Beware of Topsites
I get regular hits on this blog regarding my previous post on Topsites-us.com, so I did a search myself. Here is an indepth review of what Topsites is doing.
Topsites.us / Topsitez.us / Topsites-us.com Bogus “Renewal” Notices
A little late
I got a call and an email with another despised pre-qualification surveys for CRM software. The company contacting me most likely received my request for information back in March, when I was in “search mode”. While not as bad as the bone-head from Seibel, I’m still kind of shocked. I’d guess the leads from the website I requested the info from just weren’t handled well. What happens with your leads?
What would you do?
We’ve got a new administrative assistant to share with several departments. What tasks should we ask her to do to help our sales and marketing efforts? Direct mail, call clients, clean-out files?
One idea floated is to have her do a client survey. Maybe a good idea if the results can help me tune our CRM initiative to what the client wants. What questions should we ask?
CRM update, kind of
The sales manager and I have come to terms with our CRM selection process and are ready to be turned loose. We agree that all three software we are looking at would be suitable and do what we want. Their connection to our back-end ERP system is the greatest variance. But we at least agreed on one vendor (I ain’t telling yet, read on).
Today I fielded a call from one of the other companies and told him our pick. Their package was the highest price, but he offered to drop to meet the price of our selection. And they were offering better integration with our ERP system (I think). So, do we switch horses? Or is “price matching” a strategy we should snub? The drama continues to drag out. Need the big guys thumbs-up and we can get on with it.
Test, test, test
Being the one person who has access to our website is convenient to make changes almost ‘on the fly’. The problem is quality control. I recently found that the “TinyURL” link that I used back in January was case sensitive, but when I added it to our website, I didn’t know this. The result is a bad link! I had a similar problem with a personal blog of mine, too. I write this post to remind myself to test changes that I’m otherwise not going to see or use. You should do the same.
Punch it up
Interesting article in BtoB Magazine (but not on their website) about improving trade advertising for industrial trade journals. The magazine’s popular “Copy Chasers” critique advertisements regularly, but this article gives general advice to punch it up. They are aligning with two other influencers in my current thoughts: Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ and Emeril Lagasse’s ‘Kick it up a notch’.
The Chasers’ point is to focus on one item and message, don’t cram the page, and make it look attractive (including using people). The implied thought is that you should give them enough information to be interested to click over to your website. If the ad is compelling, they will!
You mess with Google, you lose!
I’ve probably complained here before about a certain competitor who was “spamdexing” Google, and hogging every single #1 spot of the keywords I track. As of today, their site no longer exists in Google. He now has to rely on a one-page site under a different URL, plus his AdWords ads to generate traffic. Yay!
My kind of discussion
I currently run on business.com, as well, so I am interested in others opinions.
Doing AdWords better
I’m just one step ahead of my competitors, by actually using AdWords. But I’ve judged it successful enough to not mess with it. The following article has some good advice on how I can try to boost its effectiveness. Then, when they join the game, I’ll still be able to beat them.
Messenger Spam
We run NT at work. When we get our new CRM software, we are looking at new PCs for everyone. Our sysops want Win2000 because they don’t trust WinXP. Get over it, I say!
But, running XP at home, I find a potential problem. Even with the internal firewall on, an outside user (ie spammer) can essentially create a pop-up ad on my screen at will using a little used “Messenger” service. I’d hate to have 10 guys on my back about how to stop this spam, which would be the case if we had the XP machines already. Here’s the straight dope: