Rant: The 'one-page' website goes YouTube

Remember when all those 'get rich on the internet' websites were out there? The ones that were one page long and went forever? Usually selling PDF books about how to do the make your own long-winded webpage and make millions?

Well I just saw one of these done as video. Someone linked to it as a technique marketers might try.

The whole rags to riches, learn from my mistakes, blah blah blah. Now in video form. Oh, did I mention all the teasers and foreshadowing to keep you hooked to watch the rest of the video. Like a horrible infomercial, I guess.

The point is this: YouTube has created a genuine authenticity to web video. This video seems to take advantage of this credibility for its own ends.

Get drunk or free branding-you decide

One of our sales reps is doing a local show this week. The event had a nice party for the attendees and exhibitors last night. We got about 50 drink tickets from the show to give out, but most attendees weren't interested in hanging around. Typical of a local show.

So what do you do with a couple dozen extra drink tickets? Besides get really-really drunk?

Our guy promised a dozen tickets to the band at the end of each set, if they said the music was sponsored by our company, "you know, the XXX test company."

And they did. Three times! In front of a target audience. Sweet! (Beats having a hung-over rep manning the booth this morning, too.)

B2Blog site was down, now back celebrating 6 years

Wow, my web host moved all their sites to new servers over the weekend. What a royal mess. Between their problems and me having to guess how to fix things, my sites been down for almost three days.

In a nutshell, I have nine sites with my hosting account, two of which were completely unavailable. When I noticed they were down, they told me to change my DNS settings to point to the new servers. And so it started.

Final solution: I set my account at GoDaddy to use their 'default' DNS server, then use their 'total DNS' tool to point to the IP address of the new server, actually bypassing any need to set specific DNS names.

Between this and my van's radiator leaking, I've been pretty distracted.

New blogging series:
All this occurring when B2Blog is turning six. I had some great ideas about a new series of posts, which has made the problems all the more frustrating. But no more!

The new series will be titled "The state of B2Blog", which I will use to address the issues and future of B2Blog and the B2Blogoshpere.

Stay tuned!

AdWords rulebreakers and a surprise

I know I had heard about this earlier, but today read-up on this news, as reported by Kelly Abner of Marketo: Google Updates Adwords Display URL Policy: "Starting April 1, Google is enforcing a new Display URL Policy. Not everyone knows about it, and those that do are wondering what it means." Here's the official word from Google, too.

Well basically, that little 'display URL' box when creating your AdWords ad must match the domain of the actual link URL. This has been done primarily to control affiliate marketers, but folks using outsourced landing pages are being affected, too. You can use a intermediate 'tracking URL' that doesn't match, as long as the final 'destination URL' is the same domain.

I was a little surprised by the tracking URL allowance, as that depends on using a redirect, which I thought policy doesn't allow. Obviously, it is an exception that is allowed as defined by Google.

Rulebreakers:
So I thought I'd go check on one of my major keywords because I knew there was one major advertiser already breaking the rules. His ad is still at or near the top, flaunting the rules, including:

1. Shill account: The URL displayed, and the whole account, I think, uses a shill domain. I suspect he got caught violating the rules at AdWords and had to create this separate account and domain to get back into the game.
2. Redirecting: The ads show the shill domain, but link to his regular domain. Whether he is directly violating this new policy or using a redirect, either way it is wrong.
3. All-caps: The domain URL is in all-caps. I know this is a no-no because I used some industry acronyms in an ad years ago and had my ads suspended due to all-caps.

Surprise:
While looking at the SERPs, I noticed most of the listed results were tagged as "competition". Turns out that because I uploaded my bookmarks to my Google Account, they were showing what folder/tag those sites were in.

For a moment I thought Google knew a little too much about me! Maybe they still do. Now if they'd only get after my rule-breaking competitor.

The finer points of typing

The finer points of desktop publishing, really. Since I need to use dimensional measurements in describing my products, this is actually quite useful.

(Online, of course, its a whole other ball-game.)

"Welcome, friends, to the brave new world of the typography nazi. Below are ten mistakes that everyone makes, an explanation of why each is wrong, and details on how to fix them."

Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes
via Boing Boing <>

Marcom shift--Web first

Just in case you haven't made the switch (or realized you have already done so), web content comes first for collateral development, as Rick Short makes it clear in a post titled Write for the Web:

"So, we are officially charged with directing ALL our B2B Marcom thoughts regarding literature, brochures, exhibits, etc. to the digital format first. We’ll let the hard-copy stuff come later. This is a flip of the old way of business. Frankly, it is a bit overdue.

Web first, hard-copy second."

I've got a staff of one (me) who already gets it, but Rick's got a large marcom organization. Imagine the impact such an obvious strategic clarification must have on his team.

I think doing the web content gives you an additional advantage by letting you flesh out your message and adjust according to market reaction. So when you do go to print, the content is robust enough to withstand the longevity of printing umpteen thousand copies or a high-dollar promotional campaign.

That's the beauty of the web...your message can be adjusted and shaped. If you aren't taking advantage of the valuable feedback of the market in cyberspace, your will look outdated online and in print.

And without digital being first in your strategy, you'll risk resorting to cut/paste from your literature TO your website, contributing to that outdated, unreadable content you see on so many B2B websites (even if the content looks fresh in the literature).

Got a new product or campaign? What are you going to do first?

Right--web first!

More whining about pricing on your website - Be Evil

Three things B2B websites need: Video, reviews, and pricing. I've made a point of discussing these in the last year or so.

And I often come up with whiny excuses about why B2B won't do them.

When it comes to pricing, whiny excuse number one is: Channel conflict.

Oh, I know, I'll just institute a minimum advertised price policy with my dealers. Just slip it into their contract renewal and wham...marketing nirvana for the almighty principal.

Of course, only if you don't mind coughing up $750,000 and tangling with lawsuits ... Settlement ends five-year investigation into Herman Miller's pricing policies:

"Under the company's suggested retail price policy, retailers could advertise the Aeron for no less than $949. If they broke that rule, they could be denied shipments for up to a year or be cut off completely.

The consent decree signed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York bars Herman Miller from coercing or communicating with dealers violating the policy.

Herman Miller still can punish errant shop owners, Schurman said. It just cannot talk with the problem retailer."

Hmm. So you can have such a policy, but it can't be in a contract. And you can't warn the dealer, you can only fire them. Weird, but apparently that's the way to do it

Or to reference the latest Wired Magazine: Be Evil!

Is it worth it?

I was going to post a link to survey results at Circuits Assembly Magazine's March issue about trade shows. What makes a show worth going to, was the essence of it.

The assembly and electronics industry are continuing to struggle with show-wars and weak attendance, which is why I think Editor Mike Buetow ran the survey.

1,400 email invites garnered 78 valid replies. Which says something for response rates of emails from trade pubs.

Reviewing the results and Mike's analysis, those who replied strongly felt the biggest draw to a trade show is the technical program, which I found interesting.

So here I am blogging about it ... but no direct link to the article.

Only articles from the current (April) issue are open ... archives require registering. And not just for the website, but you are being asked to receive the magazine ... that I already get.

The worst part? 35 fields of information to fill out.

No wonder there is a dummy log-in available at BugMeNot.com. So here is the link if you are interested, but you will need to use the log-in from BugMeNot to see it.

It's the Reviews, Stupid

About a month ago I asked Why not allow user reviews on your B2B website? Julie Powers, who inspired the initial post, followed up with a link to a MarketingSherpa report on the success label printer Dymo had with reviews. Good info, but hey, they make high-volume, low dollar products.

Then I ran into this pithy analysis by Andy Sernovitz, Who is reading your reviews?:

"68% of online shoppers read reviews before buying.

Stop and think about this: Your entire marketing effort expenditure drives customers to the reviews. Not to your landing page. Not to your shopping cart.

Who is in charge of reading online reviews at your company?

Nothing impacts your online sales more than customer reviews. Do you even know what they say?"

Pithy part repeated: "Your entire marketing effort expenditure drives customers to the reviews."

So if this is true for those with reviews online, what's the implication for those without: you need them! Yes, us even us B2B guys with a dozen excuses about why its not possible.

(Links provided by Andy: MediaPost, New York Times)

Japan Day 4&5 - Geocaching

Okay, its been two weeks since I was there, but still one of the highlights of my trip to Japan was geocaching. Most businessmen like to play golf when they travel and meet associates. Not me.

Geocaching is a game/sport/hobby of searching for hidden boxes and things using longitude/latitude coordinates posted at geocaching.com. My team/family, has about 1,300 finds.

I had thought I could do it mostly myself, just with a taxi ride to a central location, but ended up going out with my hosts (separately) on my last two days. It was a neat way to get to know the city of Osaka better, as well as my associates. And much better with a car, as we could hit many more than I could have walked to, despite getting stuck in city traffic.

Take a look at pictures and commentary at this Flickr set.

Net result: Two new fans of Geocaching, and 10 more 'finds' for me.

Lesson: Don't stay in your hotel, find a reason to get out there. And don't be afraid to drag someone else along.

Japan Day 4 - A surprise

Clarification (3/20/08): I am home now, just trying to catch up.

Okay, I lost my pace to blog every day while in Japan. And why not. There were plenty of distractions—meetings and dining mostly. And slowly adjusting to to the time meant I wasn't awake at 5:30. So we skip back to Day 4.

A surprise
As lunchtime came around, my host suggested Indian curry for lunch, as I had caught the scent of curry the day before. She said we were waiting for someone to join us. I headed to the bathroom wondering who it would be. One of her officemates, probably. Nope.

When I returned I found my old boss, Koh, waiting for me. He was the VP of the office that originally hired me almost 19 years ago. He had long-ago gone back to Japan, and I had only seen him once since, I think.

We had a pleasant lunch, just catching up with each other and sharing about the others from the office. But emotionally, it was more than that.

Perhaps it was the acknowledgment of how fate was set so long ago that I would be doing what I am doing. That he had a hand in choosing the path of my life.

Or just a reminder of the enjoyable times that we had as a group—as boss and staff.

But it also seemed that our relationship was restored. That we could pick up where we left off and be comfortable with each other.

Regardless, when we returned to the office and parted, I was surprised by how much I had relished this meeting—it was special to me.

Japan Day 2--Translation Lesson

On my second day in Japan, I visited our R&D center in the port city of Kobe. We were checking on software projects in various states of completion.

They had planned to ask my help to confirm translation choices to English, something I am used to doing for our marketing materials. The language of software is different.

Buttons that I use everyday instinctively, I had a hard time conjouring the exact words and purposes they represent: Close, Cancel, Apply, Okay, Save, Set, and so on. It was fun, it was frustrating, it was educational.

Translation Lesson: What words are you using in marketing (or anything else)? Are they the ones the audience is expecting? Does it deliver the desired effect? And can you save a step to avoid added confusion.

Picture: Vending machines are everywhere, here, and I am struck by the variety offered for drinks, but no Coke/Pepsi machines. (On my way back from Chinese noodle dinner in Nangin China-town in Kobe.)

Japan Day 1--Sushi lesson

I am in Osaka, Japan this week, meeting with my corporation's marketing friends. Very nice to talk strategy with like-minded folks.

Tonight (or just before you got up), I went out for Sushi with two of my lady hosts. Sushi is wonderful, but the restaurant experience makes it even better.

Every new dinner party is greeted by shouts by all four sushi chefs. Loudly!

When a new fish is cut (as opposed to the pre-cut you usually see in the ice-box), they bang a special tonko drum in celebration.

The Sushi Lesson: Why don't we welcome our new customers with such gusto? Why don't we celebrate when special-order equipment ships out? We enjoy our business, but why don't we show it?


Me chowing down on scallop sushi. Big big sushi, and the chef said to eat in one bite. Very fresh and very delicious.


Here they strike the tonko drum in celebration of the Sea Breem.


My friend Noriko and I, along with our soon-to-be dinner.

(For those wondering, the Breem was already dead, the drumming is just for the cutting. The scallop, on the other hand, was lifted out of a tank.)

Community builders?

We use Goldmine CRM combined with QuoteWerks product database. I know its old-school, being real 'installed' software, but it suits our needs just fine. The products come from different companies, but integrate.

While they are not trying to compete with Salesforce.com, they must see that one of the growing strengths of Salesforce is the community around it. So both software companies have recently come up with networking tools around their products.

Goldmine's parent, Frontrange has gone with Leverage Software, which is the same as Salesforce uses. QuoteWerks has opted to create a Linked-in Group, something I didn't know existed.

For FrontRange, they already have a vibrant user group, mostly with consultants and installers helping each other. This new community is targeted at folks like me, and appears not to be technical at all. For QuoteWerks, this is all-new, as far as I can tell.

I am at least interested that these folks are truly my peers, folks running the same software and dealing with the same issues with it (and our sales processes), but am far from feeling a desire to be engaged with the community.

So, like joining Linked-in to begin with, the question remains...what happens next? Will people use these communities? Are they any better than their message-board predecessors?

These things take time

"Congratulations on the XXX order--they didn't even give us a chance," said a competitor's salesperson to one of ours.

Ahh, yes, we are basking in the glory of booking one of those orders that everyone in the market knows about. It's a huge order and now our parking lot is overflowing with the cars of new hires. And success is doing its usual thing of attracting even more business.

The neat thing for me is that I remember the seeds of this sale from ten years ago. I was there, I helped plant them.

One of our top customers at the time had to outsource some work to XXX and recommended our product. I stopped by their booth at a show we attended just twice and was lucky to talk to one of the people involved.

He acknowledged the recommendation and told me that their current supplier was too much trouble when it came to service. His tone was friendly and I appreciated his candor. I walked away with a slight bounce in my step, the way you do when you ace a test or an interview.

I was happy for the opportunity to actually meet someone in person, when that would not normally be the case for such an small order, especially as an 'inside sales guy'. I think the meeting was important for the person I met, too--to put a face on this new prospective vendor.

They ordered the first unit, then another. They visited our factory and bought some large units the following year. Then their sister facilities made a few purchases. And so it continued slowly over the last ten years. And now we are their supplier of choice, no chance for the competition.

And I was there at the beginning. I helped plant this success, just by striking up a conversation with someone. Very cool. For that reason, I don't mind not having anywhere to park!

Showing up late to Second Life

Second Life peaked in its web2.0-ishness foolishness, um, like two years ago. And for B2B it was questionable to begin with.

So, when you are a components manufacturer opening a virtual corporate museum in 2008, you are likely to attract snarky posts, like this one from Circuits Assembly Magazine's blog titled Art as (Second) Life:

"In trying to explain why the company is underwriting the costs from its R&D budget, Jan Jurcy, Avnet’s vice president of digital communications (you probably don’t have one of those, either), said, "We look at this as another piece of the social media revolution."

And here you thought they were in the business of selling components."

Now, quit rubber-necking at the accident on the information superhighway and get back to real marketing work :)

Why not allow user reviews on your B2B website?

"Why do so few business to business Web sites load user reviews of individual products online?" asks Julie Powers (The Internet Marketing Report Online: Offer user reviews instead of discounts? Maybe).

She goes on: "Because all the results from consumer Web sites seem to imply that there isn't much downside to posting reviews (unless all your products suck. And that would never be the case, would it?)"

Admit it, we all love the product reviews at Amazon. So, Julie asks a great question: Why not?

1. Fear. Your team, CEO, and salespeople will 'what if' you till you scream and give up.
2. No alternative products: We aren't distributors with multiple brands to select from. At Amazon, I can jump from Canon to HP products. If shopping at Agilent, a bad review may drive me to Tektronix's website.
3. Its personal. These are my products and I don't want anyone dissing them publicly on my website!
   
4. Cases vary. Successful application of many B2B products depends on the skill of the user and the actual usage.
5. Customized products. The reviewer may have a unit with a modification that they may praise in a review, but others may not know is extra.
6. Loss of control. Related to fear--how do we control who posts reviews? What do you do when a salesperson calls saying he lost a sale due to what a review said?
   

Well, I could go on, but those are enough to stop any B2B marketer from allowing reviews on their website. What do you think? Are these just excuses, or reasonable reasons? Are there other issues at hand? Is it worth allowing reviews anyway?

And if you can help Julie (and me out) if you know of anyone in B2B-land allowing user reviews, let us know.

Adding other PPC campaigns to Google Analytics

I've been a Google Analytics (GA) user for a while. And I always was disappointed that it only showed paid traffic results for AdWords. Hey, what about my paid Yahoo and Microsoft ppc programs?

Well, the Google Analytics blog posted the answer today. Essentially, you the linking URLs need to be tagged with certain information. And the article links to a URL Builder Tool that creates the proper URL for you.

Actually, you can use this tracking URL tool to monitor any specialized campaign that would otherwise get lost in GA data charts and tables.

Very nice to have this fixed. Now I can look at the rest of my paid traffic more critically.

Acrobat automated form hell

When launching my new company website, I added a new feature—a PDF employment application. I stumbled my way thru making it a automated form back in December. But it worked.

It's been up a while and I've started hearing about some people having problems with it. And I shouldn't expect someone applying for a factory job to be capable of handling Acrobat forms beyond following instructions.

So I started over. What a chore.

First, please know that there are two ways of making a form in Acrobat 8--There is a form menu and subsequent toolbar, and a separate program called 'Live Cycle'.

One problem was two 'operation not permitted' error boxes when opening the form. This is because EVERY font has to be embedded in the PDF when using the 'Live Cycle' form-creator. (It sees the attempt to use the user's fonts as a possible security risk.) And once you edit the PDF using Live Cycle, you can't go back to modifying the underlying document. Which is why I was stuck rebuilding the form. Hell 1.

Part of the steps you need to do when making a form editable is going to the 'advanced' menu to change permissions so the user can save the PDF with their entries. This would also fix the 'operation not permitted' problem, I believe. Its an obscure step, IMHO. Hell 2.

The other problem was that some users needed to submit from a webmail client like Yahoo, Hotmail, or (if they are hip) Gmail. The Live Cycle program automatically created two buttons, one to email the document, the other to print it out. Webmail clients need to save the PDF and manually attach it. Hell 3.

I can fix that—I'll just add another button that uses a script to open 'save as' so the user knows to save the file before sending. And I could do that. Cool.

Except Acrobat wouldn't show the button's label text. Dunno why. So I tried editing the form using Live Cycle...now the label shows up, but the script is gone because Live Cycle can't do that function. Damn. Hell 4.

I could go on, but I've probably already bored you. And I won't even mention the problems with getting different Acrobat Readers to open and use the final result. Hell 5.

The point is that if you want to have a PDF form that website visitors need to fill out, it ain't easy to make—it's pure hell!

Engineers demand facts? But of course!

Our clients are primarily engineers. I think one of the benefits in starting in sales is that I learned that engineers want—need—the facts. Actually, with a degree in mechanical engineering, I was already 'speaking their language'.

I enjoyed this article in the latest BtoB Magazine: Sparking Interest; Electronics engineers demand facts, not fluff. Enjoyed? Yes, is was nice to hear other marketers thinking sensibly about how they approach engineers. A number of marketers are quoted in the article, all reinforcing the title. Here's a good sample:

1. "They're introverted, they're very technical, they love the Internet and they don't like salespeople," said Jeff Curie, VP-marketing at SupplyFrame, a vertical search engine for electronics components. "They really don't want you calling them and e-mailing them. They want to pull what they want, when they want it."
2. "We find that they are really, really savvy and capable of cutting through marketing mumbo jumbo and getting right back to the key message that we're trying to communicate." -John Mannion, exec VP-director of client relations for ad agency Doremus
3. Yet communicating brand to an audience of engineers can be somewhat tricky because they want information with substance, Jan Spence, director of brand for TI, said. "We feel like first and foremost we have to get out there with that technical data," she said.
4. One challenge with reaching engineers online is that many marketers are still spending too heavily on banner advertising, Curie said. "You go to a site and there are pop-ups, and towers, and pop-unders and all kinds of things that engineers tend to be somewhat annoyed by," he said. "But that's still how a lot of marketing people think."

Okay, that last one is a reminder of the struggle we face...we need to approach engineers with low-key, fact-driven marketing. But how do we get them to notice what we have to offer in the first place?

Hints for making a little money on the side

Starting a new site to earn money requires time in the beginning. The easiest to start is a home affiliate business site, I think. It will require research to be carried out to see which companies offer good products and nice referral fees. But before you can start, domain registration and website hosting research has to be done. The best web hosting packages can be easily located online. I'd also consider running through companies that are offering reseller hosting so you can have more than one domain, if needed.

If you don't have it already, get a wireless internet service so the site can be uploaded and maintained conveniently wherever you are. Actually creating the site itself will take some work, but there are some neat free tools that make it easier, like WordPress. By learning to constantly manage SEO and search engine submission, the site can do well in search engine ranking and develop enough traffic that proposals will fly in for banner advertising on the site.