How to come up with a "big idea" for a PR campaign, ensure you have the right content kit to drive traffic to your website and landing page that drives conversions

1. 6
Steps to boost your prospect
funnel and sales conversion rate
…with truly integrated B2B marketing campaigns
November 2013
@HelenMcI
uk.linkedin.com/in/helenmcinnes

2. Agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
How can you ensure marketing and sales are
aligned to meet your business objectives in
competitive B2B marketplace?
What are the key ingredients for success for
an integrated marketing campaign?
Inspiration
What can you do to increase website landing
page customer conversions?
How can you showcase your key solutions on
your homepage?
Credibility
What should you think about when choosing
a CMS?
How to measuring sales funnel and
conversion success
Timing
2

3. It’s a competitive marketplace…

It’s a more challenging and competitive
marketplace than ever before:


The rate at which large companies lose
industry leadership has doubled over the last
four decades (Source: Deloitte)
Companies need to show thought
leadership, innovation and a differentiated
value proposition via their website, events
& webinars, research, media coverage and
sales outreach to achieve growth
66% of the buying process is complete before
sales reps are engaged (Source: Sirius
Decisions)
 The average B2B IT buyer needs to consume
five pieces of content before they are ready to
speak to sales (Source: IDG Enterprise Customer

Engagement Research, 2012)
3

4. What marcoms needs from sales…
To work together collaboratively and interactively:
 Strategically engaging with customers to better
understand issues and needs
 Updates on customer prospects, wins, losses and
the drivers
What sales needs from marcoms…
Enablement of strategic contextual selling:

More focus on emerging industry trends, customer pain points, plus a clearly
differentiated value proposition and less focus on the company’s brand

Integrated campaigns that generate and nurture leads and opportunities
 An engaging homepage that showcases key areas of focus for the business
that month/quarter
 Online PR campaigns combined with landing pages and follow-up content
(white papers, webinars, eBooks) that provide real insight and value to the
customer

Actionable intelligence that enables sales to act on moments of opportunity
 Real-time delivery of breaking news, market and customer insights
4

5. Delivering sales-ready leads
5

6. The “big idea” approach to integrated marketing
uPOV
Unique
perspective on
a key consumer
or industry
issue
Credibility
Data
points, customer
examples +
innovative &
differentiated
solution
A relevant landing page on
your website featuring
additional content
Timing
A “news trigger”
(research report +
press release tied to relevant
government/industry news or a
company event)
High
impact
comms
6

7. Online PR content kit








Keyword phrases
SEO optimised press
release*
SEO optimised
image(s)*
Research report
Infographic
Video blog
Blog posts
Tweets about:
Relevant landing page
The press release
 Coverage
 Comments on other
relevant news


News jacking:

Injecting your news
into an emerging story
*See my separate SEO secrets: six easy steps
to building inbound marketing momentum
presentation
7

8. Create a great landing page

Focus the whole page on a single message, with a single Call to Action (CTA) above the fold
with a button that stands out (e.g. orange, green or blue work well)


Answer the next, immediate unanswered question in the visitor’s mind

Include a testimonial (or several in a scrolling carousel)

Use images or videos to describe your product or service


Include the benefit of the offer to the use in the headline
Use the second person (“you” and “your” rather than “we” and “us”). Use action
language that focuses on benefits
Reduce navigation options. Use modal dialogs for additional info (e.g. T&Cs, privacy
policy, product details) rather than diverting people to your website
8

9. Landing page SEO
Meta
description:
Learn the 3
secrets to
Mary’s
awardwinning
chocolate
donuts, get
times &
locations for
availability,
and learn
how to
make
donuts at
home
URL: http://marysbakery.com/chocolate-donuts
Search crawlers can
determine the site’s
canoncial version (main
domain)
Like/Tweet/+1
sharing buttons
3 key
benefits
or
attributes
Clear
layout,
simple
design &
solid visuals
The page includes an
authorship, enticing
meta description and
schema mark-up for
recipes
Primary and
secondary keyword
phrases in
headline, title +
content
Responsive design:
looks good on any
device, screen size
or browser

10. Lead generation forms

Balance the amount of information requested with the perceived value
of the item being given in return (report, eBook etc.)

Break up the content into multiple steps - when visitors to make small
commitments, they’re more likely to complete the transaction
 E.g. ask for an email address in step one and an email addresses in
step 2 (instead of on the landing page)

Use progressive profiling to collect prospect information over time
10

11. Test variants

Marketers who see conversion rates >5%
33% = those who test
 12% = those that don’t test


Test:
Headlines
 Call-To-Action
 Form layout
 Body layout


You need >10 conversion actions per day for even a basic A/B
split test. Below that, too many variables will influence results
Average across obvious sampling biases (day-of-week, time-of-day)
 Schedule around any known seasonal trends or important industry
events or other, unrelated company/product announcements
 Don't change your marketing mix during data collection

11

12. Homepages matter for campaigns too
FORTUNE
Websites

Showcasing you campaigns on your homepage is vitally important to
capture leads from direct traffic:




63% of companies have content (and not just navigation) above the fold
50% feature a scrolling content window (i.e. a “featured stories carousel”
showcasing current campaigns)
70% use Favicon (i.e. short-cut) icons
Average loading time is 6.5 secs and average size is 766kb
Source: www.moosylvania.com/blog/web-design-by-the-numbers-homepages-of-the-fortune-500/
12

13. Homepage page best practices
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Page width: Average website
width is 877 pixels
Logo: 93% of Fortune 500
companies had their logos in
the top left-hand corner
Tagline: 27% of logos include a
tagline or slogan
Background: 80% use a light
background and colour
scheme
87% have a search field
6. 47% include a call-to-action button users see in <3 seconds
7. 60% of companies feature their latest news and blog posts on their homepage
8. Contact info should be clearly displayed
9. More than 80% don’t have a newsletter sign-up feature on their homepage
10. Only 11% of companies have social media links above the fold and 89% below
Source: www.moosylvania.com/blog/web-design-by-the-numbers-homepages-of-the-fortune-500/
13

14. Content Management System

A good CMS:
Makes creating campaign
landing pages and
updating the “featured
stories” carousel on your
homepage easy
 Provides a WYSIWYG
(What You See Is What
You Get) interface for
non-technical
editors/contributors
 Provides layout modules
to create different pages
(Too often users get lost
on a site because all of
the pages look the same)
 Supports refactoring or
redesign for mobile sites

14

15. Measurement

Measure what matters
 Prospect pipeline + flow through the sales funnel,
volume/calibre of leads & impact
on selling cycles and close rates

Attribution analysis
 Online press coverage and
social media often play an
assistive selling role (i.e. they may not directly translate into the
immediate sale, but they are the vital first step to raise awareness
about a product in a multi-step conversion process)

Quality of traffic rather than quantity matters
 A single piece of online press coverage from 3 years ago can still
deliver visitors (albeit in small numbers)
 It’s important to know if those visitors return for via a second or third
visit via other channels (e.g. PPC, social media, etc) and buy
something
15

16. Google analytics dashboard
1. Measure how many people visited
your website

The number unique
visitors and visits (the
number of sessions they create)
2. Where do they come from
(News sites? Twitter? Blogs?
PPC? Search?) Look at the:
 Traffic Sources > Sources >
Referrals report to see all
sources
 Traffic Sources > Sources >
Social > Network Referrals report to see the social campaign impact
 Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic to see keywords that people
have used on the search engines

Google blocks results for web users logged into Gmail, G+ and other services and the source
appears as “not provided”. Segment this data and look for increasing traffic and conversions
to the pages you are optimising. Even though you don’t know the keywords, if organic traffic
is increasing to these landing pages, chances are your online PR/SEO efforts are working
16

17. Google analytics dashboard
2. Measure where people
come from

Segment the data according to
individual referring sites. Filter
results using the
Dimension/Metric tool

If the majority of your web
referral traffic is coming from a
certain online industry
mag, focus on securing more
interviews, mentions & backlinks
in that title

Use Google Analytics Campaign
Tracking and Link Tagging if you
need more detail on traffic
sources
17

18. Google analytics dashboard
3. Measure engagement

Use the Audience > Behaviour >
Frequency & Recency report to measure
the frequency of visits, the recency
(amount of time between visits)

Audience > Behaviour > Engagement.
Page Depth is a useful as a metric to see
how deep into the site do people go

Keep track of the bounce rate (how
many people land on your site and
immediately leave after viewing just the
landing page)

Content > Site Content > All Page report
to view which pages on the site get the most traffic and people are
interested in
18

19. Google analytics dashboard
4. Measure outcomes


Conversions >
Multi-Channel Funnels >
Assisted Conversions (or
Top Conversion Paths)


Find out
which channel assisted in a
conversion (e.g. social media,
email or a news site referral
Audience > Visitors Flow


Did you get more webinar/
newsletter sign-ups,
white paper downloads,
leads + sales?
Track where visitors are first coming to your site and what interactions they
have with it along the way to eventually buying a product/signing up for a
webinar/newsletter etc.
Conversions > Goal Flow

Track a specific campaign goal like newsletter or event signups
19

20. Google analytics dashboard

Use Custom
Reports or
Custom
Dashboards to
aggregate all of
the information
that is useful

Create an
automated
email to receive
the dashboard
every day

21. Other proxy measures

What about offline/print/broadcast
media?


Track if there was an increase in unique visitors
to the site or an influx of traffic that day or the
day after
Track links
 Use Google’s URL Builder to create vanity URLs
to track visits from news
releases, handouts, events, QR codes etc.
Assess what’s working well &
do more of it
21

22. Summary
22

23. Stay in touch
Find more useful tips at:
www.slideshare.net/HelenMcI2
www.scribd.com/HelenMcI
Connect with me at:
uk.linkedin.com/in/helenmcinnes
@HelenMcI
Thanks for your time…
23

24. Useful resources



Web design
 Bowen Crags/FT Website
Effectiveness Index
SEO
 MOZ
 Hubspot
Google Analytics
 Attend the free Google Analytics Academy
 Read relevant blogs:
 Justin Cutroni
 Andrew Bruce Smith (provides training for the CIPR on
Google Analytics for PR)
 AvinashKaushik
24

25. 6
Steps to boost your prospect
funnel and sales conversion rate
…with truly integrated B2B marketing campaigns
November 2013
@HelenMcI
uk.linkedin.com/in/helenmcinnes