Digital Marketing for Startups - how to use digital marketing to generate sales leads and acquire new customers

1. Midlands and West
Enterprise
Programme
Digital Marketing for
Startups
How to use Digital Marketing to Generate
Leads and Acquire New Customers
12 January 2012
Michael White

2. Outcomes from today’s seminar
At the end of today you should know …
1. Why Digital Marketing is important for technology startups
2. How you can get started
3. A structure you can use – start, middle, end
4. How to prioritize what you should do first
5. Practical examples – Google ads, blog email, Facebook etc.
6. Where to look for help
2

3. Digital Marketing for Startups - Agenda
Focus: How early stage technology companies can use Digital Marketing to generate
leads and acquire customers.
1 Overview of online marketing strategies for customer acquisition 10.30 – 11
2 Your value proposition – what it is, why it’s important 11 – 11.30
3 Your target buyers – how to profile them and their buying process 11.30 – 12
4 Central role of your website 12 – 12.30
5 Using Pay-per-click advertising to sell technology 12.30 – 1
Lunch
6 Using Social Media to generate leads – blog, Facebook, YouTube etc. 2 – 2.30
7 Email marketing - a key tool for customer acquisition 2.30 – 3
8 Search engine optimization – why it’s important, where to start 3 – 3.30
9 Analytics – understanding your visitors, improving conversion rates 3.30 – 3.45
10 Putting it all together – your online marketing plan 3.45 – 4
3

4. About Us
We help technology companies generate leads online and convert those leads to sales.
We provide consultancy on:
• Online marketing – we help you with SEO, Google ads, email, social media
• Website design – we design and implement search optimized sites
• Marketing content – white papers, videos, presentations, blogs, images, product guides
• Social Media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Slideshare
We are developing a SaaS system to support:
• Marketing automation – online lead generation, capture, score, nurture, allocate

5. About Us
What we do
Generate more leads at
the top of the sales
funnel using online
marketing – email, Google
pay-per-click, social
media and PR
Use simple techniques to
filter and process these
leads more effectively so
you generate more sales

6. 1 Online Marketing Strategies for Customer Acquisition

7. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups
 How to generate leads, drive sales and increase revenue using Online Marketing
 Today when people want to buy something the first place they look is the
web, whether they’re looking for shoes, a car or a house (or a technology product)
 You need to make sure they find you when they come looking for your type of product
 You need to make sure that when they find you they take an action that’s useful e.g.
subscribe, buy, register ...
 We’re going to look at the overall approach and the tools you use
Product?

8. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups
First - What is Marketing?
Make something people want, then sell it to them
?
Me
My potential customers
• 1. Make sure your product meets the needs of your target customers
• 2. Promote that product effectively to those customers

9. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups
What is Digital Marketing?
Press ads
Radio
Direct Mail
Offline
PR
Marketing Website
Online
Google ads
Social Media
Email

10. Why is Digital Marketing important?
Because this is the way businesses buy today
In a survey of 4000 B2B
buyers in the US, 80% of
those buyers said they found
the vendor, not the other way
round.
Source: MarketingSherpa –
“B2B Technology Marketing
Benchmark Survey 2008”
• Buyers are doing most of their initial research online before initiating conversations
with vendors and are better informed at an earlier stage.
• This means that by the time your sales people are aware of a prospect they will already
have visited your website, downloaded your product information, looked at competing
websites and checked out the product category on blogs and social networks
• We're moving from a focus on traditional techniques like press advertising, mail shots
and cold calling, to techniques based on websites, online ‘pay-per-click’ advertising and
‘content-based’ marketing. 10

11. Why focus on Digital Marketing?
Sources of information used
by US engineers for a specific
recent purchase
Source: MarketingSherpa –
“B2B Technology Marketing
Benchmark Survey 2008”
• This is true for technology buyers in particular – they search online both at the research
phase and during vendor selection
• Will they find you, and will they find you compelling when they do? How will you compare
with the other firms they find?

12. Why focus on Digital Marketing?
Because this is a natural progression of how sales work
1950s
to Sales teams find and persuade the buyers
1990s
Buyers start to search online, find product
1997 information from multiple vendors
2006 Buyers confer with each other via online networks
2009 Sales now use online tools to prospect, generate
and qualify leads Marketing Automation
12

13. Digital Marketing for B2B is Different from B2C
• The difference isn’t always clear cut
• But generally these differences are true
B2B B2C
Higher value e.g. > €10k Lower value e.g. < 1k
High consideration - more evaluation Lower consideration – evaluation is faster
required
Perceived risk – so reducing this risk is Low risk
important for buyers
Complexity of product is greater e.g. large Generally less complex – clothes, food,
software system, machinery – so need to tickets (but exceptions e.g. cars, laptops,
educate buyers on features, differentiators some software products)
Longer, multi-phase sales cycle – can be up Immediate – transaction occurs quickly (e.g.
to 18 months purchasing consumer goods, books)
Multiple participants on buyer side (e.g. One buyer
financial manager, users, IT dept)
Executive involvement – may require sign- Buyer decides for themselves
off from senior staff or head office
Branding / emotional appeal less important Branding / emotional appeal very important
13

14. But for both B2B and B2C, buyers find you online …
• In B2C, you use online marketing to bring
someone to your site so they will purchase
something directly, right now Buy Now
• In B2B, you use online marketing to bring
someone to your site so they will register for White
something (a white paper, free trial ...). Paper
• Once you have their contact details, you set up a Download
regular communication with them to build up
their interest, qualify them as sales
opportunities and persuade them to buy later
14

15. The overall approach
Understand who you are targeting (your buyers) – what are their
1 roles, which companies do they work for, where are they, what is
important to them, how do you connect with them?
2
What are you selling – what does your product and service do for
them, what is your value proposition for these buyers? ?
How do you compare with competitors – which ones are worth
3 focusing on, how do you differentiate from them?
Generate ‘content’ – based on your understanding of the
4 buyers, create information that your target buyers will find useful e.g.
Case studies, white papers, research surveys, how to guides ...
Drive traffic to that content using PPC, email, SEO, PR, social
5 media
6a B2C – Sell your product(s) now
6b B2B - Capture contact details in exchange for your content
Build a relationship with those people over time via your
7 content, website, social media and email so they learn and understand 15
your proposition, answer their concerns and select you as their best

16. The overall approach
Example
• Siemens project – acquire customers for a new consulting service
• Value proposition – reduced capital costs, reduced operational costs, ease of access to IT systems
• Buyers – CIOs, Directors of IT at top 500 companies in Ireland with more than 300 staff
• Content – created a white paper called “Migrating to Microsoft in the Cloud”
• Drive traffic – used targeted email offering the white paper, plus Google ads and PR
• Capture details – 265 contacts with targeted profile after 4 weeks, 25 leads, 10 prospects
Visitor gets white paper
Email and google ads Website registration page Siemens gets contact
details of visitor

17. The overall approach
The tools you use
1 Revise website 2 Generate content 3 Launch Google 4 Email 5 Generate PR
based on buyer to attract visitor pay-per-click Marketing and online PR
analysis, add registrations ads
landing pages
6 Post to Corporate 7 Launch Search Engine Hardcopy Mail to Telemarketing
8 9
Blog and Social Optimization selected contacts qualification of
Media activities warm leads
17

18. 2. Your Value Proposition
18

19. Three steps to acquire customers
A B C
“What are you selling?” “Who are you selling to?” “How will you sell?”
Your Value Proposition Your target buyers Your acquisition process
You need to look at this
first – no point running a
perfect marketing
campaign for a product
that’s not going to sell
19

20. What is Your Value Proposition
A B C
“Who are you selling “How will you sell?”
“What are you selling?”
to?”
Your Value Proposition
Your target buyers Your acquisition process
Answer these questions
 Why should I buy something from you?
 What value does your product provide to me?
 How much is that worth to me – money, time saved, other benefits?
 How quickly can I see the value your system delivers?
 Why is your product better than other similar products?
 Why is your product better than what I do at the moment?
 Can you show me examples of your system delivering value?
 Focus on the results you produce rather than what you do
20

21. Value Proposition
 1. Why should I buy something from you?
 2. “What do you want to be famous for?”
 3. How do people describe you when you’re not in the room?
 Who is this for?
 What is the need it addresses?
 How do you solve that need / problem?
 Is this unique to you? (This isn’t a deal breaker)
 Your unique capability produces what result for me?
 What impact will it have ? (Money, time saved ...)
 Can you give me an example (I want evidence)?
 How long will it take?
 What about the obvious alternative? (Do nothing, manual, competitor)
 Is this value proposition sustainable (i.e. will it still be true next year?)
 “What results you produce for me” rather than “What you do “
 Can you describe this in a few sentences on a web-page or when talking to a
prospect? E.g. Motorway billboard (= your website)
21

22. Value Proposition
 Are you selling the right product for the market, sectors and buyers you are targeting?
 Are you monitoring the environment in which you operate and the impact this may
have on your product, your customers and your to-to-market approach?
 E.g. Increased use of iPads/smartphones, SaaS, regulatory changes, competitor
acquisitions, new standards
Feature
gathering and
product
definition
22

23. Value Proposition
“Whole product”
Not just the technology, but the
surrounding services
 Are you selling the “whole product”
 This is the “stuff” that surrounds your technology such as training, videos, online help,
good support, partner technologies, integrations
23

24. Understand Your Buyers
24

25. Understand your buyers
A B C
“What are you selling?” “Who are you selling to?” “How will you sell?”
Your Value Proposition Your target buyers Your acquisition process
25

26. Understandproblem
The your buyers
Why can’t I market to everybody?
• If you have a product that could be used in a lot of different ways, people
are tempted to try to market to all potential users
• You worry that if you focus on one group you will exclude the others
• This is wrong for a couple of reasons:
– Limited promotional budget – you have a fixed amount of money to spend on
promotion. Concentrating that spend on a clearly defined target group will
produce better results than spreading it thinly across multiple potential target
groups
– Trying to be all things to all people generally doesn’t work when launching a
new product. If you designed a car that tried to appeal to young families, men in
their 20s and elderly women, you would end up with a mishmash that appeals
to no-one. The same is usually true with technology products. You should focus
your product and promotion on one or two sectors for your launch.
26

27. Who Are Your Target Buyers?
A B C
“Who are you selling “How will you sell?”
“What are you selling?”
to?”
Your Value Proposition
Your target buyers Your acquisition process
Who are your buyers?
 Where are they (countries, languages)
 What industry sectors?
TIP:
 What types of organisation? Size, location ...
Use “Buyer Personas” as a way to
 Any specific target companies? analyze your target buyers. These are
 What are their typical roles or titles? summary descriptions of your most
 How does your system relate to their job? common target buyers based on
interviews (phone or in-person) with a
 What are their key concerns/drivers/goals? sample of customers and prospects.
 What are their demographics?
 Where do they hang out online?
 What sources of information do they use? 27

28. Understand your buyers
• Who you are targeting – what kinds of organisations? Who are your
favourite customers? Develop an “ideal customer profile”
• Industry sector e.g. Pharma, Finance, Government, Medical Device
• Location – Ireland, UK, Germany, US etc.
• Size – staff numbers
• Size – revenue
• Particular characteristics that make these companies attractive
• Understand the buyers within those organisations - “Buyer Persona
Analysis”.
• A description of a ‘typical’ person in that role at your major customer e.g.
Finance manager, sales director, MD ...
Ideal customer profile
Buyer Buyer
persona 1 persona 2

29. Understand your buyers
Ideal customer profile – current customers
Think of one of your favourite customers
• Why are they ideal? - Size, revenue, long-term relationship, good interaction, they
value your product and service ....
• Sector, Organisation size, Location
• Top 5 roles e.g. Who is usually your champion/ economic buyer / technical evaluator
/ purchasing / users
• Budget
• Why do they buy from you?
• What objections do they bring up?
• Why do your customers stay with you?
• When do they buy from you –
“Trigger events” – e.g. new senior manager appointed, new product announced ...

30. Understand your buyers
Buyer Personas
• A way to ‘step into the shoes’ of your prospective buyers
• Similar to “design personas” used by web designers, and aligns with Agile approach
to user centred product design
• ‘Personas’ are aggregate descriptions of 4 to 5 typical buyers you are going to meet
on a regular basis – your ‘imaginary friends’
• Some common ‘types’ e.g. General managers, sales managers, day-to-day users
• Interview sample buyers in each sector you target e.g. Compliance Manager, Sales
Manager, HR Manager ...
• What are their key concerns and drivers? How do they describe their job?
• Where do you fit into their overall picture? Are you a big part of their typical day?
• What is their “compelling reason to buy” your products and services?
• What would stop them from buying your services?
• What do they read, where do they gather information, who influences them?

31. Understand your buyers
Example Buyer Personas
Influencer
Decision
End user
Maker
Executive
buyer
Technical Info
buyer gatherer
Gate
Champion
keeper

32. Understand your buyers
Buyer Process Scenarios
• Take the Buyer Personas
• Based on real conversations with customers and prospects, walk each
‘Persona’ through an example sales process
• Plot out the interactions, the points where the persona is likely to ask for
assistance or information, and who/where they get that assistance from
• Document the kind of information they need at each point
• Identify who they interact with during the decision process
• Identify what 3rd party sources they consider important e.g. Forrester, Gartner

33. What content will interest your Buyers? “Bait”
 Different buyers have different information needs at each stage of the buying
process
 So, if you identify 3 to 4 typical buyers – General Manager, Sales & Marketing
Director, Head of Compliance ...
 Develop content that meets the information needs of these buyers at different
stages of their buying cycle
 This will be used as online “bait” to bring them to your website
Types of content
Information Needs
Audiences • Case studies
Awareness: Consideration: Decision: • Research
Exploratory Deeper Final steps • Education e.g.
Information
slides and tutorials
User FAQs, tours Product guides Tutorials • Tours and
overviews
Economic buyer Overviews Webinars, Analyst
• How to tips
white papers, reviews, case
ROI examples studies • News
…. …. …. ….
• Thought leadership
33

34. Understand your buyers
Target and prospect lists

35. Your Website –
The Foundation for Customer Acquisition
35

36. Your Website
A B C
“Who are you selling “How will you sell?”
“What are you selling?”
to?”
Your Value Proposition
Your target buyers Your acquisition process
1 2 3 4
Persuade them to Convince them to
Bring people Persuade them to
sign-up for a Free renew each year –
to your pay for your
Trial or download retain your
website service
content customers
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retention
36

37. Your Website
1 2 3 4
Persuade them to Convince them to
Bring people Persuade them to
sign-up for a Free renew each year –
(traffic) to pay for your
Trial or download retain your
your website service
content customers
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retention
1
2
3 4
Traffic Conversion Purchase Retention
37

38. Your Website
1 2 3 4
Persuade them Convince them to
Bring people Persuade them to
to sign-up for a renew each year –
to your pay for your
Free Trial or retain your
website service
Download customers
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retention
Use online Use your website to Use your product to Ensure they remain
marketing to convert traffic persuade them to buy customers through a
drive traffic retention process
- Value proposition - Define a process
-SEO - Reflect the buyer - Demonstrate value - Define a process for
- Pay-per-click -Home page design - Product can sell itself ‘renewals’
- Social media -Calls to action Easy to use -Remind customers
-Email - Landing page - Don’t let them figure regularly of the value
-PR - Content things out alone you deliver
- Lead capture - Increasing usefulness - Contact them in
- Follow-up advance of renewal
38

39. Your Website
 Think about how your target buyers search and what they search for
 Bring them to your site using natural search (using search engine
1 optimization) and paid search (Google and Bing pay-per-click ads, LinkedIn
Bring people or Facebook ads, banner ads)
to your  Get them to register on your site for content or a newsletter so you can
website bring them back using email
 Encourage them to connect to you via social media – your
blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +, YouTube, Slideshare
Traffic
• People take different routes to your
site when searching
• Their searches can fall into broad
categories e.g. describing a problem,
describing a symptom of the
problem, describing what they think
the solution is, searching for a
Search route 2 product or brand name etc.
WWW • You need to understand which kinds
of searches are best for bringing your
desired buyer to you
• You need to analyze and understand
each major “search route” into your
site so you can increase that traffic
• Use Google analytics, KISSMetrics,
ClickTale to monitor and analyze
where people are coming from and
what search terms they are using
39

40. Your Website
 To generate good search traffic your product is not enough - you also need
to have good content
1  Produce content that will interest your target buyers (use your buyer
Bring people personas to identify what will interest them)
to your  Over time a percentage of the visitors who read your content will then
website register for your trial
 Examples of content people will register for includes: how-to guides, tours
and overviews, eBooks, white papers, industry surveys, case studies, Q&A
Traffic interviews, company and product information
 Place that content as downloads on your site and as posts in your blog
 Link to that content using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus etc.
Visitor gets white paper
Bring people to your
content using Email, Google You get contact details
Ask them to register to download
ads, ‘natural’ search and of visitor 40
the content e.g. white paper
social media

41. Your Website
Your web-site
 The most important marketing tool you have
 Your best sales-person 24/7/365
 A sales lead generation machine  Home page is the most
 Drive visitors to your site important page
 Get them to take “Most wanted action”  Structure, text
 Drive your visitors to take
an action
 Provide downloads and
prominent ‘buy now’ offers
 Look at competitor sites for
comparison
 Make most of the page
‘clickable’
 Use ‘personas’ to guide
design
 Implement on well known
CMS – e.g. Wordpress,
Joomla, Drupal

42. Your Website
1. The Website
What to include on your site
 Have you adequately provided this information on the site?
 Have you described what you do, who you target, case studies, about us biographies ...

43. Your Website
 Have plenty of “bait” on your site
 B2B - Documents, presentations, content that people will want to download
 Ask for their email address and name in return for downloads
 B2C - special offers, buy now (if B2C online sales)
 In both cases, product videos are a great promotional tools

44. Your Website
Redesigning an existing site
 Define what you want to achieve by the redesign
 Measure current figures for visitors, sales, leads
 Audit your site – list all existing pages, incoming links to your pages, documents ...
 http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ will list the pages on your site
 http://www.seoprofiler.com/analyze/yoursite.com and www.seomoz.org/linkscape to
check how many sites link to you
 Make sure none of these pages and links are lost when you move to the new site
 Use “301 redirects” to ensure links to old pages are redirected to the corresponding new page
e.g. www.mysite.com/oldpage -> www.mysite.com/newpage
 Measure the performance of the new site e.g. using Google Analytics
 Test different versions of a page – what’s known as A/B testing – to see which one works
better with your visitors

45. Your Website
Redesigning an existing site

46. Your Website
 Example sites – software ‘buy now’ site

47. Your The Website
1. Website
Website recap
 Reflect your buyer in the web-page design (‘outside in, not inside out’) – use “Buyer
Personas”
 Make it easy for visitors to accomplish goals e.g. find information, contact you (put your
number on the home page), get you to contact them (call back button), search
 Think about your “Most Wanted Actions” – what do you want them to do?
 If you want them to do something (go to a section of the site, download content, buy
something) then make it obvious and easy
 Keep your website design and structure simple and easy to navigate
 Use conventions where possible e.g. ‘home’ at the top left and on company logo
 Provide ‘bait’ on each page – downloadable content
 If you are doing a redesign, make sure to carry over your existing “web assets” – pages and
links
 Monitor your site with Google analytics or similar system

48. Your The Website
1. Website
Website resources
 “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug
 HubSpot (www.hubspot.com) – search for “Science of website redesign” and “Website
Design Tips and Tricks 2010”
 Jakob Nielsen, Usability Bulletin www.use-it.com
 Personas – “About Face: the essentials of interaction design” by Alan Cooper et al
 MarketingExperiments.com – provide regular statistics on website tests
 “The Art of SEO” by Eric Enge, Rand Fishkin et al – advice on good website design for search
engine optimization

49. Google Ads
49

50. Google Ads
1. The Website
 Quick way to get traffic to
your site
 Tell Google which search
terms you want to be
found for
 E.g. show my ad when
someone searches for
‘industrial fuel pumps’
 Only pay if someone clicks
on my ad
 Create specific ‘landing’
page for the ad
 Avg. 50c per click, can set
maximum daily/weekly
budget
 Can lock down by
geography, time, day

51. Google Ads
 Campaign set-up – budget, geography
 Keyword analysis – what are people searching for
1 Keyword analysis
 Ad text – variants
 Bids and cost-per-click
Ad text  Bid management
2
 Broadmatch, exact match, negative keywords
 Keyword insertion
3 Landing page

52. Google Ads
Keyword selection
 Think about how visitors search for your product or service
 Thousands of ways people search for things, but usually fall into a category :
 The actual question they have e.g. “how do I fix a broken pipe”
 The answer to the question e.g. “plumbers in Galway”
 A description of the problem e.g. “broken water pipe in kitchen”
 A symptom of the problem e.g. “flooded kitchen”
 A description of the cause e.g. “frozen pipes”
 Producer parts or brand names e.g. Bosch, Philips
 For each product, think how people might search for it, using the above as a guide
 Use Google’s free Keyword Tool to help generate more keywords
 Sort by “volume of searches” and “level of competition”
 Break them into groups of 20 to 30 keywords and put them in Ad Groups

53. Google Ads
Writing your ad
 To get started, search for your targeted terms and monitor what ads are displayed
 Draft 4 to 5 versions of the ad to begin with
 Run multiple versions of your ads, monitoring which ones work the best

54. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
Convert your visitors! – Landing Pages
 Rule #1: Avoid unnecessary distractions – push visitor to your “Most Wanted Action”
 Be consistent with the ad or email that brought your visitor here, including
keywords, logos and other images
 Spell out your Value Proposition and the benefits of this particular offer and have a
clear call to action
 Remove any unnecessary navigation
 Try to keep registration fields to a minimum e.g. Name and email
 “A/B” test 2 versions of landing page to see which works best
 Use Google analytics to monitor conversions

55. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
General approach
 Choose your topic “themes” - the main things you want to get found for e.g. IT
Support, sales software, compliance management, video learning
 Generate keywords under each theme – the more the better – using Google keyword tool
 Structure your keywords into “Ad Groups” of 30 to 40
 Create multiple text ads per ad group
 Monitor
 “impressions” per keyword i.e. How many time the ad is shown
 Clicks per keyword
 Clicks per ad
 Cost per click
 Clickthrough Rate (CTR) per ad

56. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
Resources
 “Advanced Google AdWords” by Brad Geddes
 “Optimizing landing pages for lead generation” – HubSpot
 Unbounce.com – landing page optimization tool
 Google WebSite Optimizer
 WiderFunnel.com
 WhichTestWon.com
 ConversionScientist.com

57. Social Media
57

58. Social Media
• Why will people share your status updates?
• What do you want to happen when they do?

59. Social Media – Blog
Blogs
• What? Basically like a website that you can easily edit and update
• Why? Draws more traffic to your web-site, leads, sales
• Can form the basis for your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter marketing
• Allows readers to provide feedback
• Can paste in YouTube videos, SlideShare slides
Tips
• Decide who you’re targeting
• Mix of entries –
news, opinion, video, photos
, informative
• Set a schedule e.g. once a
week
• Use images and video
• Basic, medium and rich
posts, light & heavy
• Strong headlines

60. Social Media – Blog
Why start a blog?

61. Social Media – Blog
How do you start a blog?
• Check out Blogger and Wordpress – both
are free
• Now also have Tumblr
• Keep posts short – 200 to 300 words
• Write about how you do your job, how to
use a product, trends in your sector, “top
10 tips”
• Long enough to cover everything
important, short enough to keep people
wanting to see more
• Put in images and videos, otherwise
visually boring
• Have a “Call to action” at the end – offer
people something, get them to do
something

62. Social Media – Facebook
Why should you care about Facebook?
• 550 million plus users worldwide
• 1.5 million plus in Ireland
• 60% female, 40% male
• 37% over age of 35
Facebook users by age

63. Social Media – Facebook
• Over 1.5 million active users in Ireland
• Lots of your customers
• 2nd most trafficked website
• Get found, promote your stuff, connect with
others
• Get started: Set up a personal page first
• Connect with friends, join groups
• Set up a business page second
• Put links to your Facebook pages on emails,
web-site, ….
• Encourage people to “Like” your page
• Set up and promote events
• Test Facebook ads

64. Social Media – Facebook
1. Set up and fill-in your Personal Profile
2. Set up Facebook Business Page (not Group and not Personal page)
3. Put links on your website, email signature, press ads
4. Encourage people to ‘Like’ you
5. Find other pages that have high numbers of your target
customers, “Like” them and post to their wall
6. Post videos, make offers, upload photos – keep up a steady stream of content
on a frequent schedule e.g. aim for every 2nd or 3rd day

65. Social Media – Facebook
Make sure you have the “follow” and “like” buttons on your site
and blog comments – and “like” is more important

66. Social Media – Facebook
Who are you targeting?
What are your goals in using Facebook for your business?
• Sales
• Conversions
• Facebook “Likes”
• Traffic to your website / blog
• Email subscriptions
Set specific targets
• Increase sales by XX%
• Grow Facebook likes by YY%
Implement Facebook Marketing Activities
• Welcome page
• “Like” button on your website and blog
Monitoring
• Facebook insights
• Google analytics
• AllFacebookStats

67. Social Media – Facebook
Facebook
 Try Facebook ads
 Can specify targeting criteria
 Includes
location, age, birthday, sex, workplace, ed
ucation and interests
 So, could run ads to women only in 30 to
40 age bracket in your area to test the
results
http://www.facebook.com/marketing

68. Social Media – Facebook
Resources
• SimplyZesty – www.simplyzesty.com – excellent source of information on Facebook and other
social media marketing
• Who’s Blogging What – “The Facebook Page Marketing Guide 2010”
• Larry Chase Web Digest for Marketers – “Social media marketing guide – 12 key tools”
• Hubspot - “Facebook marketing update Spring 2011”
• Hubspot – “Facebook page marketing 2011”
• Hubspot – “Small business cases studies – social media”

69. Social Media – YouTube
 Why? To draw online traffic, and to sell to people 24 hours a day
 Video yourself talking about your product or service
 Relate to your business – e.g. “how we used the product”
 Video a customer talking about themselves and working with you
 Home-made is good
 Sign-up on YouTube (2 minutes and its free)
 Post it on YouTube, and customize your YouTube page
 Link to YouTube from your website, blog, Twitter ….

70. Social Media – LinkedIn
What?
• Professional network
• 250,000 users in Ireland
• 75 million worldwide
Why?
• So people can find you
• So you can find prospective customers –
‘prospecting’
• So you can promote events
How
• Create your personal profile
• Connect to people you know
• Join Groups
• Get staff to create their profiles and connect
• Create company profile
• Fill out company product and services

71. Social Media – LinkedIn

72. Social Media – Twitter
• What: Listen, Tweet, Respond
• Why?: Traffic to your website, inbound links, leads, sales
• How: 140 character “tweets”
• E.g. press release headline
• Can also insert links to stuff you like/find interesting
• Follow others e.g. customers, influencers
• Make your tweets useful e.g. links to web-site, video, news item
• Tweet about good stuff your business is doing
• Customer service

73. Social Media – Twitter
How to get started
• Create your personal account
• Look for people to “follow” e.g. someone in the same business, a supplier, commentator,
partner
• Tweet about special offers, news, discounts
• Link to your blog – tweet all your posts
• Link to press releases – tweet all your releases
• Link to your Facebook and LinkedIn Accounts
• Put “Follow us” buttons on your email, website, blog
• Check out what happens on Google analytics – e.g. can see people clicking on Tweet,
coming to blog, then coming to your website
• Use Hootsuite or other tools to manage Twitter
• Can use Hootsuite to track competitor feeds or monitor for particular phrases e.g. “help
with CRM wanted”

74. Social Media – Slideshare
What
• Free storage area to put up slide presentations, word documents, PDF documents
• Really useful for anyone involved in professional services
• Can collect leads from people who download your content
• Can place stuff here and link to it from your blog
• Can also record voice over on your slides then post it here, then link to your blog or website –
good for recording a sales pitch or product demo

75. Email Marketing
75

76. Email marketing
 Do not spam
 But do regularly email contacts who have
‘opted in’ to communications
 91% of internet users use email
 Cost effective, broad reach
 Great way of building up regular
communications with existing customers
and prospects
 Should be based around offering
something that is genuinely of interest to
recipients

77. Email marketing
Email
Email System (e.g.
Constant Contact or
Vertical Response)
sends personalized email
to each recipient and
User writes records who opens,
the email deletes, opts out
1 text and 2
uploads list Reply Visit to
of your
recipients 3
website
to email
system
Download
Inbound
Marketing
Guide NOW!

78. Email marketing
Build your recipient list – 80% of the work
 First, build your list of recipients – existing contacts, add a ‘sign up for newsletter’ form on
your site, collect details at retail outlets
 Research customer websites
 See if you can send email to an association’s membership list
 Next, design and write your email
 From Address and the Email Subject – this is how people decide to open or delete the email
so give it some thought
 Keep the subject line short – 9 words or so
 Keep text in the email short too, not too many paragraphs, use the word ‘you’ as soon and as
often as you can
 Offer something useful and/or valuable e.g. “free white paper”, “big discounts” etc.
 “Call to action” – if you want recipients to do something, tell them
 Test every element
 Run email through spam filter before sending

79. SEO
79

80. Search Engine Optimization
In the long term, SEO is the most valuable traffic generation activity
Relies on understanding search patterns, then using your website, content and social
media to bring those searchers to you
If you believe people find products online, then you should understand how search
works
What search terms are related to your product, which ones bring people to your
site, which searchers are most likely to become customers?
• People take different routes to your
site when searching
• Their searches can fall into broad
categories e.g. describing a
problem, describing a symptom of
the problem, describing what they
think the solution is, searching for a
Search route 2 product or brand name etc.
WWW • You need to understand which kinds
of searches are best for bringing your
desired buyer to you
• You need to analyze and understand
each major “search route” into your
site so you can increase that traffic
• Use Google
analytics, KISSMetrics, ClickTale to
monitor and analyze where people
are coming from and what search80
terms they are using

81. Search Engine Optimization
Paid
Advertising –
(Pay-per-click)
– About 25%
of clicks
Natural or
‘organic’ search
results – about
75% of clicks.
This is what SEO
is focused on

82. Search Engine Optimization
• You want to get found
without paying Google all
the time
• ‘Organic’ or natural search
results
• How do you get to the top?
Optimize your site ‘on page’
Good ‘content’ – information
A site that people find useful
Seek links to the site
Promote your site and
business on social media

83. Search Engine Optimization
Signals that Google uses to decide which page to show for a query
Overall, it looks at relevance and popularity.
The list below is from an SeoMoz.org poll of SEO companies – 9 most important factors
1. Keyword use in title tag
2. Anchor text in inbound link
3. Global link authority of site
4. Age of site
5. Link popularity within the site’s internal structure
6. Topical relevance of inbound links
7. Link popularity of site in topical community
8. Keyword use in body text
9. Global link popularity of sites that link to the site

84. Search Engine Optimization
The Long Tail
The “head” of
Thousands of the search
queries per day demand
The “Long tail” – 70% of
queries - less frequently
searched terms
There is more competition for the more frequent “head” terms so it will be harder for
you to get to page 1 for those terms
There are less searches for “Long Tail” terms but it is easier for you to get to page 1
One strategy is to target lots of ‘long tail’ terms rather than a few ‘head’ terms

85. Search Engine Optimization
The Long Tail
Home
page
Search Search Search Search
term 1 term 2 term 3 term 4
You can only optimize a page for one key phrase
So the number of terms you optimize for across the whole of your website is limited by
the number of pages

86. Search Engine Optimization
Four main tasks in SEO
 Keyword research and selection – decide which terms you want to get found for
 “On Page” – configure settings and text on your website
 “Off Page” – encourage other sites to link to you
 Social media – has an increasing effect on your rankings in the results pages
WWW
WWW
WWW
WWW WWW
On page Off page Social media

87. Search Engine Optimization
 First step – KEYWORD ANALYSIS – what terms do you want to be found for?
 Question to ask: “If someone searched for this specific term, would I consider them a qualified
sales lead?”
 Start similar to Google PPC keyword analysis – use Google keyword tool
 But – you have to pick smaller selection of keywords to focus on
 Sort by search volume (high) and level of competition (low)
 Pick top candidate phrases for your key phrases
 Optimize specific pages for particular terms
 More pages, more terms you can optimize for

88. Search Engine Optimization
‘On page’ optimization – 5 settings per page, plus regular use of your
target keywords on an optimized page with relevant content
1. Page Title
2. URL
3. Header tags
4. Text, internal links, bold
5. Page description text

89. Search Engine Optimization
‘Off page’ optimization – get other sites to link to you
A link: www.dohertywhite.com
Links should be from other good sites
To get links, provide information/content that
people think is valuable and should be shared
Identify a target list of sites you’d like to link to you
 Who links to you now?
 Who links to your competitors?
 What sites are top for the search terms related to you?
 What standard directories are there -
irelandlookup.com, localpages.ie, europages.ie
 What associations are you a member of e.g. the Chamber

90. SEO
2. Landing page design
SEO Resources
 “Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” – Google
 QuickSprout (Neil Patel) – good advice on driving traffic
 SEOMoz.Org – Blog updates, “White board Friday” seminars
 “SEO Quick Guide” – DohertyWhite (lists other resources)
 “Learning SEO from the Experts” – Hubspot
 “Introduction to Search Engine Optimization” – Hubspot
 “The Art of SEO” - Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie Stricchiola
 Bruce Clay – respected SEO expert

91. Analytics
91

92. Analytics
Metrics , Analytics and Reporting
 Having identified objectives you should identify corresponding metrics and report on them
 Use Google analytics to measure and report on website traffic numbers, bounce rates and
traffic sources (among other metrics)
 Google adwords provides reports on impressions, click through rates, cost per click
 You can link Analytics and Adwords so you can monitor which visitors to your site from Google
ads go on to ‘convert’
 Monitor leads generated, what they downloaded, their IP address etc
 The email marketing systems provide reporting on bounce rates, open rates, click through
rates per email campaign
 You can generate SEO reports that show traffic per keyword, relative improvement over
time, competitor ranking for selected keywords etc.
 Combine the key metrics into a one-page weekly summary so you can easily plot your progress
against your top 5 to 10 objectives e.g. Traffic, leads, lead quality, email response rates etc.
92

93. Putting It All Together
93

94. The overall approach
Understand who you are targeting (your buyers) – what are their
1 roles, which companies do they work for, where are they, what is
important to them, how do you connect with them?
2
What are you selling – what does your product and service do for
them, what is your value proposition for these buyers? ?
How do you compare with competitors – which ones are worth
3 focusing on, how do you differentiate from them?
Generate ‘content’ – based on your understanding of the
4 buyers, create information that your target buyers will find useful e.g.
Case studies, white papers, research surveys, how to guides ...
Drive traffic to that content using PPC, email, SEO, PR, social
5 media
6a B2C – Sell your product(s) now
6b B2B - Capture contact details in exchange for your content
Build a relationship with those people over time via your
7 content, website, social media and email so they learn and understand 94
your proposition, answer their concerns and select you as their best

95. The overall approach
The tools you use
1 Revise website 2 Generate content 3 Launch Google 4 Email 5 Generate PR
based on buyer to attract visitor pay-per-click Marketing and online PR
analysis, add registrations ads
landing pages
6 Post to Corporate 7 Launch Search Engine Hardcopy Mail to Telemarketing
8 9
Blog and Social Optimization selected contacts qualification of
Media activities warm leads
95

96. How do your promote your SaaS system?
A B C
“What are you selling?” “Who are you selling to?” “How will you sell?”
Your Value Proposition Your target buyers Your acquisition process
96

97. How do you sell to those buyers?
A B C
“Who are you selling “How will you sell?”
“What are you selling?”
to?”
Your Value Proposition
Your target buyers Your acquisition process
1 2 3 4
Persuade them Convince them to
Bring people Persuade them to
to sign-up for a renew each year –
to your pay for your
Free Trial or retain your
website product or service
Download customers
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retention
97

98. Key Points:
• Understand your buyers
• Be clear about the value you deliver
• Get good at online marketing
• Use content as ‘bait’
• Keep cost of sales low – use web and phone
• Measure performance of your process
• Continually improve conversion rates
98

99. Outcomes from today’s seminar
At the end of today you should know …
1. Why Digital Marketing is important for technology startups
2. How you can get started
3. A structure you can use – start, middle, end
4. How to prioritize what you should do first
5. Practical examples – Google ads, blog email, Facebook etc.
6. Where to look for help
99

100. Additional resources
• Harvard MBA course on startups – recommended reading
• http://platformsandnetworks.blogspot.com/2011/01/launching-tech-ventures-
part-iv.html?spref=tw
• Building a sales and marketing machine – Dave Skok –
• http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/slides-sales-marketing-machine/
• Brad Feld, VC, author of “Do more faster” – www.feld.com

101. Thank You
Email michael.white@dohertywhite.com
Mobile +353 86 383 8981
Phone +353 7491 16689
Twitter @michaelgwhite
www.dohertywhite.com