Marketing Views

• Can you believe the word "reliability" in a 2.5" Solid State Disk brand? - It only takes a few hours to create a website saying that your company designs reliable SSDs. And many customers have been burned by flaky SSDs - even from reputable chip companies like Intel. What can marketers do to make their reliability message credible in this cynical web age? - by Zsolt Kerekes, editor StorageSearch.com

• Increasing Your Brand's Visibility by Search-engine Marketing - Many companies think their site is optimized because someone programmed 15 or so keyword phrases into the site's source code a while back. They are surprised to find that this approach is quite outdated. This classic article (published in 2003) was written by Veronica Fielding President & CEO of - Digital Brand Expressions .

• Smashing the Myth of the Press Release - Publicity "gurus" are springing up all over the Internet touting the press release as the answer to all marketing ills. Just knock out a release, mass e-mail it to journalists, sit back and wait for Oprah to call. It's a cruel joke. Here's the reality. This classic article (published in 2002) was written by Bill Stoller Founder, PublicityInsider.com.

• Using business cards effectively as promotion tools - Don't let the small size fool you. A business card is one of the least expensive and most powerful forms of advertising you possess. This classic article (published in 2003) was written by Shannon Cherry - founder of Cherry Communications.

• Marketing Nomenclature, and the Naming of Names - In business a corporate name is normally a single word. 2 word names are problematic, 3 words are more complicated. 4 words? - why not kill the business first? - This classic article (published in 2003) was written by corporate naming guru Naseem Javed. Companies are still making the same mistakes discussed in the article today.

• Why Isn't Web Marketing Simpler?
  Pay Google some money... and the job's done. Isn't it?

• Customers Search Differently - customers (who want to find suppliers and buy stuff) search differently to marketers (who want to promote their companies and sell stuff). That's why most search marketing misses the best targets.

• What's a Good Click Rate for a Banner Ad? - what you learn from testing banner ads - often results in you having to change the way you talk about your company in other places... your web site, your PR. Leaving this important task in the hands of graphics designers is lunacy. ...Later:- in 2010 - I updated this popular article to compare how banners compare to Google ads.

• Think of Web Ads as Signposts - they can lead the right people to your destination. But give them a credible message so that the brain follows the mouse click for sound business reasons. Ideally the ad should also signal to the wrong type of customer they can filter themselves out at this point and not waste their time and yours by following this path.

• Rethinking the Banner Ad - remember it's a guaranteed communication and doesn't have to be an ad. There are 2 sets of viewers who see you banner ad, and you should cater for both. The most important are the 94% to 99.5% who are going to see the banner, but not click on it (at that moment in time). What impression are they left with after seeing the banner?

• Press Release Errors I see every day - as an editor - I have to disregard zillions of press releases, which vendors have paid good money to their agencies to write and distribute. Here's why.

• Market research & storage analysts - This directory includes every market research company cited by a storage company on StorageSearch.com. Some are better than others. I classify them privately into Storage Clairvoyants (predict the future), Terabyte Talliers (tell you what's just happened) and SoothSayers (make your press release sound more credible)...

• Time to Rewrite the Business Books? - 2009 didn't turn out so bad after all - but as the year started - this article wryly commented on the fact that most IT marketing books have been written assuming a backdrop of high double digit growth.

• The Golden Keys of E-Commerce - Domain names are no longer small issues to be handled by the booming logo-centric-slogan-happy-agencies or web-tech-teams.

• Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market - animal marketing metaphors are popular in service industries, but you'd be surprised how many companies have used animals in their marketing of data storage products and services.

• The Mysteries and Future of Websites - Either your customers can find you easily or you're simply lost. No amount of money can create a bounce to your expensive websites or your big budget branding in these times, except your alpha-structure of your URLs.

• Venture Capital Funds in Storage - If you're starting a new storage company where can you go to get money? - I was asked that question so many times that in 2000 I started a list of which VCs were giving how much to whom. It lists the failures too. It's important to have a good story for your prospective VC if your business idea sounds similar to an earlier one that tanked.

• PR Agencies which are Effective at High Tech PR - The list includes only PR companies which have successfully sent targeted and timely press releases related to the publications which I edit.

• 7 laws of direct marketing - The late Isaac Asimov managed to write volumes of entertaining stories which revolved around his three fundamental laws of robotics... The stories showed that complex behaviour can result from apparently simple origins.

• Aspects of Web Advertising - This classic article from 2000 outlines the theoretical framework behind the major types of online ads.

• 7 Tips to Get More Mileage out of Your Online or Offline Publicity - You worked hard to get a story on your business in a popular website or your local paper. Don't let your efforts ends there -- here are seven tips to help you maximize your online and offline publicity:

• After SSDs... What Next? - Predicting the storage market's next obsession... looks beyond the next 3 years of hoopla in the SSD market and forecasts what will be the next "big thing" in storage after that.

• PR FAQs - How to write them, where to distribute them - List of free and fee newswires and articles related to press release writing and success.

• The harder-working eshot - 13 guidelines to improve the odds of your email marketing messages getting through. Classic article from an expert in enterprise server marketing.

• PR Strategies: Remember, the web has no memory! - Can you remember what your home page looked like back in 1996? Maybe you think that's not important right now. Like global warming, you suspect there may be some problems accumulating somewhere because of all this web stuff, but it's only when your house gets flooded, you really start to believe in it.

• The 4 Seasons of Publicity - Building an All-Year Publicity Machine - In this age of immediacy (only a few seconds separate a Matt Drudge or a CNN from writing a story and putting it before millions), it's easy to forget that, for many print publications and TV shows, it can be weeks -- and sometimes months -- before a completed story sees the light of day.

• Poor Market Research by IT Vendors Means They Go Bust Faster - I often get a sense of deja vu when seeing press releases which claim that a company is the first to ship a certain type of technology or product. A quick bit of research in the news archives reveals that another company did exactly the same thing maybe 6 to 10 months before

• Is Your Company Below the Visibility Horizon? - My experience as a web directory publisher, suggest that most of the companies below the visibility threshold eventually join our acquired, dead & merged companies list. It's a very good indicator of a company whose marketing is in deep trouble, although sometimes the marketers in those companies (who are not externally focused enough) are the last to know.

• Where B2B IT Web Advertising Works Best, and Why - I often talk to B2B computer advertisers who after disappointment with search-engine advertising ask me why advertising in a portal should be any better? They get hits, from their key word advertising but not much business.

• When's the Best Day to Issue a Press Release? - On our B2B IT web sites, readership on the busiest day is typically 2x to 3x as high as on the least busy day.

• Classic Web Marketing Resources - I first published this list in the late 1990's, and from time to time it gets a small update. That's why I've renamed it "Classic" Web Marketing Resources.

• Writing an Electronic Communications Policy - An electronics communications policy acts as a guideline for employees in the use of a company's electronics communications system. As such it provides an important safeguard for companies against liability due to misuse and abuse of electronic communications resources by its employees. A good electronic communications policy should also provide guidelines for dealing with employees who abuse the policy.

• Why Batching Up Press Releases is a Bad Idea for the Web - When it comes to delivering physical goods, it's a good idea to batch up several items and send them in one package. It saves time and money. However when it comes to issuing press releases, this is almost always a bad idea.

• What's the Call to Action on Your Blog? - by corporate blogging guru Debbie Weil - may get you rethinking yours.

• Web Marketing Today is a classic web marketing resource site - founded in 1995 by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson. My favorite article here is Alleviating Advertising Anorexia .

• How we really use the Web - is a sample chapter from a book that makes you rethink your home page. After reading it one night in February 2010 I got up at 3am and reworked the home page of StorageSearch.com.

• GerryMcGovern.com - is a rich resource on designing "customer-centric" web sites. It's new to me (2010) but it's been going since 1996. My favorite article here is - the Business case for deleting content.

• Useit.com/alertbox - is one of the few web marketing resources which has survived intact from 1995. Its theme is web page usability. My favorite article here is - Fighting Linkrot - which is just as relevant today as it was in 1998 when it first appeared.

• searchengineland.com - I used to follow articles by the founder - Danny Sullivan - in the days when his site was called searchenginewatch.com. Recommended articles from each site:- Enterprise Search: Focus on the Business Goals and the Importance of Landing Pages - 20 Tips.

• Does Telling Someone to "Click Here" Work? - this article by Brian Clark, on his site Copyblogger.com may surprise you. I've been advising banner designers to add this text to their images since I started selling banner ads in 1998. This article discusses alt-text - which has pretty much the same goal.

• Web Pages That Suck - this is another rare survivor from the earliest days of the web. To design a good site - you need to see why others are so bad. My favorite article here is - Top 30 Web Design Mistakes

• SEO Chicks - is a new-ish collection of thoughts and articles related to search and web marketing topics. My favorite article? - Stubbornness Won't Get You Higher Rankings.

• Getting the Message - Email, Blogging, Linked-In etc. It seems that once a popular messaging channel becomes too clogged with extraneous messages, a new message channel emerges.

• Search Engine Optimization - Google's own SEO article includes an amusing but serious warning. Apparently Google themselves receive spam emails offering to improve their search rank and saying - "you are not listed in major search engines and directories".

• Knol versus Wikipedia - Fair Fight or No Contest? - I like this article because it appeals to my sense of balance. Wikipedia irritates writers like me by remixing and regurgitating articles from original sources - and producing ersatz blends which sometimes score higher with Google searches than the originals. Now Google is annoying Wikipedia by doing something similar -with articles called knols which often cite their main research source as being - Wikipedia.

• Click Fraud Gets Smarter - this BusinessWeek article (published 2006) looks into some of the systemic ways that cyber crooks cream off advertising dollars you place with leading search-engines. A proportion of their ads run on 3rd party sites. But some of those sites are simply set up to skim off revenue with computer generated clicks.

• Marketing in Hard Times - Less Slash and Burn, More Measure and Learn - do you wonder how you can improve business success even when your marketing budget has been cut? - a classic article from Downes Strategic Marketing