Author: Dave J.

Last week I attended a local seminar by ThomasNet, focusing on website conversion. The two hour event featured TN Content Manager Ed Edwards. Experienced with both TN’s website, as well as client sites, he was a good pick to make this presentation. Ultimately, the presentation was a subtle vehicle for expanding TN customers into web design/content clients. Here are some take-aways:

63% of website visitors are looking for shipping info (on top of everyone looking for pricing information, as we have discussed before).

86% of visitors will not return to a website they decide has insufficient content.

One attendee brought up poor follow-through on web-requests. In my notes, I called this mystery meat response—you never know what you get until you try it. This could be a post or two all by itself.

Good content improves the quality of the leads generated by a website. (Or more importantly, the corollary: a poor website generates poor leads, leading managers to think the web doesn’t work to generate business.)

Ed made a very obvious, but valuable example of the benefit of improving conversion, basically assuming all is the same except the number of submitted RFQs goes up 1%, the example company realized 20% increase in sales.

Product search keyword-phrases can consist of the following three elements:

• Product type
• Application
• Product attributes

Overall, good, if seemingly obvious information. Of course, I’m reminded every time I go to a seminar like this how little some marketers understand the web or are simply behind. Hopefully they all got a good kick in the right direction.

Now for those more interested in what ThomasNet product positioning is like these days:

Ed showed how TN’s ‘Quick Links” features allow visitors to ThomasNet.com to drill down to product content quickly. That content comes in the way of a ‘catalog’ hosted by TN. The example he used showed a TN listing that went from 12 actions & average 35 seconds/viewer to 38 actions, 113 catalog pages viewed, with average duration of 3:09.

My take on this example is that this catalog traffic probably would have happened on the clients website if the Quick Links went straight to the customer site (assuming they had the same content there). I do like the Quick Links concept, and that some clients can benefit from the tools TN has to organize products in their Catalog offering.

The classic ‘vertical site’ justification was made, comparing TN aggregation of vendors as similar to Expedia or Travelocity. You don’t go to Google to get plane tickets, it was pointed out. Yea, but…

Also noted that in the search discussion, Ed used examples where TN Catalog pages were ranking high. While you can debate the use of their catalog service, it seems one should not discount TN because they are SEO experts who can get content ranked high. The online catalogs and ‘quick links’ are TN’s entrée into parametric search, but they are vendor specific, unlike GlobalSpec.

Okay, I’ve been rough on salespeople making cold calls recently. And they deserve it. This is risky stuff because it is so easy to blow…so if you (or your sales staff) are doing cold-calling, how can you improve?

Harry Joiner, the “Marketing Headhunter” has a recent post that asks the question Does Cold Calling Work? Really, it is question he asks at the end, but the post is filled with thoughts, links, and advise for the cold caller.

Some points I found:

• Remember you are interrupting someone
• Cold-calling is a chess game
• Nurture the leads: “Take things a step at a time: You can’t get from first base to third by running across the pitcher’s mound.”
• 50% of salespeople don’t make more than one contact
• Easy 5-step process to get to a second contact

Oh and here’s the sales-dork move of the week:
A sales guy visited our offices and left his business card with the receptionist for me. So I’ve got to go off what the card says, which isn’t much, or go to his website. Biz cards are fun to see if you can toss into the trash! 2-points for Dave!

Here’s the same old ‘renew your listing’ scam I’ve dealt with for the last 10+ years. It’s only worse because their name is “Reed Directories”, that sounds like the very respected “Reed Publications”. Matter of fact, if someone from the real Reed is out there, I’d jump all over these guys.

A little whois search tells me they are from Quebec which virtually guarantees its a shady operation. It also links shows their parent company, Mediacorp.

So, they almost sound legit because they haven’t hidden their ownership too well, and Mediacorp’s website says they are in the business of making directories. Here’s where the fish starts to smell tho:

• The Reed Directories website doesn’t list any company information.
• Introduction as ‘white/yellow pages’ directory (white pages, for business?)
• The salesperson’s pitch started with the ‘need to verify your listing’.
• At the end, told they will be sending directory via UPS (not mail, to avoid postal inspectors?)
• Asked to provide billing information for 300-some dollars.
• Told I was being contacted because I was already in their directory.

I loved being a B2B sales guy. The best part was that we are ‘demand driven’, which means no cold calling.

Sales people are the weak link in our marketing, re-interpreting our plans or materials, or worse ignoring them. They tend to think like billboards when cold-calling, not gatekeepers.

Its worst when they think its a game show. Have you heard this one come out of your salespersons’ mouth:

“Dialing for dollars”

I just hung up with a guy who was obviously doing just that. Adios muchacho!

UPDATE: Third message from a translation service. Third time at lunch. Non-committal message. This time “I’m sure your busy, so I’m going to take the liberty of sending you some literature”. NO, you called at lunch and left a message that you didn’t make compelling to return.

I received a newsletter from a trade publication with this interesting case:

“The leading industry brand abruptly cut advertising, and traffic to its website quickly followed suit. While overall traffic dropped 75% in eight months, the drastic 90% decrease in direct traffic (buyers who type in a specific URL) reveals that consistent advertising frequency is vital in order to attract new buyers to a website.”

The chart shows the website going from 18,000 visitors/hits (chart shows both) a month to 4,500 over an eight month period. I’d be curious to hear how much their web-inquiries dropped during that same period.

In any case, an interesting tale of the power of trade-pub advertising. If you aren’t using print advertising, perhaps you should flip this chart and see how your site traffic could increase if you started advertising.

You really aren’t supposed to say ‘um’. While the speaker doesn’t realize that he’s said it, the listener, who is waiting for a response, can find it rude or distracting.

Even more so, ‘um’ is not something used in written communications. You don’t need to stall, as you are writing at your own pace. You can craft the words to make your message appropriate.

When you do say ‘um’, it means you are thinking. Or stalling. Or stalling that is supposed to look like thinking.

If the listener thinks you are thinking, the delay is probably acceptable. If she thinks you are stalling, well, that’s not good!

Enough stalling

What I really want to get to is this: I’ve found myself writing ‘um’ in a few emails and instant-messages recently. Usually in response to direct questions for information or help by colleagues. I might have used it commenting on other folks’ blogs, too.

I already know the answer when I start typing. I’ve added the ‘um’ to indicated that I understand their question is a thoughtful one. And to indicate that my response is also thoughtful.

What I fear is that my ‘um’ sounds more like a stall, a delay to the response that is there when someone is thinking ‘this is an easy question, but I need to stall to make it look harder than it is’. Could it make me sound arrogant?

The internet has begot us emoticons, which I’ve used as well, when words fail to communicate the tone of what I am writing. (I once posted here wishing there was a rolling-eyes emoticon.) Similarly, this ‘um’ is a crutch to communicate tone. And just like communicating in person, it can still be interpreted different ways.

Summing it up:

Well, I have no summation. This is just a concern/issue in the back of my head. I want to appear thoughtful. I don’t want to sound arrogant. Which is it? I don’t know.

Perhaps you are listed in an online vertical product directory. Part of the value of being listed, beyond the obvious is link-love. Incoming links from these “important” webpages raises the value of your webpages via Google’s PageRank system.

The directories have worked hard to create a listing page that ranks high in Google, as evidenced by the frequency that I see Thomas, GlobalSpec, and even IQS in the SERPs (search-engine-results-pages). Then these pages link to your pages, of course.

But what do the directory pages link to? Do they link deep into your site, or just to the home page? I explored this question from a usability angle when I presented at InfoCommerce in 2005. The number of clicks on the directory can be acceptable if they are ‘going somewhere’, but how frustrating is it to be dumped at an advertiser’s home-page and have to continue exploring?

Anyway, the question raised today at Industrial Search Engine Marketing Blog is “Are you making the most of your online marketing?” What is the PageRank of the linking page and where is it linking to.

“If they are looking on one of these directories to look for a Material Handling Equipment provider, why would you take him to your homepage when you can bring him right to what he’s looking for? Don’t show him the menu when he already knows he wants the steak.

So I did an experiment. I went to each of the four directories, looking for a Material Handling Equipment provider. Keep in mind, that I’m only doing a sampling, this is not a full blown research project. Nor do I know the inner-workings of each directory. I’m simply doing an experiment. That being said…let’s begin.”

Sites evaluated:
GlobalSpec, KellySearch, MacRae’s Blue Book, & Thomas Industrial Network

I did some casual research on my on at GS and TN, and found the analysis is appropriate. Taking a look at IQSDirectory.com, it looks like nearly all their advertisers are getting links to their home pages, but with some nice PageRank, usually of 3.

That all said, it is probably up to the advertiser to make sure the deep-links are being made by the directories.

The fuel-door cable on my Honda Civic apparently broke. Search Google for “fix civic fuel door cable” and find this site as #1: www.fueldoorfix.com

No AdWords displayed, no other retailers in the SERPs. One link is to eBay where I can buy a used cable for ten bucks (without any description or picture).

The repair part at Fuel Door Fix looks like a plastic casting that costs just pennies, but I just paid $23.95 Canadian with free shipping via PayPal. There is even a short video showing how do the repair.

The Internet is truly a glorious place of solutions…and opportunities.

For those B2B media sales guys out there, you might be interested in this opportunity sent to me by Curtis Wharton of Douglas Publications:

“I am looking for an independent Online and Ezine advertisement sales person to handle B2B sales in the fields of Human Resources, Safety and Medical Facilities. We have three magazines in these areas, Human Capital Magazine , Compliance Magazine and FacilityCare Magazine.”

His email is as you might suspect: cwharton at douglaspublications.com.

I’m ready to be done with the discussion of published pricing on our websites. We got an introduction by Dilbert, then talked about the benefits, why we don’t do it, and done a case study, and chatter in between. (Thanks again for everyone’s comments.)

Today lets look at what we can do even if we can’t/won’t publish prices. Basically, we want to:

• let the visitor know how to get pricing, or
• understand the relationship price has to the features of what they are looking at.

1. Let the visitor know how to get pricing:

Create a call to action: I’ve seen a number of sites that clearly call out “get quote” or ‘submit RFQ’ as a text link or a button. One I saw this morning had a right-arrow on the button indicating a direction of ‘moving forward’ that I thought was effective.

If you want to generate calls, “call for a quote” with a toll-free number next to it is great. And even today, I think a toll-free number works like that right-arrow in subtly affirming that this is the correct path to take.

If you rely on distributors, you’ve got to find a way to drive visitors to them (i.e. a directory). Then create a call to action like “Pricing? Contact your local distributor”.

The corollary is that if you don’t use distributors, you may want to make this clear in your call to action, as well. The only thing prospects hate more than having to call for pricing, is being given the run-around.

A special page: You may want to make a special page that explains why you don’t publish prices and clarify the value of contacting your for a quote. Its your chance to sound fair and to put them at ease with your sales process.

Make a promise about quote turn-around time. These to-be-prospects want their answers in a hurry. Offering a quote may not be enough for them. Maybe that call-to-action grows a little “Get a quote today”.

2. Clarify the relationship between price and features (value):

Provide clues about pricing. In Home Depot, I’ve seen some products displayed as ‘good’, ‘better’, and ‘best’. In other cases a graphic “price barometer” could be effective technique to give a clue about pricing. These techniques are useful when comparing between your own products, but it’ll be a bit harder to do this versus your competition. Here’s a sample I just made:

Use percentages. Most obvious might be to say “10% less than other brands”. Or “upgrade to our next size for 10% more”.

Anyway, you get the idea. Folks are looking for your price and you are under no requirement to publish it. But use this knowledge of their desire for pricing to your advantage. Draw them in, let them understand, let them feel in control. In the long run, I think both you and your prospect will be the better for it.