Author: Dave J.

Forgive me before I start for the potentially circular discussion of ‘demos’. This post comes in two parts, each a different ‘demo’.
Last week, at the National Manufacturing Week et. al. show, I ran across the opportunity to get a T-shirt for ‘doing a demo’. Truthfully, I stopped because I was interested in this for what they were doing, not for the shirt (here I am wearing the T, “Just Demo It”). So I was led to a laptop linked to a website and was shown the product.

(I’ll skip the side-discussion about whether this demo made sense to do in the first place.)

The company: New Equipment Digest (NED)
The product: IndustrialProductDemos.com (IPD)
The demo: A website tour

Essentially, NED is a general digest of new equipment (Wow, just like their name implies). The IPD product is an online service to expand on the new equipment releases it’s advertisers publish.

Here is a link to a IPD demo to give you an idea of what they are like. Essentially, you get a pop-up flash-driven demo, that has 5 pages: intro, zoom, image swap, features, & applications. There is an option to add video, as well, which I liked. Price? $2,700.

IPD reminded me what of ‘CD catalogs’ tend to look like: content crammed into a cookie-cutter window. The image zoom and swap pages are good things that many folks don’t do on their websites, even though the easily could. The benefit hopefully is that the advertisers can rely on NED’s perfection of the cookie-cutter format so that users actually look at the demos.

And that’s the big question–will users actually come look? NED certainly has a readership that wants to learn about new products. But will they slow down and go to IPD? Will they be able to navigate to the content that interests them? Will they actually find the demos useful? Will they ‘just demo it’?

It is a admiral try to fill the existing gap of ‘how do I get my new product info in front of people in the 21st century?’ This approach seems a bit dated, and unless NED can commit to a lot more than just T-shirts to promote it, I don’t see a long future for this initiative.

The Mets didn’t make the National League baseball playoffs. They should have. I’m a Mets fan, and this year has been great, with the Mets leading their division…up until last Friday.

Earlier this month, they were ahead seven games, with just 17 left to play. But they were in meltdown mode, losing games to the Nationals and Marlins, teams they had tromped all season. In all, they lost 12 of those last 17 games.

Fans can deal with their team losing, after all there can only be one World Series champion. But this was different. It was gut-wrenching, with more than one fan referencing ‘watching an accident unfold in slo-mo’.

To me, it was obvious that something mentally toxic was going on. I don’t have to go any farther than the start of yesterday’s (Sunday) game, when star pitcher Tom Glavine got pulled in the first inning, after seven runs and just one out. He got pulled after hitting Dontrel Willis with a pitch.

The amazing thing, in the middle of this toxic environment, was the absolute zen of pitcher John Maine, who struck-out a personal best of 14 on Saturday, shutting-out the Marlins. I use the word zen because I think he sensed the toxic conditions and put his brain in a different spot.

Why share this with you, other than get some of the pain and emotion out of my system? Well, its a life and management thing. Toxic vibes spread. I even think it made for a rather crappy September for me. Be aware of the vibes. Find the zen to rise above them.

Must be why I found this story of men pursuing weightlifting in Afghanistan so inspiring.

Fresh from walking a big trade show yesterday, I found this article: Why Demo at Trade Shows? which rails against demo-ing. Granted it’s by Pragmatic Marketing, which focuses on product managers of software products.

Essentially, the author, Steve Johnson, feels that demo-ing your wares at a trade show doesn’t engage the audience and is ineffective, and at worst, counter-productive.

The article has posted commentaries by several ‘product manager bloggers’ (didn’t know there was such a thing), that are great reads on the subject, as well as on shows in general.

My opinion? Demos can be great starting-points for conversations with visitors. It engages them & qualifies them. If you don’t know what my machine does, I’ve instantly learned a lot about you. Its when the demo is one sided that there is a problem (as illustrated in the image here).

Yesterday, there were two chickies at the bottom of the escalator, handing out invites to their company’s sit-down demo. At the top of the elevator, there was a stack of these invites where attendees deposited them. And at their booth, I didn’t see one chair filled–not even a staff-person. Why do they even try this stuff anymore?

I’ll be visiting Rosemont, Illinois next Tuesday to visit the big multi-show event being put on by Canon Communications. If there are any readers who will be there exhibiting, send me an email and I’d be happy to stop by your booth, or have lunch.

Canon had bought five different Midwest shows including National Manufacturing Week, and combined them into one mega-show. I’ll be curious to see if this makes it an exciting, worthwhile show, or just a consolidation of weak shows.

Late last year I told you that you needed Powerdesk software during “Gizmos Week”.

Powerdesk is a a file browser that lets you have control of the ‘gotta find that file’ experience. I HATE browsing for pictures when Windows explorer randomly decides to list folders in thumbnail or filmstrip view, for example. The full software is $40, although the trial gives you 95% of the benefit for free (and just a splash screen when you close it.)

Well, a drive-by commenter to my blog pointed out the the Pro version is on sale for $9.95. I assume where I am pointing to you is an affiliate link, but they show the discount code of power995 to get the special price:

VCOM PowerDesk 6: Save 75%.

If you spend even half the time I do juggling files, you’ll quickly appreciate this software. Sanity for ten bucks…go for it.

PS: Additional features: Zip/unzip, FTP, recent-folder list when saving files, and can display two folders at one time.

Mix vague language, chinglish (chinese-english), and an important message about your brand…And you have a very rotten smelling email:

“We are Shanghai IDC Network Information & Technology Co.,Ltd, which is the domain name registration organization in China, which mainly deal with international company’s in china. We have something important need to confirm with your company.

On the Sep 13, 2007, we received an application formally. One company named ” XXX Investment (China) Co., Ltd” apply to register ” YYY” as Internet brand keyword and Chinese domain name,which involve internet intellectual property right of your company.

These days we are dealing with it. In order to deal with this issue better, Please contact me by telephone or email as soon as possible. “

Some googling turns up a number of folks like me going, calling this scammy or phishy, but no one has really got an exact report. The company is legitimate, but their website (govidc.org.cn) is full of information in chinglish (or just deceptively vague, but inflammatory) articles about protecting your brand and domains, so this must be their primary business.

Our Shanghai sister company already owns our brand-domain.cn, so the email was doubly confusing, but even more likely to be junk.

Now that I’ve shared this email with you, I’m going to go delete it. Or maybe I should send a reply first: “These days we are dealing with it.” LOL!

Geek update: Got an email this morning with an attachment titled ‘letter.docx’.

DOCX??? What the heck is that?

Ahh, its the latest file format from Microsoft’s Office 2007. It’s all XML and everything, supposedly. (Well this geek doesn’t really understand XML as a tool for everyday text files. Isn’t XML supposed to expand compatibility, too? But I’m leaving that off my radar.)

The fix? You can get a add-on to earlier Office versions here:

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Or use an online conversion service like Zamzar.

Reminds me of when Office 97 came out and there was much trouble with compatibility. Back then we were sending email quotes in Word format, which made it an everyday issue.

While yesterday I said there was plenty of room for improvement with our B2B websites, I should say the same applies to the Vertical Directories. Most have been stagnant in format for YEARS.

The one thing verticals shouldn’t do is try to generate revenue with AdWords. Hopefully that is obvious–you want more traffic for your customers. Usually that means selling banner ads to those in your directory. But banner blindness is running rampant these days.

GlobalSpec has come up with a smart approach to promotion within their directory, using their previous product announcement billboards. These billboard/banners must have been buried in the site in the past. (It appears that these are paid positions on top of GlobalSpec’s normal subscription.)

Now GlobalSpec has moved the billboards to the right of the search/category results. Kinda like AdWords. But there are two distinct differences:

• The billboard link includes a small picture. The pictures draw the eyes in an otherwise text-covered page.
• The billboard area in labeled “product announcements”. Somehow that is more digestible ‘news’ to click on than typical ads. You know you just getting a bit of hopefully new information before you click, too.

I really, really like this approach. Its targeted, its digestable, and it attracts the eyes.

While everyone wants to make the latest social networking trend apply to B2B websites, there still is a ton of improvement in the basics, first. I found this report from MarketingSherpa regarding glue/sealant distributor Ellsworth a breath of fresh air, because thats all it is:

Borrow the Best Tactics From Consumer Ecommerce to Revamp Your B-to-B Site:

1. Provide full product information and supporting documents
2. Calculate actual shipping costs for orders
3. Show photographs of every product
4. Provide experts to answer questions
5. Create unique landing pages for top brand name searches
6. Use negative keywords to filter out consumers

While these may not apply to capital equipment companies like mine, I am doing three of the six on my new website right now.

I especially like the concept of the “Glue Doctor”, which they are backing up with live chat, application forms, and other FAQ material. This is a great way to lead the unsure prospect into contacting their company or at least keep them on the site.

(Hmmm, wonder if the Glue Doctor would do videos next?)

I’m bullish on video for B2B (online) marketing. If it’s done right, anyway.

Like when we started building websites 10 years ago, it was easy to get it wrong. Some thought they could just repurpose their paper brochures into a website. Some got caught up in the stuff paper can’t do, like animated GIFs and hideous backgrounds.

Video online is different than standard corporate videos of old, or recent, vintage. My tastes in video have changed over the last year, as YouTube has gone from a toy to a staple. In my mind, YouTube is to video as blogs are to press releases.

So, all we need to do is apply the YouTube mentality to our videos, right? Except we’ve never done video before, and especially never done YouTube stuff. As I said yesterday, “Video is easy now, but getting it right is hard.”

Unlike all the bloggers who tried to become blog-consultants, I don’t hear YouTubers becoming video consultants. Probably aren’t enough of them to go around anyway. But I think for many companies like mine, video has much more possibility than blogs do, so where’s the help?

One agency stepping up to the opportunity is The Mothers of Invention, led by Robert Rosenthal (check out his frank blog, Freaking Marketing). They are giving away a free video production, and promoting it with, what else, a video in mini-site Web Liberation Army. See Robert’s post for all the links and details, as well as his commentary.

Robert’s a upright guy, and I see no problem in entering his contest. The worst that could happen is that you would be ahead of the learning curve.

Can you do it yourself, or do you need an agency? Robert’s advice to me, offline, was this: “start with the idea.” So, go start thinking!