23b4 My Educated Guess – Technology Marketing Answers – TechTarget.com » search

Archive for the "search" Category

‘Like’ Me - The Era of Engagement

June 6th, 2011 | Pegah Kamal

A colleague of mine and I recently had the pleasure of presenting to the entire TechTarget client consulting team about how online advertising has changed over the last 2 decades- ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’.  The objective was to raise awareness and further educate the team about the evolution of online advertising, understand the various influences that impact the market’s direction and explore new paths of creativity.  Through my research we noticed a common theme or trigger that seemed to be part of the root cause of all these changes and developments of innovative ads and online tools/resources.  The driving force is the very same person reading this blog post.  That’s right, the consumer.

I’m sure you’re thinking, well duh.  But start digging deeper into all the new innovations and realize just how ‘under the consumer influence’ marketers have been and you will really appreciate how far digital media has come in just under 2 decades.   Another key point drawn from our research, is that as online ads continue to evolve at a rapid pace, that it’s important for us as digital marketers to remember that the ‘IT  Pro / Consumer Will Always Be One Step Ahead’.  This notion presents all marketers with the opportunity to push the digital media industry even further in every aspect, from innovative online ads to new online tracking applications (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, etc.) and social sharing abilities (Add This, Share This, etc.) or as one of my colleagues, Ben Bradley, refers to in his recent blog ‘Socializing’.

We’ve already seen adaption of new online tools, such as social widgets, that are used to consume and share information, which has further developed a new breed of digital consumers and brand evangelists. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about ‘Like’ Button Follow Web Users, these widgets not only make it easier “to share content with friends and help attract visitors”, these widgets are a “potentially powerful way to track internet users.”  We’ve gone from a time of CPM, Open Rates, CTR, CPC to the era of CPE, cost per engagement or what is also known as CPA cost per action.

These more robust engagement metrics have allowed marketers to gather what TechTarget identifies as Activity Intelligence and has influenced the way marketers communicate their message and get users to engage with their brand on a new level.  Now in my last blog post, The Power of Customer Intelligence, I discussed leveraging customer intelligence from a high level, so I think it’s time we take it a step further.  What happens when you take the core of customer intelligence (behavior, demographics and basic activity- clicks and downloads) and add it with all this robust rich media engagement activity (time in ad, % viewed, # of tweets or shares)?

You now get a more refined set of marketing programs that are purely focused on user engagement, which provides greater insight into the behaviors and thought processes of a potential buyer or prospect.

Already out in the digital space we are seeing these new programs come to fruition.  You can find examples in the ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’ presentation, in the Things Your Mother Doesn’t Even Know About section.  These examples showcase three different types of engagement ads that take users beyond the click and immerse them with an interactive brand experience.

Overall, the era of engagement is an exciting place for all marketers to be in.  We’ve already begun to see the influence this new breed of consumers has had on the digital ad space.  And with every innovative interactive ad, comes a new set of metrics that provides marketers with a more robust set of activity intelligence. The combination of the two is pushing marketers to look beyond the click and make us venture onto new paths of creativity.  This will sure be an amazing trip and something tells me we are just scratching the surface of what is yet to come.

Tweet This

2236

Posted in search, Lead-Gen Strategies, Integrated Media, Social media, Activity Intelligence | Post or View Comments (0)

Avoid the obstacles — adopt social media marketing in your company

May 20th, 2011 | Sandra Sandoval

A recent BtoB study titled “Emerging Trends in B-to-B Social Media Marketing: Insights From the Field,” indicates that 93% of b2b marketers are engaged to some extent in social media marketing.  Twenty-six percent of respondents to BtoB’s survey cited LinkedIn as their most important social channel, followed by Facebook (20%), blogging (19%), customer communities (14%) and YouTube (7%).

Survey participants indicated that social sites are useful overall in supporting branding efforts, although different channels are considered to have their own unique strengths. LinkedIn, for example, was cited primarily for supporting lead generation.  Facebook was considered strong in promoting products and events.  Twitter was noted for its website traffic-building qualities.

With all this activity around social media marketing, companies should take advantage of using this media vehicle to aid with their overall branding and lead generation efforts, however some companies do come across obstacles when trying to adopt this strategy.   The B2b study then went on to explain three major obstacles seen when trying to adopt social media marketing in their company.  The single most pressing obstacle was due to “lack of resources,” cited by 70% of survey respondents.  Other hurdles uncovered were that 57% of respondents cited “poorly defined success metrics and key performance indicators” as preventing them from adopting this strategy in their organization.  Lastly, 44% indicated that “lack of knowledge about social media” was holding them and their companies back from adoption.

Social media is said to be one of the most powerful influencers on buyer behavior, and is “poised for hyper-growth,” according to B2B online.  According to a 2011 Social Media Marketing Trends blog post on Webbiquity, just 5% of Americans said they were familiar with Twitter in 2008; by the Fall of 2010, that figure was up to 87%, and Twitter is now adding 300,000 new users per day.  Facebook also added more than 150 million new users in 2010.

Has your company adopted social media marketing?   What are you waiting for?

Posted in Technology marketing, search, Integrated Media, Best practices, Social media | Post or View Comments (0)

Blogging as a form of nurturing

May 6th, 2011 | Sandra Sandoval

Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership amongst both current and prospective clients.  In a recent TechTarget Media Consumption Benchmark Report titled, “Closing the Gap between IT Buyers and IT Marketers,” this report uncovered that marketers and IT buyers find that information from unbiased sources (like blogs, online communities, and social networks) are more useful during the awareness and consideration stages of the buying process.  What better time to get in front of prospective buyers researching technology solutions than now?

Blogs could even be considered yet another vehicle in which organizations use to nurture  prospects with information needed to help them get closer to make a purchasing decision.   If your organization has not entered the world of blogging, now might be a good time to pursue this initiative, but before you do, make sure your blog content is worthy of attracting and keeping loyal followers.

A recent blog post from March 2010 titled, “5 Ways to Write a Killer B2B Blog post” talks about key strategies for writing blog posts, like making a list.  These are very effective in that they are easily scanned and readers know exactly what they are getting when they read further.  Examples I would suggest to come of my clients would include posts titled, “Ten Signs That You Need a Server,”  “Top 10 Reasons for a Server Refresh,” and “Five Best Practices to Optimize Server Infrastructure Costs with Virtualization.”  Other tips include playing off current events like a recent technology conference / trade show, or even leveraging someone else’s thoughts.

While this doesn’t cover every concept that could be used for a B2B blogging strategy, these are just some ideas that have proven to be successful for organizations.  Has your organization entered the Blogosphere, and what is your strategy?

Posted in Blogroll, search, Podcasts, Blogs & Video, Integrated Media, Social media 2487 | Post or View Comments (0)

Nurture your leads with success using an intelligent messaging program

March 30th, 2011 | Sandra Sandoval

It seems every technology company has their own processes established for lead follow-up.  Some companies employ a team to pre-qualify leads before being passed on to Sales.  Other companies route all of their leads directly to Sales for immediate follow-up.  Then there’s the concept of email nurturing.   A recent article titled, Lead Nurturing: The New Tech Marketing Frontier talks about how to build a lead nurturing program that will deliver results.  This involves an active process of targeting the prospect with messaging that is relevant and consistent.

Great content is also key to a successful nurturing program – according to the article, “it should be educational in nature, promote thought leadership, and go deep.  Great content gets responses and gets you invited into deeper conversations with prospects.”  You want to persuade your leads to take next steps that create transitions forward in their buying journey.  Naturally, you should have appropriate content that speaks to prospects at every phase of the decision making process.

I always recommend to clients based on experience that having an intelligent content strategy means having content available that speaks to users in all phases of the buy cycle.  This means you need to have content that’s classified into the following three buckets – Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.  The key to successful email nurturing is to message prospects with content that will lead them further along the buy cycle.  For example, take a prospect early on in doing their research – they downloaded an Awareness piece of content. The appropriate next step is to offer up content that may speak to actual product comparisons, for example.

One of my clients, AMD, currently has a Custom Activity Nurturing program in place with TechTarget.  Their strategy originally began with the simple principle of nurturing prospects with content based on respondent’s purchase timeframe responses. So for example, if a prospect said their purchase timeframe was “immediate,” we messaged them with content that late-phase product-oriented.  Click through rates seen were about average in terms of what we saw across other Custom Activity Nurturing programs, right at around a 2.44% CTR.

AMD has since renewed that program, but made a slight tweak to how the nurturing works.  We incorporated a new custom question into their mix, asking prospects if they are open to considering solutions from another vendor.  If the prospect answered yes, we messaged them with “Decision” content (example: “AMD Opteron 6000 Series Platform and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Platform for Next Generation of Smart IT”).  If the prospect answered “maybe,” they were messaged with “consideration” content (example: “Frequently Asked Questions about Virtualization and the Microsoft/AMD Solution”).  If the prospect answered “no,” we then looked at how they responded to the purchase timeframe question, and messaged similar to how we did in Phase I of their program. This program saw a dramatic increase in the CTR seen from re-messaging emails sent after the change had been made, with the CTR increasing to 3.39% CTR.

If your organization is currently brainstorming ways to fine-tune your nurturing strategy, consider putting in place a program similar to how AMD is messaging their prospects. This is great way to persuade your leads to take the next steps that create transitions forward in their buying journey!

Posted in search, Measurement, lead nurturing | Post or View Comments (0)

Let actual CIO behavior train your technology marketing

February 2nd, 2010 | Chris Olive

The closest we can get you to actually standing over the shoulder of an IT buyer as they research technology business solutions, is our latest Google/TechTarget behavioral research study on the enterprise technology buying process.

But on February 11 at the Google offices in NYC, we’re taking it one step further and inviting you to join us and Google in-person to analyze and discuss the results with your marketing peers.

You already know from our first Google research study that search engines, IT publishers, along with specific titles, topics and content types generate the most interest — This behavioral phase of the research demonstrates that CIOs view more pages of search results, use keyword queries including “solution” more, and demonstrate more willingness to provide their telephone numbers than less senior IT buyers, directors or administrators.

The full conversation’s agenda will center around three main areas: Lead generation in technology marketing, advanced social media marketing for thought leadership and ROI measurement, and the new Google/TechTarget behavioral research project results.

This promises to be a great opportunity to discuss the implications with your peers and ask the analysts for further insight and how they see this playing out in actual Google and TechTarget campaigns, so I hope you’ll be able to make it into the city for a day to join us.

All enterprise technology marketers are welcome to attend; you can apply today at, http://www.techtarget.com/googletechtargetroadshow

We look forward to seeing you there…

1fab

Posted in Research, Technology marketing, search, Midmarket CIO Marketing, Social media, Lead generation | Post or View Comments (0)

Don’t Let Organic Search Leads Fall by the Wayside

January 28th, 2010 | Richard Trussell

As we enter 2010 and online marketing strategies are getting even more targeted, IT marketers forget about the importance of nurturing organic search leads versus their targeted leads.  Marketers are concerned with only promoting to a certain audience and utilizing leads that are from email list promotions.  Late stage leads that are further down the buying cycle with the shortest time to sale are seen as the best opportunity for ROI, and marketers think the best way to gain these leads is through email promotions.

Yet, it is becoming difficult for consumers to reach the end of the buying stage and decide on that final purchase.  With the economy slowly turning around, decisions on purchasing are going to be even more scrutinized in order to ensure that it is the correct move for the future.  Decision makers need to make sure they do all the proper research before deciding what products and solutions are going to provide the best ROI.

At the same time, web content is becoming available and consumers are demanding relevant and personalized search results in order to not waste their time and make sure they are researching the right content.  In return, this means that search engines will be looking for even more relevant and personalized content from publishers and brands.

Even mobile marketing and social media has a major effect on SEO as consumers become more tech savvy and use different applications to search for the content they want.  Tag words, tweeting, and Facebook messaging all play a role in where people search for content, and they can do it right from their phone or computer.

With all this in mind, IT marketers need to make sure they do not forget about organic search leads as they play a vital role in researching and purchasing products.  Finding the quickest, and most useful way to search information from anywhere in the world is going to have a major role on consumers and how they intake and download data.  Sometimes these contacts are more qualified leads versus a targeted lead because they are actively researching for content and are more interested than someone who is part of an email promotion.

Posted in search, Lead quality | Post or View Comments (1)

0