Innovations Insights
How to Cut B2B Marketing Costs and Increase Leads & Sales
“Reducing marketing spending will, in most cases, only make a bad financial situation worse. You can almost never save your way to profitability.”
– Craig Bloem, Inc. 2019
When the market falters or new obstacles cut into your business goals, are you tempted to cut marketing costs? Be careful not to cut your leads and sales as a result:
(If you have little or no marketing to cut, then read my blog: How to Grow Your Way out of Uncertainty)
The right marketing partner is a cost-effective way to control costs without losing the momentum that marketing provides for your sales efforts.
… Continue Reading >>#fail: How to Create Google Pay-Per-Click Campaigns that Pay Off … for Google
A whopping 90% of internet search traffic takes place through the magic of Google, a company so ambitious that it named itself for a mathematical concept that means a number so big we don’t have time to explain it to you.
But that’s no reason not to trust them to help you play the world’s most popular pay-per-click competition, The Game of Google Ads.
This wild bidding war is perfect for the marketer looking to spend as much time and money as possible for results that are as predictable as ripening avocados.
Will your ad strike the right note at the right time with the ripe prospects?
… Continue Reading >>Brand Story & SEO: Increasing Website Conversions
To increase your website’s capacity to generate leads, many often turn to a commissioning new web design. Facelifts can help but only addresses the style of your brand and not its substance.
Savvy marketers know that you can increase traffic to your website with content marketing leveraged by search engine optimization (SEO) and PR to increase leads but that’s only half the battle.
While a creative, professional web design, content marketing, SEO, and PR are all important pieces of the puzzle, converting more website traffic into leads depends more upon how strongly your messaging resonates with prospects.
… Continue Reading >>5 Key Building Blocks of Successful B2B SEO
There are numerous components to search engine optimization (SEO) in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, so how do you know where to start. Here are five key building blocks that, once mastered, will increase traffic for any website by 30-300% or more.
Keyword Rankings
“The power of keyword research lies in better understanding your target market and how they are searching for your content, services, or products.” – Moz
Tracking keyword rankings is central to the success of all SEO activities. Keywords are a leading indicator for lead generation, along with organic search traffic and lead generation. Rank for the wrong keywords, and you will have wasted a lot of time and money.
… Continue Reading >>#fail: How to Write B2B Blogs that Suck
There are a lot of ways to fail at B2B blogging and sometimes we feel as if we have seen them all, but then from out of the blue – and yes, the internet is in fact, mostly blue; we looked it up – will come a daring and original new form of just plain terrible blogging.
But you don’t have to be super creative to fail at B2B blogging. There are plenty of ordinary ways to create B2B blog content that is limp, unreadable, ineffective or that actively repels or offends your prospects.
We’re going to walk you through some of the best ways to accomplish all of those things,
… Continue Reading >>B2B Messaging Under Duress: 3 Recommendations for Managing COVID-19 Communications
Your clients have a lot of things to worry about right now. First of course, is protecting the health and safety of their employees and others around them.
But while that’s the priority, the economic risks are hard to separate from our other worries right now. Your clients, like all of us, are navigating the health threat while also scrambling to keep it from spilling over into a threat to their businesses.
How do you communicate with them without simply adding to the noise, or worse – creating the impression that you put profits ahead of public health?
Here are three recommendations on how to communicate with your customers or prospective customers during this crisis:
Share the State of Your Operations
Your customers need to know if there are changes to your capacity or availability.
… Continue Reading >>B2B Storytelling that Cuts Through the Clutter
In a world full of countless, noisy marketing messages vying for our attention from a multiplying list of platforms, many companies mistakenly try to compete with messaging that is louder. HEY! LOOK AT US, LOOK AT WHAT WE CAN DO!
Meanwhile, your prospects are struggling to figure out whether you are a good fit for helping them do what they do. Hey, look over here! Look at what we need…
Brand Story marketing, adapted from sources like Donald Miller’s book, Building a StoryBrand and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, reframes the traditional view of marketing, placing the customer at the center of the message rather than the company.
… Continue Reading >>5 Common Mistakes Made by Content Marketing Agencies
Content marketing is the foundation of inbound lead generation. When part of a strategic marketing plan leveraged with search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing can dramatically increase thought leadership, inbound lead generation, revenue and profits.
Effective content marketing can generate ROI of at least 300% within 9-18 months, sometimes sooner. Unfortunately, ineffective content marketing is more common, can cost several thousand per month and may only result in a handful of leads. How can you tell the good from the bad so you don’t waste a lot of time and money?
Here are five common mistakes made by content marketing agencies, and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Content in a VacuumAny content marketing agency who guarantees they can boost your online ranking with content alone is telling you a tired story.
… Continue Reading >>What Goes Into B2B Marketing Blogging?
In order to turn blogging into a lead generating machine for our business-to-business (B2B) clients, a lot goes into every single blog post and web page that we create.
For the vast majority of our clients, weekly blogging can turn into gains of over $100,000 in new business per year.
Recipe for Success
Here’s the recipe for a successful B2B marketing and lead generation effort:
- We thoroughly research all relevant keywords (usually at least 700) and prioritize the top 1, 3, 10 keywords to focus all content generation, organic search and paid search initiatives
- We evaluate our client’s website to see how all existing content can be optimized so they get a lot more lead generation from what they already have,
The B2B Marketing Opportunity
Aimless acts of marketing, neither strategic nor holistic, have cost companies selling business-to-business (B2B) millions in missed leads, revenue and profits – not to mention the cost of these failed marketing services.
Seeing the need for B2B marketing that generates results, we launched Innovaxis Marketing Consulting in January 2007. During the recession and subsequent (tepid) economic recovery, Innovaxis has increased client website traffic and lead generation by 300% on average. And it costs nothing because it usually pays for itself in 6-9 months, sometimes sooner. Here’s how…
Marketing = Macro Sales
We believe that the essence of marketing ultimately boils down to strategy and execution. Successful marketing makes it easy for you and your sales reps to get in front of new prospective clients and sell with a shorter sales cycle.
… Continue Reading >>