Archive for December, 2005

Image is everything?

Posted on December 28 2005 by Dave J.

Here are contrasting posts about whether your company’s ‘look’ is just vanity or all important factor:
1. Beyond Web Usability…Web Credibility, Trenton Moss says”Studies have consistently proven that the most important criteria of web credibility is… the way the website looks. That’s it. “
2. How Important is a Logo? from Mike Boyink says “If it’s hard [...]

The ADD customer

Posted on December 22 2005 by Dave J.

We’ve all encountered customers who can’t seem to digest the information you provide them and then struggle when they need to make a purchase. You know the type–the one who calls you on two separate instances to find out what color or size your product is, despite it being on your website, quote, and literature. [...]

A great marketing role model

Posted on December 22 2005 by Dave J.

Why do so many people believe in Santa without ever seeing him? Great marketing, of course! Or so says Sean D’Souza:
“If you go to the heart of Santa’s marketing, the one word you come away with is ‘consistency’. Generation after generation have been exposed to one brand, one message, and the same powerful imagery. Just [...]

The marketing triangles

Posted on December 20 2005 by Dave J.

I’ve been bogged down working on phase two of our CRM program, which is a quotation system using QuoteWerks software. QW integrates with Goldmine, making a more complete solution. This phase consists of three basic tasks (But that’s not the marketing triangle.):

Develop a consistent product database. Here I am trying to fix all the [...]

Google leads the way, again

Posted on December 16 2005 by Dave J.

If you’ve missed the news, Google has added a metric to its ranking of AdWords ads: landing pages. Is this big news?
Well, duh. If you are paying for clicks, you should make sure you are driving them to a worthwhile, actionable page. But of course a lot of small B2B marketers are just going thru [...]

B2B Marketing isn't Architecture

Posted on December 15 2005 by Dave J.

(I just dug this post out of my Blogger drafts, and seems even more needed after my recent post about a job definition for marketing manager. At the time I wrote this, I didn’t like what I had to say, but don’t remember why.)
In December Seth Godin wrote about someone looking to hire a senior [...]

Marketer's are guardians

Posted on December 9 2005 by Dave J.

Did you all see this post: Brand Autopsy: Broken Windows. Broken Business? John Moore is summarizing a book, which can be further summarized by this one sentence from his post:
“According to Levine, broken windows are telltale signs to customers that a business doesn’t care, that it is poorly managed, and or it has become too [...]

YAD: SourceTool.com

Posted on December 8 2005 by Dave J.

New B2Blog term: YAD– Yet Another DirectorySourceTool.com B2B Directory Launched · MarketingVOX: “Former executives from B2B search directory ThomasB2B.com have launched a new supplier directory at SourceTool.com”
What’s makes this YAD different:

Conextual ad revenue based (i.e. AdSense)
Use of UNSPSC (United Nations) business classification
Search results are limited to companies and just link to their home pages
The [...]

What do engineers respond to?

Posted on December 5 2005 by Dave J.

I sell to engineers. They’re a fickle bunch. Unfortunately, I made it through the Mechanical Engineering program before deciding I didn’t want to be an engineer. But the background was helpful to sell to them at their own level…and now market to them.
MarketingSherpa posts a white-paper on GlobalSpec’s experience developing an online game aimed at [...]

The magic missing columns

Posted on December 2 2005 by Dave J.

When I first griped about importing addresses into Goldmine, I had a problem with zip-codes losing the leading zero for New England. Russ was kind enough to suggest saving as a DBF file, which is effective. I’ve since learned a couple things through instruction and hard knocks about using DBF files.

Only visible characters in the [...]