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Time to Rewrite the Business Books? ... Megabyte - from StorageSearch.com
I was in my wife's office having a cup of tea when the phone rang.

It was a big customer, so business conditions being what they are she took the call and I was left contemplating the wallpaper.

Actually you can't see the walls in her office because they're lined from floor to ceiling with marketing books. It's a big office, and the amazon of marketing literature flows out into the hall too.
My wife's a marketing guru - who has trained marketers in many of the world's best known IT companies, telcos, pharmaceuticals and banks, and has been a company doctor for countless organizations of all sizes.

(Not mine. I'm a lost cause.) She disclaims all responsibility for the mice BTW - I'd better make that clear. She says I correctly picked up on the idea of using animal metaphors in services marketing but completely failed to apply them as a consistent brand. That's what happens when someone like me puts the marketing book down only half way through and never picks it up again.

Her office is nicer than mine - so I thought I'd finish my tea in there - and while she was talking on the phone I idly cast my eyes around some old familiar titles.

After the call the phone was remated to its cradle.

It's a complicated process - which when I do it - if it rings late at night - involves me picking the damn thing up and studying where the pins are so I don't bend them or break them. But my wife just pops it back on - and it works fine for her.

You can't buy a simple phone that looks like a phone nowadays. As a dotcom publisher my own phone hasn't seen much action in the past 12 years - which is why it hasn't worn out. For security reasons - it's got a wire which comes out of it and goes directly into the wall. Then into the roof and up a pole. You can't use wireless phones in an office where someone might ring in to give you their credit card number. I don't mind having a big old fashioned phone. It doesn't pose an RSI risk or see much action as it's located conveniently out of the way - and just out of reach of my desk.

"They won't be selling too many of those in the next few years" I said, pointing to a whole shelf of populist marketing books by the Chasm Group.

"They'll have to come up with new titles for the recession - like Hanging onto the Edge of the Chasm."

My wife calls them "airport books" by which she means the sort of book a "type A" manager can easily digest - and feel good about - without the risk of learning anything of substance - or getting a headache - since you can usually summarise the entire book in a single sentence. In Search of Excellence, Marketing Warfare... you know the sort of thing. I love them. I haven't even read the covers of the serious marketing books.

Getting into the spirit of it I suggested that the new business autobiographies could have names like... "the Chasm Got Wider after I Jumped."

One of the problems is that nearly all the populist literature about marketing tells you how to operate in growing markets. So everything you've learned is obsolete.

"Surrender Marketing" doesn't sound as sexy as "Guerrilla Marketing"

And Bill Gates' book "Hard Drive" wouldn't have sold as well if it had been called "Soft Drive."

"Honey I Shrank the Company?"

We agreed this was an important subject that we should return to later.

I did write a serious article a few months ago called is the SSD Market Recession-Proof?

It included some warnings - like don't jump too quickly into a new market which sounds better than yours - just because some editor or market researcher said optimistic things about it.

They may be completely wrong - or over simplifying a market that's scarier than the one you already know about.

In evolution - survival of the species does not necessarily mean survival of the individual. Markets can survive and grow while feeding on the dead bodies of the companies which rushed in at the wrong time.
click to read the guide - enter the SSD market
3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market
Megabyte had researched 3 easy ways
to get rich quick (or lose a ton of money).
  • 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.
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  • 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.
  • Web Advertising Strategies: choosing the wrong portal - If you're familiar with the concept of segmenting your market, into segments defined by how you market to them, such as end-users (by market, size and geography), resellers, new customers, lapsed customers, etc, then another new segment model you should think about is segmenting your market by the portals they use.
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  • 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.
  • SWOT analysis - is one of those terms that you come across in the first morning of a marketing course - not long after meeting the 4 P's. (And some experts say there are now 7 of those.) I sprinkled some SWOT sauce around to season my comments in a recent article about SSD maker STEC
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Rethinking the Banner Ad - There are 2 sets of viewers who see you banner ad, and you should cater for both. The most important set, are the 94% to 99.5% who are typically 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?
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  • 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.
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  • Form is Not the Same as Function in Web Advertising - Web advertising, like quantum mechanics is not an intuitive process. It all comes out of the numbers. And the theory can give you a headache. But just as you don't need to know quantum theory to operate your CD player, you don't need to spend years analysing web statistics to see why web advertising works.
  • 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.

more about us

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  • Events archive - (look back at past events) - If you're a marketer involved with events, then it's useful to look backwards at what events have taken place in the last year, because many of these events operate on an annual cycle. A backwards looking list like this one sometimes gives you better long range visibility than a forward looking one.
  • Why Reader to Advertiser Ratios are Important to Advertisers - Another way to apply this kind of ratio is to look at expos. If you divide the total number of visitors by the total number of booths... That can give you numbers which are scary, especially when you factor in all the costs. So don't do it if you're the nervous type.

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