Accela Communications’ client, Biomni saw a 76% increase in a white paper download using video versus the typical downloadable pdf file. It’s no surprise that video is more engaging. What’s important about engagment is that engaged visitors tend toward becoming buyers.

I spoke with Accela rep Kevin Flatley who told me that Accela now offers a video white paper service. “It’s a great way to generate leads for clients who don’t have the time or resources to hire a production crew and film the video, themselves” said Flatley. He says all you have to do is send them your white paper and Accela will do the rest.

For about $11K, your white paper will be professionally produced–including script, acting talent and video production–into a 5-7 minute executive summary. It’s a completely turnkey solution. Accela can also create engaging video banner ads from your white paper.

Check out online video white papers here.
That’s integrated marcom!

Integrating keywords into your online copy is more than simply plugging them in somewhere on the page. The point of optimizing copy is to boost relevancy in the eyes of the search engines and that in turn can boost rankings. The way to do that is to include specific keywords and phases in the follow strategic areas where possible starting with the meta data:

• meta title — this is the area at the very top of a window with the title of the page. If you’re using Internet Explorer its a blue horizontal line with white knock-out type. If you’re reading this, look up to the top of the window you should see, “Integrated Marcom Minute Blog – Microsoft Internet Explorer”

• meta tag “keywords” — this is where you place all keywords and phrases that your potential customers use to search for your products.
• meta description — this is a brief summary of the content. Some companies use a sentence from the first paragraph of the body copy and add a brief call to action.
  (Note: Although meta data is not visible to visitors, the meta description is usually displayed by search engines beneath the hyperlink when organic search results come up.)

To fully optimize for search, you have to create relevancy between the copy in the meta data, and the body copy that follows:

• h1, h2, h3…h6 headers — these are the html tags that wrap around the bold headers and subheads. For example, right click and select “view source” on this blog post. Notepad will pop up with a bunch of html code. Scroll down and to the right until you see the following header. You’ll see an h3 preceding it and a /h3 at the end.
  

  Quick Tips on Copywriting for SEO

  Note: If your just using boldface copy with no h1, h2 or h3 html tags, it’s not as effective in helping the crawlers determine page relevance.

• body copy — this is the running text that you read

Here’s how writing for SEO works (all data is fictitious):

Let’s say I search for” discrete manufacturing software for automotive manufacturing” and one of the search results is ABC Company.

Meta data:

• meta title — ABC Company ERP for Discrete Manufacturing in Automotive
  
• meta tag — discrete manufacturing, automotive discrete manufacturing, improve cost-effectiveness of discrete manufacturing, ERP plus other relevant keywords and phrases
• meta description — “Reduce automotive manufacturing costs and keep consumers happy with ABC Company ERP for discrete manufacturing. Learn how your automotive operation can operate more cost-effectively. ”

Body Copy:

• H1 — Discrete Automotive Manufacturing Can Be Cost Effective
  Copy: Discrete manufacturing is great… it let’s your customers customize their ride. But discrete manufacturing can also be costly.
• H2 — ABC Company ERP for Discrete Automotive Manufacturing helps you reduce automotive costs and keep consumers happy. (this copy taken from the meta description)
  Copy: I think you get the idea here…

See… it’s not just about sprinkling keywords throughout, it’s a strategy for placing them effectively in the right places. Search engines crawl a page hierarchy from meta data to header tags to body copy identify keyword matches. The more matches the greater the relevancy and the higher your search ranking.

Copywriting for SEO is really a frame of mind. You have think like a search crawler and write with that strategy in mind.

“Weasel Clause”: Good copywriting alone may not boost your rankings. SEO is about integrating relevant copywriting, along with other elements such as a linking strategy. There’s a synergy that takes place when all of these elements come together. The result… better rankings!

Thanks to a recent silverPOP study, here are a few quick tips on how you can make your B2B creative really “click” to the tune of a double digit boost.

• Use postcard-style layout
  Postcard-style emails can boost click-through rates by as much as 50% compared to the popular newsletter-style format.
  (postcard style refers to large graphic with a call to action and varied cell blocks containing text and graphics)

• Include your company name or brand name in the subject
  Subject lines with your company or brand name had a 60% boost in open rate compared to those without branding.
• Use text links instead of graphic or image links
  Text links received 83% more clicks than image links.

The tried and true conventional direct marketer’s credo, “recency, frequency and monetary value” has all but given way to the new direct and interactive marketers credo…

“recency, frequency and relevance“– not to mention permission.

Thanks to technology, we can target our markets more effectively than ever before. Plus, more robust CRM applications allow us to track where prospects are in the buying cycle. So learn how to cultivate these prospects into customers. Send relevant messages based on content and timing.

Content-relevant messages focus on the product or service in which the prospect expressed interest. Subsequent mailers and offers should be timed based on the length of the buying cycle. A longer buying cycle may require additional messages timed further apart. On the other hand, a shorter buying cycle will require more frequency, but with relevancy and not simply an “are you ready to buy yet” message.

Most companies choose the obvious keywords… company name, their product names and trademarks, and perhaps product categories. While that’s not a bad idea, what about all the keywords and phrases your clients’ and prospects use? Chances are, their keywords are different than yours. They’re typing in problems that your products and services can solve.

People search for answers… solutions to problems!

So, for example, if you’re a consultant specializing in event plannning and marketing, consider phrases like get more booth traffic, design an engaging exhibition, get more leads from exhibitions, create a better brand experience, extend the brand experience after the show, etc.

See what I mean? It’s not just about the products and services you offer, it’s really about the solutions your prospects are looking for.

Here’s a good way to learn what your clients and prospects are looking for. Ask your sales team what a prospect says when s/he calls or what the prospect says during the course of a sales visit. It won’t be long before you’ll start to see similarities that will help you hone your keyword phrases and boost your search results.

The classic “leave-behind” has always been a staple of every marketing & sales department. You’ve probably been the recipient of a brochure, booklet or other memento of a sales visit.
Leave-behinds still hold their place in the integrated marcom toolbox. In fact, with a little integration, you can turn the leave behind into a memorable brand experience.

Low cost high impact leave-behind
Postcards… they’re inexpensive and easy to repurpose. Plus, they don’t take up a lot of room in briefcases or at your tradeshow booth. And as an added bonus, you can easily convert them into mailers. Here’s how…

Let’s say your launching a new product at a trade show. Here’s how you can extend your brand promise and get more mileage from your creative. Give away your postcards at the booth, but also repurpose them as pre- and post-show mailers.

One of my clients recently developed a series of postcards for the sales force to use as leave-behinds. Each card described their specific technology and showcased one of their client’s achievements made possible with the technology. But here’s an important component…

The series included an overarching theme that reinforced the brand promise.

Here’s how to extend the postcard beyond your fingertips
Add a campaign specific URL to each postcard instead of a generic link to a home page. This not only allows you to track the effectiveness of each postcard, but can also be used as a lead generation mechanism like this…

Offer your latest white paper, podcast or rich media spot in the postcard. Then, create a landing page where visitors can register to obtain the offer.

Links to postcard providers
You can conduct a search and probably find thousands of potential vendors, but here are a few that my colleagues and I have successfully used:
http://www.purepostcards.com
http://www.modernpostcard.com
http://www.vistaprint.com
And believe it or not, the US postal service has a postcard service too.

Apparently it does. In a recent campaign, I decided to try a different offer. In addition to the typical white paper, I offered a live 30-minute webinar. Wow… what a difference! Response increased by 70% over previous campaigns, which offered a white paper alone.
What’s your take?
*FYI… the 40/40/20 rules says that the list accounts for 40% of your response, the offer another 40% and the creative — 20%

While many CEOs, CMOs, and other executives have shied away from blogging, the fact is, they can’t completely avoid it — no company can. It’s no longer a question of should I blog or not, but what is our strategy for monitoring and responding to blogs. And also, what is the plan should a crisis arise from the blogosphere.

Here are several ways to monitor blogs…
Try blog monitor pioneer, Technorati. You can also try Google’s blog search or BlogPulse Now there’s a service that not only monitors, but also mines blogs for the volume of conversation and the tone of that conversation regarding any topic – brands, products, competitors, executives, features, etc. Check it out at their free webinar at www.digitalgrit.com.

Other blog resources:
Debbie Weil has literally “written the book” on corporate blogging. In addition to her own blog, her book, The Corporate Blogging Book, releases Aug. 3.

You don’t have to have a blog to get blogged…
The point is, even if you don’t have a blog, you can still be adversely affected by blogs. So it’s better to have blog strategy for monitoring and dealing with blog posts than to become an unwitting victim of the blogosphere.

Most management folks expect good results from their marketing programs… who wouldn’t! But when it comes to approving the budget, there’s a gap between management’s expectations of what it should cost and their expectations of results. And the expected results almost always exceed cost expectations.

Bean-counter types will look at each element and want to understand it’s contribution to results. Unfortunately, they don’t understand how integrated marketing really works. It’s not about the parts… it’s about the whole. It’s not about determining which element delivers the most results and then going with that element. Or which element costs the least.

Integrated marketing is about investing in the combination of elements that have the greatest probability to deliver the best results on a sustainable basis at a reasonable price. (Sorry about that lengthy business school type answer.) Finding the right combination depends on a number of things including: who your audience is and where to find them; your campaign objective and also your target’s phase in the buying cycle (awareness, acquisition, conversion retention or loyalty).

And this involves a financial committment that’s sustainable.

Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t measure the results from each element. You definitely should monitor each element. But the success of the campaign should be measured on the whole.

If you’re planning an integrated program, and management won’t approve what you believe is a reasonable budget, then don’t try to spread your budget too thin. Come up with a smaller combination that you can sustain.

But remind management to adjust their expectations accordingly.

Do you have this problem? Tell us about it.