B2B Monday Myth: All I Need Is a Press Release
by MGB2B
The Myth: All I Need Is A Press Release
The Truth: The PR Landscape Has Evolved, and B2B Brands Must Evolve with It
The nature of public relations has changed. The truth is, traditional PR cannot exist on its own anymore. Your company cannot skirt by with just a press release, hoping that newspapers, television, and radio will pick up your story. Technology and the rise of digital marketing have forced both B2C and B2B brands to broaden their PR strategy. The way information is shared is different, and your business must adapt if you plan to remain relevant and get your stories out to the right people at the right time.
The Integration of Different Departments
In the past, PR would have its own separate silo. When social media first blossomed, it was largely separate from PR. Now, public relations must integrate with social media and other digital marketing efforts for more engaged customers and better results.
SEO is also an important part of public relations today. Your press releases can go much further with the right links and keywords. These tools also give you the ability to better target your prospects and track results. This way, you can find out which stories resonate most with the audiences you’re trying to reach and back your decisions with concrete data.
Increased Speed of Communication
Information today moves faster than ever. Gone are the days when drafting and distributing a press release was a multi-day process. Companies today benefit from preparing stories ahead of time and developing a cohesive strategy for distributing them through multiple channels and media.
Public relations, at its core, is still very much about building and nurturing relationships. Going the extra mile to write in a form that is easily convertible for your contact, who will (hopefully) be publishing your work, will go a long way and get your stories out faster. Let them know where they can find more information, such as on your website or social media channels to speed up the process and keep your company top of mind.
A Bigger Network of Storytellers
Today, people aren’t solely relying on national publications and TV news channels as the only important and credible source of information. With the rise of social media, there could be any number of people talking about your company. Identifying influencers in your industry, whether they’re respected bloggers, YouTube personalities, or trusted trade publications, can help you shape your stories and who you want reading them. Engage and cultivate relationships with these influencers and you could see your stories reaching their networks of dedicated followers.
Improve Relationships With Trade Publications
Print is not dead. Which is why it’s important to cultivate good relationships with trade publications for editorial preference and customized digital opportunities. Leveraging a media buy and keeping up your advertising with a specific trade publication is a great way to get better PR for your company.
As the public relations landscape continues to change, it will become more critical to stay on top of digital trends and maintain valuable connections. While B2B companies should not overlook traditional media and trade publications, you should look for ways to stay connected online and make your PR content even more shareable. Telling your brand’s story is an important part of connecting with your audience and reaching new ones.
Continue ReadingThe ABCs of B2B Search Success in 2017
by MGB2B
Follow These Basic Tenets of B2B Search Engine Marketing To See Success in 2017.
2016 was a year of big changes in the field of online search. With the switch to a mobile-first ranking system, the addition of expanded text ads in paid search and an overhaul of the desktop search results page that reduced paid ad space, our friends at Google are always doing their best to keep us in B2B search marketing on our toes. And 2017 is sure to be another exciting year full of changes, opportunities, and challenges. That makes right now the perfect time to reflect on some of the basic tenets of B2B SEO and SEM strategy. Or as I like to call them — the ABCs of B2B Search Success in 2017.
A – Audience Awareness
Whether you’re freshening up ad copy, running a new link-building campaign or strengthening your keyword lists, the most important thing is to focus on addressing the needs of your audience. It’s easy to get caught up in your own sales goals and deadlines, but if you don’t think of the customer first, you won’t each either one successfully. Research their demographics and interests. Understand who they are and where they are before you plan your SEM. Imagine who you’re writing that ad copy for and what things they care about. Remember what drives them to search in the first place, what problems they have, and the answers that you can provide when adding keywords. Mastering this skill will give you an edge over your competition in 2017.
B – Business Opportunities
We all work in different business sectors, with different goals, priorities, and concerns. Whether you run one large SEM account or multiple accounts for different sub-brands, it’s important to keep your strengths and weaknesses in mind. And keep a sharp eye out for SEM opportunities that play to those strengths. This will help you pinpoint the most effective pathway to meeting your goals. Perhaps it means capitalizing on gaps in the search market for your field. Or pushing a specific promotion for a new product launch or bestseller. Or maybe just understanding the seasonality of your product offerings, and adjusting budgets and goals to reflect this. Whatever opportunities and challenges your particular business faces, staying on top of them will help you ride out any changes to the search landscape.
C – Conversion Tracking
For most marketers, conversion tracking is the main pathway to search success. You need to be able to see which pages, keywords, and ads bring home the bacon in order to optimize and exceed your goals. This means taking advantage of every conversion opportunity available. In this modern world of search, your customers are using an ever more diverse set of routes to reach you; you need to follow each one. You’ve likely relied upon standard landing page conversion tracking for years. But now it’s more important than ever to branch out and expand your reach. Call conversion tracking allows you the chance to capture customers that may have been untrackable in the past. As mobile search continues to become the forefront of search, the ability to click on a phone number and speak to a rep is becoming a more viable option than form fills for your busiest customers. Now’s the time to capitalize on this conversion avenue and give your campaigns a welcome boost in the new year.
It’s tough to predict which new innovations and technologies will shape the search engine landscape of 2017. But by sticking to the ABCs of B2B Search Success you can weather any search storm.
Continue ReadingRoads to Success: AdWords Device Bidding for B2B Marketing
by MGB2B
The hottest word in digital marketing is “mobile.” This is nothing new, of course. For years we’ve been seeing that mobile search traffic growth is increasing. As the screens we carry in our pockets become more and more integrated into our personal and professional lives, this trend will just continue. And now Google has made mobile content the first indicator for search rankings. This makes “mobile first” a necessity more than a suggestion. Now is the perfect time to start optimizing your B2B marketing efforts for searches across multiple devices.
Thankfully, Google AdWords now allows marketers to make device-based bidding choices on all three device categories: Desktop, Mobile devices with full browsers, and Tablets with full browsers. For years, we’ve had the ability to make bid adjustments for our mobile search traffic, but Desktop and Tablet bidding had always been grouped together. That’s no longer the case. Now we can set our base bid for any of the three devices, and then make bid percentage adjustments for the other two. This is a fantastic change to the AdWords bidding landscape — a leap forward for many B2B marketers, who for years have seen the differences in traffic performance from each of the device groups in their segmented data.
The Best Ways to Use Device Bidding for B2B Marketing
You can read about the “mobile first” traffic trend all day. But how searches from different devices affect your B2B marketing efforts can vary wildly depending on your industry. Luckily, you can find a wealth of data on how Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet traffic perform specifically for your business right in your Google AdWords reports. By segmenting your historical AdWords data by device, you can see where the majority of your clicks and impressions are coming from, and how they perform compared to one other.
For instance, you might find that while the majority of your paid search traffic still comes from desktop, the traffic that comes from mobile devices typically comes in at a better Position and Click-thru-rate/Conversion rate at a lower Cost-per-click. This would suggest you should increase your mobile bid to take advantage of this trend. Or, you might see that mobile and desktop searches make up the bulk of your traffic, but when searches come from tablets they perform far worse. From here you might decide to reduce your bid for tablets and allocate more of your budget to the higher-performing mobile and desktop searches. Whatever the data tells you, you now have the tools to make informed decisions.
While the trend towards “mobile first” is obvious and inevitable, at the end of the day, the device-bidding actions you take now should be based on what works best for your brand. When you combine these new tools with your deep insights into your markets, the possibilities are endless. Keep in mind that all the bidding adjustments you make might be in vain if you haven’t created a mobile-friendly version of your site. It’s also important that it loads quickly and is easy for customers to navigate across different screen sizes — a good reason to have a responsive design if you don’t already.
The routes customers take to reach your business are constantly evolving. Make sure your company is taking advantage of every available road to success.
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