Category: Uncategorized

My company sits in the shadow of the market leader in the USA. We’ve been successful in beating other companies to where I think we are a strong second. But what does that mean to my marketing? How should we position ourselves?

Laura Ries answers the question “What should you do if you are #2?” in her blog. She makes it seem so obvious…”So, what when wrong at Burger King? They didn’t do what a #2 brand should do. A #2 brand should never try to emulate the leader…A strong #2 brand needs to position themselves as the opposite of the leader.”

Reminds me of the comparison between Hershey and Mars chocolate companies, in the book “The Emperors of Chocolate”. Everything seems to be opposite between these two companies. (See my post on the book.)

I thought I had settled my problems with proper display of this blog when I used a new template when Blogger had a major update. I found one minor problem with the template right away, but now a reader pointed out another, more significant problem. If I ever feel that CSS can be reliable, I will change my company’s website away from tables.

Minor problem: Upon applying a format change, such as a bullet list, the font size becomes larger, and remains large throughout the rest of the post. Scroll down to see a sample. Of course, Blogger’s demo of the template I am using, Thisaway, doesn’t have this problem.

Major problem: With IE6 browsers, the right hand ‘about me’ column gets pushed down to the bottom of the page. I don’t know when this happened, but assumed it was a recent change caused by the pictures I posted of my summer reading list. I deleted all pictures from my posts.

As an avid user of Firefox, I hadn’t seen this second problem (thanks Brian), but since a lot of my visitors from Google are IE6 users, I want to make sure I have a proper introduction.

Since the creator of the template doesn’t seem interested in answering questions, I thought I might ask my more geeky readers for advice.

Like a lot of industrial companies, we use independent manufacturer’s reps to aid in our sales efforts. They’ve made us more flexible and successful, while mitigating our risk (cost of direct people, limited coverage).

Recently, as we expand, we are excluding our reps from certain product lines. This is due to political and cost issues, as well as expanding outside their core expertise. Instead, we’ve instituted ‘finders fee’ payments for applications they may submit. We’ve also reduced commission for certain product lines that we think require less effort. Reaction to these steps is lukewarm, at best.

And it is bad when the client calls our rep to ask questions when he is supposed to be working direct with us. Also at play is the fact is that the web makes most new leads quote-requests, not literature requests.

All this wrangling leads me to ask the question “why are we paying reps commission, anyway?”

• To generate new leads?
• To maintain relationships with clients?
• To work on current opportunities and close sales?
• To close more small sales or to work on big projects?
  
• To be able to be onsite with the client frequently?
• To extract more value out of each relationship?
• To develop synergy between product lines?

And once this question is answered, the next question is “how much is this work worth?” The reality of the situation is that history and politics will win over any strategic answer to the above. But it sure wouldn’t hurt to create more specific expectations of reps, and accountability, even if we can’t change the pay structure.

Okay, I’ve slacked off on posts lately, and I haven’t got a good reason. Perhaps it is the sheer variety of things going on at work and home. So, to prove I’m still alive, I thought I would share a list of books I’ve read in the last year or so.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Actually I cheated by listening to this one on tape, with my family during our vacation trips…20 hours total!

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban My wife made me read this before she would let me see the movie. Of course, then all I could see is the short-cuts they took in making the movie.

Free Prize Inside Read my review here, or my post on Edgecraft.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court I like Mark Twain, and there is some good stuff in here, but geez its a long book.

The New 8-Week Cholesterol Cure Down to about two weeks to find out how my numbers are doing!

First Lessons in Blues Harmonica Read my review here. For the less musically inclined (thats me), this is the book to learn to play blues.

Dilbert picks on sales people and marketers. Apparently we have a reputation for hype and lies. When going on sales calls or in meetings, it is Dilbert who heroically tells the credible truth.

Today’s Engineer has an article called Engineers as Credible Marketers that says articles written by your engineers become much more credible sources, according to customers.

The article suggests the use of a ghost author to make the creation of such an article easier on everybody, as well as more likely to be published. The article focuses on trade publications, but there is no reason you can’t create a white paper as sales collateral or published on a site like Vertilog.

I haven’t posted frequently in July due to vacation trips. Most recently, we visited St. Louis, MO as part of my wife’s online community get-together. We took a day-trip to Hannibal, MO, hometown of Mark Twain (I’m a big fan). Everything in this town seemed to be named after Twain or one of his favorite characters. My marketing radar was up as this small town had small-time marketing evident:

• Our lunch was pre-paid at The Jumping Frog Cafe. Good sandwich and Gooseberry pie, but they had other problems. The lemonade was horrible–too much concentrate, I think. And my son got potato salad instead of macaroni salad because they don’t label their opaque containers. Marketing lesson: test and plan for quality service (and don’t be afraid to copy the big resturants). I also thought it would be neat if they offered a free dessert for anybody who has a frog image with them (my son was wearing a frog shirt that day).
• Amongst the many antique shops there was a very cool glass studio/gallery with very affordable glass bowls and decorative plates. These would make a great gift in the future, but not anything I was going to buy that day. So I asked the artist if she had a website as I took a business card. No was the reply. You’d think that such a cool place, with unique items, amongst the mediocre in Hannibal would be on the web–at least for tourists like me who cannot make an immediate decision. Marketing lesson: consider the customer’s buying pattern and make it easy for them.
• And, finally, a more humorous lesson. I bought a T-shirt from the “Mark Twain Cave” that afterwards my wife noted reads “Created 120 million year’s ago.” Ughh! Marketing lesson: Don’t trust the designer to proofread.
  

I’m a marketing professional, right? With a recent MBA, so I know my stuff, right?

So why did I feel so intimidated reading In Search of Mediocrity in CRM, Marketing, and Advertising in which the publisher of Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine says that only one of his marketing-job candidate could define marketing. Would I be one of the many bozos who couldn’t accurately answer? I got a little anxious, as if I was in the interview, and quickly continued reading to find the answer, rather than form the answer myself. How about you?

Luckily, he gave the answer later in the article, and I felt better. These are the two things that I do concentrate on in my marketing efforts. But my lack of verbalization still bothers me. Oh, what is the right answer? Here it is:

1. Create awareness, and

2. Articulate benefits.

Effectively executed, the combination of the above should generate responses which are commonly referred to as ?sales leads.?

Here is a list of details to watch out for when running a PowerPoint presentation with integrated video. This list is based on my experience this week putting together and running PP for our church’s VBS (Vacation Bible School). Granted, I didn’t do myself any favors by thinking I could dub the video from a VCR to the PC during breaks, even though I had never done this before.

• Don’t turn off the monitors when you are done. Someone might think the computer is off or hung and reboot it.
• Don’t use CDs or floppies. If someone reboots the machine with the disk still in, you get a very upsetting and confusing “NTLDR is missing” message.
  
• When dubbing video from the VCR, remember to plug it back into the projector–or the next segment thats still on tape won’t be seen.
  
• Make sure that the sound cable is plugged into the sound board and working. It might be plugged into the wrong channel on the board, too.
• Make sure the sound-guy knows if you are playing off the VCR or PC.
• If playing a ‘slide show’ using XPs default tool while waiting to run the presentation, de-select any image files, in case you accidentally double-click and try to open 94 images simultaneously.
• The projector’s ‘video’ button needs to be pressed twice to switch from the PC (once goes to S-video, which we don’t use).
• Don’t dub the video starting at a black screen, or you won’t be sure what video it is until you start to play it.
  
• Arrive early!
• And a lesson from last year–don’t touch anything while a video or sound is playing in PP.
  

Doing video/PP for such an event does have its challenges, but it does give you a geek-high and expands your skill set. Lots of fun!

Normally, I don’t do website critiques unless I want to call someone a nitwit. This site isn’t bad, but it begs to be discussed because the designer was able to get BtoB Magazine (July 19 issue) to highlight it. And it is for an industrial supplier, a target of this blog.

Chardon Rubber’s new website is hailed as part of a rebranding effort to be “more than just a parts supplier”. Adding “success stories” to their site is a great way to do this, although the tag line “Ensuring your success one elastomeric/innovative solution at a time” is too cliche. The biggest branding foible is not having a distinctive logo (apparently just the company’s name in Arial/italic in a red block), and then burying it in the middle of the home page, and to the right on the other pages. I wasn’t brave enough to download the 15M PDF of the corporate brochure to compare offline branding efforts.

Visually, the site is pleasing and integrates Flash as part of the page. The home page suffers from a scrolling marque and a Flash image with flying text–two gee-whiz efforts that shouldn’t be used together. The press release hails the marque as good way for visitors to get “a quick overview of products and services” which it does (if they can read the small, fast type), but not as effectively as the image below it with a variety of rubber parts they make. Images inside the site show manufacturing and products, which also helps tell their story.

They did break some of my web design rules, though:

• Their address isn’t displayed, except in a flash image on the contact page. Because they appear to have a mostly regional business, this is a major oversite. They at least need a phone number on every page.
  
• They used a globe. Okay, it was just one page, and they were probably desperate for an appropriate image, but it is a crime, none-the-less.
• Using the word “solutions”. I know that they are trying to be more than a parts supplier, but I’ve never found this to be a convincing method.
• The site uses a non-flexible page design, including height. This limits not only the visitor, but the company’s ability to make longer pages that tell a better story or show more images.
  

No, I don’t mean try to find out if he is rated good or bad…just try to find his phone number. Or his address. Or, how about his webpage? Googling your doctor just seems to be fruitless, or at least mine are.

My primary care physician just opened a new office. He has a logo and a brand, but no website. Some digging will find a PDF file at the hospital of related doctors, but that’s the closest I can come…and who wants to scan thru a multi-page PDF to find your doctor’s info?

Apparently these professionals who still rely on paper and their memories haven’t figured out that making a web page with their phone number, address, and hours would be a convenience to their clients, and probably make their receptionist’s job easier.

So, are they clueless? Or too busy? Or fearful of an avalanche of emails? Or just don’t know where to start?

If they can’t get this simple technology up and going (which should cost them a grand-total of $100), when will we ever see electronic prescriptions and record-keeping?