Marketing Joint

SEM at B2B Tech Startups - Just Flirting

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a pretty sexy topic. What is Search Engine Marketing? SEM is basically a form of online advertising. SEM connects buyers with sellers. SEM is part of your company’s efforts to increase upstream traffic or visits to your site. In my mind, SEM is not search engine optimization (or SEO). I’d say SEO is a subset of SEM. Further, SEM cannot fully realize its profit-driving potential without SEO. SEM is used quite effectively by most consumer-facing marketers but not used frequently enough by B2B tech startups.

SEM is a vital component of the overall marketing mix for those who are addressing the consumer marketplace. SEM is less popular in the B2B arena for a variety of reasons but this is slowly changing.

SEO Training From Aaron Wall

I don't know this fella but he has some terrific videos on his site. This particular training video on SEO Is A Social Acitivity is great. A big part of why it's great is because it's 10 min. 46 sec in length =). An even bigger part of why it's great is because this guy knows his stuff. Check it out when you have time.

- John

Samsung Instinct vs. Apple iPhone

Samsung is an enormously successful electronics giant. I was impressed by their teaser site for Instinct. You need broadband connection with sound turned 'on' to get the full effect. Browse around the entire site. Pretty cool. Apple may already be too cool though ...

- John

Social Networking for Health

The folks at Trusera just launched their social networking for health. It's the MySpace for people who wanna talk about their own health experiences with others who have gone through similar experiences.

Read more about it on Xconomy.

- John

Bad Marketing of the Year

It's only half way into the year but I already know who deserves my vote for Bad Marketing of the Year. Have you seen the cell phone poppin' popcorn video on YouTube? It was a stunt conducted to "virally" market its Bluetooth headsets by a company called Cardo Systems.

Chegg Textbooks

We all remember spending hundreds and thousands of dollars for textbooks, right? Well, check out Chegg. Students can rent textbooks, save 60-80% so they can eat something other than ramen or mac n' cheese, and plant a tree! That's what I call a practical service melding tangible and intangible values.

Their homepage is unnecessarily cluttered and busy. I think they should just copycat Netflix.

It's another example of "simple but extraordinary." Good luck to the team at Chegg!

- John

UPDATE: I just learned that Raj is going to a Lakers game down in SoCal. I am filled with vicious envy. Enjoy a taco for me!

Cellfire

I ran across a pretty interesting service. It's called Cellfire. The "hero" section of their homepage says "Hot Deals ... on your phone." But, it talks about "no printing, no clipping, and no forgetting" without explicitly saying what it IS. So, what is the deal? And, why is it on my phone? It's actually a mobile coupon service. A straighforward description "mobile coupons or your cell phone" is in the browser window itself as well as the green flash box (if you pay close attention and wait).

It's a neat idea ...

- John