Unleashing the power of AI in B2B event marketing – a practical guide

by Alicia Drew, on 11/05/2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising digital marketing by providing insights, automating processes, and personalising customer experiences, leading to increased engagement, higher conversion rates, and better ROI.

  • Analysing customer data: AI algorithms can analyse large amounts of customer data, including their preferences, behaviour, and interaction history, to identify patterns and insights. These insights can help marketers understand their customers’ needs and preferences better and develop targeted strategies to engage with them more effectively.
  • Automating customer interactions: AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive tools can automate customer interactions through various channels, such as social media, email, or messaging apps. These tools can handle basic queries, provide personalised recommendations, and offer real-time assistance, freeing your marketers to focus on more strategic or critical tasks that only humans can do.
  • Personalising customer experiences: AI can help marketers personalise customer experiences by using customer data to offer relevant product recommendations, content, and promotions, creating a more personalised and engaging experience.

But as AI becomes more accessible, many B2B media and events marketing leaders are still unsure about how to utilise the power of AI in a practical way. Below are just some examples of how AI can be leveraged for high-performance marketing.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising:

  • AI can optimise ad campaigns by analysing user behaviour, search queries, and other relevant data to target ideal consumers with personalised ads.
  • AI can also automate bidding strategies, reducing the workload for advertisers and ensuring that ads get the most clicks and conversions.
  • AI-powered tools can also use natural language processing and machine learning to generate ad copy for PPC ads that is more likely to be clicked on, taking into account factors like audience demographics and campaign objectives.
  • AI can be used to generate long-tail keywords that are more likely to convert. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords, which means that they are more likely to result in clicks and conversions.

Email Marketing:

  • AI can analyse audience behaviour and preferences, which means you can create personalised email content that resonates with your audience and increases click-through rates.
  • AI copy tools can be used to help marketers create impactful subject line ideas that feel more personal and are likely to increase open rates.
  • AI newsletter automation tools can be used to create personalised newsletters with a custom curation of articles and adverts that are aggregated from multiple sources which will help you grow your relationships with your audience while executing mass personalisation.
  • AI can also be used for generating html code for emails, which can save marketers time and effort, and it can help to ensure that their emails are always professional and effective.

Social Media Marketing:

  • AI can recognise different social media platforms, enabling marketers to create channel-specific draft posts. These will be highly generalised though as AI will never fully understand your target audience in the meaningful way your marketers do, so you’ll still need some human intervention for increasing engagement and growth.
  • AI can also analyse social media conversations, providing insights into customer sentiment and engagement rates, enabling marketers to refine their campaigns and improve their social media presence.

Content Marketing:

  • AI can be used to repurpose existing content into new and engaging formats. This can help you to extend the reach of your content and to reach a wider audience. For example, you could use AI to create infographics, video scripts, or use transcription tools to transcribe video and webinar content making it much easier for marketers to repurpose the content for social posts, blogs etc.
  • AI can be used to track the performance of your content and to identify what is resonating with your target audience. This information can then be used to improve your future content marketing efforts so you can create more of that content to keep them engaged. It can also be used to personalise content for each individual user for example, to recommend articles to users based on their past reading history.
  • AI can be used to generate high-quality, relevant copy on a consistent basis. AI can also be used for proofing copy by placing your already written copy into the tool, it can be quickly scanned for errors, repetitive words and phrases and alternative copy can be recommended. It is important to remember however that AI is just a tool and cannot replace the human touch. A human copywriter will still need to review the AI-generated copy to ensure that it is on-brand and resonates with the target audience.

Websites:

  • AI chatbots can improve customer engagement and satisfaction by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and helping customers navigate your website’s content or products.
  • AI can analyse your audience’s web behaviour (pages viewed, content searches, forms completed) and purchase history to create personalised product, content and promotion recommendations.
  • AI can also help optimise website content and structure for search engines, by analysing keywords and other factors affecting SEO and make recommendations on how to improve rankings and visibility.

Marketing and sales automation:

  • AI can be used to automate tasks such as qualifying leads, and scheduling appointments. This can free up time for your salespeople to focus on more strategic and commercial tasks, such as building relationships with customers and closing deals.
  • AI can be used to personalise the sales and marketing process. For example, AI can be used to send personalised emails to leads or to create personalised landing pages. This can help to improve the customer experience and to increase conversion rates.
  • AI can be used to track and analyse data. This data can be used to identify trends, improve targeting, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This information can then be used to improve future marketing efforts.

AI is evolving fast, with new tools being released daily which can make it difficult for marketers to stay up to date with the latest technologies and their practical applications. We recommend appointing a dedicated AI Champion (or even multiple champions), who can help your business stay on top of the latest tech, analysing the practical implications for your business and feeding this intelligence back into the team.

  • Copy and text solutions – for creating copy for ads, emails, blog frameworks, keyword generation etc:
  • Audio to text solutions – many video conferencing tools now have this as native functionality but if you do need additional tools for generating transcripts of webinars or podcast content for easy repurposing you could try:
  • Text to image solutions – e.g. for generating images to be used in blogs, social media, ad graphics etc.
  • Other solutions:
    • rasa.io – for personalised email newsletters with curated content
    • AdCreative.ai – for generating ad and social media creatives including images and AI generated copy

But remember, while AI has the power to revolutionise your marketing and your business, if you don’t have a clear marketing strategy that is aligned with your business objectives, a strong value proposition, a well-maintained and growing database, an integrated sales and marketing tech stack and a website that is well-optimised for lead generation and conversions, then you’re unlikely to realise the true benefits of AI.

 

Team MPG can help you develop a marketing strategy inline with your event and business growth strategy and then deliver best-in-class marketing execution.

Get in touch today to have a chat about how we can help you grow your revenues faster.

 

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‘The Big Switch Off’ – Are you GA4 ready?

by Sharise Wilkinson, on 10/03/2023

There’s not much time left until Google sunsets Universal Analytics and will only process new data via  GA4 (Google Analytics 4). If you haven’t already implemented GA4, you need to do so as soon as possible, as there are 3 important things you won’t be able to do without it! 

#1 You’ll need GA4 to…track your website analytics

Put quite simply, if you do not switch to using GA4 before the 1st of July 2023, you will lose the ability to track your website analytics via Google Analytics. The current version, Universal Analytics (also known as GA3), will be ‘sunsetted’ in July 2023, meaning that you will no longer be able to collect data in any analytics properties using this version, so you will have no visibility of your website visitors and other stats. 

It will also not be possible to import any historical data from your existing UA properties to new GA4 ones – so if you have not done so already, set up GA4 asap to capture the data you need before the ‘big switch off’.

#2 You’ll need GA4 to…accurately track user engagement

One of the most crucial updates in GA4 is how user engagement will be tracked. Instead of cookie-based session tracking (as is with Universal Analytics), GA4 tracks ‘hits’ called events. This means that all user interactions on a website, such as clicks, form submissions, and video views, are recorded as events, allowing for a more detailed analysis of user behaviour.

Using these events, GA4 is then able to build a timeline of engagement for each of your website visitors, thus determining an accurate picture of each session. The engagement time is recorded from the first event to the last, and it’s much easier to determine the number of engaged sessions, against your overall website traffic.

Being able to more accurately understand how long your visitors are engaging with your website for, and what they’re engaging with, will give you the insights you need to optimise your on-site content.

#3 You’ll need GA4 to…use the latest AI in marketing

Another significant difference between GA4 event tracking and Universal Analytics is the use of machine learning algorithms. GA4 uses advanced algorithms to analyse user behaviour and predict their next move, allowing businesses to personalise the user experience and optimise marketing strategies. This feature is not available in Universal Analytics, which relies on basic tracking methods and reports – meaning if you haven’t already switched to GA4 – you’re missing out!

MPG can help you install GA4 on your website.

Contact us to start today!

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Essential steps to future-proof your marketing

by Team MPG, on 26/01/2023

Last month MPG’s founder, Helen Coetzee, hosted a roundtable discussion for the Renewd community on how to future-proof your marketing.

As economists and financial experts continue to debate the depth and length of a pending recession, the roundtable attendees discussed how to ‘be defensive but still invest well’, so that as things start improving, businesses are well set up to make the most of growth opportunities.

The resounding message was that sticking to the fundamentals and doing those well, and not being distracted by the latest ‘new and shiny’ marketing channels and tactics as a ‘silver bullet’, is going to be more important now than ever. Much of the conversation focussed on building and maintaining data, and optimising websites to support well-constructed customer journeys and good user experiences.

#1 Growing your database with 1st party data is essential for business success

Growing your database by continually adding more of the right future customers to your database – and therefore into your acquisition marketing and sales funnel – is critical for success.

Here we share with you the key takeaways from the database discussion:

  • Quality over quantity
    There’s a definite shift from the ‘more is better’ data approach. More businesses are focussing their data build efforts on being much more targeted in the data they are going after. While ABM is not a new concept, it’s still very underutilised and not as well understood as it should be in B2B marketing. Data build for ABM should be focussed on identifying the high-value accounts you want as customers, mapping out the key decision makers and influencers at those businesses and making sure they are on your database so you can market to and engage with them. You can find out more about how to implement ABM in your business in this MPG Insights resource.
  • How you segment your data matters
    Online behaviour is more important than capturing unnecessary demographic information. Having details on how engaged, how regularly they engage, and what content and formats your audience members are engaging with gives you a lot more valuable intelligence to be able to tailor your messages and content. With martech tools now available, we no longer have to make assumptions about what our customers and prospects are interested in based on job titles or past buying behaviour. Marketing automation also enables marketers to engage with their audience more responsively based on this online behaviour.
  • A hybrid approach to data collection is best
    1st party data collection should be augmented with 3rd party data research. A marrying of the two in a hybrid approach to create fuller potential customer profiles is particularly useful. On the flip side, where data is being built through 3rd party researchers, internal resources should still validate any classifications, or code the data themselves as these, often nuanced, classifications need a deep understanding of the customers. SIC codes are the enemy of marketing – they prevent you from using classifications that are meaningful and make sense to your audience and the product market fit.
  • Provide value in exchange for data
    Potential customers are more protective of their data and are far more reluctant to hand it over. In order to capture this precious commodity, you need to focus not just on what your customers can give you, but also on what you can give to them. By articulating the value the potential customer gets by providing their data, you dramatically increase your chances of them handing over this valuable info.
  • Growing databases requires robust processes
    Whether you have an internal data team or are outsourcing to good partners with the right compliance measures in place, a rigorous and consistent approach to validating, cleaning and maintaining your data is essential.

#2 Optimise customer journeys on your marketing website to acquire more customers and generate revenue

A well-optimised site attracts the right visitors, in required and sustainable volumes, and clearly communicates your value proposition.

Roundtable attendees were asked to rank how happy they are with their existing websites from 1 to 10 with 1 being the least happy. The responses ranged from 3 to 7 with the vast majority giving their websites a 6. Attendees’ key reasons for their ranking were customer experiences and user journeys. Key takeaways included:

  • Don’t make your website visitors work hard
    Many businesses are still falling into the trap of thinking of their website as just a series of pages rather than paying close attention to how visitors are interacting with their sites and what actions we want them to take e.g. form completions or making a purchase. Think about how you can guide them through this journey, how you prioritise the content on the page and how you provide information that is easy to digest and in a variety of formats e.g. short-form copy, infographics and videos.
  • Build trust
    Hosting highly relevant content that is easy to find, and written using the ‘voice of the customer’, is just one way of building trust with your site visitors. Utilising social reactions that surround your product through social walls is an excellent way to use organic commentary to complement testimonials from liked and trusted brands and individuals on your site. Case studies are also an excellent way of articulating the problems your potential clients may be experiencing, presenting them with a solution, and demonstrating a desirable outcome also helps build high credibility for your product/brand.

If you’d like to speak to an MPG website or database expert to future-proof your marketing, please get in touch.

Team MPG consists of marketing strategists and specialists who have a deep understanding of B2B media/events business models and successful marketing techniques.

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Top 5 marketing investments for sustainable growth

by Team MPG, on 06/10/2022

The world has changed so much in the past 8 years, and so has B2B marketing! Since MPG was launched in early 2014, we’ve had a privileged ‘insiders view’ of the marketing approach of a large number – and great variety – of organisations.

It has been fascinating to witness the continued evolution of B2B publishers – where the most successful organisations have developed ‘brand platforms’, serving up intelligence and connections to their ever more niche audiences.

A customer-first approach has meant the leading organisations – large and small – are ruthlessly focused on delivering what their customers need, how they need it, and when they need it. They know that to engage, monetise and scale, they need the right blend of digital and in-person experiences, with a strong brand at the centre of everything.

In this article we explore the six areas that need ongoing marketing investment – especially at times of uncertainty (including economic downturns).

#1 Brand trust

Building a strong, trusted brand should always be the top priority for every marketer. This requires a strategic investment in developing clear brand positioning and strong brand identity, and then ensuring that every place where a customer engages with your brand has a particular ‘look and feel’ that is recognisable, unique and reassuring.

The cost of engaging a top creative agency can be prohibitive, especially for a niche B2B brand. The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to undergo a costly and time consuming ‘rebranding’ exercise to achieve brand trust.

The very nature of ‘trust’ is that it is based on something genuine. It’s about ‘substance’ more than ‘style’.

If you know what really matters to your customers, and what they genuinely value about what you deliver for them, make sure this is:

  1. Evident in your messaging across all your marketing channels
  2. Well understood by every member of your team, and embedded in mindsets and behaviours

Being a steadfast presence for your customers, and coming across as genuine and reliable at all times, will win you a great deal of brand trust.

It is also very important to ensure your brand design is of a good standard, and that your visual branding is consistent everywhere, including fonts, colours and design devices. A good graphic designer should be able to make this all work well for you.

And if you can afford to bring on board a good agency to help you develop stronger branding than you have now, then do it! It will be worth the investment.

#2 Martech

Martech is no longer an optional investment, and it isn’t an area where you can afford to buy the cheapest solution. The technical debt you will incur by trying to cut corners in how you approach your martech stack is almost guaranteed to hold your business back.

You simply cannot grow your customer base or your revenue above a certain level without good martech tools in place, well integrated for data flows, and with the right processes in place to ensure they do what they’re meant to do. You cannot scale without good tech.

Don’t ignore this area of your marketing because you don’t know how to invest well in it. You may not be able to expertly analyse or optimise your tech stack yourself, but you’ll have a good sense of what is and is not working, and where the biggest issues are that are holding you back from growth.

If this is a weak spot in your marketing, get it seen to as soon as you possibly can. Investing well in the right tech stack for your marketing will make a world of difference in how you can serve your customers – and build your brand.

 

As partners to HubSpot, Marketo, Ingo, Guild and Saltbox, and having set up, optimised and worked in many other platforms such as Mailchimp, Adestra, Sailthru, Zapier, Salesforce and MS Dynamics 365 over the past 8+ years, Team MPG has a strong track record in enabling B2B marketers with the right tools. Get in touch to find out more.

#3 Website

For every B2B brand, your website is by far your most important marketing channel. The perception your customers will have of your brand will first and foremost be based on your website, and nothing will damage brand trust more than a poor website user journey.

Therefore, as with martech, choosing the cheapest solution for a website will almost always cost you dearly in the long run – both in terms of real spend (having to redo your website), and opportunity cost.

Engage a good agency with a strong reputation (make sure you get at least two references), and make sure they follow the step-by-step process laid out in this MPG Insights resource.

When considering the development framework, for smaller companies with relatively simple sites, a good option for a purpose-built site is usually WordPress. For larger projects, we recommend Headless CMS, alongside Laravel to build the backend, and Vue JS to build the frontend (mainly for good loading speed). This combo is more expensive and takes longer to build, but is much more robust and secure.

#4 Analytics

Without analytics set up well across all your marketing channels, starting with your website, you won’t have the intelligence you need to really understand what your customers care about, and to make good marketing decisions.

As business leaders start becoming more focused on marketing ROI, Team MPG is seeing a surge in demand by B2B brands for real-time dashboards and reports that give their marketers and senior executives strong visibility of important marketing metrics.

There is also a stronger appetite for measurement against ‘joined up’ marketing and sales KPIs. This MPG Insights article shares a useful guide on how to achieve strong sales and marketing integration – which is more important than ever.

We’re also seeing B2B brand leaders asking for customer insight reports to deliver intelligence into their content/editorial teams, showing levels of engagement with certain content themes, and often specific pieces of content.

MPG’s experience in building and deploying these kinds of reports are highly valuable for a content-led B2B brand, as long as they are:

  1. Kept relatively simple
  2. Focused on key data points presented with good data visualisation techniques
  3. Easily accessible
  4. Updated in real time

 

Team MPG can help you make better business and marketing decisions by setting up your website and marketing analytics tools in the right way, and building custom dashboards to deliver valuable intelligence to your team. Get in touch to find out more.

#5 Database

Every week we have at least one conversation with a business leader who is immensely frustrated with the state of their customer and/or prospect database!

This foundational part of your 1st party data simply cannot be ignored as you cannot effectively or efficiently communicate with all your existing customers, or find new customers, if your database is not well organised, up to date, and populated with the right data.

This is an essential area for ongoing investment, with the following two key areas needing particular attention if you want to grow your business:

  1. Targeted research to constantly clean, append and grow your target audience data sets – so your marketing can reach all members of decision-making units, not only the main buyer.
  2. Tracking of engagement, at contact level, with your marketing and sales efforts.

Without these two essential pieces in place, your database isn’t the kind of asset you need for business success.

Your database is an asset that needs ongoing investment, delivering a direct, strong and measurable return.

 

Team MPG can help you get your current database into good shape, and we can help you continually grow your data sets to become valuable business assets that consistently deliver a strong return. Get in touch to find out more.

The world and marketing may be changing constantly. But don’t let constant change derail your long term, strategic focus.

By investing in the five areas explored above, you cannot go wrong – as long as you do so in a measured, focused and deliberate manner.

Knee-jerk reactions, looking for the cheapest marketing solutions, focusing too much on ‘quick wins’, and insisting on unreasonably high returns in the short term will set you back.

Play the long game, as the world’s most successful and valuable B2B brands always do.

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Building a resilient marketing function: putting website analytics at the heart of marketing decision-making

by Team MPG, on 22/02/2022

In a recent MPG Insights article, we covered why having a high-performance marketing website is essential to success when it comes to building a resilient marketing function. 

If your business has a well-designed website, with well thought-through and carefully mapped out customer journeys, as well as efficient back end/CMS functionality – you’ll be in a good place when it comes to building resilience into your marketing function.

An important aspect that should not be neglected, is how you evaluate the performance of your website – and thereby also your marketing.

Website analytics reports are critical for understanding your customers, and how they interact with your site, as well as your other marketing channels. This is the #1 marketing priority, as stated by MPG Founder & CEO Helen Coetzee in her blog from 1st January 2022 – “In 2022, the most resilient organisations will have relevant and resilient marketing”.

Having a website analytics tool and a reporting dashboard set up and integrated into your marketing process is the only way to make evidence-based decisions to feed into marketing planning and overall business strategy.

Getting value from your website analytics requires going beyond basic stats from your Google Analytics report. Analytics dashboards should be set up for a deeper dive into what you need to know about your website visitors – going well beyond just the number of visitors, pages per session, bounce rate etc.

You need to use the right tools to collect and analyse the data available, so you can understand how your audience is engaging with specific pages on your site, as well as the marketing channels, campaigns, and tactics that brought them to your website in the first place. 

Getting the right setup and process in place for your website analytics helps build a resilient, growing business in 7 ways:

  1. Allows you to see what is driving people to your website.
  2. Enables a good overall customer experience when they get to your website.
  3. Allows you to create personalised customer journeys that deliver the most relevant, compelling, and engaging content to your customers.
  4. Delivers more conversions at an optimal conversion rate – so more web visitors do what you want them to do when they are on your website.
  5. Helps you identify the website content your customers most value, and therefore build strategies and operational plans to create more of the most valued and engaging content.
  6. Means you can leverage your best advocates and create a strong referral engine.
  7. Gives you visibility of which marketing approaches, channels, tactics, and specific campaigns are working best, in terms of driving high numbers of relevant people to your website; and then the specific ROI of each of these, based on website conversions and ultimate revenue these conversions deliver.

Quite simply: if you don’t have website analytics set up in the right way, you can’t know how any of your marketing initiatives are working, what return your marketing investment is delivering, how to improve the return, or how to invest more for growth.

So, if you’re unsure of whether your website analytics is set up correctly and you’re not seeing marketing reports based on these, we recommend you focus on this as your next area of marketing investment. Investing much more in marketing campaigns before their performance is visible to you is not a smart move.

In our next MPG Insights resource, we will be providing a practical guide on which metrics and KPIs you should be monitoring via our website analytics. Subscribe to MPG Insights to make sure you don’t miss out on the next resource, and future useful resources after that…

And in the meantime, if you’d like to speak to MPG about how to get your website analytics properly set up to help your business grow, please get in touch. Team MPG includes website and analytics specialists who can help you get great visibility of your marketing performance and ROI.

GET IN TOUCH WITH MPG TO FIND OUT MORE

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Building a high-performance website for a resilient marketing function: a practical guide

by Team MPG, on 19/01/2022

In the last MPG Insights article, we covered the role your marketing website plays in ensuring you have a resilient marketing function – and therefore a resilient business. This week, we’re sharing a practical guide to building a high-performance website.

Helen Coetzee Quote

Here are our recommendations for following a common-sense, practical and systematic approach to building and maintaining a website that will deliver strong marketing results, and strengthen your business:

#1 Process, process, process

We can’t emphasise enough how important process is – in every area of marketing. If you follow the right process, you’ll get good results.

Mapping and following processes can sometimes feel tedious, but creating a step-by-step approach to building, maintaining and enhancing your website, and then following through consistently with rigour and attention to detail, is what will get you where you need to be.

Like so many necessary things, having a high-performance website is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration!

Here we share MPG’s step-by-step processes focused on ensuring you get the right website built in the first place, with a downloadable resource of the processes that Team MPG has used time and time again, for consistently good results.

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE STEP-BY-STEP PROCESSES

Once you have the right website, built in the right way, including the customer journeys and functionality your customers and your team needs, frequent website reviews and ongoing optimisation should be baked into your ongoing marketing performance review and marketing channel optimisation procedures.

This will rely on
(1) Google Analytics, or a similar tool – set up in the right way
(2) A marketing performance dashboard – which we recommend you build in Google Data Studio

 

#2 Optimising for conversions

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) isn’t only needed on your web pages focused on registrations, subscriptions and lead capture. Here are the four main areas of your website where CRO plays a very important role:

(1) Your homepage

This is where you make your first impression with many of your visitors and should clearly articulate your value proposition. Your unique selling point (USP) and value-focused benefits for your customers need to be very clearly and simply laid out high up on this page.

Your homepage should also include clear signposting to further content and information to keep your web visitors clicking deeper into your site, including prominent CTAs pointing to conversion-focused pages e.g. Subscribe Today, Book Now, Download Brochure etc.

(2) Content pages

Content pages should also be focused on conversions by pointing visitors to:
(a) Lead generation forms for downloadable sales materials e.g. Download Marketing Solutions Prospectus
(b) Lead generation forms to access premium, gated content e.g. Request a Demo
(c) Subscriber acquisition forms (free subscriptions) – where your audience can volunteer their data to have free or sample content emailed to them via a newsletter, or other types of email updates.

(3) Pages displaying your ‘packages and pricing’

Focus on simplifying the process for your user to understand what’s on offer and choose the best option for them. You need to make it easy for them to buy from you!

If there are different categories of purchasers with different prices e.g. for events you may charge vendors more to attend events, make sure you display the prices clearly.

And remember to signpost web visitors from this page to the landing pages dedicated to conversions and including forms…see next point.

(4) Landing pages dedicated to conversions i.e. with forms

These are the pages that need the most attention for CRO and where you should focus your testing efforts. Include eye catching, brand-enhancing visuals and engaging copy that compels the user to complete the form, highlighting the benefits to them of taking the time to complete the form and giving you their data (What’s in it for them to complete the form? What will they get?).

Avoid lengthy forms that request unnecessary information, or requesting the same information multiple times.

 

#3 Helping potential customers find your website

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an ongoing process to ensure your site is always ranking well for the keywords that are most relevant to your audience and product.

SEO is influenced by a number of factors like content, time on site, pages visited and device optimisation. Generally speaking, a good website means good SEO.  Here are some of the key components of the ‘good website’ as far as Google is concerned.

(1) Content, and UX around your content

The accuracy and relevance of your content, frequency of updates, how well your content is tagged, and how seamlessly it aligns to what a visitor is expecting to see (i.e. customer experience), all impact your SEO.

When producing content for your audience, you should always have top of mind both the customer needs and the objective of the content. And then you need to ensure that your marketing campaigns make the most of the content and the overall customer journey you have built.

(2) Technical set up and performance

You need to continually review the technical performance of your site. There are many tools out there, such as Lighthouse, which are an easy way to assess this aspect of your site.

Here are some of the key things to look out for that will impact technical performance:

  • Images and videos: search engines can’t ‘see’ what an image contains, so make sure that all images on your site contain alt text and captions. It is important to bear in mind that images and videos can sometimes have a negative effect on your SEO – especially when video and image files are large and take a long time to load, or when they are low quality.
  • Mobile responsiveness: if your websites are difficult to read and use on a mobile phone, your SEO will definitely be badly affected. Always consider all elements as they appear on a mobile, such as navigation, size of font, length of text, and usability of forms. Getting this right is a combination of good digital design, good functionality and good front end development.
  • Navigation: specifically for SEO, you need to consider how search engines’ bots crawling your website to create their rankings ‘understand’ what your site is all about. To make this work well, include keywords in your navigation elements such a URLs for specific pages, menu items, CTAs and headings.

SEO covers a lot more than what we have shared here, but what we’ve covered should help you get the most important ‘fundamentals’ on place!

(3) Back-links (or links from other websites to yours) are a sure-fire way of increasing your ranking – as long as they are linking from relevant sites. That’s because Google considers relevant back-links to be like positive recommendations to your website. Try to encourage advocates such as event speakers and sponsors, authors of articles you publish and partners to add links to your event on their websites, wherever appropriate.

 

#4 Creating a good customer experience on your website

User experience (UX) of your website will impact your marketing performance, and therefore your business resilience and performance.

The more favourable an interaction your potential user has with your site, the more likely they are to purchase from you and also refer your products to others. The key elements to be mindful of in creating a positive customer experience are:

  • Navigation: the age old adage, ‘don’t make me think’ is well known in the world of UX. Your website user should be able to very quickly and easily find exactly what they are looking for on your site, with minimal effort.
  • Design: when we talk about design, we are not just talking about having lovely imagery on your site. Good site design also includes fonts, colours and imagery that are consistent with your brand guidelines, are visually pleasing in how images are combined with text, and contribute to telling a story that will lead them down the path to conversion.
  • Customer journey: mapping out the customer journeys (the paths users take through your website content) is essential in creating a site that converts. Always consider how different entry points affect the experience. As other marketing channels are pushing users directly to specific pages on your website, it is important to consider the full customer journey including all their touch points with your brand, even before they hit your site.

If you get all of these things done consistently well, your marketing function – and your organisation – will be more resilient!

Do you need help optimising your existing website? Or maybe the time has come to build a brand new website?

MPG’s digital marketing experts and website team of web project managers, designers and developers know what it takes to create and optimise a website for high-performance marketing that converts. We also know how to optimise sites on an ongoing basis in a practical, systematic way that keeps your website in ship shape, and high up in search rankings.

Get in touch today to find out how MPG can help you attract and convert enough of the right customers to help your organisation grow and be more resilient.

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MPG built a great marketing website for HBI that integrates our membership and flagship event. We’re very pleased with the design and functionality, the automated data flow between our website and other systems, and the user-friendly CMS. Team MPG has also set up analytics to give us good visibility of the performance of our website and our other marketing channels. A recommended solution for an B2B membership-led brand.

Julian Turner, Chief Executive, Healthcare Business International

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Build a resilient marketing function: start with your most important marketing channel

by Sharise Wilkinson, on 13/01/2022

As the pandemic rages on, challenges and opportunities continue to emerge for B2B media and events businesses.

From Team MPG’s vantage point, it is clear that the most resilient businesses, and those that have started growing again, have certain characteristics – including: a belief in the strategic importance of marketing – shared by the whole senior leadership team; a strong understanding of what good marketing looks like and should be expected to achieve; and a commitment to invest well in marketing for sustainable growth. 

This was the focus of Helen Coetzee’s blog published on 1st January: In 2022, the most resilient organisations will have relevant and resilient marketing. In this article, Helen highlights specific areas that require focus and investment for building relevance and resilience into your marketing – and therefore into your whole organisation. 

One of these specific areas is your website, or more specifically, the website or web pages that serve the purpose of marketing your brand, value proposition and products.

The companies that have invested heavily in building high performance marketing websites, are standing out as resilient and winning organisations at this time. 

And by ‘high performance websites’, we’re not just referring to a beautifully designed ‘look and feel’ for your site – which is usually the calling card of slick creative and digital agencies very good at selling their sizzle (and making things look nice). A well designed, nice-to-look at website is an absolute must, but far too many organisations we talk to have fallen in to the trap of spending a fortune with a ‘shiny’ agency (confusing style with substance…) on a website that just looks lovely, but doesn’t actually work in terms of:

(1) Optimised customer journeys in the front end – to acquire more customers and generate more revenue, and
(2) Back-end/CMS functionality that makes the website practical and efficient (and viable!) for marketers to manage in the manner required for the website to work well within a content-led, integrated marcomms approach.

There is a very specific, specialised set of functionality requirements that B2B media/events businesses need built into their marketing websites that can be very poorly understood by many business leaders (and often their marketers too), and by the too many agencies trusted with this kind of work.

These specific functionality requirements are focused on the extremely important role your website serves as the hub of all your marketing efforts. If you want to be a resilient and growing business, your website needs to do all the following – really well:

  1. Positioning: host impactful messaging – in words, pictures and sometimes video and/or audio – that positions your brand and value you deliver in exactly the right way. For this you need a strong messaging strategy.
    See: Build a winning messaging strategy: a step-by-step guide
  2. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO): have well structured navigation and CTAs that draw customers through your marketing funnel – getting them to share their data, become a customer, and also share your content.
    See: 4 Things you should do for a high performance website
  3. SEO: use relevant messaging, content and good UX to organically attract relevant people from search engines – to then become exposed to your positioning and converted to engaged prospects, customers and advocates.

A well-optimised site attracts the right visitors, in required and sustainable volumes, and clearly communicates your value proposition – which is more important now than ever to cut through all the noise on digital channels. 

Remember that your website is the hub of all your marketing activity. Every time you post on social media, run a PPC campaign, or send an email campaign – you should be pushing relevant people to your website so that they become visitors, engaged audience members prospects, and customers. 

If your website is not in the best shape possible, all of your other marketing channels will be much less effective than they should be. There is almost no point deploying any other marketing channels (especially PPC!) until you have a website in place that looks great, and works exactly as it should in terms of functionality needed to deliver customers and revenue to your business.

Next week we will share a practical guide to building a high performance website. Subscribe to MPG Insights to get notified when the next article is published.

And in the meantime, if you’d like to speak to an MPG website expert about how to optimise the site you have, or build a brand new, high performance website – please get in touch. Team MPG includes website designers, developers and website project managers who have a deep understanding of B2B media/events business models and marketing. We know how your website needs to work to grow your customer base and your revenues. Read more about MPG’s website design and development services.

MPG provided excellent design and functionality recommendations for our website – helping us immediately put into action initiatives that would help us gain more customers and move forward as a business.

Alex Ayad, Founder & CEO, Outsmart Insight

 

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5 Strategic investments being made in B2B marketing in 2021

by Sharise Wilkinson, on 06/05/2021

Team MPG has unique insight into how leadership teams are choosing to invest in marketing at any point in time.

Right now, we can see first-hand how the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed marketing to the forefront of the ‘bounce back’ strategies for B2B brands, and how transformation of marketing in organisations of all sizes has been accelerated.

This article covers 5 areas of marketing where we’re seeing the greatest focus and investment at this time.

 

The state of B2B marketing in May 2021

As parts of the world start emerging from the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, senior executives  are seeing that making strategic investments in marketing now is essential – not only to recover lost revenues, but (more importantly), to take advantage of the new opportunities our ‘new world’ presents.

Organisations focused on serving and monetising professional communities have a particular set of opportunities to go after: building strong, engaged communities online and offline; growing high quality, engaged, paying subscriptions & memberships; and delivering a strong portfolio of events year round in digital, in-person and hybrid formats. Marketing budgets that were previously being locked down are now being released, but with this spend being focused in areas previously ignored or under-valued.

The work Team MPG does with a range of organisations globally (B2B media, B2B events & professional associations), and the ongoing conversations we have with the community, gives us a strong viewpoint on where B2B leaders are placing their marketing bets.

Here are five investment areas that have dominated these conversations:

Investment #1: Marketing strategy development

In the pre-pandemic times, many marketing functions mostly (or only) delivered tactical marketing. The job of marketing was to just ‘get campaigns out’ – at speed and scale.

But the events of the past 14 months have forced senior executives to carefully evaluate the role of marketing in their organisations. At the start of the pandemic, those who believed their marketing had mostly tactical value swiftly cut their marketing budgets when faced with a prolonged period of risk and uncertainty.

As the pandemic fog lifts, it seems there are two types of organisations that are emerging well:

  1. Those that put their marketing function at the heart of their pivot – leveraging the digital expertise marketers have to create and execute their strategies to survive & thrive. These organisations understood that marketing is all about putting the customers’ needs and pain points first, which has been a common trait for organisations coming out of the pandemic in good shape.
  2. Those that realised after a few months of trying to work out what to do next, that a strategic marketing approach is critical for future-proofing their organisations. These organisations have started the process of rebuilding their marketing functions in a deliberate, thoughtful and sustainable way.

I urge you to reflect on your own organisation. Are you one of the above types of organisations? Or do you still see marketing as a cost to be reduced, rather than an investment to be managed and optimised?

If you’re aiming to be more strategic in your marketing approach, here are a few points for you to ponder:

  • The bedrock of every successful marketing strategy is understanding the composition of your market, or your community. This all begins with a robust and up to date market map.
  • Community marketing is coming to the fore. It is important to understand what this means for your organisation. The recent MPG Insights blog on how B2B communities work and our webinar exploring community marketing strategies and MPG’s community marketing model have been some of our most read and watched to date.
  • Once the market or community you are serving has been properly analysed, you need to find a way to cut through the noise in a very competitive space to grab and keep attention (i.e. get good engagement!). This requires a strong messaging strategy.
  • Having the right combination of strong marketing skills in your team is essential. Marketing is complex and the skills you need are varied – from very analytical and technical, to those strong in creative and communications. These are very rarely found in one person. Here are a couple of relevant MPG Insights blog articles:

Get in touch to find out how MPG can help you develop a future-proof marketing strategy.

Investment #2: Marketing technology stack optimisation 

The reality is that many organisations have martech challenges – usually including one or more of the following: the wrong tech tools; martech not implemented well in terms of system set up or new process adoption, and now needing remedial action; missing or misfiring integrations and data flows; or key pieces of tech missing altogether. Any one of these issues will mean what should be automated is painfully and expensively manual and slow.

A key opportunity cost of not having a fit-for-purpose martech stack is a poor customer experience – which is something no organisation can afford in what is becoming a very competitive digital world with lower barriers to entry and fewer ways to differentiate.

So, smart business leaders have spent much of the lockdown getting their martech stack in order. Rather than slashing marketing spend altogether, they spotted a gap to make strategic, impactful investments in getting their martech stack working well to monetise and scale their audiences and offerings in a more digital world.

And they have also recognised this is not a ‘one off’ exercise. Martech stacks need ongoing maintenance and regular tweaks and upgrades as new tech emerges and their businesses grow.

Good things will come to those who have fully embraced martech and invested well, and continue to invest well, in this area. Well done if that’s you.

Get in touch to find out how MPG can help you get, and keep, your martech stack in good order. 

 

Investment #3: Stronger marketing databases

Marketing databases are often neglected for three reasons:

  1. They’re not well understood
  2. They’re hard to manage well
  3. They’re not as exciting and visible as the creative parts of marketing

But, having a strong marketing database that is always growing, and is well maintained, is essential to B2B marketing success. The best creative comms in the world won’t work if you’re not getting them in front of the right people – and this is where your database comes in.

We’ve seen a definite trend in senior leaders suddenly paying attention to their marketing databases. They have recognised that being more digital requires good database management. 

Marketing automation, which is critical for effective monetisation and scale, just isn’t possible if your marketing database is not well set up and well managed on an ongoing basis. This was particularly important for virtual and hybrid events, where a much larger pool of potential customers and marketing automation is needed to achieve good attendance rates.

It is therefore no surprise that many of my recent conversations with CEOs have been about how best to invest in their databases, and MPG’s database and marketing automation experts have been in high demand.

What is also clear is that organisations of all sizes have similar needs and require a similar approach when it comes to setting up, growing and maintaining their databases. Over the past 12 months, MPG has worked with very large and very small organisations (and all sizes in-between) to successfully implement the tried & tested database development methodology we’ve used since we launched MPG in 2014. Even back then it was GDPR-proof!

We’re hoping to release an ‘explainer video’ soon about MPG’s database development methodology. So, make sure you subscribe for MPG Insights emails to be notified when this resource is available!

Get in touch if you’d like to have a chat with MPG about your database.  We love all things data!!

 

Investment #4: High performance websites optimised for search engines and conversions

Large parts of our lives have been lived online over the past 14 months. And a legacy of the pandemic is that most of us are likely to stay more ‘digitised’ in behaviours and preferences.

Having a marketing website that is substandard in any way is therefore no longer an option. Your customers will judge you on how your marketing website looks and works – fact!

Your brand, messaging, content, lead generation mechanisms and, in many cases, sales – are now hosted mostly on your website. And all your other marketing channels drive traffic to your site. So, if your website is not optimised for search engines and conversions – on an ongoing basis – then you have a big problem.

What has been interesting about conversations I have had with CEOs about their websites in recent months, is that they now understand how important it is to plan, build and optimise a website with a strategic marketing mindset. Before the pandemic, websites were often largely left to the tech team, with tech people making key decisions about how a website should look and work.

Let’s hope the change to treating websites as the most important digital marketing channel is one that sticks!

MPG can help you optimise your existing website, or build a new one that works really well, to drive high performance marketing. Get in touch to find out how.

 

Investment #5: Pay-per-click (PPC) via Google and social channels

PPC is a category of marketing tactics where MPG has seen definite increased investment. To fund this investment increase, it seems marketing spend is shifting from direct mail, and in some cases ‘cold calling’ sales – to Google Ads and paid advertising on social media.

However, this seems to be poorly served by dedicated PPC agencies at present as marketers are switching regularly from one agency to another, and in many cases pulling PPC in-house.

I believe the reason PPC is not working as it should – even with more investment – is that too much attention and money is going into clicks spend, rather than strategy and planning.

Once again, as per Investment #1 in this newsletter, you need a strong marketing strategy to make your PPC work well. PPC needs to be well integrated with all other channels and it needs to be carefully measured, and performance analysed in the context of the full marketing mix. This is where most PPC agencies go wrong:  they just focus on tactics and clicks spend, rather than delivering PPC services that are an integrated part of a robust marketing strategy.

My advice: don’t spend a penny or a cent on clicks if you have not yet invested in an overall marketing strategy, followed by an aligned, robust PPC strategy. Otherwise you’re just making Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn even richer – without anything to show for it. Short term, this will be an irritating waste of money. Long term, this is a massive missed opportunity.

Don’t get fixated on ‘in-house versus agency’, and don’t get bamboozled by very slick PPC agency sales people. Focus on making sure your marketers:

  • Understand where PPC strategically fits in your marketing mix
  • Set clear PPC objectives
  • Have the tracking and analysis tools in place to measure PPC ROI

…and only then look for good digital marketers to set up and manage your campaigns – whether in-house or outsourced.

If your organisation runs virtual events, we recently published a step by step guide to PPC for B2B virtual events, so make sure to have a read of that!

Get in touch to find out how MPG’s digital marketers can give your PPC a boost!

And that’s a wrap – five important areas for investment that just 14 months ago were not getting anywhere near enough attention from most B2B organisations.

And as a final note: thank you so much for being part of MPG’s community!

If you would like to be even more involved by speaking at our webinars or being a guest blogger, we’d love to hear from you on [email protected]

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The future of event marketing

by Team MPG, on 06/04/2021

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the world of B2B events into a very sudden and deeply disrupted state, which is continuing well into 2021.

The Share Theory’s recent expert-led report ‘Re-imagining B2B events, How has 2020 changed the way event companies will operate in the future?‘ includes some excellent insights from senior events professionals on the profound changes that will shape the future of events.

As a marketing consultancy and agency, Team MPG has worked with a range of event organisers globally to not only cope with this rapid change, but to also make the most of emerging opportunities. And it is quite clear, from MPG’s vantage-point, that the disruption to B2B events is still peaking.

In our day-to-day work with senior executives in the events world, many have asked us the following question: “To future-proof my events business, how will our event marketing approach need to change?” To find the answer to this question, here are some key things every events leader should consider:

  1. Event marketing (not just your event) should now follow a community-first approach
    Some leading events were already moving towards a more community-focused, year-round offering; COVID-19 just accelerated this trend and has turned it into a necessity. So, when building your event marketing strategy, consider first and foremost how you need to build your community. MPG’s recent blog on how to approach building communities will be a good guide for you here.
  2. Building digital-first, community-led, hybrid brands is the way forward.
    In a well-balanced portfolio of digital and F2F products, events of various types are likely to always play an important part in how brands engages with their audiences throughout the year. But, digital needs to come first and we need to switch our thinking from ‘event’ to ‘brand’. See MPG’s blog on how 2021 will be the year of hybrid communities.
  3. Marketing databases need more attention and investment than ever before
    Focusing on ensuring you have a very strong, well organised and compliant database to use for email campaigns is not ‘old school marketing’. It is more essential than ever. For virtual events, email is still one of the best ways to engage and convert people to turn up and stay tuned in. And there is little point to investing heavily in content marketing, inbound marketing and lead generation via data capture forms if the data you capture does not feed into a well organised database.
  4. Digital event content is rocket-fuel for community engagement and lead generation
    Virtual events deliver easily created videos, slide decks and intelligence captured via audience interactions such as surveys and polls. If you’ve got your virtual event content strategy right, these will be very relevant and valuable to your community, resulting in extended digital engagement and sharing within the community. This ultimately results in a good number of high quality leads (if your marketing is set up properly to capture and manage these!)
  5. Optimising customer journeys via journey mapping, data and analytics is essential for success
    Content, messaging and medium need to be as personalised as possible in terms of relevancy and convenience. Your digital offering and F2F events will be most ‘sticky’ if you give the audience what they want, where they want it and when they want it – in a seamless and integrated way. Event marketing campaigns and event consumption need to be more deeply integrated with other products i.e. memberships or subscriptions and other events.
  6. A strong messaging strategy is needed as virtual events become more than just online versions of their in-person counterparts.
    A poll conducted during MPG’s recent webinar on B2B event marketing found that three-quarters of event organisers plan to run virtual events even when COVID restrictions no longer demand them. We should expect virtual events to continue to evolve and improve. Event marketers will need to focus on developing strong messaging for virtual events focused on value, benefits and the enjoyment factor – all important for convincing easily-distracted office workers to commit their time and attention (and in some cases money).
  7. Optimised websites will become an even more important focus area for marketing.
    Website performance should be a key KPI for event marketers – demonstrating how both inbound and outbound channels are performing to attract, engage and convert customers online. And how the event website is integrated with the product delivery platforms will be a key part of enabling strong performance. A lot of this is very new to event marketers, so this is likely to be a very challenging area for some time to come.
  8. The right skills and mindset are critical. Event marketing experience is more optional, but definitely helps.
    Event marketers need to think strategically and execute with sharp digital skills. It is essential they grasp the concepts above and have the ability to incorporate what is required into their virtual event marketing approach.

The disruption to B2B events over the past 12 months has been as painful as it has been exciting and rewarding – so the change to how event marketers need to work will be painful, exciting and rewarding. And, as with all change, this needs to be carefully managed and your marketers need to be supported through the change.  Having a strong event marketing function, backed with the right level of investment and executive support, will be critical for success.

If you’d like to explore how your marketing can achieve a stronger ROI as the ‘future of events’ becomes a reality, please get in touch here. We’re always happy to have a chat with anyone who is as passionate about great events and high performance marketing as we are!

How will you grow your event and community revenue in 2021 and beyond?

With strong audience acquisition and commercial marketing knowledge, MPG delivers all aspects of marketing for virtual, hybrid,  in-person events and B2B communities. From strategy development to delivering digital campaigns, MPG is the chosen marketing partner for organisations who want to achieve strong revenue growth.

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Looking to upskill your team in events or community marketing?

Upskill your whole marketing team with direct access to our trainers in our digitally delivered, interactive masterclasses:

Want something bespoke? We can create a training programme for your team that is specific to your needs – in a format that suits you best.

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We’ve worked with MPG across a range of our most important events for a number of years. They are a key part of our team. Operationally, they are knowledgeable, focused, open-minded, creative and disciplined. Strategically they are good thinkers, blending an ambition for the possible without losing touch with the practical. I highly recommend the MPG team as value creators and a safe pair of hands!

Tim Lucas, Managing Director B2B, BAUER MEDIA GROUP

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4 Things you should be doing for a high performance website

by MPG Development Team, on 16/12/2020

Considering your website is your most important marketing channel, do you give it as much attention and investment as it needs? As the host of your branding, messaging, content, lead generation and often also online sales/ecommerce, it acts as the end destination for all of your other marketing activity – so if your website is not performing at its best, the rest of your marketing channels won’t be either.

Optimising your website is critical for your bottom line, especially as we enter a year with continuing remote working and increasing digitalisation and the world’s business will be done online. The smartest companies who will be able to make the most of the post-Covid recovery will have the best websites!

Every brand, value proposition and audience is different, but the key success factors of having a well optimised website are universal. This post focuses on four of these key success factors needed to create a high performance website, whether your core offering is events, subscriptions, membership or community – or a combination of some or all of these.

1. Don’t make your users think (the 5 second rule)

Don’t make me think is well-known adage in the world of website UX. Website users have extremely short attention spans, so when constructing and populating your website, making the user journey as smooth as possible should be a core consideration in your decision making. Slow loading pages, improperly formatted mobile pages, rambling copy, confusing navigation – anything that forces the user to engage their brain to try and figure out what’s going on is an issue, and makes your website ‘hard work’ for your user. You need to make it very easy for your user to quickly get what they need from your website – whether it’s information, a newsletter subscription or a delegate ticket purchase.

A good rule of thumb is the ‘5 second rule’. Imagine you showed your website to an audience member for 5 seconds, before hiding it again. What would they know about your product/service? And would they have been able to at least have found on the ‘form page’ you want them on e.g. lead generation form or event booking form? They will probably need another few seconds to fill in the form – but if they can’t find the form they’re looking for in 5 seconds your website is not in the ‘high performance’ category!

 

2. Don’t try to make everything stand out – or nothing will

A common pitfall with website design is to try and make too many things stand out.

This can lead to an overwhelming and confusing experience for users, where they can’t figure out what they’re supposed to do next or what is most important about the organisation or product.

This can result from too many CTA (call to action) banners or buttons, links, text boxes and/or images. It can also occur when elements are all made an equal size or visual ‘weighting’ or positioning. Elements that are given more breathing room are generally more likely to be noticed and clicked on.

How do you know what’s important and therefore what should stand out? Consider what primary and secondary objective you have with your website.

For many, direct purchases or enquiries are the most valuable action a user can take, and ultimately the one you want to them to take at some point (even if it’s not during their first visit). This is your primary objective.

The design and structure of your site should place the most importance on content and CTAs that serve this primary objective. The button in the top right of your navigation bar (prime real estate on any website) should be reserved for your primary objective – e.g. ‘Buy now’. The main CTA in your header section should be the same. All content on your site should – in some way – further encourage users to take that final conversion.

For other sites, a primary objective may be lead generation. Filling in a data capture form may be the action you want users to take. Lead generation often works well across a range of touch points, at various levels of the funnel e.g. signing up for a free newsletter subscription, downloading a report advertised in a newsletter and then enquiring about a specific product via a link in the ‘thank you for downloading the report’ email or a link in the report itself.

Even if lead generation isn’t the primary goal, every website should include some form of lead generation as it captures valuable customer data that can be used to enrich and grow your marketing and sales database.

 

3. Build in lead generation intelligently

Lead generation is much more than just sticking a data capture form on our website and waiting for users to find it.

CTAs to your lead generation forms should be integrated as naturally as possible. Is someone viewing the ‘membership benefits’ page? If so, encourage them to download a member case study and ‘enquire about membership’. Are they viewing your event agenda summary? Then push them to download the full version. Work out what you would like your user to do next and point them to that next, desired action.

More generic lead generation opportunities (e.g. ‘Register your interest’) should be accessible from across your whole site, including CTAs and a presence on your top navigation menu. This will ensure users always have a ‘next action’ to take, regardless of where they are on your site. These kinds of more general and ‘low commitment’ lead generation options create an easy way for users to engage with your brand without committing to buying something before they’re ready, but keeps them in your marketing list so that you can further nurture them.

Also consider that visitors may land directly on your lead generation forms; whether from an email campaign, organic URL or social post. It’s important to ensure your lead generation forms/pages provide ample context and persuasive messaging as to why the visitor should surrender their data. What benefit does completing the form give them? A short descriptive paragraph, simple bullet points about the benefits of completing the form and possibly a relevant image (e.g. report cover) are simple but important ways to increase conversion rates.

 

4. Make sure Google can find your site

SEO is an ongoing process and one that is always baked into good website design. Search engines – with the most important one being Google in most regions of the world – want to serve the most relevant and valuable websites. A key factor in their ranking is user experience, which is determined by things like content, time on site, pages visited and device optimisation. Therefore, a good website generally means good SEO.

Also consider your keywords. If your website is for an event about financial technology, then you want to make sure ‘financial technology’ and ‘fintech event’ are scattered across your website content. It’s important this is done naturally within your copy. ‘Stuffing’ keywords – the practise of including the same keyword an excessive number of times on a page – will harm not only the user experience, but also your SEO.

You can also apply keywords when considering more ‘on-trend’ issues. If there’s a new piece of technology that could revolutionise fintech, consider publishing a blog or news article on it with the name included in the headline and within the main body. This will help you rank for a relevant keyword that potential attendees will be actively searching for as it is a ‘hot topic’.

A final consideration is how you can ‘win’ links to your website. Links from other websites (e.g. your homepage URL on a media partner’s site) effectively function as votes for your website in organic rankings, lending authority and trust. Producing great content is a sure-fire way to win links, as users will want to share content they find interesting/valuable on their own sites and via social channels. This should be proactively managed via an advocacy marketing programme that results in your site linking to multiple other highly relevant sites and your content being shared more widely on social media.

The four key success factors we have covered in this blog are important, but certainly not comprehensive when it comes to having a well optimised website! And each of the four factors we have covered could each have their own, very long blog (or even an e-book!).

But, the most important thing of all is to ensure your organisation is investing well in your website. Your senior leadership team must recognise that your website as your shop window – and the shop your users are wondering around in before they agree to buy anything or speak to a salesperson. How your customers and potential customers experience your website could be the difference between surviving and thriving in 2021 and beyond…or becoming a Covid (and digital revolution) casualty.

Get your website optimised

MPG’s website experts can help you optimise your website for optimal performance. Or we can design and build a brand new, high performance website for you!

Whether you’re offering events, subscriptions, memberships or a community – our team can set you up with a winning website.

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Get website optimisation skills into your team

MPG Academy’s trainers can work with your team to ensure they have a strong strategy and the right skills to optimise your website. Request more information about training and development for your team on website optimisation, as well as other key areas of marketing for communities, subscriptions, membership and events.

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The Marketing Mix | Summer Newsletter

by Helen Coetzee, on 06/08/2020

Newsletter • Summer 2020

Virtual Event Marketing • Website Optimisation Guide • Marketing Training

The pace is intense.

In our last newsletter we shared the story of MPG’s work with Social Media Week – a remarkable eight week pivot to create and successfully deliver #SMWONE. The pioneering spirit and ability to think fast, act fast and deliver a great, innovative virtual event experience inspired many. We thank Toby Daniels and Brian Leddy for their vision and leadership in a very challenging time.

Since #SMWONE’s successful delivery, the MPG team of marketing strategists, martech specialists, data specialists and digital marketers have been working with Toby and Brian on the launch of their new SMW+ live and on-demand streaming service. This rapid product and marketing strategy development to deliver a digital subscriptions service for SMW’s community has once again been an exciting and inspiring journey. And the important work of strong execution and ongoing improvements to the approach for ongoing improvements to outcomes is only just beginning!

More MPG clients and community members have been moving rapidly through ‘test and learn’ cycles. The analytics and data collected over the past months on how professionals are engaging with digital offerings – and the marketing of these – has surfaced some interesting benchmarks. We shared some of our key learnings in our latest webinar.

MPG’s Summer newsletter focuses on four important areas that present great opportunity for every organisation focused on growing, engaging and monetizing their communities:

  1. Attracting new sponsors for digital content packages, including virtual events
  2. Attracting a great, engaged audience to your virtual events
  3. Ensuring you have the best combination of ‘must have’ marketing knowledge and skills to successfully take to market your digital events, subscriptions and memberships
  4. Optimising your website to do a great job at engaging and serving your community, while also delivering conversions to customers and revenue

So, take a break from your desk, step out into the August sunshine – and have a good read!

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INSIGHTS

How to use marketing to get new sponsors for your digital events
Helen Coetzee | 16/07/2020

How to use marketing to get new sponsors for your digital events

Growing digital revenue by sourcing new sponsors is a great opportunity for many organisations. Marketing has a key role to play here in generating marketing qualified leads for your sponsorship team. Our recent blog gives you a step-by-step approach to acquiring new sponsors via marketing. Read more here >

How to use marketing to get new sponsors for your digital events

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Creating a robust, sustainable marketing function: a strategic, hybrid approach
Helen Coetzee | 19/06/2020

Creating a robust, sustainable marketing function: a strategic, hybrid approach

In these financially stressed times, the question should not be ‘should we use internal or outsourced marketing’, but rather ‘what does the most effective and cost-efficient marketing function look like for us?’. Read more here >

Creating a robust, sustainable marketing function: a strategic, hybrid approach

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VIRTUAL B2B EVENTS WEBINAR

Marketing Virtual B2B Events: 9 Key Success Factors

Marketing Virtual B2B Events: 9 Key Success Factors

In our latest webinar, which took place on Thursday 6th August, MPG’s Founder & CEO, Helen Coetzee, uncovered the ‘secrets of success’ in developing the right marketing approach to attract the audience of the size and profile you need to your virtual B2B events.

You can now download the comprehensive content package including:

  • Presentation slides – including additional detail on 9 success factors
  • Full webinar video replay
  • All Q&A responses
  • All poll results

ACCESS CONTENT PACKAGE

 

SPOTLIGHT

How to optimise your website

How to optimise your website

Your website has always been your most important marketing channel. As the end destination that all other marketing activity pushes to, the hub for your content and the place where your target audience converts to leads or registrants; getting your website right can mean the difference between success and failure.

But how can you improve your website, generate more traffic and, most importantly, get more leads and revenue?

  1. Know your user: As with all marketing, the key to success is understanding your audience. Put yourself in the shoes of a new visitor to your website. Does the site load quickly and look professional at first impression? Is it immediately clear who you are and what you do? Are there obvious and compelling CTAs that will pull them further into the site? A user will be considering all these points within seconds of landing, and if they encounter any friction with their journey they may leave, so first impressions really matter.
  2. Create great website content: Once you’ve hooked them, it’s time for your website content to do the heavy lifting. Write copy that communicates the value of your product, focusing on benefit-led copy. How does your offering address a particular challenge your target audience faces? Avoid focusing too much on the ‘what’ and instead focus on the ‘why’.
  3. Understand the rules of design: Design is crucial, and not just because it makes your website look attractive; it’s fundamental to the quality of the user experience. Avoid overly-cluttered pages. Use size, position and colours to emphasise important elements and create a structure. Visitors won’t read line-by-line, they’ll skim read to the parts they’re interested in. Keep it simple!
  4. Create a seamless journey: Effective navigation is what ties it all together. You are taking your visitors on a journey, so make sure you never leave them at a dead end. Link content together naturally, provide CTAs to related pages and push them to a lead gen form or booking page when you think they may convert. Users visit your website to achieve a goal, whether that’s to find out more information, submit an enquiry or make a purchase – make it easy for them to move through your content and present them with things they can’t help but click. The smoother the experience, the more conversions you’ll get.

These are just some of the points you should have in mind when upgrading an existing website or creating a new one.

The MPG team has been designing and building high impact websites for 6+ years. To find out how we can build a great website for you, get in touch.

MPG Newsletter Summer 2020
MPG Newsletter Summer 2020

VOICES

“MPG delivered a great series of tailored marketing workshops for the team at China-Britain Business Council. This training helped us formulate our membership growth strategy and gave us some very useful, practical guidance on improving our digital marketing and sales tactics.”

Claire Urry, Executive Director, China-Britain Business Council

CBBC

The world is presenting every organisation with significant challenges and great opportunities in our quest to innovate and transform to become more resilient and sustainable. The global economy is relying on each of us playing our part. As dramatic as that may sound – it’s true!

The MPG team is grateful to be working with the fantastic people that make up our community. We sincerely hope to help you find the best way to push forward – with strength and confidence!

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How Event Marketing Can Build – Or Break – a Trusted B2B Media Brand

by Helen Coetzee, on 27/03/2019

What nearly all of the most successful community-focused and subs-led brands have in common is a strong and growing events portfolio – where their subscribers (or members) can come together to learn and network with their community across a range of event formats. It is at these events where subscribers also come face-to-face with the information brand they rely on, reinforcing trust and building loyalty.

And it is also at these events where much of the lost advertising revenue has now re-surfaced as income from sponsors and exhibitors – now often called ‘spex revenue’. A combination of strong delegate and spex revenues from events can drive highly profitable, high annual growth for a B2B media brand.

But events present a much greater strategic opportunity – or risk – for B2B media brands, depending on how the marketing of these events is conducted.  

Event marketing can be a frantic, siloed, highly tactical exercise (often done on the cheap) focused only on attracting the largest possible number of attendees in a short space of time to satisfy internally driven or spex-driven quotas – an approach that severely compromises the quality of communication and the audience. This is very dangerous for a brand that relies on the trust of its subscribers.

Or event marketing can be strategic – with brand trust as the starting point for developing an effective strategic marketing communications plan that, when executed well, leverages and reinforces brand trust. As with building effective and sustainable subscriptions marketing campaigns, strategically approached event marketing requires longer term thinking, planning and investment.

The best kind of event marketing not only fills venues with high quality delegates representative of the brand community, it also attracts new, high-quality subscribers, thus growing the engaged brand community.

 

The 5 areas brand leaders should invest in to ensure their event marketing builds brand trust and overall brand growth:

1. A good database and CRM

A well implemented and organised database in a good CRM will enable segmentation by demographics, behaviours and transactions – meaning communications can be personalised and made relevant. In addition to ensuring event communications are relevant to an individual’s role and challenges, it is very important subscribers are treated differently to non-subscribers.

When managing data through an event marketing cycle, the best set-up of systems and processes will also enable the identification of potential new subscribers, and push them in to the subscriptions marketing funnel.

2. A strong inbound marketing engine for events

Inbound marketing should run all year-round, driving event awareness via social channels, and shared email and event leads via a well-optimised website – while building overall brand awareness and strengthening brand positioning.

Subscriber engagement and brand-trust will often be positively influenced by what they see in social channels, especially if reinforced by a third party via likes and shares, while potential subscribers will often be drawn in by a compelling event-specific message.

The impact that the presence and engagement of high profile and well-respected speakers, sponsors and other third-party event stakeholders can have on a brand’s social channels should not be under-estimated.

3. An event website that reinforces a brand’s positioning, while integrating the event with the subscription value proposition

A strong event website helps customers extract more value from their subscriptions by engaging with event content before, during and after the event.

Highlighting and serving up unique ‘subscriber-only’ event-specific content and networking opportunities via your website is a good way to drive subscriber retention and acquisition. The FOMO factor is powerful, especially if what sits behind a paywall is highly current and relevant, as with event content.

4. A well-managed event marketing and sales funnel

An optimised funnel also ensures marketing qualified leads are followed up by sales people in a timely manner with relevant communications. Team members skilled in delegate sales, as well as solution and value-focused spex sales people, can make a significant contribution to brand building.

And if you can incentivise sales people to prioritise subscriber renewals and acquisitions over chasing down delegate and sponsor revenue, you’ll have a winning formula.

5. Ongoing measurement of engagement and conversions

It is important to understand how deeply subscribers and potential subscribers are engaging with an event, and then how customers are engaging with a brand beyond the event.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”, as the famous Peter Drucker said. The tools are now available to every business to put meaningful metrics at the forefront of making decisions and driving results.
 

Events are powerful. The way in which events are marketed, all year-round, is equally powerful. The impact of events can be extremely positive for a B2B subs-led brand, or can destroy a brand by quickly eroding customer trust.

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