Category: Uncategorized

Being a ‘one man marketing department’ is fun, but not without its drawbacks.

Often I need some simple art to send out; today it is for a trade-show booth banner. I know what I want and I’ve already laid it out in Fireworks. I’m not an artist, but for some things I’m good enough to get by. Its not worth calling out the ‘big guns’ at the ad agency to do it for me.

But the printer needs it in a certain format. While Fireworks’ PNG format is supposed to be widely available, most people are unaware of it, or unsure if it will upload correctly. And I don’t blame them. I can ‘save as’ other file formats. But its hard to be sure that what I send out is what the recipient can use.

For today’s graphic, a ‘vector’ type file is preferrable, so that it can scale to a large banner. But there is color bit-map associated with it. And I’m supposed to identify the PMS colors in the graphic…apparently no one trusts what is embedded in the file regarding color anyway.

In the past I was once called to meetings with five people to primarily settle on file-format issues, and three of those people were pros. Is it always this hard for electronic art? Is there an easier way to ensure graphic files can be handed off with confidence?

As a guy who’s head fits well inside a computer monitor shell, I’ve been helping lead the way for a new website for my church. One of the ‘killer apps’ we’ve come up with would be an online-calendar. After researching this earlier this week, I’ve become facinated with the potential of a standard called ‘iCal’.

What’s facinating is that you can run several calendars on your PC, and subscribe to others from the internet. I could have one integrated calendar that shows me my wife’s schedule, my personal one, my church’s, and my co-workers’. You can update and syncronize from any location, if it’s posted to the web. There is even a great open source tool that displays the calendar on a website.

The challenge has been in learning how to use it and what the best choices are. While standard with new Apples, there is no driving force for Windows machines. Studying how to use it has been interesting and frustrating.

For right now I’ve gone the easy route:

• Install Mozilla browser with Calendar plug-in. The calendar plug-in isn’t particularly stable, but if I want to run this from multiple locations, I don’t want to pay $20 per machine.
• Find a person nice enough to host ‘.ics’ files and run the iCalendar webtool, like www.icalx.com.

As I use it more, I’d like to share my experience here, to help save others the trouble. For now, take a look at the Mets Spring Training Schedule that I copied elsewhere and posted.

When I look at my website’s stats at the end of the month, I start wondering how all this traffic gets to my company’s site. Google is high on the mind, of course. I’ve survived the latest Austin algorithm change, but still hurting on some key words. But, overall, hits from Google are back where they used to be.

My one spamming competitor retains #1 position for just about any term I can think of. But now, one of my major competitors is showing up very high in the exact words I am not being ranked by Google for. Ouch!

So I turned to Serge Thibodeau for the latest on update Austin. Google’s Hilltop Algorithm has a tendency to detect sites that are authoritative in their field and will usually rank them higher, along with a higher PR value.

So maybe my competitor is getting proper ranking because they are a top company. So why is the spammer ranking still so high? And why is the Industrial Quick Seach site nowhere to be seen?

I’m a firm believer that success on the web is difficult because of the many details that need to be handled correctly. After reading this article by Dean Rieck, I see that direct mail is the same way. It’s a good refresher course in any kind of marketing:

“It’s okay to cry. Let it out. But after you dry your eyes, think about what you’ve learned from this depressing spectacle. When people sort your mail, they’re quick. They’re brutal. And if you don’t instantly capture their attention, you’re dead.”

Lets take a few minutes and be thankful we didn’t work for these people or companies:

Business 2.0 – 101 Dumbest Moments in Business

I’ve been helping someone source a material that we use. He isn’t a customer, but the material was hard to find. I found out who our vendor was and passed it along. What a nice guy I am.

So this engineer calls me back and asks if I have the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for this material. Turns out the supplier of this material ‘only gives MSDS sheets to customers.’

How can he evaluate the material’s suitability if he can’t get an MSDS? How will he become a customer? So I’m the one who ends up making the sale for them. They don’t deserve it. Maybe I should find him a different vendor, too!

When I went to the Google Dance in the last few months, it was like I was sitting on the side, watching all the nerds dance with the pretty girls. The music was ‘Florida-update’, and I didn’t know how to dance with it, anyway.

As of this morning, I am standing about where I was before the Florida-update. Yipee! Apparently this update is called Austin. Its got a familiar beat. Thank god, after a big AdWords bill for January.

Taking a quick look at the SERPs (search engine results pages), I see that this dance either isn’t over, or has other surprises that aren’t affecting me. I do notice that plural search terms are less likely to affect results. We’ll see how things stand when the dance is over.

Someone asked me this morning about what email newsletter software to use. Here is my reply:

Check to see if your web-host includes ‘mailman’ software. I haven’t used it, but I here it is a good tool. My host has ‘majordomo’ which is older and much harder to use.

There are a lot of web services out there, but most cost money or have advertising. For a small, infrequent list, they aren’t worth it.

Most important is to have a plan and schedule for your newsletter. Also a consistent format.

I could make some tenuous connection between Martin Luther King Jr. and marketing, but, it isn’t necessary. He really was a great salesperson, though.

Humor me and take a look at pictures of MLK and others in the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March in 1965. Be sure to click on ‘more photos’ at the bottom. I really enjoyed these seeing these photos when I visited Montgomery last year. The exhibit at the Alabama Archives tells the complete story so well.

“Injustice anywhere hurts justice everywhere.” – MLK Jr.

Today I will talk to a sales rep from Saleforce.com. But before I do, I read the article: Hosted CRM: A Great Debate or Much Ado About Nothing? (thanks to CRM Mastery.) At the very least, it will help temper my excitement for the benefits of an online CRM package.

However, much of what the article warns about ASP software doesn’t apply to me, which is probably why I felt I could look at Salesforce. The one lingering argument about cost over time should be worth discussing. Yes, over the years an ASP software will cost more, at $70 a month per user, versus $30 a year for maintenance for Goldmine.

But I should also factor in the savings in IT support and my time in supporting in-house software. This is especially true if we deploy to all our sales reps. Some of them have a hard time cutting-and-pasting. I don’t want to have to walk them thru a software upgrade or other fix.