As you begin to consider marketing or advertising on-line, you may be contemplating which Internet service is best suited to your business needs and which is going to give you the biggest return on your investment. Marketing services currently available over the Internet today can be found on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Go Daddy and a variety of other search engines. When considering marketing your business through any of these sites. some things to take into account are: accessibility, products available, how you want to pay for the services rendered and additional user friendly options. Google’s integration of the services they provide has set the bar, as they have most of their products available to users on one, user friendly, login platform. Further, most other available search engines strive to attain the success of Google as it is the most popular search engine today and many company owners have found it a tried and true means to advertise their business. Even our modern day vernacular reflects the success of Google; when someone thinks to look something up on the World Wide Web – they are likely to say ‘Oh, I’ll just Google that!” In addition, approximately 80% of all searches performed on the Internet occur on Google’s search engine. Some of the products that Google has to offer to small businesses include: Google Adwords, a method by which business owners can narrow advertising to their target market. Google Documents, which allows for editing documents between multiple users. Google Calendar, can also be used by multiple users and also has a sync option for some mobile devices. Google mail or a Gmail accounts are also available at no charge. Due to its superior accessibility, products and service readily available and user friendly applications, most people who specialize in search engine marketing would recommend Google.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to advertising by the use of search engines, where ads are placed within the right margin or at the top of the search results page. Depending on how specifically the text content typed in by a person searching is to the content provided on your website or ad, the more likely you are to appear with the first several listings. Further, depending on how much you are willing to pay to advertise on Google or any search engine, your ad could appear at the top or in the right-hand margin.
When comparing on-line ad pricing you can chose from the following options: Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM); where your add will appear one thousand times, to people who use keywords within their search that match the ones found within your website; or a Cost Per Click (CPC) where you will pay for only the clicks people make on to your listing. CPM advertising, for local advertisers will run $0.10 to $3.00 on average while CPC will average anywhere from $.50 to $5.00 for local advertising. Some things to bear in mind when generating your on-line presence and using these services to advertise are:

• Who is my target audience?
• How many people currently search for my type of service day to day?
• What am I willing to spend to attract people to my business?
• Can I attempt to advertise on my own or would it be more advantageous to hire someone who knows more about search engine marking?

In an effort to maximize your business efforts, you may want to consider hiring such a professional.

Reference: Online Networking > Recruiters, Headhunters and HR Professionals: Social Marketing and Social Networking Experts

We last left off discussing the need to integrate sales and marketing activities to closely collaborate in meeting organization-wide goals. We defined the second goal of these collaborations as facilitating close-to-real-time knowledge by marketers as to what problems and objectives customers are facing. Your sales staff are the first line on inquiry into these insights. They are out in the field with your customer, and see first-hand what problems your customers are facing, what solutions are out there competing with you, what product improvements would take your product from good to indispensible, and what is driving your customer to seek your product or service. If you can collect such information quickly and efficiently, you can always be on-target in terms of your value proposition, in terms of building the closest match between customer problems and your proposed solutions, and in terms of staying ahead of the competition.

There are many effective ways to activate your sales network in getting this information back to your marketing department in a timely, well-organized manner. We can look into these strategies in detail, but first let’s outline what essential questions the salesperson might ask in order to get the most essential nuggets of information.

Essential Questions Salespeople Should Ask for the Benefit of Marketing:

1. What attracted you to our product or service?
2. What is driving you to look for a product or service such as those we offer? (Answers to this question may include the need to drive profit, the need to drive organizational efficiency, the need to eliminate critical mistakes, the need to comply with a government regulation, etc.)
3. More specifically, what problem are you trying to solve? (Answers to this question will be similar to those above, but drive towards a greater specificity, i.e. prospect’s drive is to comply with a particular regulation, and the problem might be that their current QA/QC protocol does not include a tool to check for the disallowed component, which has been found in their product before).
4. If we offer solution X, how close will we be coming to being right on target with what you are looking for?
5. Do you have other solutions in mind?
6. Is this a problem you will need to solve once, or do you foresee changes and a need for extended solution support?
7. Describe the ideal result of a relationship between your organization and ours.

If you can gather this sort of information quickly from the field, you will be well-equipped to adjust marketing strategy to both customer needs and the competition’s behavior. Information about drive to use a product or service such as yours is probably the most essential, as it lets you hone in other prospects that may have the same drive and hopefully gives you insight into where to find them. Understanding particular client problems will allow you to create collateral that makes your prospects feel that you fully understand the challenges they are facing and are well prepared to provide a solution.

Read More…

• Back to Basics Marketing
• Marketing as Company Wide Responsibility
• Mobilization: Reaching Outside the Marketing Department
• Advanced Lead Qualification: Sales and Marketing Work Together
• You Are Here Sales’ Feedback into Marketing: Profiling Prospects and Their Problems
• “Inside Marketing”: Marketing to Your Own Sales Organization
• Developing Unique, Customer-Focused Value Propositions
• How to Train an Entry-Level Marketing Employee
• When Return on Investment Doesn’t Paint a Full Picture
• Defining and Presenting Value Propositions in a Competitive Market
• Logos and Promotional Product Designs for “Difficult” Subjects
• Defining and Refining Value Propositions for Luxury Items
• Evaluating Return-On-Investment (ROI) for Tradeshow Activities
• Management Mistake in Small Business: No Investment during Trying Times

In our discussion of creating strong collaboration between sales and marketing teams, let’s start with strategies for improving Lead Qualification. What is lead qualification? It means assigning a certain lead quality based on several factors including level of interest, whether or not funding is available, the level of compatibility between what the prospect needs and what you provide, and the timeframe in which your product or service is needed. How to most efficiently collect this information from sales? Make it easy for them. Give them a lead qualification form in which they have to assign a number or a percent to each of these considerations, as well as any other lead qualification considerations that may be specific to your industry. Make this form a part of your CRM system, or simply make it the case that every lead has to have the accompanying form in order for the sales rep to be able to collect commission on the lead when it converts. Alternatively, you can assign lead qualification tasks to sales and marketing assistants, who must working closely with the sales team responsible for the lead or leads in question to make sure the lead qualification information is passed on.

When it comes time to put together a quarterly forecast, your job will be about a million times easier when you have this information. By knowing how many of your leads are actually interested (versus just literature seekers or curious people), in what timeframe they see themselves making a purchase, and what their funding status for the purchase is, you will have all the data you need for accurate pipeline forecasting. Example of data collection rubrics will be offered in future posts.

Top Seven Tips for Improving Lead Qualification:

1. Ask direct questions when communicating with a prospect. It’s ok to ask “What timeframe are you looking at for purchase?” or “Does your organization already have funds set aside for the purchase of a product/service of this type?”
2. Also ask direct questions that will help you evaluate whether/how you can best meet the prospect’s needs. Ask what problem they are trying to solve, or what need they are trying to fill. What’s the “business drive?”
3. While direct questions for lead qualification are important, they should not be part of “the push.” Make sure your questions come off as questions, not as pushy sales tactics. You’ll be more likely to get accurate, thoughtful answers.
4. Leads must be qualified in a timely manner. This means that leads must be qualified while the prospect still remembers asking for information or making an inquiry, and before the competition. Depending on your industry, a lead follow-up/qualification time between within one and twenty four hours may be appropriate. This not only puts you ahead of competition, but lets the client know you care to win their business.
5. Provide a standardized lead qualification method throughout your organization. All parties should be qualifying leads based on the same parameters.
6. Listening is an essential part of lead qualification. Aside from the questions you might ask as a standard part of your lead qualification process, it is essential that you include some guidelines and strategies to get the prospect to tell you in detail why they seek a product or service such as yours. People who have the sense they are being listened tend to give more information. If you’re lucky, that information will be just what you need to close the deal.

Early in the process, ask questions to figure out who the stake holders/decision makers are in the prospect’s organization. Is it the person you’re talking to, or are others involved?

Read More…

• Back to Basics Marketing
• Marketing as Company Wide Responsibility
• Mobilization: Reaching Outside the Marketing Department
• You Are Here Advanced Lead Qualification: Sales and Marketing Work Together
• Sales’ Feedback into Marketing: Profiling Prospects and Their Problems
• “Inside Marketing”: Marketing to Your Own Sales Organization
• Developing Unique, Customer-Focused Value Propositions
• How to Train an Entry-Level Marketing Employee
• When Return on Investment Doesn’t Paint a Full Picture
• Defining and Presenting Value Propositions in a Competitive Market
• Logos and Promotional Product Designs for “Difficult” Subjects
• Defining and Refining Value Propositions for Luxury Items
• Evaluating Return-On-Investment (ROI) for Tradeshow Activities
• Management Mistake in Small Business: No Investment during Trying Times