Recently, Facebook sponsored a study run by NeuroFocus — found via Search Engine Land– intended to quantitatively determine how people respond to websites and website ads. The results had some interesting findings for marketers who are wondering how their site structure and ad campaigns affect how users react to their website. Let’s just dive right in to those results and see what marketers can learn from their experiments.

What the Study Looked At

NeuroFocus used devices to measure the brainwaves of searchers when visiting websites, and looked to see if any patterns emerged. The test subjects were 50% men, 50% women, aged 21-54, and with a minimum annual household income of $30,000. The researchers tested the subjects’ reactions to the Yahoo! homepage, The New York Times homepage, and their personal Facebook news feeds. These are the reactions they measured:

• Attention: The test subjects had clear instances of sustained focus, and shifted focus — meaning it was easy to measure when they were very interested by what they were looking at, and when their attention got diverted by something else.
• Emotional Engagement: There was a clear delineation between positive and negative emotional response to certain page elements. For the purposes of this study, a positive emotional response is called “approach motivation,” which means the test subject felt motivated to do something, while a negative emotional response is called “avoidance motivation,” which means the test subject felt compelled to avoid a certain action.
• Memory Retention: Researchers could clearly detect when something on the page was interesting enough to be stored in the test subjects’ memories.

The researchers were able to combine scores given for each of these responses into something called Overall Neurological Effectiveness, a composite measure of the efficiency of a test subject’s cognitive processing.

Interesting Findings From the Study

To see how each website fared individually, you can read the whitepaper in its entirety. Here are some of the most interesting findings that emerged from the study.

1.) Overall: The New York Times had higher levels of attention and memory than the other two pages, but less emotional engagement. The Yahoo! homepage had higher levels of emotional engagement than The New York Times homepage, but less than the Facebook page. And Yahoo! had the least amount of memory activation out of all three pages.

People viewing their own news feed on Facebook, however, had high levels of activation on all three metrics — attention, emotional engagement, and memory. The Facebook page had statistically higher levels of emotional engagement than The New York Times and Yahoo!

2.) Effect of Ads on Attention: The mere presence of ads had neither a positive nor negative effect on subjects’ attention levels.

3.) Different Types of Ads: There’s higher attention and emotional engagement with social media ads than with TV ads or ads on a corporate web page. But ultimately, subjects’ memories weren’t activated enough in any context. Take a look at the results of an experiment NeuroFocus ran with a Visa ad on television, on a corporate web page, and on a social media site.

People paid more attention to the ad in the two online contexts, the ad had the most emotional engagement in the social context, but it had low memory levels in all contexts. NeuroFocus reported that memory scores at these levels usually indicate an ad has weak persuasive capability and that viewers discount it in their memory. 

4.) Effect of Stimuli on Memory: Memory scores tend to be higher when stimuli are personally meaningful and provide learning opportunities.

5.) Post-Facebook Activity: After subjects view their Facebook pages, the next site they visit makes subjects feel more connected — more users associated their experience with the word “connecting” than they had before.

6.) Engagement vs. Attention: Overall, emotional engagement scores are lower than attention scores. This makes sense, since online content demands more attention than passive media like television; there are simply more elements competing for a user’s attention, and consequently the study found that emotional engagement shows a slightly negative correlation with attention. The results indicate that high attention levels have a diminishing impact on emotional engagement.

7.) Effect of Prior Expectations: All of the consumers’ responses to the websites were found to be impacted by the expectations of the site that they carried with them before visiting.

What Marketers Can Do With This Information

If nothing else, it’s encouraging to know marketers are on the right track when we strive for a more and more personalized experiences in our marketing — even beyond our website. Along with great nurturing and segmentation, allowing people to interact with your brand in a social way is key to achieving this personalized experience. This study has shown that marketing is about more than just information consumption and cognition. Facebook is so successful because it provides new information that is both emotionally driven and highly personal. That means the information delivered is relevant to the user, and it makes it far more likely they will remember what they see on that site.

In the age of information overload, it’s remarkable content that can actually embed its way into someone’s memory. That is only achieved when you really know your target audience, what they want to hear, and you present it in a way that resonates with them. It’s just as much about the topics you select as your presentation of it — something that A/B testing can help you refine.

And as if you didn’t already know it, your reputation matters. Every time people come to your website, they are building up a pre-conceived notion they will carry with them on every subsequent site visit. So be purposeful with what you put out there and the brand image you build for yourself. Selectivity is a good thing; what you don’t publish is just as important as what you do publish. Use your website and company social media accounts to build the emotional experience you want people to have when they interact with your brand.

Finally, it appears that site with social elements are particularly attractive for advertising because they have both the high emotional engagement of TV (without the high costs) and the active cognitive engagement characteristic of the online experience. So, if you’re going to run an ad…run it online!

Have you run any tests on your website to see how users engage with your content? Share your findings in the comments!

Image credit: digitalbob8

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Marketers talk a lot about advanced techniques for working with their leads: lead flow, lead management, lead nurturing. But all of that is meaningless without consistent lead generation, and landing pages are the strongest tools in a marketer’s arsenal to meet that looming monthly lead goal.

Because landing pages are so important to lead generation, attention to detail is in order to ensure you have the highest conversion rate possible. And as it turns out, landing page visitors are pretty darn fickle about which pages they’ll convert on. To show you how to prevent landing page abandonment, we took a HubSpot landing page and broke down what it looks like before optimization, and after. See if you can identify the mistakes and how to fix them!

Subpar Landing Page

Here’s an example of a landing page to access HubSpot’s ebook that explains how to build your Google+ business page. It’s not ugly, it’s on brand, and it’s professional; so what’s wrong with it? It’s not optimized, that’s what. That means conversion rates will be low, and page abandonment rates will be high. When it comes to landing pages (and almost everything else in marketing, for that matter) pretty is great, but functional is better.

I’ve identified all of the page elements that are either missing or incorrectly executed in the screenshot below. Take a few moments to try to identify what’s wrong with those page elements I’ve called out, then scroll down to see an improved landing page with explanations for why the new page elements will yield better conversion results.

Optimized Landing Page

Now let’s take a look at the second landing page treatment and dissect why each change helps improve the performance of this landing page.

1.) URL Architecture – An optimized URL will help your landing page rank higher in search engines. You probably don’t want the ebook PDF itself or the thank-you page it lives on to rank (that’s why you have a form in front of it), but if your landing page appears in search, think of how many more leads you have the opportunity to collect. Instead of optimizing for www.hubspot.com/google-plus, the URL structure www.hubspot.com/how-to-use-google-plus-for-business is ideal because the phrase for which this page is trying to rank — Google+ for business — is in the URL. And be sure to separate words with dashes instead of underscores; Google’s crawlers have an easier time reading dashes.

2.) Navigation – Notice how there is none? Including a navigation on your landing page like we did on the first treatment gives users another place to exit your landing page before they become a lead. The more choices you give site visitors, the more confused they will be about what action they are meant to complete on the page. And confusion among site visitors means lower conversion rates. You can bring back your navigation on the thank-you page where new leads land after they complete and submit your form.

3.) Page Header – First, notice the inclusion of the keyword phrase “Google+ for Business” in the header; remember that this also helps search engines identify the keyword phrase to associate with your page! But this isn’t the only reason this header is a drastic improvement from the first landing page treatment. The copy used in your landing page header is one of the most important page elements, because it’s what helps your page pass a user’s blink test. The blink test refers to the commonly accepted 3 seconds which every web page has to orient users once they land on a new web page. This particular header tells us that this is the page where you can access a new ebook, and what the topic of that ebook is, helping users quickly orient themselves and continue reading to get more information and complete the lead-capture form.

4.) Form Header – Our first landing page didn’t even include a form header, a major faux pas but quick fix. Your form header should simply tell the visitor what exactly filling out that form will do. In this case, visitors know if they fill out the form, they can download their ebook. And when can they do it? Right now!

5.) Image Selection – The first landing page included an image of two business people collaborating, but it wasn’t as relevant as it could be to the topic of this landing page. The image of the actual ebook visitors will see if they complete the form provides greater relevancy and helps hammer home the benefit of completing the form.

6.) Privacy – Privacy is a real concern for folks nowadays, and the last thing you’d want is for someone to abandon your form because they weren’t confident you’d handle their information securely. Including a link to your privacy policy helps alleviate those concerns so more visitors convert.

7.) Keyword Optimization – Just as the keyword phrase “Google+ for Business” is included in the URL and header, the second landing page treatment includes the long-tail keyword phrase to help the page rank well in search engines. Targeting long-tail keyword phrases like these on your landing page will not only drive more relevant search traffic and be easier to rank for than a head term, but it will also help you rank for those short-tail keyword phrases like “Google+” too.

8.) Value Building – While short is good, the extra copy in the second landing page treatment will actually improve conversion rates, because it displays the value of completing the landing page’s call-to-action. Sure, the promise of an ebook on Google+ for business is good, but explaining what you’ll learn if you download and read the ebook is even more enticing. Make the end benefit of completing the download crystal clear with the copy you include on your landing page, even if it does mean a few more lines of text.

9.) Readable Format – You can make those extra lines of copy more easily digestible by separating the value of the offer into bullet points. The extra copy is needed to convey value and drive conversions, but readers won’t absorb the points you’re making if they’re too visually overwhelming. Using bullet points, numbered lists, dashes, and headers helps make those chunks of text easy to scan through.

10.) On-Page Social Sharing – You might think including social sharing buttons is a distraction just like the navigation in the first treatment, but on-page social sharing buttons don’t take a user away from your landing page. Let users share your landing page with their network for more leads, and still let your current visitor easily convert during their visit with on-page social sharing, just like on your blog posts!

11.) Pertinent Form Fields – The fewer form fields you can include on your landing page, the better. However, this is one element of your landing page that should be subject to the most scrutinizing A/B tests! It’s important not to overwhelm visitors with so many form fields that they abandon mid-form, but you also must collect the information you need to appropriately qualify your lead. The first landing page treatment’s form fields, while admirably low in count, don’t sufficiently qualify those who convert.

You’ll notice that the second treatment also includes red stars that indicate which fields are required, and which are optional. If there is information that isn’t absolutely necessary to qualify leads for your business but helps provide a more personal sales experience, include the fields and simply leave out the red star that indicates the field is a requirement.

12.) Action-Based Button – The last barrier to receiving a brand new lead is clicking the “Submit” button. Or if you’re looking at the second (and better performing!) landing page, the “Download Now” button. Your form button should contain active and instructive language that tells the user exactly what to do. “Submitting” a form doesn’t mean all that much, but pressing a button that says “Download Now” tells users that by clicking, they will be able to complete their ebook download — and complete it immediately.

Have you experimented with new structures for your landing pages that flout any of these best practices? Share your experiences building landing pages in the comments!

Image credit: dcysurfer / Dave Young, AGmakonts

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Law has been all over the marketing news lately. First, there was all the SOPA/PIPA drama. And you might have also noticed that privacy has been quite a hot button issue recently, with the launch of Google’s new one-size-fits-all privacy policy as well as the latest debacle with the up and coming (or maybe not?) social network, Path. With so much talk about laws governing the internet, as a marketer, you may be wondering how it could affect the way you do your job.

So if you want to make sure you’re not being a marketing outlaw, here’s what you need to know to comply with the major laws that apply to marketers so you don’t end up with a lawsuit, or worse. Rumor has it you can’t blog regularly in the slammer.

1. CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act (or the ‘Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003′) is a law that outlines rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, provides email recipients with the right to make you stop emailing them, and lays out big consequences for violations of the Act (such as penalties of up to $16,000 for each separate email violation). As a marketer, all of your email marketing messages need to comply with the requirements set forth in the CAN-SPAM Act.

How to Abide:

• Avoid using misleading, deceptive, or falsified information in your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” subject line, and routing information. Make sure you clearly identify who is sending the email, whether it’s from a company or an individual. Make sure your email subject line clearly indicates what the content of the email is about.
• Include your physical postal address. Every email message you send out has to include your valid physical mailing address.
• Include an opt-out link, and honor unsubscribes promptly. You must include a clear and obvious way for recipients to unscubscribe from all email communication from you, even if you also provide a list of other types of email to which they can subscribe instead. If a recipient asks to be removed from your list, you must honor their request within 10 business days, and then you cannot sell or transfer their email address to another list.
• Choose a reputable email service provider (ESP). Even if you’re sending emails using an ESP like HubSpot, that doesn’t mean you won’t be held liable if the emails sent aren’t compliant with CAN-SPAM regulations. Both your business and your ESP can be held responsible for a screw-up, so make sure you select a legitimate ESP for your email marketing.

Real-Life Offender: In 2004, Nicholas Tombros pled guilty to charges and became the first spammer to be convicted under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 for “war-spamming” thousands with emails advertising pornographic websites. Tombros was sentenced to three years of probation, six months of house arrest, and was fined $10,000.

2. Do-Not-Call Implementation Act

You’ve probably heard of the National Do Not Call Registry, which allows U.S. consumers to limit the telemarketing calls they receive. This is the Act that made it happen, and today, more than 200 million people are registered with the Do Not Call Registry. The Do Not Call Registry doesn’t prevent all unwanted calls, such as calls from organizations with which a person has established a business relationship, calls for which a person has given prior written permission, calls that aren’t commercial or do not include unsolicited advertisements, or calls from or on behalf of tax-exempt non-profit organizations. Violating this Act will cost you up to $11,000 per violation. Now that’s an expensive phone call.

How to Abide:

Here’s the obvious advice: Don’t cold call! Using inbound marketing to establish a business relationship with a prospect first saves you from being a slave to the Do Not Call Registry. At the very least, limit it. If you do cold call and use telemarketing…

• Regularly update your list. You’re required to search the Do Not Call Registry at least once every 31 days and remove from your call lists the phone numbers of new registrants.
• Do not call people on your list before 8 AM or after 9 PM. It’s prohibited.

Real-Life Offender: In December 2010, the FTC shut down two groups of Florida-based telemarketers that inundated consumers with “robocalls” in which they falsely promised to reduce consumers’ credit card rates. JPM Accelerated Services-associated defendants were fined $5.9 million, and fines of $3.2 million were ordered to six other defendants who were associated with an affiliated operation, IXE Accelerated Financial Centers.

3. Privacy Policies and Terms of Use

Although partial regulations exist, there is no privacy law that singlehandedly addresses how you can acquire, store, or use personal data in the U.S. Generally speaking, in the U.S., whoever bothers with collecting data is deemed to own the right to store and use it. That doesn’t mean you should play with fire. With the recent examples of Google and Path, we’ve seen what happens with businesses when they’re thought to have abused users’ personal information. Furthermore, it’s also important to understand other websites’ terms of use if you’re using them in your marketing strategy. Here’s what you should do to stay on the safe side…

How to Abide:

• Create a privacy policy and terms of use for your business. Make them clearly visible on your website. In your privacy policy, make sure you clearly communicate how you use personal information, who you share it with, and whether you use cookies or tracking software. If you say you will not sell users’ information or email addresses to other vendors, don’t sell their information or email addresses to other vendors.
• Provide a link to your privacy policy on or near your landing page forms and in email marketing messages. This will not only establish you as a credible, trustworthy vendor, but it will also suppress anxiety, create less friction, and thus increase conversions.
• Never sell or share sensitive information. This includes social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account information, criminal background, or health records.
• Adhere to other websites’/business’ terms of use. This is particularly important if you’re using third-party social media sites in your marketing strategy. Make sure you consult these sites’ terms of use before you use them so you know what is and isn’t acceptable marketing behavior on each individual site. For example, were you aware that Facebook has pretty strict guidelines about how you can run contests and promotional campaigns on its site?
• If you conduct business internationally, obtain your Safe Harbor certification. Intended for organizations within the EU or U.S. that store customer data, the Safe Harbor Principles are designed to prevent accidental information disclosure or loss. US companies can opt into the program as long as they adhere to the 7 principles outlined in the EU Data Protection Directive on the protection of personal data. For more information, visit the official Safe Harbor arrangement site.

Real-Life Offender: In November 2011, Facebook agreed to settle federal charges from the FTC that it violated users’ privacy “by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.” The settlement requires Facebook to allow independent auditors to review Facebook’s privacy practices over the next 20 years. It also requires that Facebook get approval from users before changing how it handles their data.

4. Defamation Law

Defamation is a false statement of fact that is harmful to someone’s reputation and published as a result of negligence or malice. Depending on state laws, defamation is often defined in specific ways. Libel is written defamation, whereas slander is spoken defamation. Luckily, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, websites are protected against defaming user-generated content such as blog comments, which means you won’t have to monitor and weed out that type of content (although you’ll probably want to remove it anyway).

How to Abide:

• Don’t abuse your freedom of speech in your content. You have the right to share your opinions in your content, but avoid definitive statements that just plain aren’t true. 
• Check your sources. We’d like to think that you wouldn’t purposely post defaming content on your website, but where you might get into trouble is if you unknowingly source defaming content and use it in your own content. Be sure you check your sources and question anything that could be considered defamatory before you publish.

Real-Life Offender: Many of you probably remember the popular example of online defamation that resulted in a $430,000 settlement that Courtney Love paid fashion designer Simorangkir for the 20 minutes worth of Twitter hatred she unleashed on the designer over an invoice dispute. To her 40,000 followers, Courtney had called Simorangkir a drug-dealing, prostitution-pushing thief who lost her children because of an assault and battery record.

5. Intellectual Property Laws

Intellectual property laws oversee the creation and enforcement of intellectual property such as copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secret laws, etc. These laws grant owners specific exclusive rights to various assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. While Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does protect you against user-generated content that is defamatory, the law does not offer protection for intellectual property violations, meaning it’s possible that you could be found liable if a user posts something to your site that is in violation of intellectual property laws. Although you’ll need to reference specific laws to understand the intricacies of each, there are a few things you can do to make sure you stay on the right side of the law.

How to Abide:

• Attribute your sources. If you have any question about whether or not (or how) you can use another’s content in your own, reach out to the source. To prevent others from using your content inappropriately, create a set of content usage/attribution guidelines (you can refer to HubSpot’s content usage guidelines as an example), and make them visible on your website.
• Remove questionable user-generated content. Don’t allow content that you think is in violation of intellectual property laws to remain on your website. You don’t want to run the risk of getting sued over it. Create and publish a user-generated content/comments policy that indicates you have the right to remove any content you feel is defamatory, inappropriate, or in violation of intellectual property rights and that you will disclose personal information to requesting authorities over questions of intellectual property violation.
• Use Creative Commons-licensed content. Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that offers a free alternative to full copyright. In marketing, it’s particularly useful if you’re looking for images to use in your content. The conditions of CC licenses vary depending on which license the owner chose for his/her content, but for the most part, CC-licensed content can be used when attributed correctly. This page provides the information you need to know when using/attributing CC-licensed content, and you can search for CC-licensed content here. You can also cheaply purchase royalty-free images from sites like iStockphoto, without needing to attribute the source.

Real-Life Offender: Who remembers Napster, arguably the most popular intellectual property case ever? Napster allowed users to share music files, causing thousands of people to download songs for free instead of purchasing CDs or MP3s. The problem was, Napster didn’t own the rights to the music its users were uploading to Napster’s servers. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster and won, forcing Napster to shut down. Napster is now owned by Rhapsody.

6. Disclosing Paid Reviews/Promotion/Affiliation

In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published revised guidelines to its FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. The guidelines explain the conditions by which the FTC would find endorsements or testimonials unfair or deceptive. Per the FTC’s guidelines, a positive review from a person connected to the seller — or someone who receives cash or payment to review a product or service — should disclose the connection between the reviewer and the seller of the product or service. In other words, bloggers who make an endorsement are required to disclose their connection with the seller of the product or service. And if, in an ad, a company refers to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the ad is required to disclose the connection between the advertiser and the researcher. These guidelines also extend to informal, under-the-table payments for testimonials from influencers used in word-of-mouth or buzz marketing.

How to Abide:

• Don’t ever offer payment in exchange for positive reviews. That said, it’s perfectly acceptable to encourage customers and fans to leave you positive reviews if they wish by reminding your happy customers and biggest fans that positive reviews are always appreciated.
• Always disclose relationships with partners and co-marketing partners. When it comes to online marketing, transparency is key to maintaining a credible, trustworthy brand image.

Real-Life Offender: Don’t be like Legacy Learning Systems, a popular seller of guitar-lesson DVDs that ended up with a $250,000 fine for using misleading online ‘consumer’ and ‘independent’ reviews. The FTC charged that it “deceptively advertised its products through online affiliate marketers who falsely posed as ordinary consumers or independent reviewers.”

The bottom line? As an inbound marketer, you need to stay in the know about the laws that govern the web to avoid possible legal ramifications. Even if it doesn’t cost you a hefty fine or some time behind bars, the negative attention associated with legal trouble could cost you your brand’s reputation.

And Now, Some Legalese…

This blog post has provided information about the law designed to help our readers better understand the legal issues surrounding internet marketing. But legal information is not the same as legal advice — the application of law to an individual’s specific circumstances. Although we have conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, we insist that you consult a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. To clarify further, you may not rely upon this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead regard this article as intended for entertainment purposes only.

Image Credits: Sam Howzit, whittlz, pasa47, Thos003, Sean MacEntee, Margaret Ornsby, Trace Meek

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As a follow up to last week’s post about things a marketer could buy with a Super Bowl ad budget, we wanted to share this real life story of a Super Bowl ad buyer’s remorse.

This week, we discovered that a HubSpot customer ran commercials for his business during last weekend’s Super Bowl. Turns out that customer learned a tough lesson about the cost and value of outbound marketing as a result.

Truth be told, this company has made great progress implementing an inbound marketing strategy using HubSpot software, but it also hired a PR agency that wanted to help them make a big splash. The company purchased 3 in-game and 17 pre-game and post-game spots in its local market at a total cost of $54K. The ads used a tracking phone number — which means the business knew which incoming calls were a result of the commercial — and encouraged viewers to visit the company’s homepage; other than that, there was nothing in the ad campaign integrating the offline efforts with their website or another online presence like social media. According to Nielsen Ratings, their ads were seen by 2.8 million viewers.

The Results: Inbound Marketing Outperformed Super Bowl Ads

Thanks to the ads, web traffic was up 11% on Super Bowl Sunday (February 5th) and 4% the following Monday. Sounds great, right? Let’s take a look at all of this HubSpot customer’s traffic sources for that time period, first.

Turns out the commercial wasn’t so great. During that same time period, along with several inbound leads, the customer’s blog generated twice as much traffic as its TV spots. To make matters worse, the ads resulted in no online leads, only 7 phone calls, and zero opportunities or customer conversions. Needless to say, the company was not very satisfied with the ROI of the Super Bowl ad campaign.

The Moral of the Story: Outbound Isn’t Worth the Cost

This customer has (understandably) requested to remain anonymous, but they asked us to share this story with the marketing community as a reminder that, more often than not, outbound marketing just isn’t worth the cost. This customer has seen a much higher return at a fraction of the cost doing inbound marketing with HubSpot software.

The outbound marketing vision of reaching 2.8 million viewers in a couple hours with minimal work sounds great; even if it comes with a $54,000 price tag. After all, that’s a mere 2 cents per impression. But, like many things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So far, this company has yet to convert any customers from their ads and, even if they did get one or two, the cost per customer wouldn’t even come close to justifying the investment.

The Takeaway: Keep Focusing on Inbound

Marketers, if you focus on inbound marketing, you will see consistent results. It takes time, dedication, and hard work to create great content and generate inbound leads. But those who are willing to do the work (including the company referenced in this post) get to see a real return on investment. In fact, since this company started using inbound marketing with HubSpot, it’s increased its organic traffic by 567% and its overall traffic by 583% in less than a year.

If you are doing outbound marketing like TV, print, or radio ads, at the very least, do yourself a favor and integrate those ads with your inbound marketing strategy. Create free offers and strong calls-to-action to give viewers a reason to come to your website and convert into a lead. Encourage viewers to follow you on social media so that even when they forget your ad, they’ll still be connected with your company. And finally, be targeted in your outbound advertising. Just because you can reach 2.8 million people doesn’t mean you should. Find shows and publications that cater specifically to your customer base, and don’t ever pay for impressions that won’t one day convert into paying customers. Not only is it annoying the audience, it isn’t helping you achieve your marketing objectives.

Have you ever experimented with a commercial? What were the results (or could you even measure them)?

Image credit: .reid.

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Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most important elements of lead generation, and they should be used in each and every one of your marketing tactics: emails, social media updates, press releases, trade shows … the list goes on. In fact, whenever you want to ensure your team is moving in the right direction, pose the question, “What’s the call-to-action we’re using to drive people’s behavior?”

Once you have a strategy in mind for which calls-to-action you’ll feature on your website, you’ll probably start obsessing over their design. In this blog post, we present you with some guidelines to master the design of successful calls-to-action.

1. Size Matters: Make Your CTA Big 

The goal of your call-to-action is to attract the attention of website visitors, and one way to convey its importance is by enlarging it. “You want your button to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the design,” writes graphic designer Cameron Chapman.

Size shouldn’t be determined independently of other factors — it is tightly related to the context of the page and the other characteristics of your call-to-action. For instance, the CTA will naturally be large if it includes a graphic or an image that strengthens the message. This is what we do for HubSpot’s blog: the call-to-action placed at the end of each article is bigger than your standard CTA button because it is contextualized and adds value to the article. Just scroll down to the bottom of this post to see for yourself.

2. Spatial Effect: Give it Room to Breathe 

You know how they say that, sometimes, less is more? Well, that can definitely be true for calls-to-action. If you want to attract more attention to your CTA, you should give it some white space (or in the case below, orange space). Don’t crowd the language unless the information around it is key to taking the action. 

Simple logic dictates the ‘amount of white space’ decision. Separating the CTA from the rest of the content on a web page will mean it’s a separate item. If there is a tight connection between the call-to-action and some other web page element, then maybe there should be less white space between the two. 

“The more white space there is in between a call-to-action button versus a surrounding element, the less connected they are,” writes Jacob Gube in SmashingMagazine. “Therefore, if you have other elements that can help convince users to take action, reduce the white space in between those elements and the CTA.” 

Another tactic here is to fill your call-to-action with warm background colors, such as red and orange, which appear larger than colors suggesting coldness, blue and green. Warm colors appear closer to the viewer. 

3. Give it Prominent Placement 

Your call-to-action needs to be above the fold so viewers don’t have to scroll down in order to spot it. According to an Eyetrack III study, the best placement of online ads is in the top and left position. This tactic, too, is dictated by simple logic. In the English language, we start reading from left to right and from top to bottom. 

Copywriter Dean Rieck suggests that once your readers get used to a particular placement, they might start ignoring the call-to-action or ad. “So even the prime upper left area won’t work so well if you always put ads there,” he writes. The most effective placement could also depend on the context of the rest of the page, so make sure you do some testing (see the section at the end of this post). 

For instance, test the ideal top and left position versus a placement in which the call-to-action is right beneath the offer description. Run an A/B test to see if you get more clicks, and pick a winner. 

4. Contrast Is Key 

Contrast is one of the most powerful graphical techniques you can apply to calls-to-action. The fastest way to grab someone’s attention is by making your CTA stand out from the rest of the page and making it dominant. You can achieve that by picking a color for your button that contrasts the background. 

There has been a huge debate revolving around usage of the color red for call-to-action design. Some marketers argue that red can increase click-through rates significantly. Others explain that the context of the web page should determine the color. Whether you decide to use the color of fire, passion, and also the international stop signal or not, be mindful of your overall website design. While you want to keep the colors contrasting, make sure all of them fit in with your general website color scheme and avoid using patterns. 

Another way to achieve contrast with your call-to-action is to make the font visually different: some words might be larger or more emphasized than others. Just ensure that the CTA is easy to read. 

5. Add Hover Effect 

Surely, you’ve seen calls-to-action that change when you hover over them with your mouse. This type of hover effect creates a perception that the CTA is instantly clickable. In that sense, the visitor is one step closer to taking the action. 

Using hover animation, you can make your buttons change color and brightness. You can also give them a shadow or have them zoom in or out. There are many Adobe Photoshop tutorials out there that can teach you how to create such a hover animation and help you create an even more irresistible call-to-action.   

6. Embrace Unconventional Shapes 

Most calls-to-action have the same shape: that of a standard rectangular box. Shay Howe, designer and user interface engineer at Groupon, recommends that you give your CTA shape rounded or circular corners to make it more “button-like.” Square corners, he writes, may signal to visitors that the CTA is an ad or banner, and they might therefore avoid it. 

Sometimes you will encounter calls-to-action that have more unconventional shapes. For instance, they might be oval, star-like or assuming the contours of another object. This creative approach creates an element of surprise and might prove to be effective for increasing click-through rates. So experiment with call-to-action shapes that are rare, asymmetrical, and out of the ordinary. 

7. Create a Sense of Direction 

Some of the most successful calls-to-action out there have arrows pointing at them. It creates a sense of direction and guides the visitor to the important element on the page. This is a way of prioritizing information and creating a flow. 

In fact, HubSpot Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella, found out that if you have a picture of a human looking at a lead-capture form or call-to-action on a page, that’s where the eye of the visitor will also shift to. So don’t add images of people who stare right at your audience; make them stare at what your audience should look at.

8. Focus on Text, Not Graphics

The Eyetrack III study also showed that in ads, website visitors read more text content than graphical content. “People looking for information are looking for text, not pictures,” writes Dean. Make sure your wording is clear, specific, and action-oriented. If you need more information on copywriting for calls-to-action, download our free ebook, which includes specific guidelines for CTA copywriting. 

While you should focus on your call-to-action text, don’t forget that graphics can help convey meaning and strengthen your message. They are especially useful in explaining a concept that is hard to explain with words alone.

9. Consider Adding a Secondary CTA

Often times, you have two or three competing actions that you would like your website visitors to take. For instance, you might want to ask them to request a consultation and try out your product. Or you might want them to sign up for your email newsletter and download a whitepaper. Decide which call-to-action has higher priority, and give it more prominent placement and a bigger size. Also, keep in mind that the context of your page will affect click-through rate, so make sure there is a clear alignment between your call-to-action and the content around it.

Make sure you use different colors to illustrate which alternative is more desirable. For instance, on HubSpot’s homepage, you will see that in the center we have three calls-to-action that, from left to right, decrease in importance. The key call-to-action, “Request A Demo,” is in orange, followed by the grey “Free Trial” CTA, and then the “Full Feature Set” CTA, which is just hyperlinked text.

CTA A/B Testing

A lot of the suggestions in this post have represented CTA best practices, but it’s important to understand that sometimes, best practices might not be the best practices for your particular business. One business might find that a red button in the top left corner of a web page performs the best for them, while another business might find that red buttons rarely get clicked, and the top right corner of a web page is the optimal placement for their CTAs.

Therefore, marketers who are striving to continually increase their CTA’s click-through and conversion rates are constantly conducting A/B tests to determine the best design for their CTAs. Every design element we’ve mentioned in this post can — and should — be tested. And if you’re a HubSpot customer, the Call-to-Action Module makes it very easy to A/B test different call-to-action buttons to determine which generates the most clicks and conversions.

Now that you’re familiar with the key elements in call-to-action design, you should go and see how improving CTAs affects your lead generation efforts. Make sure you share your experiments with us!

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A few weeks ago, I saw AOL co-founder Steve Case give an interview on The Colbert Report about his company Revolution, which is investing in people and businesses that disrupt the traditional concept of consumer ownership with a more practical and efficient consumer-sharing model.

The consumer-sharing concept as a revolution that will impact the way we do business in the future (and now) has been mulling around in my mind ever since. Then on Feb 9, Cynthia Boris at Marketing Pilgrim wrote an interesting piece called The Sharing Economy: Could It Be the Next Big Thing? Well, I think that yes, it is the next big thing (dare I say it is already here?) and here’s why marketers and business owners shouldn’t ignore the sharing revolution.

What Is the Sharing Revolution?

Also called collaborative consumption, the sharing revolution refers to the shift away from an ownership economy in which consumers want to, well, own things, to one in which people are happy to rent items from a larger group of people with whom they simply share access to those things.

It’s not exactly a new idea, at least in internet years. The idea to build a company around the sharing concept started with Case’s interest in sharing vacation home rentals. After doing some research, he found out the average cost of owning a summer home was more than $100,000 a year, but it was only in use an average of 17 days a year. He soon discovered Exclusive Resorts, a club that shared luxury homes with its members, and bought it to try out his sharing theory. Membership grew 100-fold in 3 years. (Source: The Atlantic) Turns out, consumers were into this sharing idea.

“There’s a generational shift away from ownership to use and experience,” Case said between wise cracks on The Colbert Report. “The last 50 years or so, people moved around, moved cities, didn’t really know their neighbors. But now with the internet, you’re able to reconnect some of those communities and build some trust and some reputation tools that make it easier now to share things.”

And companies have responded to this shift. Check out just some of the brands whose entire business revolves around buy-in to the sharing economy — granted, some more successfully than others.

• Zipcar: With an inexpensive yearly membership, consumers can rent a car at any time for a low hourly rate instead of dealing with the cost of car ownership.
• Netflix: You don’t have to own movies and TV shows if you have Netflix; you can stream them instantly, or get DVDs in the mail that you return when you’re done watching.
• Rent the Runway: Instead of paying top dollar for designer fashions, rent your outfit, wear it once, and return it.
• HomeExchange: Similar in concept to Exclusive Resorts, with HomeExchange consumers from anywhere in the world can swap their homes instead of paying for a hotel when on vacation.
• Groupon and Living Social: These companies apply the sharing concept to any products, services, and experiences you can sell — think house cleaning, vacations, meals, and clothes.

Can the Sharing Revolution Take Hold?

The sharing revolution is more popular right now with Generation X than it is with Generation Y, and that will need to change for this revolution to have longevity. Generation Y is, after all, poised to be the largest consumer market in US history in just a few short years. But as Cynthis Boris at Marketing Pilgrim points out, that might simply be because Generation X is in a different phase of life. They have families, which means they’re more cautious with their expenditures and use of disposable income. But Generation Y will soon grow to be in this phase, too — not to mention almost everyone is trying to stretch a dollar in this economy. In fact, as we move out of the recession, I expect many consumers to remain cautious spenders, especially for the luxury items and non-necessities around which many of these types of companies are based.

We should also consider that Generation Y was raised quite used to the online group mentality. They’re savvy online researchers. They consult other people for their purchasing decisions, whether they know those people or not. They seek advice from their networks before making major life decisions. This interconnectedness has been integrated into their daily activities — especially with the dawn of mobile devices that lets everyone stay connected at all times — and has laid the perfect groundwork for the sharing revolution to grow and thrive. You can read more about how Generation Y consults its network in this blog post about the importance of user-generated content in Millennials’ purchasing decisions.

The argument for this movement taking hold is made stronger when you consider how easy it is to overcome the biggest reasons people don’t want to partake in this sharing concept: trust issues.

Turns out, people are reticent about the privacy issues associated with sharing, and express concern over items being lost, stolen, or damaged. But with Millennials who grew up sharing information about themselves online, I think this privacy issue is easily overcome as Gen Y grows into the sharing revolution’s target market. And concern over items being lost, damaged, or stolen is something the companies themselves often mediate, so there’s little or no liability for the user.

Generational identity aside, the strength of the sharing revolution is rooted in the fact that people love feeling connected. Take a look at the Facebook-commissioned neuroscience study that shows the positive feelings associated with participation in community sites like, well, Facebook. We’re all getting more community oriented nowadays, but we want it with the convenience that comes with global resources and infrastructure. A sharing revolution driven by online companies solves for that dichotomy.

How Can You Leverage Sharing in Your Marketing Strategies?

Instead of redirecting your business model to one like Zipcar or Groupon (yikes) to take part in the sharing revolution, leverage the reasons sharing is emotionally appealing to consumers in your marketing. Campbell Mithun’s study on why the sharing revolution is attractive found peoples’ top 5 emotional benefits were:

• Generosity, or being able to help themselves and others
• Being a valued part of a community
• Feeling smart
• Feeling more responsible
• Feeling part of a larger cultural movement

The easiest way for your business to leverage these feelings is maintaining a powerful social media presence. Not only does social media let your business have strong online connections with people you don’t know, it also has the ability to be segmented so the conversations you have with folks on- and offline are more personalized. If you haven’t already, grow your community by incorporating social sharing and following into everything you do — your blog posts, your emails, your offline campaigns, your website’s home page, and even your other social media accounts.

Then create a strong community by doing things like engaging in one-on-one conversations with fans and followers, or soliciting and following up on community feedback about your company, product, or service. These behaviors make your social media followers feel like they’re a valued member of a tight-knit community, two of the emotional benefits described of the sharing revolution. You can find more ways to engage your followers in Rachel Sprung’s blog post on the subject.

You should also take time to think of some amazing referral programs that let your current customers get in on the sharing action while you reap the benefits of free marketing and a larger customer base. Everyone loves being in the know, and when people refer something to someone in their network, they gain value and status for being the first to know about a great thing — your business.

The sharing revolution is also very mobile-centric. The Atlantic put it well when they said, “Thirty years ago after launching AOL to bring people to the internet to read things, Case is focused on bringing the internet to people so they can get out and do things.” What marketers should take away from that statement is the importance of mobility to consumers. Case followed up by saying, “These companies are part of the second internet revolution. For example, Zipcar is not an internet business per se, but it is enabled and powered and animated by the internet. You can have your smartphone and see there’s a car a block from here, book it, walk up, push a button, and drive away.” You’re probably well aware that 2012 is the year to go mobile, but if you haven’t optimized your website and emails to be mobile friendly, it should be on the top of your priority list — regardless of how much you want to leverage the sharing revolution. We’ve created a mobile marketing kit that can walk you through the process if you’re not sure where to get started.

Finally, let’s extend the sharing concept beyond ownership. People like to share ideas, too. Being the first to know and break information is more and more important for online credibility — just look at Google’s freshness update that rewards the first and best publishers of a news story. The first ones to do something well reap the most benefit. Make your company the one that shares the best information with your network, even (or especially) if it’s not about your products and services. Your business’ network will grow organically with this approach as your research and responsibility enables other people to become a thought leader within their own communities.

How important is sharing to your business model today? Can you see it playing a role in your marketing campaigns in the future?

Image credit: krissen

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It’s Valentine’s Day, and if you still haven’t gotten that special someone something special, you should probably rush over to your local drug store. There’s still time, and there are probably 2 or 3 fairly cheesy greeting cards left to choose from. Okay, maybe you deserve a little bit more credit, you actually made your dinner reservations weeks ago, and you have a genuinely heartfelt token of your affection wrapped and ready to go. Great work Casanova, but you’re still forgetting some very special people who are also deserving of your love today. “Who?” you ask? Your customers, that’s who.

After all, it’s really those customers of yours who are paying for that romantic dinner tonight, right? Don’t they deserve some attention, too? Luckily, there’s not as much pressure to show your love to customers on Valentine’s Day as there is to show your significant other. That being said, you should constantly be showing customers your love throughout the entire year.

The Benefits of a Loving Customer Relationship

When a business regularly shows its customers it loves them, that business also becomes a lovable brand. And making your brand lovable has a ton of great business benefits, including:

• Customer Referrals
• Customer Evangelism
• Social Sharing
• Press-Worthy Testimonials
• Customer Retention and Loyalty

Think about a brand you love. Let’s call that brand ‘Company X.’ Chances are, you’d tell a friend to try that brand’s products/services (customer referrals), you’d talk about how much you love them when the topic arises (customer evangelism), you’re happy to share interesting content that brand creates with your social networks (social sharing), you’d be pleased to have that brand feature one of your “I love Company X” rants (testimonials), and you regularly choose this brand over its competitors (customer loyalty).

So, if you’d like your current and future customers to insert your business’ name into the Company X scenario above, here are 11 things you can do to start spreading the customer love.

11 Ways to Give and Get Customer Love

1. Feature Customer Successes in Case Studies and Testimonials: If your product or service is one that helps make peoples’ lives better in one way or another, feature your top customers in case studies or testimonials that you can publish on your website and share in social media. Whether your products/services help them succeed in their business or allow them to improve a certain aspect of their personal lives, highlighting happy customers not only gives them an ego boost, but it also contributes to a positive brand image. While the main benefit of this tactic will be on your end, considering that customer success stories are a very powerful sales tool, your customers will also get a valuable inbound link and quite a bit of pride out of it, too. And if a case study customer is one who shares similar buyer personas with you, the promotion of their case study to your audience could open them up to potential new business.

2. Offer Exclusivity: Giving your customers exclusive access to different things can be a great way to show them you value their customer status. Give them sneak peeks into product development, invite them to beta test new product features, allow them to be the first to try out a new service, or offer discounted rates only available to paying customers. They’ll feel special, and you might even benefit from some valuable user feedback on your new product features.

3. Grandfather Them: If you charge your customers on a recurring basis for your product or service and your business makes pricing changes, grandfather your loyal, existing customers in so the price they pay gets locked in at the rate they started paying when they first became customers. For example, when Verizon changed its rates and no longer offered an option to purchase unlimited data plans for smartphones, I was grandfathered in to the former unlimited data rate since I’d already been using it, whereas new customers are not. It makes me happy that I use Verizon, and it keeps me loyal to the brand. Netflix, on the other hand, failed to grandfather in its existing customers when it hiked up its pricing in July 2011, and, needless to say, the resulting sentiment among its customers was not a happy one. The number of customer subscriptions it lost was nothing to shrug its shoulders at.

4. Offer Loyalty/Rewards/Referral Programs: If it makes sense for your business, offer a loyalty or rewards program for your customers. If your business follows a recurring revenue structure, reward customers when they hit certain benchmarks such as offering a discount once they’ve been a customer for a certain amount of time. Or give customers a frequent buyer’s card that rewards them with points when purchases are made. Once they hit a certain number of points, give them a gift card, a coupon code, or another reward. Starbucks’ My Starbucks Rewards program is a great example of a business that effectively leverages this tactic, offering perks that increase in value over time like a free drink on your birthday, free Wi-Fi, free refills, etc. for loyal patrons. You could also implement a referral program that rewards customers who refer potential customers or new business to you. Many online retailers do this well by offering a discount to customers who get a certain number of their friends to register for their website.

5. Show Some Personality: It’s hard to love a business. It’s easier to love the people behind the business. That’s why the most lovable brands are the ones that have a recognizable and lovable personality. Let your business’ personality shine through in your marketing and your customer communication. Be personal, relatable, and interesting. Be fun. Give them a behind-the-scenes look at your employees or how your products are made (Pinterest is great for this!). Show your customers that you care about the values, lifestyle, and interests they care about. For example, if your customer base is one that cares about the environment, make a donation on behalf of your customers to a non-profit that supports going green.

6. Provide Social Media Recognition: Social media is the perfect channel to spread the customer love. Respond to positive mentions of your brand and your products in social media, retweet customers’ tweets of things they care about or successes they’ve had, and show appreciation for the love your customers are spreading about you. Using social media to recognize customer success, happiness, and interests is a great and easy way to show your customers you care about them.

7. Solicit Feedback: Ask your customers for feedback — on your products/services, your marketing content, their user experience, your customer service, etc. You can do this in a number of ways: with an email, through social media updates that link to a survey, by pulling together a customer focus group, or in a blog post with an embedded survey. Asking for your customers’ feedback shows them you value their input and are committed to making their experiences with your brand as positive and valuable as possible. A commitment to improvement makes you lovable.

8. Provide Stellar Customer Service/Support: Let’s say the feedback you got from your customers using the last tactic reveals that your customer service/support could use some work. Well … act on it! If your customers are complaining about your subpar customer service, improve it. Better educate your customer service teams, work to decrease wait times on your support line, and maybe hire more support reps. If you’re a software company that continually onboards new customers, for example, you’ll need to hire enough support reps to handle your increasing number of customers. You can also use social media as a mechanism to deliver high quality customer service (here’s how). A really powerful customer service experience can go a long way.

9. Offer Guest Blogging Opportunities: If it makes sense for your business, offer guest blogging opportunities to your customers and partners. You’ll benefit from some free content for your blog, and they’ll benefit from the link love and exposure. Win win!

10. Refer Complementary Products: Take opportunities to refer to your customers’ products/services that complement — not compete — with your own. For example, if you sell industrial coffee making machines for office buildings, suggest to your customers some vendors that sell coffee beans in bulk for great prices. Doing so will show your customers that you genuinely care about helping them, not just about selling coffee machines. 

11. Say Thank You: This one is so simple yet so easily overlooked. Take every opportunity to thank customers for their business. They chose to give it to you over your competitors, and you should be grateful. Use marketing automation tools like those in HubSpot’s software to send customers a thank you note after they’ve made a purchase. Or, create a dedicated campaign that uses a video to thank your customers for their loyalty.

In what other ways do you show your customers some love? Share them in the comments, or tweet them below! And join us for today’s Twitter Chat at 3 PM ET at http://www.hubspot.com/inboundchat, where we’ll be talking about creating customer love (hashtag #inboundchat).

In what ways do you show customer love so they know you appreciate their business? #inboundchat hubspot.com/inboundchat

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) February 14, 2012

Image Credit: Dan Moyle

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This is a guest blog post written by Brian Honigman, the social media account manager at LunaMetrics. As a Google Analytics certified partner, LunaMetrics also specializes in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC. You can follow him on Twitter as @Brian_Honigman or @LunaMetrics.

B2B companies don’t often see how location-based social platforms like Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, Facebook Places, or Google Places, can benefit them or their customers. However, there are a number of opportunities for these type of companies to market themselves using location-based apps; its just harder to identify the strategies that’ll help draw the same results a B2C company would see using these social channels. Here are the 9 best B2B uses of checkin-based social platforms and some companies that are using them right.

1.) Claim Your Business

It may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies don’t have their business listings claimed in Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places, or other widely used services. This is a missed opportunity for your business, regardless of industry. It’s not required that you claim your location before someone is able to check-in, but your listing may be missing vital information like a phone number, web address, Twitter handle, or a physical address that users might be looking for. Claim your listings to ensure they’re both branded and optimized at every location for the best experience every time someone decides to check-in, no matter the service they’re using. All verification requires is a phone number or a bill to claim a location as your own. Unfortunately, this can be quite a tedious process if you have multiple locations.

2.) Add Foursquare Tips

Companies are now able to leave tips at various venues (physical locations) from their very own Foursquare page as their brand and not as an individual user. These tips will pop up on a user’s mobile phone if a user checks in nearby or at the venue where your B2B left a tip. The tips generated by your B2B will appear on your Foursquare page for viewing on the Foursquare application on users’ phones or desktops/laptops. Tips offer insights about a location that are helpful and will drive further recognition of your business. The key to applying Foursquare tips to a B2B is understanding where physical location factors into your sales funnel. Think long and hard: where will your customers (other businesses) see these tips and also find them relevant to the location and the products and services you offer?

For example, Barracuda Networks is a security, networking, and storage solutions company that provides most, if not all, of its services to other businesses. This B2B has started a promotional tour of the nation called the 2012 Velocity Tour to promote its product offerings. Barracuda is stopping at relevant conferences, hotels, restaurants, and other locations to spread the word about its business. This marketing tour is the perfect opportunity for Barracuda Networks to leave tips about its upcoming showing at the particular locations they are planning to stop and promote at. Leaving tips at the conference locations throughout the tour is the most beneficial because conferences often attract other businesses and tech-savvy individuals, giving them more opportunity for exposure on Foursquare. This could work for Barracuda Networks, because it is an easy addition to an existing marketing campaign. An important question for you is, how can you adapt to using Foursquare tips at physical locations so it makes sense for your B2B?

3.) Create Lists of Tips on Foursquare

Creating lists of your Foursquare tips allows you to group your tips based on a subject of your choice like a list of airports with Wi-Fi or restaurants with vegan options. B2B’s can group their existing tips based on the nature of those tips. Lists of tips are beneficial because it helps users quickly see which tips are most applicable to them, while also allowing users to follow these grouping of tips for future additions to the list. Based on the example above, Barracuda Networks could group all the tips for its 2012 Velocity Tour into one list, separating it from other tips on its page. The creation of lists is up to you, as long as they’re relevant to your B2B and truly benefit your audience based on how you’ve organized them. You can create a new list at https://foursquare.com/lists.

4.) Network at Conferences

Like we just discussed above, conferences are often an amazing networking opportunity for businesses to connect with other businesses and industry professionals. Many B2B’s thrive when it comes to attending industry conferences for sales leads and more. Take your networking to the next level at these conferences, not just with tweets and posts on Facebook, but by also checking in and promoting yourself on Foursquare, Facebook Places, and SCVNGR. These services allow you to check in, alerting others on these networks that you’re there and allowing you to post a message as well. It’s one way to stand out from other conference attendees. Reach out to your audience, and let them know where your B2B can be found at the conference as well as what you’re looking to accomplish while you’re there. Do research on your own as well, by seeing who else has checked in and what they’re messaging about. Comment on check-ins of relevance, and make lasting connections with other B2B’s, potential customers, and other influencers.

5.) Check In With Clients

Whether you’ve got an existing network or you’re starting from scratch on SCVNGR, Facebook Places, or Foursquare, showing your current and future friends/followers you’re active is a vital way to increase buzz about your business. Check in at meetings with your clients, showing you’re involved in your industry and most importantly, thriving. Be sure not to share before the time is right with particular clients; simply practice common sense. To ensure the most exposure from these checkins, follow your employees, existing clients, potential clients, industry partners, competitors, and other B2Bs of interest to your business. They’ll be more likely to follow you in return if you’re active on the particular network, thus seeing where you’ve recently checked in.

6.) Explore Partnerships

Explore partnerships with other B2B’s, B2C’s, and nonprofits to promote a particular campaign that has a location-based component. This is an effective way to incorporate your branding into a service like Foursquare, even if your products or services wouldn’t regularly fit the platform.

For example, American Express started partnerships with Sports Authority, H&M, and a handful of restaurants in New York City, offering a loyalty coupon. Through this campaign American Express uses Foursquare to draw customers to the physical stores of a few B2Cs, while increasing impressions of its brand and giving incentives to Foursquare users to use its services. In terms of your B2B, stop and think about what organizations would make sense to partner with on a local, state, or national level, and decide what benefit they would receive from a partnership of this nature.

7.) Conduct Market Research

When it comes to truly making long-lasting relationships with industry partners as well as existing and prospective clients, understanding their activity on every channel is key. Any information your sales team can gather about your market can aid in strengthening existing and future relationships. Monitoring where others check-in as well as the activities they complete on these location-based networks is more information to work with in the future. This research can help tell you which locations to leave Foursquare tips at, give you ideas for campaigns that will help engage your customers, understand which location-based networks your audience participates in, and keep yourself active on these networks to increase interest in your B2B.

8.) Do Competitive Analysis

Just as you can look to see how customers and industry partners are interacting on location-based channels, you should also look to follow the activity of your direct competitors. See what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong, changing your strategy accordingly. Identify which locations seem popular in your industry to optimize and create your own spin on an existing technique by creating your own unique list of tips on Foursquare or one of a kind challenge on SCVNGR.

9.) Lighten Up

One of the most important things you can do is have fun with whatever location-based social network you choose to utilize for your B2B. Social media should be a fun and engaging experience for your users, providing them with a true value from their engagement with your company, whether it’s on Facebook Places or any other network. If you force participation from one of these communities, it’ll come off as such. Work with what you know best: your company. Take what you do well and relate it to a common experience you share with your existing audience. Your strategy will resonate best if it’s relevant, engaging, and most of all, rewarding to your audience.

How are you using location-based social networks in a B2B setting?

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Have you ever attended live or viewed an online TEDTalk? You know, those inspiring, funny, or fascinating talks from industry leaders and amazing people that take place around the world? Today, the TED nonprofit, which began in 1984 as an annual conference that brought together people from the technology, entertainment, and design industries, has launched TED Quotes, a web page on the TED.com website dedicated to featuring some of the best quotes from its TEDTalks.

It’s a brilliant move; who doesn’t love a good, insighful quote? We’ve been scouring the TED Quotes today and wanted to highlight some of our favorite ones from the technology, internet, management, and business categories. These quotes are easily tweetable and Facebook sharable via the TED website, and they can make great additions to your presentations and other marketing content. Enjoy!

TED Technology Quotes

1) Clay Shirky: Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming — not producing, not sharing — and we should say, ‘No.’ Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

2) Ian Ritchie: [Tim Berners-Lee] told me about his proposed system called the ‘World Wide Web.’ And I thought, well, that’s got a pretentious name. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

3) Roger Ebert: Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

4) Evan Grant: Everything gives out some kind of data, whether it’s sound or smell or vibration. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

5) Aaron Koblin: An interface can be a powerful narrative device. And as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity, and maybe even an obligation, to maintain [our] humanity and tell some amazing stories. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

6) Ze Frank: On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it’s easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

7) Nicholas Christakis: Social networks are these intricate things of beauty, and they’re so elaborate and so complex and so ubiquitous that one has to ask what purpose they serve. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

John Underkoffler: That’s the old way, that’s the old mantra: one machine, one human, one mouse, one screen. Well, that doesn’t really cut it anymore. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

9) David Agus Quoting Andy Grove: No technology will win. Technology itself will win. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

TED Internet Quotes

10) Clay Shirky: We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

11) Joe Sabia: In 6,000 years of storytelling, [people have] gone from depicting hunting on cave walls to depicting Shakespeare on Facebook walls. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

12) Adam Ostrow: By the end of this year, there’ll be nearly a billion people on this planet that actively use social networking sites. The one thing that all of them have in common is that they’re going to die. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

13) Eli Pariser: Facebook was looking at which links I clicked on, and it was noticing that I was clicking more on my liberal friends’ links than on my conservative friends’ links. And without consulting me about it, it had edited them out. They disappeared. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

14) Eli Pariser: In a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. Along came the Internet and it swept them out of the way, and it allowed all of us to connect together, and it was awesome. But that’s not actually what’s happening right now. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

15) Eli Pariser: Your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. What’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But you don’t decide what gets in — and more importantly, you don’t see what gets edited out. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

16) David McCandless: Data is the new soil, because for me, it feels like a fertile, creative medium. Over the years, online, we’ve laid down a huge amount of information and data, and we irrigate it with networks and connectivity, and it’s been worked and tilled by unpaid workers and governments. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

17) Stephen Lawler: We’re so constrained by browsing the Web, remembering URLs, saving favorites. As we move to search, we rely on the relevance rankings, the Web matching, the index crawling. But we want to use our brain! We want to navigate, explore, discover information. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

TED Management Quotes

18) Stanley McChrystal: Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

19) Elizabeth Lesser: Don’t persuade, defend or interrupt. Be curious, be conversational, be real. And listen. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

20) Jason Fried: [Facebook and Twitter] aren’t the real problems in the office. The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

21) R.A. Mashelkar: An innovator is one who does not know it cannot be done. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

22) Simon Sinek: If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

TED Business Quotes

23) Jacek Utko: There is no reason — no practical reason — for newspapers to survive Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

24) Tim Harford: Ten percent of American businesses disappear every year. … It’s far higher than the failure rate of, say, Americans. Ten percent of Americans don’t disappear every year. Which leads us to conclude American businesses fail faster than Americans, and therefore American businesses are evolving faster than Americans. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

25) Lisa Gansky: A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir. Tweet This! (Watch the TEDTalk)

Which TEDTalk quote inspires you the most?

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