About Marketing Views

Welcome to Marketing Views!

I'm Zsolt Kerekes, the editor. During more than 11 years publishing IT directories like STORAGEsearch and the SPARC Product Directory I've spoken to thousands of sales and marketing people who have asked me questions about PR, web promotion etc.

Sometimes the answer was already contained in one of the sites I edit, other times not. If I didn't know the answer, I'd often put them in touch with a marketing expert from the many special companies which, as a publisher, you get to know.Other times, the answer to a question like "is this segment growing" might lie in our web site statistics.

MarketingViews collects up useful information for IT marketers from the various sites that I've edited or published. Then, over the next year or so, as we add new content from experts in electronic marketing, advertising, PR, business strategy, market research etc I hope it will become even more useful.

• To save you time, if you are an IT sales person or marketer who asks me frequently asked questions about press releases, or web advertising.

• To save me time. Instead of replying to hundreds of queries every month with a long and boring email, I refer all such queries to this web site.

• To prompt you into thinking more about the processes involved in electronic marketing, and hopefully, get better results from some of those activities. You won't find all the answers on this site. But it may help start your research process. I've found that the more my customers understand about their whole customer promotion and acquisition process, the easier they are to work with, and the more they are likely to spend. (Not just on our sites). So it's a win-win process.

• None. No formal qualifications, anyway, but a lot of experience. I've built up a publishing business which has attracted millions of buyers (readers) using pure direct marketing and segmentation. The results have been beneficial for my customers. In the early 1990's, i.e. before the web, my customers would typically buy mailing lists. Since 1996, my publications have been web based, and my skill lies in attracting the right kind of reader to these publications, so that it works for my advertisers, and for people who supply content like press releases. It also works for me. I have a dotcom publishing business which is worth a lot of money, is debt free and profitable. If you focus on one subject for a long time, you inevitably become some kind of expert. I don't claim to be a marketing guru. But I know stuff that works. I've also spent more on internet promotions than most of my customers. So you can learn from my (many) mistakes.
  
  Before I became a publisher, I was technical manager in a Sun VAR and systems integrator. And before that I raised venture capital to found a high tech manufacturing business, after a long career in R&D in many US and European companies. So I've been on your side of the fence, wondering where the next customer was coming from, which technologies could change my business etc etc.

• It's not a necessary part of my business model. The point of MarketingViews is to help the people who interface with our high volume computer publications as content providers and advertisers. But if you're interested, here's some advertising info.

• If you think you know better about some aspect of electronic marketing that's covered or not covered already, I'll be delighted to hear from you. Don't send me your gripes (because the site is not aimed for you if you are already an expert). Instead, send me a poposal for an article or whitepaper about some aspect of marketing which will help our readers. You should also tell me what company you work for and a summary of your relevant experience. If it comes within the scope of the FAQs my customers ask me, I'll publish the article with your company logo and a link to your site.