More recently, micro-vertical market marketing has gained interest as competition grows in software, consulting, capital equipment, and truly any “considered purchase” market (considered purchase is a typically complex, high dollar value scenario vs. impulse purchase, which is simple and low dollar value).

Our micro-vertical marketing guide will start with a definition, followed by details on industry classifications. Next, objectives and some tips for identifying viable micro-verticals. Of course, effective marketing is the key to success, so best practices are delineated. Finally, a micro-vertical marketing case study will share a real life example, and relevant resources will provide additional insight.

Continue reading or consider checking out our vertical marketing services.

Micro-Vertical Marketing DEFINED

Micro-vertical marketing is going deeper into broad market segments, to identify sub-segments that have specialized and common requirements, applications, decision-makers, and more. Often broad market segments are described as “horizontal” market segments that are made up of vertical and now, micro-vertical segments. In the past, marketers called vertical or micro-vertical marketing, niche marketing. Finally, the identification (and analysis) of market segments is called market segmentation.

Historically, market segments were referenced by Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC codes), developed and used by multiple branches of the U.S. government. In 1997, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes replaced “SICs”, with corresponding codes. Today, both codes are still used, and can identify both horizontal, vertical, and micro-vertical market segments. Often, directories and mail/email list providers use such codes for classifying records. Examples include D&B, Hoovers, InfoUSA, and more. Finally, outside of North America, there is a corresponding International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) system.

Following is an example of market classifications and segmentations that will aid understanding (see appendix for additional market classifications and codes).

Micro-Vertical Marketing OBJECTIVES

The objective of micro-vertical marketing is to demonstrate expertise that is relevant to the specialized requirements of a micro-vertical customer.  Educational content relevant to these requirements is key. If executed effectively, the brand (or person) will be perceived as a subject matter expert (SME), and ideally, the thought leader for that micro-vertical. Once achieved, the brand can rise to the top of the consideration set, reducing or eliminating competitors, speeding up the sales cycle, and ultimately driving sales.

How To IDENTIFY a Micro-Vertical

To ensure success, brands or marketers should target micro-vertical markets that leverage past experience, and ideally, proprietary skills or intellectual property (IP), that is difficult to replicate. Such experience, skills or IP lend themselves to a Case Study, which is critical. Of course this is not always possible, so brands may be able to leverage vendor experience, IP or case studies as an option.

Other keys to micro-vertical marketing success are market size, market infrastructure, and decision-making process.

Regarding market size, it is important to identify early whether the micro-vertical has enough prospective customers, and is not too small to be worthwhile of investment in time and resources. Directories like D&B or Hoovers can quickly identify “counts”, or number of companies for a given NAICS code. A rule-of-thumb for market size minimum depends on your brand sales objectives, but 100-1,000 establishments can be a preliminary benchmark.

Once a micro-vertical passes the “size test”, research industry infrastructure. Specifically, identify if any associations, media/publications, trade shows, lists, and related assets are available. Such industry “assets” can often support the next topic, marketing.

Understanding the decision-making process in a micro-vertical is certainly helpful. Likewise, identifying who decision makers are by title(s) is important. Such insights can come from interviewing customers or industry experts, but may differ by size of company.

Micro-Vertical MARKETING Best Practices

So what type of marketing tactics are effective for micro-vertical marketing? To answer, lets go back to that “considered purchase” reference. For expensive and complex purchases, prospective customers are very likely going to do their “homework”, which today is most often a “Google” search. Marketers must anticipate this scenario and have content along with search marketing in place. 

No question, a search-optimized website is foundational to effective micro-vertical marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a too big of a topic for now. For more information, link to the MMP SEO Guide.

Educational content relevant to the micro-vertical will be critical to success. Ideally content positions your brand as a subject matter expert (SME), or thought leader. Website content should include landing and registration pages, blogs, case studies, white papers, reports, videos, and more. Interlinking of such assets, and calls-to-action (CTAs) are important considerations.

Certainly, such website content supports organic or free website traffic for given keywords. Other marketing tactics that drive organic traffic include email, social media, and link-building.

Email is absolutely critical to micro-vertical marketing success. Why? Because email lists identify prospects in a micro-vertical. Of course, email should target decision makers, and drive traffic to relevant website content. Email lists should go deep into a prospective business (e.g. multiple contacts), and be verified for deliverability. Emails should be optimized for open and click-thru rates (CTRs). For more info on email, link to the MMP Email Guide.

Social media is another significant source of organic website traffic. In addition, social media often ranks high on search engine results pages (SERPs). For example, YouTube videos rank high for specific keywords. LinkedIn is an excellent social network for business decision makers. Facebook Business Pages, and Twitter are key networks that should be used. Finally, Facebook advertising can be effective for many micro-verticals.

Relevant and high authority links to your website also support organic traffic. Article writing and placement with in relevant online media with “Do-Follow” links is an example of link-building. Branded thought leadership is another link building and organic traffic-building strategy. For more info, link to the MMP Thought Leadership Guide.

Besides organic or free website traffic, Paid Search delivers (paid) website traffic that is especially effective when educational content or calls-to-action (CTAs) are employed. Paid Search includes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (e.g. Google AdWords), Remarketing, and Display advertising (e.g. banners). We recommend Paid Search for new websites that cannot attain search authority quickly, or for categories with a large number of competitors.

No question, all aspects of digital marketing are key to micro-vertical marketing success. That said, the are also some traditional marketing tactics can support effective micro-vertical marketing. Intuitively, trade shows, networking, and other live events are often vertical market focused. Finally, publicity and advertising are tactics that can build awareness in vertically-focused media.CASE STUDY – Micro-Vertical Marketing

A leading business software reseller based in the northeast successfully implements micro-vertical marketing in multiple niches. This case study will focus on one of their most successful micro-verticals to demonstrate best practices: K-12 Private Schools.

For this reseller, the micro-vertical started with a single, successful implementation. Not only was experience in place, but the reseller developed proprietary integrations and systems that address requirements specific to private schools such as tuition payments, fundraising, along with multiple accounting automations.

Regarding market size, K-12 Private Schools number 34,576 in the United States according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. What’s more, there is an association for the decision makers in private schools, the National Business Officers Association (NBOA). The Business Officer title is unique to private schools and includes CFOs, Presidents, Operations, and more. Association members are also non-executive staff. Finally, NBOA has an annual conference and publications which are marketing and sales opportunities.

The reseller implemented a complete marketing mix to communicate to private school targets including website landing pages and blogs, case studies and white papers, email lists and campaigns, and trade show participation.

The results reinforce the reason micro-vertical marketing is gaining popularity. Leveraging a single client along with proprietary technology for the micro-vertical, the reseller achieved market leadership, beating competitors, and closing deals year in and out with multiple private schools. Over time, additional customizations and integrations further reinforced technology leadership in the private school micro-vertical.

Is Micro-Vertical Marketing a SILVER BULLET?

Micro-vertical marketing can be effective in many considered purchase categories (software, technology, financial and professional services). Why? Because the brand or marketer can demonstrate specialized expertise in specific micro-verticals by communicating and marketing to a very targeted prospect base, and be perceived as a subject matter expert (SME), thought leader, or preferred solution provider.

Micro-vertical marketing requires skill to identify viable markets, and execute the proper marketing mix. The objective of micro-vertical marketing is that if implemented correctly, the (micro-vertical) marketer can rise to the top of the “consideration set”, reducing or even eliminating competition, speeding up the sales cycle, and ultimately driving sales.

Interested in implementing Micro-Vertical Marketing?  Get the full Micro-Vertical Marketing Guide or request a marketing assessment to learn more.

Relevant Micro-Vertical Marketing Resources 

Micro-verticals are nipping at the heels of enterprise application vendors (Infoworld)

Infor Aligns Partners and Micro-Verticals to Facilitate Last Mile Configuration (Infor)

Which commercial models make mobile-enterprise SaaS start-ups successful? (McKinsey)

Top Account Based Marketing Tools and Tactics (MMP)
Micro-Vertical Marketing Appendix

Some examples of top Markets, corresponding NAICS Codes, and Market Segmentation.

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For marketing professionals in today’s business climate, it means being patient, not passive, just alert and resolute. And it means letting the customer come to you. You still have to entice them of course, but it may be over a longer period of time.  How do you establish visibility and credibility with this approach? By creating relevant content that has more in common with inbound tactics vs. outbound tactics.

Companies today often utilize outbound marketing efforts in hopes of reaching sales goals through volume. Get enough marketing information out the door and you’ll get enough leads in the door and hit your targets. Direct mail pieces such as quick and easy postcards that get sent in masses or interruptive advertising that pops up on websites or social media platforms are outbound tactics that have their purpose in very specific situations.

Switch Perspectives

Inbound tactics just handle lead generation through different tools that help prepare the consumer for a buying decision with your company. The tactic most compelling is through the creation of relevant content. And believe it or not, it is often a free way that helps businesses connect with customers and build trust over a longer period of time. With inbound tactics, customers actively choose whether to stay in the loop with what your company is offering and doing.

Here are some examples of how inbound content tactics work:

Thought Leadership Blog offers customers new insight about an important topic that turns into a subscriber enewsletter A.K.A. leads.

Engaging Company Facebook Page and posts show the human side of your organization and helps tell the personal story of how your business works and plays, receiving Likes and being shared along the way.

Helpful Company LinkedIn Page that offers a connection to a specific group with like-minded interests. Your demonstrated expertise in the group’s communication leads to one-on-one questions through LinkedIn’s personal messaging system, A.K.A. leads.

Survey Customers

More needs to keep happening with your perspective to create content that fully embraces the inbound approach. Not sure what you should focus on? An interesting way to start this process is to ask customers what they are interested in. Using a quick online survey can yield some great feedback that will provide your company with opportunities to provide the content that customers want to consume.

Personalize

Following the step above and surveying your customers will help toward personalizing the content you create as well. Knowing that consumers are reading anywhere from four to nine pieces of content prior to contacting a company and a whopping 80 percent of people make a purchase decision without ever contacting a company means your content needs to answer questions and guide them through the process.

Personalizing content requires having a solid grasp of who your customers are and how you can make a difference in their lives. One strategy for producing content of this type may be to provide more in-depth pieces to generate high-level interest. Experts often note that content follows the 80/20 rule – with 80 percent of leads coming from 20 percent of their content.

Optimize

People are going to come across your content through many different channels so be sure to optimize, optimize, optimize. Yes, you want your content to enhance search engine rankings, as it will help bring customers to you. Beyond that relevant content will be heard as an original voice and grow as a best in class piece. This provides optimization opportunities, as it can become an important link builder that improves your website’s domain authority.

Relevant content is a gateway to action. It still requires being patient and yet staying fluid, to create content that is valuable and sustains customers’ interests. Get to know your audience and write for them. Need help getting started? Contact Modern Marketing Partners.

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Global trends

Although it is difficult to make predictions in a global marketplace where shorter-term trends rather than longer-term seismic shifts are the norm, affiliate marketing is certainly not immune to minor fluctuations. Anything involving a degree of technology will be subject to external impacts.

For instance, according to the latest e-commerce analysis, feedback from clients and benchmark reports, we are seeing a shift away from large-scale affiliate programs which can span marketplaces across international boundaries, to much more moderately scaled operations. One reason for this shift would be that the very nature of affiliate marketing means this type of business model is open to a considerable cross-section of small businesses. So many people wanting a slice of that pie, it makes sense that markets will splinter into more dedicated operations. The technology available to affiliate marketers in terms of tools is also evolving, becoming cheaper and more user-friendly all the time.

Alterations to affiliate programs

When it comes to other areas of technology, such as data acquisition and attribution modeling, ongoing improvements to the scope available means retailers are becoming ever more equipped to align their commission structures. As these are continually overhauled, advertisers will be looking at various factors, such as the types of affiliates they are offering in the programs.

Commission structure alterations

This will have a direct influence on the various marketing channels that impact on the various commission structures. What this means in practical terms is that when it comes to traffic driven by product or dating network marketers who have created content, there will be more situational rules applied whenever they are active along the so-called ‘clickstream’ – the sequence of links lying at the heart of the affiliate marketing business model. Interference at this level will affect the commission rates available to those operating at the bottom of these processes, by offering coupons or loyalty to established customers. This will have a direct impact on commission rates. In a nutshell, up until now, commission rates have remained relatively reliable for small business owners seeking to get involved in working with retailers. In future, these are liable to fluctuate to a far greater extent.

In the longer term, this might affect how payments are triggered depending on the type of customer who is making the click-throughs. There will be variations depending on whether that customer is new, or has performed existing customer actions. Again, this is likely to have an effect on the way commissions are split.

The publisher might receive 20% of the overall total, while first click engagement will receive a much lower figure, around 2% of the total. When it comes to the actual blogger, it could be the case they only receive commissions when items are added to the shopping cart after the coupon code is entered.

As well as fluctuations in the condition under which the affiliate marketing clickstreams are managed, there could be a degree of separating traffic into different channels, with group affiliates separating out their traffic so that marketers will only be eligible for payout if no other affiliate types are involved.

The post What the Future Holds for Dating Affiliate Programs appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

4 Phases in the Buying Process

There are 4 phases in the a typical buying process: (1) attract, (2) convert, (3) close, (4) delight. The first step involves attracting strangers to your website, turning them into visitors. Then, in turn, interested visitors are turned into leads. You then attempt to close those leads, turning them into customers. Keep customers happy, and they’ll promote for you.

Image Source: https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing

Step 1: Attract

The best ways to attract new visitors include: blogging, SEO, and social media. Blogging will often be the first content a consumer sees – write something they’d be interested in. You’ll then use SEO and social media to amplify this content and attract new visitors.

Step 2: Convert

Create calls-to-action at the bottom of any blogging content; the CTA should be a form of customer information. You can also use contact forms as a gateway for special content, like whitepapers and webinars.

Step 3: Close

Staying in touch with leads and tracking where they are in the process helps you close. Email, for example, is a great way to keep your brand top-of-mind.

Step 4: Delight

Change your approach if they’ve already bought, provide any necessary after-purchase customer service – follow up, answer any questions. Also, adapt your messaging to fit their part of the customer journey. This way, they stay happy with your brand and don’t feel like nothing more than a sale.

Keys for Driving Web Traffic

Have your content go further with these important traffic drivers.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent traffic driver. You’ll need to create an attention-grabbing headline and use on-brand language throughout the body of the email. Want your marketing to go further? Then be sure to segment emails based on where customers are in the buyer journey. Read more on email marketing – Email Marketing Strategy in 2018 Part 1 & Part 2.

Pay-Per-Click or PPC

Some keywords are highly competitive and, as a result, difficult to rank for. Here, use PPC campaigns to attract customer attention. Do some research on what your customer wants to see, use that to create the ad, and then attempt to outbid your competitors.

Social Media

Further broadcast your content through social media. Content should be highly visual (video, photos) and scheduled during optimal days and times. Also, be sure to respond to any comments or messages swiftly.

Measure Your Performance

Make sure your inbound marketing tactics are working; here are the most important metrics to look out for.

Website User Experience

Ideally, when a consumer visits your website, they’ll click on to multiple other pages. If they leave after the first page, you’re not doing enough to keep them on your site.

Lead Conversion

Even if visitors seem to enjoy flipping through your site, how many of them are converting into lead registrations or sales? That should be the ultimate goal of all your marketing, to lead buyers to the next step.

Track Traffic Sources

If you’re getting ample leads from Google, but few from social media, then good job on your SEO! Try to figure what you’re doing right and keep doing it. As far as social media, try to find where you’re lacking and improve it.

Engagement Rate

How is the engagement rate on the post and the social media you broadcast it on? Are people sharing, commenting, and liking? If no one is responding to your content or helping you amplify it to the masses, then something needs to change.

Number of Inbound Links

How many high-quality sites are linking back to you? Inbound links are crucial to good SEO. Unfortunately, there’s no real shortcuts here. You need to create content that others want to share or reference.

Return-on-Investment (ROI)

Ultimately, is the money you’re investing in marketing less than the sales revenue you’re bringing in? If a particular channel is not producing a significant ROI, then either fix it or forget it.

4 Musts for Digital Marketing Excellence

Inbound marketing is great, but make sure your webpage is ready for it.

1. Mobile-Optimized: Google will never let you rank if you’re not optimized for mobile, and why wouldn’t you be? Consumers are increasingly choosing mobile devices over desktops to do their research.
2. SEO: Speaking of Google, make sure to practice good SEO all-around, otherwise your competitor’s will outrank you. More resources on SEO here.
3. Content, Content, Content: Make sure to have a healthy supply of content and update it frequently.
4. Secure Your Webpage (SSL/HTTPS): This not only keeps your customers safe, but you as well. Plus, Google cares about this factor as well.

Focus on the Customer Journey

The most important thing we can take from Hubspot is the customer journey. Keep this in mind and adapt your messaging accordingly. This allows your inbound marketing tactics to do the work for you and will result in success.

Read more about inbound marketing from Hubspot here.

The post Inbound Marketing Primer appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

According to Salesforce, the idea is to enable companies of all types and sizes to work with their value chains to better understand and serve their customers’ needs across sales, service, marketing and other commerce channels.

Increase Brand Engagement & Productivity

The companies wanted to focus on two main areas – brand engagement and digital asset management and productivity and collaboration for teams working in a cloud environment. The integration will allow customers to created customized/branded Dropbox folders inside of Salesforce Commerce and Marketing Cloud. This brings the content together in a two-way workflow that can be accessed by both internal team members and external partners.

For example, a retailer using Salesforce Commerce Cloud can create a Dropbox folder to access product images or creative briefs from an external creative agency. The retailer then gets notified when the agency makes changes or additions and can update their online storefront in order to deliver a better shopping experience.

On the productivity front, users will be able to easily share content, such as photos, videos, and slides they have stored in Dropbox, directly within Salesforce Quip. Dropbox will also add support for Quip documents, providing a live collaboration environment for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Integrations for Later This Year

These new integrations are expected to rollout out the second half of 2018. You can find out more on the Dropbox blog or by possibly attending one of the Salesforce World Tour events.

This news is important to companies who are invested in creating a quality customer experience. Being able to share customer information across platforms creates a unified home for content that can now be kept up-do-date and relevant. Many B2B companies, in particular, have struggled to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace due to the rise of increasingly complex customer interactions and the rise in influence the customer experience now holds as a method of differentiation among companies.

Businesses looking to address customers’ changing needs and perhaps catch-up a bit to their B2C counterparts, should consider these four tactics asserted by customer experience professionals:

Start with your Culture. An intentional shift must be made to focus on the customer experience across every department in your organization. A more customer-centric culture will develop as leadership makes a commitment to employees who become more engaged and dedicated to making the way they do business faster, easier, and more personalized.

Knock Down Silos. Create a more seamless customer experience. That’s why the above announcement has value because you cannot pass customers around from one function to another anymore. No more moving the customer from sales, to account management, to installation, and then to customer support – it’s too disjointed today. Team members all need to access to the same information to quickly and easily help a customer.

Embrace and Manage Change. Customer expectations are continually changing. Your employees need to have the same attitude toward shifting expectations. Developing a customer-committed attitude in operations means moving beyond just a project approach and understanding the changes from a customer’s perspective.

Innovate the Customer Experience. Businesses often focus on innovating products and features. Their focus should be on innovating the ideal customer experience. Develop an initiative that focuses on making interactions with your company faster, easier and more personal.

The power of the customer experience continues to grow in importance. Companies looking to establish a competitive edge need to get current on customer trends and continue to foster customer-focused changes within their organizations.

The post Salesforce and Dropbox Partnership to Enhance Collaboration and Customer Experience appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

It is reported that although 90% of B2B sales begin with a web search, only 2-3% of website visitors complete a contact or registration form. While website analytics software report traffic or visitors, page views, bounce rate and other useful statistics, actual sales leads from registrations are a fraction (2-3%) of website visitors. What if you could identify all those anonymous website visitors?  A marketing no-brainer, right?

Enter IP Tracking Software

Think of a Caller ID for your website.  Someone “calls in” when they visit your website. IP Tracking software identifies the IP (internet protocol) address of the visitor, and reports all contact or registration form completions. Typically, the software reports other contacts that share the same IP address, with the ability of the subscriber to select titles, geographies and other criteria. The report includes contact email addresses, and telephone numbers, along with important behavioral information about your leads: keyword search information, pages visited, time duration by page or form. IP Lead Tracking offers benefits to both sales and marketing teams, and the following displays the top 3 benefits for each.

IP Lead Tracking Benefits to Sales

• Identifies new prospects that were previously anonymous
• Reduces time and effort for client research and cold calling
• Improves relationships with current customers by identifying cross-selling and up-selling opportunities

IP Lead Tracking Benefits to Marketing

• Provides new and incremental measurement tools
• Reports both organic and paid search
• Provides additional facts to build an accurate customer profile
• Improves your Marketing Return on Investment (MROI)

Finally, lead tracking is the perfect step in the right direction with respect to aligning marketing and sales.

Who Offers IP Lead Tracking?

Although many companies offer this service as part of much larger marketing automation or inbound marketing platform, a number of IP or Lead Tracking services have launched as a result of strong demand, including the following.

Leadformix

Leadformix is an easy to use lead reporting tool. Leadformix is able to identify the IP address of your website visitors.  If these visits are from a company location, then Leadformix will provide contact information such as company name and address, a possible contact person and telephone number.  It also provides pages of interest for each visitor so you can have some idea to what that visitor is interested in before you make that sales call. Leadformix lets you customize reports and have them scheduled to be e-mailed right to you inbox on a daily basis.  It allows you to be timely in reaching an interested prospect.

LeadLander

LeadLander delivers a comprehensive amount of functionality and information, and is leveraged by some of the largest companies in the world in conjunction with their existing marketing automation efforts. Yet it’s designed with simplicity in mind so that even the most non-technical sales, marketing, or management staff can use, understand, and act upon the information it provides.

LeadLander was built with one objective:  to help you analyze and respond to the companies that are researching information on your website. LeadLander enhances your ability to identify leads and measure inbound and outbound marketing campaign effectiveness. Powerful and relevant analytics provide you with superior intelligence to fortify your sales and marketing teams with information that they can use to close more deals faster. And with push-based notification alerts, your sales team can be immediately alerted to important leads and prospects that are actively researching your online marketing collateral.

MegaLeads

MegaLeads.com offers a subscription for unlimited access to the world’s largest online database of business contacts at a convenient price. MegaLeads offers extensive B2B mailing lists, business leads, and email lists, searchable by company, city, state and many other criteria.

In addition, MegaLeads offers Mega Tracker, using reverse IP technology to identify website visitors, with real-time email alerts, and one click reference to LinkedIn.

Other IP Lead Tracking Software

Some other IP or lead tracking providers include Leads Explorer, LeadForensics, WOW Analytics, and Lead Liaison; each with different features, fees, and customer databases.  While these services specialize in IP or lead tracking, note that most marketing automation software providers offer similar services including Salesforce.com, Marketo, and HubSpot.

What Reports do IP Lead Tracking Services Offer?

In general, a good IP Tracking service will offer the following reports:

• Lead Information: Company Name, Contact Information, Pages Visited, Time Spent on Each Page
• Alerts: Get notifications based on request or in daily emails.  Set up alerts based on specific criteria (Pages visited, specific title)
• Lead Scoring: How qualified was this lead in your company’s goals?
• Integration with CRM: Does the software work with Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, or SugarCRM?
• Advanced Web Analytics: Search Queries, Traffic Sources, Conversion Management

The New Marketing Silver Bullet?

With the marketing mix evolving to greater emphasis on internet marketing, along with increased emphasis on results measurement, the appeal of IP Lead Tracking software is indisputable. Adding to this appeal, the software is available for reasonable monthly subscription fees ($100-$500/month), and implementation is as easy as adding simple analytics code to each website page.

Some caveats, IP Lead tracking only identifies a fraction of website visitors, typically larger companies or entities, and may not identify the individual that was browsing your website. In addition, low traffic websites may not get a lot of leads from IP tracking. In contrast, high traffic websites will get overwhelming amounts of information that will require effort to review and react to.

So I ask you, what if your competitors are using IP lead tracking, and you’re not?  I rest my case.

Related: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Please Comment, Bookmark, or social share with your colleagues.

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So what roles do millennials play on their buying teams?

• 13% Decision-Maker
• 27% Influencer
• 17% Project Manager
• 38% Researcher

This information shows that most millennials are not yet making the final decisions, but the fact that so many are researchers and influencers shows that they have an effect on the final decision. Without impressing them, you’ll likely never be seen by the decision-makers, so it’s best to remember that millennials are likely your “in” when it comes to buying decisions.

So what do millennials value most when deciding to buy? Resources for research, vendor-buyer relationships, and company values. We break them down – and what you can do about them – below.

The Value of Research

Generally, millennial buyers aren’t going to be willing to immediately interact with your sales team. It’s too much of a commitment so early on. Rather, they’d prefer to do some research first. 59% of millennials prefer to engage with sales after they’ve done some research. Millennials are also more likely to contact salespersons late in their research (27%) rather than early (9%). This shows that they’d prefer to rely heavily on company information first before hearing any kind of pitch from your salespeople. As just stated, the majority will reach out in the middle of the process, so most of the time, you’ll have the opportunity to influence their decision before they get closer to the final consideration process. The fact that over a quarter, however, reach out late, shows that many want to be certain about you before communicating, and that they have confidence in finding the best solution from non-relationship based research alone.

So how can you use this idea to your advantage?

Laying out all the information you can to potential buyers is the best way to approach these statistics. Include informative and relevant content within your company blog to attract researchers to your site. Also, include case studies, testimonials, and any other form of proof to prove the effectiveness of your B2B services. Buyers want a product that works; simply stating that it does isn’t enough, especially with buying employees pushing off contact with vendor salespersons until they have sufficient information.

Further, include landing pages on your website – perhaps providing a free e-book or webinar in return. This way you can capture the contact information of buyers and encourage them to take the next step in their research process. Further, email from the landing page captures can serve to remind buyers of your company’s benefits and other useful information.

Enhancing Your Vendor-Buyer Relationship

Despite the fact that millennials may wait to contact the vendor sales team, they value their relationship with vendor employees as the most effective resource for evaluating solutions. Third-party references and case studies trail second and third, respectively, in terms of effective resources.

What should you do about it?

Two things: (1) try to build the relationship as early as possible during their research process and (2) work hard towards having your best possible vendor-buyer relationship.

To address number 1, make it as easy as possible to contact your company. You can offer live chat on the site. Or you could provide calls-to-action on your content, encouraging viewers to contact your company via a contact form. Also, going back to the previous discussion of landing pages, you can use this contact info to encourage a conversation between buyer and salesperson.

There are plenty of ways to enhance your relationship once it’s initiated. Work actively to provide personalized solutions to their problems. Offer to send them additional resources. Convince them to meet in-person – face-to-face is more personal and can often be more effective.

Millennial Buyers Want a Company that Cares

Interestingly, many millennial buyers placed company community involvement and company values ahead of every other factor when determining which companies to work with. They’re looking for companies that go beyond good work by doing good things.

How can my company accomplish this?

Live your company values and actively get involved in the community – and then communicate it.

Company values aren’t just important for internal culture anymore, they influence customers as well. Communicate your company values through your work and content, as it’s sure to attract customers with similar value sets.

Further, find a worthy cause that your employees and upper management can get behind. Encourage employees company-wide to get involved, through volunteer work, fundraising, or both. Then share in the form of content – press releases, blogs, news, etc. – on your website and on social media.

Our whitepaper on Cause Marketing is actually a really great resource on how to best get involved and then market your involvement. We cover:

1. Picking your nonprofit wisely. Pick a nonprofit that your employees can feel passionately about and that makes sense with your business. A good nonprofit for a makeup brand that chooses to not use animal-testing for its products may be an animal shelter, for example.
2. Integrating the cause into company culture. Taking it one step further by integrating said cause with who your company is further communicates your commitment.
3. Giving more than money. Time is just as, if not, more valuable than money. The whitepaper covers ways to give non-monetarily.
4. Be transparent and demonstrate the impact of your cause. Be willing to discuss where donations go and what they’re used for. Then demonstrate the effectiveness of your efforts.
5. Leverage PR and social media. If you’re putting all this effort into your community involvement, it’s important to communicate it. Use social media, PR, and other means to share your involvement.

Research, Relationships, and Values

To make a long story short, the B2B millennial buyer values 3 things when making a buying decision: research resources, vendor-buyer relationships, and company values. Working hard to provide millennials with the most informative resources and actively working to improve relationships may ultimately finalize their decision. Further, they want companies with strong values and community involvement; so demonstrating these traits can ultimately convince buyers that your business is their best fit – both logically and emotionally.

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5 IT Firm Challenges

Identifying the challenges of the IT industry can help us determine what their marketing needs are. What are IT firms struggling most with? It boils down to 5 major challenges:

1. 8% have difficulty attracting new business.
2. 6% have difficulty finding and retaining good employees.
3. 8% struggle to remain innovative.
4. 7% face a difficult economy or an overly competitive marketplace.
5. 7% find it difficult to meet customer expectations.

A great deal of this list could be addressed with good marketing.

5 Tips for Marketing IT Services

Conduct Some Marketing Research

The tech community often emphasizes compiling and using data and information to appropriately strategize. Marketing is no different. Before you can develop and implement your marketing strategies, you’ll need to understand the business environment. Marketing research is also necessary to understand client needs and expectations. This research will allow you to provide better services, manage these services more effectively, and then market your product to match customer needs. In fact, those who use research on current and potential clients see a growth rate that is 3-10 times faster than those who go without it; further, they are up to twice as profitable. It just makes sense to do your homework before diving in.

Build A Superior Website

You would be surprised to hear the number of IT service firms with outdated websites. Because many early IT firms grew quickly through word-of-mouth (WOM), many put less emphasis on many types of marketing, including digital and of course, websites. If you are one of these IT firms, think of your website as a first impression. As a customer is getting to know your company, they’re bound to search you on the internet, and your website is one of the key sources they’ll check. Websites tell a potential customer so much about your company – from basic information, to a compilation of your services, to case studies describing previous work you’ve done.

It won’t be enough to have a nice-looking website on desktops alone, either. Your site needs to display right on every device: cell phone, tablet, or desktop. Not only does a responsive website improve the consumer experience, but Google will typically penalize you for not being mobile-optimized, and, as we’ll touch on shortly, SEO strength is incredibly important.

This step is absolutely necessary. It harms your credibility to emphasize your success in tech, all the while having an outdated webpage. And with the ever-looming presence of fierce competitors, a good website could be the difference between you receiving the client over your competitor. In fact, research actually shows that an unimpressive website is among the top reasons buyers will rule out a company during their decision-making process. First impressions mean everything, so don’t be so quick to dismiss this step.

More IT Website Tips: 6 Features Every IT Company Needs on Their Website

Promote Industry Rockstars Within Your Organization

Apple had Tim Cook and Steve Jobs, Facebook has Mark Zuckerberg. But it’s not just the big tech companies with employees of status; you can achieve this on a smaller scale. One of our clients Prescient has Jerry Irvine to constantly represent the company – at different conferences, trade shows, and publications. Putting your more impressive employees in the limelight can do wonders for your business. Find employees with both great credentials and unique points of view on your industry. Then encourage them to participate in speaking engagements, publications, and other events to get both their name and the company’s name out.

Focus on SEO

As we have repeatedly stated throughout this article, the world of tech firms is highly competitive. This makes placing on search engine results especially difficult. If you don’t wind up on the first page, or even within the first few results, you’re essentially invisible. SEO can be extremely challenging at times. What works today might not work tomorrow and, in some cases, it can even penalize you. For example, in Google’s early days, many focused on the quantity of their links, rather than the quality. That doesn’t fly anymore – a low-quality link can, at best, do little to boost your rank. At worst, it can severely damage your SEO rank. SEO is absolutely essential for every business’ marketing strategy, but you will have to keep up with the trends and adjust accordingly often.

More SEO Tips: Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Top 10 Priorities

Create Exceptional Content

For many B2B companies, content marketing is crucial for business. High-quality content helps to build your company into a thought leader within the industry, establishing credibility amongst both your peers and customers. Answering questions that customers are actively seeking helps them find your page. The ultimate goal is to eventually capture their information and then eventually convert them into a paying client. There’s a variety of content forms you can use: blogs, whitepapers, case studies, informational videos, and more. All work to increase your visibility.

More Content Marketing Tips: Content Marketing Best Practices Guide

Don’t Get Crushed By the Competition

In the highly competitive world of tech, it can be easy to fall behind. It can be as simple as having an out-of-date website or using inappropriate SEO practices. Through thorough research and marketing tactics that bring you in the now, you can only expect a prosperous IT firm for years to come.

For more information on growing your IT services company, download our in-depth guide: IT Marketing Best Practices Guide. Also, Modern Marketing Partners has broad experience managing marketing for regional, national and global Information Technology consulting and IT services brands with digital marketing excellence, thought leadership content, lead generation tactics, and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help!

Interested in More Leads? Get an IT Marketing Assessment

Information technology is a high-growth category attracting intense competition. So how can software brands succeed, thrive and achieve market leadership? Marketing. But not just any marketing. Digital Marketing Excellence is required, fueled by content and inbound marketing, and integrated with email and traditional marketing to ultimately drive measurable lead generation, sales conversions, and customer acquisition.

Register now for a custom consultation that includes a complete software marketing assessment, in-depth Website/SEO analysis, and marketing plan recommendations. Click here for your marketing assessment.

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The primary purpose of your website is two fold: 1) to help prospects find you; and 2) once they find you, to tell them about what your business does (services).

Whether a small or large IT services provider, there are 6 essential website features that are crucial to generating more leads:

1. Mobile-Friendly
2. Easy to Contact
3. Services
4. Case Studies/Testimonials/Reviews
5. Blog
6. Local SEO

Mobile-Friendly

Potential clients are almost certainly searching for your services on a phone. More often than not, searches with local intent (e.g. local IT support) are performed on a mobile device. This shift in mobile preference makes it even more important to ensure your website is mobile-friendly. If a user visits your website and it isn’t optimized for mobile, it can make it more difficult for them to see and process the information on the site—but more importantly, you immediately come across as unsophisticated.

In early 2015, Google announced that they would be using “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking signal for mobile searches. What does this mean for your IT services company? Beyond the importance of a mobile website for user experience, if you don’t have a mobile or responsive website yet, you may find your rankings dropping in mobile search results. Try out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your website is optimized.

Easy to Contact

This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many websites don’t have contact information easily accessible. Here are some tips to consider:

• Add a phone number in the header of your website so it appears on every page;
• Make phone numbers on your website click-to-call links to streamline the process for mobile users;
• Include a link to a contact page in your primary navigation. Your contact page should include a general inquiry form

If you have the internal resources and the time to manage, consider using a third-party ‘live chat’ platform to connect with website visitors in real-time. In addition to being a great sales tool for prospective clients, it can be a helpful resource for support of current customers.

Service Pages

It is important that prospective clients know what you can do for them. Have a page on your website that lists your top IT services, which can link to individual pages for sub-practice areas or further information. Consider linking to additional resources like specific case studies for that service, or testimonials to aid in the hiring process.

In addition to helping visitors find the information they need; service pages can provide an SEO benefit for your website.

Many visitors who find your website through a search engine will be searching for service + location (ex: desktop support in Chicago, disaster recovery services Chicago). Having individual service pages can help you get found in search engines for some of those long-tail queries. For example:

• http://www.yourwebsite.com/services/desktop-support/
• http://www.yourwebsite.com/services/disaster-recovery/

Case Studies/Testimonials/Reviews

Recommendations from third parties are often more trusted than from the source itself. Build trust and credibility by adding client testimonials, awards, and recognitions to your website. You can even embed or link to reviews on third party sites (e.g. Yelp or Google) as an additional source.

Especially in a professional services company like IT services, prospective clients will want to know how you solved a similar problem for another company. Even better, would be to show them how you solved a similar problem for a similar company, meaning in the same industry.

Develop as many case studies as possible that are easy-to-read, detailed with specific project actions, and provide real results or metrics. Consider an outline of 1) problem, 2) solution, and 3) results.

Blog

Having a blog on your website is a great way to position your IT firm as a subject matter expert on IT topics. Beyond credibility, blogging has SEO benefits and helps prospective clients find your website on search engines.

Do you have services pages on your website like we mentioned earlier? Consider adding a feed of blogs relevant to that service on each of those pages to further demonstrate expertise or aid visitors on their quest for information.

Local SEO

As mentioned, many visitors who find your website through a search engine will be searching for service + location (ex: desktop support in Chicago, disaster recovery services Chicago). With Google increasingly favoring local businesses in its search engine results, local SEO is more important than ever.

According to the 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors report from Moz, the #1 ranking factor for local searches is: proximity of address to the point of search.

Here are the top 3 strategies to implement to boost your local search authority:

• Google My Business – click here for more information
• Online directories and citations – click here for more information
• Local Schema Markup – click here for more information

Grow Your IT Company

Having a website is a must, but merely throwing up something will get you nowhere—it needs to be a great website. Ensure that you incorporate the 6 features that every IT services company should have: mobile-friendly, easy to contact, services, case studies/testimonials/reviews, blog, and local SEO.

For more information on growing your IT services company, download our in-depth guide: IT Marketing Best Practices Guide. Also, Modern Marketing Partners has broad experience managing marketing for regional, national and global Information Technology consulting and IT services brands with digital marketing excellence, thought leadership content, lead generation tactics, and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help!

By: Lindsay Brown

The post 6 Features Every IT Company Needs on Their Website appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

What is a Meta Description?

A meta description is the text that shows up with your listing in a search results page (like Google).

Each page and blog on your website should have a keyword-rich meta description (also relevant and specific to the page) that is approximately 150 characters in length including spaces.

While technically, meta descriptions do not effect rank, the meta description is what displays in a search result, so keyword relevance can effect click-through rate, and hence authority.

It’s also worth mentioning that social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook will use your blog’s description tag when it is shared on their sites. Without a meta description on your blog, they could use the first words from your blog, which may or not serve as a good description.

Here are some tips for writing your description:

• Give visitors a reason to read your blog
• Use a keyword-rich description
• Keep around 150 characters in length (including spaces)
• Avoid non-alphanumeric characters

How to Add a Meta Description to a HubSpot Blog

1) From your HubSpot dashboard, navigate to Content > Blog

2) Click the ‘Add New Blog Post’ button

3) Select your preferred publishing method (compose/inline)

4) Add your post title and body on the content tab

5) Click on the settings tab

6) Add your meta description.

(note: HubSpot will warn you if you go over the 160 character limit)

That’s it! You are now ready to publish or schedule your blog for a future time and date.

HubSpot Implementation and Support Services

Whether your new to HubSpot or looking to take your inbound strategy to the next level, we can help! Modern Marketing Partners offers HubSpot services to help businesses like yours leverage HubSpot and ongoing inbound marketing programs for dramatic marketing and sales results. For more information, contact us today.

Learn more about the top HubSpot Workflows for sales teams.

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