It’s one of those difficult questions, isn’t it? What should we outsouce? To start, I’m 1990′s old-school: outsource what’s not your core competency. So, to be more specific, the questions is, is marketing a core competency? is sales?
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The traditional agency often gets a bad reputation. From difficult to work with to expensive, many clients dread hiring a marketing, design, or technology agency to help them. Why is this?
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It’s long been known that search engines are useful for finding qualified traffic for your site. What’s new is how important this is for B2B companies. According to MarketingProfs.com, 95.5% of B2B purchases use a search engine while making their decision.
In the past, B2B companies have dismissed the Web and especially search engines as being irrelevant to their sales process. The truth is that it’s only their companies are irrelevant to their potential customers.
The fact is that B2B purchases use and need the Web to complete their purchases. They are looking for information and education about the purchase. Many of them are not fully informed about the purchase and thus are looking for education. Many are looking for white papers and PDFs they can print out for their colleagues.
The search engine represents the best chance to grab this traffic: early in the sales process when all that’s required is information. And, if it’s setup correctly, your Web site can fulfill all these needs without involving expensive human labor from the sales department.
You might think that the Web isn’t relevant to your B2B business. The truth is that is it’s relevant to your customer. The question is really whether your business is relevant to them.
According to MarketingProfs.com, 93.2% of B2B purchase decisions use the Web. This means that your Web site has the chance of being helpful. Do you make the best use of it?
Ideally, your Web site meets your B2B shoppers where they are: in the info-gathering phase of their purchase. If your salespersons are fulfilling this function, not only are you spending too much money per lead, you’re also annoying your future customers.
Rather, make sure people can find your site (search engine marketing), and make sure people can use your site (customer experience management).
At first, this seems like a distinction without a difference. But, of course, then it seems like two totally different things.
OK, it’s an awkward term. The goal is to replace the concept of usability. Or, rather, to supersede it. Audience Experience Optimization is a discipline that seeks to make certain that a viewer/participant of a Web site has a satisfying experience.
Yes and no. Check out this site and www.synaxisworks.com. These sites use CSS-only layout, viz. no tables. There are some good things and some bad things.
Traditional usability studies are effective, but limited in scope. They focus strictly on how “functional” an application is. Specifically, they determine whether a user can complete a strict series of tasks. I think this model is outdated and doesn’t apply well to the Web.