Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

Early on in my writing career, I thought my proofreading was meticulous. I’d read and re-read my material over and over again, because I myself judged others by their writing skills.

The problem was, I relied on my eyes which are super-sensitive to the tiniest of errors in other peoples’ work. However, I quickly learned these same eyes are extremely forgiving when it comes to my own errors, auto-correcting flagrant issues, subtleties the average person would miss, and clumsy sentences that break the natural rhythm in the piece.

A writer whom I have great respect for once recommended that I invest in a software that would read the text back to me, but since my employer was on a very tight budget, I didn’t pursue the idea at first.

Instead, I relied on old-fashioned, unreliable tactics like setting the piece aside for a day before final proofreading, asking others to review my work, re-reading the piece backwards, and the worst of all methods, relying on Microsoft Word’s spell checker.

After several months of doing things the hard way, I decided to see how much a text-to-speech software would put me back. A quick online search turned up an incredibly inexpensive yet powerful software called TextAloud by NextUp.com.

For less than thirty bucks, this nifty software will read e-mail, web pages, reports, and more, aloud on your PC.  You can even save your daily reading to an mp3 or Windows media file for playback on an iPod, PocketPC, or TV using Tivo’s Home Media Option.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I took advantage of their free 15-day trial, using it to review online promotions and articles that were already in their “finished” state.

Needless to say, TextAloud caught at least one error in every single piece. With eyes wide open, I shelled out the money, saving me tons of time and my good reputation.

The default voices that come with the software sound robotic, but if you find that annoying you can download other free voices or upgrade to natural-sounding voices like I did.

Nowadays, every piece I create undergoes the scrutiny of TextAloud and my ears.

If you’re responsible for writing web content or other marketing material, I dare you to try it. If you’re like me, you’ll be humbled by the errors you find.

Let me know if it helps!

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

For anyone who asks me where to get started with web analytics, I recommend Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s comprehensive enough for most web owners, and it’s very intuitive. It also – I’m constantly reminded – tends to filter information in ways that don’t always allow the complete story to show through. This bothers some people.

Analytics is a hot topic, and there all kinds of places you can go to learn more, get started and move beyond Google (should you feel the need). Fortunately for me, Jim Sterne has just posted an excellent list of resources so I don’t have to develop one myself.

Instead, I can just direct you to: Web Analytics: From the Top [via Metrics Insider].

Technorati Tags: Web analytics, Google,

If you’re a business owner or marketer who is undecided about the value of email marketing, Email Marketing for Complex Sales Cycles, by Winton Churchill, is a good book for you. It’s intended to be a quick read, and it is. I got through it in one afternoon while waiting on my computer to finish a variety of updates.

On the other hand, if you already know email marketing is good and you’re looking for actionable information that will make your email programs more effective, you’ll probably be disappointed. I found very little that I didn’t already know – and I’m not an avid follower of the latest in what works in email marketing.

The book does serve as a good reminder of things we know but sometimes forget, such as:

• Good lists are better than cheap lists.
• Provide multiple opportunities for the reader to click on a link throughout the message. Winton feels that three is best.
• A piece of educational material makes a great offer.
• You may send four or five emails to the same person before they read your message.

There’s more but as I said, this book is better as a high level (and wonderfully simple) overview of email’s role in the complex sale process, and not so great as a guide to successful email marketing.

Technorati Tags: email marketing, complex sale, lists, lead generation, nurturing

It’s been a while since I wrote about trade shows as a market tactic, so you might be interested in reading an article I recently wrote for Sales and Marketing Management magazine. Read more about it here: Escaping the Money Pit.

Are you wondering why business technology marketing and selling has become so much more challenging over the past few years? It may mean that you’re trying to use outdated communication tactics to persuade people who simply aren’t listening.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark offers a very enlightening look at marketing in the new world of the connected customer – a customer who has access to far more information than ever before about your products, your services and your competitors.  Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg give an actionable introduction to the persuasion process and offer a practical approach to converting more traffic into customers. And isn’t that really what it’s all about?

I found a number of very useful suggestions in this book – several of which we have already implemented.

Technorati Tags: technology marketing, conversion, traffic

Social media is here to stay and every business technology marketer, executive and entrepreneur needs to get a grip on what that means. Now is Gone, Geoff Livingston’s primer on new media is a great place to start.

This book provides a good high-level overview of the so-called New Media and how it affects the way we communicate with traditional PR audiences — such as journalists and analysts – as well as prospects, customers and our extended “communities”.

Livingston suggests five benchmarks to determine whether or not your company will succeed with a social media program. Here are those benchmarks along with a comment or two from me.

1. Willingness to give up control of the message. Don’t fight it – it’s happening anyway.
2. Readiness to participate in a community. This requires a mind shift of sorts. You may be an expert, but the community is made up of your peers. You have to join in as one of them.
3. A market that is social media savvy. In other words, your customers are using social media – kind of a no-brainer if you’re selling business technology.
4. Ability to dedicate resources. Social media participation – blogging is a good example – is very time consuming. You must be willing to devote the necessary resources to it.
5. Ethics and transparency. You must be what you claim to be – otherwise you’re going to get nailed.

Now is Gone is a quick and interesting read. It won’t tell you how to conduct a good social media program but it will give you a good understanding of what it is and why you need it.

Technorati Tags: social media, blogging, communities, technology marketing, pr