The Rules of Lead Generation Defined – Book Review

For years I’ve been helping B2B marketers execute on their marketing strategies and at times I felt like I was working from scraps of information here and there that I have learned over the years. The issue was that there really wasn’t a guide for B2B marketers. We now have one: The New Rules of Lead Generation: Proven Strategies to Maximize Marketing ROI by David T. Scott. David was kind enough to send me on a copy and I will provide a short review of his groundbreaking work.

There are many smart marketers out there that have provided a bunch of insightful resources but there really wasn’t a straightforward starting point for someone new who was just breaking into the field. David’s book has helped bridge that gap by creating the B2B Marketing bible for demand generation marketers. I have not seen another book out there that is ambitious enough to include the majority of marketing tactics covering both offline and online formats.

Who Should Read This Book: Anyone New to B2B Marketing or Wanting to Improve

David makes it very clear whom he is targeting – it’s not the mom and pop shop businesses. He’s trying to help those marketers that are looking for information on principles and strategies of enterprise level lead generation. If you are someone that wants to get an introduction into some of the tried and tested tactics as well as the basics on putting a lead generation strategy together, this book is for you.

Besides those that may be new to B2B marketing, I would also recommend this book to those that are trying to put the various pieces together and may have been thrown into the role or volunteered without a full background in this area. Have a look at this book – you will benefit from it.

 

What Did I Like? A Focus on Strategy, Testing and Metrics

Definitions & Strategy. I love this quote from David “You can’t build a strong house without a string foundation”. The book is split up into two major areas: definitions and strategy of lead generation and lead gen tactics.

David makes it clear that you need a firm strategy in place or your tactics will fail and you won’t be able to convince your executives to get the funding you need. He provides you with the details you need to start the planning process so even a newbie can get this in place in no time. David starts off by defining some of the basic concepts of lead generation as well as focus on targeting and segmentation (My comment: YES!). Without these foundations, it can be difficult for marketers to get their bearings and execute on their strategy. This is something I have emphasized to many marketers over the years and it’s nice to see something in writing with a hard cover that that outlines this. Don’t miss David’s “5 Steps of a Lead Generation Campaign”.

Testing. A number of resources will tell you what you need to do. David emphasizes throughout his book that you are never done tweaking your tactics. You need to constantly test as a best practice for one organization may produce the opposite effects for another. You never really know what works best unless you test in lead generation. He covers testing techniques from emailing to cold calling. David believes that there are no mistakes in testing lead generation – you need to experiment to find out what works best to reach your target audience.

The Importance of Metrics. So you don’t consistently measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. David gets you. Marketers are really behind in this area and David documents in laymen’s terms how to measure the overall Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) of your campaigns as well as some of the basic metrics. Running some campaigns and hoping for the best is not a smart option. Metrics should be part of your overall strategy and something that you present to executives on a regular basis. This book will help point you in the right direction. He has included a good example of comparing the success of display ads vs. a tradeshow and how to measure the impact to demonstrate which tactic is better.

There are also many small tips that you’ll take from this book from where to setup your booth at a tradeshow to best practices on messaging for your Google Adwords campaigns. You will definitely walk away with something from this book that you can use in your day-to-day marketing campaign execution.

Where it Comes up Short

In this book David admits that lead generation is in a constant state of evolution. There is no way he can cover everything that is out there as well as all the emerging trends. There is just too much going on and David has done an admirable job. I would have liked David to have focused more on these areas:

• Marketing Automation. David makes a passing reference to some of the vendors out there including Eloqua and Marketo. I’m a bit biased here but marketing automation is a major force in lead generation today and should have had a bit more space allotted to it.

• Content Marketing. David dismisses search engine optimization as “passive marketing” and not a large aspect of lead generation. I disagree with his opinion here, as content marketing is instrumental in attracting viewers to your materials and assisting in generating leads and moving buyers through the sales and marketing funnel. This is probably an area that can be covered in a follow up in the next volume.

• Mobile. There are a lot of opportunities here that should be better acknowledged when it comes to Iphones and Android.

Another consideration for the next volume is to cover the area of advocate marketing. David dismisses the area of “word of mouth marketing” but advocates today are generating leads through referrals. These are solid leads that have a much higher conversion rate then some of the other tactics out there.

The book also could have used more illustrations and practical examples. David has done well to focus on the various social media tactics such as Twitter and Facebook but there are some good examples that could have been included to help the new marketer grasp these concepts. Again, only so much that can be fit into this book. I also disagree with the book’s emphasis on list purchases when it comes to email. I would recommend spending the time to build your lists organically then wasting money and time on list purchases that can get you in hot water with your email or marketing automation vendor.

 

My Takeaway: Read it, Live it

Let’s face it - B2B Marketing is a newer concept that is still emerging. We’ve moved beyond the traditional type of brand marketing that you see in Mad Men and marketers need to understand these new frameworks. Another name for this book should be “Lead Generation 101”. The New Rules on Lead Generation will help marketers get to that next level and should be standard reading for those studying marketing in business school and those that are newer or less experienced in this area. Happy reading!

Chad H.

@chadhorenfeldt

PS: The last chapter on integrated campaigns is a must as it ties together many of the concepts and has some good examples.

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Improving Your Upsell/Cross Sell Conversions

I was recently asked about approaches to take for creating a cross-sell nurturing program - what are the best practices? I could highlight a few examples of some well crafted emails and messaging but getting a good conversion rate goes well beyond a good email design and an engaging call to action.

Amanda Hinkle wrote a great a simple yet powerful article over at MarketingProfs "Three Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Tactics to Improve Email Marketing Results". Her first point "Take Advantage of Available Data" really hit home with me. If you have a marketing automation tool that can track the digital behavior of your web visitors, then you can review which pages your customers have visited on your website. Take a first pass at some of the products your looking to cross sell to existing customers and review which customers of other products have browsed those pages. That simple step can provide you with a seed list for contacts to add to your first cross-sell campaign.

You can also rely on traditional methods such as truly understanding the sweet spot of who buys your products and looking for similar customers in your database. Try this - instead of just firing off campaigns to anyone who matches your criteria, start with those who are actively engaging with you. This includes those that are responding to your emails, visiting your website regularly and/or agreed to be customer advocates (references). Segmenting based on behavior has proven to be a major contributor to marketing success,

A lot of this all comes down to data - start small and focus on who you are targeting. The list and not the email creative is more important in executing a successful campaign. Thoughts?

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The Right Way to Generate More Leads on Your Site

It's been a very busy month with lots of travel thrown in. Throughout my journeys much of the conversation comes back to generating a higher quantity of leads from the web that are of better quality. I had the pleasure of attending the Marketing Experiments Website Optimization workshop that was held in Florida earlier this month (still waiting for my landing page professional certification badge :) ). From that conference, combined with a very good study on email tactics in retail I've been inspired to write a post on this topic.

What's in it for me?

They key point hammered home at the Marketing Experiments Workshop is that all points of interaction on your website should answer the following question from the web visitor's perspective: "What's in it for me?". Therefore, if you have one of those newsletter sign up boxes on every page of your site (like the one I have in the top right hand corner) that says "Enter your email to get our newsletter", you may need to rethink this area as you're not providing a compelling reason for the visitor to sign up for your newsletter. A better approach may be "Get expert updates on X" (by X I mean a specific topic that is assumed to be relevant to the site's content or why would they be there in the first place). Even the submit button should be written in a way that answers the question "What's in it for me". For example: "Send me Product Alerts".

To use a simple sign up form or to not use a simple sign up form - that is the question.

To go back to my last point on that newsletter sign up - should this be a simple email only form or should you have a link that directs web visitors to a newsletter sign up page? This depends on your target audience as well as the type of segmentation and personalization you would like to perform in your marketing campaigns. B2C companies may only need email to begin the conversation but B2B companies typically collect company name and first and last name.

Here are the points to remember:

1. Most of the pages on your site can be accessed from a search engine. Don't assume that web visitors come waltzing through the front door (your home page). A website is like a big semi-permeable blob (think back to your to your biology days) that can be entered from all areas. Therefore ensure that you have a call to action on every page to engage new visitors and turn them into leads that you can market to.
   
   
2. Ensure you answer the question "What's in it for me" and don't assume that because they are on a website about say hot dogs that the visitor will know that the newsletter will provide the latest deals on hot dogs. Don't assume anything. You need to spell it out.
   
   Another bad tactic that I see is to use landing pages for multiple purposes. For example, directing newsletter registrations to the Contact Us page. This is not a good idea as the call to action doesn't correspond to the desired result and possible subscribers would be scared off as they don't want Mr/Mrs Salesperson calling on them asking them how many hot dogs they want.
   
   
3. The more fields on your web form, the less conversions. For some marketers, this is OK as they only want serious submissions. For example, if you're inquiring about how you can fly into space through one of those private space programs, you first need some serious coin to be considered. It would be a good idea to ask subscribers for their annual income before having someone in sales call them back.
   
   However, if you are just trying to start a conversation to attract a larger audience to a subject area that you have expert content in, the less fields on your form that you do have, the higher the conversion rate. Always ask yourself if you really need those additional form fields (say for segmenting or personalization) and can you get that information in a future campaign or do you need this information right away.
   
   Another consideration is to ask subscribers what type of information they would like to receive. This is definitely recommended. It should also be clear how often you will be sending subscribers communications.
   
   
4. Test, test, test... I know you hear that all the time. Imagine being stuck in a conference room for 8 hours straight each day in Florida right beside a PGA golf course and being forced to hear that when you could be outside. Of course the Marketing Experiment people are right. You need to test out the method that will work the best for your situation.
   

I hope that this post has been helpful and I should be adding some additional findings from my landing page workshop experience. In the meantime, feel free to check out my twitter profile for updates on marketing tools and info that I pick up. I just found an interesting tool that can tell you the type of email client that your subscribers are using to view your email in. This can be key in better understanding how best to design your emails.

Chad H.

PS: I just changed my blog updates sign up form text - we'll see if it improves conversions. I think I need to provide content more often. :)
PPS - image courtesy of www.wearyourbeer.com

Technorati tags: beer, landing page optimization, Marketing Experiments, Call to Action, What's In it for Me, test, PGA, Tiger Woods, Space - the final frontier

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5 Ways to Set Expectations in Online Marketing

I was camping this past weekend and my sister brought with her a CD of this hilarious comedian, John Pinette. If you haven't heard of him, you will soon enough. Here's a clip of him describing how he hates lines of any kind.



Why is this so funny? I think we all hate lines. We all hate waiting. We want what we want and we want it now! The reality is that we're going to have to wait. If this means waiting for a Starbucks latte that you ordered or for that technical assistant from your local cable/Internet company we all know that waiting is a part of life. If that's the case, lets make sure that we know what we're getting ourselves into ahead of time and if we do need to wait, provide some added value.

Setting Expectations the Right Way in Online Marketing

1. If you want people to register or sign up on your site, tell them exactly what they're going to get. This means using images to provide context. For example, if it's a webinar that people are signing up for, provide a pic of the person who is going to speak. If it's a contest for an IPhone, show an IPhone.

2. Make the registration process as easy as possible. Only ask for the information that you need and let the visitor know that they will only need to register once (it's a best practice to configure your site this way if possible). If you're looking to setup an e-commerce site, look at the heavy weights such as Amazon and EBay.

3. Make sure the information is relevant. Don't blast your entire database and expect magic to happen in terms of conversion. Use relevant information such as a person's title or the pages that they have previously clicked on to determine the messaging.

4. Allow your customers/prospects to set their own expectations for marketing messages. They should control the type of email, the frequency and the content. If you don't give them this control (and you should), make sure they know what type of marketing messages they can expect to receive and how often. If you don't, welcome to unsubscribeville - population, your company.

5. Use appropriate messaging on your site and email and provide something in the meantime if you can't deliver the goods right away. I can see why John Pinette is losing his brains at McDonald's. I was there yesterday at a roadside service center (OK, I admit I have the odd Big Mac attack) and I was waiting for what it felt like was forever. Whether it's unacceptable or acceptable the only thing that kept me sane was my Blackberry. I'm not asking for Ronald and the gang to sing show tunes while I wait but it would be nice if:
a. I had a sign that told me that the wait would be less then 5 minutes (this would be updated automatically like a scoreboard)
b. If there was a TV or something so I could watch a sporting event while I wait. How about a contest of some sort like "Where's Waldo?". Get creative!

I don't think I'm asking for much here. Do you? I'm sure John doesn't.

When it comes to email and your website, tell people when they should receive a confirmation email regrading a webinar that they signed up for or for a recent purchase. Tell them when they can expect their new computer to be shipped to them. Provide easy access to FAQs and contact information and have someone on the other end of the line. If I send a customer request to Bell, I want to receive an email that tells me how long I will be waiting until I hear from someone.

Here's a bonus one:

6. Go Beyond Expectations. Have you ever been at Starbucks sipping a coffee and they offered you a free sample of a cookie or beverage? Typically I've had way too much caffeine at that point and another coffee may turn me into a jabbering idiot but the offer is appreciated. Why? Because the interaction is personal and shows that you, the customer is rewarded for being a customer and that Starbucks cares about its customers (if only they could fix their line ups!). I'm not saying that McDonald's should go around giving out free hamburgers to kids who are playing in the play area but there are many opportunities that companies miss out on.

Here's an example: Company X has been a loyal customer for the past 5 years. Treat them like they are private members to your exclusive club and offer additional incentives such as a free upgrade - go beyond their expectations and they will remain loyal to you.

Let's get even simpler: I just signed up to receive your newsletter. They are sent every three weeks. Here's an idea: Send me the most recent one right away! Here's another one: I just purchased a computer or expensive software from you. Why not send an email with links to tutorials, social networks etc... In this way, you can keep the enthusiasm going that you had when you purchased the product/service and relieve some of the cognitive dissonance (wasn't psych 101 great?) that you may have after the purchase or after you just provided your contact information.

Getting to the Front of the Line

Web visitors need to understand how much time they need to invest in an activity and how it will benefit them. Those that are loyal deserve some extra TLC so giev it to them. Think about the tips above and how your company can bring potential customers and prospects to the front of your line, and how to get them there as fast as possible.

Chad H.

PS - any examples that you have on setting expectations would be greatly appreciated.

Tags: Starbucks, setting expectations, IPhone, McDonald's, Online marketing, cognitive dissonance

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How to Adjust Your Landing Pages For Search

Does your website have a home page? Ok, that's a stupid question but because of the preponderance of use of search engines in browsing the web, home pages are just not the same as they once were. A site can now have multiple home pages depending on what search query was used to end up on your website. Is your website ready?

I was reading a great article on Imedia called Websites: The Secret to Landing Pages and Shopping Carts by Joseph Carrabis who pointed out a great point: Landing pages for visitors that enter your site from a search engine must also serve as home pages. "Joe" (if I can call you that) believes that when users search for something in particular and enter your site, the content should be centered around this topic which would form a mini-site or microsite (a subset of the greater website). Joe states: "Thus, the entry page that focuses on a specific car or hand lotion or food item or whatever must also serve as the "homepage" to a microsite. This microsite may be one, two or at most three pages within a larger website system..."

These new home pages (or "side pages" as I call them) should be very specific and geared to the search query that led them to that page. The content should be easy to follow and the user should be able to quickly decide if this company can help them or if they need to try again. If the company is of interest, it should be fairly easy to request for additional information.

Joe inspired me to see if companies are gearing their websites around search and if they are creating these new types of home pages. I've used Google and randomly chose the search query "software integration". I've selected a few of the paid search results from this search and reported my findings below.

Search Landing Pages (Side Pages) That Need Improvement

I've learned from my research that marketers need to distinguish between different types of landing pages. There are the landing pages that companies use to drive people to from emails and direct mail and there are landing pages used for search results and other forms of online advertising. There really are different best practices for each of these.

Let's look at the first example from my search on "software integration" from BEA Software:

I've highlighted the areas in the image above that I felt are important. Here are the positives:

• The headline and copy is crisp and concise. The web visitor will know after a few seconds if this is something that they are interested in
• It's easy to request additional information and all that is required is to fill out two fields to complete the web form.
  

The main drawback of the page is that the copy is geared to someone who visited this page from another page on the BEA website or from a BEA email. The first line says "Thanks for your interest in our white paper for developing the organization & governance plan". That doesn't make sense coming from a Google search query! I never expressed interest in this white paper. BEA seems to have re-purposed this landing page and the result is a poor one.

What if I was interested in something else from BEA? Now what? Unlike an email landing page where you're typically driving someone to a very specific action (such as signing up for an event), search results landing pages are different. While the visitor should be driven to a certain action (such as requesting additional information), additional options should be included to allow for browsing other areas of your website (like a home page but coming through a side door and hence why I call these side pages).

In this case, the web form was very short and probably worked. However, a web form may seem obtrusive to someone who just came in from a search engine. Before someone divulges personal information, you need to earn that trust and providing valuable information first without first displaying a form may be a better way to go (I'll let you determine this from your testing).

Here's another example from Agilent:


This landing page does a few things right. It has a call to action right at the top which outlines how to purchase the product and has a good first paragraph that summarizes the product. The problem is that there is too much extra text on the page. For example, there is a "What's new" section. If this was setup as a real microsite, the "What's New" section would be on a separate page. This main page should focus on outlining the features of this solution in a clear and concise way while providing options to the web visitor to explore additional information on this product.

Search Landing Pages (Side Pages) That get it Right

The following search landing pages are worth looking at perhaps mimicking. The first example is from Cisco:

The content on this landing page gets right to the point and it starts with a great headline. Using bulleted points also helps the reader quickly scan the page.

What I like even more about this page are the call to action options that it provides at the end of the copy (but without the need to scroll on a typical monitor configuration). If you're ready to download the product, there is a section that says "I'm ready" and if you're not ready just yet you can select the "I'm interested" registration. The fact that it spells this out for you and uses clear images to delineate the two sections is extremely cool. That way, Cisco is accounting for two types of visitors - the serious and the non-serious. In addition, Cisco has provided the top-level navigation if this page doesn't satisfy the users' needs.

The last example from my research (excuse the pun) is from a company called Adeptia:
This was another good example of content that is clear and concise. In addition, I liked how the product name was highlighted at the top of the page which allowed those web visitors that already knew the product name to go to that page. For the rest of us, the page provided examples and benefits of the product while providing call to actions such as viewing a demo or case study without the need to scroll. The page also allowed you to browse other areas of the Adeptia website to view their other solutions.

Landing Page Conclusions

Here is a summary of my findings:

• Keep the content clear and use headers and bullets to break it into chunks that are easily digestible.
  
• Only provide content that is directly relevant to fulfilling the desired action on the page. If you have additional content that is related to the product or service, consider providing a link to it (for example, updates to the product)
  
• Call to actions need to be viewable without scrolling
• Provide multiple call to actions. Since people are coming from a search engine, you don't know if they're in the final stages of the buying cycle or just at the beginning. The Cisco example provides for both scenarios.
• Consider not placing a form on the first page that a web visitor sees when coming from a search engine. If you do, keep it short.
• Allow web visitors the opportunity to browse other areas of your website. As mentioned above, search landing pages (side pages) are side doors to your content. These are people that are not coming through the front door but may have randomly happened upon your site. If your call to actions don't appeal to them, allow them the opportunity to view other areas of your website.

I hope you have found this informative. Feel free to use the term "side pages" and be sure to continuously test and optimize your landing pages to get the best results.

Chad H.

PS: I want to apologize in advance to the companies listed above for spending their valuable marketing dollars and for my abusive click fraud.
PPS: You can take this concept beyond paid search to organic search - are your pages fully optimized to drive web visitors down a certain path?

Tags: Google, side pages, software integration, landing pages best practices, Imedia, search engine optimization, SEO

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Landing Page Strategies and Lead Qualification

Here are some quick tips from the experts - Google that is - on how to improve your landing pages. Check out the Top 7 Landing Page Strategies on the Google Analytics blog.

I found #4 interesting: "Using qualifying copy". This strategy is used by marketers to try and limit the form submissions to only those people who are truly interested in your product or service. Google recommends that you should add certain requirements such as "A minimum order is required" etc... In the B2B world having a form that asks very specific questions related to your product can qualify someone out who really doesn't care to fill out all of these questions. The problem is that you may be losing high quality leads from executives who are interested in signing up for a webinar but just don't have the time to fill out a huge form.

How do you Increase Conversions yet Ensure that the Leads are Qualified?

This is the magic question for some marketers. The first item I would recommend is only ask for the basic information - name, email, company. Phone and title should be optional. For title, I would use a drop down to find out the level that a person is at - For example: manager, director, executive. This type of standardized data can be used for future segmentation. If it's an open text field, it's difficult to use for segmentation and many titles are crazy these days as "everyone is a manager" in some cases. As I've recommended earlier in the post Why B2B websites fail, one of the strategies you can employ is asking for basic information at the beginning of your interaction and asking for additional information for each subsequent interaction. Therefore a phone number may not be needed if someone is registering to receive your newsletter. All that may be needed is an email address.

The other item to keep in mind is to look at leads as if you were applying for a job. What does that mean? It goes something like this: If you went to a job interview, would you ask your potential employer what they do? Would you ask them about the key aspects of their business and what their annual revenue is? Not if you really want the job. This is data that you should have access to. You should be able to take the company name and find out this information yourself. What I've been seeing lately is the ability for marketing databases to interact with data repositories. In this way you don't need to ask people for this data as you will already have this. This may not be practical for companies but I still think that this is something that the company should do themselves and not the person filling out the form. This depends on what are the type of resources that you have. Sometimes spending more money up front saves you more in the long run.

That's Great - You Still Haven't Mentioned Anything About Qualifying Leads

If you're getting too many crappy leads coming in I would recommend automating your lead qualification process. For example, if the annual revenue of a company is below a 1 million, do not pass them on to sales or your call center to call directly. This type of back-end lead qualification can save your company a tremendous amount as there is no human interaction necessary and your company can focus on those leads that are a good fit for your company.

Look for ways to qualify leads without using human intervention. This may seem difficult but by reviewing your data, you can look for trends. For example our leads that come from actual company addresses better then those that come from hotmail or gmail address accounts? Is there a way to filter these out so that the company email addresses get looked at first to see if they are a good fit for your company?

The other more recent trend is qualify leads based on behaviour. Therefore a higher score is attributed to those leads who have conducted certain trackable actions such as filling out forms, responding to emails and visiting key web pages. This type of data won't matter if the actual company is not a good fit for your product or service but can be very helpful by providing your sales team the intelligence to better understand who are your best leads and the leads that should be prioritized. This type of lead qualification of course requires a way to track this information, process it and provide reports etc... Besides the software itself, getting your company aligned around what a qualified lead is an entirely different story.

I think that's all I want to touch on for the moment as this post is getting into some complex topics but hopefully it opened you up to some new ideas and possibilities. What type of lead qualification do you do? Is it automated?

Chad H.

Tags: google, lead qualification, lead generation, landing page strategies

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Learning About Web Analytics: Part I

If you're a true marketer or a hard-core blogger (or both) you have to be into web analytics. Ok, you don't but you should and I have found some good resources.

Bloggers for the most part write because they want to be heard and your analytics justify the time that you sit at your keyboard (for the most part although my wife still needs convincing and web stats, well they just don't do it).

You may like to monitor your site traffic to see which keywords and referrers are bringing traffic to your blog or who is on your blog right now (hey - I see that you're reading this and I thank you from the bottom of my keyboard). It's also cool to see which countries are reading your blog. I wrote a post about free feed icons and I was receiving traffic from all over the world and was featured on many Asian sites - it was quite interesting but I couldn't understand the comments on those blogs. I also had a pleasant surprise last week when I found out that Brian Carrol over at Start With a Lead was linking to my blog. This caused a bit of a traffic spike and I thought my blog was broken. In this way, my blog is similar to the thinking process that an e-marketer goes through on a daily basis (or should be going through!!) : "What actions that I take will drive traffic to my site and increase conversions." Examining and understanding web analytics is key to this.

As a blogger, one of my goals is help others in marketing (specifically B2B marketing) better understand the e-marketing landscape. A very good newsletter that I subscribe to is the ROI Revolution News that is created by Google to promote its services - specifically Google Analytics. The format of this e-newsletter is interesting as instead of pushing people from an email to a regular web page, it takes people to the ROI Revolution blog. I think you will be seeing more and more of this type of format as blogs maximize the SEO effectiveness of your content (I wrote about this previously). And here's a saying that you should adhere to: If Google is doing it, it's worth trying.

I'm new to Web Analytics, Where do I start?

There are many different places to begin. With web analytics (just like SEO), it's not enough to understand the terminology. You need to jump in with two feet. If you just want to get your feet wet though , you may want to start by subscribing to ROI Revolution News. What I like are some of "Analytics Basics" articles that provide overviews to some of the key areas of web analytics that you need to understand.

For example, some marketers may be worried that their web stats are skewed because of a recent Jupiter report article that says that 58% of their users delete their cookies. This can affect historical data that you may be tracking on a certain person. The article explains the difference between first party and third party cookies as it's mostly third party and not first party cookies that users are deleting. The article of course plugs Google Analytics as it uses only first party cookies.

Google also offers free tutorials on how to use Google Analytics. What I recommend you do is to start up a blog perhaps through blogger and sign up for the tutorial. In this way, you can test out what you learn from the tutorial. One of the keys that you will learn as you get into web analytics is testing is crucial. What offers, content and/or keywords are driving content to your site? Google Analytics is also free so it's definitely worth having a look at. In the real world analytics testing is like testing out different methods to prevent your new puppy from messing up your new carpet. Eventually you will hit pay dirt but things may get a bit messy on the way there.

At the moment, I'm in the process of moving so you may not hear from me for a little while but I plan to write "Learning About Web Analytics: Part II" in which I want to focus on some key metrics that you should be keeping track of on your site. I've just finished reading a book called "3G Marketing" and found some interesting information that I'll share.

In the meantime, please let me know other resources on web analytics that you have found helpful. I've heard that Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business is also a good start.

Until next time,

Chad H.

PS - For web analytics, one of the most important concepts is to understand that a point in time is irrelevant (i.e. number of pages on a particular day). What is crucial are the trends. Are your site visitors going up over time or going down? Why is that? Is it becuase your packing up all of your stuff and moving and don't have time to write? :)

Tags: Google Analytics, e-newsletters, ROI Revolution News, web stats, web analytics for beginners, 3rd party cookies

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Free Online Marketing Tools for Marketers

Larry Chase at Web Digest for Marketers is an amazing source for marketers looking for tools to assist in email marketing, search marketing, surveys - you name it! Here are a few of my favourite tools from his website:

Paid Search and Organic Search

• Spyfu: Can be used to find out how much a search term is currently going for, how popular a search term is and who (which of your competitors) is currently using the search term and how they are using it. You can also see the copy of the ads they are using and what the organic search results are.
  
  In addition, you can see the additional paid search terms that competitors purchased and how much they are spending on paid search. This stuff is gold! Go there right now and type in the name of your company and see what happens. The data can be a bit out of date so don't use it to look for terms that others may not have purchased just yet. It would be interesting to see how the results compare to Wordtracker
• URL Trends: Use URL Trends to find out how many sites are linked to your site as well as how many sites you link to. You can also see your page rank and how many search results you produce on the major search engines. This is great if you want to keep benchmarks on how your SEO efforts are going.
• Marketleap Link Popularity Check: Compare your site traffic to your competitors. You can also look at benchmark graphs and compare your site to your competition.
• SearchSpell Typo Search: Want to know if people search for your company or your products but make spelling errors? Use this tool and it will let you know what are the top typos for the keywords you enter.
• Keyword Suggestion Tool: Find out how many times each of the keywords & phrases you enter has been searched on so far this month in the major search engines. It allows you to compare a few different search phrases.
• Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool: Tells you how many times a keyword was clicked on. This is not as accurate as Wordtracker as it focuses on paid search only and not organic search
  
• Web Site Keyword Density Tool: This tool tells you if certain keywords appear enough or too little on your website. This seo tool also returns the ratio of your keywords to your body count.
• SE-Tools: Type a web page address and SE-Inspector will check its title, meta tags, text, url, link popularity and keyword density. SE-Spider will allow you to see how the search engine spiders crawl your pages and follow your links.
• Yahoo CPC ROI tool: Calculate the ROI from your cost per clicks vs. sales generated.
• Keyword Difficulty Check: Determine if it's worth it to go after certain keywords. Tool will tell you how difficult it is to get into the top ranked sites for keyword(s).
• Lycos Top 50: Get an idea of which keywords are hot
• Google Keyword Tool: Makes recommendations on additional popular keywords. Shows your competition and search volume. I would trust Wordtracker over this tool.
• Google Conversion Tracking: This is a newer feature that allows you to track your conversion rate (sales or form submissions) for all of your paid search campaigns.
  

RSS Feeds

• Feed Advisor: If you're looking for web feeds to add to your website, newsletter blog or just for your personal research, consider checking this site out. It will tell you how many people have subscribed to the RSS feed. This type of social ranking provides the RSS feed with added credibility and helps you navigate amongst the millions of feeds out there.
  

Survey Tools

• Sample Size Calculator: Tells you how many survey respondents you need to generate a meaningful results.
  
• Question Pro: Allows you to create two free surveys for 100 respondents. This is an ASP model survey tool that has some excellent features. It's advanced tool also integrates with Salesforce.com
• SurveyMonkey.com: SurveyMonkey also provides a free basic survey tool which is limited to a total of 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. You can purchase a more advanced tool on a per month basis.
  

Email Marketing Tools

• Content Checker: This free tool will check the content of your email and provide feedback on how you can reduce the chances that it will hit your receipients spam box. They've incorporated SpamAssassin's™ rules.
• EzineCheck: This tool also provides feedback on any issues with your email that will increase the chances that it will be labled as spam.
  

General Marketing Tools

• Give to Get Marketing Calculators: Includes calculators for small businesses to calculate ROI, marketing results, and website visitor value.
• Calculate marketing ROI with the Marketing Lead Calculator: Calculate marketing ROI with this interactive spreadsheet by B2B sales and marketing expert Mac McIntosh. It is designed to help B2B sales and marketing professionals determine the realistic number of marketing touches, inquiries and qualified sales leads needed in order to meet your company's sales revenue objectives.
• Web Page Analyzer: Track how quickly your page loads and provides recommendations on improving page performance.
• ZoomInfo: Looking for contact information for a company? Before spending xxx number of dollars, try using ZoomInfo. It's a service that has collected data on people from information gathered on the internet
  

I hope you enjoyed these. Thanks again to Larry Chase and I encourage everyone to sign up for his newsletter. Let me know if I've missed any great links that should be added.

Chad H.

Tags: paid search, ppc, internet marketing, seo, search engine optimization, search tools, free marketing tools, organic search, ROI marketing tools, Adwords

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Simplify Your Landing Page, Increase Your Conversions

It's really tempting to dump all sorts of tidbits of info on your landing pages to try to convince web visitors to fill out your web forms. However, I test by MarketingExperiments.com demonstrated that a more simplified landing page had a better success rate in their article on ImediaConnection called: Use Single-Column Format and Up Revenue. Not convinced? Check out the stats:



What about blogs? Do you think they have too much garbage content besides the main blog posts? This content is obviously there for a different purpose but does it really add to the blog?

Chad H.

Here are some related posts:

• Why B2B websites fail
• Sealing the Deal: Your Landing Page

Tags: marketingexperiments.com, lead conversion methods, Imedia Connection

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