'Giant Mass Email Document' from 'Do Not Reply'

How sloppy and/or lazy can you get? 'Giant Mass Email Document' from 'Do Not Reply':

• I've cropped the email, but it doesn't say what they do at all.
• He misspelled 'machienery', part of his company name.
• He used his own email account, so likely will be tagged a spammer and none of his real clients will get his email for a week.
  

He did remember to have an 'unsubscribe' link, but I imagine he'll never do another mass email because 'it doesn't work'.

B2B Blog-posts worth reading (especially the last one)

Life's been in fast-forward for the last month or so, but I'm trying to slow it down a bit and recognize the objects flashing by.

Here's three posts by fellow B2B bloggers worth checking out:

Difference between Marketing and Sales post by Troy Bingham surveys some Linked-in groups: "When do you contact your web leads?"

... In the Marketing, the responders often said it was best to wait 24-48 hours. ... On the other side, the Sales responders all felt that a call should be made immediately or as quickly as possible.

Anyone got an answer for why that is for Troy?


Wild, Wild Web: Shoot Out at the Online Corral post by Julie Power serves up discussion of B2B trash-talking:

Now in a new twist, a business customer of a communications firm has created a new sucks site that cuts its provider up in to tiny little pieces with a commentary that must really, really hurt.

Examining Google's Practices post by Tom Pick is well-researched commentary on the threat Google is to our marketing. He uses the term Monopolist, and not without justification. If Google is more than $100 of our monthly ad-spend, you need to read this one.

Some bits from the post: Google disabling some SEO tracking tools (not my beloved Free Monitor for Google, which uses API). Google treating directories as paid link farms. Google squeezing us for revenue, tracking data, and providing crappy customer service. Etc.

A cool tool for hands-on marketers from ThomasNet

ThomasNet knows that their advertisers are hands-on marketers. So are their engineering-type users. So here is a cool desktop thingy they have released for free: The ThomasNet Toolbox. Screenshot:

It does just enough for a marketer to be useful. And as it hangs out in a normally dead zone of your screen (the very top), its not in the way.

1. The screen capture lets you select the part of the screen to capture. Saves me a step cropping, especially if doing the same shot repeatedly. (Good for engineers making instructions, too.)
2. Color palette tool picks colors off your screen and gives you coding. I forgot about this feature and was doing things the hard way this morning, copy-and-pasting Hex color numbers from a CSS to see what color they really were.
3. The rulers help you measure items on your screen ... again helpful for marketers and engineers. (I do have a cool Firefox plug-in that does this, as well.)
4. Who-knows when the magnifier may come in handy. I know Windows has one, but couldn't tell you how to call it up.
   
5. I normally hate post-it desktop tools, but who knows, I may use this one since it is attached to these other useful items.
6. You are stuck looking at "ThomasNet.com" all day in your header area. If it pays off, people will use the first item in the toolbox, which is a link to their site.
   

I've picked on TN for posting other web-stuff that didn't really do the job, but this one is a winner.

Rant: Logging in shouldn't be this hard

One of our client's just sent a PO notification. So I have to go retrieve from their EDI service, Exostar. Here is my rant I punched into their help/support form:

"1. Does not work with Firefox.
2. Does not give any warning about not working with firefox.
3. Tells me my user/pass is incorrect instead.

... So I attempt to log in and reset password in IE. (I see the website add some text to the end of my user_id when I press submit, which apparently is what Firefox couldn't do). I get a temporary password.

4. Now I have to select my secret question and secret answers? Why, why, why, do I have to select my secret questions?

5. Now I am locked out from logging in for 5 minutes?????

Could you make it any harder???????????"

Yes, I have to select two secret questions from a pulldown list of four. Then provide an answer. And all four questions are things you 'like':

Who is your favorite author?
What is your favorite book?
What is your favorite sport?
What is your favorite food?

The answers to these questions may change over the years. I may have answered these questions 5 or more years ago. My favorite things may have changed. My mother's maiden name will not change. Neither will the city that I was born in.

Apparently my submission was given a case/ticket. It'll be interesting to see what kind of reply I get.

UPDATE: Semi-related: Mean Dean explains how poor 'secret questions' were the cause of Sarah Palin's email getting hacked. Publicly available info makes poor questions, too.

Turning others' webforms into lead generators?

When checking my website's leads this morning, I found a promotional submission, most definitely not a sales lead, but someone trying to sell me. The message was a bit vague, but promised a new way of generating leads via webforms.

I tend to ignore spammy messages, but to save you, my readers, the trouble, I took a look at their website to see what the deal was. Here's there quick run-down (less their brand name):

1. You tell XXX what industries you want to target
2. You specify the geographic areas
3. Choose the plan, that fits your objectives with the maximum number of 'form submissions'
4. XXX proprietary technology then scours the web for industry and geographic matches.
5. XXX pulls the data in, ranks them, and submits your contact info & sales message. XXX populates the forms it determines most meet your target objective as qualified sites.
6. You get oodles ultra targeted, interested, incoming calls/emails quickly.

So, the assumption is that people forwarding webleads will helpfully forward your request to the correct person in the company. Hmmm.

I imagine this may work as a back-door to sales and marketing departments. It may also work because it is a less common approach. But I don't think there is a whole lot of reason to think it is more worthwhile than other marketing techniques.

In the end, it is just another spamming method, I think.

Finding a clunker in AdWords

At the beginning of August, I broke down my AdWords campaign into more keyword-centric 'ad groups'. Now I am able to look at the results of a whole month, and I'm glad I did it.

Overall, I had about 20% less click-thrus. But wait, I had 40% MORE conversions. The conversion rate nearly doubled over July. Cool!

In reviewing the data for individual keywords, I had one clunker of a keyword I am completely stumped by. Here's the situation:

Its the number one keyword for this particular ad-group, lets call it 'tennis shoe'. I even pay a premium over my normal maximum CPC for this term to make sure I am listed well versus the competition. Right below it with almost identical views is 'tennis shoes'. But look at the conversion rates:

Keyword	CTR	Conv. Rate
tennis shoe	3.80%	1.30%
tennis shoes	2.15%	19.00%

What the heck is going on here???? And what should I do?

I'm going to watch a little closer and see what's going on. But I see a major savings in my AdWords spend coming up.

How do you write about it?

Its been a week. That alone should take the pressure off. How do you write about it? How do you talk about it?

My boss and company president died last week of a heart attack here at the office. Joe was a too young 56. The gap in our business is huge, as well as a personal loss of someone I have worked with for almost 18 years. And the shock of realizing I could just walk away from the office, something that he would never be able to do again.

Being the marketer, I realized I had to put something on the website. People are going to be looking for news about it. It was 11pm at night when I finally posted something. One of our overseas reps had sent an email of condolences, and I guess seeing it in print made it real enough that I could talk about.

I showed what I had posted in the morning to a co-worker who made two comments: we should check with his wife first; and it sounded too newsy.

I disabled the post waiting for approval, and replaced some of my text with someone else's "we regret to inform you...". Turns out that the approval never came. But for at least a few hours the news was right on our website.

What I realized, and was willing to accept, is that in certain situations, dignity and respect are more important than directness and timeliness. The writing style that I use here and on my company website needs to be dialed back, even to the point that the voice no longer seems to be mine. Who really wants to read a death announcement written by someone who was there and personally affected by it anyway?

The thing is, the funeral service had this third-person feel. Part of the problem is that the pastor never acknowledged that a whole company was wondering 'what's next?' I hope that the family felt comforted by her words about his family life, but I wanted her to acknowledge my pain, my worry.

I settled for accepting that our presence there was to comfort the family as well. And the family was very gracious and heartfelt in meeting with everyone who was there.

So what do you say? What do you write? Who's your audience? Will you make others (or yourself) cry? Are you direct and personal, or formal and polite? Does it gloss over the ugliness or make it real to others?

All these questions for someone who has to communicate, never mind the personal thoughts one has about the passing of a colleague.

Shalom Joe Hamm.

AdNonsense Advertising

Saw this post yesterday by Tatum Marketing: B2B Online Advertising – You Need to Change the Default Settings

"The first of these settings is an automatic opt-in to a content network. When you’re in a content network, your ad is served on non-search engine websites – presumably those whose content subject matter is a match for your ad."

How important is this? Take a look at this example of what not to do I found:

Hmmm, Adsense is content-matching based on the word 'strip'. And this poor advertiser is getting 95K views just from Bloglines users!!!

If they are lucky, no one is actually clicking on their ad. Even 0.1% of viewers click (accidentally or curiously, I assume), that's 95 clicks to pay for every day the ad runs.

Adsense for B2B marketing: Adnonsense ... if you aren't careful.

Is 'Q-tube' an improvement over webinars?

Video is the next frontier of B2B marketing. But how to do it? Where to do it?

For 'where', partnering with a trade pub makes sense to aid in promotion. But 'how'--most trade pubs that use video are offering 'webinars' and I HATE WEBINARS.

Quality Magazine has taken a stab at a different video presentation, in the form of "Q-Tube":

"Q-Tube SHOWS you the latest products and technology manufacturers are using to improve their manufacturing processes" etc...

Q-Tube in its current form is three interviews by the editor of the magazine with marketing folks at a trade show about their products. Like some webinars, adding a representative from the publication makes the presentation seem less like a sales pitch. The sound quality is poor and the content is as dry as any staged pitch, but I applaud them for experimenting.

I really think video is the next frontier for trade pub editorial content, too, but that's a subject for a different post. So, what do you think? And is anyone out there in industrial B2B marketing or publishing getting video right yet?

The weirdest ad for lab equipment you will EVER see « Collateral Damage

Blog Collateral Damage posts The weirdest ad for lab equipment you will EVER see:

"How do you market a machine that automates using a pipette (an instrument used to transport a measured volume of liquid)? Romance, of course. Eppendorf is pushing its new epMotion machine with a video of a boy-band group of lab types singing a boy-band type of love song about how you deserve to have your pipetting done by a machine."

You can follow link above to Collateral Damage, or go to YouTube, or the epMotion site where you can also get wallpaper for your lab PC.

Just way over the top!

But you gotta figure that, lets guess, $50k to pull this off is the equivalent of 5 full page ads in Lab Equipment Magazine. Makes it look like a reasonable approach, all of a sudden.

A Gift from Google

A quick search lets me know I am not the only one getting a gift package from Google for being a customer for five or six years. But I am personally honored.

Contents:

• Thank-you letter from David Fischer (VP Global Online Sales/Operations).
  
• Booklet "Advanced Tips from AdWords Experts" from Fred Vallaeys, AdWords Product Evangelist.
  Snip--"You're part of an exclusive group of advertisers who have been with AdWords from the start."
• Cookbook "Keyword: Delicious" from John Dickman, Global Food Manager.
  Contents are recipes for four seasons. Yum!
  
• Black Google Apron, with pockets
  

You may not know, but I enjoy cooking. I may not try the wood-roasted lobster, but there are a number of other interesting and do-able recipes in here. I may start with the ricotta-stuffed roasted nectarines.

Thanks to David, Fred, and John at Google.

Click the link below!

"He prefers to keep his full identity hidden, but here's what you need to know: He's one of the most passionate, intelligent, helpful and enduring bloggers out there on business marketing."

Yep, its a Friday Online Marketer Interview with yours-truly via email with Julie of the Internet Marketing Report...

Harp-playing crusader for all business marketers

(Includes 27 seconds of me and my new Suzuki D harmonica.)

Don't make me think, and don't make me squint

I get a few spam emails a day that must be from semi-targeted lists my email (and our generic sales@ email) are on. Most look like one-shot wonders by folks who have never spammed before.

The one I just got was self-centered, which is typical. So I tried to figure out in the email what their organization is or does, but all they use is their acronym. Especially horrific was the head graphic in the email:



How small is that type under the logo? And as a graphic it is barely readable.

Stupid to spam, and even stupider to make sure your results are 0%.

Ariba Supplier Rip-off Program

Got an email from uber-EDI Ariba (EDI=Electronic Data Exchange=online purchasing system):

"We are pleased that the Network is helping your company facilitate business with customers, including XXX International.

Due to the volume of business your company transacts through the Network your account has been upgraded to Premier level status ... As a new Premier Member, you are required to pay associated annual fees. "

Ahem ... $207?

So that we can be on the receiving end of a paperless purchasing system??? Is this Ticketmaster I'm dealing with?

Of course some poor marketer had to come up with a list of Premier Supplier Benefits ... "The Premier membership level is for mid-sized suppliers seeking advantage through value-added features." Features include gems like "premium content" and "Premier membership attribution on Ariba Supplier Directory."

Still sounds like a arm-twisting rip-off to me, just like Ticketmaster's "$2.50 Print At Home Delivery Fee per order per ticket."

Sneak peak at new ThomasNet home page

I was digging thru my website traffic reports and noticed some referrals from beta.thomasnet.com. Of course I took a look and am sharing the link for the Thomas-watchers out there.



Overall, a nice visual improvement over the current www.thomasnet.com. I especially like the eye-saving and space-saving method of hiding sub-categories in the 'Browse Categories' block. Search pages all seem cleaner, too.

The cleanliness of the home page, while much nicer, still doesn't give the feeling that they are the powerhouse in B2B directory sites, however. Not sure how to do that, but GlobalSpec's blue header-bar and bright logo seem more authoritative.

A solution to displaying pricing on my website

Over a year ago I did a series of posts discussing the value and issues in adding product pricing to your website. Part of the reason I went thru this exercise was to figure out a solution for my particular situation, where posting pricing is not feasible.

And with the database tools of my new site launched earlier this year, I had an opportunity to try something. I realized that pricing on a website serves two purposes:

1. As a real number for budgeting and purchasing.
2. As a measure of value, to compare to other models.

In my posts, I had suggested pricing barometers as a way of addressing #2 when #1 was impossible to address, as in my case. So now I had to follow my own advice, but how...

I realized that comparison to other brands was just one problem, but comparison between my models was a problem I could solve. With two product categories of almost 20 models, and one with over 75, helping the visitor distinguish between my models was already a priority. I had already implemented side-by-side comparison for my largest product categories shortly after launching the site to make things much easier for the user.

And on the comparison page is where it makes the most sense to show a price barometer, so you can compare value along with specifications. So, here’s what I created: a ‘Price Rank’ category to the product specification table. This rank is a simple numeric ranking of base price for that product category. It looks like this:

“Price Rank” (Comparing to other models in this product category. Lower Number = Lower Price): #11 out of 18 ranked

This information is displayed on the product-detail page and on the comparison page. I was really happy when I got this implemented because it seemed very clear. My fear was that the ranking would need a detailed explanation or would be easy to mis-interpret.

And this helps my primary goal for shoppers on my site: to get them to say ‘cool, this looks like the model I need for my application’, and then submit a quote request.

(Pats self on back ... and Mike Boyink for his help in implementing.)

Google Trends: ThomasNet vs. GlobalSpec

UPDATED: See clarification about 'Also visited' below.

Just announced that Google Labs' Website Trends tool can put graphs side-by-side. Hard numbers are not shown, which is probably smart on their part. And 'tiny' sites like companies in my industry don't have enough traffic.

So why not compare ThomasNet and GlobalSpec? This data I limited to USA users, since worldwide, the trends were nearly the same (and USA is my market). I also tried adding iqsdirectory.com, but not enough traffic to rank.

Thomas shows more traffic than GlobalSpec from USA visitors:

In the same screen they also show other sites their users visited. (Blue bar =TN, Red bar =GS)

TN's visitors must include a lot of their salespeople, as the #1 'also visited' site is their extranet. #3 Webtraxs.com is their website analytics tool.

UPDATE: Per a comment left at the site, this isn't exactly true summation on my part:
"A better way to think about it is the reverse: Nearly all users of TRRep.com visit ThomasNet.com, which makes perfect sense. This creates, statistically, a very tight association between the two. The point is that it has nothing to do with frequency, but with statistical probability."


Meanwhile GlobalSpec's visitors hit have a high probability of visiting ip09.com the most, which I am guessing must host their newsletter content somehow. Interesting to see trade-pub Machine Design as #2 'also visited' site.

Like any trend-graph, things are open for interpretation. What do you think this all means? Ultimately, I am looking at leads delivered, but this gives an overall idea of visibility.

The State of B2Blogosphere (2): Getting some signal

I guess I titled this series wrong. I really want to talk about the B2Blogosphere. I've complained about the 'noise' drowning out the 'signal'. We need more 'signal', but what counts?

Getting some 'Signal'--here's the kind of things that I like in a blog post:

1. Lists - Gotcha reading this post didn't it?
   
2. Waffling - Its okay to post questions without answers. Lets discuss the tough issues and figure out the possible solutions together.
   
3. Train wrecks - The Internet gives us a chance to rubber-neck. It gives us a chance to learn from others' mistakes and feel smarter for not making them.
   
4. Level 6 - In the seven levels of change, Level 6 = Different. This is what Seth pushes us to toward.
5. Hacks - Make me work smarter. Save me hassles. Yay.
   
6. Stories - Facts are boring...tell me a story about the facts instead.
   
7. New Stuff - Okay, I'm tired of posts about iPhones, but most posts about new things help me feel aware of the world around me.
   
8. Stuff from Left Field - Surprise works, too. Boing Boing's theme of 'wonderful things' is a great example.
   
9. Attitude - What's your voice? Speak up if you want me to hear you.
10. Links - Send me somewhere new. Back up your argument. Lead me down a path to learn more.
    

Okay, not a link to go with every point, but you get the idea. Probably sad that I could come up with multiple examples of 'train-wreck' blogs quickly and not 'Level 6' blogs.

11. And comments, and posts that make me want to comment...

So post yours here, please. Reactions to my list? What blogs are drawn to, that give good 'signal'?

Microsoft AdCenter offers some help, free

I got this email last week (edited down):

Dear David, At Microsoft adCenter, our goal is to help you attract more customers and maximize your search ROI while saving time. That's why we're offering you free one-on-one assistance from an adCenter representative. ... An adCenter representative will be calling soon to discuss how to improve your search campaigns.

Oh geez, I thought. #3 is going to call, maybe, and if they do, it will probably be a telemarketer trying to set up an appointment or cross-sell or some hassle.

The call
I ended up talking to Cory this morning and he was prepared, approachable, and gave useful 'ideas' to tinker with my campaign without talking down to me, or forcing me to log in and follow him click-by-click.

At the end Cory gave me his number, and it was written down by yours-truly in appreciation of his professionalism and potential value.

Smart!
If others like me ignore our MS AdCenter account, you gotta think that this is a smart strategy to get us to look again, improve our campaigns, and see results that (hopefully) we will take notice of. Win-win results!

B2B Magazines drive traffic to websites?

Got a link to this webpage from a magazine publisher: Magazine Vertical Search:

"Business-to-Business magazines drive more readers to their own website than any other medium. ... The reader goes direct from the print page to an advertiser’s website to continue to search a product or service or new technology."

The webpage is actually an attempt at a pitch for a vertical-search software, although it reads more like a manifesto about the value of B2B trade pubs, with half-a-dozen links to articles proving his case.

My opinion? Anyone can drive more traffic to their site via magazines and advertising than search can. It just takes a lot of money. One of the articles linked to references automobile website traffic being driven by advertising, which is not relevant to the B2B print ad discussion, although is a good example of what money can do to site traffic.

Yes, if trade advertising were measurable (which I have no idea how this guy's software does this), it could make the case. The problem is that for many of us niche industrial marketers, the low-hanging fruit of search is so bountiful, and measurable, that trade advertising is no longer worth it.

Hints for making a little money on the side

Starting a new site to earn money requires time in the beginning. The easiest to start is a home affiliate business site, I think. It will require research to be carried out to see which companies offer good products and nice referral fees. But before you can start, domain registration and website hosting research has to be done. The best web hosting packages can be easily located online. I'd also consider running through companies that are offering reseller hosting so you can have more than one domain, if needed.

If you don't have it already, get a wireless internet service so the site can be uploaded and maintained conveniently wherever you are. Actually creating the site itself will take some work, but there are some neat free tools that make it easier, like WordPress. By learning to constantly manage SEO and search engine submission, the site can do well in search engine ranking and develop enough traffic that proposals will fly in for banner advertising on the site.