With lead-to-close sales cycles for B2Bs typically lasting four months or more, it’s important to reach and engage with potential clients as early as possible in the sales cycle. Specialized keyword research is used to identify keywords that prospects are using in search engines like Google while in the early stages of the sales cycle. Targeting your campaigns to the Awareness and Research phases, can help your company reach prospects before the competition does.

I’m going to discuss two proven B2B Keyword strategies for reaching prospects early in the sales cycle through search. The first strategy is to identify search queries for known pain points that prospects are experiencing. The second is to figure out other searches a prospect might be making that relate to their job function. At Walker Sands, we call this second strategy “Targeting the searcher, instead of the search.”

Pain Point Searches

Talk to your front line sales team about what your prospects say are their pain points. Use these pain points to research how prospects may be searching when trying to deal with these and related issues.

For example, if your business is sells software to help businesses manage employee shift scheduling, then a pain point might be that they are paying employees for too much overtime. Target keyword phrases to go after might include: “how to reduce overtime” or “ways to reduce overtime.” The landing page then should convey the problem and how your software addresses it. To increase the effectiveness of the campaign, the landing page should have some obvious action the prospect could take next, such as a sign-up for a free a trial, download a whitepaper, read a case study, schedule a demo or call us.

This technique works well for several reasons. The best two are: You are providing an answer to a very specific pain point that they are seeking options for. The prospect has self-qualified themselves as a match for your solution. They are primed to take the next step and begin engagement with your sales team.

Paint Point Search Strategy Implementation Plan:

1. Interview sales people about pain points. Align to your solution/services
2. Perform keyword research about the pain points to identify target phrases
3. Develop content (Ad copy, web page content, and any supporting materials such as case studies and white papers)
4. Create landing pages to support the content
5. Market the landing pages through paid search, social media, search engine optimization, etc.

Targeting the Searcher, Instead of the Search

This strategy helps build brand awareness and gets you in front of the prospect to start building a relationship early on. Instead of using keywords that focus directly on your solution, identify and use keywords that prospects use when trying to operate or improve their business.

For example, an HR Director or VP may be looking for new ideas on how to improve their own job performance or the performance of their group within the company. They turn to search engines looking for information. They make searches like: “hr process improvement” or “hr best practices.”

If you target these searches, you should create landing pages about the topics they are interested in and how your solution helps improve their processes or how best practices include improvements to operations or functions that tie into your solutions. These prospects are not as primed to talk to a salesperson, so I recommend creating soft calls to action about webinars, white papers, newsletter signups and product literature downloads.

One way to enhance this strategy is to pair it with your retargeting strategy to continue to build brand awareness with the prospect and drive more conversions.

Tip: I segment my keyword research into several buckets of keywords for this strategy. Some of the buckets I use are:

• Operations (think about terms related to: efficiency, management or operations)
• Growing (think about terms related to scaling or growth)
• Turnaround
• Cost Management
• Learning
• Recommendations
• Outsourcing

Targeting the Searcher Strategy Implementation Plan:

1. Perform keyword research
2. Segment keyword phrases into buckets
3. Develop content for each bucket you wish to target (Ad copy, web page content, webinars and any supporting materials)
4. Create landing pages, with soft calls to action to support the content

Measuring Success

In your analytics package, setup goals for each of the calls to action. After marketing the new landing pages through paid search, social media, search engine optimization, email and on your own websites, examine how each landing page is performing and make fine tune adjustments to the content and measure the impact.

Pain Point and Targeting the Searcher keyword strategies have proven to be excellent ways to help fill the top of the sales funnel with targeted leads. If you are looking to enhance your B2B sales, I strongly recommend these two approaches.

The internet has been abuzz since social networking giant, Facebook, launched a series of rather radical changes to its platform Wednesday. These changes are the largest overhaul to the site since 2008 and although Facebook deems these changes “improvements,” many users are in an uproar.

This happens every time Facebook unveils a new series of updates.  The Oatmeal developed a very funny
 comic that sums this sentiment up perfectly.

People are blogging, tweeting and commenting about the new site, what it means for users (and the world in general), businesses, and other social media sites. According to AllFacebook.com, a Facebook-tracking blog, since the updates went live on Wednesday, status updates that complain about the changes are appearing at least once every ten seconds and comments on these posts are going up too fast to even track.

Interestingly enough, Ben Parr of Mashable, wrote in an article on Wednesday, before the official announcement, that Facebook is changing its site to address users’ aversion to the platform. Even though Facebook has more than 800 million users to date and spectacular levels of engagement, it has lost its emotional connection with users, Parr explained.

People love to hate Facebook but refuse to leave because everyone is still using it. Unfortunately for Facebook, Google+ is gaining traction and most users do not have the same distaste for Google as they do for Facebook. Parr says the newest changes are designed to address this issue by enhancing Facebook’s emotional appeal and providing a more enhanced user experience.

The major changes include a complete overhaul of profiles and integration of the Facebook timeline, which allows users to personalize and share their life story. It introduces new media applications for discovering, sharing and playing music and video through partnerships with media providers such as Spotify and Netflix, as well as lifestyle apps. Facebook has partnered with lifestyle application developers to make updates to your ticker and timeline so you can share activities, like running, shopping, and dining in real-time.

Personally, I am curious to see what the new Facebook is all about. What do you think? Is it another bad move by Facebook or will the addition of social applications add value to the platform?

Foursquare, a location-based social networking platform, has been making a splash since its 2009 inception. At the beginning of the year foursquare released its very own infographic highlighting the company’s enormous growth. In 2010 alone, foursquare grew an unprecedented 3400 percent, with “check-ins” in every single country on the globe, and even one from space.

A few weeks ago, foursquare rolled out a completely revamped version of their popular mobile app that works on virtually any smartphone device, making it extremely accessible to all smartphone users, which is key since global smartphone use is on the rise.

The latest update involved the addition of foursquare self-serve Pages where brands can create their own Page, gain followers, share Tips, check in, and interact with fans. More than 300 big-name brands have signed on to foursquare’s Pages.

In honor of foursquare’s redesign that made the application much more user-friendly, here are four examples of brands utilizing this extremely effective and interactive social networking platform.

1. Walgreens – Walgreens is one of my personal favorite examples of how big brands are utilizing foursquare. The company stays engaged by offering fans more than 500 Tips ranging from ways to stay safe during flu season to how to take a great sunset picture. Moreover, Walgreens makes great use of foursquare’s Special feature. Last Friday, Walgreens offered consumers a chance to win a $100 gift card with every Walgreens check-in. I won’t lie; I made a special trip to the store just to see if I would win. I didn’t, but Walgreens did get my business on Friday, which otherwise would not have happened.

2. Redbox – I don’t mean to continually toot Walgreen’s horn, but recently Redbox offered a Free Movie Monday for any check-in to Redbox at a Walgreens location. This got movie-goers to the Redbox retail site to claim their free rental. And, it got those same users back a second time, 24 hours later, to return their Redbox rental. Even better, according to Adam Kmiec, Head of Social Media at Walgreen’s, prior to this program, foursquare did not allow Redbox locations to be official business locations with business management tools. This initiative was a marketer’s dream – it is measureable and drove customers to the store.

3. ESPN – Another effective way brands can encourage interaction and gain foursquare fans is by offering Badges. Badges are a fun way to encourage users to check in to your venue or follow your Page. A few days ago, ESPN created a new badge, only available to their super-fan followers. Diehard sports fan can unlock the ESPN Foam Finger badge by following ESPN and checking in to three sports stadiums. Foam Finger badge winners can then “paint their chest” with their favorite team’s colors to show all of their followers their team spirit. So far, ESPN’s Page has over 12,500 Followers and a wealth of useful Tips for fans.

4. Pepsi – Users that unlock the Pepsi Summer Fun Badge will be eligible to win tickets and a trip to an MLB World Series game, $500 gift cards, and Summer Party kits from Pepsi. Interested foursquare users just have to follow Pepsi’s Page and check-in to summer-related venues in the U.S. Most avid foursquare users are already checking-in to these types of locations, which include beaches and parks. Although users are not encouraged to purchase anything to enter, unlike Walgreens or Redbox, this feature does a great job of building brand awareness and increasing interaction between Pepsi and its fan base.

Foursquare isn’t limited to big brands, though. Small businesses can make great use of this platform as well by offering specials or freebies for frequent check-ins. Now that Groupon is integrated in foursquare, there is even more reason that small businesses offering a Groupon should have a foursquare presence.

I’d love to hear your comments about foursquare. Do you love it or hate it? What are some other brands that have a stellar presence on foursquare? How can small businesses make use of foursquare Pages?

Our favorite Old Spice Man is back, and he is bringing his A game. The Old Spice YouTube videos first aired earlier this year

and have been declared the most creative social media strategy for a brand. The first campaign was a hit, taking on everyone from celebrity super stars to tech geeks. Now after taking some time off, which he attributes to being busy negotiating the NFL lockout, he is back and ready to duel Fabio where the winner claims the title of Old Spice Guy.

The duel is still in its early stages, and it is too soon to gauge success; however, everyone agrees that the first campaign was wildly successful because it was both creative and hilarious. It is a great example of how to effectively use social for your brand. Shortly after the series of videos aired, many other brands were ready to jump on the social band wagon. But before your client asked to you have a presence on every social channel possible, let’s first look at how Old Spice did it, before we evaluate how others can do it.

How Old Spice Did It:

• Integration: the tweets and the videos were a part of an existing campaign. They had been putting videos on Facebook and Twitter for months.
• They listened across multiple sites and platforms, and made responses to what people were saying on Reddit, Twitter, etc. They did not just listen on one channel; they monitored and responded to numerous sites.
• Worked tirelessly on a marathon 18 hour video shoot that combined pre-recorded and “on the fly” content from a hilarious actor, comedy writers, social experts.

But before your client declares they need a Facebook page, make sure they develop a creative strategy that is tied their business objectives, and not just a tool (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Channel).

How You Can Do It:

• Define the brand’s audience
• Define the depth and breadth of the brand’s problems
• Develop detailed audience insights

Old Spice identified key audience insights: that people associated them with dads and grandpas, the brand is old and antiquated, and that it smells and not in the good way. By identifying key insights, they were able to develop a creative strategy that was much more effective than deciding “we need a Twitter page.” The strategy could then be tied to research and clear goals for the strategy can be developed.

So, once you have gathered as many audience insights as possible, and you have determined your target audience can be reached on a social platform, lay out your business objectives and begin testing your social strategy. Start by evaluating the existing campaigns your brand has to see if social can fit into one of them to enhance the campaign, instead of creating a whole new one. While you don’t need to create your campaign in an 18 hour marathon session, I would recommend taking after Old Spice and integrating the campaign across multiple platforms.

Still not sure if your social strategy is ready? Test drive it a small audience for feedback before it is completely launched, and always reference your business objectives and audience insights to keep you on track.

         Screen capture via stjarna!’s photostream on Flickr

Keen-eyed viewers of the popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother were treated to a pretty bizarre surprise recently. An episode originally shot and aired in 2007 was re-run this month with a small addition: an advertisement for the 2011 film The Zookeeper, digitally imposed onto a magazine behind a couch where one of the show’s characters was sitting. In the How I Met Your Mother universe, it was an ad for a movie from the future! Although I’m sure Zookeeper is a delightful summer film (cough), I think something definitely seems odd about seeing product placement for a 2011 movie in a 2007 TV episode.

This method of “virtual advertising” is nothing new. Live TV viewers of nationally televised baseball games have seen virtual ads behind home plate dating back to at least 2002. But, as NPR.org’s Marc Hirsh points out, the Zookeeper example is curious because it involves “altering a creative work that has been completed and published,” the work in this case being the How I Met Your Mother episode. Hirsh also notes that the ad in this example (pictured above) is so subtle that it’s almost pointless, which in a way makes the whole concept seem a little more silly and obnoxious.

The counterpoint to those who are skeptical about this form of advertising is simple: with today’s prevalence of DVRs and other options enabling viewers to bypass traditional commercials, thus lowering the commercials’ value, networks are under a lot of pressure to identify new revenue streams. True, seeing an ad for a movie from the future in an old TV episode is a little surreal, but maybe, without innovations like virtual advertising, we won’t even have any network sitcoms left to entertain us in a few years.

Hey, at least we can all be glad that The Zookeeper has still done lousy business at the box office.

What do you think—got anything to add about virtual advertising?