The Marketing Maven: Industrial Marketing Blog & B2B Marketing Tips

Landing Pages: 10 Best Practices

The objective of Web site landing pages is to convert visitors who click from search engines, marketing e-mails or banner ads into leads for your company. A one-page format tied to a specific offer such as a white paper or Webinar, landing pages are an essential part of many online marketing campaigns.

Landing pages are quick and inexpensive to produce. Created properly, they can provide campaign cohesion by aligning the ad and Web page creative; increase your ROI on paid search campaigns, e-mail sponsorships and banner ads; and turn anonymous Web site visitors into valid prospects.

To increase conversions and maximize your return from online marketing campaigns, follow these 10 best practices for landing pages.

Listen to "GlobalSpec: Firing Up the Vertical Search Market"

Check out this interview video spotlight entitled, "GlobalSpec: Firing Up the Vertical Search Market".  Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Angela Hribar was recently interviewed by Adotas.com, an online news publication focused on the Internet advertising and media industry for members of the advertising community

In it, Hribar discusses GlobalSpec, our philosophy and what differentiates us from other online advertising solutions for the industrial marketplace.   Topics include company history, our audience, vertical search, competition, and the imprint that GlobalSpec has made.  Yes I'm biased, but this is worth watching if you want to learn more about what sets GlobalSpec apart from other online options. 

She encourages listeners to include vertical search as part of their marketing plan, saying, "If you're not getting some experience with vertical search through GlobalSpec, you're putting yourselves and your customers at a disadvantage, now and well into the future.  I'm not saying that GlobalSpec should be 100% of your media buy, but it should be the essential foundation of the media mix for anyone who's in this space."

Questions to Ask When Evaluating Online Media

When you evaluate online marketing programs, you may have many of the same concerns as you do with traditional media programs. Alignment with your goals, audience, reach: these criteria apply across all media buys. However, other issues are specific to the online world: online metrics, conversion accountability, reputation of Web sites and more.

With suppliers allocating more of their marketing budgets to online media, it’s important to know what to look for and ask about when working with new media partners. Here is a list of questions you should ask your online media partners. We’re including those questions that apply to both online and traditional media — it never hurts to be reminded of the fundamentals.

How Marketers Can Win Friends and Influence Sales

I promised in a previous Marketing Maven article, “How to Win Friends and Influence Marketers,” that I would write for the other side.  I have some practical advice on how marketers can better work with their sales organization.

Let’s acknowledge some of the typical complaints Marketing has to say about Sales:

• Sales doesn’t like the leads we give them. 
• They don’t use the tools/collateral/information we provide for them. 
• Sales keeps asking the same questions over and over. 

First advice I would give any marketer is to remember who is responsible for your pay check. That would be Sales.  The “build it and they will come philosophy” doesn’t really work except in the movie Field of Dreams.  Even companies with healthy ecommerce online catalog sales often have a sales force.

Understanding CAN-SPAM's Latest Updates

On July 7, 2008, the latest CAN-SPAM updates from the Federal Trade Commission take effect.  There are a few things you should be aware of that will most likely impact industrial marketers.

You can only ask for an email address to process an opt-out (unsubscribe).  The goal of the act is to make it simple and easy for a subscriber to unsubscribe.  That means if you ask subscribers to login with a password to manage preferences, you will need to change the process. 

Also a subscriber should only have to visit one web page or send a reply email in order to opt-out.