Archive for February, 2012


SEO, it’s snot.

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Web Strategy by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
February 29, 2012

Inbound Marketing and Lead Generation, Minneapolis, St Paul, Minnesota, Atlanta SEO. It’s…

Snot link farms.

Snot keyword loading.

Snot listing on hundreds of directories.

Snot coding all content with H1 tags.

Snot solved by loading alt tags.

Snot hiring blog farms.

Snot copying your competitor’s keywords.

Snot forgetting 301 redirects when redoing your pages or site.

Snot traffic for traffic’s sake.

Snot always something you tell a new acquaintance at a party that you do for a living.

Snot easy.

Snot a one time fix.  (It’s a process.  It takes a while.)

Happy Leap Day.  Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Five Objectives for Search Engine Strategy

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Clients, Customers, Web Strategy by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
February 27, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation, Minneapolis, St Paul, Minnesota, AtlantaIn Web Tactics versus Web Strategy, I emphasized that your web strategy and business strategy may need to become one in the same.  But what is it you should try to accomplish in your web search strategy?

When it comes to organic search, there are a number of objectives on which you should focus.  These are all part of my overcoming resistance theme.

First, of course, is getting found or being discovered by search engine crawlers so you can show up in indexed results.

The second is having a site architecture that is crawler friendly.  You can be discovered, but present unintentional barriers to indexing and ranking your pages.

Once the page is found and accessible, your content needs to be available or extractable.  For example, the image of the webinar blurb you inserted in your sidebar may not help.

With these first three items, it seems like we are responding to search engines rather than people.  So the fourth item becomes the first and most important item.  You need to make the information on your page useful to people you are targeting and easy to read.  One way to do this is to provide Quid pro Nada.  But it’s also important to make content that can be scanned as well as read.  I often see word dense content littered with SEO terms.  (A sin I commit too often.)  My reaction is to flee quickly.  Life is short.  About three seconds short.

One little tool to check out for readability is The Readability Test Tool.

If you’ve done the first four steps, your last step is getting your visitors to take action or convert.

In the end, you are optimizing your page for people, not search engines, because people decide if they want to convert, and they decide whether to become clients or customers.  Create compelling content.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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What’s Your Value PrXpXsitiXn?

Filed Under: Customers, Marketing, Messaging, Sales by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
February 22, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis, St Paul, Minnesota, AtlantaHow many times have you had a sales person ask, “What’s our Value Proposition?”

The question I always ask next is, “Why do you ask?”  This is sort of a snotty response, and it doesn’t endear me to the sales team, but it has a purpose.

In my experience, too many sales people simply take the value proposition given by marketing and restate it to the prospect.  This is the worst use of a value proposition.  If you are in Marketing and you enable your sales team this way, then you are not helping.

A value proposition is a list of reasons why a prospect might benefit from buying your product or service, and it usually contains a number of elements.  The first is identifying a need, the second is some sort of differentiation, and the third is some sort of proof.

For example, “If you want fine flavor, then the smooth taste of Camel cigarettes is what nine out of ten doctors recommend.”   Parsed, the need is fine flavor and health, the differentiation is smooth taste, and the proof is that doctors recommend them.

While value propositions are good for internal dialogue and evaluation, as you know, simply stating the reasons why you should buy a product or service is bad sales form.  It’s also lazy.

When a prospect asks you, “What’s your value proposition?”  They are simply saying, “I don’t have time for this… just give me the Cliff’s Notes version, and I will decide.”

But the process they are going through is: 1) Do I really have this need? 2) Is this really any better? And 3) Do I really believe this, or do I trust you?  There is no way that a single “Statement” or “Value Proposition” will ever do justice to a prospect in answering these questions.  But if you fail to answer any of these, your sales and marketing efforts will falter.

So instead, slow down, and go back to basics.  Take your Value Proposition and turn it into a set of questions to determine whether the prospect has the need you believe your product or service can fill.  Then determine the prospect’s perception of the value to satisfying that need.  If it’s worth solving, then look at what their current vision is for solving that need.  Only then can you begin to explore an alternate vision and differentiation.  Your differentiation may be simply that you are not spouting a value proposition, but guiding the prospect through a process of discovery and helping them see things differently.  Proof doesn’t come until the prospect has a vision of capabilities they might need.

But please don’t just give your value proposition.  You might as well sit back, light up that Camel, and wait for good health to flow your way.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Web Tactics Versus Web Strategy

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Prairie Sky Group — 1 Comment
February 15, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis, St Paul, Minnesota, AtlantaLet’s say that you are a drug store owner in a small town.  Business has been good, but the freeway has just bypassed Old Route 7, which runs through town and past your store.  In addition, the town mine has played out, and people are moving away.  What do you do?

This is essentially what is happening to many businesses as the result of the Internet.  Yet, when I talk to B2B executives about their Internet efforts, I get three different responses.

The first group, let’s call them Luddites, doesn’t have the willingness, the time, or the resources to focus on their web presence.  While they may have a website, it is little more than a cardboard storefront.  They still believe that their current marketing approach will work, and they are riding this horse hard, even though their businesses are increasingly failing.

One of these little drug stores has figured out a way to get found and motivate people to drive five miles off the freeway and stop.  It’s called Wall Drug.  How did they do it?  They put up signs all over the world and made their business a novelty.  Imagine, they offer free ice water.  It took a long time and cost a lot of money for the signs.  The other 20,000 drug stores in small towns didn’t do as well.

The second group, call them the Reluctants, believes that the web is sort of a necessary evil.  It’s complicated, and they pay some technical geek to do some SEO and “stuff.”  Sometimes they are proud of their site, though they don’t know how to measure the results of their investment.

One of these drug stores formed a chain, put up a store on every corner, and got bigger through volume and lower prices.  Their cost structure is wacked because of the cost of their physical presence.  They have some Internet services.  They can be found online.

The third group, call them the newly Awakened, understand that their business strategy and their web strategy are irrevocably linked.  The world has changed.  They are seeking to change their business model and gain access to this new world.

One of these drug stores decided to take a different approach.  They decided to use the Internet to access those that were looking for solutions to particular health problems or access to particular drugs.  They sell online, but they decided to improve the customer experience online and offer access to pharmacists and even doctors, if needed, at no extra cost.  They deliver anywhere in the US, anytime, even after normal hours so you don’t have to get into your car.  Their prices are competitive, and they honor every major form of insurance.  When you can’t afford it, they will help get your drugs paid for.

There is a difference between doing a little Internet and embracing it.  Just as there is a difference between SEO and Web Strategy.  Strategy doesn’t just change the tool from a sign post in Afghanistan to the Internet, it thinks about the way potential buyers find, access and experience the relationship with your business whether you are online or not.

The biggest mistake I see around inbound marketing is the confusion between SEO or getting found, and the experience and customer relationship in the interaction.  You can get found with SEO, but no one will visit you on the net if you don’t have a sound strategy.  For example, you may have all the keywords you need, but if you don’t write for people and offer them something useful, no one will spend any time on your page or convert.

Start with a strategy.  Strategy for the web, as with any strategy, has to be pervasive across your organization.   And it has to be more than just a set of tactics or SEO.  Though free ice water sounds good.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Blog Mills. Really?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Messaging, Thought Leadership by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
February 13, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaYesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you.  The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog!  He asked for my reaction.

My reaction was, “Really?”  And not in a good way.

Think about it.  Do you really want to phone it in?  If you are truly passionate about your business, how can you simply hire out the content and voice of your business’s soul?

I believe that marketers and business bloggers need to provide thought leadership, push the envelope, and not just offer rehashed stuff.  Because when you do rehashed stuff, your readers won’t tell their friends about your posts.  It will be boring.  Your readers will drift away from your blog.  Your posts will wind up like my insurance agent’s newsletter.  I will never read his stock subject, “Summertime Grill Safety.”  I might look at “Five Ways Not To Blow Yourself Up.”  But no newsletter or blog service will ever come up with that title.

Like every other industry, the marketing business can also follow the path of mass production.  Figure out how to produce more at a lower cost, offer it for a lower price, and then spend the money you make “marketing or advertising” your service to the masses.  You may sell something.  So will a hundred other organizations.  They will all be the same.

Yes, occasionally there is a technical discontinuity that happens in the marketing business.  For example, the creation of websites becomes more automated and doesn’t require experienced html programmers.  This can lead to lower costs for putting up a site, and suddenly there are website companies springing up from South Dakota to Manila.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of improvements in technology or marketing.

We are told that blogging helps generate leads, and social media helps leverage your content.  I believe this to be generally true.  But you need to do the hard work.  Thank you to those that do it.

So if you are contemplating blogging and want to generate leads, I would advise against using a blog mill.   You might just as well lock yourself up with everyone else… or blow yourself up.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales With Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

PS: For those of you who want to stop the other kind of mill you can visit this site.

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