B2B and Industrial Marketing Blog
Seth Godin doesn’t post often to his blog, but he makes it worth coming back. His post for August 6 is great for any marketer to read. The point is you need to aim at making your style remarkable and that the basic price to do this is free!
Seth’s Blog
Now, where do I start, Seth?
You’d think I was researching this stuff, with two articles in two days, but actually have been in “maintenance mode” for a while. Anyway, here is a good review of running ads with Google and Overture from Search Engine Watch. You should definitely should be subscribing to their newsletter, too.
Compare & Contrast: Ad Guidelines At Overture & Google
Here is another good one on creating effective subject lines for your B2B email campaign. I’ll assume readers already know the difference between spam and legitimate campaigns. Crafting an Effective B2B Subject Line
Using Google Ad Words? You should be. As SherpaBlog points out, their activity is starting to rival Overture, which I can personally attest to. Here is a guide on making the most of your Google Ad. How To Write Little Tiny AdWords Ads That Bring Giant-Sized Profits
BTW: Google has been putting my ad across the top of the page sometimes, apparently if there are no big dollar spenders for the targeted keyword. (The ads across the top are only for those with large spending with Google, like $5,000 a quarter.)
I’ll be trying this website search tool on my new company website. The current one from whatuseek serves up Overture listings. Imagine my competitors seeing a link from my site! Try Atomz Search Express (up to 500 pages)
Got to talk to a new rep at GlobalSpec. I was polite to listen to their pitch again and will continue to sit on the fence, I think. Got some interesting info, tho. Their price has gone up from first $6K (a year ago), to $8K (last January), to now $14K. And the rep said they currently had about 15 leads a month for my product category. Thats $77 a lead! Cheaper than a trade show, but very expensive for a measured web metric. So what’s the value I would get? How much better is this than a web search? And what am I giving up? When does critical mass occur that I need to be on board with these eye-ball aggregators(sic)?
This is a very cool website. It makes my head spin thinking of the possiblities. Web guides, out-of-the-box-experience, user interfaces. Now, if I can only read it all and implement it!
IBM/Ease of Use/Design
I visited a website from a related industry’s top brand (or so I’m told). Their website was barely useable, which means it only meets the minimum standard. Its ugly, poorly laid out, and unclear. They could pay someone just a couple grand to make it look really sharp (should I give them my number?).
Yet, on their home page they are promoting the release of their latest paper catalog. Don’t they realize that they have already made an impression on the website visitor and they aren’t going to want a catalog from a company with such a clunky website? My industry is riddled with so many smaller companies with ingrained marketing machines that just can’t seem to adapt to the web, even seven years later!
I am going to be posting my third generation site shortly. The cool thing is that I don’t have to change the content much–it is already streamlined. I am only fixing the navitation scheme. What will they think when they see my new site? Will they even consider trying to catch up? To really blow them away, I really should outsource the website design, but they make the bar so low, I am not ashamed to do it myself. But ultimately, my control of the website is what makes it useable, forgetting the design.
I ordered new envelopes for our company with our new-and-improved logo recently. I usually don’t get involved with this stuff, but because of the issues with the logo, I was anyway. Our new logo is orange. The envelopes came in a color closest to maroon. It appears they mixed in “cyan” (blue) when none is needed to make orange. The sales rep seems stumped as to why they saw blue as being required to make the logo. I showed him my original Photoshop file (at my desk, on my PC), where no cyan is required. He showed me their test proof (I only saw a fax of it) that was almost maroon.
They will reprint the envelopes, but now I need to make a visit to their press to inspect the output. But where the heck did the cyan get mixed into my logo file? And why didn’t I get a color proof?
Thanks to the Random Trout (link also shows my comments), he points to a article about The Church, going, going, gone.
From a marketing perspective, what is in a name? Does “church” help define the product effectively, or does it scare people away by their preconceived notions of what a church is? And how does this affect your core congregation/customers?