Author: Dave J.

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 If you aren’t taking advantage of the valuable feedback of the market in cyberspace, your will look outdated online and in print.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first in your strategy, you’ll risk resorting to cut/paste from your literature TO your website, contributing to that outdated, unreadable content you see on so many B2B websites (even if the content looks fresh in the literature).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!

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!

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.)

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.)

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?

“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!