I know most of you will just scan the following list, but that’s okay…thanks for being there and reading what I’ve written for the last year.
I especially enjoyed these posts of mine for their ‘aha’ effect, or the frankness of my opinion. The Marketing Eye series was probably my favorite effort of the year.
- Gizmos Week: PowerDesk Yes, you need this!
- Buyers are looking for sellers “Buyers are looking for, but not finding, the following information on our websites: Pricing, Tech support details, Shipping, & Ordering online.”
- Is It Really That Difficult? “In B2B, haven’t we all assumed that product knowledge is #1 for an effective salesperson? Have we been that stupid?”
- Is B2B marketing really this bad? “Some of B2B products get sold without a customer ever looking at a website, while others are web-intensive. You can’t just “leave these outmoded methods behind.”
- Techie prospects like industry standards “Being ‘standard’ eliminates risk, justifies pricing, and removes the sense of manipulation. It’s a powerful concept.”
- BtoB advertisements Crappy ads pervade…let me prove it to you.
- B2B content trapped in need for completeness? “How much smarter is it to leave your marketing incomplete and let the reader do the heavy lifting? The conclusion may be obvious, but now the conclusion is theirs.”
- Marketing Eye for the Sales Guy series My intro to this series: “These salespeople have only one chance to do it right, in most cases. And being on the receiving end of the pitch, I’m constantly amazed by how salespeople blow it. Top crimes, IMHO: Wishy-washy voice mails; Not asking the right questions; Barking up the wrong tree; Not following up; Pretending the Internet doesn’t exist”
- Small and ugly can be a winner Get the most of your partial-page ad.
- Quality is free! Freely abused, anyway “In today’s online world where marketing-speak is not tolerated, the marketer may just avoid the subject of quality and let the buyer assume that your quality meets whatever minimum standard he or she has.”