Presentation on SEO-cial for B2B brands given on 10/5/12 at MarketingProfs in Boston.

1. SEO-cialize Your Marketing to Gain
Online Visibility, Traffic, Leads, and
Sales
Presented by
Veronica Fielding with Deborah French

2. Introductions
• Presenters
 Veronica Fielding, President, DBE
 Deborah A. French, Senior Sales & Marketing Communications
Manager, Q Center
• Our Topic—SEO-cial
 Strategically combining SEO and Social Media Marketing for your
B2B brand
Social
SEO
Media

3. What We’ll Cover Today
• Getting on the same page about SEO
• Why SEO-cial is the way to go
• How to make SEO-cial work for your B2B brand
• What others are doing
• In-depth look at Q Center’s SEO-cial program

4. How Many of You Are…
• Not doing any real (ongoing) SEO or social?
• Doing SEO but not social?
• Doing Social but not SEO?
• Doing both?

5. Very
A ^ Brief History of SEO
Internet Launches for Content Driven Links
Consumers for SEO
3/15/1995 1/1/2007
On-website SEO Social Media Links Social Signals for
for SEO SEO
6/15/1998
1/16/2009 9/16/2012
Link Building For
SEO
1/1/2002
' 95 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 ' 12
Today

6. SEO Now: Ongoing Offsite is Key
Technical adjustments
Competitive research
On Website Keyword research
SEO Domain research
Keyword mapping
Content Creation
Content Curation
Content Distribution: Off
• Directory listings Website
• Traditional link
building SEO
• Social engagement
• Social link building

7. SEO + Social Media = SEO-cial
Published in:

8. Top 2 Sources—Perfect Together

9. Yet Most Companies Are Not Integrating

10. Social Use By Companies

11. Links Are Increasingly Important
42.58
SEOmoz 2011 Search Engine (Google) Algorithm Ranking Factors

12. Benefits of Social for B2B Marketers*
• Over 56% of B2B marketers acquired new business
partnerships through social media (compared to 45% of B2C
marketers)
• Nearly 60% of B2B marketers saw improved search rankings
from their social efforts (compared to 50% of B2C marketers)
• B2B marketers are more able to gather marketplace insights
from their social efforts (nearly 69% vs. 60% of B2C marketers)
• The one area where B2B marketers significantly lag behind their
B2C counterparts is in developing a loyal fan base. 63% of B2C
marketers found social media helped them develop loyal fans,
compared to only 53% of B2B marketers.
*Source: How B2B Marketers Use Social Media: New Research, Phil Mershon,
SocialExaminer.com 4/24/12, see links in Resources section

13. B2B Marketers Social Media Preferences

14. So What Is SEO-cial?
• Strategically leveraging social media marketing to
support SEO goals
• Controversial: see the comments following my Fast
Company post on SEO-cial
• Why the uproar?
 It’s still early, difficult to draw direct conclusions
 Still possible for SEO to succeed without SEO-cial
• Though getting increasingly difficult to generate search-engine
sanctioned links without it
 It’s A LOT of work
• Takes time, $, and persistence
 It requires teamwork

15. SEO-cial Isn’t Easy…
• You will need to work hard to unite your resources and
manage through silo-ed objectives and plans
 SEO team
 Social media team
 PR/Communications
 Analytics
 Internal funders and supporters

16. Internal Stakeholders & Social
• Convincing people that social is worth their input will be
a challenge in most organizations
– Still relatively new
– Quantification and connection to bottom line almost impossible
• Social isn’t a “sales” channel
– Demonstrating success will be key
• Agreeing on success measures, even qualitative ones, is critical
• Convincing the money people to fund it will be
challenging, too
– “D, all of the above…”

17. Important!
• If you focus on the search engines, you will annoy and
alienate people (and lose search engine attention)
• Stay focused on connecting and engaging with people,
and the search engines will follow

18. Comparing B2C & B2B SEO-cial
B2C B2B
• Large # potential customers • Defined, limited # customers
• Channel is direct interaction • Sales people = intermediary
with consumers between social channel & buyers
• Small % of audience makes • #Fans, #Followers smaller
engagement #s look great • Engagement harder to come by,
• Engagement #s high, lots of fewer people available to
activity “socialize” from work
• Engagement easier, sharing • Opinions shared reflect on
constant and fluid—personal organization, more cautious in
decision to participate sharing with brands in channel
• Wide variety of appropriate • Offers need to be appropriate to
offers biz decision makers

19. Reframing SEO Now: 1, 2, 3
1. Technical adjustments— so search engines can crawl On
and recognize content on your site Website
SEO
2. Identify the keywords YOUR buyers will use to find
the site when not using branded terms. Apply
On
throughout site: Website
• Page Copy SEO
• Source Code Tags
3. Generating activity outside of your website that points Off
to your website to signal the search engines that your
Website
site is of value to authority sites (and their
stakeholders) SEO

20. The Rise of Social Signals
• Getting inbound links by traditional means is still good:
 Directories
 Authority websites
 Influential bloggers
• Getting links from the social channel is a must-do, too
• What signals count?
 “Conversations” and content on your own social properties that include
links back to your website
 “Conversations” and content on others’ social properties that link back to
your website
 Activity around your brand name, even if it doesn’t include links:
• Twitter chatter
• Facebook likes
• YouTube comments

21. How Do You Create Social Signals?
1 Create (and curate) unique, relevant, shareable content
Identify “distribution” channels: blogs,
2 social media, websites, etc.
Create interest and excitement around
3 the content, get many others to share it
and talk about it, too

22. What Content Works Best?

23. Integrated SEO-cial—The Right Mix

24. Edmund Optics: SEO-cial Early Adopter
• Started SEO/PPC with DBE 2007
• Began to incorporate social elements 2010,
expanded program in 2011
• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Organic search visits up 82% 2011 v. 2009
(25% 2011 v. 2010)
• Measurable “Assisted Social Conversions”
alone deliver 5-1 ROI
• Note: very active LinkedIn company presence, but that isn’t a direct assist to
SEO

25. PTS: SEO-cial After Panda/Penguin
• Started SEO/PPC with DBE 2005
• Began to incorporate social elements 2009
• Blog
• Facebook
• Organic search visits up 18% 2010 v. 2009
• Brought program in-house 2011
• Panda & Penguin hit
• April 2012 organic search visits drop 56%!
• Began to implement SEO-cial best practices July 2012
• Early indicators show good bounce back on keyword and domain authority

26. Deborah French, Q Center
• Deborah is going to share what she has learned
spearheading the introduction of SEO-cial for her
organization
• They’re just picking up steam now
• She will share what she planned, what happened, what
she did to adjust, and where Q Center goes from here

27. Q Center Overview
• Corporate conference center in
business for 40+ years
• Located 45 miles west of
Chicago Loop
• 1,042 overnight guest rooms,
150,000+ sq. ft. of state of the
art meeting space
• GROUPS ONLY– no individual
business or leisure travelers
• We are a B2B sale, not a
hospitality sale

28. Q Center Marketing Goals
#1 – Generate leads for group
sales effort
#2 – Drive incidental revenue
from guests
$

29. Q Center Marketing Challenges
#1--Single, independent property competing with
national and international brands
#2--B2B sales model competing with brands that
interact with targets in B2B AND B2C
#3--Conservative culture

30. Why Search Matters to Q Center
• We’re a niche solution
• Brand awareness is generally low
• Traditional advertising has not been
effective—too wide a swath
• How do buyers find us? They look for
us!
 #1 word of mouth
 #2 online search
• Limited funding makes SEO very
attractive

31. Q Center: SEO and PPC
Cost-effective
PPC presence
#1 Natural Listing, generated by DBE SEO

32. Using SEO (and PPC) Since 2005
• Organic search = 33% of the site’s traffic
 up 20% over this time last year
• PPC = 33% of traffic
 Strategy—complement to SEO
• Social Media, new in 2011
 2012--Strategically integrating with SEO=SEO-cial

33. Why Social Matters to Q Center
• Word of mouth and referrals are important in decision making
• People trust other people
• Our clients and guests are very engaged in social
• We need to be there with them
• Competitors use social to drive B2C awareness
• Cost-effective, flexible way to drive brand awareness
• Corporate buyers use social to research options
• Social combines the benefit of being where the buyers are with credibility
from others who value your brand
• Long sales cycle—social keeps us engaged with prospects
• Social’s impact on search will fortify our keyword rankings and domain
level authority

34. Getting Started
• Began blog, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr in 2011, added
Facebook in 2012
• Weren’t getting enough return for resource cost in 2011
and considered abandoning—outsourced to DBE

35. Getting Started
• Set goals and measurement
• Increase organic search traffic by
15%
• Increase social referrals, too
• Grow influential followers list to
100% of 105
• 25% of the way there!

36. What We’ve Done So Far in 2012
• DBE assumed management of Q Center’s social presence in March 2012
 Blog, Twitter, Facebook (and consulting on LinkedIn and YouTube)
• April – launched Service Upgrade Offer page on Facebook (aimed at meeting
planners)
• May – launched the Oasis spa promotion targeting on-site guests
 Found to be too “consumer” focused and changed promotion to something people
could use
• Late May – enhanced LinkedIn Company Page
• July – Twitter influential follower outreach began
 The goal is not just to gain new followers, but to gain them from a targeted list of
industry influencers.
• Drink promotion (targeting on-site guests) ran from 7/16 to 8/17
• Mid-August – LinkedIn training for sales team
• September – discussing launch of Pinterest, starting development of white
paper

37. Challenges for B2B and Q Center
• Needing to show clear connection between online buzz and bottom
line (a sweepstakes may be fun, but is it connecting with the right
audience?)
• If the B2B market for your brand is small, you need to do a very
targeted promotion. But reaching a small audience runs counter to
the big buzz that’s needed to drive SEO. Catch-22
• Building buzz without generating sales leads is pointless but SEO
needs to feed the search engines activity that is working for people.
• Solutions:
– Thought leadership that is relevant to the brand and its audiences and has value
beyond the brand
• Offer unique whitepapers
• Create and curate value-added content through Facebook and Twitter
• Curate content of core target and wider audience interest on Pinterest and/or YouTube
– Target solutions that are controlled with modest expectations: free drink offer

38. What We’ve Learned So Far
• Resources may need to be traded
 Money spent on traditional marketing may need to be converted to staff or
to an outsourced resource
• Don’t overthink it to the point of paralysis
 It’s new, adopt a try it mindset
• Try everything
 You can always pull it back and try something else
• It’s not a project, it’s a journey
 You learn things along the way so be flexible and open to changing the
approach
• Measure everything
 The insights are in the details
• Be patient
 Like any strategy, it takes awhile to have an impact

39. Your Turn

40. Other Helpful Resources
• Report of social media usage by B2B companies via Phil
Mershon/Social Examiner 4/24/12 and links to great research results
of 3,800 social media marketers surveyed:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/b2b-social-media-marketing-
research/
• Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/7986/b2b-
social-marketing-growing-linkedin-top-channel#ixzz26ZnYCqGv
• Fast Company article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/3000283/seo-isnt-what-you-
think-it

41. Need More?
Contact Us!
DBE is a leading digital marketing agency for middle market marketing
decision makers who need a trailblazing partner to increase sales in
quantifiable and cost-effective ways. DBE’s innovative mix of content-
driven SEO, PPC, and social media marketing connects buyers and
brands and delivers results that make our clients heroes.
Veronica Fielding
President, Digital Brand Expressions
vfielding@digitalbrandexpressions.com
609-688-8558