In a nutshell, quality sites are trustworthy containing well-crafted content relevant to the audience’s interest. The questions below Amit writes are the kind that Google staff pose when assessing the quality of a site.
Best Practices May Be Your Best Content
Whatever B2B service or product you offer, chances are there are some related best practices. Best practices are something most of your B2B customers are interested in. Your experience and knowledge is valuable and useful to potential customers. Here are five great formats for sharing best practices.
1. Share Survey Results
Mail Chimp shares best practices for writing email subject lines. In this case information is based on survey data, but insider knowledge could work just as well.
2. Focus on the Stars
Create a story around the stars of your industry. What is the best practice and who does it best? Select your winning subjects and create a slideshow around them. Business Week’s Customer Service Champs combines short but effective copy with an interesting graphic.
3. Ask the Experts
Ask the experts how they would address a particular best practice. This blog post from Green Biz provides expert tips for a greener fleet.
4. Make Rules
There is something irresistible about rules. They provide information in a simple and easy-to digest format. Rules are a great way to promote the safe use of a product . Check out these new rules related to food safety.
5. Learn from Your Mistakes
Talking about mistakes is a round about way of demonstrating best practices. For commercial real estate agents content might be titled “The Five Biggest Mistakes when Leasing a Commercial Property.” Business decision makers want to know about real world failures so they can avoid them.
As a marketer and content writer focused on foodservice and construction, I see plenty of content opportunities missed. It’s no longer enough to have a nice website, you need content that will continue to draw traffic and qualified leads. Best practices may very well be your best content. If you don’t know where to start, call us.
Facebook Tips From LinkedIn Group
I condensed the following ideas from a conversation started by Jenna Bresnahan on the LinkedIn Social Media Marketing group. She asked: “What are some strategies to get people to ‘Like’ your business Facebook page?”
Jenna got 107 comments to her question at the time of this writing. Here is what I took away from the wisdom of this crowd. Most of the comments fell into the following categories.
Contests, Promotions, Giveaways
Offer to donate $1 to a worthy cause for every one who “Likes” the page.
Look at Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines before starting a contest or promotion. You need to get contact information to enter a contest using third party vendors (Google Docs).
Offer passes and free entry to webinars, downloadable white papers.
Initiate a FB lottery by emailing contacts a randomly generated lottery number and ask them to visit the page on a certain date to see who wins. Offer a $200 gift card to the winner.
Give away a popular prize and create a dedicated landing page that promotes the offer.
Collaborate
Find similar companies that will combine efforts and support each other by posting on each other’s walls.
Support and initiate interaction between the people visiting your FB page.
Start a word of mouth campaign via email. Follow up by inviting all employees to “Like” the business page and invite their contacts to do the same.
Share your links to groups on LinkedIn
Use Facebook’s network feature.
Encourage reciprocal “Liking” from other businesses relevant to yours.
Ask people to “Like” your business page on the profile page and other social sites.
“Like” other businesses first, add value to their page and they will start to need you.
Repost content from your followers.
Advertise
Spend a few bucks on “Sponsored Stories and Ads” to target the people you want to join the interactive community.
Promote free community events through FB ads. At Facebook advertising you can create an ad, identify your target audience, set your own budget for CPC or CPM.
Strategize
Use your other social media sites to promote your Facebook page. Try a twitter hashtag.
Post relevant content consistently. Daily interaction is required.
Add a welcome page. Wildfire offers a free app for this.
Understand your audience and their culture
Brand, target, differentiate.
Integrate your Facebook page with the overall marketing plan. Prepare your content while remaining spontaneous.
Add a gateway ao users cannot see your content until they “Like” your pages.
Optimize
Use keywords and keyword phrases.
Create a mobile app that links to your Facebook business page.
Several people recommended reading this post from Social Media Examiner.
Add the “Like” button on your website. Use a QR code for your FB page.
Include polls. People like answering simple questions.
Add videos and photos.
Whatever method you use keep those who do “Like” your business page engaged with the content and each other.
Should You Talk Price on Your Website? Absolutely.
A lot of businesses shy away from talking about pricing on their website. Classic sales trainers claim you should never talk price until the customer has confirmed they need your services. Other businesses say their quotes are based on too many different project variables. Some companies fear being perceived as too “high end” while other businesses fear that their prices will be undercut by the competition. The result is that a lot of websites simply ignore pricing.
Yet cost is probably one of the most common questions potential B2B customers have about the products and services you offer. People want to know what a product or service will cost. This is especially true for products and services that buyers have never purchased before. Cost is likely to be one of the key drivers of traffic on your website. You can confirm it if you drill down into your analytics and look at the keyword searches that include the word “cost”. On our site, What Should I Pay a Content Writer, is one of our most popular posts.
Now I understand why you may not be able to publish a specific price for a product or service. Your customers understand it too. But instead of ignoring the elephant in the room, focus on what you can tell them about your pricing. Provide useful information related to pricing that will drive highly qualified traffic to your site.
Five Ways to Talk About Price without Giving a Price
1) Describe the variables that determine the price.
For example, a tuckpointing business could say that the price is based on the square footage of the building as well as the current condition of the building. Pictures could help buyers recognize the characteristics of a building in good condition, vs. one in poor condition.
2) Provide a price range.
Often customers just want a number they can use for budgeting purposes. Providing a price range based on a typical scenario can be an effective solution. Explain what qualifies as typical. For example, a graphic designer might charge a rate per page for a brochure that includes two rounds of revisions. Buyers will understand that if you have four rounds of revisions, or additional pages, you can expect to pay more.
3) Write an article or blog post about how to save money on your services.
What clients don’t want to know how to save money? Allegra Print & Imaging in Rolling Meadows provides some great tips on how to save on postage and printing on their blog.
You could also do the opposite and write about the mistakes that cost your clients money.
4) Provide an hourly rate for various types of services, as well as a ballpark rate for typical assignments.
For example, we charge a rate of $100 per hour for writing press releases. A typical press release takes about 1-2 hours to produce.
5) Provide pricing options.
If your products and services involve a lot of different options or services, consider developing packages designed to meet the needs of clients with a wide range of budgets. For example, a recent inbound marketing proposal we developed for a fashion-oriented direct selling business, included “couture,” “designer,” and “ready-to-wear” packages.
If you really don’t know how much it will cost until you look under the hood, inspect the jobsite, etc, come up with a price for completing the diagnostics and publish that online. From there, buyers can make the decision whether to move forward based on your actual quote.
In addition to increasing your website traffic, there is yet another advantage to providing pricing information online. You don’t spend time with prospects who cannot afford your products and services. Instead, your sales funnel is full of qualified leads that are easier to convert.
How have you addressed pricing on your website?
4 Content Strategies to Increase Sales Leads Online
To increase sales leads online break the big picture down to small but effective steps. In essence craft, share, and measure your content. Add live interaction to complement your content strategy.