Search Engine Marketing Blog

Facebook has emerged as a marketing channel that’s been adopted by countless individuals and brands alike. In fact, Facebook, the world’s largest social network, now has more than 1 billion users, including about 15 million brand pages. This presents marketers across all industries with an opportunity to tap into this massively connected audience and showcase their brand.

This is even true in the B2B sector, where 44% of business executives (directors and above) use Facebook, which provides an opportunity for B2B Facebook pages to be seen by decision-making individuals at companies; it also increases chances for leads and sales. The key is to make sure your page is worth your reader’s time.  ... Read the full post

B2B marketers are constantly tasked with the challenge of driving lead growth, increasing web traffic, and improving brand differentiation. Organic search visibility is an important component and differentiation in search engine results can be a critical factor in traffic and lead growth. In the following examples I will outline useful ways in which an organization can optimize their website, distinguish their keyword visibility from others, and aim to increase organic visits.  ... Read the full post

Last month, Content Marketing Institute (CMI) released its report, “B2B Software Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America,” sponsored by the International Data Group (IDG).  The report, which highlights responses from more than 1400 B2B software marketers across the U.S. and Canada, represents a full range of industries (advertising/marketing, software, consulting, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance), functional areas, and company sizes.  ... Read the full post

A recent study released by eBay, “Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment” refutes the value of paid search and claims an overall ineffectiveness both of branded and non-branded keyword ads.

Over a specified test period, eBay conducted a series of SEM campaign experiments that stopped running paid queries for brand based keyword strings in search results to determine if organic results picked up the clicks of the forgone advertisements. In addition, eBay selected a group of test cities in the US to cease all non-branded keyword advertisements as well, their tests initially found that in these areas revenue was not affected by the cessation of paid ads.  ... Read the full post

Last week I headed out west for ad:tech San Francisco. It was my first time at an ad:tech conference and I was fortunate to be able to both enjoy the show and speak on a social media panel.

The conference offered some excellent sessions on content, social media, mobile advertising, display, and more. It also had some very cool startup spotlight sessions where companies went in and pitched brands, including General Mills and Wonderful Pistachios.

I came away with some valuable takeaways from the show worth sharing. While I’ll get to those takeaways in a second, I want to start with the session I was a part of, “Social Media: Integrating Paid, Owned, Earned.”  ... Read the full post

B2B marketers struggle with common challenges. At the forefront are lead generation, lead nurturing, and building a brand that distinguishes the organization from the competition. A growing list of tactics and technological opportunities further complicates the process.

Research, guides, and marketing surveys help guide B2B marketers down the right path. Sometimes they provide new opportunities and directions. Other times they reinforce the existing direction of marketing tactics and strategy. Here are ten B2B marketing related research reports and guidelines we recommend for review, and a brief explanation on why they are important.  ... Read the full post

We’ve all been there: a blank page, a blinking cursor, a looming deadline.  Writer’s block.  It can strike at any time, whether you’ve just fired off your most impressive work to-date and you’re ready to tackle the next assignment or you’ve been struggling to find the words for your last few pieces of writing.

Many who consider themselves “real” writers will try to tell you that writer’s block doesn’t exist.  It does.  And, if you try to tell yourself that it doesn’t when you’re sitting there staring at the same sentence for a half hour (or longer), well, you’re not doing yourself any favors.  ... Read the full post

KoMarketing will be taking the stage at ad:tech San Francisco, April 10th to discuss social media marketing.

If you aren’t familiar with ad:tech, it’s billed as “the leading digital marketing event for marketing and technology professionals from all over the world—a marketplace for buying and selling, a community for networking, a forum for exchanging ideas and an opportunity for contributing to industry trends and initiatives.” The event features two days of sessions covering digital marketing topics such as social media, mobile development, display advertising, search marketing, and more.

Our Director of Online Marketing, Casie Gillette, will be speaking Wednesday, April 10 on the panel “Social Media: Integrating Paid-Earned-Owned” alongside renowned social media marketers, including Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Innovator, Intel; Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CMO, Mindjet; Wayne St. Amand, VP of Marketing, Crimson Hexagon; and Wendy Lea, CEO, Get Satisfaction. Here’s more information about the session:  ... Read the full post

A few weeks back I wrote a column for Search Engine Land on B2B buyer personas. In exploring the persona concept, it further supported my opinion that for SEO to truly be effective for the B2B organization, SEO needs to run hand-in-hand with traditional B2B marketing initiatives.

In this post, I want to discuss how B2B SEO discovery can be integrated into buyer persona development, in turn creating a more effective search engine optimization strategy in the long run.  ... Read the full post

In Forrester Senior Analyst Anthony Mullen’s new report, “Emerging Touchpoints Require A Marketing Mind Shift“, he identifies four fundamentals marketers must realize, in order to succeed in today’s technology and information-rich environment. His article in Advertising Age discusses these fundamentals, which are:

• Design is the New Marketing
• Value is the Currency
• Agents Broker Brand Relationships
• People are the Regulators

Citing additional Forrester research, Mullen indicates that more than half of US online adults are already annoyed by the amount of advertising they see, and 37% would rather not be contacted by brands at all.  ... Read the full post