Twitter Proves Fast and Effective Testing Tool

The email subject line-the first thing that a recipient sees when checking their inbox, and the key driver of the most critical metric for email success-open rates. Best practices suggest subject line split or A-B testing and optimizing. But such testing can be time-consuming and expensive, especially when using purchased email lists. Now you can use Twitter Promoted Tweets for email subject line testing. How? First compose your tweets with alternative subject lines, while using identical hashtags and links for each Tweet. Next setup up a promoted tweet campaign featuring the tweets to be tested. For as little as $30, you can earn you THOUSANDS of impressions for your tweets. Twitter reports such metrics as clicks, Retweets (RTs), replies, follows, card submissions, and engagement rate! The most effective subject lines will be the Tweet with the highest engagement rate. Did we mention this test can be completed in 24 hours? The power of Twitter. Next up, testing ad headlines!

Google Places Setup is CRUCIAL

If you haven’t done so already, you need to set up Google Places, which works with Google Local and your Google Plus Page. It has been shown that having a completely developed Google Places listing helps you with search rankings. Not only are you validating your address, showing that you are an actual company, but you make it easier for those finding you to get to your website, browse your video, see a quick overview of services you offer and more. Google Places ties in with Google Local as part of your G+ profile and can offer a quick snapshot of your company and include customer reviews. Be sure to validate your Google Places listing as soon as possible!

Internal Links Increase Search Authority

By now you know the search authority value of back-links to your website. DId you know that creating internal links within your site, you can build your page’s search authority? If you have a new campaign coming up and need to create a separate landing page, it’s a great idea to link that back to your home page, or another page on your site with existing high search authority. Hubspot recently published a whitepaper on Internal Linking, which we feel is very informational.

Free PR a Bargain!

Sometimes you get what you pay for. In this case, some of the free internet news release distribution services deliver top search engine results! In the past, we use the free services for minor releases, but increasingly noticed placements thru Google Alerts and Radian6, along with top search results (although these results fade quickly after a couple of days). Now we use the free services for all releases. Check our Resources page  for our whitepaper: New Rules of PR. Do check out 24-7PressRelease.com, PR.com, Free-Press-Release.com and others!

LinkedIn Company Page Drives Leads

In addition to your personal profile on LinkedIn you can create a company page that allows you to share company news, highlight your products & services, and share job opportunities. Millions of professionals are following more than 2 million companies on LinkedIn. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to stay connected with current customers or reach potential customers. Setting up your company page is not difficult, but you will want to build out completely and effectively. Company pages are divided into four sections: home, careers, products & services, and insights. Build out these 4 sections to start generating leads from LinkedIn today.

Build Your Home Grown Email List

Buying email lists from publishers or brokers is both expensive and often inaccurate. The “home grown” list if often the most accurate and effective. Existing customers are your best future customers, so be sure to grab contacts from order forms, quote requests and warranty registrations. Next, offer a eNewsletter registration, training webcasts or RSS feed on websites, blogs and social profiles. Outside your company, check trade association member directories, trade publication editors. Do ask inbound telephone requests for their email address for valuable offers. Finally, centralize all contacts in a customer database.

Embed Your Video Everywhere

With free video services such as YouTube, embedding video to your website, blog, Facebook or emails is easy by simply copying and pasting HTML code. Why embed videos? Because videos have the highest click-through rates (CTRs) and social sharing. What’s more, videos support search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and brand engagement. Finally, YouTube has robust analytics such as video views, traffic sources, demographics and viewer location. Don’t miss out on this simple marketing tactic.

Repurpose Your Print

That glossy capabilities print brochure or catalog should be leveraged across all electronic mediums for maximum exposure! Place a thumbnail on your website homepage that links to a registration page for immediate download. (Don’t get too greedy with the amount of registration form fields). Next place a thumbnail and hyperlink on your LinkedIn company page under the Products/Services section.

You can also convert a PDF or Powerpoint on your personal LinkedIn profile utilizing SlideShare. Next, place as a PDF on your Facebook Page, ideally under a custom tab to be downloaded directly from Facebook. Don’t forget to decrease your next print run by 50%!

Small Ads Deliver Big Leads!

No question that advertisings role in the B2B marketing mix is evolving to driving prospects to a registration page or microsite with offers that capture information for future marketing. One inexpensive ad placement option is classified ads in trade publications that often cost hundreds, not thousands. Small sizes and 1 or 2-color require strong headline hooks with simple web domains or 800 telephone numbers. Check out our Portfolio page, Advertising subpage for examples!

Email Still A Killer Marketing App

Despite average (b2b) deliverability of 20%, Email is still an effective tool for marketing with some caveats. Do not email from your desktop (Outlook, Entourage, etc). Use an Email Service Provider (ESP) to improve deliverability, and to avoid being (email) blacklisted by customers. ESPs provide easy-to-use templates or the option to create your own html email design, robust reporting (opens/click-throughs/opt-outs), and list management tools. Cost is minimal for Constant Contact, Benchmark, MailChimp and others. And email offers can link to registration pages to capture prospect information.

Are You Communicating With Your Sales Channel?

It would be hard to over-communicate with your sales channel, as most companies and brands under-communicate with sales reps, dealers or retailers. Some just communicate with sales reps, but no further.

Use both snail mail and email. Make sure your lists are cleaned up with correct names and addresses. Qualify your channel members for additional contact names. Ask channel members to add your email address to their address book to avoid filtering. Communicate new products, programs and promotions. Also, selling tips, case studies and success stories. Your are competing for attention, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Does Your Website Suck?

Now you can quantify how good or bad your website site is, even compare it to competitors using a Free Tool from Hubspot called the Marketing Grader. Link to www.marketinggrader.com and enter your website address, along with addresses of other sites you wish to compare. After a couple minutes of computing, the tool will provide a report that evaluates your sites metadata, Google page indexing, traffic rank, inbound links, directory links and social media presence. And finally, issue a grade. You’re gonna love this!