Alert Blog Reviews

Interactive marketing as a whole is a good place to be relative to the rest of the marketing world. Anywhere where the worst numbers show low single digit decreases and the happy numbers are still in the positive teens despite a continued overall economic morass you have to smile at least a little. We need to, however, remember that the overall interactive marketing is doing fine it is still like any other market. That means, simply, that some industries are going to be much better off in the interactive space than others. It is not a silver bullet for everyone. Forrester is starting a series of reports that tell just how particular industries are utilizing the interactive marketing environment. The first is called “US Interactive Marketing Forecast by Industry, 2009-2014″. It is interesting to see how some of the verticals are using the medium in its various forms and what lessons can be potentially learned. Not surprisingly it’s the retail and financial sectors that account for nearly 1/ 3 of the interactive spend and that trend is likely to continue through 2014. What is interesting is that their overall marketing budgets still hold room for their growth to be significant. I wonder when other industries will find that they are completely under utilizing the Internet channel and will take more of their traditional spend online? Our readers are knee deep in this stuff every day. Do you see any verticals / industries that may be missing the boat to this point? Where are there spots in the B2B and B2C world that will be hot growth areas for the next five years for interactive marketing. C’mon now. Don’t think you have some big secret that you can’t share. Remember that 99.999 % of the people that hear your ‘great idea’ probably couldn’t even begin to figure out how to execute it so don’t hold back.

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Forrester Looks at Interactive Marketing by Segment

The other day I clicked a link on Twitter to a blog post everyone was talking about. I did like everyone else and read the post and then left a snarky comment. But then unlike most everyone else, I right clicked the margin and selected “view source”. Why did I do that? I am not really sure, I honestly did it without thinking. Looking at other people’s code has become something of a habit for me. I find myself sometimes getting more out of analyzing the blog’s HTML, than the post itself! Anyways, on this particular site I was shocked when I saw the HTML. It was horrible. I mean it was really really bad. It looked like this site was coded by a drunk monkey in 1998! And, to be honest, it really got my angry. Angry? Yes, angry! You see this site isn’t just any site, this site happens to be the corporate web site for a very recognizable brand. This company is known for their excellence in their industry. Furthermore I know a few of the folks that work for this company, and they are all really awesome people that do good work and believe in what they do. And because of that, it mad me angry that their site is so haphazardly put together. It made me angry that a company that I believed in, wasn’t taking my profession seriously. The folks that I know that work for this company deserve better, they deserve the best site money can buy, and trust me, this company can afford it. So I started asking myself, why? Why would a company that has earned so much respect, developed such a strong brand, and have such awesome employees, have such a horrible site? I ask myself these types of questions a lot, because unfortunately the story above isn’t uncommon. There are many good companies with strong brands that don’t care enough to build a good web site. And, I will freely admit that I have extremely high standards when it comes to web development. So why does this matter? Why should these companies care what a geeky code monkey thinks? They should care, because I am not alone! They should care because as leaders in their industries people look to them to set the standard. They should care because their competitors know they can do better and are prepared to prove it. But most importantly, they should care because their clients and customers expect the best in everything they do, and if they find out the truth, then they can find another company to do business with very quickly. And no I am not naming names, but if you think this post is about your company, get in touch with me and I would be happy to give you a free site audit.

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Cup of Joe: You Aren’t a Drunk Monkey, So Don’t Act Like One!