Your Chance to Give Biz Advice

Got the following email question from long-time reader David, who is heading up marketing at a tech start-up:

I had a question about online marketing, perhaps you or your friends could chime in.

As you know, the only way to scale marketing and hit very ambitious revenue numbers is online marketing since there are only so many events you can attend, direct mailers to send, etc. To really bring in new prospects and build a big pipeline any company must leverage the web. Most big F500 have just begun to put more than 25-30% of their marketing budget into online strategy and this will probably grow in the future if they have sufficient ROI metrics to support.

What would you recommend to really take advantage of the internet and really bring in 500-1000 qualified "hot" leads a month? I am aware of SEO, online newsletters, weblinars, e-mail marketing but what other efforts can be made to really launch a successful web marketing campaign?

My first response would be: it depends on the product and the customer. If I remember correctly, your product is hardware sold to businesses rather than consumers (?), which is different if you were selling, say, software, in which case my answer would be different.

In my experience, for non-software sales to businesses, the web isn't really the main lead generator, it's the pull-through for your "real" lead generation activity. In other words, your leads go to the web to follow-up on something they heard about from your sales force, read in a magazine, or saw at a trade show. If they like what they see on your web site, the site then pulls them in as an active lead. I think this is especially true for business products as few engineers/purchasing agents today do their primary research and decision making based on web browsing (again, if you were in the software business, I think a web sales approach is much more doable and there are successful models for this).

In my three years at a hardware start-up during the peak of the tech boom, the "pure internet leads" were college students and garage tinkerers, not useful leads. That being said, you still have to have a web strategy to support your other sales activities, and that means putting useful information not only on your product, but also on your segment and industry, as well as making it easy to navigate and having it reflect your company.

My personal opinion is that you still need "people on the ground" to generate quality leads, so would recommend a rep/disty strategy, giving big percentages to these guys to generate leads, with the web acting as a support function, rather than a primary lead generator.

However, my scope in this area is limited, so I would welcome other comments or insights in the comment section.

Last Week of Construction (Cross Fingers)

As some of you may have guessed after reading my Paleolithic regression over my new fire-toy, the Fabulous New Back Yard^TM is nearing completion. From a "macro" standpoint, the casual observer might think the only thing left is sod (and new patio furniture & bar stools, which are on order), although there are a lot of little things left to do in the background (or underground): plumbing the sink, putting in "light scaping", putting in new valves for the sprinkler system, etc.

This week all the plants (minus the sod) showed up, including 5 trees



When picking out my new trees, I used very scientific terms like "the one that blooms purple in the spring" (Jacaranda), "the pretty one that has white bark" (birch - two of these) and a red-purple flower tree that I had no input on, but which showed up anyway (and I still don't know what it is, but I got two of them). This is in addition to a plum, peach and citrus tree I already had, so I have good tree coverage, although the news one are sorta small so will take a while to really grow in.



In this pic you can also see the fountain, which is a really nice addition. For a sense of scale, the fence is just over six feet tall.

The components for the bar are all in, although the sink still needs to be hooked up:



The side of the house has been a nice surprise. If you look at the original diagram, this was not that well defined, but it has come together as a separate little patio area. I have been calling it the "secret garden", but the contractor calls it the BAC 0.2% area:



That's temporary patio furniture (some old stuff) in there, and we will replace this with a quaint little table and chair set for taking in morning coffee, or getting separated from the main party area to get that BAC up.

I Survive Another CEO - for Now

Here is the real email that was waiting for me when I got back from lunch today. I did a double - or triple - take since I have seen this exact email several times before in my career:

(My Old CEO) has made the decision to leave (My Company) to pursue new career opportunities. (My Old CEO) was instrumental in building the product group organization within (My Company). Through his tenure with the company, he has worked diligently to increase our product and business base, rising to become our President and COO. We thank (My Old CEO) for his nearly (long time) years of dedicated service to (My Company) and wish him success in the future.

(My New CEO) has agreed to move into the position of CEO and is excited about the future of our company. His initial focus is articulating a clear direction...(yada, yada, yada)

Soon after this email went out, a new org chart went out shuffling some senior managers around. Right now I think things are okay with my group, but you never know when the new guy decides that Chainsaw Al was a paragon of corporate management.

Fortune 50 Companies Acting Like Impatient Children

My blogging pace has been off recently since my work load has increased dramatically. As a result of my trip to NY last week, I have a new customer. The bad news is that this multi-multi-multi billion dollar corporation acts like a whiny kid and wants almost hourly updates on their program.

This is in addition to another multi-national conglomerate who calls me almost hourly wondering if the schedule for their product has changed in the last 60 minutes. Add these two whiny children together ("Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Now, are we there?") and you can see why my blogging has suffered lately.

And the weekend, vacation days, and evenings are not an escape. I have gotten phone calls on all of these occasions, having to listen to guys (they're always guys) at the other end of the line wondering if they were there yet.

I am not complaining - these guys have the potential to drive lots and lots of business and it certainly beats the alternative of having no customers. I just forgot how needy giant corporations can be. And it requires a great amount of patience since you can't yell back at them - you have to patiently explain that the schedule hasn't changed in the last 60 minutes and invite them to call you again if they have any concerns.

The Olympics? Yeah, Whatever...

Outside the Beltway has a good roundup of blogger reactions to the Olympics, most of them underwhelming. He points out some really good things that have turned them into just another marketing event, including

o Having Olympics every two years instead of every four - Having an grand Olympiad that stretched across two seasons every four years made them pretty unique. Now that the winter and summer games are staggered every two years it seems to make them less of a big deal.

o Historical changes - Just saying "East German Women's Track and Field Team" used to bring up laughs and hinted at those evil commies that we somehow beat, even though they cheated. The changing of "amateur status" also goes into this category, as watching pros like Roddick compete in some of the events changes the whole nature of the games.

o Soap Opera Versus Sports - The last time I sat down and watched an Olympic event there was more "human interest" footage than the competition itself. The original intent was to get "women" more involved, but I know plenty of women who also find these segments annoying.

o You Call That a Sport? - The Olympics used to be a showcase of athletes who spent a lifetime of intense training to reach the pinnacle of their field. Now, I am sure there is a lot of effort to become an expert in the winter sport of curling, and I sure as hell can't tread water long enough to compete in synchronized swimming, but are these really Olympic sports? Come on. Adding these just cheapened the value of a "gold medal".

There are a few other really good points listed, so just go read the post.

There are certainly those that disagree with this assessment, but for me, if it weren't for the fact that my wife, like 95.8% of all other women, will intensely watch gymnastics, I probably wouldn't watch a minute of the Games this year.

Movie Bars I Wish I Could Go To

While Tivo surfing recently I have watched portions of movies that took place inside interesting restaurants or bars where I thought "I wish I could really go to that place." So I thought I would compile a quick list from the top of my head, ranked in order:

1. Jackrabbit Slims - This place from Pulp Fiction is what got me thinking about this topic in the first place. Any place where Buddy Holly takes your order and Ed Sullivan introduces the evening dance contest is just way cool. Having Uma Thurman as your date would just add to the evening. (Note: there is apparently a bar named this in NYC, but as far as I can tell it isn't like the one in the movie).

2. Rick's - If I were stuck in Casablanca, this is where I would want to hang, as long as it was before Rick sold it to Ferrari. Even though Rick never shares drinks with customers (or will he), he seems to run a classy joint. (Another Note: I remember reading somewhere that some enterprising Morroccans actually opened a bar of this name in that city to attract tourists.)

3. House of Games - The bar gave the movie its name, but you don't go there for the drinks, you go there for the poker game in the back (or is it a poker game?). If you don't want to play, one of the regulars will be happy to teach you the art of the con.

4. Mos Eisley Cantina - The only one on my list that couldn't really exist, this "wretched hive of scum and villainy" of the Star Wars universe seems like a fun place to go slumming. Just remember to leave your droids at home since their kind aren't allowed in.

5. Club 49 (I think that is the name) - I've mentioned the good, bad movie Blast from the Past before, and this swing club just seems like a fun place to check out. Maybe because it has Humphry Bogart acting as MC.

I'm sure I missed a few. What others should be on the list?

We All Rather Be Dead Than Wrong

The evolutionary history of this species has served to put a premium on the ability to make appropriate decisions...The decision is always reduced to its simplest level: Is this a threat to my survival? This has placed an incredible burden on the mind to be right. Because in the mind's view, the alternative to being right is being dead. The mind (thus) equates rightness with survival and wrongness with dying...We, as individuals, have to be right whatever we do.

- A Rage for Revenge

This book isn't the original source for this idea, I just happened to run into there since I read a lot more pulp SciFi novels than I do texts on sociological evolution. When I read it over a decade ago, this paragraph stuck in my mind for a long time and has recently come back into my thoughts since the blogosphere has proven the best medium to date to track predictions and opinions and point out where people were wrong.

While there are certainly people on both sides of the isle that have this problem (well, according to the theory, all humans have it), it does seem a lot more severe on the left (Ed: because they are wrong more often?). I don't mean matters of opinion where overwhelming facts still don't prove a point (i.e. you can still believe that the Bush tax cuts didn't help the economy) or on issues where the jury is going to be out for a long, long time (whether going into Iraq was the "right thing to do" will probably take over a decade to settle out). I mean things that have already come to pass where you can point out and say "you were wrong here"

The Iraq war didn't produce a refugee catastrophe. It also didn't produce tens of thousands of deaths for American troops. Invading Afghanistan didn't result in a quagmire. Iraq did try to by yellocake in Africa. Arnold won in a landslide. Has anyone who made a prediction or statement opposite one of these facts come out and said "I was really wrong about that."?

"Fisking" has been one method used to point out where others were wrong, using links to point out factual errors or even contradictions in people's opinions, but this has rarely resulted in people admitting they were wrong or issuing a mea culpa.

Maybe as the blogosphere matures we can look forward to the day that Kevin Drum admits to double standards or to The Daily Kos acknowledging distorting facts to support a point of view, but evolution says don't bet on it.

Where to Buy Shoulder Fired Rockets

The feds arrested two people in New York for trying to buy a shoulder-fired missile. Apparently they were tracking their purchases on Ebay