I’m in charge of coming up with B2B social media marketing strategies for our clients, then helping get the content that makes them work through the process of development and implementation. That means I do a lot of research and exploration to find out what lies in that lovely matrix of customer interest and market opportunity. What I do is all about possibility. It’s about sorting out the puzzle pieces and making something cohesive from them (which I love doing).

My research takes me outside of the things that are my immediate domain because I need to have an understanding of what the client does already and how it’s working, what they’re not doing, and where the opportunities are. There tends to be a pile of “other stuff” that isn’t what we’re contracted to do. If there’s something that really needs attention, we’ll point it out and can help you get it taken care of or refer you to someone who can.

Sometimes, I wish that it was my job to help deal with this pile of “other stuff” that could be done as part of the web marketing strategy. It can be hard to curtail scope creep when you’re really excited about finding a huge, untapped opportunity for a client. You might be wondering how people missed these big opportunities in their own business. They’re often not the most obvious or trendy ways to solve the problem. Or maybe they solve the problem in an unexpected way. What they almost always are is the second right answer.

A Facebook page or Twitter stream might not yield big results for your company. You might not have the time or strategy to market it, maintain interest, and fill it with useful content. That doesn’t mean you’re exempt from needing to have some social media in place. Would answering common troubleshooting questions regarding your product or software on tech forums make users less frustrated and inspire brand loyalty? Is checking your reviews on Google, Yahoo!, and Yelp part of your routine? What about responding to customers that had a less than ideal experience?

If you’re intimidated or unable to build and maintain some of the bigger efforts that would boost your company’s web marketing strategy, I challenge you to sit down and think of a dozen things you could do that are second right ideas. Just because they weren’t the first right idea doesn’t make them any less right!

If you’re come to the blog via the home page, you probably noticed all the design changes, namely boxes defining some prospects’ needs, pointing to new pages addressing how we can address this particular problem.

This was all possible because last Thursday, we launched our SEO dashboard at InnoTech in Austin, in combination with more flexible, less expensive service offerings. This is a big milestone, because it’s the first fruit of our strategy to evolve into a product company. As a bridge from here to there, we’re only selling the dashboard in combination with services we provide. From the business perspective, we now have a $250/mo. entry level price point instead of a typical monthly price of $2000, so our expectation is that this will stimulate a lot more demand. Plus, now we can help a lot more people weather the recession.

As a company, our intent is to become known for personalized education about search, tools for clients to better oversee and manage SEO (either internally or for an overview of the results from their consultants or SEO agencies), and as a trusted partner for developing site optimization strategy. The SEO dashboard is the first tool we’ve created, in response to where we believe the market is headed, which is wanting to develop search marketing as an internal capability. With the right kind of help, we think clients can develop this as a truly sustainable competitive advantage.

October is usually the month that companies are working on budget for the next year, so I wanted to be prompt in reminding you that the continual improvement offered by site optimization is a great investment.

We talk to a lot of companies who a) didn’t know they were missing 90+ percent of their potential new prospects by having an unoptimized site, b) had no idea they would need to rework their website to reach these people, and c) didn’t budget for it. Well, what other marketing investment is going to increase your leads and web sales by 50-100%? That makes the ROI on the investment easy to figure out.

If you don’t know what it’s going to cost to fix your site, talk to a good SEO agency now, discuss your options, and make sure you include enough money to do the substantial work with content that will improve your rankings. Even if you only have $1000 a month to put toward working on the site, that’s still enough to effect positive change. We have clients who spend $250 a month, and clients who spend $5-10,000 a month on SEO. What you need for a search marketing budget really depends on what needs to be done…which is why we start with an audit or, for bigger companies, an audit with a thorough competitive analysis. That gives you a strategy and road map of how to get there…well worth the effort and the limited investment ($2500-4500). Our rule of thumb for B2B sites is to plan on spending $25-30K in the first year, and adjust based on your results.

This just in from BtoBOnline:

Natural search adherents learn the value of tweaks and tweets

It’s not news that marketing budgets have been cut to the bone, nor that even paid search expenditures are in a slump.

What is new, and slowly building over at least the past six months, is the realization by marketers that search engine optimization�the “free� kind of Web site tweaking based on content, metatags and link-building that helps a company get recognized in search queries�can return big, enduring benefits.

“Because of the recession, there has been an acceleration [in attempts] to figure out proper Web site optimization due to its lower cost overall and higher ROI,� said Aaron Kahlow, founder and CEO of the Online Marketing Summit conferences.

SEO GETS LEADS
“It’s forced us to ask what is the most effective way- to get traffic leads and sales,â€Â� he said. “And there’s almost no one out there who won’t say SEO is now No. 1 by far, with e-mail a close second.â€Â�

Besides attributing this burgeoning focus to the recession, Kahlow believes marketers are simply outgrowing old assumptions.

“It doesn’t take a lot of skill for the mainstream marketer to get started with paid search,â€Â� he said. “They’re used to paying for ads, and also perhaps some got burned by the SEO work done for them by snake oil salesmen. But today, there’s a gradual awakening to the virtues of natural search.â€Â�

The Houston Interactive Marketing Association is having their annual conference on 090909, and I’ve been invited to speak on “transitioning to digital.” We did some research on Houston companies in the Inc. 5000 last year, and discovered that there are some very big, very profitable (as long as oil is over $75) companies doing business with websites that look like they were done in the ’90s. As we say in Texas, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So, my job is to help the marketing managers figure out a rational path from brochure ware to true interactive lead gen, and help them tune in to the right signal amidst all the noise on search marketing, social media marketing, SEO, PPC, Twitter, etc. Should be a great day, hope to see you there.

Early bird registration for the Interactive Strategies ’09 conference ends on July 3rd.

The SEO industry is such fun. With a little research and your site’s analytics package, you can figure out what search terms are bringing folks to your site, and then determine if they get what they wanted once they land on your pages.  This article from Chris Smith, writing for Search Engine Land, gives some really great advice:

1) research what users are entering … not what you call your product/service (“divorce lawyer” rather than “family law lawyer”)
2) use geolocation/geotargeting information to get traffic from the *right* parts of the country/area
3) review the design of your landing pages — a simple tweak could easily bring more conversions (make use of bounce rate data)

Are you using your analytics data to improve your site?  Or, like many, have you implemented, then forgotten it?

I’ll be chairing a panel on Metrics and Measurement at Interactive Austin 2009, and tasked the panel (Ian Strain-Seymour of Apogee Search, Pam O’Neal of BreakingPoint, Michael Wilson of Small World Labs, and Andy Meadows of BudURL fame and Live Oak 360) with coming up with questions we think people will be interested in. We’ve got a couple of search marketing gurus, a couple of guys with companies wrapped around social media marketing, and Pam’s a B2B social media maven, with some great success stories and real-world experience to share.

Please take a few minutes and complete this questionnaire on the topics, focus and specific questions YOU would like to have answered. We will be a much more focused, relevant panel if we can get your input. Hope to see you at IA09!

Click Here to take survey

I’m always glad to see the gleam of positive news in the reams of economic doom, gloom and despair–and especially when it’s good news about our sector. This just in from the new Technical SEO Consultants blog:

While the world is experiencing an economic financial crisis, the SEO industry is experiencing a surprising increase in demand. From intensive training and SEO consultation to actual website changes and link building, the demand for expert SEO help is growing at an astonishing rate….But currently most established SEO professionals seem to have just the opposite need, they have too much business. Many established SEO professionals are declining to take on new clients because they just cannot accept any additional work load right now.

Google is releasing SEO guides, Microsoft and Yahoo! both have in-house SEO departments and the “SEO is BSâ€Â� crowd have lost a little of their swagger and a lot of their arguments. No surprise – solid evidence trumps wishful thinking, especially when times are tough….

“Prospects are demanding more specific information related to their sites issues and detailed, actionable solutions are expected. Generic audits that look automated in any way are no longer welcome. Ex: Don’t just tell me I got a problem with my titles, but tell me exactly how are we going to fix them! That is the attitude of an average educated site owner looking for help. This will ultimately separate the amateurs from the experts.�
-Jose Nunez

We’ve seen a year-end push from new clients, and of course the normal inquiries related to setting 2009 budgets. December looks to be very busy, for which we are thankful. The good news is that clients are getting a lot smarter about both the value of SEO and how it works. In tough times, the SEO charlatans who promise a lot for a little are going to be hard-pressed to show results, and the clients who continue to improve their sites are going to gain market share. Those SEO agencies which do good work are going to ride out the storm as valuable team members of those successful companies.

It’s a happy day when you are bouncing from blog to blog and discover something both recent and extremely helpful. On the Google Webmaster Central blog, there’s a link to a new 22-page PDF with the authoritative title of “Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Instead of warning the innocent website owner of the SEO wolves lurking outside the door, Google has documented their (and our) best practices, and even added some good counsel on marketing your website. We’ll definitely have to add this to our list of free SEO tools.

Search Engine Marketing isn’t just for companies with substantial marketing budgets selling nationally and internationally.  ‘Bricks and mortar’ businesses in metropolitan areas are often shocked when they discover how much search exists for their products and services in their city. 

For example, there are approximately 3,500 (broad) Google searches per month on pet grooming services in Austin, TX (metro population approx. 1.5 million).  Strategic optimization with appropriate keywords like ‘Austin dog grooming’ and ‘mobile pet grooming Austin’ could drive a substantial amount of searches to the website over time, and a pay per click campaign starts at just a nickel per click on many of those keywords.

Even better, most businesses don’t know that the local search results�at the very top of the Google search results�are a FREE service. To sign up, click on the blue link at the top of the listings for your category, then go to the bottom of the page with listings. There’s a link for Information for Business Owners. From there, complete the forms on your business, and verify by phone or post card.

If you are a small business, more people are searching for your products in your city than you think - find out how small business SEO can work for you!