Media Plus

The quest for high search engine rankings (and the traffic that comes along with them) has spawned some new search engine optimization techniques of late, two of them being article submission and hosted marketing pages. Although these techniques are similar in appearance, each has advantages and disadvantages. Before we delve into the heart of the issue, a couple of definitions are in order for newcomers to the internet marketing realm.

Submitting articles requires quite a bit of unpleasant work. First you have to be an expert about your chosen subject (or have the ability to fool others into believing you’re an expert). Next you must be able to write about your subject in at least a coherent manner. Then you must find article directories in which to submit your work, giving them and any possible viewers the authority to freely copy and distribute your creation.

A hosted marketing page is a cross between purchasing a one way link from a website and submitting an article to a directory. The website in question allows you to purchase a complete page from their site along with a professionally written article that has multiple one-way links to your site.

The main advantages to both techniques are the SEO-friendly links. Whether you submit your article to a directory or purchase a hosted marketing page, you will get one-way links pointing to your site. Because search engines love one-way links, your website will undoubtedly receive a boost in your search engine ranking. But, the biggest boost will come from links using keywords relevant to your site coming from pages written about a subject relevant to your site.

Here’s something you should remember. In most cases, a hosted marketing page text link from a relevant, high PR website will be much more important to the search engines than a text link from a posted article in a directory. But, if you’re a talented enough author to have your writing approved, it may show up in several directories as well as multiple authority sites. This influx of links could potentially outweigh the few links from a single hosted marketing page.

The disadvantages are pretty obvious. Writing and submitting articles, although free, can consume a considerable amount of time, especially if you are not comfortable writing professionally. On the other hand, purchasing a professionally written hosted marketing page can be very expensive. You should be prepared to shell out anywhere from fifty dollars to several hundred dollars per month, depending on the popularity of the site.

Here’s the bottom line. If you have little time, little writing skill, and a large marketing budget, hosting marketing pages would be most beneficial to you. However, if you have some free time, some copywriting experience, and little to no advertising dollars, writing and submitting articles to article directories would be most beneficial to you.

Mac McIntosh

Meet Bill, he’s the owner and CEO of a growing, mid-sized manufacturing company. Bill is in his early 40s, wears glasses and tries his best to squeeze in an early-morning workout whenever he can. He prefers to wear golf shirts and khakis, donning a suit only when he has to. Bill drives a late model SUV with a booster seat in the back seat for his four-year-old daughter. He’s harried, and worries about managing his company’s growth. He wants to leverage technology to increase operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, and to offset the rising costs of doing business, but doesn’t know where to start.

Helen is his director of sales. She’s 32, single, a competitive runner, and is partial to 80s rock. She drives a new BMW convertible. She struggles with managing a dozen salespeople, many who are 10 to 15 years older then her. Helen wants the company to invest in a new CRM system to replace the contact management they long ago outgrew, but wonders how she’ll convince Bill and the company’s CFO to spend the money.

Bill and Helen are not real people, but they’re examples of one of the most powerful tools you can use to better connect with prospects and customers: persona-based marketing.

Persona-based marketing is part Hollywood characterization and part business analytics. It involves constructing a fictional customer—based on real-life data and intelligence—and then using that character as the touchstone for promotional and selling decisions.

Persona-based marketing goes beyond simple demographic data

Persona-based marketing describes who a prospect or customer is, by also answering questions about their behavior such as: what keeps this person awake at night? How does he spend his time? How does she like to be sold to?

This concept can help you, as a business-to-business marketer by creating a vivid, tangible picture of your best prospects or customers, and then sculpting a marketing message that’s pertinent to their concerns, and move them to inquire and buy.

Let’s get back to the example of Bill and Helen. Say you’re a systems integrator who is targeting mid-sized companies like Bill’s. Using what you know about Bill as a representative of the typical business owner, you can make some tactical marketing decisions.

Because Bill is pressed for time, he probably won’t attend an all-day seminar, or an evening dinner meeting—he’s got family responsibilities after work. But he would be interested in a 45-minute, executive-level Web seminar he could attend from his desk. He might also say yes to an executive breakfast briefing with his peers from other local mid-sized firms.

This fictional CEO can even help guide decisions about minute matters such as brochure or Web site design. Because you know that Bill is over 40 and wears glasses, you’ll make sure that the font is big enough for him to read easily. And because you know he’s time-pressed, you’ll break down key messages into bullet points he can scan quickly.

Helen, your customer’s sales director surrogate, meanwhile, will respond to an offer that speaks to her needs. She might raise her hand to a half-day seminar on “convincing your CEO and CFO to invest in CRM.” She might also request a white paper on “How to get salespeople to use your new CRM system.” Because she’s younger and has upscale tastes, she’d probably attend a lunch seminar at the hot new bistro in town. She’s also more likely to notice an ad or seminar invitation or other promotional materials that are designed in a modern and colorful manner.

Granted, Bill and Helen are composite characters, not real people. But referring to them as you formulate and execute your messages can make your marketing more effective. And it can prevent your promotions from becoming too generic to be noticed. Performed correctly, your persona-based decisions will stop being about “I think” and start being about “what would our customer or prospect think?”

How do you get started?

1. Convene a group of employees who interact with your customers and prospects. Bring in lunch and a white board and ask them to help you build a persona for each of your target customers.

2. Start by describing the customer’s role in their company: CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, sales manager, purchasing agent, user, and any other important influencers.

3. Next describe the kind of company they work for. What industry is it in? How big is it? How up-to-date is it? Does it have a lot of competition?

4. Then describe the person and their behavior: Give each persona a name, a title, an age, and describe how he or she looks. How does he dress? What kind of car does she drive? What does he do in his free time? What kind of educational background does she have?

5. Flesh out as many attributes as you need to give a full, rounded picture of who this person is. Then, turn to your persona’s problems and goals.

6. Think about what does this person’s daily calendar look like? What are his or her most pressing concerns? What product or service attributes would be most helpful in solving this person’s problems? Is he or she looking to roll up 20 databases into one, getting ready for an IPO, dealing with a new competitor who has just entered the market?

7. Then, when formulating your marketing messages, think about what path this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this problem. Will he or she turn to white papers or articles in trade publications or Web sites? Would this customer or prospect seek input from a speaker at a networking group of their peers? Let the personas steer the route, which you can pave with information that can help your prospect and customers move forward in their consideration and buying process.

There are a few savvy web folks who have effectively used keywords and relevant content to generate a huge amount of links to their blog or website. These guys are mavens when it comes to keywords, they know how to choose them, and they know how to optimize for them. In this way, they have managed to organically increase their web traffic without having to pay a cent. These are the masters of article marketing. They are intelligent, savvy people who know how to drive up web traffic.

Then there are those frustrated individuals who, try as they might, can’t write an article to save their life. These people slave away at writing articles to market their website , but no matter what, they don’t get results. They are the cynical types who insist that article marketing simply doesn’t work.

How come we get completely different results from the same method?

A. You Have To Study the Art of Article Writing

Most people lack the humility and wisdom to study the art of article marketing. Just because they know how to write an academic essay doesn’t mean they are article marketing whizzes. In fact, writing marketing articles is a science that can be learned, but only with a humble attitude. Just because one has written a whole ton of blog posts and papers in his life doesn’t qualify him to write articles for marketing purposes.

The truth is, one must carefully study and practice this skill for a long time in order to achieve efficacy. Even people who are skilled with words need to be able to understand how to seize the attention of an online reader and get them to pay attention to their article. This is especially because writers need to maintain an organic voice when writing articles.

A lot of gifted writers have tried their hand at writing articles, only to fail and then brand the whole idea as overblown hype. A little bit of humility and positive energy would turn that hype into effective work.

B. Keywords mean everything

Many people have gone past the first stage and have been able to write highly effective articles. These people have learned what it takes to write articles. Except after mountains of work writing good articles, they have nothing to show for it. Why is this?

Keywords will drive more traffic to a web site than any well written article. Keywords are the most important part of any article. More importantly, writers must choose keywords that correctly fit within their business model, but keywords that are not too highly competitive. In other words, you want to find keywords that you can optimize so that your site appears high on search engines.

Recent data has shown that more than 74 percent of web traffic is derived from search engines. We’re talking in the number of more than 50 million. The tiniest percentage of that traffic would boost your web site significantly.

C. Head In The Sand

You’ve got to provide interesting content if you want to be successful. Boring sites will not engage anyone, no matter how well optimized they are. People will get bored and leave. This means you have to provide original, engaging content and use lots of keywords. Make sure you write relevant articles, and you keep them interesting. Write them and read them, and if you are bored, then write them again. You’ve got to find your own niche and explore it fully. Have something that distinguishes you from the competition. If you’re spending all this money trying to bring people to your site, you’d better make sure that site will mesmerize them.

D. Distractions will kill

Writing effective articles requires that you focus intently on what you are doing. Since there are a plethora of other things occurring on the web, it is easy to lose focus. Yet it is crucially important that you maintain intense focus when you are working. This will ensure that you produce quality work.