Online Marketing Blog

Our agency TopRank Marketing has been working with Marketo providing SEO, content and blog marketing consulting services for about 2 years. I finally had the opportunity to meet Marketing VP Jon Miller in person today prior to his presentation at Online Marketing Summit: Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation.

Marketo is one of the fastest growing software companies in the U.S. and this session is a case study for how Marketo has achieved that rate of growth.

Marketo launched their main product about 2 years ago. In 2 years, they’ve signed up 400 customers at a value of about $30,000 per year in recurring revenue. The current run rate is over $12 million which is pretty impressive for a 3 year old company.

[Note from Lee: A few weeks ago, Michelle wrote a great post on Retail SEO tips and this week, I've asked her to tackle B2B SEO and general search marketing tips, since one-size SEO does not fit all programs. Enjoy!]

Search marketing should be a top priority for organizations in any industry. But B2B search marketing efforts take a slightly different form than the tactics used in consumer focused SEO and PPC programs . Typically, B2B markets are smaller, products and services are more complex, and sales cycles are longer. Therefore, B2B marketers must think a bit differently in terms of target keywords, online content and link building.

I love B2B, so a session on how to maximize lead generation within a B2B context is a must-attend.

New or old, a B2B marketer knows that a unique set of marketing challenges awaits them including:

• No single decision maker
• Increased risk for decision makers
• Offline conversions
• Long lead time
• Complex sale
• Ambiguous search terms
• Difficulty to pre-select B2B clickers

Whether you heart B2B or not, who doesn’t want to increase conversions? Find recommendations below to increasing conversion rates.

Scott Brinker, of ion interactive, shared how to increase conversions by segmenting, specifically as it relates to Keywords & Landing Pages.

Keywords & Ad Creative
Give your clickers a very specific, customized landing page about the topic for which they performed the search.

If you are in the market to harvest leads from your web site, then this is the session for you! Industry experts Barbara Coll, CEO of WebMama.com, Patricia Hursh, President and Founder of SmartSearch Marketing and Adam Goldberg, Chief Innovation Officer for Clearsaleing gave some tips and insight to help B2B marketers develop search strategies to increase the number of qualified leads from their search campaigns.

Patricia kicked off the session with 10 tips for B2B Marketers!

1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
The sales cycle can often be long and complicated. B2B marketers rarely face the fact that people are conducting product searches at the beginning of the buying cycle. Reality is, your customers are looking for your product information way before they are ready to convert. You have to be there early!

The global market represents a huge opportunity for those who can master the nuances of local customs and languages.

In this session, leading global B2B search marketers Patricia Hursh, President of SmartSearch Marketing, Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder for Didit, and Jeffrey Pruitt, President of SEMPO and VP of Corporate Sponsorships for iCrossing share their advice on how to optimize your global search efforts to improve ROI for global B2B campaigns.

Patricia Hursh kicked off the session, giving tips on how to get started in global B2B search.

Before launching a global B2B search campaign, consider:

• Which search engines to focus on
• The importance of translation
• Regional search trends
• Ease of PPC campaign set-up