Thursday Geek Mail – Stuff in my e-mail that may be worth sharing

December 4, 2009 · Posted in Geek Mail, Information Security, Information Systems, Information Technology, Internet Marketing, The Internet 

Why Small Businesses Quit Advertising Online
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I was focused 100% on online advertising, the rate of advertiser churn was perhaps the biggest challenge of the business.

Customers buying cheap ad packages were extremely happy and loyal (well over 90% retention).  They got a great value and bought a product that they understood.

But as the advertising become more sophisticated and expensive, advertiser churn became a major drag.

It was like running a 100 yard dash wearing MC Hammer parachute pants.  (Not that I’ve ever actually done this).

The initial sales came easy, but small business advertisers buying online media left at triple or quadruple the rate of the traditional print Yellow Pages.

There were a couple problems . . .

Gone with the Wind Poster
(Online Advertisers are often Gone with the Wind)

No Penalty for Leaving

The traditional Yellow Pages model paginates a directory based on size of ads and then seniority of advertisers.  So the largest ads are placed first in the category, and among ads of the same size, the advertiser who has been buying that size ad for the longest comes ahead of advertisers who have not been customers as long.

This is a powerful customer retention tool, because even if an advertiser is having a bad year, or doubts the value of his advertisement, he is often reluctant to reduce his spending or to sit out for a year because he will lose the preferential position he has earned from years of faithful participation.

Some directories have 50 or 100 pages of attorneys, plumbers, or roofers.  The more businesses participating, the more painful is the thought of losing the position.

No Reward for Staying

Most online advertising does not have a meaningful reward for customer retention nor a substantial penalty for early withdrawal.

On Google, if you want a better position, just increase your budget or your bid amount.  Positioning of ads changes moment to moment, so no one company owns the position.

This makes it easy for advertisers to drop out and jump back in later.  One bad day, and a major campaign can be tossed out the window.

Social media does nothing to change this, providing little stability or predictability for small advertisers.

Tips for Online Publishers

A company wishing to have sustained success selling online advertising would do well to build a model that combines substantial rewards for customer loyalty and substantial risk of loss for failing to maintain a program.

One method of doing this is to sell exclusive positions and to drive meaningful, quality traffic to the site.

The trick is to balance the consumer’s need for accurate information and the advertiser’s need for consumer attention.

This is probably best accomplished in narrow niches combined with hyper-local targeting.

Post your thoughts here.  http://bit.ly/5Uvcb9

Dick Larkin
Dick Larkin
The Small Business Commando
Dick @ DickLarkin.com

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FOUR LESSONS IN IT DISASTER RECOVERY PLANNING FROM AN FAA OUTAGE
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10130216/6358329
Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer

What can CIOs learn about IT disaster recovery planning from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) recent computer problems, which caused flight delays and cancellations at airports across the country? Plenty, say disaster recovery experts.

“Here we have a system that is vital to the flow of air traffic in the United States. It is hard to imagine how many dollars are riding on people getting to their destinations on time,” said Gene Ruth, who covers disaster recovery (DR) at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group Inc. “You have a failure in the network and there is no ability to set up a disaster recovery site immediately? That is completely unacceptable.”

The root cause of the FAA outage, which lasted nearly five hours, was reportedly the failure of a circuit board inside a router at the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) facility in Salt Lake City.

Details on why the backup router did not engage are still unavailable. The failure brought down a flight management system, forcing air traffic controllers to rely on faxes and emails to communicate flight plans.

The FAA attributed the outage to a software configuration problem, suggesting the single-component failure was compounded by a configuration management failure.

READ THE FULL TIP
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10130217/6358329

Quick Intermission: FAA is a large org and this article may be directed mostly to larger organizations, but small businesses also need to realize the importance of having a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. For large organizations, failure to have an effective BCDR plan may cause major embarassment, but for small businesses it may mean the entire life of the business. Do you have a BCDR plan?

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Eleven Questions
CIOs Should Ask Their IT Managers
Every business is looking for ways to be more efficient. You know information technology is critical — you can’t be in business without it. But what is your IT really costing you? Making the right choices around technology is critical to the success of your business. Finding out becomes a lot easier when you know the right questions to ask. This technology brief provides tips to get you started and how Red Hat can help.

This document is free to IT Business Edge members and it’s easy to download. Just click on the button or image of the document and follow the simple instructions.

Click link to download the whitepaper: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/offer.aspx?o=02760010em1203

Quick Intermission: As a small to medium size enterprise, you more than likely don’t have a CIO, but you may have an IT Manager or may be dealing with an IT Consulting firm. Read and see how you can find best value from your IT Team…

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HOW TO DRIVE A SUCCESSFUL WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10169189/6358329
Niel Nickolaisen, Contributor

A few months ago, I was talking with the CIO of a midsized steel manufacturing company about his approach to implementing Web 2.0 technologies at his company. He was adamant that his company would not and could not support the use of such things by its employees. When I pressed him for reasons why this steel company would not deploy Web 2.0, he gave me two very clear reasons:

First, by implementing Web 2.0 technologies, his employees could either intentionally or unintentionally leak company trade secrets.

Second, if Web 2.0 technologies were permitted, large groups of employees would spend their time updating their Facebook pages and profiles rather than doing real work.

To be honest, these reasons have not deterred me from pursuing my own Web 2.0 technology implementation at my company. If I have an issue with employees sharing company intellectual property, I expect that happens whether I deploy Web 2.0 technologies or not. And if my employees are not getting work done because they spend their time on Facebook, I have a management problem, not a Web 2.0 problem. In my opinion, the rewards of Web 2.0 far outweigh the risks.

READ THE FULL TIP
http://go.techtarget.com/r/10169190/6358329

Final Note: Again something directed to CIOs and IT Executives, but any business owner who have to deal employees, computers and the Internet will be able to get some nuggets out of this.

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