16 Dec 2014

25 Subtly-Crafted Marketing Questions To Get B2B Clients Results

You know when you get notified of a new 'list post' publication, you get that blanket of dread envelope you? Especially a post about marketing that purports 'new ideas'?

Well, when Mr Jingles rang for this post from Jay Baer on Google+, I felt that familiar "oh, no, not another 'pointing out the bloody obvious' post" ghost settle around my shoulders.

I should have known better.

Jay's meteoric rise to the very summit of social media mountain hasn't happened by regurgitating crap and simply putting his name, his brand on it.

Like the below Listly list of questions marketing agencies should ask their B2B clients, Jay's knowledge fills a gap. A gap, to be fair, that few acknowledged even existed.

If they did, they kept that insight closer to their chests than a prile of threes.

Not so with Jay's new social marketing steamroller of a concept.

Marketing Budget has to be a consideration

In an ideal world, it would be grand to take on board every aspect of this savvy marketing strategy. But let's be realistic: to accomplish all these tasks, you'd need a dedicated team working your content marketing 24/7. Adopting all of these tactics on a tight budget isn't an option, no matter how much automation your throw at it.

Just last week, we were trying to talk one of our clients around to adapting content curation as part of our service. As it stands, he firmly believes in broadcasting his companies' messages based on what he believes is suitable content. It's old school and, in our opinion, doesn't deliver best bang for his buck. But he's adamant.

With little room for engaging left over once our social bookmarking template has been implemented, we're between a rock and a hard place when it comes to recording results. Analytics only give you a part of the picture. It doesn't show the gratitude or human interaction that analytics cannot unearth.

On the thread on G+, I've asked Jay what he does when faced with budgeting restrictions. As a marketer, we instinctively know what's good for brand building. Heck, we've done our own and know the pitfalls.

How do you 'convince and convert' naysayers or those on tight budgets?

What we cannot do is hold a shotgun to our clients' heads and tell them not to expect results if they don't implement strategies a, b and c. They are the paymaster and sometimes no amount of persuasion will break their habits.

Take a good look at this list of questions Jay asks his clients, as much to get an idea of where they are as where he and his team want them to be. Then ask yourself how you'd convince a client that they need to spend accordingly to reap the benefits of social media marketing done right. It's a tough ask, but I'd love to hear what you've got to say.

Are you writing for the click-thru or organic search?

There are two very different motivators for clicking through to read a piece of content. On social, you have to draw the audience in with a clickable headline. For organic search, it's subtly different.

Trustflow is a major factor for ranking your website. And it's a two way street. When Google renders your page in SERPs, it's put to the test:

  • How many click-thrus are there compared to impressions?
  • Do people bounce from your page because the title/meta-description doesn't quite hit the mark?
  • Do they go on and share your content? What reaction does that get?

Jay references two tools to check whether you're content is hitting the mark with your audience:

  1. Inbound Writer - you can request a demo;
  2. Atomic Reach - this is the link to the web app, but you can pay for your own software.

Both give you an idea of how on target your copywriting is, in its structure, clarity and focus. We use similar programs, but our focus is on organic search.

Given the semantic web's fast-evolving reality, we use Alchemy API. This shows the concepts, taxonomy, keywords and sentiment of your document.

It also shows relations - this is an area many copywriters overlook. But in a world where Google is joining the dots, making sure Google knows how one entity relates to another is imperative for organic reach.

We also use a clarity - or NLP - app. It's called Hemingway and is the cornerstone of making your content crystal clear. There's a web app, but for $7, it's well worth downloading to your desktop.

You can see how we put these to use in our Semantic X-Ray Slideshare. It's fascinating to see how making your content fluff-free and focused can make a huge difference to what Googlebot understands about your content. Let us know how you get on? Awesome!


image credit: David Castillo Dominici, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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