Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been quiet. Went on vacation, got geocache #1000, been plugging away at my new website. But when the blog is quiet, I seem to generate interesting emails. Here’s one:

“Have you ever dealt with the 21st Century Business, where General Haig and others sell your Company? They produce a video for 4 minutes on TV, advertising in airplanes, etc.”

Turns out that 21st Century Business (previously World Business Review) makes these videos into a paid-programming show on CNBC, plus distribution on some airlines video systems. The client gets the video for additional collateral usage, of course, as well as bragging rights for being associated with Alexander Haig (that being a 10 second intro).

Guess how much?? $24K.

Now maybe for some clients the exposure and validation is needed, or the cost is just a drop in the budget, but for smaller industrial marketers like myself (and the submitter), I think its money best spent elsewhere.

The bigger problem is that despite the 21st century moniker, the approach is 20th century. The video is stuffy, boring, and like a lot of CEO interviews, full of good sounding talk that don’t amount to much. Here’s a sample of one:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdgaTXbMhuk]

I talked about video for B2B earlier this year, in my post: B2B Content 2.0: Video, where I say “Video is easy now, but getting it right is hard.”. Please reread that, then we’ll get to part 2 of this post.

Maybe you heard something about Google’s new “universal results”. Its Google’s attempt to mix search results from images and video in their normal SERPs. (Search Engine Results Pages)

Well, it made me wonder what might happen to search results of my products. I didn’t bother checking at the time, till I found the folks at Industrial Search Engine Marketing Blog call it a new opportunity:

Something New: Developing Digital Content for B2B

“What does Universal Results have to do with B2B? This is the industries’ chance to do something creative, design something unique, start a blog or post a video. There are different ways to capture your audiences’ attention and drive them to your website or to pick up a telephone and we need to explore those areas and branch out.

Our digital content will be found with Universal Search. I’ve seen the changes in my search results already. And personally, I like it, because now I don’t have to use the video search engine to find a related video to my topic. The most relevant result was already posted.”

Last year I added short demo videos of specific functions of two of our products, via Google Video. Searching for those products in Google came up with no video links. I’m sure there must be some minimal criteria I’m not meeting. But these are for niche products even within my market, so there probably isn’t enough traffic to warrant ‘universal results’. Still, they are right, it is an opportunity.

I don’t pay too much attention to Microsoft’s AdCenter account. Apparently, I’m not the only one: Larry over at Flag’s Bay (also of ‘Motivation on the Run’ fame) found out that isn’t such a good idea.

Microsoft AdCenter Warning!: “Here’s the warning—Pause Campaign, doesn’t mean pause until you get back to it and make a decision and redesign your ad. With certain settings, pause campaign means pause until the midnight reset, which restarts the campaign. And since billing runs several months behind, you won’t notice it until the charges show up on the bank statement.”

Of course the one sneaky thing AdCenter has in common with AdWords is that they bill your credit card without notifying you in any way. Apparently this is what tripped Larry up.

(BTW: This got me to log on to AdCenter for the first time in a while. I forgot my user and password–what a pain in the neck to get that information! The worst part is the password reset email is not hyperlinked…AND they added a period to the end of the URL so they could complete a sentence. That period was interpreted as part of the URL and I couldn’t log in. Doh!)

Remind you of a sales rep you know? Or all of them?

While I promise not to make this blog a whiny mid-life crisis blog, I do occasionally think about my life and career. I am 40 after all. Maybe I think about my life more than occasionally.

Am I trapped doing the same job at the same company? Is there a corner office waiting for me somewhere? Am I too good at what I do to move up? Can I stomach being a heartless prick in order to move up? You might have all these or similar thoughts in your head, too.

I’ve started to realize that I need to consider my career in terms of being ‘manager’ instead of being ‘marketer’. One of the things that has been on my mind is how my behavior should/would change in order to be a better manager, and, of course, be ready to move up.

I found this article in June’s Men’s Health by Gil Schwartz enlightening, The Metamorphosis enlightening. Here’s a quick synopsis, in which he uses the metaphor of a bug changing:

“To achieve true career success, be prepared to make these 4 major transformations along the way”

1. Associate to Manager
   Transforming moment: The first move up comes when you’re willing to assert your personality over those more powerful than you. The capacity to be unpleasant about your own cause ruins you as a slave — and marks you as a manager.
2. Manager to Senior Manager
   Transforming moment: You decide that young Bob can handle three or four of the 12 things on your plate. When he’s almost done, you grab them back so you take can credit for them. Crack! You just earned your new skin.
3. Senior Manager to Executive
   Transforming moment: You realize you care more about 2017 than you do about 2007. You look in the mirror and see your father, or what he looked like when he dressed up for a big occasion.
4. Executive to Regular Guy

Well, this article was Gil’s way of announcing his retirement from CBS, I can only assume. In reading up on him, I found that he started writing under a pseudonym, telling tales of the corporate life, much like my favorite Big Picture Guy.

Anyway, I found this article (and previous columns) great, gritty food-for-thought. It’s hard to set true goals for your future without realistically understanding what it takes to get there, and what it really is like once you do.

From the latest SitePoint Tribune one of my favorite newsletters:

Answer Your Email Right Now!

We have a number of clients in the same market niche who all sell basically the same thing from their web sites in basically the same way. But here’s an interesting finding:

• The client with the highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the fastest.
• The client with the second-highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the second-fastest.
• The client with the third-highest conversion of inquiries to sales is the client who answers their email the third-fastest.

Noticing a trend?

Not rocket-science, but a strong reminder and motivator to improve response time by your sales staff to web-leads.

Over the years I’ve heard the advise that I should have a dedicated ‘landing page’ designed to maximize ‘conversions’. I’ve always said phooey. Turn ’em loose and let them find what they want once I get them to our site.

Now the Marketing Maven at GlobalSpec is backing me up. In their latest newsletter, there is an article titled Landing Page or Landing Path? Improving Post-Click Marketing that identifies why landing pages may not be a good idea.

“But landing pages can be fraught with problems that turn visitors off and lower your conversion rates. Some of the common problems include:”

• Loading up on content
• Trying to close too soon
• Being all things to all people
• Looking cheap

In other words, for the ‘complex sale’, you can’t try to force the visitor to fit their complex needs into a simple one-page landing page. Better to make a ‘landing path’ with navigational cues based on different needs of the visitor.

The Maven goes on to give some clarification when to use a ‘page’ versus a ‘path’. Ultimately, it depends on your products and prospects. Use what makes sense, not what you hear others saying should be done.

I’ll save you the long story about why, but I had granted someone access to my Adwords Account. Then I deleted their access account. Easy enough, right?

Nope. I was mystified when I found some changes made that I didn’t do. Some digging around and I found out they were continuing to gain access via API. (API allows the use of other master accounts or external applications.)

Turns out when I created their account, the API access was actually a different ‘account’ listed under a different section of the Adwords site.

My experience to your future benefit, I hope.

(Those of you familiar with Adwords campaigns may have a guess as to what I was up to. Hopefully I can share the details later.)

A little off topic–I hate the seeing the bad guys get away. These guys come from a medium I’ve nearly abandoned: television.

Bad guy #1: Kevin Trudeau
Flipping thru Direct Magazine, my attention was caught by an ad that didn’t fit. Turns out MacroMark is selling a mailing list of Kevin Trudeau’s clients.

Who is Kevin Trudeau? I googled him and found out that he is a shady character gettting past FTC rules based on his first amendment rights to print and sell books that say whatever he wants. The books are sold via Informercials and are really just an entre to sell subscriptions to his website. He’s a guy with a checkered past staying one step ahead, and by selling his client list, milking it for all its worth.

I can only hope that no one buys these lists and make this guy any richer. But if Direct wants to keep the message that direct marketing is above scammy infomercial and phone solicitors, they should distance themselves from this guy.

Bad guy #2: Bill O’Reilly
Marketonomy blogger Chris Kenton rants on Bill O’Reilly’s recent snub of JetBlue giving some tickets to website DailyKos. I don’t really care about O’Reilly or DailyKos, and I don’t think Chris really cares either.

O’Reilly basically says that because JetBlue gave some free flights to support DailyKos’s member convention, that JetBlue is endorsing hate-mongering speech that some commenters at DailyKos have made.

Knowing the simple fact that DailyKos is a community site with lots of members and free form discussions makes the whole 7 minute YouTube clip Chris linked to laughable. Well, I guess I’m not laughing, because Bill skips this fact and chooses to attack JetBlue and DailyKos, specifically calling DailyKos a hatemonger (note the singular term he uses). The pansy ‘expert’ from BusinessWeek is there just as a foil and does nothing except give Bill someone to hurl unsubstantiated questions at repeatedly.

Rant wrap-up:
Anyway, two crappy examples of what makes this one-way communication model of television is broken. And two people taking advantage of it, with major companies behind them. I’m just revolted. I hate when truth and fairness are abused while I sit her politely selling my B2B products.

Sorry, but these were bugging me. Now I can go home!

The Small Business Commando Blog by Dick Larkin targets small, local businesses like electricians and plumbers that depend heavily on Yellow Pages.

So why is he talking about online video?

Imagine you need a fence for your home and business. You know whoever you pick out of the yellow pages (or on the web) is likely going to be who you buy from because it is a complicated purchase. The vendors websites are of such varying quality that you aren’t sure who to trust. The slick sites are too slick, and the poor sites might just be hiding a top-notch pro.

How can you reliably judge credibility before making that fateful call? Video!

Take a look at Scott Fence’s promo video (via Google Video)

Video isn’t easy to pull off. This example is a great sample of what works for this type of company. Instant credibility!