Things for B2B tech marketers to think about on Cyber Monday
Let’s face it, there’s not much in it for us on Cyber Monday.
It’s not as if IT is going to go out and hunt online for a bargain-rate firewall today. It’s not like the CFO is going to look for free delivery and a $10 coupon on an enterprise ERP system.
No, today the online consumer is king.
But Cyber Monday’s as good a time as any to make sure that B2B marketers are thinking about cyber marketing - and about not getting lost in cyberspace.
Here’s what should be on your to do list for 2009:
- Figure out how, where, whether, and when to use e-mail marketing. Direct (paper) mail should probably still have a role, but how can you augment or complement it with e-mail. (Conversely, how can you augment or complement your e-mail efforts with paper.) And don’t forget that e-mail is a potent tool for your sales people to use in staying in contact with prospects: make sure they have ammunition, i.e., reasons to hit that send button. (’Thought you might be interested in this article I saw in Widget Online…)
- Evaluate whether txt has any merit for your products and services. If you’re like me, your initial thought is ugh! But there may be a role for texting in your universe. New software patch available? A text message is less likely to get caught in the shuffle than an e-mail is. Coming to an event in Gotham City? Why not let everyone in area code 212, 201, 718, and whatever else is around there know.
- If you haven’t already, take a careful look at your PR approach, and do whatever revamping you need to do to recognize the reality of online journalism. With more and more publications moving online, there are more and more opportunities, for example, for by-lined articles. In order to keep things fresh, online pubs need a lot more content. You can help provide it. And while it’s cheap and easy to put a release out on the wire, make sure that you contact key press and analysts personally (if that’s the way they want to be contacted - and you should know, because if they’re key you should have a relationship with them).
- With respect to PR, don’t forget bloggers. There may be none that really matter in your space, but if there are, you’d best not overlook them if you have a new release or something else that’s blogworthy. Bloggers can be a risky lot. They’re a lot less constrained than print and online pubs, who are - let’s face it - always under pressure not to tick off potential advertisers. And analysts who are - let’s face it - always under pressure not to tick of potential subscribers. (Chinese wall, my foot.) But bloggers are always on the look out for topics of interest, and if there are bloggers in your domain, you should know who they are and what makes them tick (and tick off).
- Comment intelligently. It’s a good way to build relationships with online journalists and bloggers. Avoid the canned, cut and paste sales pitch. But embrace the possibility of getting into an honest to goodness conversation with someone, in which you become a trusted source of information and commentary.
- Spruce up that website. And make sure it’s as optimized for search as is humanly possible. What constitutes optimized changes. Make sure that you’re keeping up with those changes.
- Analyze your Ad Words, search terms, click throughs, etc. I mean, really analyze the information that’s out there. Tweak things as necessary. DO NOT LET THIS STUFF JUST LIE THERE. When I talk with the customers of my clients, many (most?) of them have found “us” online.
- Google your company, products, product area, top executives and see where and how they all come up. Unless it’s related to a scandal, you don’t want to be on page 2.
Hey, it’s Cyber Monday.
Take a break from ordering Aunt Dora that balsam centerpiece with the tartan bow, and trying to figure out where you can get the cheapest GPS, and start thinking about what Cyber Everyday means for us B2B tech marketers.
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Some interesting points were brought up today regarding the outage of web hosting servers that brought down most likely millions of dollars of transactions on Cyber Monday.
It made me start thinking about the web hosting company’s responsibility to the e-tailor and web store owners. We have not heard of these types of issues on a major scale in a while like we have on cyber Monday.
The question I pose to web hosting companies is how much responsibility should they bear? For example, if Victoria’s secret is in an outage, and they estimate that they have lost about $500,000 in sales due that the server, is there any type of reassurance from the host that they will some how better this in the future and try to right this situation?
In all honesty, it probably does not matter to Victoria’s secret or Best Buy or Amazon for an hour, however, what about Joe selling sandals online or someone trying to make a living on eBay that an hour to them could be the difference of paying their bills for that particular month…
Food for thought and I’d love to hear what others think about the web hosting agent’s responsibility to the e-tailor.
Chris - The liability of web hosters for economic loss experienced by their customers during an outage is a very interesting topic. Having spent a number of years in the hosting industry, I know that here are typically SLA’s in place - but the SLA’s remedies are typically around not having to pay a portion of hosting service fees, based on the duration of the outage. Proving economic loss is, of course, tricky, as while some of the transactions during an outage are “lost forever” (i.e., the consumer purchases the same good elsewher), many are not (i.e., the consumer comes back at a later time and makes the same purchase). Personally, if I had a problem with LL Bean online, I’d either call my order in or come back later - I wouldn’t go to Land’s End. On the other and, if Amazon were out, I’d probably go over to B&N.
You’re right about the web hosters needing to be better prepared for Cyber Monday - just as the retailers (like Walmart) need to be better prepared for the chaos of teeming crowds on Black Friday. At least on the web, no one gets trampled to death.
Anyway, thanks for raising an issue with a lot of implications for web retailers - and web hosters.
Full disclosure: I work for a web hosting provider.
In strictly legal terms: most hosting agreements specify that the host is liable for the value of the hosting services, period.
But of course, that’s no way to have happy customers. But it IS incumbent on the customer to look at the infrastructure they are paying for, determine if it’s up to the challenges of Cyber Monday (or any other event), and then talk to their hosting provider about options to make sure the site doesn’t go down.
It isn’t reasonable to think that if you’re paying for infrastructure designed to handle 100,000 visitors a day that everything is going to work perfectly when you get 1,000,000 instead. Your hosting provider can provide service for a million but you probably don’t want to pay for it the rest of the year.
But you can prepare for these bursts in traffic, and there are plenty of hosting solutions out there that can help.
If a company doesn’t do this, they’re a bit like a retail store complaining to the landlord that they got ten times the usual customer traffic and people didn’t fit into the shop.
A good bit of advice for any ecommerce operation: well before Cyber Monday or whatever event you expect to make your traffic peak, talk to your hosting provider about your expectations and set up plans to handle them. Another bit of good advice: talk about unanticipated traffic bursts and how you might prepare for those and make a business determination of whether the costs are worth it.
The nice thing is that hosting is not physical real estate, and solutions are generally a lot more practical that renting retail space suitable for Black Friday and having it empty the rest of the year.
Bottom line, talk to your provider early, and be prepared.