Our Brave New Ad World
Two weeks ago, I discussed Microsoft's $6B acquisition in the context of how customers are searching online for new distributors.
Learn more by reading Will the New Online Advertising Models Click?, a very good analysis of online ad models from Knowledge @ Wharton.
A key point: the online ad model is based on accountability -- Did an ad deliver the intended reaction? Online ads can be measured using criteria such as the number of people who "click through" an ad or the number of leads generated from a particular search query are readily available.
Unfortunately, it's virtually impossible for traditional media (trade magazines; newspapers; yellow pages; NASCAR sponsorship) to correlate spending to new leads or incremental sales dollars. Thus, business trade magazines are getting thinner and thinner as B2B moves online.
If you are still skeptical, look at the following searches inspired by my visit to the ISA meeting two weeks ago:
Cutting Tools (google) or Cutting Tools (froogle)
(I discuss Froogle in Chapter Four of Facing the Forces of Change®: Lead the Way in the Supply Chain.)
Pay attention to the ads -- "sponsored links" -- on the right hand side because these keyword ads probably feature your competitors!
At the same time, heed the words of one Wharton professor who said: "I wouldn't walk away from TV. Instead, I would allocate some budget to non-traditional ads, buzz marketing and the Internet. This is the time for a lot of experimentation." (Hey, just like Exhibit 4-4, page 77, of Lead the Way!)
Your next step: Try something new. Buy some Google keywords for your business, see what happens, and let me know.
1 comments:
Adam,
I am continually amazed at the major Internet opportunities still missed by distributors and manufacturers. I was making a presentation at the Lab Products Association Convention last month. I had a chance to listen to a very bright young lady named Hollis Thomases, www.webadvantage.net, speak directly to the group on search engine placement, and key word strategies.
She had gone to most of the members web sites, some of them were very large companies with very fancy e-commerce sites. She took their products and ran searches on Google and showed them how poorly placed or invisible that they were. She hadn’t read Lead the Way in the Supply Chain but she kept giving specific example after specific example of buyers looking for information on new suppliers. She basically took their products and showed them what a buyer would find if they went looking for a new supplier.
You could have heard a pin drop when the light bulb went off for the group. These were senior executives who saw the gap between where they were and where they needed to be. During the break I heard several people repeat the phase, “I had no idea…”
For us old guys, this is still a new thing. I guess that there is some truth to the adage that if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
I was recently working in with a manufacture of excavators and they were showing me very detailed information on their market share against their competitors. The part that was interesting was their analysis of the market for used equipment. Just for laughs I looked on E-Bay during the meeting and found a bunch of excavators for sale that weren’t even on the manufacturer’s radar screen. They did some research and decided that E-Bay moves approximately 1,200 new and used excavators every year.
It raises some interesting questions about who is selling and who is buying? As this major trend of customers being connected continues to gain scale, the real issue becomes one of visibility. It is a threat to those that don’t see it, but a major opportunity for those that do.
Mike Marks
Managing Partner, Indian River Consulting Group
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