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After all the rumors and last-minute botched deals over the years, it’s finally happened: Microsoft and Yahoo have reached an agreement to merge their search services in hopes of finally being able to compete with the grand search overlord, Google.

Under the new 10-year, $275 million agreement, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine will power Yahoo Search

, while Yahoo Search Marketing will be powered by Microsoft AdCenter.

So what does this mean for small-business owners? Well, keep an eye on your Yahoo rankings because they are going to change once the Yahoo search engine is replaced by Bing.

As for your Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns, the good news is that your ads will now be seen across a greater number of websites. If you’ve been running campaigns through Microsoft AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing, once the change takes effect you will only have one campaign to manage, which will free up your time to work on other search marketing strategies.

If you’ve never bothered with Microsoft’s search offerings, the best way to get ready for the coming changes is to learn how to optimize your site for Bing and become familiar with the rules and regulations of Microsoft AdCenter.

Since its launch, Bing has proven itself to be very amenable to webmasters’ optimization efforts. That means that with a little tweaking you can get your site listed at the top of Bing’s search results

quickly. And if your site is brand-new, you can probably get it indexed faster on Bing than on Google, so you might want to focus your optimization on Bing first. Then, once you’re ranked well in Bing’s listings, you can tweak your optimization efforts to meet Google’s more stringent requirements.

Here are five easy ways to get Bing to notice you:

1. The older, the better. Bing places a lot of emphasis on the age of a domain, so if you’re just starting out, you might consider buying an older domain in order to get your site a higher ranking.

2. Titles are important. Bing seems to place a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google does, so make sure you use your best keywords in the title tags of every page on your site.

3. Text is terrific. For Google, the amount of text you have on a web page doesn’t play a huge role. Not so with Bing, which seems to place a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.

4. Outbound links are OK. Google has always seemed to frown on the number of outbound links you have on a page. But Bing actually seems to like them–at least for now.

5. Backlinks are even better. If you’re frustrated because all of your efforts to get links pointing to your site haven’t gotten you anywhere with Google, then good news! When it comes to backlinks, Bing’s attitude seems to “the more, the merrier”–as long as the links are coming from relevant sites.

So there you have it–five easy optimization tips to help you score a good ranking with Bing.Bear in mind that this is a huge change, and will take months to fully take effect. But the sooner you align yourself with Microsoft’s search policies, the better positioned you will be to ride the wave of change to the top of Bing’s–and Yahoo’s–search results.

Think branding only falls in the B2C court? Think again.

In fact, three of the top 10 brands in 2009, as ranked by Interbrand, generate a sizable amount of revenue from their B2B customers: IBM, Microsoft and GE.

As a B2B marketer your brand is your most valuable asset.

B2B branding is less about cool, hip monikers (the Apples and Starbucks of the world) – and more about thought leadership.

Particularly in down economies, B2B prospects and customers conduct significant research leading up to purchases. That means you as a marketer have to educate them early on, and establish your brand as a trusted resource that gets their problems and has the solution.

To help your organization be seen as the thought leader it is, we’ve identified five B2B branding tips:

1. Consistently produce useful, innovative content

These days, every company is essentially a media company. So it’s easier than ever to provide relevant, informative content for customers and prospects.

From a company blog to Twitter to YouTube, there is no end to the content channels available. Provide the latest industry news and insight on trends through:

• Offering a white paper through an email marketing campaign
• Creating videos and promoting through YouTube and on your web site
• Conducting interviews with industry influentials and turning into blog posts

Whatever channels you choose to promote, and whatever types of content you create, these consistent signals prove to customers and prospects that you are a thought leader.

2. Network digitally and in person

Nothing communicates a brand more than direct involvement with customers and prospect. In that regard, online social networking has opened a new door. According to a recent eMarketer study, six in 10 B2B marketers planned to up spending on social in 2010.

Whether your organization integrates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or another social network into its B2B branding efforts, the same rules apply:

• Social media is about engaging in conversations, not just pushing products
• It’s not about the masses; it’s about your target audience
• It’s listening and hearing before selling and talking

That’s not to say that in-person networking is irrelevant. On the contrary, perfect B2B branding combination. Take advantage of opportunities to give keynote speeches, participate in panel discussions or lead breakout sessions at industry events.

3. Get personal and be real

B2C marketers seem to have this concept nailed. But humanizing your company for customers and prospects is just as important in B2B branding.

For one TopRank® Online Marketing client, an industrial part distributor for the bulk powder processing industry, humanizing its image was a top concern.

The TopRank team created the Powder Doctor, a unique character, to relate to customers and prospects through email marketing campaigns. This humorous cartoon character offers advice – Dear Abby style – for common industry problems. Powder Doctor campaigns have increased sales for Powder-Solutions by 83%.

4. Position yourself differently than others in the space

No doubt about it, it’s tough to build personal B2B brand if you’re just like everyone else. You simply can’t be known for what everyone else is.

Standing out from the crowd is easy when your products or services are truly one-of-a-kind. When products or services are similar to those offered by the competition, it’s more of a challenge to uniquely position yourself.

For one TopRank client – a staffing software company – that challenge was known all too well. To help the client stand from a large pool of competitors, TopRank developed a copywriting strategy where website copy was written in first person, from the viewpoint of the staffing software (i.e., “why you should hire me to fill your staffing software needs”).

This strategy has not only helped the company develop a truly distinct B2B brand; the strategy has also achieved increased search traffic, high rankings for terms such as “staffing software” and a trend up in inquiries.

5. Leverage proof points

It’s perfectly appropriate – and necessary – to toot your own horn from time to time as part of your B2B branding efforts. Whether it’s an impressive media placement or a web traffic milestone, implement proof points illustrating why your organization is a thought leader into marketing communications.

Business owners often find it difficult to know whether their marketing tactics are working. This can be especially tricky when you use a combination of marketing activities  simultaneously, or if using personal-contact tactics such as networking.

No matter what business you’re in, your marketing should be accountable. So here’s a few ways to evaluate how well you’re doing.

1) Look at your sales (or fee income). They should be going up! But be careful about what you measure. Some firms have a longer sales cycle than others. To get an accurate picture you might need to also measure the number of new leads being generated, or the number of appointments, or the number of billable hours achieved. Remember discounts or variances in fees will affect total sales values.

2) Ask your clients. Check to find out where they heard of you. Most businesses never ask this question and miss out on gleaning valuable insights into how clients select a service provider.

3) Does your advertising and/or promotional activity produce direct responses?
It should. If your answer is “I don’t know” then you’ve got some work to do. In addition to 2) above, there are some things you can do to improve response rates.

• Firstly, make sure you are advertising in the right media. Choose media to suit your selected audience. Be as specific as possible. And avoid rejecting options just because they don’t look “exciting”, such as trade journals that might have relatively small readership. Importantly, check with your audience to make sure they actually do read the publication.
• Use a strong headline that asks a pertinent question, or gives a solution-oriented statement.
• Include a clear call-to-action. Tell people what they should do. For example: Ring today for your free appointment; Ask for our free information sheet.
• Include multiple methods of contact. Phone, email, and web site are all important. Give prospects a choice of how to contact you.

4) Do your networking activities create new opportunities for you? One of the major principles of effective networking is to “give” rather than “sell”. That is, you should look to help others as you spread word about your services. But this softly, softly approach can make it hard to measure effectiveness.

To measure your networking activities make sure you track the source of incoming enquiries. Then see if any of your visible/tangible tactics can be credited with generating the enquiry. If not, then maybe you can safely say it was a referral generated by networking. This is made a lot easier if you’re a member of a lead-generating club such as BNI or Leads. You’ll get specific feedback each week from these groups.

5) Do your marketing tactics make it easier to sell your services? To do this your marketing activities and/or material should do the following:

• Attract qualified prospects (who have shown a specific interest in your services).
• Anticipate and diffuse potential questions/concerns from prospects.
• Be easy to use when personally selling to prospects. For example: material should be relevant; images/charts easy to understand; and be presented in a format the prospect will be likely to keep.
• Focus on your client needs and your points of difference (Unique Selling Proposition).

6) Check your sales conversion rate. The best approach here is to look at your historical records and determine whether your conversion (or closure) rate has improved. “Selling” is an important part of the “marketing” function, so make sure you assess your success at closing the sale, rather than just focus on generating new leads.

7) Does your plan have a positive return on investment (ROI)? Does it bring in enough new/repeat business to justify the expense? Rather than just look at the “marketing budget” as one total, you really need to evaluate the cost effectiveness of each specific marketing activity. Even if you think you’re getting a great ROI overall, maybe you can do even better by changing or eliminating unproductive tactics.



Who better to offer tips and insight to someone just starting their management career than the seasoned professional manager. We are fortunate to have such a group of management professionals frequent the Management Forum on this site. Recently, I asked them this question:
“Remember way back when – when you got your first management job. What do you wish someone had told you then? What would be the one tip you would give to a manager just starting out?”
Their answers reflect the character and style of these individuals; their wisdom; their experience.
Here’s a list of Ten Top Tips:
• (M) Consult, consult, consult.
• (A) You are managing people, not projects or product development or customer service or any other departmental mission. People are complicated and messy. They aren’t machines any more than you are; they won’t be the same every day, no matter how much you’d like them to be. So stay alert to what’s going on with them.
• (K) For the first couple of days, sit down and get to know your staff. Find out what they do, what their goals are, what they like to do in their free time, etc. Several years ago, I watched a new manager start with a company and for the first month or so, didn’t talk to any of his staff. A month later, he wondered why people were handing in their two week notices.

Get to know your staff!!
• (R) Learn how to deal with problem or resentful employees. I was promoted into my position over a longer-term employee. She was made my assistant. (Before everyone raises the sexism issue, I was the ONLY male manager and was promoted on performance.) She had a great deal of resentment and worked against me at every turn. After floundering around for a while, I finally took her into the office and calmly explained the facts of life to her, that I was the manager and if she couldn’t work with me one of us would be leaving and it wouldn’t be me. She straightened out after that and we eventually developed a good relationship.

Avoid re-inventing the wheel. Everything doesn’t require your unique hand-print. Some things probably work just fine already. Also don’t think or act like you know everything, nothing breeds resentment more than arrogance. You may be smart, but there’s always someone smarter.
• (MC) You are responsible for everything that happens in your scope of authority. Don’t ever think that just because you may not be doing the actual work, you are not responsible—you *are*. Unless you are comfortable with this basic fact, management is *not* for you.

The rewards come at a price. You will have to make decisions that will benefit the company as well as your staff….and quite often they are in direct conflict with each other. (You cannot be all things to all people….)

You do have a right to be human. Just because you are now management, does not mean that you can (or should) throw emotion out the window.

Laugh with your people….let them know that you are not a humorless troll.

Be honest with your people…you expect the same from them. Even if it’s bad news, honesty does help lessen the blow.

Defend your people! They will reward you with their loyalty.
As exciting and as insightful as these tips for new managers are, there is one more we should add. Management is not for everybody. As (A2) put it “it’s never too late to say thanks but no thanks….I’m happy where I am.”

Difficult employees are that way simply because it is a behavior that has worked for them in the past. They may not know any other behavior or they may choose this behavior when they think it will be most effective. You will be successful in dealing with difficult employees only to the extent that you can make these undesirable behaviors no longer effective for them. In many ways, it’s like dealing with children. If every times a child screams, its parents give it candy, what will the child do when it wants candy? It will scream, of course. The same is true for the employee who “blows up” whenever anyone disagrees with him. When he does that people stop disagreeing with him and he thinks he has won.

How Can A Manager Deal With Difficult Employees

• Evaluate
  It is important when dealing with difficult employees to act quickly. Often you will need to act almost immediately to neutralize a dangerous situation. However, it is always appropriate to think before you act. Clearly if an employee comes to work with a gun, you will need to act more quickly than when someone complains that another employee is always taking credit for her work. In either case, take the appropriate amount of time to evaluate the situation before you act. You don’t want to make it worse.

Recognize that most employees can be “difficult” from time to time. This can be caused by stress on the job or away from it. Some employees are difficult more often than others. It is not always your least-productive employees who are difficult. So take a moment to evaluate each situation for the unique situation it is.

• Do your homework
  Always act on facts. Don’t base your actions on gossip or rumor. The person spreading the gossip is a difficult employee in their own way. If you have not seen the inappropriate behavior yourself, look into it. Ask the people reportedly involved. Collect all the facts you can before you act.

Don’t use the fact that you haven’t seen the inappropriate behavior as an excuse to delay doing something. It is important to act promptly.

Make sure you aren’t part of the problem. It will be much more difficult to remain calm and impartial in confronting the difficult behavior if you are partly responsible. If that’s the case, be sure you acknowledge your role in it, at least to yourself.

• Develop a plan
  You’re a manager. You know the value of planning. This situation is no different. You need to plan the timing of the confrontation. You need to select a quiet, private place where you won’t be interrupted. You need to decide whether you need to have others, like an HR representative, present in the meeting. Plan the confrontation and then make it happen.

When you have prepared, it is time to act. You do not need to act impulsively, but you must act quickly. The longer an inappropriate behavior is allowed to continue, the harder it will be to change it or stop it.

• Confront the problem
  Don’t put it off. It may not be pleasant, but it’s an important part of your job. It will not “fix itself”. It can only get worse. You have planned this confrontation. Now you need to execute.
• Deal with the behavior, not the person
  Your goal is to develop a solution, not to “win”. Focus on the inappropriate behavior; don’t attack the person.

Use “I” statements like “I need everybody on the team here on time so we can meet our goals” rather than “you” statements like “you are always late”.

Don’t assume the inappropriate behavior is caused by negative intent. It may be from fear, confusion, lack of motivation, personal problems, etc.

Give the other person a chance to develop a solution to the problem. They are more likely to “own” the solution if they are at least partially responsible for developing it.

• Try to draw out the reasons behind the behavior
  As you talk with the difficult employee, actively listen to what they say. Stay calm and stay positive, but remain impartial and non-judgmental. Ask leading questions that can’t be answered in one or two words. Don’t interrupt.

When you do respond to the difficult employee, remain calm. Summarize back to them what they just said, “so what I understand you are saying is”, so they know you are actually listening to them.

If you can find out from the difficult employee what the real source of the inappropriate behavior is, you have a much better chance of finding a solution

Identifying your marketing targets enables you to find opportunities and tap into them. It gives you the information needed to focus on the buyers that are interested in what you have to offer. This can save you both time and money in an ever-changing society.

There are three prime areas that you must identify when it comes to developing your marketing strategy. They include:

• Target Market
• Purchasing Target
• Communications Target

It’s not enough to be familiar with these terms, you must understand how these components work together.

Your target market is who you aim your marketing efforts to. This is the group that you want to sell your products or services to. They have an interest in what it is that you have to offer. Your target market can be broken down into segments that can include demographics, psychographics, income levels, and age levels.

Your purchasing target are the individuals or businesses within your defined target market that needs your product or service and can actually afford to purchase it.

The communication that you use to target this market is referred to as your communication target. It is the different methods or styles that you will use to reach your defined target market or audience. The message you send through your communication target can be presented both formally or informally.

As you can see each piece is equally important and works together like a jigsaw puzzle. By identifying and knowing who your target is it is easier to develop your marketing effectively and aim for the bull’s-eye. It will enable you to design special offerings and promotions. It will also increase your ability to convert your marketing efforts into sales.