The One Blog: Digital Marketing Insights

Nine Cost-Effective Ways to Accelerate B2B Lead Generation

by James on January 9, 2012

Here are nine effective ways to generate online leads for B2B tech companies. These strategies take into account the often need of mid-sized companies for lead generation tactics that show an immediate and measurable return.

When it comes to accelerating lead generation for B2B, digital inbound marketing channels lead the way. According to research from inbound marketing solutions provider HubSpot, businesses dominated by inbound marketing have a 62% lower cost per lead than firms that do mostly outbound marketing. In fact, as Hubspot research shows that . . .

  • 78% of Internet users conduct product research online.
  • 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
  • Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.
  • Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing. The average outbound lead costs $373. The average inbound lead costs $143.

Data above from Hubspot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report. See also this post.

With that data in mind, here are some cost-effective ways to accelerate your lead generation.

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Tectoria: Four Awesome, Innovative Victoria Web Companies Right In Our Backyard

by James on December 9, 2011

Victoria is gaining a reputation as a tech hub. But have you heard of these four innovative Victoria web-based companies? You will soon.

Today, the One Net Marketing Team headed down to Tectoria to find the coolest, forward-thinking web-based companies hiding in our Island backyard.

This is a live blog from the exhibitor floor. Here, in no particular order, are some awesome, innovative Victoria companies you should definitely check-out.

Online PR Strategies for Tech Start-Ups: Get Google Fresh and PubSubHubBub

by Dylan on December 3, 2011

In traditional marketing, PR was a big mountain to climb for new companies. How did you get a majestic publication like the New York Times to cover your little company? And for most tech start-ups, the price of a big PR firm just isn’t in the budget.

Luckily, the age of traditional PR is declining. And this is, in part, due to the way fresh content is organized, spread, and distributed online.

Consider Google Fresh and PubSubHubBub—two new technologies that are making it easier and faster for smaller sites to get their content in front of users—and giving nimble little companies an easy way to get their products in the news without going through the traditional PR route.

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Why is it 100x Easier to Create a Google Business Profile than a Facebook Page?

by James on November 4, 2011

It’s a simple question. But simplicity isn’t really Facebook’s preferred method. Why have one way to view your news feed when you can have a synchronous, overlapping timeline of top stories, stories, recent stories, images, links, and photos?

So our short answer is that, as business owners, Facebook doesn’t really like us. They laugh at the thought of market research, and don’t really put much thought into the tools they provide to businesses to market themselves.

And if we had to choose, Google’s Business Profile (sometimes called Google Places) is a much better choice for creating a company profile online. Here’s why.

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Social Gaming and the Enormous Advertising Opportunity Within.

by Dylan on October 16, 2011

Social gaming is hot. The number of internet users playing games on social networking sites has surpassed the number of gamers on consoles and PC’s.

Zynga, the #1 social game developer has more than 45 million daily users playing titles such as Farmville, CityVille and Texas Holdem Poker. Rovio’s Angry Birds has surpassed 140 million downloads and 50% of Facebook’s 800 million users play social games.

Large console game developers like Electronic Arts and Xbox are re-designing their entire publishing strategies to become more social with direct integration with Facebook, Twitter and the social graph. Needless to say the social gaming industry is exploding and for good reason –social games are in high demand, highly addictive and portable. And, they’re proving incredibly effective for direct response and brand marketers alike.

 

State of online gaming Infographic

 

So how do digital marketers, brands and businesses capitalize on this explosive market, and it’s highly engages user base, to drive qualified traffic and conversions from social gamers glued to their Facebook account iPad or smartphone? Read on and we’ll show you how.

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What is Last Click Attribution and Why You Should Avoid It

by Dylan on October 4, 2011

Every marketer has heard of A.I.D.A., right? This little formula is explained in every marketing textbook, mentioned in thousands of blog posts, and pretty much drilled into every marketer’s head. So when it comes to investing millions of dollars into digital marketing campaigns, we wouldn’t forget about something so basic, so logical, and so elemental as a sales cycle? We wouldn’t forget that strangers typically become customers through 5 basic stages: awareness, interest, desire and decision, and then finally action?

Until recently, we as digital marketers really have been blinded by “last click attribution.” It’s a fancy way of saying that digital marketers tend to give most, or all the credit, to the last marketing touch-point. In other words, digital marketers tend to focus and invest most heavily into the last stage of the buying cycle–action.

 

Consumer buying cycle last click attribution

 

Last click attribution is why SEO and PPC campaigns have retained the lions share of digital ad spend over the last 10 years. Let’s face it – everyone heads to Google once they become aware of and interested in a brand, product, or service. And this awareness and interest usually arrives from another ad source such as a banner ad. Yet the banner ad that started and planted your message into the consumer’s brain to get the whole thing rolling gets none of the credit. Instead PPC search ads and SEO campaigns get all the glory because if you’re anything like 95% of digital marketers out there, you’re probably using Analytics to measure your campaign conversion and those conversions are inherently tied to the last click generated before the desired action (sale, lead, download, etc) was completed. Clicks sell products. Clicks create leads. Impressions? Wasted brand awareness, right? Think again.

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The Politics of Auto Posts and Facebook EdgeScore

by Nicole on September 14, 2011

Social media cliché speeches always point to the importance of being authentic, to refrain from auto-posting, and to craft content that works for each tool.  But just like dieting, we are constantly looking for ways to cut corners or to *gulp* “cheat” and still win.  Linking your social media accounts together via API is one annoying way to “cheat” – a clear industry taboo, but who would have thought that Facebook would declare that using a third party app to help you manage all of your social accounts would be against the rules too?

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5 SEO Tips That Every Serious Tweeter Needs to Know

by James on August 31, 2011

It’s been official for a while now. Tweets, likes, +1’s, and other social signal tidbits are now helping your website get found in the search results.

People, as the new buzz-phrase goes, are the new links. (If you don’t know why links are important for helping Google trust and promote your website, see our guest post on Jay Baer’s social media blog ConvinceandConvert.com).

But while social media and search are now becoming very close (see this article for a great overview of the evolution of search into social) there are still a few simple ways to make sure that every tweet helps to increase the visibility of your website in the search engines.

Social Media Links are the new SEO

Here’s a checklist of 5 things that can really make your Twitter efforts work hard to spread the digital word about your business.

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Power to the People: The Digital Shift from B2C to C2B

by James on August 19, 2011

Last week, the One Net Marketing Team published a post on Convince and Convert, the awesome social media powerhouse blog by the illustrious Jay Baer. In that post, we talked about the importance of popularity for increasing your website’s rankings. Our article showed that Google’s algorithms, as advanced as they are, are basically about listening to the armies of voices out there.

C2B digital marketing: a shift from B2C

In the digital world, the people have the power. And they know how to use it. This power, as your probably know, is both a threat and opportunity to your business.

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Remarketing can be remarkable if executed correctly

by Dylan on August 11, 2011

You’ve probably seen remarketing before. You think about signing up for a new online subscription or software download. You fill out some details–and are just about to enter your credit card info when you decide to walk the dog, rush to work, or just sleep on the decision.

A few days later, while browsing online, an ad appears on the screen, offering you a special discount on that very product you never bought. As you continue visiting other websites, you might notice that those ads are following you. This is remarketing at work–trying to recapture your attention and bring you back to close the sale.

Remarketing (also called re-targeting or behavioural targeting) is based on the premise that people who have already visited your website’s key pages (like checkouts and product pages) are much more likely buy. Using a small piece of code, you can create relevant ads that follow the visitor around the web, reminding them of your awesome product or enticing them back to your website with a special promo or free trial.
 

 
While this technology is only available with display ads (banners, videos–not plain text search ads), it can be a pretty remarkable way to put your brand back in front of prospective customers. Most large ad networks offer this technology, making it very easy to add to your current display campaigns.

Let’s look at the basics and then move into some more advanced features.

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