BtoB advertisements

Once again, BtoB Magazine sent out a reader survey to review advertisements in their latest issue. And just like my post last year, it is appalling when you slow down and put a critical eye on these ads. They surved up thirteen for me to review--I've dubbed two excellent and three poor.

Click on the small image below to see the whole ad.

Excellent ads	Poor ads
TechTarget: They have one message and they communicate it clearly.	Cheetahmail: The ad is ugly and takes three paragraphs to get to thepoint.
Global Intelligence: It says what they do and give specifics about costs. Confident without swagger. All in B&W.	Davis Harrison Dion: If these guys do branding, their ad certainly doesn't prove it.
	CTIA: What a jumbled ad. And poorly written.

The "Copy Chasers" really need to get after their own advertisers!

Search marketing works for B2B, too.

Thanks to a reader, I learned that there was a 'B2B Case Study' session at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco. The article reviewing the session, titled, Search marketing works for B2B, too, starts with this gem:

"Most people assume search marketing works only to reach consumers, but it's actually quite effective for businesses wishing to connect with other businesses, as well."

Um, I'd counter that SEM is more effective for B2B, but I think this comment just shows the lack of knowledge of the author--obviously B2B is off the charts for some folks. The article throws up comments about basic SEM for B2B but this bit is probably of interest B2Blog readers:

"Rick Brown, President of NetTrack closed out the session with a discussion of the effectiveness of paid inclusion in vertical aggregator sites like ThomasNet, GlobalSpec and Industrial Quick Search. Brown articulated his endorsement of such aggregators cautiously, saying that they can bring in relevant traffic as well as provide valuable links to a company's homepage but that many of the metrics such websites use to promote their services (such as "reach," "page views," and "brand activity") don't have much impact on a client's bottom line.

He also noted that the value of the links from content aggregators is highest when the landing page can be controlled and there is a one to one relationship between the product category being searched and the landing page on a firm's website. Brown suggested than firms who invest in paid inclusion on a vertical aggregator site have their own analytics like ClickTracks to determine the value of the traffic coming in from sites like Industrial Quick Search. "

Um, get an analytics program? Duh. What most B2B folks don't do is actually look at the data and ponder its meaning.

One thing that Rick Brown said that is innovative, is that he proposes a 1-to-1 relationship between the seller's landing page and the product categories on the directories. I've opined before that part of the problem with directories is that once the user clicks-thru, they have to start their search over again.

BTW: A rather interesting post by Marketing Headhunter Harry Joiner about a SEO specialist looking for a new job. Key fact: $125-150K pay for specialists at SEO agencies. Wow!

Sponsoring B2B email newsletters

Globalspec's newsletter, Marketing Maven, posts a e-marketing 101 article titled What to Know About Sponsoring e-Newsletters that caught my attention. I don't think the subject gets talked about very much. Ultimately, she is making a case for sponsoring Globalspec's industry-specific newsletters.

"A compelling case exists for suppliers and manufacturers to add sponsorship of e-newsletters to their marketing mix. The benefits of the right sponsorship include:"

• Brand visibility
• Frequency
• Low barrier to entry
• Audience
• Ability to test"

Okay, the Maven is right on these (and she explains more for each bullet), but there are two other issues that come to my mind:

1. Cost. Of course.
Globalspec has always positioned itself as costing about as much for a one year listing as a single full page ad in a trade publication (around $15K). Their newsletter sponsorships (three different positions available) are about $2,500 per issue. This was true regardless of the audience size (30K or 70K), but is on par with pricing I've seen with trade publications.

This expense could be acceptable for an advertiser with a large budget trying to round out their exposure triangle. For a partial-page advertiser like myself, this is a big price to pay for a extremely fleeting exposure. But that leads to my second point.

2. Effectiveness
Just how fast do people scan e-newsletters? Fast. The quality of content and the format is going to effect how the user reads the newsletter, but the process is fast nonetheless. While there is a 'low barrier to entry' as the Maven says, and it sounds good to get your promotion in front of 70K folks at one shot, I don't think that you can just throw money and a simple ad/listing and expect results. Particular care needs to be placed on what your ad says and looks like, and how it fits in the newsletter. Essentially, the same due-diligence should be applied as to a print ad in order to be effective.

So, in summary, I think e-newsletter sponsorship works when:

• It is a smaller part of an overall marketing program
• The newsletter format makes the sponsorship likely to be noticed
• The advertiser prepares content that gets noticed
• Sponsors should take advantage of the points the Maven calls out

Longtime readers may remember I once posted about a newsletter sponsor that got me to click, only to lead to a white paper as a Word file. Hopefully we're all past that by now.

Hiding your email address in plain site

Posting email addresses on your website is dumb. Evil things called Spam-bots patrol the web looking for email addresses to add to their spam lists. For a corporate website, a web-form is a convenient way to hide from bots as well as manage incoming requests.

But for situations where direct contact with someone is preferred, please don't post their email address on the website without hiding it from the bots. There are a number of ways to do this, but the best way is to use Javascript to assemble the email address for a browser. Spam-bots (and search-engine-bots) don't use browsers or Javascript and thus just get some useless code.

A quick search turned up a number of tools to do this, but I used this one yesterday. You just take his email.js script and add it to your website, then use his tool to generate the script-call with the information to assemble the email address in the browser.

So I've added an email link to the right of this blog, instead of going to the 'about' page (where I assume Blogger has posted my email address with similar cloaking). Blogger won't let me use the script within my posts, but you can look at the webpage to email me (if you can't guess that my email is dave-at-b2blog anyway.)

"Finally, an event for those of you who wear too many hats!"

So leads a mailer I recently received from ISA (Instrument Society of America). Seems that they are putting together their "First Annual Marketing & Sales Summit". Wow, a real B2B organization putting together a marketing program!

The ISA seems to be more about software and automation these days than instruments per-say, so maybe I'm overreaching in thinking they care about 'industrial' marketing vs. 'tech' marketing.

Anyway, it lands at a bad time for me to be able to attend (second week of September), but maybe some of you guys out there are interested. www.isa.org/rsvp/1

Seth said it, were you listening?

It bears repeating:

"If you're busy marketing like you've got my attention, you've already made a huge mistake." --Seth Godin

Need some proactive material on what to do about it? Here: Unconverted Leads: What Do You Do With Them? By Sean D'Souza.

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BTW: I feel compelled to share: I clicked on an untargeted banner ad yesterday. Don't know if I ever have before. Maybe I did when the web was young and I was curious. It was an ad for the new DVD set for Brisco County Jr. And that's going on my xmas list, no sale today. Now how many banners have I needed to ignore over the years just to find this one?

GTD goes Zen

Some people run out and buy a health club membership when they commit to 'getting healthy'. Really, are you better off (A) doing low-cost exercise at home till you find the commitment sticking or (B) getting better tools so you succeed easier?

When I decide to 'get organized', I go with choice B. Of course, I spend more time tinkering and trying new systems than actually Getting Things Done (GTD). I'm attracted by how organized computer programs can make things, but my actual usage lacks (as I admitted to Larry last month in his post Digital or Analog).

Last round, I installed GTD-PHP, a handy "next action/to do" web-app. Besides my lack of active use, the current version doesn't work with my host's older version of MySQL. Of course I'd rather spend an hour trying to install it anyway than to spend that same hour using the version I have and GTD. (shake head at self)

My shiny-new tool is called Tracks, which I found via lifehack.org, who linked to 52reviews.com. Their posts were alerts that Zenlist.com was offering free hosting of Tracks. I downloaded the program anyway, but quickly found I was out of my league for install...so Zenlist it is. All you need is an email and password to sign up.

Tracks is not all that complex, and misses some key features GTD-PHP has, but it is Ajax/Ruby-on-rails smooth, which bumps its usability up. Usability and less tinkering should boost my chances of success.

I am adjusting my expectations, too. Rather than a total brain-dump, I am limiting Zenlist to work-related projects that I need to keep organized. Paper to-do lists and piles of 'active folders' will still litter my desk. I have committed to having Zenlist open on my PC at all times to encourage usage.

My personal life needs organization to GTD, but I will relegate that to choice (A) in the first paragraph, and see if I can't stick to paper lists first.