You website sucks and you don’t even know it?

Why do most B2B websites suck? Pragmatic approach to marketing for B2B online and how to improve your website and revenue.

…most web designers are graphic designers, trained to make things look attractive and fit a certain ideal of what we’ve come to expect for web sites.  But this is not what the client needs to help them sell. The client, through no fault of their own, doesn’t know what works in the web world and is relying on the web designer to do the right thing.

Second, companies frequently rely on internally-written copy instead of engaging a writer to craft effective prose. In the end this decision  costs the company many times more than the cost of the hiring a writer.

Go to Moutain Social and Get all Mountain Like

So I’m speaking at Mountain Social, a Social Media and Networking Event in the Mountains!  So this means I can bring the wife to enjoy with me and provide the opportunity to meet other industry leaders along the way.  Mountain Social should be different than most others you go to in other ways – it focuses on things outside the typical things you read in book and uncoferences.  There may even be some venture money there, at least so far there are 2 registrants that would indicate that.  More on the event can be found at www.mountainsocial.com – you can register with the following discount code (spatially) here.

The discount code allows you to save $50 from the currently available options for when you register.  Social media metrics and proof points continue to be pursued, but not a whole lot of folks can speak to it.  From the website:

The challenge with most social media events, research and training is you don’t get the right balance.  The 2009 Mountain Social Media Summit focuses on the 4 P’s of Social Media: Personas, Problems, Projects and Profits.

Personas: Who leverages social media, what are the opportunities and why is social media important in a personal, professional and commercial context.

Problems: What challenges exist for social marketers? What problems does media address? What problems exist for social media.  Understand the opportunities, obstacles and value social media can bring to your business or your personal growth.

Projects: Understanding use cases and case studies which highlight key lessons and themes which are important.

Profits: Where is the market opportunity, revenue channels and process improvements.  Can social media increase customer acquisition, drive cost reduction and improve customer/market awareness?

MediaTemple Provides Religious Sunday Experience!

More cathartic, than religious, but nevertheless thought provoking – not just for me but a bunch of folks.  For over 24 hours, Media Temple has had an outage on my primary servers for my blog, Spatially Relevant.  Apparently I am on Cluster 2 – oh joy.   How cool “the power of hundreds of servers” who are working in tandem for high availability is a great marketing message.

Not a good time as a Media Temple customer right now and I suspect not a good time for media temple.   Media Temple does get some Web 2.0/social media kudos for keeping the information flowing, sorta – blog, twitter and interactions.  MT spent time to engage the consumer throughout this event and they have clearly communicated status – open communications has always been a good part of being with Media Temple.  Of late though – service throughput and availability not so much.

Part of their communication was to ensure we knew that another vendor was involved – Bluearc.  How’s that working for you Bluearc?  Would love to interview you on that situation -  a customer under contract, perhaps an NDA and the customer broadcasts that your brand sucks!   Should a Bluearc PR person want to do this – just submit a comment.  I would be like so open minded.

While I clearly have found a way to spend my afternoon on a snowy Georgia day, I’m just a little curious how the brand is doing under constant Twitter noise?

I did get DM that the cluster which is hosting my blog on marketing and product management is down.   So they got that going for them.  BTW, if you are going to send direct messages, you might want to follow folks back.  In fact, following people is how conversations happen.  As of today you are a little lopsided…

…and others kinda see that too, like Justin Gardner.

I wonder what they are going to do this time?  Last time I got a free month.  Losing 1/12th of your income in a commodity market can’t be good to EBITDA.

Here’s to a week of apologies, validation and busy work.  I apologize if any of the links to media temple return an error. Cheers!

Changing Markets and New Tactics

The Social Marketing Construct

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing socialmedia)

Social media is changing the marketing mix.

Market Interviews: Products, Markets and Options

David Daniels

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Product marketing was one of the most interesting and challenging roles in my career.  It was the first time I was really forced to think about markets of buyers rather than users.  Prior to that my focus was on users of products for which I was a product manager.  In the role of product marketing manager my thinking shift from using criteria to buying criteria, and that shift was a significant one.

Read the rest of this Product Marketing focused interview.

Vikram Singha

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?
The sales and marketing interface.  At most of organizations where I’ve worked there has always been tension between these two functions. The push and pull happens on many different levels:

• who to target?
• What markets?
• What to build and pitch?
• How to price?
• How to get to the decision maker?

More on packaging and positioning

Adam Shapiro

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Integration with other teams that are stakeholders.  Too often, marketer’s efforts are either unappreciated, underutilized, or in the worst case, miss their mark because sales, customer service, product management, etc. were not involved or considered.

read more on sales engagement

The Social Marketing Construct: eBook Launched

Marketing and branding are changing. This is nothing new, but the relatively recent introduction of new marketing channels due to evolving technology and the Internet–mainly social media–is leveling the playing field for small and large companies alike. All brands have the opportunity to be more visible in the marketplace and to develop greater customer trust with the right approach to managing the new marketing mix.
This document highlights areas for consideration as you look to launch a new brand or better manage an existing brand in a social marketplace. It discusses the emerging realities for brand management given the advent of social media as well as provides some basic practices that you can implement to navigate the changing landscape for your marketing and branding efforts.

Download from Spatiallyrelevant.org

The Social Marketing Contract: Evolving Brands and Changing Realities

The market requires a new contract – The Social Marketing Contract