Promoting with Facebook: four ways to free marketing

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Time and marketing pounds are limited, and one of the most important skills in running and promoting a business is knowing which particular horses to hitch your cart to.

For the past several years there’s been only one player in town: Google. So marketing experts have recommended, quite correctly, a two-pronged approach of working on search engine optimisation (SEO) for long-term traffic and Google AdWords/Display Network advertising to instantly drive potential customers to your site.

I’d hate to calculate how many hours I’ve spent learning, practising, analysing, adjusting and worrying about AdWords in particular. This is because of its near-legendary ability to drain the deepest pockets unless strict limits are set and extreme vigilance exercised. And it’s been a big success for me. AdWords has driven the success of several of my businesses and is currently performing admirably in the run up to Christmas for MakingYourOwnCandles.

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What the Removal Man knows about marketing

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

It’s easy to get obsessed with online marketing such as Google AdWords and, more recently, Facebook ads – and with good reason. Using AdWords (and its equivalents Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter), you can get almost instant results, track conversions and make incremental changes until you arrive at the optimum combination of ad text and sales funnel. However, to do just this is to miss what marketing is really about – building a constructive relationship with your potential customer that means they choose to buy from you rather than your competitors. (more…)

How Dixons is (under)selling Windows 7

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

If you’ve been into a Dixons Group shop lately (i.e. PC World or Currys Digital), you’ll have seen the place festooned with posters and displays declaring that the arrival of Windows 7 means it’s “time for a new PC”.

From a marketing point of view, it’s an obvious message for Dixons to be pushing. But in reality, as we all know, one of the great merits of Windows 7 is that most of us don’t need a new PC to run it. I use it happily on an old Advent laptop with 1GB of RAM and a Pentium Dual-Core processor; David Bayon runs it on his Atom-powered Samsung NC10 netbook. If there was ever an edition of Windows that didn’t mean “time for a new PC”, this is it.

With Microsoft getting so much right in Windows 7, it’s a disappointment to see it permitting (perhaps even supporting) such a misleading marketing slogan. And I think it’s a mistake. In the coming years Windows is going to be increasingly threatened from multiple directions — by a buoyant Apple, by emergent operating systems such as Chrome OS and by cloud-based mobile computing. Surely as the battle grows Microsoft will want its best foot forward, in the shape of a satisfied user base. The last thing it will want is to be weighed down by still-lingering resentments over Vista.

Yet this slogan seems designed to deliver precisely that outcome. Dissatisfied customers won’t appreciate being told they must write off their old PC to escape their unsatisfactory OS. Many who can’t afford a new PC will stick with Vista and remain disgruntled with it. And those who know the truth – that any machine that runs Vista will run Windows 7 better – will resent Microsoft’s apparent collusion in an attempt to get them to waste money on an unnecessary new PC.

Making sense of Microsoft

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Just when I thought Microsoft had seen sense, just when I thought it had learned from the multitude of mistakes surrounding Vista, it does this. Rather than reduce the number of versions of Windows, it ups the number to six. And what’s more, the versions don’t make sense.

I’ll qualify that a little. The MS press release says, “Windows 7 will have two main SKUs [versions]: Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional. This is where we will focus our marketing and communication across consumers and business customers.”

In other words, the only ads you’ll see paid for directly or indirectly by Microsoft (including adverts for new computers) will include one of those operating systems. The rest will be hidden away from mainstream view.

I’m sure that, sitting in the Microsoft boardroom when all this was decided, that did in fact make sense. Because when you’re sitting in a lovely clean boardroom sipping your decaf espresso, it feels like you’re in control of what the world will do. The terrible truth is, you’re not. (more…)

Wagon wheels

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Now I’m a 100% signed-up, baptised, confirmed lover of Microsoft Office 2007 – it’s the software that’s made the most difference to how I work ever. But even I think that the latest advert (as featured on this very site, so please don’t tell our ads team I’m blogging about it) is going too far.

“A PC without Office 2007 is like a wagon without wheels.” Well, for starters, if Microsoft believes that’s so then why on earth isn’t it bundling Office 2007 with Windows?

And secondly, it really isn’t. Office 2007 is fantastic, but there are lots of different ways to create documents and crunch numbers without spending the extra money on Microsoft Office.

Perhaps the advert should read “A PC without Office 2007 is like a slightly awkward wagon that you won’t enjoy using quite so much as a PC with Office 2007.” Equally catchy, I’m sure you agree.

What type of person are you?

Friday, September 19th, 2008

There’s a continual attempt from political parties and big companies alike to define the population, and Acer is the latest to unveil its thoughts. So the question is, do you recognise yourself in any of the below?

Techno Leader
Is very advaned in technical matters. He knows what he wants: “The best and up-to-date”. He wants best performance and he is not price-sensitive. And – he can afford it. He is affluent and young.

Techno Rational
Shares the same positive attitude towards technology as Techno Leader, but his comparatively lower income makes him less ready to pay a premium for brands. (more…)

The clouds are coming!

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

There’s something in the air. In fact, look closely and you can see it. Up there, white and fluffy, and apparently full of exciting new technology. You see, all the best new technologies are moving to the cloud, and if you haven’t moved your data to the cloud yet… well, heaven forfend.

I’ve just deleted filed two press releases in the space of two minutes that sell themselves on the back of cloud computing. The first was from respected backup specialists EMC: “EMC has today announced its first major step into cloud computing as EMC Mozy and Lenovo will now offer unlimited online backup for SMBs” to quote the first line – head to Lenovo’s Protect My Data site for details.

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Marketing babble: will it ever stop?

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

PC Pro inboxes see their fair share of press releases that are full of rubbish about the ‘user experience’ and providing customers ’solutions’ to problems that really don’t exist.

It seems to have reached a new zenith this week: in a presentation from a major IT company – regarding a relatively sedate new offering  – I saw some of the worst examples of marketing-speak that have ever darkened my inbox.

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Save the world! Read about hard disks!

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

I’m all for innovative marketing, but I think Toshiba’s hard disk team may have gone a little mad. Head over to www.harddiskdriverevolution.com and you can play a game all about – well, it’s obvious really – saving the world through the medium of hard disks.

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