Business-to-Business Email Marketing Strategy

Everyone loves super powers, right? What if I told you I could get a certain number of people to do my bidding at this very minute? Well, it's true. It only works about 20% of the time, but it works. You see...I have an email marketing strategy. I can send people to wherever I want on the Internet with one simple email.

Imagine if you had this power! Where would you send people? What would you ask them to do? Today, because you're here at Big Picture Web, we're going to cover the basics of business-to-business email marketing so that you and I will both have the super power of email marketing strategies.

Business-to-Business Email Marketing Strategy. No Paper Required.

If having super powers doesn't entice you to start business-to-business email marketing, maybe talking about the economy might help. Look, print is hurting. Print sales dropped nearly 30% in the first quarter of 2009. Newspapers are going out of business left and right. In this economy, the only paper we can truly count on for revenue is when our customers decide to pay in cash. Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun. No one is saying to stop print advertising altogether. It's more of an all-your-eggs-in-a-basket thing. And really, it's mostly about just having super powers.

Imagine an Email Marketing Strategy

Now we're going to imagine something wonderful. Let's say you have these super powers of business-to-business email marketing. And let's also say there are 50,000 people in your domain (again with the puns!) each month over whom you have this super power. What do you want those 20% who respond to you to do? Being the benevolent force of stewardship and goodwill for your company that you are, you would surely do things that were mutually beneficial for you and the customer. It could mean 10,000 folks looking at your offers. Or 10,000 relationships fostered. Or 10,000 business partners' questions answered. These are the powers of email marketing strategies at hand.

Business-to-Business Email Marketing Strategy. Using Your Powers.

In honing your email marketing strategy powers, you'll need to master three things:

1. Your email list is at the core of your powers. It is your audience, your denominator for all efforts. You may need to exert a little effort at first to ensure your email marketing strategy consists of a list of opted-in subscribers and adheres to the CAN-SPAM Act guidelines. But once you do, you'll have a large audience that's in tune with your message.
2. Next, you integrate this list with your Websites and email servers. You can either do these things in-house, through a vendor, or a mixture of both. Folks like Constant Contact and iContact can get you up and running in no time. You even get a Sign-up box to put on your Website to encourage even more people to join your happy audience (Ahem. You'll notice it over to the right-hand side of the screen. I'll wait here while you fill in your info.)
3. Finally, your business-to-business email marketing powers come through in the form of a stellar process. Have measurable goals. Go through all the right steps. Use best practices. It should end up looking something like this:

Email Marketing Strategies on the Cheap

In addition to being very effective, an email marketing strategy is familiar, cheap and low-risk. Now that's a good investment in these times, right? Even for someone with super powers.

• Familiar. An email marketing strategy is just a combination of email and your marketing strategy. Most of the regular elements (target, focused objectives, brand positioning) are the same as usual. There are just a few tags and .pngs thrown in for good measure. You'll be familiar in no time.
• Cheap. The aforementioned Constant Contact allows unlimited emails sent with packages starting at $15/month. Yep.
• Low-risk. Business-to-business email marketing doesn't require a huge service agreement or lengthy implementation. You can be up-and-running within days and always have the option to take your data and go elsewhere at a moment's notice.

Business-to-Business Email Marketing Strategy. The Greatest Power of All.

Best of all, email marketing strategies give you the power of knowledge. How do I know that you can get 20% of people to respond? Because other companies have Email Marketing Success Rates. That's right. You can track how many people receive and open your emails, as well as if they clicked on any links. You can also tie in your Web Analytics platform (e.g., Google Analytics) to see if they bought anything when they got to your site. You have the power to know these things down to the penny. It's no wonder 75% of business-to-business marketers have email marketing strategies.

And so are you ready to use your super powers? Ready to have your message resonate with a verifiable 20% of your audience? Ready to do it on the cheap and with a close watch on the details? Oh yeah, and don't forget to sign up for the website over on the right-hand side of your screen.

What tips or comments do you have about business-to-business email marketing or email marketing strategy in general?

How to Increase Website Traffic with Search Engine Optimization

You have the impossible task. You've been told that this is the year that you need to do more than ever. You have to get more sales, increase Website traffic and perform a verifiable miracle with last year's budget. Did I say last year's budget? I meant 90% of last year's budget. If all of this seems impossible, I assure you it's not. We can begin to address these challenges by answering one simple question, "What does SEO stand for?"

What Does SEO Stand for? Part I.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of getting your Website to appear higher in the search engines' results pages and ultimately increase Website traffic for a given search keyword phrase. Sounds easy, right? Don't worry. We'll get to how to do it in a minute, but for right now, let's discuss why it's important.

Articles on SEO, but what about Search?

Other articles on SEO often breeze past a critical point when talking about SEO: search engines! There are now 15 billion searches performed each month on the main search engines. Users performed 9.5 billion Google searches in April '09 alone. And in all of those searches are people trying to find information about you, your products and how to buy them. Do you know how much search traffic you're getting from these folks or how much you could be getting? Are you doing your part to find them? To bring the proverbial horse to the water? Your competitor is. Guaranteed. They've read articles on SEO and have probably even hired SEO agencies. And here we are: "What does SEO stand for?" There's no time to spare. Read on for a crash course in SEO.

What Does SEO Stand for? Part II.

Now that we're all headed in the same direction, let's do it. Let's actually increase Website traffic through SEO. Some of what comes next is technical, but don't worry. I've placed links to additional resources in the margins of this Web page. With the start you're getting here at Big Picture Web and the next steps you could take by buying the resources mentioned, you'll conquer the learning curve in no time. Ultimately, it's simply a matter of having an SEO-focused content creation process, having plenty of links to your site and architecting your site to be search-engine-friendly. Let's discuss these three steps.

Increase Website Traffic in Three Steps

1. Have a content creation process.  People use specific search "keyword phrases" to find things on the Web (e.g., "flights to MSP" or "dental equipment"). You should know what these keyword phrases are for your business and then jump at any organized opportunity to include these words in the actual text and images of your Website. Write product descriptions, blogs, articles, about us pages and everything else with "dental equipment" somehow baked into the words of the pages. This is what the articles on SEO will tell you to do to increase Website traffic. Get it? Notice the bolded phrases from two sentences ago. Now do you get it? Once you've done a little homework, you can set up a process that looks like this:
2. Have plenty of links to your site.  The best way to describe why links are important is this. Imagine that Google is looking out into a crowd of Websites trying to determine which should be the first one presented when someone searched for a particular keyword phrase. The Website with its hand raised highest will be the one selected. Every link from another Website is like a tiny leg-up to help your site gain some visibility. The site with the most links towers over the rest in Google's eyes, which will earn it the top spot in search results for the keyword phrases you're targeting. You'll want to build links to your site by creating link-worthy content, asking your business partners to link to your site and encouraging customers to link to you as well. Do this and increase Website traffic, you will!
3. Get your technical team involved.  SEO requires that your website be built on a specific foundation. This foundation includes creating an appropriate navigation structure and addressing how the individual lines of HTML, Javascript and CSS are arranged on the Website. (Please don't assume that your technical team knows all this. Encourage them to reference articles on SEO or resources listed in the margins.)

What does SEO stand for? Part III.

Once you get some links built up and have a process in place on an optimized website, you'll see that SEO is an easy process to implement and track. You'll increase Website traffic regularly and spend less and less time (and money!) doing so. The increase in traffic will in turn lead to more sales and you'll be the hero. See? It wasn't impossible.

Business Internet Strategy - Two Reasons to Start

If you're still only doing traditional marketing and advertising, you're probably starting to get a little stressed out, right? Times are tight. Budgets are thin. Advertising spending in the U.S. has dropped by 4.1% in 2008. Magazine advertising is down by 7.5%. Newspapers are down 11.8%. The only place where spending increased in 2008 was Online, which experienced 4.6% growth. Either companies are having success only here or trying to throw together an approach to Internet marketing for business. Either way, what's your business' Internet strategy?

Internet Marketing for Business

Internet marketing for business is becoming the norm for smart marketers these days. E-mail campaigns, social media, affiliate marketing, Google AdWords (pay-per-click advertising), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)...these tactics and more are all part of the new media mix. What's the big deal? There are two fantastic reasons to dip your toes in the waters of Internet marketing.

Measure your Business' Internet Strategy

The first check in the "pro" column for a business Internet strategy is the ability to measure it. You can track costs and revenue down to the penny using free tools like Google Analytics. Whether you want to gain subscriptions, leads or sales, Internet marketing for business can be tracked. And if you can track it, you can improve performance and meet goals. Everyone loves reporting solid numbers to the company brass, especially in down economies.

Big Results with Little Investment

The second boon to Internet marketing for business is the bang for the buck. There's no need for the big tools of yore. The aforementioned Google Analytics installs in just five minutes and can provide insights to everyone from the Webmaster to the marketer to the designer. It's free. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are also free and very much a part of internet marketing for business. Constant Contact will run your entire e-mail marketing campaign and even teach you how to incorporate e-mail marketing into your business' Internet strategy for $15 a month. You get the picture. You can access insights to drive your business forward for little to nothing.

What other compelling reasons can you think of to start the ball rolling on your business' Internet strategy?