Author: Dave J.

I was asked a couple weeks ago: “What about all those email newsletters the trade publications send out? Does anybody read those?”

I’m not a direct marketer, so I didn’t really have a good idea, but as a potential newsletter advertiser, the question is a good one. DM News provides a good answer, as reported by MarketingVOX:

“This survey confirms our suspicions that a large percentage of BTB e-mail subscribers do not download images and prefer to scan or read their e-mails within the preview pane, and never fully open the e-mail,” said Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing at EmailLabs.”

So as an advertiser, I should be looking for email newsletters that are designed for this type of usage: “EmailLabs suggests that emails include a 2-3-inch preview pane header area containing no images but including key offers, article teasers and ‘In This Issue’ information.”

I usually don’t jump on new stuff, but since I’ve been pondering ‘client-side analytics’ for my websites, I signed up for the new Google Analytics on Monday when I first heard about it.

I added this blog and my company site. The website was a little balky and took some time to show actual data, but I saw my first reports this AM. Some reports were essentially blank, so I had to go back to configure it to suit my needs:

1. Disallowed recording accesses from our office’s IP address. They have these funny Posix regular expressions for controlling filters, which will take some getting used to. This is important because you need a backslash in front of periods if they are part of the expression, because periods are also Posix terms.

2. Had to go to my AdWords account to ‘link’ to the Analytics account. This is important for conversion tracking. There is a new tab in AdWords called Analytics where you can do this.

3. I had to create Goals. This is simply target URLs on the website that you want to measure traffic to. In my case, this is the main web-request form.

The reports you get are overwhelming and I’m not sure which ones are useful to me. Its always fun to look at you data in new ways though. I did find how to see more than the top 5 or 10 page accesses, which was my initial concern. Overall, it looks promising, but I need to pick a couple reports to track results. (Chart shown is for this blog.)

I get this nifty little magazine/promotional piece a few times a year called Product Marketing, which is targeted at technology product management. I don’t market software, but there is always something worthwhile in it. You’ll love this one:

As a sidebar to the cover article, the author makes parallels between Star Trek and marketing called: Is your company The Original Series or The Next Generation? (scroll halfway down to find the whole sidebar)

“Unfortunately, sales people are often like Captain Kirk: action without thought, asking for the impossible and frequently violating the prime directive.

Meanwhile, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is like many marketing people: emotion without logic, frequently complaining about what they aren’t: “Damn it, Jim. I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.”

Thankfully, we have Scotty as a stand-in for our product managers. Scotty initially tells Kirk that whatever he wants is impossible and fifteen minutes later, says, “Okay, you’ve got warp drive.””

Then he compares to the characters from TNG (The Next Generation). He says about Bones’ contemporary:

“Beverly Crusher, in the marketing role, is a good doctor, as was McCoy, but she also understands the business of the starship, can and does serve as an executive officer with understanding of all roles, and uses scientific metrics to evaluate the health of the crew.”

And wraps up with this gem:

“Here is the difference: Picard can be trusted with accurate information while Kirk cannot. Picard never makes promises that his crew cannot keep while Kirk frequently does. And the crew knows it… in both cases. The “old school” acts more on instinct and hope while the next generation acts on procedure and knowledge.”

And so, which ship are you on? What’s your crew like? And are you acting appropriately?

The title of this post is also the title of my presentation at ICC on Monday. Poking a stick at the directories, wasn’t I?

Thankfully, I don’t have to try to remember what I said during my ‘sanity check’ presentation. My blogosphere buddy (and now in person) David Shaw does a great job finding the high points: “My summary: For Dave, Google is outperforming industry-specific directories dramatically, not only in clickthroughs, but in quality of search results. And that’s a serious problem for any b2b publisher. Some more key takeaways…”

Dave laments the small audience I drew (speaking opposite Sherpa Anne Holland), but the feedback I have gotten back says I delivered the goods, which is satisfying enough. And talking to Pat and others afterwords says I had the right audience.

John Blossom has detailed slide-by-slide notes, as I noted yesterday. If any regular readers want to see the presentation, drop me an email. Because it has some real traffic numbers, I don’t want to publish it here. But I can post the core of the presentation, which justifies my title (besides the traffic numbers):

What’s Wrong with directories:

• We are sold on clicks and category rankings
• Users judge (directory) sites on relevant results

• We assume you have an unique audience
• You focus on skimming Google to boost traffic

• We (advertisers & directories) want to use categories
• Users are used to using search

Hence: Google rules:

• It ranks based on relevance
• Traffic is not contrived
• Uses search to drill down

Go ahead and argue with that! But its easy to be the critic. The directories have the really hard work of finding solutions to these issues–I’ll be watching.

Most trade pubs run annual buyer’s guides, relics of pre-internet days. But you’ve got to imagine that a focused list of suppliers would be of value to their readership still. And so I diligently respond to update requests from magazines, especially when their buyer’s guide includes an online listing with a link (yay PageRank).

I’ve just had two to take care of, one of which was a 5M Word file I had to download and then email back. Its almost painful to think of the office assistant who gets stuck digging thru each of these responses, all 21 pages. (I’m sure I’ve complained about this kind of thing before.)

So I was excited to find out at the InfoCommerce Conference that there is software out there that can help publishers manage such projects, priced under $10K. And for you entrepreneurs considering creating a directory website (or book), this has to be a great way to launch.

bg2go is the only self-service print and online buyer’s guide and directory solution: “bg2go is completely self-service. Companies can sign up to be listed in your directory, update their listings, change categories, and even purchase enhancements in both the print and online editions of your directory using bg2go’s integrated credit card processing software. You maintain control over what gets listed in your directory, all the while making it easier for companies to do business with you.”

For the sake of marketing managers everywhere, I hope bg2go sells a bunch of software! Good luck, Don McAlpine.

Wow, going to the InfoCommerce Group’s annual conference was a terriffic experience. My thanks to Russ and Roxanne for inviting me to speak.

The exciting part was meeting so many different people from such diverse companies, all there interested in the same things I am. And it was really cool introducing myself to people who then say “hey, I’m a real fan of your blog”–that’s what the first person I met said, in fact (thanks Greg!).

It was also great to meet other bloggers, some who had the energy to ‘blog the conference’. Check these out:
John Blossom of Shore Communications posts detailed live notes on each presentation, including mine.
Barry Graubart (who I didn’t meet) summarizes his experience at Content Matters Blog.

I’ll post more stuff later.

Via MarketingVox, here is a cool new b2b search engine: VerticalSearch.com

Doing searches with it, it looks like the content comes almost exclusively from B2B media publications. Well, now that I’ve read their mission statement, they that’s exactly what they have indexed to start. But they are ambitious:

“Soon we will be adding tens of thousands of B2B company sites to augment the B2B trade press sites. And, as VerticalSearch.com evolves, watch for useful community tools and features that will allow each vertical B2B community to share domain expertise, product offerings, and business and job opportunities by sector.”

Sure, this kind of thing has been tried before, it some form or another. But as I work on reviewing the online directory business, I keep seeing something similar to VerticalSearch as where directories should be headed. Let’s see how well they can do.

In August I talked about pay-per-call services that generate unique phone numbers on websites to allow tracking of response. Well, if you are a chosen ThomasNet client, you will now get phone call tracking. The press release from eStara (the call tracker) doesn’t clarify, but I would assume that these clients are getting the service as part of their fixed-price program.

In my previous post, I said this, which I still think applies to Thomas using call tracking:

This technology is being positioned for supporting advertising of service companies and local businesses, where a phone call is much more useful to the prospect than a website.

For all the job-shops and custom manufacturers in ThomasNet, this may be a much better way to judge response to their listings. Interesting.

Part of the logic and emotions that drive paying to be listed in a business directory, is whether there is competition. Directories push the fear that because your competition is listed, you are missing out and letting them run away with all the business. We marketers react emotionally, often signing up out of fear…or arrogantly rejecting being listed because the competition is there. But realistically, what is the right answer?

What directories and marketplaces do (or should do) is create an environment where prospects can confidently shop. Seth Godin soothes us in this post from a week ago called The proximity effect:

“Too often we’re beaten down by comparison shoppers and companies issuing RFPs and commodity buyers who won’t take the time to hear our story. Too often, frustrated marketers believe that they’d do better if they just didn’t have any competition.

In fact, the proximity effect can work in your favor. It usually does if your product or service is special. The proximity effect gives the consumer confidence. It creates a category where no category existed before. It lets you sell the difference, as opposed to the whole thing.”

The proximity effect is part of the Hotelling effect. Don’t know about this? First it is named after someone, not hotels and explains why Burger Kings can be found so close to McD’s. Hotelling said that two competitors located centrally have access to the whole marketplace, instead of being separated and only having access to part of the market.

This is what drives our desire to be listed in Directories. Its the same as the physical world…its location, location, location!

Two personal oberservations of mine, brought together to define what good service should be all about:

Be engaged:
In the car the other day, I heard NPR’s Terry Gross interviewing Jerry Lewis. Not something I would have planned to do, but there it was. Jerry explained two things about how he works:
1. He has an internal critic that evaluates each performance.
2. In his live shows his adrenaline (to overcome performance anxiety) overtakes all else.

In each case, he said if don’t have these, you aren’t going to be successful as a performer. He told these not as motivational mantras, but simple facts about what keeps him going at his age and health. In other words, he is fully engaged in what he is doing when he performs, and so should a customer service rep or salesperson.

Know what your customer really wants:
In a separate event, a friend of mine who is a wedding DJ, said that what he provides to his clients is not music…he provides someone they can bug for six to nine months during the planning process. A sharp guy, he knows that the product he provides is not the benefit that the customer is buying. And I’m sure he plays the part, sucking up to future mother-in-laws micromanaging a wedding.

Now bring the two together:
We need to be fully engaged with our prospects and customers, which includes listening. But we need be aware of what that person really wants that isn’t said and include that in our performance.

Sounds simple? It is, but engagement takes energy, and awareness takes keen observation.

Case example: When I was traveling the other day, eating a lousy breakfast-burrito at McD’s, my head snapped up as I heard a hearty “Goood morning” to a new customer at the counter. The young man was engaging the client, giving friendly service (not just food). Fantastic! Compare that to the normal cashier who believes there job is to ring up orders–there is no engagement with the customer, partly because they don’t see that as their job. They end up just ‘going thru the motions’.

Maybe the problem with powerpoint presentations is that the presenter becomes focused on the job of running thru the slides, and not on engaging the audience and giving them the real info they are there for.

Where do you see engagement and awareness lacking? I’m starting to see it repeatedly.