Author: Dave J.

I am preparing my talk for the InfoCommerce Conference coming up in a couple weeks. At the same time I am working on renewing my ThomasNet contract. I think you will see much of my posts leading up to the program centering around online directories.

Here’s a fun one to start…Googling “thomas register globalspec” lead to this forum discussion: Where do you find info online?, posted by someone considering GS advertising. A couple responses from the engineers:

“The company lists don’t seem to help me too much (GlobalSpec, TR, etc.) The categories are too broad, and clicking on 20 of them to find the one product I need is is a lot more difficult than letting Google do the searching.”

“It seems like TR or GlobalSpec just want to give you to an unorganized list of the paying advertisers that generally might match your search string regardless of what you are looking for, oh well.”

What these two comments imply is that using these directories requires more effort than Google. They are still left with the need to filter and/or flip thru each vendor’s site. Depending on the sophistication of the search, this can quickly kill the directories’ chance to help.

Another major Google Dance is upon us, apparently. According to this article, Talking To Google About Jagger, you can register your complaints to Google, using a special ‘jagger1’ keyword. Nice way to separate the whiners from the playerz.

The article has some interesting tidbits on issues regarding Google search results and webspam and is worth reading (its short, too).

For my company site, recent changes on Google’s SERP (search engine results pages) have been very good. Most of the top twenty listings are for companies that actually manufacture what the keywords are looking for.

GlobalSpec and ThomasNet are the two major exceptions to this, which could help explain why I am seeing better traffic from both (even tho I don’t pay GlobalSpec anything).

And Google has completely dropped one major competitor who had stuffed their home page with hidden keywords and links. They have been dropped before, but only for a month or so. This time they actually removed their ‘stuffing’, so I suspect I will see them back again.

Gosh, if I’ve read a business book, chances are it has already tipped and I don’t have to say very much. Ideas ‘tip’ into sudden popularity, but even though Malcom Gladwell does an excellent job of explaining why in The Tipping Point, the question remains if this is something you can actually harness…especially as a b2b marketer.

The book shows how the ‘connectors’, ‘mavens’, ‘salespeople’, and ‘stickiness’ are extreme states that are needed to make something tip. These extremes are hard to create and maintain, making them even rarer. And in a B2B world, I think it would be foolish to think that this is something you can create or control. Your best bet is to watch for ‘tipping’ things and ride the coat-tails.

While an interesting book, I found what I learned in Paradox of Choice (amazon link) more useful personally, and as a marketer.

An ‘appointment specialist’ from the Zycon Manufacturer’s Directory called me this morning. The what? I thought. Typical spiel, promising an email with more info and appointment to talk to a salesperson, which I accepted, if only to learn more for you, my loyal readers. Do I really feel like dealing with the a sales pitch from another directory? Not really.

From what I’ve gleaned so far:

• They charge $1 per view of your product listing on their site.
• Based on reverse IP log they offer in the email, I’d say they have 5,000 visitors a month.
• Main webpage has a PR of 4 (This blog has a 6 (wow, haven’t checked that in a while.))
• Most of the new product announcements for the last three months are from just one company. The announcement page does have an RSS feed.

Anyone know about this company? I’ll post more after I talk to the salesperson.

We’ve all seen recently closed businesses with signage still entact–a ghost of commerce past. Suppose it was an upscale business? How about renting the building and putting up ‘going out of business sale’ signs and selling off-brand merchandise? That’s was has happened right here in town:

Signage controversy confusing customers at furniture store:

“Flashy going out of business signs placed side-by-side with removed lettering and awnings carrying the Ethan Allen name have some customers confused.

‘I thought it was an Ethan Allen store that was going out of business,’ said Lisa Tikkala told 24 Hour News 8. We have learned that is simply not the case, as there are no pieces of Ethan Allen furniture in the store.”

While legal action is mentioned in the article, it also says that the new EA store, just down the road, is losing business. Lesson? Guard your brand!

I am the ruler over my computer and know how to get it to do almost anything. But today I learned something I didn’t know. Something helpful that I didn’t even expect, and its so easy:

Adobe Acrobat can ‘Save As’ the following file formats: jpg, ps, rtf, txt, eps, png, and tif. Now I can put PDF documents into a PowerPoint presentation easily and do other nifty things.

Go ahead and laugh at me if you already knew this, but I’m more excited than embarrassed.

I received a postcard from Graphic Controls yesterday. It was addressed to our company without a name or title to go to. Apparently the receptionist assumed it was for printing services and put it in my mail. That may be the biggest problem with this nitwit…sending a mailer without directing it anyone. (And after a little investigation, I find they are a vendor of ours–you’d think they’d have a name to send it to.)

Here’s the headline of the card. Can you guess what their second error is?

Got it? They don’t tell you what they do, or give any scent of information to get you to read the card. The list of bullet points below the head just give the benefits of the website, with no indication of what they sell (see the card here). If you squint at the screen shot you might figure out what they do, but it isn’t until the back of the card that you read that they make “quality precision charts and marking systems”.

The list of benefit bullets is lame, stuff like “Place Orders on-line” (without clarifying if they will accept PO numbers online). They bury the biggest benefit in the last bullet…the ability to search for products by OEM part numbers.

Their lastly, their special offer:
“Special for On-line orders only: $100 minimum reduced to $25 now through 12/31/05”
Okay, as I think about it, this isn’t that bad a deal, but should it be a ‘special’? Isn’t part of the benefits of an e-commerce website is the reduced cost to handle orders? Wouldn’t this serve better as a permanent change?

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are testing a shift in the minimum order. But with a lousy card like this, they are going to be struggling to get much traffic at all on their new site.

If you haven’t got this nifty tool, go get the new version 2.0.
Free Monitor for Google

It just quickly queries Google for your ranking for a URL by keyword. Painless…unless it delivers bad news, anyway.

Interesting how little details can screw things up. I had a online survey form set-up by an outside agency for a specific purpose. Their form asked users to provide their Name, Business, Address, Phone, etc.

It was interesting how many described what their company does in the ‘business’ field. No, we just want their company’s name! And it does make working with the resulting data a bunch more work.

The details will kill ‘ya.

InfoCommerce’s last blog/newsletter had an interesting editorial that centered around this statement: “What’s fueling paid search is the pay-for-performance model, where advertisers don’t pay unless something happens.” The title of the article: In a word: Fair.

Actually the article is a good exploration for pricing of online advertising pricing. How much are leads worth? How much more are quality leads? How does pay-for-performance make for a fair bargain between advertiser and publisher?

My take? The ones charging flat rates (Industrial Quick Search, ThomasNet, GlobalSpec) are big pills to swallow. However, they promise targeted leads…high quality.

PFP sites (business.com, Yahoo/Overture) keep my business because I can maintain a low investment and just pay for performance. Lower quality, lower cost, lower risk.

Meanwhile, pay-for-performance at Google, if looked at annually, can eclipse the flat-rate sites, so the overall cost is similar. Google Adwords has proven performance and quality…probably the best value of the bunch.

Anyway, as a marketer, I depend on a mix of sites to gain visiblity and quality clicks/leads. The mix I use is strongly influenced by the site’s pricing model, as well as percieved quality.