The Marketing Maven: Industrial Marketing Blog & B2B Marketing Tips

5 Ways to Improve Landing Pages

If you use online marketing to drive prospects to your Web site, you need to develop landing pages to convert prospects into qualified leads. A landing page is a single, simple Web page tied to a specific offer. The offer might be a white paper, Webinar, research report or other content your audience will find valuable. Your goal is to convert visitors into qualified leads by capturing their contact information when they accept your offer.

Here are 5 ways to improve landing pages to help increase conversions and get more return from your marketing campaigns.

Promoting your news

While building content for your site is an important optimization strategy; you can't count on content to purely drive traffic.

Justilien Gaspard, an independent consultant who focuses on organic search, has written a series of articles on building newsworthy content. In the this week's article, Create Something Newsworthy, Part 3 -- Promotions he offers tips to promote your content.

He began the series with Create Something Newsworthy -- Branding, Marketing, Links and continued it in his post Create Something Newsworthy, Part 2 -- Testing.  

We are a Quarter of the Way Through 2009 – What Now?

In December, you were looking at what to slice out of your marketing budget. In March, you were looking into the success rate of your current programs.

We are officially a quarter of the way through 2009 -- What do we do now?

Two words: Frequency and Reach.

Frequency: All of the marketing experts are saying it. Stay in front of your target audience. Online opportunities are often the least costly and most effective way. Some effective examples within the industrial community are sponsorships to key electronic newsletters. Whether the e-newsletter is weekly, bi-weekly or monthly – you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck in frequency and you can be certain that you are in front of the correct audience.

Reach: Industrial professionals today want news and information – they need to stay ahead of the curve and they are going online to find it. Make sure that you are marketing online – and more specifically – that you are marketing where your target audience is searching for information, products and services like yours.

In times when the sales cycle has lengthened as well as become more complicated – frequency is a way of nurturing your prospects. Reminding them of your offering - of your products and services.

It may seem like common sense, but best practices in marketing generally are common sense.

To learn more about how to become a marketing hero in 2009, download our Marketing Hero's Toolkit today.

Listen and Learn: Social Media Provides Direct Feedback

By Mike Nikolich

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Beatles’ classic A Hard Day's Night. Not just because of the music, but because of the writing. There are many memorable scenes and lines. One scene that comes to mind today occurs when George Harrison inadvertently winds up in an office where the company is marketing products to teenagers. The man in charge shows George a photo of their spokesmodel Susan, of whom the company is proud. George quickly bursts that bubble, telling the man that George and his friends “turn down the telly when she comes on and say rude things.”

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It

There’s a saying in the business world: Customer acquisition is an investment, but profitability is built on customer retention. And with the economy in its current state, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have.

According to a recent survey of engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial marketers, 13% indicated that customer retention is their primary marketing goal in 2009, up from just 5% last year. This increase can be attributed to the fact that companies cannot afford to lose customers now, and many realize it is easier and more cost effective to retain current customers than it is to find new ones.

So how do you retain your customers and earn their loyalty? It’s like any successful relationship: If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them. For starters, you must have a product or service that delivers as advertised, but that’s just the minimum requirement, kind of like dressing appropriately and smiling on a first date. 

To foster a healthy long term relationship with customers, you must do much more than provide a good product or service. You must pay attention to your customer needs and meet them. There are always competitors ready to lure your customer away. And there are always customers who will switch given any slight, perceived or real.

Follow these strategies to keep your customers loyal to your company.

Webinar on How to Drive More Sales in Today's Industrial Marketplace

Sign-up for GlobalSpec's webinar on May 14th entitled How To Drive More Sales in Today's Industrial Marketplace.  

This webinar covers the latest research about how engineering, technical, industrial and manufacturing professionals are finding and specifying products and services in today's economy.  

Some of the things you'll learn:

• Which industrial sectors are least impacted by the economy
• Where to be discovered and influence customers looking for your products and services
• Eight strategies and tactics you should implement in 2009 to find more sales-ready opportunities

There is no doubt this is a challenging environment.  Attend this webinar for insight on how you can find opportunities for success.