ten24 works closely with a large number of B2B clients and we understand how important content is to their overall marketing strategy.  Powerful content, presented correctly can drive traffic and generate leads.

We are producing our learn24 Content Marketing Summit on Wednesday March 24th at the Newton Marriott in Newton, MA,  to provide actionable insights into:

• Creating content that advances the buying cycle
• Marketing content through SEO and social media
• Reaching new prospects through content rich online events
  

The Summit will feature three content marketing experts:

• Stephanie Tilton of Ten Ton Marketing
• Derek Edmond of Komarketing Associates
• Patrick Cahill of RallyPoint Webinars

We are planning for a limited number of attendees so you get the most out of the experience.  To learn more and register click here.

As we approach our two year anniversary it is a source of great pride that we have been able to negotiate the worst business climate in recent memory and not only survive, but grow.

With Sumit on board, along with the recent addition of Brad Gustavesen, we have brought together a team of web experts that worked together for many years at Synthenet Corporation.  Together we have designed, built and supported hundreds of web projects.  It is a pleasure to be working with Sumit and Brad again...onward and upward!

Brad Gustavesen is definitely one of these people.  I should know, we worked together for 3 years at Synthenet Corporation before he left to eventually lead Crabtree & Evelyn's successful website, overseeing the day to day management and marketing for their US operations as well as contributing to the success of their European and Australian markets.

I am proud to announce that not only am I working again with Brad, but he is also a partner in ten24.  I know he will bring the same dedication to building strong partnerships with our clients that I believe is at the core of our success.

You can read Brad's bio here, or view his LinkedIn profile for a more detailed background. His expertise in web production, development and marketing will be a tremendous asset to our clients.

It takes time, sound strategy, more time, business intelligence, time, persistence and then more time.  So when you don't win a project it can be a difficult pill to swallow.

• What could I have done differently?
• Did I ask the right questions?
• Could my pitch been more effective?

Well, what if you knew the answers to some of these questions at the start of the process?  You would probably win more deals.

RainToday, a leading website in the areas of selling and marketing professional services, asked more than 200 business buyers to share their insights on the most costly sales mistakes you are making.  And then they put these findings in an information packed report.

You can download it for free be clicking the image below, and no registration is required.

I know that a lot of clients are interested in how webinars can help from a marketing and lead generation standpoint, but are not sure if they are worth the effort and cost.

Rally Point has written a white paper that answers these questions, and even provides a calculator to help you determine if the ROI will make sense.

Entitled, Expand Reach, Grow Revenue: The Business Case for Lead Generation Webinars, this white paper outlines how webinars can create new revenue by finding new clients and reaching new prospects. It also shows how webinars cut marketing costs as an affordable and highly-effective tactic. In total, this white paper makes the business case for how running webinars at your company can make business sense.

Some of the other topics covered in this white paper include:

• Why webinars appeal to prospects.
• A comparison of web based versus in person events.
• How webinars can create content and lead marketing programs.

You can download the PDF here, and there is no registration required.

We have all received offers for a free white paper in an email or perhaps come across something through a PPC ad or Twitter link.  When you click on the link you are asked to provide some information before you can access the content.  I must see at least 5-6 of these each day.

So how can you write thought leadership content in the form of white papers that will actually generate leads?  Stephanie Tilton of Ten Ton Marketing has written an ebook that helps outline this process. 

5 Steps to a White Paper that Pulls in the Perfect Prospect

Click here to download the PDF, and no, I do not ask you to complete a form before you download.

According to research done by Information Week, as many as 2/3 of their readers consider white papers as thinly veiled sales pitches, which of course many of them are.

Stephanie outlines 5 ways you can elevate your white papers so that that  they stand out from the clutter and deliver value.

1. Deliver relevant, valuable, and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers
2. Format to ensure even busy executives read your paper
3. Craft an attention-grabbing title
4. Increase the likelihood of registration
5. Reap the rewards of reciprocity

The PDF is full of helpful information, but of course the hard part is actually producing the content.  That's where experts like Ten Ton Marketing can help if you don't have the bandwidth or expertise to do it yourself.

And many times the answer to this question lies somewhere between the two.  We have been evaluating project management solutions for about a month, setting up free trials (and in some cases paid accounts) and running them through a small set of criteria to see if they meet our requirements. 

All of these project management tools offer affordable monthly hosted solutions, but not one of them meets our requirements exactly.  So we face the question; do we build something from the ground up that will work for us, or do we compromise some of our requirements and go with the off-the-shelf product at a lower price point?  In an ideal world, with unlimited time and money, we would build ourselves a custom solution, but reality is cruel.

Instead the best solution is a hybrid.  We will settle on a product that comes closest to our requirements and provides a robust application programming interface (API).  The API will allow us to access the project data, and then customize it to close the gap.

The same scenario is true for 95% of our clients seeking a content managed solution for their website.  In a B2B marketing and lead generation website, requirements will most often dictate a custom design, SEO optimization, forms, landing pages, news and event functionality.  But every implementation is unique and there is no CMS that gets them 100% of the way there.  However, there is also no need to build something from the ground-up, duplicating functionality that is already available. 

Most often we work with an open source solution, such as Plone, which provides an enterprise level CMS framework.   Open source means we can access the source code and build custom features, or draw upon the community of developers to plug-in products that meet our needs.  This gives us the best of both worlds; a strong product that allows for customization, so that we can build solutions based on specific client requirements.

We have built partnerships with a number of leading marketing, branding, advertising and design firms that are at the core of our business.  These partners come to ten24 when they need a trusted resource for website design and development, a partner that will deliver the level of professionalism and service that their clients expect.

Wellesley Hills Group, recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in America by Inc. Magazine in 2008, is a management consulting, marketing, and lead generation firm specializing in helping professional service firms grow their revenue.

I have personally been working with the team at Wellesley Hills Group for seven years and have collaborated on over 15 website projects.  It was pleasure to help in the design and launch of their new site, built in ten24's content management system.

To learn more about this project click here.

The Webcrawler Blog on cnet had a post about a cool slideshow tool from Animoto that allows you to put together images, video and music.

It took me about 10 minutes to create my account, upload some images, choose stock video and music and create this video.

It wasn't perfect, and I'm not quite sure what I might use it for, besides making cool videos of the kids to send to my parents, but it was fun!

Maintaining a website can be a pain.

Content Management Systems definitely make managing a website’s content easier.  But not all CMS platforms help you keep up with the fast pace of improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

I will be hosting a free Webinar, along with Andy Komack of Komarketing Associates, that will highlight features you should look for in a CMS that allow for maintaining SEO best practices and that help make content & structural changes to a website easier.

We will look at:

• Content editing
• Web page management
• Web address and URL generation
• Additional SEO best practices

Click the image below to regsiter:

How does that saying go, something about the cobbler's kids always running around in worn out shoes?

Well ten24 isn't any different as we have been planning to update our own site for a while now, but client projects and other priorities always seem to get in the way.

How do you keep that from happening, if anyone has some great ideas let me know.  In the meantime, at least I can post the design comps so you can see what it will look like when, and if, we ever get to it.

Here's a link to the original post:
Hidden Costs in Website Development Projects
and below is the input from some very knowledgeable people on LinkedIn:

Steve Gogolak
Director of Media and Broadcasting at Cramer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sgogolak

First and foremost is a lack of proper discovery. Many clients don't realize the need to get to the bottom of what their requirements are. Instead they want to jump right into design because that makes them feel like something is actually happening. Fleshing out what the overall goals of the site are before you move into actual design and development work is critical.
In my mind you pay for discovery in one of two ways:
* You understand the need and are willing to pay for it, so you hire a company to do an analysis of your business objectives and how your website will play into them.
* You think that your website is "just a design" and you are not willing to pay for a formal discovery, so instead the company you hire moves right into design and then when you're 75% through the project you realize that it's not what you need and "discover" what you really need.
So the question becomes, "do you want to pay for the work to be done twice or do you want to pay more for it to be done once, but with a great end-result?"
Without a doubt that is the #1 problem that everyone encounters

Derek Archambault
Marketing Manager at Dean Foods
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingandmusic
I've been on both sides of the table developing web sites: both as the designer/developer AND as the client. In either case, the biggest issues are:
- Making sure that the web site does what it needs to; don't put up "brochureware" if you're trying to do ecommerce, etc. etc.
- Getting the focus needed to get all the information necessary. This is particularly true when starting from scratch - very few people have all the necessary write-ups of their history, "about us" products, etc. that they will need for their web site and they totally underestimate how much time that will take.

Shari Monnes
Owner, Marketing Consultant and Monnes Marketing Communications
http://www.linkedin.com/in/smonnes

...what about when clients resist or fail to completely gain input and buy-in from all stakeholders within the company for the web site redesign at the planning stage? This can lead to huge delays as well as increase the budget. For example, if sales absolutely needs a system to track referrals and distributor codes, or display different information by region, country or distributor, but nobody in Marketing thought it was important and didn't think to include it in the site specifications, it can be a huge issue to add something like that at the last stage of database development. Starting the process with some sort of meeting or workshop to get everyone on the same page and gather all input up front is important. Amazing that some people don't do it.

Sharon Shepard
Marketing Communications Manager at Mentor Graphics
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonmshepard

Not to mention management buy in and not making the decision making team too large. I have also been on both sides and it is no fun to be two weeks before launch date and find out that management had a different idea on direction. When a project team is too large this kicks the live date out considerably. Everyone THINKS they know about website design but very few actually do.

Mike Ciolino
Founder and Creative Director at Verve Creative
http://www.linkedin.com/in/vervecreative

All great points. Many of our clients have never been involved with a web development project before and thus hold misinformed or unrealistic expectations - That which they don't know that they don't know.
Might I add two additional issues to this list - Not recognizing the distinction between web development and content development and misjudging the learning curve, time and effort involved with content development and management after launch.
Everyone wants content management (CMS) however few want to learn the basic IT processes (such as how to use FTP to upload a file) Often clients ask for a laundry list of features however they are not prepared to allocate the effort, resources and training needed to maintain and support these features.

Ryan Vong
Senior Marketing manager at BDNA Corp
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanvong

I just came into a website redesign where personas and wireframes were missed and the group was going in many directions on the design without anything to base it on. We're now back on track and the project is moving forward.

Vendors sell great design, or some cool software to update the site and fail to provide the tools and guidance needed before and after the contract is signed.  If you rely on your website as a central element of your marketing and communications and are driving traffic through direct mail, search engine marketing, email, social media or PR, then you cannot afford to under estimate the complexity of the project or be under sold by a vendor.

A typical project (non e-commerce) will take 250-350 hours of work when you take into account all of the critical project stages:
 

• Stage 1 Discovery and Prototypes           
• Stage 2 Design                                                  
• Stage 3 Development                                   
• Stage 4 Testing                                                 
• Stage 5 Training                               
• Stage 6 Launch 

Based on our experience here are 4 key tasks that are consistently underestimated when considering a website development project:

1.    Wireframes and Prototypes
Movie producers use storyboards for good reason, it is less (much less) expensive to figure out scenes, camera angles, set design, on paper first than it is to have everyone standing around on a live set while you figure out what to do. 

The same is true for your website.  Our process starts with the home page and determines main navigation elements and site features, all informed by a Discovery process.  This wireframe is developed into an interactive prototype and is our guide through the design and development process which follows.  Without this process the project is open to scope creep and cost over runs.  For complex, custom projects we won’t enter into a contract without completing a prototype and detail needs assessment first.

Time: 40 - 60 hours

2.    Content Population
In every project I have been involved with, when a client says the site will only be x number of pages, I guarantee that by the end of the process we have x number of pages times 2 in the database.  A rule of thumb for your project is that there will be more content than you think and it will take you longer than you expect to compile.

Hand in hand with content creation is content population, taking your content and placing it in a content management system (we don't believe in building a website without a data driven content management system).  Depending on the size of your site, most often this process is done manually, by creating pages and then copying and pasting content into a WYSIWYG editor.  For those of you who have worked with web editors before you will know that formatting can be tricky, particularly if you are trying to bring content in from a word document.  Most often page content needs to be pasted a simple text and then all formatting handled in the web editor. 

For larger sites you can write a import script to try and automate this process, but there is no magic bullet and this process can be time consuming.  

Time: 25 - 35 hours for content population only

3.    Testing
The latest numbers from wc3 there are 6 browsers that you need to consider as of Feb 2009:

• Firefox 46.4%
• IE7 25.4%
• IE6 17.4%
• Google Chrome 4%
• Safari 3%
• Opera 2.2%
• (and IE8 will soon be in the mix as well)

And as any web developer will tell you, making sure that your website displays and functions properly in each of these environments can be very time consuming.  You may decide that for your audience, you can ignore a particular browser and that will save some time, but for most projects each of these need to be considered.

Time: 30 – 50 hours

4.    SEO
If you are investing in a content management system for a public facing website then it is impossible to ignore the implications this will have on search engine optimization.  It is our recommendation that every client budget for an SEO consultant to be part of the project, helping optimize the site from both a content and technical perspective.  You will also need to consider properly re-directing traffic to the new URL structures that can result after launch. 

Time: Depends on specific needs

These are certainly not the only tasks that can be overlooked when planning for and budgeting a website development project.  These are difficult projects to specify and manage so make sure you go into the process with a complete understadning of the resources required to do the job right.

Some great ideas were discussed around approaches to lead generation and I thought it would be worth expanding on the platforms or tools that should be used to best support these marketing tactics.

I define a platform as any tool (tangible or intangible) that supports the collection of marketing data or leads. Below I list some of the most effective platforms or tools that the small business marketer or owners should have in their tool box.

Website (#1): Ultimately every connection you make is going to visit your website, so it is critical that the content on your site supports your efforts. ten24's expertise is in developing websites powered by content management systems, and our own site runs on our Online Marketing Suite.

The system allows a non-technical user to update pages, images, documents, create forms and manage a blog. We have integrated several tools into our Online Marketing Suite that support the website and our client's marketing efforts:

• Email Marketing (#2): VerticalResponse
  An excellent self‐service software that allows you to create, send and track broadcast emails.
• Metrics (#3): Google Analytics
  It's important to know where your web traffic is coming from and how visitors are using your site. Google Analytics is a great tool and itʹs free.
• CRM (#4): Salesforce.com
  Each form on the website can be connected to Salesforce to update the CRM database every time a form is submitted. Salesforce.com provides the tools to manage your sales contacts and sales funnel.

Partnerships (#5): ten24's most effective lead generation platform has been partnerships with marketing consultants, graphic design firms, SEM companies, ad agencies and PR firms. These partners find themselves uncovering website development opportunities within their client base, but lack the internal resources to deliver, particularly database or content managed solutions.  They call upon ten24 as a trusted resource to work with their clients and provide a high level of service and support.

Finding and building relationships with these partners is a long term process and ultimately the tactic that cements these relationships is face to face meetings, however there are many tools that I find critical leading up to the actual personal connection.

Social Networking Online: I focus on LinkedIn (#6) and Twitter (#7), spending about an hour per day.  On LinkedIn itʹs important to get involved with the Groups and start/join in on discussions.  It is also helpful to involve yourself in the Answers feature on the site. A recent recommendation I made for a partner, in response to one of the questions, resulted in a $40k project.

Social Networking Offline: Social networking groups (#8), business associations (#9) and referrals from existing relationships.

This is by no means a complete list, as there are many other great tools available depending on your specific market and business objectives.  If you want some additional perspectives you can view the slides from the webinar here:

or access the recorded webinar here:

Finally, check out Eric Glazer's blog The Marketing Studio.

Litle & Co. is a former Inc. 500 company providing payment processing software for card not present transactions.  Litle was referred to ten24 by Komarketing Associates, an SEO firm in Massachusetts, who was working with them on PPC campaigns.

Litle wanted to re-structure the site to provide a more intuitive navigation system, update the design to match some changes to their brand and add a robust content management system so the marketing team could easily update the site.

ten24 worked closely with Litle through our Discovery process, producing wireframes of the Home and Inner pages.  We then delivered design comps for each page style.

The approved designs were assembled in the Online Marketing Suite content management system, and tested on mutiple browsers.  ten24 also populated all of the content for the site.

The new Litle site will provide a platform for the marketing team to effectively manage content, drive traffic through SEM and email marketing campaigns and generate leads for the sales team.