There is a close relationship between the average deal size and the length of the B2B sales cycle. Smaller deal sizes lead to shorter sales cycles, while larger deals have longer cycles. Marketing Sherpa’s research shows that average B2B lead time length has decreased year over year as indicated in the chart below.

While it makes sense intuitively that the larger the size of the deal, the longer the sales cycle, the reverse can also true. Look at the Marketing Sherpa chart below, where you can see the average lead time length actually declined from 2010 to 2011 for B2B deals over $10,000, resulting in a shorter B2B sales cycle for larger deals.

While some B2B organizations like to use promotions when business is bad to speed up deals currently in the pipeline, these promotions can cost money. However, there ways to shorten your sales cycle without spending money by optimizing your sales funnel.

Sales Funnel Optimization: B2B firms can address the challenge of a long, complex sales cycle without lowering prices by optimizing their sales funnel strategy. By qualifying, scoring and nurturing your leads, you can increase your sales team’s efficiency, which leads to higher closings and increased revenue.

The end of your sales funnel is the final step toward accomplishing your sales goals. To optimize the sales funnel, B2B firms must analyze navigation through their sales funnel and make modifications to assist visitors moving through each step to the end. Take a close look at your sales funnel. It’s easy to define the end, but what lies between entering and leaving?

Funnel Entry: Did you know the web page where your visitors enter your site may not be their first contact with you? The number of touch points where your company comes in contact with potential buyers can be huge. There are so many ways to market your business; hence, any one of your many initiatives could be responsible for a website visit. The first touch point might be an email, an ad, a social media discussion, a link from search results, a website address on TV, etc. These are all possible first steps into your B2B sales funnel.

The steps that lie in between entering and exiting your funnel must contribute to a successful conversion. Therefore, you need to review this path from beginning to end. People are inundated with an enormous amount of information daily, and all this can distract your prospects from accomplishing their objective.

Optimizing the Sales Funnel: A sales funnel can consist of a series of web pages that lead your website visitors through your sales and checkout process. It is very easy to inadvertently have road blocks in your conversion funnel. Some common road blocks include:

• Each additional click provides the opportunity for a visitor to exit the funnel
• Requesting too much personal information
• Failing to provide the required information or process when necessary
• Failing to have a strong call to action
• Up-sells that interrupt the current purchase process

As you identify the road blocks, you’ll discover the cracks in the sales funnel and make improvements. When reviewing your funnel, determine for each page:

• What information and process is required?
• What minimum personal information is required?
• Is the purpose of the page immediately obvious?
• Can customers identify where they are in the conversion process?
• Is this page necessary?
• Is the call to action visible above the fold?
• Does your call to action promote urgency?

Making Funnel Changes: Analyze your sales funnel to discover any elements that need improvement. Once you revise the funnel, test to maximize its performance. Test one page element at a time, measure the results and retest. If you’re not achieving enough traffic volume to test your funnel, you can conduct a little pay-per-click campaign to get the traffic needed for testing.

Last week, Google introduced some new features in search results that make search more social and tie in with its Google+ social network. This latest change is called Search Plus Your World. The new features will display personal results in the SERPs, mostly from the Google+ network. Search Plus Your World is available to users who are signed in to Google and searching on https://www.google.com in English. The following features will now be integrated into your search results: People, Pages, and Profiles.

Google says it wants to enable its search engine to not only understand content, but also people and relationships, making it more social. Below is a brief description of the three new features.

1. Personal Results: Lets you find information that’s only relevant to you, such as Google+ photos and posts. You will see your own and those shared specifically with you.

2. Profiles in Search: Available in autocomplete and results, this feature enables you to immediately find people you’re interested in.

3. People and Pages: This helps you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic, enabling you to follow them with just a few clicks.

These results will contain data from the Google+ network rather than Facebook or Twitter. Google says the reason for this is due to their terms of service with social networks like Facebook and Twitter that do not allow them to crawl those networks deeply. However, Google is open to crawling other networks in the future. Below are some examples of what you can do with the new features.

Personal Results: Say you’re in the market for a big ticket item and want to know what experience others had with various brands. Of course, you can search the web; but who can you trust? That’s why most people prefer to learn what their friends think. Here’s what you can find with Search Plus Your World.

• Google+ posts. You can find relevant Google+ posts from friends talking about the car they just bought, or a home entertainment console. You’ll likely find links shared by your friend talking about their buying experience with various brands.
• Photos. You might find great photos of your friends’ car or some other product right in your search results page. You can also find your own private photos from Google+ and Picasa, based on captions, comments and album titles.

Google+ Profiles in Search: Google states in its blog: “Every day, there are hundreds of millions of searches for people. Sometimes, it’s hard to find the person you’re looking for. Once you do find him or her, there’s no quick way for you to actually interact. Starting today, you’ll have meaningful ways to connect with people instantly, right from the search results.”

When you type the first few letters of a person’s name, Google autocompletes it and displays their own search results page, which includes their Google+ profile page and “other relevant web results.” Once you’ve found the person you’re looking for, you can see every single web result for them, excluding others with the same name.

People & Pages: If you search for a topic like [music] or [soccer], you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page. You can connect with them on Google+, strike up meaningful conversations and discover entire communities in ways that simply weren’t possible before.

Control: You can control your results on Google Plus Your World with a prominent new toggle in the upper right of the SERPs where you can see what your search results look like with or without personal content. By clicking the toggle, users can view search plus your world results or non-personalized results.

Security: Last, but not least, Google says it sets a high bar for Search Plus Your World when it comes to security and privacy by providing SSL encryption. Therefore, when you’re signed in to Google, your search results, including your private content, are protected by the same high standards of encryption as your Gmail messages.

TopTenWholesale’s newsroom has been publishing wholesale and retail news over the last six years, and our blog has been around since 2005. What articles do you think caught the attention of our readers over the last 12 months? To refresh your memory, below are the articles and highlights for our most popular stories of 2011.

Top Ten Flea Markets in the USA: This article covered the top ten flea markets in the US, from California to Texas to New York with many other states in between. Attending a flea market is a fun experience and most people find at least one good bargain. Maybe that’s why this article was the most popular piece ever. If you missed it, you may want to click the link and take a look.

Buying Liquidation Merchandise and Closeouts: Maybe due to the economy and people losing their jobs, this article was in high demand by those interested in buying overstocks, closeouts and customer-returned merchandise from major retail stores for reselling in stores, on eBay, at local flea markets and online. It’s a good business if you know how to attain low-cost inventory. This is a business where you can purchase for pennies on the dollar and sell at a profit with a little business acumen and sales experience.

Top Wholesale Predictions for 2011: We took a look at what would be the hot products of the year and shared the information with our audience. In 2011, the biggest draws were in electronics with digital products set to be big sellers. Yet, many non-tech products also made the grade. We’ll be writing another piece of predictions for 2011 once we have the data to make some predictions for this year.

Retailers Are Drop Shipping to Save Capital: As retailers felt the recession, they started looking for ways to increase sales without using too much capital. The perfect solution for many was to use drop shipping because this allowed them to take orders online without having to stock inventory. The fact they could ship directly from suppliers saved them money, too. With low overhead, zero investment, no warehousing and shipping to worry about, many retailers went this route in 2011.

A Mini Guide to SEO for Wholesale Suppliers: Last year, wholesale suppliers needed to allocate marketing dollars wisely. SEO remains one of the most successful and cost-effective online marketing tactics, so we decided to review the latest SEO techniques. Keyword research, title tags, meta descriptions, link building and on-page content optimization can go a long way toward gaining better rankings, traffic and conversions.

9 Tips for Preparing Your Website for Holiday Traffic: It’s smart for online merchants to start planning website improvements for year-end holiday traffic in July because if you’re unprepared, heavy traffic can temporarily shut down your site for hours or even days. Our 9 tips suggested what you might work on − things like easy navigation, wish lists, registry options, smart coupons, rewards, global payments, live chat and help desk options.

As Shoppers Move Online, Retailers Go Digital: It used to be that most people shopping for clothes, shoes, electronics or whatever went to local malls or neighborhood stores. However, now that the Internet is available 24/7, consumers have left the malls for online stores and virtual showrooms. That means brick and mortal retailers must be creative to keep their customers. TopTenWholesale tells these businesses how to upgrade their marketing strategy.

Priceless Pricing: While consumers have always been price sensitive, they seem to be more so today than ever before. Actually, the new Gen X and Y consumers are even more price sensitive than older consumers. John Stanley gives some advice on pricing strategies and examples of effective consumer pricing you can use to get more conversions.

7 Tips for Optimizing Images and Videos for Your Site: Whether you’re a supplier or a retailer, you’re likely to have a lot of product images and even videos on your site. These are digital assets that need to be optimized for top rankings, and if you’re not doing this, you’re leaving money on the table. We give you the top SEO tactics for optimizing your images and videos, which you can use to attract more traffic and conversions.

5 Tips for Creating Effective B2B Newsletters: Since email is one of the most popular online marketing strategies, all B2B marketers should take advantage of the power of email to enhance their image and sell more product. Email is a cost-effective way to nurture your customers and prospects by creating and maintaining relationships over time, namely throughout the long B2B sales cycle. Top Ten Wholesale gives you five important tips for creating effective B2B newsletters.

B2B Merchants Must Optimize for Mobile and Tablets: Smart B2B merchants will be optimizing their sites for mobile and tablet users since they will soon outnumber computers and laptops. More and more of your customers can now connect directly from their handheld devices, and that means your website must visually accommodate all these users. Top Ten Wholesale tells you how to minimize your site while maximizing your visibility in the SERPs.

Google Product Search Drives Merchant Sales: Google Product Search continues to be very important for online merchants because this price comparison shopping service helps drive customer traffic to merchant websites by displaying their products in the organic links. While not all online merchants use Google Product Search, it offers retailers the opportunity to display specific products in search results. Top Ten Wholesale tells you the benefits of Google Product Search and how to submit your product feed for display in search results.

Since B2B marketers have been dealing with smaller budgets, it is important to use the most effective marketing tactics for generating leads and conversions. Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) have proven to be cost-effective for generating quality leads and driving revenue. This article will provide some tips based on research (Marketing Sherpa, 2011; Google/Forbes, 2009; Google/Slack Barshinger, 2009) that can be used to improve your conversions and marketing ROI.

Evaluating Lead Quality
Research has shown that lead quality is the number-one B2B marketing challenge. B2B organizations need to generate both high-quality and high-volume leads.

The first step toward improving your leads is to understand inquiries versus leads by tracking and evaluating raw inquiries (all leads) and accepted leads (filtered inquiries that warrant follow-up). Some B2B marketers selling to a very specific niche market can get a lead acceptance rate as low as 50 percent.

The next step is to create a lead-grading system. A common system sometimes used is the A-B-C-D format where:

• A leads are inquiries with the highest sales potential (large companies with purchasing power in your target market and desired geographic area)
• B leads are from slightly smaller firms in your target market
• C leads represent companies with potential, but not in your target market
• D leads warrant some follow-up but do not have high-potential

It is important to create a marketing-sales feedback loop. Communication between sales and marketing teams is critical, especially for companies with a long and complex sales cycle.

Lastly, lead grades should be reviewed and updated by the sales team and shared with marketing on at least a monthly basis to complete the marketing-sales feedback loop.

Increase in B2B Search Volume
Research shows that B2B Google searches have increased well over 200 percent since 2009. That makes a good case for investing in search marketing. You need to be in front of your target audience when it counts, and you can be there by fine-tuning your search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns.

Business buyers are using search engines. Research shows 65 percent of C-Suite personnel conduct six or more work-related searches daily. Not only that, 100 percent of policy influencers use the web to research the issues. Search is used by large and small businesses alike. In fact, 99 percent of small business owners believe search engines are the most effective tool for finding suppliers.

Multiple Personnel Decision Making
Many times, B2B conversions require a decision by a number of personnel. More often than not, an average of three individuals are involved in the decision making and purchasing process. So how do these personnel gain the information needed to make these decisions? It’s a foregone conclusion that they use search engines for research; what else? When asked if search marketing is effective, 93 percent of B2B marketers said SEO is effective, and 80 percent said PPC is effective (Marketing Sherpa, 2011).

The above study also revealed many B2B organizations are managing search marketing in-house with 59 percent handling SEO in-house and 45 percent handling PPC in-house. This is especially true of larger organizations.

However, B2B search departments focus mostly on the basics of SEO, including keyword research, on-page optimization, Meta tags and content development, ignoring link building, social optimization and blogging. It would be advantageous to use more advanced SEO tactics.

Personalization and Landing Pages
It is advantageous to use personalization in marketing materials and messaging, and most firms do that today. Additionally, B2B marketers can use Landing Pages and Downloadable Content for successful lead management.

Determining Marketing ROI
Valuable metrics for determining marketing ROI include Cost-Per-Lead and Cost-Per Acquisition, as survey respondents said these metrics are 90 percent effective in helping businesses evaluate marketing ROI.

Tracking these metrics can be done with analytics, as SEO and PPC programs can successfully track cost-per-lead and cost-per-acquisition, making search marketing programs very quantifiable.

In conclusion, B2B marketers need to be exposed to their target audience at the right moment, and the best way to do that is with well-managed organic and paid search campaigns. It’s important to evaluate and categorize leads. And it’s a good idea to develop supporting marketing materials to help move leads through the sales cycle by targeting messages to various decision makers. Finally, it’s important to use landing pages and personalized messaging to improve conversion rates and lead quality.

As you know, Google implemented its Freshness algorithm in early November to provide more relevance for time-sensitive queries. You can learn more about the freshness update in the “Catalyst POV on Google Freshness Algorithm,” which estimates the Google freshness update will affect 35 percent of searches in the SERPs. As a result, this update requires a major shift in B2B content strategy with a focus on recency, quality and relevance.

B2B marketers can change their content strategy to make sure the freshness update doesn’t negatively affect their positioning in the SERPs. One line of defense is to use RSS feeds to generate fresh links. This will help you display relevant links to users searching for time-sensitive topics and can also improve your organic positioning by moving competitive results down in search results.

Develop a Focus on Recency, Quality and Relevance
Because of the freshness update, recency becomes an important element in B2B content strategy. While content has always been important, it has now become even more so. The B2B sales process is becoming more diffuse as customers lengthen the sales cycle by conducting more research before making a purchase decision.

Customers are doing their homework, which means B2B marketers must continuously modify their content in order to serve their audience’s needs. B2B organizations can help their customers understand their offerings by focusing on customer needs, providing them with useful information about the benefits their products offer, while educating them on what’s happening in the marketplace.

Keeping Your Content Fresh and Relevant
To create fresh, relevant content, B2B marketers must better understand customer needs and know how they arrive at their buying decisions. They can gain some insights on this process by creating a simple Q&A used to solicit some information about customer needs during the buying process. These insights can help marketers create content that addresses their customers’ concerns.

Once you gain these insights, you can provide content that helps your customers during the decision-making process. Find out what topics are on your customers’ mind, and then figure out how your value proposition applies to these topics.

You can create a content strategy by providing content in the channels that offer your customers the information they seek, based on your research. For many B2B marketers, this will include a blog, RSS feed, and press release optimization. But it can also include video, user-generated content and product reviews.

After creating a content strategy, you can track how well your content is performing and how to improve your website performance. Create a content tracking analytics program to measure the effectiveness of each channel’s content. Factor in such Key Performance Indicator’s such as reach, relevance, and conversion metrics to determine how each content channel is performing.

In conclusion, B2B marketers must develop a search content strategy that takes advantage of the freshness update. It is now more important than ever to implement a content strategy that focuses on recency, quality and relevance.

B2B marketers can take advantage of the power of email to enhance their image and sell more product. Email is a top digital marketing tactic, second only to search marketing. It is a cost-effective way to nurture your customers and prospects by creating and maintaining a relationship over time and throughout the long B2B sales cycle.

A B2B email newsletter can serve different purposes, such as attracting leads, encouraging prospects to close a sale, connecting with customers to reinforce your business relationship, and establishing your company’s authority as a industry expert. You can make your newsletter more effective by creating a reader-centric newsletter with the following tips.

1. Create personal copy
Speak directly to your recipients by expressing a personality that matches your brand, product, or market niche. That means giving your newsletter a voice that might sound like a colleague offering business advice over a cup of java. All companies have a personality, and your newsletter copy should reflect that voice.

Remember, you are marketing to individual decision makers; always envision your recipients reading your copy, and write it as if you were talking directly to that person.

2. Ask recipients to take action
The heart of your email message is the call-to-action, be it a request for product information, whitepaper download or webinar signup. B2B newsletters typically focus on product or company information, industry news, or how-to’s and tips on industry opportunities or problem solving of interest to customers.

You can focus on turning a prospect into a solid lead, converting a lead into a customer, or to keeping existing customers active. Have a specific goal in mind for each message in your email campaign with a clear call-to-action in each message, whether it’s downloading a white paper, requesting a product demo or taking advantage of a special offer.

A good way to encourage engagement is to add a relevant one-question survey to your next newsletter. You might ask recipients to check or click the newsletter section they find most valuable. Then report back to your readers on the results and action taken if applicable.

3. Segment Your Audience
Divide your customer database into well-defined segments and sub-segments; then develop content that addresses the needs of these segments. You may not be able to achieve a high level of segmentation; however, you can simply segment by geography. Send one version of the email to your North American audience and a different one to the European and Middle Eastern audience, with yet another version to your Asian audience. The foreign versions can be similar to the U.S. version but provide different articles or offers reflecting subtle differences that are culturally appropriate.

Another possible segmentation is prospects vs. customers, or targeting those who signed up for more information (white paper, phone call, webinar, etc.) separately from those who are inactive.

4. Avoid information overload
This can happen if you include multiple topics to cover all of your audiences. However, this can turn people off when they don’t have the time to scroll through to read what applies to them. You can focus on different audiences sequentially by offering at least one article in each issue that targets a specific audience.

5. Create unique landing pages for each article link
Don’t send readers to your homepage. Many are likely to get frustrated and click away rather than try to find the right article. Set up informative landing pages that also link to related information like case studies, press releases, etc., sending readers deep into your site.

In conclusion, your company newsletter is apt to be the first place you make contact with potential customers. Therefore, let it convey your authority, expertise, and company personality in a nutshell. Bringing your newsletters closer to your readers, with a personal voice, offering an action they can take immediately without committing to a sale, can help you create newsletters your readers will read and value.

A new study from Accenture, “Making Social Media Pay: Rethinking Social Media’s Potential to Bolster B2B Interactions, Customer Loyalty, Revenues and Brand Reputation,” found that a majority of B2B companies are not using the power of social media. However, social media networking is a great new place for wholesalers and manufacturers to engage their prospects and customers.

While many B2B marketers have doubts about social media effectiveness, they need to realize that Business-to-Business marketing is even more about relationships than Business-to-Consumer marketing. Whether you sell wholesale merchandise or manufacture products, you need to showcase your products and services so they demonstrate the value provided to your customers. This happens naturally when you understand your customers’ business, and they understand the value of your offering. In other words, you must convince your customers you are the expert in your industry and you know their business. This is hard to do with an ad or brochure, or even in a 15-minute sales call; however, it can be effectively done online with social media networking.

Social Media Networks Are a Great Way to Gain Trust

In social networking, it is not so much about the value of your offer, but rather, it’s about the benefits your products and services provide to your customers. Rather than trying to overwhelm your prospects with ads, newsletters or webinars, this is a way to listen to your customers and offer value about their concerns. Your best salespeople do this on a one-to-one basis in the field. And you can do this on a larger scale by communicating the information you learn from reading industry emails about new product applications, industry regulations and other important insights to customers on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or other discussion groups. Once you start sharing your industry knowledge through social networking, your customers will recognize you and your company as an expert in the industry and therefore trustworthy.

Social Networking Spreads Information Quickly

Your customers need information to help them make decisions on an everyday basis. Social networking doesn’t take the time that polishing a newsletter requires. Just share your insights off the cuff about important information of interest to your customers on a blog and then tweet a link to it. Voila; it’s done.

Social Networking Is a Great Way to Demonstrate Knowledge

Social networking is a great way to “blow your horn” by showing everyone how well you know your business sector. Search engines now display social networking links in search results in real time, which means your tweets on topics users are searching for can be seen in the top search results, even by users that do not have a Twitter account. So go ahead and show your smarts on relevant social networks.

Successful B2B wholesalers and manufacturers have always thrived on using industry knowledge and specific business expertise to gain trust and increase business. Social networking is a great new way to expose that knowledge and expertise to your prospects and customers.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an essential tactic used by many B2B marketers. A successful campaign requires skills in both ad creation and campaign management. Not only do you need to create compelling ad copy to get the click, you also need to create effective landing pages that convert. This article will discuss the elements of landing pages that translate into sales.

Your PPC landing page must be specific to your offer and dedicated to providing the information your buyers seek, making it easy for them to get what they want. A PPC landing page should be simple in design with few options and a distinct call-to-action that tells prospects how they can easily contact you, subscribe to your catalog, download information or purchase product directly from your landing page. Below are some landing page tips that can help B2B marketers generate more leads and improve the quality of those leads.

The fastest and easiest way to increase your sales without spending more to increase traffic is to optimize your landing pages. With landing page optimization, you can get four times more customers for the same advertising budget. The most successful B2B companies test the most important elements in their landing pages.

Start by reviewing your website statistics (or log files) to check your landing page performance. You’ll likely find the largest percentage of visitors leave within 0-8 seconds after briefly viewing your landing page. The next largest percentage of visitors leave when they decide your landing page is not compelling or it’s not what they are looking for. A small percentage of visitors attempt to convert and fail; some may call if you provide a phone number. A small percentage of visitors actually convert. You want to minimize the number of visitors that leave without converting by testing your landing page conversion elements.

Listed below are the top six conversion elements that can be tested, improved and re-tested to increase your conversion rate.

1. Headline: The headline is the first thing your visitors see, and it gives you the best opportunity for improving your conversion rate. Create headlines that clearly state the best benefit(s) your product/service offers. Tell them exactly what they get.
2. Offer: Your offer is the call-to-action that compels visitors to act (buy, download, opt-in, etc.). This is your second best opportunity to improve your conversion rate.
3. Lead: Your first paragraph lead is the third best opportunity to improve your conversion rate. Leads must include strong benefits that grab your visitors’ attention and makes them want to continue reading.
4. Benefits: The benefit bullet points are the fourth best opportunity to improve your conversion rate. List benefits in order of value to your target market, starting with the strongest benefit first.
5. Images: Images have a huge impact on conversion rates. Use images that clearly demonstrate the most important benefit your product/service offers. Research shows product images work best when placed to the left of your product description (lead paragraph) because people read copy from left to right. People like to read captions under images, so create powerful captions and make your images clickable to the order or sign-up page.
6. Look & Feel: Studies show 46 percent of Internet sales are lost on websites lacking elements that build value and trust. The number-one reason given for not buying from a website was that it had an unprofessional look and feel that lacked credibility and trust. Create landing pages with a professional look, and add trust-building logos like VeriSign to help convert more qualified visitors.

Additional conversion elements you can test include:

• Buttons: Button text, color, look, etc.
• Pricing
• Page Elements formatting and placement: images and copy
• Navigation links vs. no navigation links
• Press Quotes
• Testimonials

In conclusion, a focus on simplicity, buyer benefits, compelling call-to-action, urgency and accuracy will increase both the number of leads and your lead quality. The key to success is to test and re-test to determine the best elements for converting customers on your landing pages.

As you know, Google is making search more secure with encrypted search using SSL (secure sockets layer). This will happen when users search on Google.com, but only if they are signed into Google with a secure connection. How many searches does this involve? Danny Sullivan reported that Google estimates single-digit percentages of all Google searchers on Google.com will be involved, although many SEOs believe that estimate is low.

Google encrypted search will protect searches from being watched or captured while users navigate the Internet. Encrypted Google search is not completely private, but it helps individuals and businesses ensure sensitive information is not available to people snooping around. This is a significant change, and it’s a good idea to be aware of the implications of encrypted search and the secured browsing experience. Below is more information on Google Encrypted search.

Google Keyword Data: Organic Vs. Paid Search Results

Normally, web browsers report “referrer” data when users navigate from one website to another. This data tells the destination site how it was found — from a link on another website or a search term entered into a search engine.

With encrypted search, referrer data in organic results will be blocked, so site owners will lose valuable data that helps them understand how their sites are found through Google. They will still know if users come from a Google search, but they won’t know what the search query was. While SEO traffic in general remains trackable, conversion analysis down to the keyword level will not be possible.

However, referrer data will not be blocked for Google ads. If a user clicks on an ad, the advertiser site still receives the same information currently provided with non-encrypted search. Why? Because Google feels advertisers need this additional data to evaluate their campaigns

Search Terms from Google Webmaster Central

As an alternative to the loss of referrer data, Google Webmaster Central allows websites to find the terms people use to reach their sites. Google recommends that site owners go to Google Webmaster Tools where they can get an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that sent traffic to their sites over the past 30 days.

Benchmarking Keyword Search Data

Another alternative to the loss of referrer data is to start benchmarking the performance of your historical and current keyword search data. Metrics to consider include:

• General organic keyword referral reports.
• Specific breakout for primary keyword targets and competitive keyword phrases. For example, if you targeted “wholesale jewelry,” track specific referrals for the term along with the number of times this phrase is used in overall search referrals to your website.
• Percentage of “not provided” data via Google Analytics since Google encryption change.
• Conversion metrics, traffic from link building initiatives and new vs. return visits via organic search.

You can track these metrics once a month and then measure year-over-year improvements and changes.

Third-Party Analytics Tools

Google Analytics reports this change to web marketers with the “not provided” benchmark in keyword reports; however, other third-party tools used by B2B marketers may be slow to address this change. Contact your vendor to find out how it is handling this change. Below are some third-party vendor announcements regarding encrypted search.

• Omniture: The Impact of Google Encrypted Search
• Web Trends: Our Response to Google’s Query String Security Announcement
• Coremetrics & Unica: Google Making Search More Secure

In conclusion, secured browsing and protecting user privacy along with security are improvements that help secure the privacy of B2B marketers’ sensitive information. However, since referrer data in organic results will be blocked, site owners will lose the data that helps them understand how their sites are found through Google. They must either benchmark their keyword search data or get the data from Google Webmaster Tools.

The Official Google Search Blog posted ten algorithm changes last week. One of these is the freshness update. That means the new Google algorithm now displays the freshest news in search results. Your news, blog posts, events and Google+ posts can now display prominently in search results when optimized for SEO. For instance, a search for occupy wallstreet conducted while writing this piece is shown below. The news was posted 15 minutes before this query was made.

This freshness update will impact from 6 to 35 percent of web searches, delivering more up-to-date and relevant search results. The freshness update includes searches for recent events, hot topics, current reviews and news items. Since product and service reviews will get give merchants more visibility in the SERPs, now is the time to encourage reviews.

Because social media now influence what links display in search results, merchants need a good public relations strategy focused on SEO that is all about getting their news and content to appear in organic search results.

Today’s merchants have more control than ever to deliver news and messages directly to their customers via blogs, newsrooms and social media networks. And Google’s new update gives them one more opportunity to provide fresh and relative content that will show up in search results.

Now, more than ever before, it is important to provide an online newsroom for your customers and stakeholders. How many of you have an online newsroom? Or a blog? Your customers and prospects can learn about your products, services, reviews, events, etc., and Google will rank it at the top of search results when presented with the right query.

A company’s online newsroom can be an excellent source that delivers fresh news content that goes directly to Google, so this is a good time to spiffy up your newsroom or blog. An organized and optimized online newsroom will feed Google the content freshness and frequency that Google now prizes.

All you have to do is post company news, send out optimized press releases for media coverage, create blog posts to publicize events, and use images, videos and white papers in industry news and company newsletters.

If you don’t have the time nor the personnel to add a newsroom to your website or blog, online newsroom providers like MYPRGenie, MyNewsdesk, and TekGroup can get an online newsroom up for you in 24 hours. Now is the time to beef up your editorial calendar and publish content more frequently to leverage the Google freshness algorithm change.

You can post news about events such as trade shows, which come up regularly in our industry throughout the year. Press releases and event-related blog posts can capitalize on the new Google algorithm as well.

But remember, you must create good content, not mediocre prose that can get you a Panda penalty. Great content creates tweets, links, likes and Google+ votes. It takes excellent content to generate traffic.

In conclusion, merchants that publish quality company news that is relevant, consistent and frequent will be rewarded by Google’s freshness update with SERP visibility.

A new report by online marketing agency Webmarketing123 reports that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the top source of leads for both B2B and B2C marketers − better than PPC and social media marketing. However, more marketers (60 percent) will be increasing social media marketing efforts over SEO and PPC in 2012. Read on to find out why.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report surveyed over 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September. Approximately two-thirds of the respondents were B2B marketers. Both B2B and B2C marketers agreed SEO had the biggest impact on generating leads. In their responses, 57 percent of B2B marketers and 41 percent of B2C marketers said SEO was their primary source for generating leads.

Website Traffic Best Measure of Success

Both B2B and B2C marketers said website traffic is their primary means for measuring online marketing success. Conversely, brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

Marketing Budget Allocations Differ

The digital marketing survey included several budget-related questions. One question asked which marketing tactic gets the majority of their marketing budget. The B2B marketers favored SEO with 33.3 percent indicating SEO gets the majority of their marketing budget. However, the B2C marketers favored PPC, with 42.5 percent indicating PPC gets the majority of their marketing budget. That’s almost double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation. No surprise there.

Plans to Increase Social Media Marketing

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012. For SEO, 53 percent plan to increase their budget, and for PPC, 40 percent will increase budget.

The increases in social media spending can be explained by the statistics below, which came out in the survey.

• 68 percent said they generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn
• 55 percent closed deals from social media leads

Download the Report

You can download the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report from the webmarketing 123 website by providing your name and contact information. There is a very interesting infographic illustrating a number of the statistics from the survey in Search Engine Land’s article, Infographic: Digital Marketer Views on SEO, PPC & Sopcial Media.

It’s smart for B2B merchants to optimize their site for tons of mobile and tablet users, as they will soon outnumber computers and laptops. More and more of your customers can now connect directly from their handheld devices, thanks to new technology. That means your website must visually accommodate all these users. This article tells you how to minimize your site while maximizing your visibility in the SERPs.

Creating a mobile version of your site can give you the advantage of reaching customers who are always wired. Today, nobody sits at a desktop waiting for pages to load; rather, they’re holding mobile devices. That’s why it’s more important than ever to ensure your website is available for the growing mobile audience. It must be well optimized for optimal viewing, searching and connecting. Below is some info you can use.

• Search for mobile specific keywords in Google AdWords to help narrow down exactly what words you need for reaching today’s mobile and tablet consumers.
• Use the same SEO tactics to optimize your mobile site that are used to optimize your website, but use your mobile keywords to create the title tag, description and headers.
• Don’t overwhelm mobile users with content. Keep it short and simple, ensuring that your images are small. This provides the best mobile experience for you customers.
• Use clear fonts that are easy to read, create large action buttons and easy navigation so information can be found.
• Test for small screen viewing.

It’s important to transform your website from computer-friendly to mobile-friendly to reach all the people using mobile and tablets on the go. Most sites have two URLs − one for mobile and one for computers.

Did you know there’s an SEO advantage to having a mobile version of your site? Google now has Googlebot Mobile, a special crawler that looks for mobile versions of classic sites to index. This can be an advantage if you optimize your mobile and classic sites properly because you’ll be twice as searchable on mobile and web. There are several things you can do to make your site mobile-friendly.

• Create visually appealing content for small-screen viewing by using CSS. Reduce image sizes and ensure fonts and content are simple for easy scanning.
• Optimize your content and images by including keywords from Google AdWords mobile search. Don’t use ads on a mobile site – it’s hard enough to read content.
• Ecommerce apps provide a competitive edge that keeps your customer from going to competitor sites.

You can also consider two design options for your mobile site: Google Transcode vs. Mobile Subdomain.

• Google Transcode: If you use Google’s configuration tool to transcode your site from classic HTML to mobile HTML, it doesn’t give your customers the best user experience because images and content can be resized in an unsightly manner, resulting in error pages. Avoid this by creating a mobile subdomain.
• Mobile Subdomain: Create a subdomain specifically for your mobile site. Having separate URLs for mobile and web allows the GoogleBot Mobile to visit and index the mobile version for mobile searches, a key factor for searching and indexing.

Don’t use Flash, Java, Ajax or Frames. You can use XHTML (WAP 2.0), cHTML (iMode) or WML (WAP 1.2).

• Be Sure to Test: Run your site through WSC Mobile to ensure it is mobile-friendly. Test and re-test on multiple browsers and devices.
• Optimize for All Screens: Not everyone has a smartphone since there are still a number of users using classic phones. Make sure your site views properly no matter what screen is used.

The Ubiquity of Tablets. Tablets are quickly replacing laptops and even televisions – they are lighter and easier to pack, making them more attractive for today’s users. Unlike the majority of mobile phones, tablets rely on Wi-Fi and 3G to connect. A tablet-friendly site is fast and looks familiar and simple. Here’s what you can do:

• Provide classic and mobile versions of your site for iPad users. Since iPads don’t use Flash, sites with Flash content can redirect iPad users to their mobile site.
• Ecommerce sites can have an application developed that directly connects their products to mobile and tablet consumers with one tap. Apps can store all your information in one place, making payments easy while providing fast-loading pages.
• Content-heavy sites are good, but it can be time consuming and annoying to scroll down for info. Avoid this by including “Previous” and “Next” buttons to make content navigation easy.

Optimizing for Tablets. Here’s what you can do to make your site tablet friendly: 

• Limit duplicate content by changing CSS so it’s optimized for tablet viewing.
• If you use Flash, redirect to your mobile site from the tablet.
• Create an app for ecommerce pages and information storage to avoid slow loading time.
• Optimize the check-out process for buyers by using cookies, postal codes, and PayPal.
• Make pages touchable by using HTML5 and CSS3 to create scrolling and horizontal navigation with content all on one page.
• Offer downloadable content by creating PDF versions of important site content, allowing users to store content for future reading.
• Test and retest.

Following the above tips will get your mobile site indexed, while giving you instant purchasing and sharing from mobile and tablet customers. Using individually developed apps that remove users from the browser and into your online store will keep your customers’ attention focused on your products, resulting in more conversions.

Business-to-business marketing is growing at a rapid pace, but B2B marketers have many challenges to face. What are these challenges? The answer comes from the Marketing Sherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, which surveyed B2B marketers about marketing barriers and top challenges to success. Facing these challenges in today’s market makes it more important than ever for wholesalers and manufacturers to identify these obstacles within their own organizations and develop solutions that will keep them competitive.

The Marketing Sherpa report identified the barriers listed below as obstacles preventing B2B marketers from overcoming their greatest challenges. B2B marketers must identify and address these barriers within their businesses, and then develop solutions in order to succeed. Following are the top barriers identified by the survey.

• Lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time – 62%
• Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically – 39%
• Limited ability to develop content – 35%
• Lack of sufficient insight on target audience – 32%
• Lack of alignment between sales and marketing – 32%
• Lack of reliable data to drive decisions – 31%
• The economic climate – 30%
• Lack of clarity on goals and objectives – 27%
• Not enough education of marketing staff on best practices – 26%
• Lack of a clear value proposition – 25%
• Lack of insight in competitive research – 25%
• Lack of support from IT – 19%
• Difficulty gaining C-suite support for new strategies – 17%

B2B Lack of Resources. The top barrier to B2B marketing success seems to be the lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time (62%). This correlates to the economic climate, which was also identified as a barrier to success by 30 percent of respondents. The only way for wholesalers and manufacturers to deal with this is to carefully review staffing and budgeting, as well as accurately estimating the time necessary for completing projects.

B2B Content Marketing. Many of the above barriers can be difficult to track and correct, but the third one, the limited ability to develop content, was identified as a challenge by 35 percent of B2B marketers. This challenge can be corrected by adopting effective B2B content marketing practices, which begin with understanding your customers’ needs. Below are some best practices for successful content marketing.

• Focus on Your Customer. B2B marketers need to speak to customers as often as possible, and a good opportunity to do this is to attend several trade shows every year. Good content on your website will meet customer needs. When your content is aligned to customer needs, and using the customer’s own words, interest in your products will soar.

• Define Your Process and Delivery Policy. Once you have great content on your site, your marketing and IT departments must make that content easy to find and access. Sales portals and other technology like Content Management Systems, CRM, salesforce.com and marketing automation systems can help you create a well-defined delivery process so the necessary content is available when and where customers need it.

• Centralize Your Content. Content “tagging” and company-wide information architecture are very important for making your content findable by customers and sales teams. You must have a centralized program to make this possible.

•Test Your Results. Effective B2B content marketing doesn’t stop after you post information on your site. The 80/20 rule often applies, and that means 80% of the content people read may not produce the results you want. Therefore, your content marketing is an ongoing process of finding out what worked and why, then using that information for the next round of content creation.

In summary, B2B marketing is growing at a rapid pace, but there are many challenges to success. B2B marketers face obstacles that run from a down economy to a lack of resources in staffing, budgeting and time, and limited ability to develop great content. Facing these challenges makes it important for wholesalers and manufacturers to identify these obstacles within their own organizations and develop solutions to keep competitive.

While many people think local search optimization is only for B2C sites, recent research suggests it should also be a part of B2B marketers’ search efforts. Marketing Sherpa found only 35 percent of B2B marketers claimed a local business listing, and only 23 percent optimized for local search terms in organic SEO efforts. On the other hand, 43 percent of B2C marketers claimed local listings, and 36 percent optimized for local search. This article will explain how B2B marketers can benefit from local search optimization.

There are many reasons for B2B sites to take advantage of local search. For instance, consider the goal of dominating the search engine results pages. The SERPs have limited real estate, and when you get more visibility by combining SEO, PPC and local search optimization tactics, you’ll be able to maximize your SERP exposure.

If you doubt that B2B sites need to optimize for local search, just take a look at the first four listings in the Google Places category list, which are: Business to Business, Business to Business – Machine Shops, Business to Business – Manufacturers, and Business to Business – Wholesalers.

Yes, B2B sites can gain advantage by claiming a local search presence. In fact, many local search tactics apply to any business whether the customer is a business or a consumer. Here’s what you need to do to claim your local listing.

• Provide a local phone number in your listing
• Include a local address
• Use strategic keywords in your listing description
• Enhance your listing with custom details such as hours of operation, coupons, etc.
• List your business in a range of business categories
• Add area(s) served outside your immediate area or your zip code
• Add videos to your listing
• Add photos to your listing
• Add offers to your listing (B2B companies can run promotions)
• Use Google AdWords to raise the visibility of your Google Places listing

Be sure to complete every section in the local business listings rather than just the bare minimum. You can also claim your local business listing in multiple locations, including Google Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local, Yelp and more.
Optimize Your B2B Site for Local Search

Claiming your business on local search engines is an important first step, but you must also optimize your B2B site for local search. That means putting your address on the footer of your website template, which tells the search engines that you are in that area. It also adds trust when people can see you have a physical address. Another thing you can do is create dedicated pages for each company location that includes information like directions, hours of operation and phone numbers, etc.

Create Location-Specific Landing Pages. It’s smart to create state or city level landing pages to correspond with your overall keyword strategy to get customers from those places when your physical location is elsewhere. For instance, a company that does a lot of business in California, but doesn’t actually have a facility there, can create a landing page based on its California business. The landing page would focus on clients based in California, listing the location of these clients. You could also include testimonials from those clients and add a video to support your page content. That way, even though your physical location is not in California, your location-specific landing page shows customers and tells search engines that you have business in that area.

Use Microformats for Location Tagging on Your Website. Microformats are website code in semantic markup that can provide information such as contact details, events, location, etc., with tags that make it easier for search engines associate that information with relevant searches. Structured markup tagging can also give you SEO benefits and is a powerful way to get location information noticed by the search engines.

In conclusion, local search optimization is important for helping B2B marketers get ahead of their competitors. This article offered some tips to help B2B merchants claim their local listings and start optimizing their site for local search.

As you know, the 2010 holiday season was huge for online retailers. The Coremetrics report indicates online merchants got double-digit increases in website sales and average order size. Consumers seemed to ignore the recession last holiday season, and this trend continued into 2011. Coremetrics benchmark data suggests the coming holiday season could be another record-breaking season for online retail.

However, the report warns of pitfalls. Consumer attention is at its weakest level, as indicated by metrics like “average time on site” and “page views per session.” Savvy visitors are spending less time browsing retail sites than they did in prior years. The report says they are shopping surgically, zeroing in on just the items they need. The bounces rate (percentage of single-page sessions) is also up and has remained steady over the last year and a half.

Not surprisingly, mobile browsing and shopping has increased as consumers enjoy the convenience and functionality of tablets and smartphones. Mobile sales as a percentage of overall site business nearly doubled in Coremetrics’ reporting period, with mobile shopping likely to reach double digits by the holidays. Social media visitors and sales have increased moderately; however, these shoppers are more than twice as likely to convert compared to overall site visitors.

The Coremetrics annual holiday guide provides in-depth analyses of key trends in online shopping based on anonymous data aggregated from over 500 U.S. retailers participating in the Coremetrics Benchmark program. The report also includes best-practices on how retailers can make the most of the opportunities during the all-important holiday season.

Online Shopping Trends

The holiday season is offers a huge opportunity for online retail sales, which are predicted to increase significantly over the next few years. Research firm Forrester reports the following statistics to support this prediction:

• 83 percent of consumers prefer to shop online than in crowded stores during
Thanksgiving weekend

• 21 percent of online shoppers expect to spend more over the web in 2011

The above trends were also documented in the Coremetrics Benchmark data. The report looked at trends in five key areas listed below. We will cover the first two in this article.

• Consumers are spending more on more items
• Mobile device usage and social media are growing
• Consumer attention continues to decline
• Carting and ordering hit record highs
• Single-page “bounce” visitors remain high

Consumers Spend More on More Items

Between the 2009 and 2010 holiday seasons, retailers saw a double-digit gain in Average Order Value. Order values also went up substantially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2010 compared to 2009.

If these trends continue, retailers can capitalize on consumers’ willingness to spend. However, they must aggressively expand their email marketing, web analytics, mobile and social media efforts to maximize returns and increase customer loyalty.

Retargeting browsers and abandoners with personalized emails and targeted display ads is a good strategy, as is product recommendations technology. Mobile device support is a must, while social media offers a new way to get consumer engagement and site visits.

Coremetrics Concludes: “Increases in average order value and average number of items per order should prompt savvy retailers to look for ways to smartly engage online shoppers and capitalize on consumer use of social media and mobile devices.”

Mobile Usage and Social Media Are Growing

The Coremetrics Benchmark data shows steady increases in mobile usage in both site visits and sales. Mobile usage is on the rise and is a critical channel for online retailers.

Mobile site traffic is expected to increase by the 2011 holidays, as well as sales via mobile devices, as consumers use smartphones and tablets for making purchases.

Site visits and sales by social media visitors are also rising incrementally, with the percentage of social-driven site sales higher than social-driven site visits. Coremetrics’ comparison of key metrics across overall, mobile, and social visitor populations reveals the following insights:

• “Social visitors. They’re more than twice as likely as the overall population to convert, at a rate
of 10.7 percent versus 5.2 percent. Many of these social visitors are likely responding to offers,
as their bounce rate (62.8 percent) is high and their time on site (3:26 minutes) is low.

•” Mobile visitors. They’re less engaged than the overall population, with fewer page views, less
time on site, lower conversion, and higher bounce rates. Though this is not unsurprising, it does
underscore the need for retailers to monitor and optimize the mobile user experience.”

Coremetrics Concludes: “Mobile and social visitors are rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with. Retailers need to move fast to ensure they meet the expectations of fickle mobile visitors, and should continue cultivating the important segment of social media users.”