lundi 7 août 2006

Web Conferencing Services Reviewed

If you deliver Webinars, hold meetings with remote sales or other personnel, or lead marketing or sales presentations for clients and prospects, you know the value and utility of Web conferencing services. Features and reliability have increased greatly over the last few years. Internet presentations save enormous time and money in travel.

As the popularity of Web conferencing services has increased, so has the number of options in the market. There are estimated to be more than a hundred vendors in the space now, though only a handful of leading contenders. Which service is the best? The answer, as it so often is in these situations, is "it depends." Web conferencing services vary considerably in price, functionality, and ease of use. The best solution for 2-3 participant remote sales presentations is different from the best solution for 6-10 participant marketing or training presentations, which is in turn different from the best solution for 50+ participant webinars.

Here are reviews of six options -- three market leaders and three up-and-coming services -- based on a recent client evaluation project.

HelpMeeting

Pros: Attractively priced at the 25 participant level and above, includes most of the basic functionality, easy to use, no client download required, and a free trial offered.

Cons: Expensive at lower licensing levels, lacks advanced features, not suitable for very large webinars, may have issues with some firewalls.

Bottom line: Worth checking out if you do a lot of 25-50 user presentations and don't need every bell and whistle. Pricing is attractive at this level, but needs to be simplified on their site.

Glance

Pros: Reasonably priced, easy to use, has all the basic features, no client download required, generally no firewall issues, free trail offered.

Cons: Limited to a maximum of 15 participants.

Bottom line: Glance is a great tool for remote sales reps who generally present to small groups., but is not a corporate or Webinar solution.

GatherPlace

Pros: One of the most attractively priced solutions at up to 25 users, and provides "event pricing" for one-time or occasional large webinars (up to 200 participants); excellent feature set for the price; very easy to use; free trail offered; no client download required; friendly and knowledgeable staff.

Cons: The two biggest are horrendous video performance (4 frames per second) and firewall issues (your presentation will be unviewable by anyone whose firewall blocks Java). The company is working on both issues and should have solutions in future releases.

Bottom line: This is one to watch, and maybe try out, given the relatively strong feature set and ease of use. If most of your presentations are to 25 or fewer participants, you may want to sign up for the free trail and test this as extensively as you can to determine if firewall issues are likely to arise internally or with your clients and target prospects.
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GoToMeeting

Pros: Pricing isn't the lowest, but is competitive at up to 25 participants; ability to cost-effectively host very large Web presentations (up to 1,000 participants); easy to use; strong feature set; few if any firewall issues; friendly and knowledgeable staff.

Cons: Product offering is unnecessarily complex, client download is required.

Bottom line: Budget-conscious users with simple needs may want to look elsewhere, but with its combination of ease-of-use and an excellent feature set, GoToMeeting is a strong contender for midsize and larger businesses. With its new GoToWebinar offering, GTM is by far the leading solution for frequent, large presentations and webinars.

Microsoft LiveMeeting

Pros: Broad feature set, virtually no firewall issues, strong integration with Microsoft Office tools, free trial offered.

Cons: Price, client download required, difficult to use.

Bottom line: A decent solution for companies with complex needs, where Web conferencing is used for a variety of tasks (e.g. client training, sales and marketing presentations, IT collaboration), and where integration with Office and Outlook is important.

WebEx

Pros: Market leader (i.e. system your prospects or other participants are likely to have used before), extensive feature set (including audio conferencing and Outlook integration), virtually impervious to firewalls, free trial offered, good tech support.

Cons: Same as LiveMeeting.

Bottom line: WebEx is the most expensive solution on the market, but also has the most extensive feature set. For large organizations wanting a single cross-departmental Web presentation tool, WebEx is a solid choice.

In the end, you'll have to make judgements about the relative importance of various criteria -- price, features, ease of use, compatibility -- in order to determine which service best meets the needs of your department or company. With the possible exception of Citrix-backed GoToMeeting, none of the emerging services are likely to unseat market leaders WebEx and LiveMeeting, but each has the potential to stake out its own niche. The best news for users is that, because these are hosted services, there is very little if any IT investment required. That means switching costs are low, so you can afford to experiment until you find your own best solution.

*****

Terms: Web conferencing services, Web presentation tools, online presentations, WebEx, LiveMeeting, GoToMeeting, GatherPlace, HelpMeeting, GatherWorks, Glance

The Internet marketing and advertising portal: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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lundi 31 juillet 2006

Greer's OC: A Fashionable Micromedia Site

Greer's OC is a great example of an effective consumer marketing micromedia site. Former fashion columnist Greer Wylder targets her content to, and delivers for her advertisers, a very narrow but lucrative and otherwise difficult to reach audience: upscale shoppers, primarily female, in the Orange County, California area.

For Hugh Hewitt to call Greer's OC an advertising revolution and a mortal threat to newspapers isn't off the mark. Newspaper subscriptions are declining. TiVo and XM are killing the value of media advertising. Mega-portals like Yahoo that try to be all things to all people end up being of little value to anyone. People will flock, however, in small but targeted numbers, to sites and media that focus specifically on topics that fascinate them.

So what exactly do I mean by "micromedia"? Micromedia is any form of media targeted to an individual or group of individuals that can be can be defined by a set of unique characteristics. It is much narrower than untargeted mass media, but it encompasses and is somewhat broader than one-to-one marketing. While targeted direct mail is clearly form of micromedia, and advertising during the Super Bowl is clearly not, the boundaries of what constitutes micromedia are somewhat fuzzy.

Micromedia is not to be confused with software company Macromedia, or with specific companies like this Canadian firm which focus on library resources for the elementary school market, or this commercial Unix project.

Micromedia can take a wide variety of forms.

Most blogs are a form of micromedia. Content-based ad networks are close, because those ads are most likely to be viewed by people within a distinct target market.

Targeted email and advertising in narrowly-targeted industry e-newsletters are micromedia; the audience is self-selected and virtually guaranteed to have a high degree of common characteristics.

TV is generally not a form of micromedia; even companies advertising Medi-gap insurance on reruns of Matlock end up with a lot of wasted coverage. However, advertising on the Golf Channel arguably qualifies, because both the demographic and the interest are pretty narrowly qualified.

Similarly, radio advertising is generally not micromedia; even Kim Komando's radio show draws too diverse an audience to qualify.

Billboard advertising is also normally not a form of micromedia, though it can be. For example, advertising an insurance or financial product specifically for employees of General Motors, near the entrance to one of their facilities, would qualify.

Targeted direct mail is among the oldest forms of micromedia, thought mailbox clutter is rendering it increasingly less effective.

With the explosion in electronic media choice, mass marketing is becoming more difficult and expensive. However, there are more opportunities than ever for marketers to use micromedia to deliver carefully-crafted messages of real value to specific demographic or business sub-markets. The key is to know your customers well, so that you can know your prospects well -- what do they care about, what do they need, and what will compel them to act.

*****

Terms: Greer's OC, Hugh Hewitt, micromedia, one to one marketing, targeted media

The Web marketing strategy portal: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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lundi 24 juillet 2006

Choices Expand for Customized Start Pages

Where does your browser go when the click the "home" icon on the toolbar? For many people, the answer is still their ISP's home page (at home) or whatever page their IT goup set it to (at work). However, there are an increasing number of services that let you customize your own start page. Among the first were My Yahoo and the aguably better though under-publicized Google offering, but both the choice and sophistication are increasing.

Among the new entries in this space are the very cool Netvibes and Pageflakes. These services let you customize your stat page with tools like news feeds, RSS feeds (such as your favorite blogs), local weather, your address/contact book, a dictionary, to-do lists, online file storage, mail and IM, photos, Web search, sports scores and more. Yahoo, Google and Netvibes all seem to be fairly browser-agnostic; Pageflakes appears to work best with IE.

Another service planned but not yet launched is the "life organizer" from Lifeio from ATTAP Technologies. You can sign up to be notified when the service is up and running.

Being naturally suspicious of anything that seems too cool to be free, I contacted the folks at Pageflakes to inquire about their business model. They responded quickly (something I always admire and appreciate) that their model is to build traffic first, then monetize it with advertising, and offer users a premium ad-free version for a modest fee.

All of these services are pretty slick; I'd recommend playing around with each to figure out which works best for you.

*****

Terms: personalized home page, personalized start page, Pageflakes, Netvibes

The Internet web site marketing portal: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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lundi 17 juillet 2006

Explaining Technology So Even Your Mom Can Understand It

How do you explain a highly technical product or complex service offering in an easily understandable way? Better yet, how can you explain it so simply that even your mom will understand it (assuming your mother isn't a network system administrator)?

That was the challenge facing Xiotech, a maker of storage area network (SAN) systems. CEO Casey Powell, who joined the company about a year ago, is a big fan of HowStuffWorks.com, the site that famously explains in simple terms how almost everything works, from ballpoint pens to rocket engines.

When he challenged his marketing team to develop a similarly simple way to explain Xiotech's offerings, Tom Pearce and the rest of the group came up with...the Mom Button. After all, how better to explain complex technology in terms so simple your mom can understand it than to have a mom explain it?

Since the initial launch of the Mom Button, the original "Mom Explains Xiotech" concept has been expanded to have Mom discuss server consolidation, clustering, and business complexity. In addition to explaining esoteric technology in simple terms, "Mom" puts a human face on the company. Even more impressively, while this is the kind of creative thinking often associated with marketing agencies, the marketing team at Xiotech developed the Mom Button internally.

There are many ways to humanize a company, from Protomold's quirky Professor Plastic, to sending out personalized letters from your CEO, to blogging. But Xiotech's Mom Button certainly ranks as one of the more clever and effective ideas.

*****

Terms: Xiotech, storage area network marketing, Protomold, Professor Plastic, Casey Powell

The portal for Web site promotion strategies: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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mardi 11 juillet 2006

Best of the New Marketing Books

Three outstanding new marketing books have been added to the Top Marketing Books page on WebMarketCentral.com, the Internet Web site marketing portal.

First, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale by Brian Carroll presents a strategic approach to generating profitable leads. Brian's book outlines a proven approach to generating qualified leads for complex sales, which frequently involve pre-sales engineers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and even corporate executives, as well as traditional sales professionals. The complex sale -- which combines elements of consultative, competitive, and team selling -- is now the norm for business-to-business sales. Brian's book shows how to identify your best leads and target sales approaches; align sales and marketing to optimize both the number and quality of leads; build strong sales pipelines; and use multiple lead-generation vehicles, including email, PR, referrals, blogs, and speaking opportunities.

Second, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? : Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, and Lisa T. Davis, makes the obvious observation that one message no longer fits every audience, but presents this in concise, entertaining, and highly readable chapters. The Eisenberg brothers and their co-author create "personas" representing broad consumer types, identified as "methodical," "spontaneous," "humanistic" and "competitive" shoppers. They then provide marketing scenarios guiding each type to the point of sale. Increasing media fragmentation makes traditional mass market advertising obsolete (an idea noted here previously). People aren't "markets," they're individuals. And in the age of Tivo and a billion Web sites, useful information has far more power than anything viewed as marketing fluff.

Finally, Blogwild! : A Guide for Small Business Blogging, by Andy Wibbels, describes the increasing popularity of and rationale behine business blogging, and provides a guide to creating a profitable business blog. Wibbels shows how blogs can help, in an informal and friendly way, to promote your business and create buzz, reach new customers, put a human face on your company, and influence industry media.

*****

Terms: Internet web site marketing, top marketing books, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, Brian Carroll, Waiting for your cat to bark, Eisenberg brothers, Blogwild, Andy Wibbels

The portal for Internet Web site marketing strategy: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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mercredi 5 juillet 2006

Blog Tools and Stuff

If (like me) you've chosen Blogger as your platform for online disquisition, you've noticed that it's fast and reasonably intuitive, but lacks a few basic functions. The folks at Quick Online Tips have rectified that with Free Essential Tools for Bloggers, an excellent list of add-ons that expand the capability of the platform.

The list goes well beyond the common tools such as Pingoat and Technorati (well known and also covered in Best Practices in Blog Marketing) to include traffic-generating and tracking tools, as well as mobile blogging. Definitely a post worth bookmarking and coming back to.

That's the tools. As for the stuff, Larry Bodine has written an interesting piece over at RainToday titled It's Not Too Late To Start Blogging - But It Will Be Soon. (Yes, Brian Carroll beat me to this; when does he sleep?!) Registration is required to read the full article, but it's free.

Larry provides seven great reasons to blog, most of which are covered in Why Write a Blog for Business, but includes the timely advice: "If you fail to set up a blog on your special topic, someone else will claim it before you do." He also provides a number of tips for producing a successful blog.

That's all I will say, lest I violate Larry's tip #3: "Keep it short."

*****

Terms: Brian Carroll, Larry Bodine, why blog for business, blogging tips, RainToday.com

The portal for Web site marketing strategy: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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mercredi 28 juin 2006

Awards Are Nice, but Relationships Rule

At the risk of having a Sally Field moment, I want to say "thank you" to everyone who voted for this blog in the recent Marketing Sherpa Reader's Choice blog and podcasting awards. It's quite and honor.

Winning an Honorable Mention (despite being up against Seth Godin) is the second-best thing that's happened as a result of lanching this blog. The best thing has been the opportunity to meet, or to get to know better, a lot of fascinating marketing people, directly or indirectly through this blog. Although traffic here hasn't been huge (at least not until the last week or so), I've been amazed and gratified by the caliber of my readers.

I've used this blog to introduce you to some of those people, such as Albert Maruggi, PR guru and head of marketing agency Provident Partners, who writes one of the best podcasting blogs on the planet. And there's Kelly Allan, operations and marketing consulting expert at Kelly Allan Associates; Yvonne DiVita, author, speaker, blogger, and diva of smart marketing to women online; Mike Schultz, a brilliant marketing of professional services at RainToday.com; Jay Lipe, author, consultant, and head of Emerge Marketing; and Ardath Albee, president of CRM extension software developer Einsof. There are also a number of other great bloggers I've had the opportunity to interact with and learn from.

But the most amazing person I've gotten to know professionally this year is Kirsten Chapman, head of technology marketing agency KC Associates. She is not only a brilliant marketer, but a truly extraordinary person: her talent exceeds her ego. For example, when I interviewed her for this blog, she insisted on providing a group photograph of her entire team in place of the traditional headshot. She's justifiably proud of the group of talented, experienced marketing professionals that she's assembled.

It would be nice to beat Seth next year, but I'll happily settle for continuing to expand my circle of online marketing friends, and introducing them to you here.

*****

Terms: Marketing Sherpa 2006 Reader's Choice Blog and Podcasting Awards, marketing blogs, podcasting blogs, professional services marketing, IT marketing agencies

The portal for Internet marketing strategy development: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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