Sharpening The Saw Ends In Spider Webs

An old mentor of mine has always preached that life is a journey and that you need to constantly "keep your saw sharp", implying that periodically you need to pick your head up from the grindstone and learn about evolving strategies, trends and techniques. Given the incredible pace in which options for marketing promotions [Kotler's P #4] are evolving, his advice is an absolute requirement to be effective.


Over the last couple of months [mostly between Xmas and New Years] I did a deep dive into the most current thinking on SEM and SEO. Gotta love Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Experiments, vendor white papers and easy access to thousands of online opinions. Well, it was encouraging to see that the techniques we have been using at IQ are current and in some cases "leading edge". We have moved beyond focused website optimization and scoring, landing page testing, conversion tracking and lead nurturing.


I see one 'gap' in current online practices.....current B2B approaches seem to be focused on either Instant Gratification or Long-term Nurturing. There is very little attention on the step after Instant Gratification but before actual sales team engagement. For IQ, given our sales cycle, a sales person is always involved in the purchasing process. So, let's compare a Typical B2B Lead Capture Best Practise (current IQ approach) to what I will call a Spider Web (potential IQ approach).


Typical B2B Lead Capture Best Practise

• Marketing campaign run [online / offline]
• Prospect is sent to a landing page with analytics tracking
• Landing page has a focused call-to-action (CTA)
• Prospect enters their information
• Prospect information is added to CRM system [lead scoring may happen]
• [Instant Gratification]
• Screen shows a "thank-you somebody will be in-touch" message
• The End

An Alternative Spider Web Approach

• Marketing campaign run [online / offline]
• Prospect is sent to a landing page with analytics tracking
• Landing page has a focused call-to-action (CTA)
• Prospect enters their information
• Prospect information is added to CRM system [lead scoring may happen]
• [Enter The Spider Web]
• Screen shows a "thank-you" message + contextually relevant additional information for the user to click-on / learn more about
• The End

What's the big difference between Spider Webs versus Typical B2B Lead Capture Best Practises? Maybe the following points can illustrate them:

1. When a prospect lands on a landing page, the message is tuned to where they are coming from (i.e. what campaign were they targeted with? what keyword did they click on?)

2. Once they have entered their information into your online capture form, you have additional knowledge of who they are (i.e. role, organization size, geography, etc.).

3. With this additional information, contextual content can be presented, engaging the prospect to learn more and to be better informed, ideally accelerating the sales cycle once the sales person speaks to them. For example, a person that self-identifies themselves as working for a manufacturing company, will be presented with a manufacturing specific case study.

Spider Webs are nothing more than a concept of mine but I feel strongly that success comes to those who innovate [and work bloody hard]. My IQ team still needs to refine how we implement and test the Spider Web concept, but the bottom-line goal is increasing the efficiency of our marketing campaigns. Test data will quickly identify whether it is a worthwhile concept or not.

Google - the amazing perpetual revenue engine

Google is truly an amazing revenue generator. In the last six months, our PPC advertising costs on select key-words have risen almost 300%. So, in order for a specific key-word to show on the first page of search results in positions 3 - 10 we are now paying $3.50 per click versus ~$1.20 in July 2007.

The cost increase can be attributed to Google's AdWord tools that prompt advertisers to optimize their campaigns and increase their positioning. Typically, all this means is that you need to increase your per word spend. Each time an advertiser optimizes their campaign, all other advertisers in the category suddenly need to re-optimize theirs. To add insult to injury, the optimized results are typically broad matches with inefficient campaign structures. A bit of a vicious and expensive cycle.

From a business standpoint, the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Google AdWords is starting to go down. Given Google's higher CPC we have begun to shift advertising $$$ to other vendors and other mediums. While there are oversight and reporting costs of managing campaigns across multiple engines and mediums, financially it makes sense. Over time, I would expect a similar reaction from other advertisers. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion engine and given the alternatives, I don't expect Google to become a perpetual revenue engine either.

IQ Website Launch - Results Exceed Expectations

About 6 months ago I hired a Marketing Production team in Bangalore (see June 1 2007 posting) to do website development, collateral creation, SEO, SEM, online advertising, etc. Their first main project was to develop a new "customer network" concept for IQ; very Web 2.0 and extremely promising. The team delivered the prototype with flying colors and the "project" is expected to be launched in 2008. Their next initiative has been the redesign of the IQ website as well as a completely new collateral package that includes new product positioning, customer case studies, Podcasts, recorded demos and more.

For a number of business and schedule reasons, the website launch has been split into 3 phases:

Phase 1 - Re platform the website so that marketing can make content changes without engineering input. This will accelerate content creation and increase efficiency / cut costs. We are migrating the aspx website to a CMS system (Joomla) with integrations to SugarCRM. Other items in scope include additional content, more detailed analytics and significantly more targeted landing pages (squeeze pages).

Phase 2 - Redesign the homepage and include new events, Call-To-Action options, PR and product information. This will coincide with the 3.0 launch of an IQ product in Q2 2008.

Phase 3 - Update the website to support on-going marketing activities.

Phase 1 has been completed and we launched on Nov 1st; the first two weeks of metrics have exceeded my expectations. When comparing the old site to the new site for the same period in the current and prior months (Oct 1 - 15 vs. Nov 1 -15) the results are very encouraging:

Avg Time on Site +199.95% (good)
Bounce Rate -13.89% (good)
Average Page Views: +31.04% (good)
Goals (new leads) +42.86% (good)
Absolutely unique new visitors -32.66% (not so good)

At first glance it is a negative that our number of absolutely unique new visitors has dropped by 32%. While I never want to see a drop in visitors, it is actually a good thing. When we launched the new site, I initiated an online advertising review that ended-up reducing the number of words that we are paying for - essentially cutting out the lower performing "garbage" words but paying more for the high-value words. The 32% reduction in visitors is a result of this......and so is the 42.86% increase in conversions. All in all a good trade off.