May 22, 2006

Here is some more Q&A from attendees of the BtoB Magazine webcast on business blogging that Marqui sponsored last week.

Q.  How could B2B (business to business) marketers leverage blogs for lead generation?

A.  Blogs are great for building online communities - people who are interested in a specific subject are increasingly likely to search online for information on the subject, and (more and more) searches will include results that link to blogs as reference points.  (There's the joke that blog stands for Better Listing On Google, and it's true!)

Because blogs are great for improving organic search results.  Search engines love fresh content and lots of links.  So blogs fit the bill.  If you're not satisfied with your organic (non-paid) search results, consider blogging about your business' subject of expertise to help get you better results.  At Marqui, we've been able to direct more of our search engine marketing dollars toward pay per click (PPC) lead generation campaigns, and away from more general search engine optimization (SEO) activities because we're consistently better at search rankings than we used to be. 

You may have heard buzz about Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.  That's the premise that people trust people (rather than a company's marketing department) to refer them to good products and services.  Crowds talking to crowds about your product - even if it's a small, niche crowd (there's an oxymoron!) talking - will carry more weight than press releases or testimonials.  Provide an online forum and engage your customers through your blog, and they'll turn into public advocates for you.  Blogs are increasingly the forum for word of mouth online.

Marqui is a BtoB software company. We've found that our blog is consistently one of the highest referring sites to our web site - month after month.  We've added a profile question to our download forms that allows us to find out when people have found out about the company through our blog, and have closed deals that have come from our blog. 

The keys are to be smart about how you write your blog, how you capture information from your blog, and how you measure results of your blogging activities.

(JJ hopes for extra credit here....)  Another, less glamorous, but more important benefit of blogging is the opportunity for market research that exists in the blogosphere. You'll learn a ton from your customers and prospects when you give them the opportunity to share information with you and each other around your blog. When we engaged in our paybloggers campaign in early 2005, we got some amazing advice from our bloggers. And if you listen, you'll gain a lot.

Q.  How effective are company-run blogs to build a company's brand?

A.  A blog should have a clear purpose if you're going to bother to have one for your company.  At Marqui, the purpose of our blog is to be a "Center of Marketing Excellence," a resource for marketers - who are ultimately our customers.  We blog about business blogging, public relations, brand, technology for marketers, etc. here.  And we hope our readers and subscribers look more favorably on Marqui - the software company - as a result. 

Figure out where a blog can help your organization.  Do you need to improve your community relations?  Do you have a customer-first initiative you can feed with a blog?  Are you implementing 'green' business practices you can share through a blog?  Take action around a strategic initiative to ensure longevity and success.

What better boost for your brand than to have your readers feel good about the company behind the bloggers?

Posted by at May 22, 2006

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