How to use Digital Marketing to Generate Leads and Acquire Customers for Startups - workshop delivered at Athlone Institute of Technology August 2012

1. Digital Marketing for
Startups
How to use Digital Marketing to Generate
Leads and Acquire New Customers
15 August 2012
Michael White

2. Outcomes from today’s seminar
Digital marketing is essential to promote
your business…
1. What – what are you selling?
2. Who – who are you selling to?
3. How – how do you promote yourself?
3.1 Website
3.1 Google ads
3.1 Social media
3.1 Email marketing
3.1 Search Engine Optimization
2

3. Outcomes from today’s seminar
At the end of today you should know …
1. Why Digital Marketing is important for 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
3

4. About Us

5. About Us
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. About Us
• Co-founder and Director of DohertyWhite since 2010
• Enterprise Ireland mentor to 25+ early stage firms
• Ex Head of Marketing at Singularity – helped double revenue in 2 years, won the Irish
Software Association Sales Achievement award 2008, ex-member of Forrester Research
Technology Marketing Executive Council
• We’re also a startup - building our own software system – Enterprise Ireland client, Propel
Michael
program
White
• Senior Product Manager at Siemens (electronic security products) 2001 to 2005
• Also Senior Business Analyst with Elavon, Management Consultant with Deloitte &
Touche, Product Manager with Marrakech, Implementation Manager with Misys
Corporation (Kindle Banking Systems), software developer with AIB Bank
• Trinity Computer Science graduate (1990), Post-Grad Dip. Computing (2004)

7. 1 Online Marketing Strategies for Customer Acquisition

8. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups
Your priorities as a startup
1. Confirm someone will buy your product / service
2. Build the first version of the product (prototype)
3. Get your first customer

9. 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?

10. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups
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

11. Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups

12. 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. 12

13. Why is Digital Marketing important?
Because your website is the top source of leads outside of
personal connections
Source:
DemandBase and Focus.com
2011 Survey of B2B IT and
marketing professionals
13

14. Why is Digital Marketing important?
Because your website is the top source of leads outside of
personal connections
Source:
BuyerSphere Report
2011 (survey of B2B
buyers in Europe)
14

15. 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?

16. 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
16

17. 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
17

18. 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
something (a white paper, free trial ...).
• 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
18

19. The overall approach
Understand who you are targeting (your buyers) – what are their
roles, which companies do they work for, where are they, what is
important to them, how do you connect with them?
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
focusing on, how do you differentiate from them?
Generate ‘content’ – based on your understanding of the 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 http://
media
B2C – Sell your product(s) now
B2B - Capture contact details in exchange for your content
Build a relationship with those people over time via your content,
website, social media and email so they learn and understand your 19
proposition, answer their concerns and select you as their best choice

20. The overall approach
• 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

21. Outcomes from today’s seminar
Web traffic
+ Content
= Customers
21

22. 2. Your Value Proposition
22

23. Three steps to acquire customers
23

24. Three steps to acquire customers
24

25. What is Your Value Proposition
A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible
results a customer gets from using your products or
services. It’s outcome focussed and stresses the
business value of what you have to offer
If you can’t demonstrate superior value then
customers will choose based on price
25

26. What is Your Value Proposition
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
26

27. 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)
27

28. Value Proposition
Typical problems
1. Talking about your company and its capabilities rather than focusing on
the customer
2. Talking about features instead of the value provided by those features
3. Using marketing waffle like ‘leading global provider of X’
4. Highlighting benefits that your customers don’t care about
5. Lack of a single definition within a company – if you ask two different
sales people you get two different answers as to what they do and why
they’re the best.
28

29. Value Proposition
 List out what you think you can do that makes
you unique
 Then go ask your existing customers what they
think is the unique value you provide
29

30. Value Proposition and The Market
 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
30

31. Value Proposition and “The Whole Product”
 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
31

32. Value Proposition – NOSE framework
 Tom Sant’s NOSE framework is a structure you can use to help
sell your Value Proposition
 Describe your value proposition using this 4 step format
 Need - what is the need the customer is experiencing
today?
 Outcome – what could tomorrow look like if things could be
improved, what great results could be achieved?
 Solution – what is your solution?
 Evidence – can you show evidence of where you’ve done
this before?
 Search for ‘Tom Sant’ on Google to get other presentations and
resources on value propositions, effective sales communication
and writing proposals.
32

33. Understand Your Buyers
33

34. Understand your buyers
34

35. Understandproblem
The your buyers
Why can’t I market to everybody?
• People are tempted to try to market to all potential users
• You worry that if you focus on one group or one geography 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.
35

36. Understandproblem
The your buyers
Define who you are targeting
Use some logic when picking your first target customers
Use “Personas” as a tool to understand them
Talk directly to customers to find out what they need
Don’t make assumptions without verifying them
Don’t be smarter than your customers
36

37. Understandproblem
The your buyers
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand
the customer so well that the product or service
fits him and sells itself”
Peter Drucker
37

38. Who Are Your Target Buyers?
Who are your buyers?
 Where are they (countries, languages)
 What industry sectors?
 What types of organisation? Size, location ...
 Any specific target companies?
 What are their typical roles or titles?
 How does your system relate to their job?
 What are their key concerns/drivers/goals?
 What are their demographics?
 Where do they hang out online?
 What sources of information do they use? 38

39. Understand your buyers
• Who you are targeting – what kinds of organisations?
• Who are your favourite customers?
• Answer these questions and develop an “ideal customer profile”
• 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 ...

40. 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 ...

41. Understand your buyers
• 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?

42. Understand your buyers
Examples: IMEC customer driven by EPA breaches, Mergon customer focused on
med device certification, Rocudo and Facebook usage

43. 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

44. What content will interest your Buyers? “Bait”
Content Strategy
 Digital Marketing is like fishing – you need the correct bait to attract your fish
 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
•Case studies
•Research
•Education e.g. slides
and tutorials
•Tours and overviews
•How to tips
•News
•Thought leadership
44

45. Understand your buyers

46. Your Website –
The Foundation for Customer Acquisition
46

47. Your Website
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
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retentio
n
47

48. Your Website
Your web-site
 The most important marketing tool you have
 Your best sales-person 24/7/365
 A sales lead generation machine
 Drive visitors to your site
 Get them to take “Most wanted action”

49. Your Website
Checklist
 “Outside In” – make sure your website reflects your target customers
 Design for Search – Mobile – Social
 Value Proposition is clear
 Easy to find information
 Clear “Calls to Action” - CTAs
 Trust – make it clear you are trustworthy
 Evidence – proof that you can do what you say you do
 Measure and analyse traffic and visitor behaviour
 Competitor analysis – look at their websites, keywords, messaging, value proposition

50. 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 ...

51. 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

52. 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

53. Your Website
Redesigning an existing site

54. Your Website
Wireframe

55. Your Website
Graphics
 Keep graphics down to less than 3rd of home page – see heatmaps
 Use images of real people, avoid clichéd stock images
 Make the entire graphic clickable
 Make sure graphic is ‘tagged’ so you turn up on image searches
 Use Clicktale or similar tool to check how visitors move around your pages

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

57. 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

58. 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

59. Google Ads
59

60. Google Ads
1. The Website

61. Google Ads
1 Keyword analysis
Your ad text
Why we’re great
2 Ad text Call us now!
www.mywebsite.com
3 Landing page
 Campaign set-up – budget, geography
Name
 Keyword analysis – what are people searching for Email
 Ad text – variants Download
 Bids and cost-per-click
 Bid management
 Broadmatch, exact match, negative keywords
 Keyword insertion

62. 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

63. 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

64. 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

65. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
Monitor and improve your ads
Click through rate
Average cost per click

66. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
General approach
 Choose your topic “themes” - the main things you want to get found for e.g. Web Design,
Digital Marketing, Compliance, 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 times the ad is shown
 Clicks per keyword
 Clicks per ad
 Cost per click
 Clickthrough Rate (CTR) per ad

67. Google Ads design
2. Landing page
Google ad 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

68. Social Media
68

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

70. 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

71. Social Media – Blog
Why start a blog?

72. 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

73. Social Media – Facebook
Why should you care about Facebook?
Facebook users by age

74. 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

75. 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

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

77. 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

78. Social Media – Facebook
Facebook
 Try Facebook ads
 Can specify targeting criteria
 Includes location, age, birthday, sex,
workplace, education 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

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

80. Social Media – Google+
Why should you care about Google+ ?

81. 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 ….

82. 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

83. Social Media – LinkedIn

84. 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

85. Social Media – Twitter
• 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”

86. 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

87. Email Marketing
87

88. Email marketing

89. 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!

90. Email marketing

91. Email marketing

92. SEO
92

93. Why SEO is important:
• Business buyers as well as consumers search online
when looking for products and services
• 85% of those buyers find what they want via search
engines
• If they can’t find you, they will find a competitor
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search
(ads) are the two main tools to ensure you are found
• You should understand the basics of how search
engines prioritize search results
• Then you can decide what to do about it – do nothing,
do it yourself or hire someone to help
93

94. Why is Search Engine Optimization important?
Because most people (75%) click on the ‘natural’ search
results rather than ‘paid’ ads
25% of clicks
go to the
75% of clicks go “paid”
to the “natural” advertising
or “organic” results you
search results see at the top
you see at the and right-
left hand side of hand side of
the search Google and
results pages Bing search
pages
94

95. Why is Search Engine Optimization important?
Because when people do search, they usually don’t look
past the first results on page 1
Most people (64%) click on the
first 3 results on Google page 1
•42% to the first result
•12% to the second
•9% to the third
Less than 10% click on pages
beyond page 1
Source: SEOBook and SEOMoz
95

96. Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Optimization is the process you use to appear higher in the search
engine results pages for searches relevant to your business
• It is based on first understanding how people search for terms related to your
business - keyword analysis
• You then use that understanding to update your website, interact with social
media and seek links so you can push your business higher up on the search results
Keyword Analysis
Content on your
Website settings
pages
Links
(incoming, outgoing Social media
and internal)
96

97. Search Engine Optimization
• People take different routes when searching for your kinds of products and
services
• You need to understand which kinds of searches are best at bringing your desired
buyers to you online
• You should analyze each major ‘search route’ into your site so that you can
increase that traffic
Sea
r ch r
o ut e
1
Search route 2
te N
ro u
rch
Sea
97

98. Search Engine Optimization

99. 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

100. Search Engine Optimization
The Long Tail
• The most popular keywords account for 18.5 % of search traffic
• They are the most competitive terms – it is usually hard to get a new web page onto the top
of page 1 for these terms
• However, over 70% of searches are for less common terms – these are the ‘long tail’
keyword phrases
• Usually these terms are 3 words or longer and are more specific e.g. “1996 green 3 series
bmw” rather than “bmw”
• Targeting these ‘long tail’ keywords is a good way to get more traffic to your site
Source: SEOMoz.org

101. Search Engine Optimization
The Long Tail

102. Search Engine Optimization
Three main tasks in SEO
 “On Page” – configure settings and place content on your website
 “Off Page” – Link Strategy – 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

103. Search Engine Optimization
 First step – KEYWORD ANALYSIS – what terms do you want to be found for?
 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

104. 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

105. 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

106. SEO
2. Landing page design
SEO Resources
 “Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” – Google
 “SEO Quick Guide” – DohertyWhite (lists other reources)
 “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
 QuickSprout (Neil Patel) – good advice on driving traffic
 SEOMoz.Org – Blog updates, “White board Friday” seminars
 Bruce Clay – respected SEO expert

107. Analytics
107

108. 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
 Monitor leads generated, what they downloaded, their IP address etc
 The email marketing systems will provide reporting on bounce rates, open rates,
click through rates per email campaign
 We 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 the top 5 to 10 objectives e.g. Traffic, leads, lead quality, email
response rates etc.
108

109. Putting It All Together
109

110. The overall approach
Understand who you are targeting (your buyers) – what are their
roles, which companies do they work for, where are they, what is
important to them, how do you connect with them?
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
focusing on, how do you differentiate from them?
Generate ‘content’ – based on your understanding of the 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 http://
media
B2C – Sell your product(s) now
B2B - Capture contact details in exchange for your content
Build a relationship with those people over time via your content,
website, social media and email so they learn and understand your 110
proposition, answer their concerns and select you as their best choice

111. The overall approach
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
111

112. How do your promote your SaaS system?
112

113. How do you sell to those buyers?
Convince them to
Bring people Persuade them Persuade them to
renew each year –
to your to sign-up for a pay for your
retain your
website Free Trial service
customers
Traffic Conversion Subscription Retention
113

114. 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
114

115. 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
115

116. Outcomes from today’s seminar
Digital marketing is essential to promote
your business…
1. What – what are you selling?
2. Who – who are you selling to?
3. How – how do you promote yourself?
3.1 Website
3.1 Google ads
3.1 Social media
3.1 Email marketing
3.1 Search Engine Optimization
116

117. Recommended reading
Books
• “Lean Startup”, Eric Ries
• “Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey Moore
• “Innovators Dilemma”, Clayton Christensen
• “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, Peter Drucker
• 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

118. Outcomes from today’s seminar
Web traffic
+ Content
= Customers
118

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