In this day and age, B2B marketing seems more like modern warfare than business as usual. With more and more competitors entering the market, shrinking budgets and economic uncertainty, B2B marketers need to do whatever they can to be found when users type their business problems into search engines.

The answer is to implement a strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program by populating your website, blog and other social media efforts with content that your target audience is searching for (you can download our B2B white paper on this topic here). This is a comprehensive, in-depth process that takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish, but it’s worth the results of making sure your prospects find you.

How do you find out what your prospective customers are looking for? That part’s easy. Do keyword research using tools such as Word Tracker, Google AdWords and Keyword Discovery to see what people are searching for. Then, develop your website and blog copy with relevant content that will enable your target audiences to find you when they’re searching. This will ensure that you smooth out the wrinkles in your online communications programs by making them as targeted as a sniper instead of using the traditional shotgun approach.

How have you optimized your website to look good to search engines? Did you find this post by typing in one of the timely keywords I’ve peppered this post with?

Webinars provide a convenient, fast and cost-effective way for B2B marketers to reach prospective customers. So you might be wondering, what is the best way to coordinate and execute your own webinar series?

It may seem daunting at first, but it’s not! We’re currently working on a series of webinars for Loop Demand Gen, and we have found GoToWebinar® to be the most user-friendly site for our web events.

With GoToWebinar, you can set up your presentations online, send e-mail communications to drive attendance, handle registration, and present and engage with the audience live—all under one roof. The only thing you need to do is put together the presentation, the rest is automated. GoToWebinar does a great job of simplifying the process. It ensures that your audience receives e-mail reminders so no attendees slip through the cracks.

So what happens after the webinar? Archive your webinars online so that others can download and view the presentations. This will increase the power of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) once web crawlers locate content.

Go ahead and take a stab at it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised!

I recently ran across some of my old text books from college while decorating my home office. Yes, I AM “that girl” who keeps her college textbooks—but only the ones from my marketing and advertising classes, I promise!

While reminiscing about the four “Ps,” the product life cycle, the consumer decision making process and other lessons I learned—I realized that while most of the marketing principles I learned in school remain true today—the world of marketing is evolving quickly before our eyes.

For one thing, consumers primarily use the Web to research products and services rather than relying on sales representatives for information. SEO and marketing automation software are invisible tools that help marketers track and predict behaviors of their customers and prospects. Brands are given faces and personalities with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter—I predict that in the next three years, having a company Facebook or Twitter page is going to be as expected as having a Web site.

As marketing professionals, it’s in our best interest to keep up with industry trends and continue our education. There are plenty of Webinars, luncheons and online tutorials happening everyday that are just as valuable as our dusty old textbooks.

What is the biggest marketing change you’ve seen during your career?

My grandpa turned 92 yesterday. Over his birthday lunch, grandpa told stories about the Ploiesti Air Raids in WWII. Sixty-six years ago to the day (on his 26^th birthday), grandpa was flying practice runs from Libya for this bombing mission that targeted oil refineries in Romania (a significant source of oil for Nazi Germany).

I’ve heard lots about Ploiesti over the years. Today, I Googled Ploiesti for the first time. It took multiple search attempts:

1. “Plueste mission” = 4 results in Spanish
2. “Pluheste low-level flying mission” = 0 results
3. “Plueste, Romania” (yes, I tried the wrong spelling again) = “did you mean Ploiesti, Romania?”

Why yes, I did. With the correct spelling, I tackled Google again.

4.  “Ploiesti mission” = JACKPOT! Wikipedia delivers the top listing

So, what does this have to do with B2B marketing?

Your potential customers can’t spell your “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” solution or product name!

And, they certainly aren’t going to find you online when your SEO strategy is based on optimizing it—your efforts will be fruitless.

B2B marketers need to focus on how users search. Users search for keyword phrases that describe a problem in order to find a solution; they don’t know your solution exists and, if they do, perhaps they can’t spell it.

There are free tools to help you research and logically deduct what keyword phrases will drive quality traffic to your site. Try WordTracker or Google Adwords to start. You may even consider a misspelled keyword as one of your keywords.

Are your SEO efforts centered on your product name? Can using a misspelled keyword pay off? Did you already know how to spell Ploiesti?