There is a lot of info out there about choosing key terms for metatags and content and there are a lot of good tools to help you do that. The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is how your potential buyers are searching for what you are offering. As with many aspects of marketing, the sales team can be a huge help here—they almost always understand buyers better than anyone else at the organization. They are a good resource for choosing key terms and phrases. Note

It’s important to get periodic feedback from clients on what you are doing well, what you need to work on, and what the next performance goal should be. A five-minute conversation once a month should suffice. For most people, the very thought of this is terrorizing, but as with all analytics, the terror diminishes with frequency. Getting Past Fear of Feedback One of the biggest obstacles to excellence is fear of feedback. We’re afraid to know the truth for many reasons – ofte

Before you start planning a slew of projects for the year, revisit last year’s duds. A project that appears to be dead may be a prime candidate for revival. Make a list of projects that either you or someone else started, but never finished, last year and ask yourself these questions: Why did we drop the project? How far did it get? What’s changed since we dropped that project – company objectives, the competitive environment, project personnel, technology, etc.? What new

From the buyer's perspective, the brand is an insurance policy. A brand on a consumer product tells the buyer exactly what to expect – every time. But in B2B sales, buyers often don't know what they need, what’s available, or how it works. A reputable B2B brand, from the buyer's perspective, insures the buyer against risk before and after buying. From the B2B seller’s perspective, the basic purpose of a brand is to educate the potential buyer and reduce the impa

Albert Einstein said that if he had one hour to solve a problem he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. In fact, zeroing in on the right problem is so important that you could say a perfectly defined problem is not even a problem anymore. Consider this: A large municipal library had signs posted in its parking lot that said the lot was for library patrons only. Often, downtown shoppers ignored the signs – especially on week

Over a year ago, I discovered Melina Palmer, host of “The Brainy Business” podcast and author of a book called “What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You”. I’ve written on the behavioral economics insights in the podcast and book as they apply to technology companies before, here is a twist on how they apply to even very small businesses. · Do your homework—ask your current customers what information they ultimately needed to make a decision. What pushed them over t

Following are a few more nuggets from Dan Ariely’s excellent book on buying behavior, “Predictably Irrational”: The first price that people hear for a product or service is likely to become an anchor – they will strongly associate the value of the product or service with that price – no matter how the price fluctuates in the future. Everything becomes relative to that first price. We assume something is good or bad based on the behavior of others. Is “everyone” buying someth