Yesterday morning I returned from the Software Industry Conference in Boston. My three bags made it back, but a significant amount of my brain has yet to catch up with me. So my apologies if this post sounds as though it’s been written by someone else. During the conference I delivered four presentations, one of which (an A – Z … Read More
Loyalty is easily destroyed when the product is free
I’ve been a long-time user of the Cligs URL shortening service, and have recommended them to countless colleagues and friends. Yet they’ve recently been experiencing technical issues that have forced me to jump ship to one of their competition. There are two main issues, both of which remain unresolved. 1: Their shortened URLs don’t always work. This is a problem … Read More
Websites reviewed – interesting data and opinions!
Yesterday’s Website Critique Webinar was a great success, and as well as looking at six different websites in detail, we also asked attendees a series of questions in the form of live polls, with some interesting results. We’re just collating the data now, so watch this space. As the webinar was limited to only one hour, some attendees emailed me … Read More
Think small, stay small
Our company provides a range of marketing services, and each week we typically send out around 4-5 price quotations. We also turn away around 9-10 requests, when we feel that our services are not appropriate. Most of the companies that we turn away understand what we’re saying, and appreciate our not taking their money under what would amount to false … Read More
2009 – the year of the eBook?
Marketing Pilgrim believe that this is the year for eReaders to make the transition from early adopter’s toys to widespread acceptance: “We’ve covered the Kindle here a couple times, but I’m willing to bet most of you don’t have one. Sometimes we like to think that means that eReaders and eBooks are nonstarters. But according to new research from Forrester, … Read More
U.S. Online Ad Revenue Now Shrinking
From the Silicon Alley Insider: “For the first time since the dot-com bust, the U.S. online ad market is shrinking, including search. That’s a stunning drop in growth from a year ago, when the market was still growing more than 20%.” As a person who spends a large amount of time handling Google AdWords accounts, this reinforces what I already … Read More
Ask not what Google can do for you, but what you can do for Google
Software developers, product designers and manufactures can learn a lot from Google. They churn out new features at an incredible rate. Their new ideas are (mostly) useful. They don’t wait too long before releasing their offerings to the world (Gmail is still in beta). And they don’t dilute a great product with superfluous features. Their latest most visible development has … Read More
McDonald’s advertising – inspired!
I thankfully don’t even remember the last time I ate a McDonalds meal, but a quick look at their advertising slogans makes for interesting reading. I personally suspect there’s more nutrition in our household waste than a McDonalds meal, but have to admit that when it comes to advertising, McDonalds truly know what they’re doing. I recently went shopping in … Read More
Yesterday’s website critique webinar
Yesterday’s webinar worked really well, and judging by the volume of email that we’ve already received, attendees found it to be both useful and entertaining. We aim to please. We’re hoping to post a video of the critique, and will announce it here once it’s online. Thank-you to everyone who attended, and a special thanks to my co-host, Sharon Housley … Read More
The dangers of working in the dark
We just finished redesigning our SoftwarePromotions website. It was a complete redesign, and involved a massive investment in time, cash and stress. But I think it paid off. We began our redesign process by first of all identifying what we felt were the most important pages on our website. The pages that we considered vital to our business. The next … Read More
