B2B Myth of the Week: Social Media Content Should Be All-Business
by MGB2B
Myth: Social Media Content for B2B Brands Needs to be All-Business
Fact: Social Media is the Perfect Channel to Show Brand Personality
Social media content for B2B brands must revolve around statistics, numbers, and charts. Right? Wrong. While buyers do need practical information, it’s also necessary to humanize your brand. To do so, make sure some of your content resonates with your buyer’s emotions. After all, at the end of the day, it’s a human making purchase decisions. Need help getting started? Here’s three jumping off points to get your creative content up and running:
-
Tell Stories
Storytelling is a simple way for buyers to relate to the brand. This, in turn, strengthens the relationship between brands and buyers. By sharing stories on social media, your company has a chance to develop a personality that strikes a chord with your audience. According to a study at Stanford University, information shared through stories is remembered 22 times more than facts alone. So what kind of stories can you tell? Try a testimonial from a satisfied client. Polish up your brand creation story. Or consider a story that demonstrates how your product or service can solve a problem.
-
Use Humor.
People often assume that social media content for B2B brands is limited to stiff and serious posts. Including humorous content is a great way to get people interested in what your brand is doing. Let’s face it, most people don’t expect B2B brands to be funny. Use that to your advantage. Incorporating humor can be an extremely successful way of getting attention from potential buyers. There are plenty of ways to mix a little humor into your content calendar. Get creative with photos and videos that your brand is sharing. Is there something people find confusing about your brand? Poke fun at yourself (like MailChimp does). Or maybe there’s a common challenge in your industry you can make light of. A little levity can go a long way in ingratiating your brand to your audience.
-
Show the Brand’s Personality.
Developing a personality that is associated with your brand has way more impact than just facts and numbers. Audiences remember personalities over stats. This one’s tricky – it’s easy for B2Bs to fall into the same-old personality traits: committed, quality-oriented, eco-friendly, etc. But who is your brand really? And how does that resonate with your audience? Make yourself memorable. Think about what ultimately motivates your brand, and develop your character from there. Is your brand personality wise? An explorer? A trusted advisor? Do you aim to challenge or inspire? Whatever you feel your brand is, infuse those characteristics into your content (not to mention your ad copy and visuals) and stand out from the pack.
Even though it seems like social media content for B2B brands is limited, it’s just the opposite. It’s an opportunity to showcase just what makes your brand tick. While facts and stats provide the proof, your brand personality will resonate far longer.
Continue Reading
B2B Myth of the Week: Simply Having a Website Is Enough
by Emily Swet
The Myth: Simply Having a Website Is Enough
The Truth: How Your Website Is Designed, Written, and Programmed Determines Its Performance
When was the last time you took a critical look at your B2B website design? In today’s market, B2B marketers simply can’t take a “one and done” approach to their web presence. Buyers have become acclimated to today’s standards. Content, searchability, user experience, aesthetics, and responsive design should be the drivers of your site layout. If your website hasn’t been updated in years, or if you haven’t fully fleshed out a recent redesign, we’ve put together a quick cheat sheet to get you up to speed.
5 Essential Building Blocks for B2B Websites
-
Killer Content
Creativity and persuasive insights don’t just work for B2C companies. There is a still a person on the other side of your website making purchase decisions every day. The content on your website has the potential to differentiate you from your competitors and lead your prospects further into your sales funnel. Make sure yours is compelling and directive. And more than anything, check your content for clarity, accuracy, and usefulness to your prospects.
-
Smart SEO & SEM
B2B marketers are getting savvier with search engine optimization and search engine marketing. And so should you. Since the rules are constantly changing, you can’t expect your site to produce results all by itself. Investing in an SEO/SEM specialist or using an agency to maximize your results based on cost efficiency is one of the smartest moves you can make. Use SEO and SEM to drive customers where you want them to go, then analyze their experience so you can make educated tweaks in the future.
-
Intuitive User Experience
Is your site easy to navigate? Where are your visuals placed? Are your call-to-action buttons easy to find? The answers to these questions can mean the difference between a click and a bounce. Your users want to be led, and your user experience dictates where you lead them. A successful user experience follows the natural eye flow pattern across a website. If your site feels clunky or fraught with stopping points, you’re more likely to lose users. Consider a redesign that leads your user to a purchase decision.
-
Engaging Aesthetics
The graphic design of your website has the power to elicit an emotional response as it is the first thing your buyer will see. Smart design works seamlessly with your content to convey a feeling, insight, or solution simply through imagery. You can set the tone right on the home page. The colors, fonts, photography, and illustrations you select can all affect those who visit the site. When done well, design can be a major point of differentiation from your competitors.
-
Responsive Design
Considering Mashable called 2013 The Year of Responsive Web Design, if your site isn’t by now, you’re woefully behind. Responsive sites “respond to” the type of device they are being viewed on, resizing to a more appropriate layout and view. (Think: desktop vs. laptop vs. tablet vs. smartphone). Why is this important? Because your buyers aren’t on their desktops all the time. If they are on the road or in meetings, and unable to really experience your site on their mobile device, you’re likely to lose them – and fast.
Online presence isn’t something that is created overnight. It takes time, research, and a budget to make a website worth having. Yet the initial effort up front can pay you back in spades for the long term. Your ROI can make it well worth it. So with this in mind, it’s worth repeating: when was the last time you took a critical look at B2B website design?
Continue ReadingPaid Search for Manufacturers – 5 Tips to Improve Your PPC Campaign’s Performance
by MGB2B
The U.S. manufacturing industry is the strongest it’s been in years. According to the most recent data, manufacturing job growth is on the rise. And in 2016 “manufacturers contributed $2.18 trillion to the U.S. economy.”
But while the manufacturing industry continues to grow, the majority of manufacturing firms in the United States are small businesses. In fact, three-quarters of these businesses have fewer than 20 employees. This means that competition among small businesses in the manufacturing industry continues to increase. Which can make it harder to get your manufacturing company to stand out from the crowd.
Paid search for manufacturers can be just the solution you’ve been looking for to put you ahead of your competitors. But if your business is small, or perhaps new, your budget may be limited. And it’s important to add that money can be spent quickly on a PPC campaign if it isn’t managed correctly. With this in mind, here are some tips to help you control your spend and make sure your paid search budget effectively reaches the right customers.
5 Paid Search Marketing Tips for Manufacturers
- Keywords – Keep Them Tight and Targeted. It’s not revolutionary to make sure your PPC keyword lists are tightly targeted to your product offering. But it’s so important that it has to be stated up front. A lot of your paid search marketing budget can be wasted on search terms triggered by poorly chosen keywords. This means you need to choose keywords that accurately represent your products and industry. It also means you need to utilize Google AdWords’ and Bing Ads’ keyword match type options to eliminate loosely matching search terms. It’s likely you’ll find that broad match keywords bring in highly irrelevant traffic. So sticking to phrase and exact match options for the majority of keywords is highly recommended. One other thing to be aware of is the dual meaning some of your most important keywords may have. In both the B2B world and the manufacturing industry, it’s common to see words that may mean something completely different to the world at large. Use industry-specific modifiers like “industrial” and “commercial” in front of vaguer keywords. This helps make sure you’re showing ads to the right type of searchers while reducing spend on irrelevant clicks.
- Day and Time – Show Your Ads When Your Customers Are Searching. For B2C, it often makes sense to show your ads all day/every day. The average consumer doesn’t have a set schedule for when they’re going to search for a pair of sneakers or a cheap hotel room. But in the manufacturing world, there are days and times when a search is more valuable than others. Most of your searchers are employees or owners of other companies. Therefore, they are much more likely to perform these searches while they’re at work. Setting your campaign’s ad schedule to only run Monday through Friday, say, or from 6 AM to 8 PM, can help you save money on searches less likely to turn into leads. Which enables you to save your budget for the days and times with peak value.
- Location – Limit Based On Your Company’s Capabilities. There are a number of options available to you in the location targeting settings of your paid search campaign. So you should definitely use them to your advantage. You can specify which countries, states, even zip codes, can see your paid search ads. What you choose, however, must be determined by your company’s or product offering’s capabilities. Does your manufacturing business only ship to the U.S.? Then don’t show ads in other countries. Is your product offering specific to a regional industry? Limit your location settings to exclude states outside of your target region. In the end, it makes no sense to show your ads in places you can’t or won’t sell your products.
- Devices – How Are Your Customers Searching the Web? Today’s articles on Internet traffic sources will tell you that more and more searches occur on mobile devices every day. While this is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the traffic your PPC campaigns receive from mobile devices is more relevant or valuable than the traffic from computers. In fact, you’re likely to see quite the opposite. Since, as we’ve already stated, you are targeting a B2B audience, your prospects most often perform their searches while at work. Often from a desk. You’re likely to find, then, that the traffic you receive from computers performs at a better rate than the traffic from mobile devices and tablets. In your paid search campaigns, you can choose to bid higher or lower for mobile, tablet and computer traffic. This allows you to put more or less of your limited budget behind the traffic source that is most valuable to your business.
- Remarketing Lists for Search Ads – Reaching Your Website’s Previous Visitors. Like the manufacturing industry, the online paid search market is a highly competitive one. A higher bid on a search keyword can determine who shows first for a relevant search. You should use every tool at your disposal to reach your customers. But also recognize that some searchers are more valuable to your efforts than others. And perhaps the most valuable searcher of all is one who has already visited your site. After all, they may just need that extra push to return and make a purchase. Data regularly shows that the traffic from these previous visitors is likely to perform at better click and conversion rates than regular traffic. Utilizing Remarketing Lists for Search Ads can help you reach these customers before your competitors do. RLSA requires some set-up. But once you have it running, you can set higher bids for searches that come from previous visitors to your website. So you can appear above your competition in the search results and turn past visitors into new leads and sales.
Both the manufacturing and online advertising industries will continue to grow over the coming years. So you’ll need to use every tool in your belt to grow along with them. These 5 tips for paid search for manufacturers can help get the job done.
Continue Reading