Many IT consulting websites on the surface look pretty darn professional, but have very little to show for it. More often than not, the owners spent nearly 100% of their online marketing budget on websites that look real pretty on the surface, but are totally freaking worthless when they come to generating traffic, leads, clients, and ROI. It’s almost like their websites were built by a team of Barbie and Ken dolls: very superficially attractive and exuding confidence (usually without justification)…but underneath the surface, anorexic (no real content) and completely devoid of any functional brain activity going on upstairs. There’s no way to attract traffic at scale, no way to generate leads, no way to convert leads to clients, and no way to track ROI. So what are the 11 signs your website was built by Barbie and Ken dolls?
Most channel marketing managers have a bear of a time creating engaging website content that their channel partners actually want to read. But it doesn’t have to be so frustrating when you know what your partners actually care about.
In episode #9 of the IT Channel Inbound Marketing Podcast, host Joshua Feinberg is joined by Mark Kilens, Leader of HubSpot Academy at HubSpot in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Now that 57% of the typical B2B buying cycle is over before decision makers contact any vendor, it’s critical for all businesses, including managed service providers (MSPs), to use content marketing to get found in these initial searches.
Whenever I ask owners of computer consulting businesses who their target market is, I get two kinds of answers (a) Small businesses, or (b) a blank stare. Why is answering this question so critical? Because websites that try to speak to “everyone” (small businesses) usually end up speaking to no one.
While Google never has and probably never will publicly disclose all of the rules for getting a website to organically rank for important search terms, Google does publish Webmaster Guidelines which explain best practices for getting Google to find, crawl, and index your website. There’s certainly a lot to know. But at a more basic, fundamental level, there are two big reasons why cloud services websites are often not getting found organically on Google.
The search engine optimization (SEO) industry has taken a big reputational hit in recent months. Now, it’s not so much that SEO is no longer important or effective for getting specific pages of your website ranked on page one of search engine results. It’s just that there’s been such a massive backlash against bad SEO practices, that the needle is clearly and rapidly moving more towards using content and Inbound marketing to organically attract the right website visitors. With that in mind, consider these nine on-page SEO tips for computer consulting business owners.
Because many cloud service providers (CSPs) offer services that are largely similar to their competitors, marketing innovation is an extremely important lever. Innovation that develops and promotes the company’s thought leadership is one of the only tools left that can protect a cloud provider’s pricing power, profit margins, and ultimate survival. In this post, we’ll focus on how CSPs can use social media to attract the right website visitors.
Many B2B software companies that try to blog think their blogs are helpful. But their readers and analytics strongly disagree. Generally the only way to get blogging right: invest the time and resources in good, solid persona research before you even look for keywords and plan your editorial calendar.
Ask a couple of teenagers whether they’d rather read a 400 page novel or watch the 90 minute DVD. (Sorry if we’re offending elitist high school English teachers everywhere.) While there are literature geeks to be found in every high school, after all someone has to come back and teach high school English, most teens just like adults would rather watch the video content than read the book.
Blogging can be an extremely effective way for IT consultants to generate leads and acquire customers. Yet, few IT consultants blog regularly.
Can we be brutally honest with you? Most computer consulting business websites totally freaking suck at generating high-quality leads. We’re not exaggerating. When speaking with new prospective clients and running their website URLs through a few basic evaluation tools, usually the biggest gaping obvious hole: there is pretty much no traffic coming to their websites. And if you can’t generate website traffic, how in the world can you possibly generate leads from that website traffic?
Even for relatively time-starved channel marketing managers, there are two kinds of low-hanging fruit for lead generation waiting for you on SlideShare.
Learn content creation techniques you can use to give your important blog messages a chance to make it to page one of search results pages, one way or another.
Now that 57% of the typical B2B sales cycle is over before decision makers contact any technology vendor, it’s critical for your company to get found in those early stage searches to drive high-quality lead generation. In this context, we often get asked, “Do news releases still work? And are news releases effective for IT lead generation?”
Every month, we speak with a few dozen managed service providers. Nearly all want to know how they can get more leads and clients from their MSP websites. What do nearly all of these websites have in common? They’re just terrible at converting visitors to leads. In fact, 9 out of 10 get a FAIL (<70%) from our website evaluation tool.
Most IT consulting websites fail to account for modern B2B buying. Read this post to learn the 3 sales cycle stages and which content works best.
Most IT consultants that are sole proprietors are not big fans of marketing. But ignoring marketing altogether means that your company’s survival and growth depends entirely on marketing to your family, friends, and former co-workers. Unless you have a bottomless supply of family, friends, and former co-workers, you’ll need a strategy like this to better market your small business.
While some MSP business owners got into managed services as entrepreneurs, most were system engineers or IT consultants first. So from the standpoint of hiring and managing technical talent, most owners have a pretty good grasp of the skillset that’s required to satisfy various client’s IT needs. But what about marketing?
There’s a 10-person MSP deep in the sales process right now struggling with a common dilemma: Should you hire sales help first? Or marketing help first?
We seem to be getting this question a lot lately, where owners of technology companies get impatient and want to take a shortcut by “buying” a mailing list. There’s an easy answer to the question (Is it OK for a technology company to “buy” a mailing list?) and a more complete answer. Let’s start with the more complete answer.
Find out why many potential clients aren’t even considering your company... and what you can do about it...before it’s too late (page 1)
Identify the 6 key pieces for planning an effective inbound marketing strategy (page 2)
Narrow down your “must do” list to these 11 ways to attract targeted visitors (page 3)
Convert a lot more of your website visitors to qualified leads with these tools (page 4)
Close sales faster with new clients that are eager to do business with your company (page 5)
Achieve the Inbound marketing holy grail by delighting and retaining clients for life (page 6)
Find out eight very low-cost ways to draw in new business (pages 4-5)
Uncover four little-known secrets for locating the most highly qualified prospective clients (pages 7-8)
Learn how you can consistently attract more high-paying clients (pages 9-10)
Discover five easy-to-apply tips for marketing high-margin, small business computer consulting services (page 14)
During this one hour webinar, you’ll learn:
The easiest way to create highly relevant content that attracts leads
How to give your company a 92% chance of acquiring new clients through your website
Whether your website copywriting is attracting clients or alienating them
The best keywords to target on your website
How to tell if your company is invisible to the decision makers that you need to reach
3 key social media best practices that attract the best website visitors
How to generate more leads from your blog posts
Which 4 elements must be in your news releases to attract great website visitors
The 9 types of partners most computer consultants need
How even the smallest IT company can build its own channel partner program
And much more!
During this one hour webinar, you’ll learn:
What must happen first before your website is in a position to generate leads
Why most computer consulting businesses and MSPs are wasting at least half of their website traffic
How to create irresistible lead generation offers that cause conversion rates to go through the roof
What you can do to keep your sales funnel filled and accelerate the sales cycle
What it takes to transform qualified leads into highly-desirable paying clients
The key to making your best leads feel a burning desire to learn more
The 5 types of landing pages that nearly every computer consulting or MSP website must have
The basic workflow that must be mastered for effective lead generation
Which metrics matter most when it comes to generating more leads from your website
How to uncover which sources of website visitors ultimately monetized into paying clients
And much more!
