Premiums That Propel Prospects to "Order Now"
By Karen Gedney, Clickz B2B Email Marketing

"One of the best ways to get a prospect to act immediately is to offer an incentive. In business-to-business (B2B), the usual suspects are:

* Free information offers, such as white paper downloads

* Online gift certificates in small denominations, such as $10 Amazon.com gift certificates

* Drawings for higher-value gift certificates, such as $250 American Express Certificates

The above work well, depending on your audience and strategy. Sometimes, you want to try something a little different.

Here are two premiums I've used lately in e-mail that performed well (though actual results are confidential)."

To read the entire article, click on the following link:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/b2b_em_mkt/article.php/3515866

Slow and Steady SEM can Still Win the Race
By Jennifer Laycock - Search Engine Guide

"One of the most common reasons that I hear small business owners give about why they are not undertaking search engine marketing is that it's too much work and it costs too much money. While there's no arguing that both time and money are involved in proper search engine marketing, many companies overlook the fact that a little bit of time and a lot of perseverance can have just as much of an impact as a lot of work up front.

The "take-your-time" approach to search engine marketing can work whether you want to take on your search marketing in-house, or even if you want to farm it out to a specialist. Here's how it works.

Farming it out to Professional Search Marketers

While many search marketing firms prefer to do all of the optimization work for a client up front and then charge a maintainence fee for keeping an eye on the listings, there are some that are willing to be more flexible with their offerings. Some SEM firms are more than happy to take on a client on a retainer basis. The idea behind a retainer is that you are paying the company to work on your site for a certain number of hours each month. A retainer deal for organic optimization on a small site may break down like this:

1 hour a month of keyword research
2 hours a month of copywriting/editing
2 hours a month of code changing/page building
2 hours a month of link building
--------------------------------------------------------------------
7 hours a month of search marketing at anywhere from $50 - $250 an hour = $350 - $1650 a month

This type of retainer deal should get you a couple of pages of new content each month, each targeting one or two keyword phrases. It should also get you some ongoing link building, which will have a cumulative effect on helping your site rank better. The real benefit of this method is that it lets you start seeing results before you have committed a large amount of money, a true blessing for business owners that just aren't sure about how well search marketing will work for them."

Read the entire article by clicking on the following link:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/004860.html

Is Your Webmaster Making Your Company’s Marketing Decisions?
By Jennifer Laycock - Search Engine Guide

"The carpenter who built your house is not necessarily the right person to sell it. If you want to see real return on your webmaster’s creation, we recommend they not be the person involved in marketing the site.

Many online businesses are more than happy to leave the aspects of marketing their web site to the person who developed the site – their web master. While it’s true that developing and optimizing a website involves a fair amount of technical knowledge, a professional search engine marketer should be the person developing your search marketing strategy, not your webmaster.

The recent MarketingSherpa Search Marketing Metrics survey showed that sites which include organic search engine marketing experienced an average increase on conversions by 158%.

Clearly defined marketing that focuses on the features and benefits of your product/service, concentration on retaining and up selling customers and defining your unique selling proposition are aspects of marketing that most webmasters have little or no experience in.

If indeed your webmaster is calling the shots and making your SEM decisions, here are a few questions to ask them to address to rate their marketing savvy-ness..."

Read the entire article by clicking on the following link:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/articles/2005/0624_rc1.html

The Little E-Mail Marketing Budget That Could
Clickz E-Mail Marketing
By Jeanne Jennings

"Think you need a big budget to make e-mail marketing work for your organization? Or a large list? Or a three-digit average order? Think again. Here's the story of a company that's seeing a tidy profit from its e-mail marketing efforts with none of the above.

I heard Sam Cutting IV, president of Dakin Farm, speak at the Vermont/New Hampshire Direct Marketing Group annual conference last month. My thanks to him for letting me share with you what he shared in his presentation, including specific cost and revenue figures. If you're looking to do a lot with a small e-mail marketing budget, you'd do well to follow Dakin Farm's lead."
=========

I really liked this article because it's full of great advice and hard numbers. A great read for email marketers at companies of any size!

Check out the entire article at the following address:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/em_mkt/article.php/3513641

Take a peak at my advice on publishing an email newsletter by clicking on the following link:
http://www.web-marketing-tutorial.com/email-newsletters.html

Search Plays Key Role in B2B Sales – Parts 1 and 2
By Paul Bruemmer
Search Engine Guide

Conventional wisdom tells us the fastest and most efficient way to research and compare products and pricing is on the web. Recently, this belief was confirmed by two research studies examining the role of search in B2B marketing.

First, Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa demonstrated the dominance of search in B2B transactions. Now, a Google-Millward Brown study corroborates the importance of search in the B2B sales cycle.

Read Part and Part 2 by clicking on the following links:
Part 1:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/bruemmer/004807.html
Part 2:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/bruemmer/004881.html

Pharma Continues Its Move to Online Advertising

A new eMarketer report examines why pharmaceutical companies are shifting a significant portion of their marketing focus and dollars online.

According to data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 45% of American adults, or 91 million Americans, regularly consume prescription drugs. And Manhattan Research estimates that as many as 45.7 million Americans go online to search for information about pharmaceutical products in particular, while other industry observers estimate that millions more Americans use the Internet to look for health information in general — either for themselves, or on behalf of friends or family members.

"As a result of this growing Internet audience, pharmaceutical companies are continuing to shift a significant portion of their marketing attention and advertising dollars online," said Steve Butler, Senior Analyst at eMarketer and author of the report, Pharmaceutical Marketing Online.

Read the report overview at:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003458

Blogging for Dollars
by Stephen Spencer, Catalog Age

"WHY ARE PEOPLE READING BLOGS? A new blog is created every 5.8 seconds, according to the Washington-based Pew Internet and American Life Project research center. Not surprisingly, many of the millions of blogs littering the Web are not meant for public consumption beyond a small circle of friends or colleagues. Business bloggers, on the other hand, target a wider audience consisting of current and prospective customers, catering to their wants and needs with useful info or insightful commentary on a regular basis."

Here's a link to the entire article.

A really good blogging overview article, especially for businesses wondering if they should start a business blog with a good listing of the services you'll need to get it up and running.

Yahoo! Research Labs Releases Yahoo! Mindset (Beta)

Sort the first 100 Yahoo! search results for your search term to reflect whether you're ready to buy now (commercial) or you want to learn more about your search term (research/information-oriented). It's really a neat new feature! Here's what Yahoo! has to say about it:

"What is Mindset? A new twist on search that uses machine learning technology to give you a choice: View Yahoo! Search results sorted according to whether they are more commercial or more informational (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).

Sometimes you want to buy stuff and sometimes you just want to do research. In a typical search page, results point to commercial pages that are mixed together with non-commercial pages, so it's harder to find the type of information you're looking for. Mindset is our attempt to help solve that problem.

Through the use of machine learning for text classification, we try to classify each web page in the top 100 search results for a query. Then we sort those results according to the preference you set. Mindset uses an intuitive slider in the interface, so you can set the bias for commercial vs. non-commercial results. Often, we come across a web page that hasn't been classified yet. In those cases, Mindset tries to classify that web page in the background, so it'll be classified along with the rest of the results next time you do the same query."

To try it out, go to: Yahoo! Mindset

Source: Yahoo! Next Web Site

Detecting 'Click Fraud' - A Fast-Growing Cottage Industry

"The search-ad market is estimated at around $4 billion in the U.S. in 2004, and the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from search and similar keyword-triggered Web-site ads. But there is increasing evidence that some people are clicking on such ads either to run up fees for competitors, to boost the placement of their own ads or to make money for themselves.

The Web-search companies concede that click fraud is an issue but decline to quantify its scope; some outside estimates run as high as 20% of all clicks. Many companies complain that Google, Yahoo and other search engines are vague about how they are tackling the problem, unresponsive to questions about suspect clicks and ineffective when advertisers point out possible abuses.

Sensing a business opportunity, entrepreneurs have built up a cottage industry to capitalize on search-advertiser discontent. Their services, with names such as Clickfacts, Click Defense, ClickDetective, WhosClickingWho, and PPCTrax.com, generally monitor records of visitors who come to their clients' Web sites via search ads. To sniff out fraudsters, they rely on such clues as the numerical addresses that computers provide when they connect. Advertisers can take that information to the search companies to request credits to their ad budgets for fraudulent clicks."

Source: Wall Street Journal
9 June 2005

Thomas Register Ends Print Directories,
Turns Exclusively to Online Listings

In a move that truly demonstrates the impact the Internet/Web has had on the business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, Thomas Information Network has announced that it has discontinued the print versions of its Thomas Register of American Manufacturers and Thomas Register Regional Buying Guides. The information contained in these is available, free of charge, at www.ThomasNet.com.

The last hard-copy edition of either of these publications will be the 2006 edition of the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers, which along with its sister tome were known as the Big Green Books. During the last ten years, Thomas has been making a transition to the Internet.

"As an Internet marketing company, all our energies and investments are directed to serving our clients -- where and how they can best reach customers, " said Eileen G. Markowitz, president of Thomas Industrial Network, in a statement.

Markowitz continued, "To do this, we provide Internet marketing and Web site and content management solutions, including online catalogs, e-commerce capabilities, and CAD drawing distribution."

As a marketer who has his roots in the B2B world, this transition by the Thomas Register to an Internet/Web-only format is a truly significant event. It underlines the importance for ALL companies to not only have access to the Internet/Web, but to also have a truly professional Internet/Web presence. That presence (Web sites, search engine visibility, email newsletters, blogs, etc.) is rapidly becoming THE "Front Door" to your company for the entire world!