Year: 2006

This week I am sharing some of my favorite software gizmos from my Web-marketing toolbox.

Today’s gizmo: FastStats by Mach5
Tasks: Analyze your website’s log files.
Cost: $100 or $200
Get it here: FastStats website (aff)

I’ve talked about FastStats here before, so let me explain instead why I still recommend it.

I still use FastStats (FS) despite adding Google Analytics (GA) last year. FS analyzes log files, whereas GS analyzes based on a script run each time one of your webpages is accessed. Log files give you additional data about the usage of your site, such as 404 errors, image downloads, raw referral info, and more. And because the results can be outputted into Excel (FS gold version), I can tinker with the data in a way GS makes difficult or impossible. The only problem is comparing data between the two is not helpful.

Sometimes the hand-saw (FS) is simply a better choice than the power-saw (GS).

(Disclosure: Any affiliate income this week will be redirected to one of my fav podcasts, Coverville. He has a BMA license for his music to pay for and I have a couple gig of his shows. I figure this way everyone wins, and hopefully I don’t look like a shill.)

This week I am sharing some of my favorite software gizmos from my Web-marketing toolbox.

Today’s gizmo: Free Monitor for Google, by Cleverstats
Tasks: Check your keyword ranking on Google
Cost: Free
Get it here: www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm

Checking how you rank on Google can be like checking the hot stock you just bought. But why actually go through the trouble of entering each of your keyword terms and finding where your rank…there is a better way.

Free Monitor lets you enter a number of different URLs, then keyword phrases that you want to check for that URL. Then press the search button and it checks all the keywords for you. Slick!

It gives you green arrows when your ranking improves and dreaded red arrows when you sink. In the right-most pane you can review the results for that keyword, in a condensed form, showing who is ahead or behind you. The only downside is that you can’t print-out the results…I use screen shots instead.

Just today I’ve run into some problems with Google giving results out via this tool. Cleverstats does recommend registering with Google for an API key (there is a menu item which takes you to Google’s API page), which then made the tool work (but not perfectly). I assume this is just temporary and still heartily recommend this program.

But just like checking a hot stock (or other behaviors), don’t get carried away. I usually check just once a month.

Just got a call from a new keyword marketing service called Realfrases.

(Well that’s not their real name, but I don’t want to attract their attention just yet, because Googling their actual name generates just six results. If you substitute a ‘ph’ for the ‘f’, you’ll find their website.)

1. The service:
They are offering a IE7 plug-in that creates a peek-a-boo of your webpage on top of whatever search engine their users are using. The idea is that users will find this ‘preview’ of your website valuable and then you beat out the actual search results below. No idea how they are going to get their tool installed on so many browsers. The plug-in on their site is offered as an .exe, not a true IE plug-in.

2. The pitch:
Because their tools shows only one website, its first come, first served…at around $1-2K per search term for one year. Cash upfront, according to their contract. Their website is skimpy. The person I spoke to was promising a specific number of views per month.

The sales pitch and lack of supporting information smacks of other shady SEM services I have been approached about before. Regardless, there are too many questions to be taking a risk on this one.

This week I am sharing some of my favorite software gizmos from my Web-marketing toolbox.

Today’s gizmo: Irfanview
Tasks: Image viewing, printing, adjusting
Cost: Free
Get it here: www.irfanview.com

Do you hate the clunky software that came with your digital camera? Do you need to resize 34M tif files from your photographer, but hate waiting for Photoshop to load? (Or just the price of Photoshop?)

I use Irfanview every day. It opens nearly every image file type there is, and quickly. I use it as my default image-viewer. Then if I want to modify the image, the tools are right there.

Part of the secret of any software, but especially a single-task software, is knowing exactly what it can do and accessing it fast. Here is my primer for Irfanview.

(First, be sure to set ‘view>display options>Only fit large images to window’. Miss this and you will be frustrated with what you see on your screen.)

• Navigating between pictures in a folder: space & backspace…slick!
• Resizing images: ctrl-R to get a window of choices
• Adjusting color/brightness: shft-G (I use the gamma slide bar instead of brightness)
• Saving to same folder: ctrl-S (saves to folder you opened image from)
• Saving to different folder: “S” (helpful when you want your modified pics to go elsewhere)
• Printing: ctrl-P of course, but this is such an nice feature…all the options you’d want for printing the image are right there on one window, including a preview.
• Batch editing: “B”. Be sure to check out the ‘advanced’ button for resizing options.

Yes, I still have a couple 16 oz. hammers in my toolbox (Fireworks, Photoshop), but this 12 oz. hammer is the one that goes on my toolbelt.

So on Tuesday, I posted a prediction that the next challenge for B2B marketing is integration and tools. Here’s an example:

George Fischer Signet has built a Flash web app System Selection Tool that lets engineers select sensors and instrumentation for their application.

This is simply an automated ‘selection wizard’ that helps confirm you’ve selected the right sensor, then lets you configure it with the correct connectors and outputs. As you select choices in the wizard, the application grays-out those sensors that don’t meet your requirement. Then you add the parts to a virtual order sheet.

It’s Flash, it’s not perfect, but it gets the job done the way a static web page or shopping cart can’t. They also have a nice B2B 1.0 application library that I’ll bet most B2B sites don’t have (mine is pretty lame compared to theirs).

I’ll restate myself from the other day: The bar is being raised!

MarketingVOX:

“There is a very real risk that B2B companies with an online focus limited to marketing via search engine or display advertising will lose out to 2.0-savvy companies committed to internet-enabling everything throughout their organization.”

This final comment comes almost out of nowhere in the article: B2B Putting Money Where The Market Is, but I think it might be prophetic.

Over the years I’ve posted here about bogus B2B telemarketing scams. I even got contacted by a Canadian Mountie once. Looks like another kingpin is going down!

The Caffeine Marketing Blog pointed me to this news: Ontario man sentenced to more than 12 years in prison in telemarketing scam:

“Terrence Croteau, 32, of Welland, Ont., pleaded guilty in May to 20 counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud and a telemarketing-conspiracy charge….

Authorities say that between 2000 and June 2004, Croteau’s employees called businesses, charities, churches, sheriff’s offices and others, offering for as much as $800 to include them in business directory listings, which ultimately were bogus.

Croteau’s employees pretended they were legitimately renewing an existing listing or said they were confirming the business’ correct address to get employees to say the word “yes” on tape.”

Sound familiar to some of you?

Sometimes it seemed as if the government doesn’t really care about these B2B scams because they are white-collar, per-incident value is low, and, of course the difficulty in hunting down the bad guys. That may still be true, its just that Croteau got greedy (the article mentions foot-high phone bills), making him an easier target.

Thank you to the US government for pinning this guy down!

ThomasNet recently published a new white paper titled Industrial Marketing Online with the much more interesting sub-title of “Getting industrial buyers and sellers on the same page”.

One of my readers recommended it. There is good stuff inside. You can download it here. (There is another interesting report there called Supplier Survival in the Information Age that I may review in the future.)

Here are some highlights:

Where buyers first look when researching a new need:

• Search engine (23%)
• Known supplier offline (19%)
• Industrial destination site (17%)
• Known supplier website (11%)

The next data set is where the reality-check of the sub-title comes in…where sellers are ‘meeting the market’ and where the buyers are looking.

The big disparities here are search engines and destination sites.

The search category is probably a bit erroneous because I would assume that organic listings in search engines may be enough without any effort on the marketer. But this data also means that nearly half of industrial marketers aren’t trying to maximize their value where 83% of their prospects will be.

The industrial destination site category is where ThomasNet falls. And these are apparently used more than some folks would think. How they are being used would be an interesting follow-up question.

Overall, the white paper reports that buyers can spend an average of eight hours of research online before making a purchase. Did you get that? Eight hours!!!

The last set of data in the report jabs a well-deserved elbow in the ribs of us B2B marketers: Buyers are looking for, but not finding, the following information on our websites:

• Pricing
• Tech support details
• Shipping
• Ordering online

I could write a post about each of these, but suffice it to say that these are big challenges that may not be practical. The paper acknowledges this, but tells us that the potential customers would be quite grateful if this information were online, as they could remain anonymous. That is half of why this information is NOT online. We want them to call us.

However this data aligns with your marketing methods, I think it is a helpful snapshot for how the buyers are behaving and what they expect. When planning for 2007, I’d keep this information in mind!

I’ve been waiting for Firefox to cross an imaginary line. October 2006 was it:

10.9% of visitors to my company’s site were using Firefox, according to Google Analytics.

When I first posted for January 2005, my stats were at 7.7%. That was using log files which today shows 14.9%. Adoption is slow.

The new Firefox is great for automatic spell check alone. Beats Blogger’s spell check that still doesn’t recognize the words blog and Google. Really!

(BTW: already 2% of visitors using IE were using version 7, while 4.5% of Firefox users were using version 2)

(YAD= Yet Another Directory)
John Blossom, in his excellent marketing/publishing/communications news blog, lets us know about a new B2B search/directory called Zibb. His review reveals that Zibb was created by Reed Business Publishing to make their trade pubs’ contents easily available on the web, but was expanded to include much more information. “The result is a portal that provides content from leading B2B trade publications as well as product and company content from KellySearch and content from weblogs and Web sites”, John summarizes.

Read more from John: Zibb Jab: Business Search Engines Take on Google and Enterprise Aggregators

Okay, Zibb may not technically qualify as YAD because it is more than a directory. But, like John, I see potential and flaws. Of course, the biggest problem for YADs is getting users. InfoCommerce recently pointed to SourceTool.com (a previously reviewed YAD) as being successful, while Alexa shows that after initial hype, the site traffic has dropped way off.