Who wouldn't like to reach 96% of their target market with one business to business marketing plan? According to a survey published in the September 1, 2005 issue of "Electronic Design" magazine, it can be done. When asked, "Where do you find the most useful information about new products and technology?" the respondents ranked print magazines (54%), Web searches (23%, Google primarily), and E-mail newsletters (19%, which includes RSS feeds) as the top three sources. This covers 96% of the bases, relegating trade shows (2%) and word of mouth (2%) to being almost inconsequential. This comes as good news for anyone using business to business marketing for lead generation. These numbers show that print is roughly equal to the Internet in value; you can't neglect either without significantly hindering your marketing campaign. Of the electronic half of the marketing publicity equation, Internet searches on Google account for a slightly larger percentage. However, unless done correctly, simply posting optimized" press releases on the Web will not necessarily land a company on the first page of a search. Most companies have done some search engine optimization (SEO) for their site, so the playing field is level. Taking optimization to the next level, a marketing or public relations firm must generate optimized releases and articles that go out on major wire services with embedded links to the relevant pages on a client's website. And they should be syndicated with RSS content feeds to increase visibility with new audiences. Rounding out a close third are Internet newsletters. In particular, RSS newsletters are quickly becoming an excellent marketing tool as this medium makes it easy to display high-quality, relevant news on a company's Website, and to syndicate its news and content elsewhere. Just as for news releases, though, anything written for RSS must employ all available SEO techniques so critical for visibility when a prospective customer is searching your keywords. Once correctly optimized, major search engines seek out RSS feeds and view them as legitimate news sources. Here lies one of the greatest strengths of any marketing publicity effort: that customers readily recognize the editorial copy of electronic or print media outlets as fairly objective arbiters of the "real" story. For this reason, editorial copy is read six times more than advertising, according to some studies. Without print, optimized press releases and RSS feeds, there will be gaping holes in your business to business marketing strategy and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to get to the 96% saturation level. But with the right online marketing plan, lead generation should more than take care of itself By John Elliott. Founder of Power PR, a business to business marketing firm. 3711 Lomita Blvd., Suite 200, Torrance, CA 90505; (310) 787-1940; fax (310) 787-1970; or http://www.powerpr.com.

About the author:

A native of Hawaii, John is a journalist and former editor of a national real estate publication. While editor-in chief- of The Property Management News, he actively participated in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. As a public relations executive, John has been instrumental in landing hundreds of pages and hundreds of hours of radio and television coverage for his various local, national, and international clients and employers. H