"Top N" lists
of companies, like the Top
10 Storage Software Companies are popular articles in most publications, the
most famous being Fortune's 500 list of the top manufacturing companies.
Similarly
on
STORAGEsearch.com the "Top 10"
articles which list companies in various categories have for several years been
more than twice as popular as other types of articles.
This is good
for readers, who get a shortcut to the most successful or most important
emerging companies, and it's good for the listed companies, but what about the
hundreds of other companies which don't get into the top 10?
Marketers
who contact me about promoting their companies in our directories can discover
where they rank in the unpublished part of these listings - in the range from
11 to 999.
Sometimes I have to tell a company that they are below
the visibility horizon.
My definition for that is a company
profile which ranks below that of companies which have been out of business for
a number of years, or below that of spoof companies like the
Prickly Spine
Software which has appeared in April 1st news stories from time to time. If
a real established company ranks below a spoof company with our readers, then
it shows they have serious problems with credibility and visibility on the web.
My
8 years 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.
Marketing
ailments don't have to be fatal.
Companies can and do climb out of the
abyss. But they are rare exceptions. The first step is actually finding out that
your company is at the bottom of the slope, and not, as wishful thinking often
suggests, somewhere close to the top. Marketers in companies tracked by our
publications can contact me by email and find out where they stand.
Confidentiality about these ratings is assured. Readers aren't interested in
losers. But you can turn your company around before it's too late. | |
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