can intelligently engage prospects and build a valid sales pipeline with the precise channels in place.

• Establish yourself and your business as an industry thought leader.

• Build a valuable search marketing practice to be found online.

• Create an additional customer service arm by learning to respond to enquiries in real time.

& most of all…

Deliver against measurable targets.

This kind of effort requires research, analysis, planning & coordination. The skills and messaging used on these platforms are very unique and also need to be customised to your industry. A strategic plan ensures you have tangible results. Without one, it becomes a big fat waste of time and money.

Have you noticed the changes to your Google+ Profiles yet? The navigation is now flexible and there is some enhancements to video and images sharing. You can personalise where the navigation sits.

You will need to add a new profile pic image. Very similar to the Facebook timeline update recently. The new Google Plus image size is 940 x 180 pixels. The image tool will allow you to crop to the correct size if larger, but there is a minimum of 940 wide.

You can also use one of the alternative templates that display five images, similar to the previous layout.

Google has said vanity URLs for Google Plus might be a security risk and  wont allow them. A Google+ profile or page URL looks like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110615320026166241672/posts. This is a way too long and very workable. But there is a short cut.

A vanity URL is a customised URL that replaces the series of numbers used to reference a user account. If you know what one is, skip to the next paragraph.

Let me show you. For example, a user account URL in Facebook looks something like this: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=30000200039. A vanity Facebook URL looks more like http://www.facebook.com/pollenmarketing. This is much more polished and easy to remember.  You can place it on other forms of media and print material now too.

Alas there is a simple application that enables you to shorten your Google+ profile. The site gplus.to allows you to enter your burdensome Google+ profile or business page URL and shorten it to a URL of choice. So https://plus.google.com/u/0/110615320026166241672/posts transforms into  http://gplus.to/pollenmarketing. Took me 1 minute. Pretty nifty right?

I am off to add it to me Blog page, LinkedIn Profile etc. Don’t forget our Google Plus Business Page Set Up Guide.

People interact with brands across multiple channels such as email, social media, and offline. Multichannel Marketing means delivering a cross-channel experience, including your email marketing, direct mail, and social media
communities to create an ongoing dialogue designed to drive customer action.

It is no surprise to you that because of the volume of marketing messages out there, people are increasingly numbed to your story. Booking a number of banner ads and hoping for the best won’t create the impact it once did.

Consumer behaviour has made multichannel marketing a must, forcing your marketing department to extend the consumer viewing experience across screens—iPad, mobile, computer & TV. We have seen this mobile interaction ex
plode firsthand in the last four months on the website we manage: SKYROCKET

Nielsen found half of US consumers exposed to and ad on TV only recalled it. So now, when you add multiple screen exposure, including online, that percentage shifts another 48%.

We know the majority of B2B marketing may never see a TV screen. My interpretation of this data is that there needs to be a shift from short, snap campaigns to becoming a holistic, drip feed information source. Customers must experience you over a prolonged time. You must build trust while highlighting your conviction to serve them.

Social Media, for example, cannot be a stand-alone tactic. You must consider:

• What unique pieces of advice can you turn into an event or workshop or perhaps a ‘downloadable‘?
•  Have you planned to capture those prospects into a web form for your email marketing list?

Image Credit:  Mari_1008

If people hover over your photo or profile on Google+ a neat caption will pop up. This is a great opportunity to highlight your skillset or specialisation. It works not unlike a tagline. Did you know you can customise what shows up?

Now look at my hover text above. You’ll see that in addition to my company, I have a tagline a bit like my official title. You could put a number of keywords that give a glimpse of what you are about. You only have seconds on the interwebs to make an impression. You have to dictate that you’re worth circling.

5 Steps to Customise Your Hovercard Byline

1. Go to your Personal Profile page and Click ‘Edit Profile’.
2. Click on ‘Employment’ to edit it.
3. Check/Tick the first box as ‘current employer’.
4. IMMEDIATELY after the name of your employer (in the same box), add any text you want to have show in your hovercard.
5. Click “save” and “done editing.” Done & done.

You may need to login and log out for it to show up.

If you don’t have anything in your current employer box, the hovercard text defaults to the following hierarchy (in order):
1. Places Lived (top location)
2. Occupation
3. Profile Tag Line (under your name)

Place what you want to say in your hovercard in any of those boxes instead.

Have you set up a Google+ Business Page for your business yet? We have a FREE simple 33 page Google+ Guide, packed with all the information you need. Download it now!

There is a lot of hype around online marketing these days. At Pollen Marketing, we use a four-point approach that aims at developing strategy in the key digital areas. These are: Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing and Social Media.

From the countless marketing campaigns we conduct per year, this order also relates to the amount of leads each business will generate on average. Bottom line, none of these options will work without a strong focus on the first: Content Marketing.

Why? Digital Content Marketing focuses on more than one area of customer development and lead generation. Since it is focused on what I have termed ‘downloadables’ or free information, products, what-have-you, the investment on the part of the customer is minimal out of the gate. Content Marketing focuses on reaching the customer early in the buying process. Plus, people love getting something for nothing. Whether you produce a white paper, an eBook, or offer some sort of insight into your business and your industry, the base concept behind Content Marketing taps into that love of “free” and “privileged.”

There’s more going on, however, than just an exchange of digital material. When a customer chooses to engage with your company’s content marketing strategy: they get to know you. Especially in B2B marketing situations where information sharing and innovation drive consumer demand, showing off your knowledge through content that is freely available establishes you as an expert in the customer’s mind. This leads to trust, which is paramount in turning a lead into a sale.

Image by King Kong 911

Word-of-Mouth on the Web re-launches as ‘Word of Mouth Online’

In the days before the Internet, many businesses relied on word-of-mouth as their primary means of attracting customers. But as the Internet has gained prominence, the concept of word-of-mouth may seem dead, but it’s not.

Since its launch in 2007, WOMO – Word of Mouth Online  (formally WOMOW) has seen an exponential increase of both reviewers and businesses using their service. There is now one review every 5 minutes. The concept behind this approach is simple: People convert to customers 168% more often, when they read a review online.

Reviews help your potential clients make the critical purchasing decision to use your services. WOMO are also the only review website I know of in Australia that are continually offering incentives for reviews. There has also been some questions around the transparency of reviews on websites like Truelocal.

Having a strategy for hosting, unbiased third party reviews is smart. The results are what make it really stand out. A few reviews can make all the difference in terms of generating business. DNA Bathroom & Kitchen boast a doubling of their business from WOMO. Every review with vital keywords also increases your relevance/ranking in search engines for location-based businesses eg Hairdresser Moonee Ponds. (PS Seen SEO businesses charge $5k for that gold nugget).

WOMO have just updated  their website (and name!)  and word of mouth program to better highlight the most important aspect of this website’s success: customer reviews. Watch this space!

image credit : wordboner.com

Pew found that though social network use is on the rise (65% of adults now report using social networking sites as opposed to only 11% in 2005) email and search have a grip that are hard to release. 92% of American adults report using both email and search engines with about 6 of every 10 doing so daily.

These figures make come into better focus. Social networking, though important, cannot compete with the importance of reaching customers through email. This is compounded by the fact that email’s hold as the top ranked online activity has been consistent for 9 years running (since 2002).

Adults are creatures of habit and though the rise of social networking sites and marketing through them represents a viable opportunity to expand brand awareness to new niches, there is a resounding call to stay true to what works and to that which we know people use: email.

Information drives the Internet. Content Marketing seeks to engage potential clients with meaningful information, related to what they are looking to buy. Basically, as opposed to your sales pitch and unashamed advertising, content marketing focuses on customers during or before they are researching products.

So how does this work? It pays to think of the Internet as an interrelated community of shoppers looking for information. Giving readers something to take away other than a sales pitch will heighten your brand name and make them more likely to come to you when they are ready to move along in the next phase of the buying cycle.

This stage is very important in the B2B environment, as there is often a buying committee that needs to be satisfied. This is also a valuable exchange for contact details to re-market to prospects through trigger email campaigns or email marketing, until they are ready to buy.

Providing your clients with ‘downloadable’ practical guides such as research papers,  presentation notes, cheat sheets or behind the scene insights is a sure way to build rapport and establish your company as a trusted advisor an industry expert. (I have taken to calling them ‘downloadables’ but think I just invented a word- again cc: @evanfosterufg ).

Your goal is to create a sense of trust and credibility, so that you become your customer’s solution before they have a problem. You do need to be subjective to invite trust and create the relationship that will lead them to you.