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It’s a widespread and persistent quandary for marketers, particularly B2B marketers who use white papers as a lead generation incentive for response: on the one hand, if you place a contact form in front of your content, you’ll get a very low conversion rate (on average, 95% of visitors will simply leave the site, and one-third of those who remain will enter bogus information). On the other, if you leave your PDF content open, more people will download your materials but you get no information: who are these visitors? Are they actually reading your content? Printing it? Passing it along? Leaving your content open may actually produce more leads in the long run, but you have no way to measure that with any precision (or even know for sure if that’s the case).

How do you maximize the return on the investment you’ve made not only in producing valuable white papers and other content, but also in driving traffic to it through search engine advertising, email marketing, banner ads and other media? Particularly in this economy, when budgets are being squeezed and marketers are mandated to do more with less, how can you exceed “typical” results and get more than 2-3% of your visitors to raise their hands?

My first post on this topic looked at one possible answer, “post-click marketing” services that extract visitor IP information from your website log files, filter out ISPs and then match remaining network information to various databases to show you, in real time, who is visiting your website and what information they are viewing. Although the term “spyware” is unfair, these services still make some marketers uncomfortable as they are collecting information without the specific consent of visitors. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to get a higher percentage of visitors to voluntarily provide you with their contact information?

A unique new SaaS offering from Vitrium Systems called Docmetrics may do exactly that.

How Docmetrics Works

Once you are set up with their online service (no software to install), you upload your PDFs—white papers, case studies, product data sheets etc.—to your Docmetrics account. Next, create custom Flash forms using Docmetrics tools to collect user information. Insert these forms into your documents; for a white paper, you may want to place the form on page 2 or 3; for content you wouldn’t normally “gate” with a contact form, such as a product sheet, you can put the form at the end of the document. Finally, download your PDFs with the contact forms now inserted and upload these to your website.

When a visitor comes to your site, they can download any PDF without completing an on-site contact form. When they reach the page in your PDF with the Docmetrics Flash form inserted, the form will appear asking them for their contact information. You have the option of requiring completion of the form in order to read the remainder of the document (e.g. with a white paper), or providing a “skip” button on the form so the form submission is voluntary.

On the back end, the Docmetrics system collects all activity information. Typcially, you have no idea what happens to your PDFs once they are downloaded from your website. With Documetics, you get complete tracking—number of times the document was opened, how much time was spent on each page, number of times it was forwarded, printed etc.

Why It’s Cool

The folks at Vitrium claim that Docmetrics dramatically increases—by up to 10X—lead capture rates for normally gated content (such as white papers), while for the first time enabling the collection of contact information from content that isn’t normally gated (e.g. product sheets and case studies).

It also, as noted above, provides activity statistics on PDF content to help marketers improve their offerings. If white paper A has a much higher pass-along rate than white paper B, and gets printed more often, and users on average spend more time with it, then…develop more content like white paper A. That kind of data has just not previously been available for PDF content.

I’m still at the stage of working with selected clients to test this technology, so I can’t vouch for the increase in lead capture rates—though I plan to write a follow-up post once I have that data. For now, it’s sufficient to note that if the increase in conversion rate is even 20% of what Vitrium claims, the product will pay for itself. If Docmetrics provides half the increase in conversion rate claimed, it will make you a rock star with your boss or client.

What to Watch Out For

There really doesn’t appear to be much in the way of a downside to this service. It is possible that your PDFs may not display properly for prospects using older versions of Flash, although 1) this should affect only about 5% of viewers according to Vitrium, and 2) the next release, planned for February, will resolve this problem. Docmetrics offers a free trial, so it’s easy to test drive the software and draw your own conclusions.

Pricing

Monthly fees start at $100 and are based on the number of PDF documents tracked. Contact Vitrium to get more exact pricing for your situation.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Excerpt from:
Getting More Out of Each Click, Part 2: Docmetrics

Fishermen (fisherpeople?) choose their bait based on the type and quantity of fish they hope to catch. On the lakes of Minnesota, worms and small leeches are great for catching sunfish, and if find a good spot, you can catch a lot of them in a short time. However, it’s likely that you’ll also end up throwing many of them back because they’re too small to be “keepers.” Bait such as sucker minnows or spinner lures will attract larger, more exciting prey like northern pike. These larger fish are more elusive, so you likely won’t end up catching many, but each one will be larger and more fun to catch than a small panfish.

The same principle holds true in b2b lead generation. Different types of b2b lead generation programs can be used to draw visitors to your landing page, but once there, your incentive for response is the bait that determines the quality and quantity of leads you’ll “catch.” The greater the involvement you require of respondents, the lower the quantity but the higher the quality. Several examples are shown in this illustration:

Sweepstakes require very little involvement; a site visitor gives you their basic contact information in hopes of winning an iPod, a trip to Hawaii, or whatever. They are great for collecting a large quantity of names, but often few actual sales leads.

White papers are a popular and productive incentive for response. They weed out the pure prize-seekers attracted by sweepstakes because anyone willing to take the time to download and (hopefully) read a white paper at least has an interest in the particular technology area addressed. White papers also have far more branding value than sweepstakes. They are one of the most commonly used response incentives because of the balance of relatively high quantity and quality they provide, although sales will still often end up “throwing back” many of these leads.

As the level of involvement required increases, so does lead quality, but the numbers get smaller. A respondent willing to sign up for a free trial and actually use a software product—particularly in a corporate environment where IT approval is needed—has a relatively high probability of becoming a buyer (assuming the software actually works as promised). And at the far right of the diagram above, if the only incentive for response on a landing page is to be contacted by a sales person, the conversion rate will usually be very low, but the leads generated will be serious prospects.

The diagram above shows just a representative sampling of incentives for response that can be used; there are many other creative incentives that can be offered. The point is that the level of involvement required of the visitor is the key to estimating both the probable response rate and quality of the resulting leads in your bucket.

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Fishing for B2B leads? Choose the right bait.

One way to think about designing a B2B technology web marketing plan is as a series of layers, like an onion. At the core is SEO—simply making your website “findable” through organic search to buyers who are looking for what you offer. Working out from the center are concentric layers of additional investment and sophistication.

Small companies and start-ups with modest budgets will focus most of their efforts on the inner layers or rings, which are primarily designed for lead generation. As the company and its marketing budget grow, efforts can be expanded to the outer layers, which are aimed more at branding but support lead generation efforts. Ideally, a company eventually reaches the outer layer where pure branding activities (such as print advertising) help to maximize the effectiveness of lead generation programs (such as SEM) near the center of the circle.

This diagram shows how different types of web marketing programs can be prioritized in order to maximize the return from any size B2B technology company online marketing budget. (It also shows why I don’t try to make a living as a graphic artist.)

Starting from the center and working out, a phased web marketing plan can be developed:

Layer 1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Since (ballpark figures) 75% of b2b buyers use search engines to research vendors when making a purchase decision, and 75% of clicks are on organic search results rather than paid links, SEO alone has the potential to expose your company to half of all sales prospects. That makes SEO—keyword research, meta tag and content optimization, and link building—the logical starting point for web marketing.

Level 2: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Using the figures from the paragraph above, running text ads on search engines offers potential exposure to roughly another 20% of buyers. Since Google is the dominant search engine, it’s AdWords search program is the place to start. Once the program is fine-tuned and results are maximized there, SEM efforts can be expanded to the AdWords content network, then progressively to Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo’s content network, MSN AdCenter, and finally to Microsoft’s content network.

Level 3. IndustryBrains

B2c marketers have a wide variety of ad networks to choose from, but for technology-focused b2b vendors, IndustryBrains (recently folded into Marchex Adhere) is far and away the leader. This networks enables you to run text and print ads across popular technology websites like PC Magazine, Network World, PC World, Intelligent Enterprise, InformationWeek and InfoWorld with a single buy.

Level 4. White Paper Syndication and Guaranteed Lead Generation Programs

Guaranteed lead gen programs generally promise X leads for Y dollars, and are offered by individual publications as well as aggregators such as ITtoolbox, TechTarget, FindWhitePapers.com and NetLine. These are also referred to as white paper syndication programs as white papers are most commonly used as the incentive for response (though other assets including case studies, reports, even podcasts and recorded webcasts with some media outlets, are also used.)

Though primarily used for lead gen (as the name implies), these programs provide some branding benefit as well. The quality of the leads tends to improve as more targeted media are used.

Level 5: Banner Advertising

Unlike search marketing and targeted network ads, which are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, banner advertising is sold on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. While network buys are common in b2c marketing, b2b banner advertising is generally purchased directly from media publishers.

Because of the low click-through rate of banner ads, they are generally viewed as primarily branding, secondarily lead generation. Again, however, this varies with the publisher: broad titles such as InformationWeek are mostly for branding, while banners on narrowly-targted sites like Wall Street & Technology are reasonably effective at lead generation (though this particular publication may not be the best choice at the moment).

Level 6: Email Marketing

Email marketing comes in two varieties: enewsletter advertising and email blasts to targeted, purchased (or rented) lists. Enewsletter advertising is generally the less expensive alternative, on a CPM basis since your ad is “sharing” space with editorial content and, in most cases, with other advertisers. However, these ads may also be better for branding as they are seen as less intrusive and your company benefits from the association with the publication and surrounding content.

Email blasts are more targeted as you can send to only a selected subset of the publisher’s overall subscriber base, filtered by title, company size, industry vertical, geographic location and/or other criteria. In addition, your ad isn’t competing with any other content in the email message.

Because the effective cost per click tends to be much higher than search engine marketing (often by a factor of 10 or more), the value of email marketing is generally viewed as primarily branding with a lead gen component.

Level 7: Webinar Sponsorships

Many publications sell “turnkey” webinar sponsorship packages where the publisher provides most (or all) of the content, promotes the webinar and delivers it; sponsoring vendors are then provided with contact information for all registrants and attendees. Although webinar sponsorship is primarily a lead generation activity, it is in an outer layer of the web marketing bullseye because of the level of investment required: programs generally range from $20,000-$30,000 for a single webinar.

Level 8: Print Advertising

Although various types of “print-to-web” programs are offered, and some publications offer print advertisers comparable space in their digital editions at no extra charge, the value of print advertising is almost strictly branding. Because companies willing to invest in print advertising are often perceived as industry leaders, this activity definitely supports online advertising and other lead generation efforts. However, costs are high and benefits difficult to measure with any precision.

Summing It Up

A “well-dressed” web marketing plan starts with solid SEO, then works outward from direct lead generation programs to more expensive and beneficial-but-difficult-to-measure branding activities. Vendors with limited budgets necessarily begin with core activities that provide easily measurable, short-term payback. As budgets increase, branding activities in the outer layers can be added to enhance the performance of core lead gen programs.

Interactive PR and social media engagement also provide branding benefit by increasing awareness and credibility for vendors. Like outer-layer web marketing programs, these activities have little direct lead generation value but can increase the return on SEM and other lead gen expenditures.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Here is the original post:
The 8 Layers of a B2B Web Marketing Plan

MarketingSherpa has just released its 2008 B2B Lead Generation Handbook (that’s a link to the free executive summary PDF; the complete report will run you a cool $500). The 22-page executive summary contains some useful information for B2B marketers and CEOs (plus a little bit of misinformation best disregarded).

B2B Marketing Has Changed Dramatically

The report authors spend considerable ink on the changes that B2B marketing has undergone since 2000. Parts of this analysis are very helpful, for example, “The easiest way to save money (during the 2000-2002 recession, when marketing budgets were being slashed) was to replace old media with cheaper new media. That meant replacing print brochures with PDFs, post-mailed newsletters with emailed newsletters, road shows and seminars with webinars, and print ads with online advertising, including search.”

However, the coverage does have an element of navel-gazing: “Since the year 2000, B-to-B marketing has undergone dramatic changes—in strategy, budget, measurement, philosophy and tactics…the Internet has certainly been a big part of these changes.” Yes it has, and so have the other factors cited in the report, but there isn’t anything really magical about the year 2000—except that, as the report also reveals, that’s the year MarketingSherpa first started paying attention to B2B marketing. There’s a strong case to be made that B2B marketers have always been more aggressive than their B2C counterparts in adopting new technologies, due to their smaller budgets and more tightly targeted audiences, or at least that this has been case for the last two-to-three decades.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, B2B companies were aggressive at moving print materials to CDs, then moving CD-based content materials online. B2B companies were building websites, sending out email newsletters and buying ads on trade publication websites well before their B2C counterparts in many if not most cases, and were certainly active in all of these areas before 2000.

It’s Critical to get SEO and SEM Right

As the chart below shows, buyers are far more likely to find vendors when they are ready to buy than to respond to vendor outreach that may or may not hit them at the right time.

That’s why it’s crucial that vendors be “findable” when buyers are looking, and why spending on search engine optimization and search marketing have become a significant portion of B2B marketing budgets. Social media also plays an important role here, and the report provides some tips in this area.

According to MarketingSherpa’s study, a typical B2B company spends about 30% of its total marketing budget online, and about 30% of its online budget on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. About 5% of online marketing spending is dedicated to SEO.

For Best SEO Results, Seek Professional Help

SEO is a no-brainer; even a moderately well-done effort will improve a company’s online visibility and site traffic at a relatively low cost. According to MarketingSherpa, in-house SEO programs generally produce about a 40% increase in traffic over six months. But hiring an outside expert can grow visitor count even more dramatically: external programs led to 100%+ (i.e. more than doubling) increases in traffic within half a year.

However, the report’s advice on hiring an outside expert is disastrously off base. “When hiring an agency or consultant, B-to-B experience is not as important as is dedicated SEO experience. You don’t want to hire a team that does SEO ‘on the side’ as an addendum to online marketing activities…Many marketers hire two different agencies for PPC versus SEO and make sure the two teams play well together to take advantage of measurement and keyword synergies.” MarketingSherpa rarely misses, but that may be among the worst pieces of advice the publisher has ever provided.

Separating SEO from broader marketing and PR activities is a really bad idea for several reasons. First, SEO and PPC efforts go hand in hand and need to be coordinated, from keyword selection (”head” terms for PPC, longtail terms for SEO, mid-length terms for both) and testing all the way through reporting (e.g. comparing PPC to SEO conversions, with a goal of maximizing both). Hiring two separate firms to do PPC versus SEO work is like having two shortstops on a baseball team, one to scoop up ground balls and the other to throw over to first base; it just doesn’t make any sense.

Second, SEO efforts need to be aligned with PR and social media outreach efforts, both of which are key link-building activities. Having one agency in charge of a coordinated effort assures that all components are working together; hiring an SEO “technician” from a separate firm, who knows nothing about the bigger picture of B2B marketing and PR, greatly increases the likelihood of missed opportunities and synergies.

Third, SEO and PR/marketing shouldn’t work at cross purposes. For example, any company offering insurance or financial services to Fortune 1000 enterprises needs to build and maintain a reputation for quality and trust. Having an SEO firm blast out spammy link requests, and worse, add a collection of questionable links to the company’s website, can instantly nullify years of credibility-building efforts.

Finally, getting SEO and marketing assistance from different providers can lead to inefficient duplication of effort. One tactic commonly employed by gray-hat SEOs is to write keyword-rich “articles” designed more to get high ranking from search engines than for actual human reading. A marketing/PR firm, however, can write thought leadership content that appeal not only to search engines but also enhance your image among prospective customers, and can also help get value out of the article (through social media, for example) beyond simply publishing it to your site for SEO purposes.

SEO Must be Sensitive to IT

Your webmaster or internal web team will be understandably nervous about any outsider touching your site, particularly if it is also hosted internally. A good SEO firm should meet with your technical team first, explaining exactly what is going to be done (transparency is critical factor in selecting an SEO agency), when and how—as well as what won’t be touched. For significant changes, such as modifying the URL structure, the SEO should be able to explain, in plain English, why the change is a high priority.

More to come…

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

The rest is here:
What Works Now in B2B Lead Generation, Part 1