Author: Dave J.

As I posted last week, I eliminated my plural keyword phrases in my AdWords campaign, as Google’s new ‘broader’ matching capability is supposed to handle plurals. It didn’t work. Here is Google’s email to me regarding this:

Thank you for your email. Please note that if you would like your ads to show on plural versions of your keywords, we still advise that you keep these plural keywords in your list in order to track the CTRs and for times when our system does not show your ads under plural searches. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

She’s right about the tracking…I’ve notice a difference in CTR for plural and singular terms (but to what real benefit is this knowledge). Time to go patch things up and add my plural terms again!

For those of you playing along at home, the CRM game has been delayed till 1Q 2004. Here’s the funny thing–We are moving to a new building at the end of 4Q 2003 complete with new XP workstations. XP stations that can’t run our current CRM-like program! The president just casually says “so you might be without a database for a couple months”. Oh boy!

I have been hearing more about hosted CRM packages, which makes me think maybe I am missing something, as I have been considering ‘real’ software. This blog post from CRM Mastery E-Journal was helpful in making me feel better:

“Before investing in any new CRM solution, it is my opinion that every SMB should develop an IT strategy that will thoroughly address their approach to combining, sharing and easily being able to ‘work with’ and analyze all of the customer related information captured in their organization.”

I really want to link our CRM to our ERP database, but haven’t been satisfied with any of the solutions I’ve seen, even from our ERP vendor. And the manager of our ERP system is talking about changing systems in the near future, so I can’t depend on any integration I do do lasting.

What to do? A true business decision–where there is no easy or right answer. My standard of measurement has been: what is most likely to be used, and used as fully as possible, while not worrying so much about the technology. But that goes back to having order data from the ERP system to make it useful. Argh!

I had an email from Google with news of two new services. First is that they are ‘expanding’ search matches, which essentially means that I don’t need separate keywords for plural terms-yea. While I was updating my keyword-phrases, I also used their keyword suggestion tool to come up with a couple terms I hadn’t used before.

Secondly, they have added a ‘conversion tracker’ like Overture recently released. I signed up, so we’ll see what results I get (Overture stands at zero so far).

Someone suggested I compare results of my different sources, but it is challenging to do. Average cost per click for September (in order of most total clicks) and my comments:

• Business.com $0.70 (less targeted, but well distributed)
• Industrial Quick Search $2.86 (clicks dropping–is their rankings at fault?)
• Google AdWords $1.51 (nearly the same impressions as Overture)
• Thomas Register $11.15 (this includes EZ sites. Better than it used to be.)
• Overture $4.47 (Could increase clicks, if I want to pay $12 each!)

BTW: The Thomas Register rep wants to get our contract signed for 2004. It’s decision time…more on that later.

Since the previous post, I’ve looked at the actual log files for my site and found the extra ‘hits’ were logged as ‘search’ commands, not ‘get’ commands, so it means the browser trying to find the home page. I’m moving the subsite and getting rid of the script to clean-up my stats. Keyword analysis won’t be clouded with terms for the sub-site either.

Moving the site was fun. I just signed up for a multi-domain hosting account for personal use and used one of the accounts for the subsite. I’ll move this blog tonight, I think. With 20 domains available, I can have fun creating new websites for the cost of a domain.

If you want a good deal on hosting, 8-95.com, a sub-unit of my current host dixiesys.com, is running a 2-for-1 special for two weeks. And if you enter b2blog’s special code, DJ01, you get an extra 10% off. From what I can tell, SSL is the only thing missing (they charge $22 extra a year).

The start of the month means wrapping up data on last month…specifically web logs. I really find that Faststats (see link to the right) does a good job, but garbage in, garbage out. Here are some things I found:

• Multiple requests for pages that don’t exist, specifically ending in .aspx. I assume this is some kind of attack, looking for common pages that may offer access to the innards of my site.
• Have you heard about how Verisign is now redirecting people toward sites if they enter a nonexistent URL? Well, I now have about 20 referrals from Verisign.
• I got two or three referrals from each of three different "EZ" sites from Thomas Register. Not impressive, but TR’s main referral numbers are high.
• My log files now are recording hits separately for requests of the home page that do or don’t have /index.html at the end. If I add these two together, my stats go thru the ceiling for the home page. Like 2000 more hits.
• When I created a ‘mini-site’ earlier this year, we made it a part of our website and had a little script determine which URL the visitor was asking for. While this site is ‘mini’, it is cluttering my statistics. I will move it out soon (more on that later).

October ends our sales-year, so I will be summing up this and other data in early November. I’ll share more then.

In the old days, Hanson Publications would call and ask to update our 800 directory listings or confirm our shipping address. Of course, if you confirmed the shipping address, you are also accepting the directory, which you will be billed for. They got shut down a year ago.

Today I got a new variation. A accented man called from “Comutel” confirming cancellation of our order of the B2B directories from our President. “Because I don’t have a PO, let me get your okay to send you confirmation of cancellation along with your copy.” When I protested, he said that the cancellation was received after their printing date. I stonewalled, and he will try to call the president, I guess. Beware!

I’ve done my part rewriting our latest press release, and after it is finished it needs to be sent to editors of appropriate trade journals. How should this be done to please the recipient? After all, if your release format doesn’t fit how they work, they aren’t going to use it.

This blog post helps answer this question concisely. The agency is getting a copy along with my revision. Posting PR information online…

Our company has engineering and it has marketing, and sales. So, who has responsibility for the product? The engineers don’t know the marketplace and the salespeople have no control or knowledge of engineering, so neither is qualified to take care of our products to ensure they have the right features at the right price.

As a marketer, I can help fill the gap, but only indirectly. I’m proud of what I’ve got them to do for us but sometimes I yearn for total control and power over the product. What we really need is a ‘product manager’! This article helps define the role and pitfalls in such an assignment.

How to make less of a mess in software product management: ‘Product management means building the right product for the market at the right time, and helping sales sell it,’ Corrigan says. ‘It means understanding your customer inside and out, so that you can deliver the right product to the right audience. Product management puts the product on the shelf; product marketing is getting people to take it off the shelf.’

As a small-time industrial marketer, PR consists mostly of ‘new product’ releases. While I prefer my own writing, I’ve let my ad agency write and release such documents, with significant editing from me, assuming they know better what needs to be done.

I’ve got a new product release on my desk to review. It is factually accurate, and generally usable. But it doesn’t seem especially ‘benefit’ oriented. Yes, I remember that engineers want technical data, but in this case they also need to know why they should consider this type of equipment.

The release does open with the product’s main benefit (cost savings), but not in terms of the user’s needs or experience. The benefit, in terms of the user, makes this type of equipment a viable choice, and could radically change their testing methodology. How much of this ‘sizzle’ can I get them to squeeze into this dry document so that it is newsworthy to editors and their readers? (Dave wanders off to get a red pen and see…)

Part of what my presentation at our sales meeting regarded being more professional with email communications. It really covered the style of emailing, rather than the mechanics.

The problem is that ‘style’ is something ingrained, so that established habits may be hard to break. So I at least tried to get them to add one new habit to their style, which is to be sure to say ‘thank you’ where appropriate.

Read (and share) my notes in a PDF of Making the most of email