Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager

Is online video a part of your marketing mix and, in particular, your SEO strategy? As online video usage continues to surge, more marketers are focusing on how video can integrate into their search programs. The following YouTube statistics show how prevalent online video has become:

• 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Approximately 120 decades of video are uploaded in a year

What can your company do to make sure that your videos are ranking high in search results and are visible to relevant users? Much like your site content and meta data, you need to make sure that your video title and description are keyword rich (without being spammy) and applicable to what the user is looking for. Think about what terms users that are interested in your video would use to search and work to incorporate them into your copy. You can also provide keyword tags for your video to increase search visibility.

Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager

When setting lead generation goals for a new program, there are many important considerations to keep in mind. To start, you need to realistically evaluate your team and resources. It’s important to have an idea of what type of lead volume your sales force can handle. You want the users to have the best experience possible, including receiving timely follow-up if they are requesting contact. In addition, it’s helpful in planning to talk to the sales team about what types of leads they receive the most value from, which could be dependent on the type of offer(s) the user registered for, the type of online event they attended, whether or not they raised their hand for contact, etc.

Another key part of starting the lead generation program is knowing what products or campaigns will be the focus of the lead generation push. When embarking on a lead generation launch, you need to keep in mind what you’ve done with past products and how your brand is perceived. Will users understand that this is your product? Do they already trust your brand?

Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager

Most marketers are in the same spot: do more with less money. As you’re facing this challenge, here are three things that you can do to improve the efficiency and results of your lead generation program:

#1 – Stay Visible Even in a Tough Economy
Through these tough times it is more important than ever to stay visible to prospects whether or not your competitors are doing the same. There are many cost-effective and even free opportunities to help us accomplish this. Use social media and social networking sites to your advantage. Even though it may be out of your comfort zone, consider being present on tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and more. In addition, if you are planning online media buys for 2009, work to negotiate tactics that include freebies such as e-newsletters and ad units. All of these things help keep you in front of potential leads.

Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager

If only about a quarter of new leads are “sales-ready,” then the obvious main objective of lead nurturing for the manufacturing industry is ensuring that they’re qualified and mature enough to be handed off to sales. In other words, after pushing each lead through an offer flow and engaging them in higher level offers as they go, we are then able to push them to sales at their most ready. The benefit? Saving the sales team’s time and money and ultimately closing more sales.

A key to the process flow is thinking about the target audience. In the case of industrial manufacturing, we focus on the needs of design engineers (on the OEM side) and plant managers and operators (on the MRO side). That’s why we carefully select educational offers that will interest them on the right level without sending them so much information that they’re overwhelmed or so little that they become cold. It’s all about finding the right balance.