TheWHIR Blogs - Hartland Ross Web Hosting Marketing Blog

Hartland Ross is the founder of eBridge Marketing Solutions. He will discuss Media buying and planning, copywriting, PR, SEO, PPC and various marketing topics for web hosts and others.

Should I buy customers or grow organically Part 1

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:54:39 -0400
"Should I grow my business through acquisitions or organically through marketing?" Sometimes I hear variations on this question - "I would much rather grow through acquisition than through marketing - it's much less risky". More and more frequently I am being asked some form of this question so I thought I would share some of my insights. There are a number of considerations to evaluate. This is not a comprehensive list but a few of these include 1) Financial, 2) Technological, 3) Your appetite for risk, 4) Access to capital and 5) Your infrastructure and systems. Financial

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Three simple marketing tools Part III Prove You Can Do It using Case Studies

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:23:21 -0400
The previous two marketing tools I have written about - white papers and special reports - need to be free of obvious bias, or they lose their strength to persuade readers. But case studies cover some of the same ground, while making your case, entirely. One of the beauties of case studies is that they can be long and exhaustive, short and sweet, or any length in between - it all depends on what you have to say and who you want to say it to.

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Three simple marketing tools Part II Attract Interest with Special Reports

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:10:54 -0400
I was talking with our copywriterJohn here at eBridge and a number of years ago he wrote for a marketing newsletter in a natural resource industry. At various times the publisher would approach him to tell him that he needed more subscriptions in order to keep paying the big bucks.

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Three simple marketing tools Part I Position Yourself as the Expert with White Papers

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:52:44 -0500
Sooner or later if you do any marketing online, you will hear about using whitepapers. But I wonder how many of the people who talk or write about them really know what a white paper is. The term has been around for at least 100 years and was first used to describe deep background documents or position papers published by the British government. They were called white papers because they were printed on white paper with plain white paper covers.

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3 Night of the Dresden Dolls

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:20:52 -0500
The problem with marketing on social media is that the campaigns that work are viral in nature. And you can't create a viral campaign. You can only put your campaign out there and hope it is catching. Here's recent example of a Twitter campaign: On a Friday night not long ago, Amanda Palmer, lead singer of the alternative girl band, Dresden Dolls, was sitting at home, alone, when she idly posted the following tweet (without the asterisks):

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2Social Media Marketing Whats your story

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:50:08 -0500
If businesses consider creating social media or using the methods of social networking, Professor Piskorski's research suggests that a good social strategy uses what drives online social networks in the first place, that is: "solving social failures in the offline world". Helping "people fulfill their social needs online" is at the core of all successful social media sites. Social failure doesn't mean being socially inept in the real world - it means that a forum or vehicle for one's social needs is not readily met in the off-line world. People use linkedin because they are successful and want to find other successful associates, for future work contacts or business development that may not be possible in their off-line work environment.

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Background to Marketing on Social Networking Sites

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:35:16 -0500
In a recent episode of The Simpsons, teacher Edna Krabappel confiscated her students' iphones to stop them from texting. Shakespeare be damned, because the new teacher gave the kids back their iphones and assigned them 20 minutes of Tweets on Twitter for homework. Such is this social networking world - an animated TV show imitating life. The world seems to be one big social network. It isn't just Edna's class who are tweeting - perhaps even your grandmother has an account. Stephen Hawkings and Demi Moore are tweeting. Over on facebook, everyone from Barack Obama to Aerosmith, to Bill Gates, Hugh Hefner and Jackie Chan are all there.

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What can web hosts learn from the airline industry

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:07:15 -0400
Well it seems Hostingcon has taken its toll on myself and our team in the sense that we have been very busy following up with clients since we got back hence my delayed post. I mentioned last time that I would like to explore the airline industry from both a marketing and operational angle. One of my theories, albeit I know next to nothing about the industry, is that I wonder how disappointed an airline really is when it is "forced" due to weather or control tower directions to cancel flights? Although they end up with customers such as myself who are inconvenienced, I wonder if there is a financial payoff for them? They can easily respond to these upset customers citing these problems as beyond their control however is this also convenient for them? Airline seats are perishable much like hotel rooms or seats at a movie. Once the plane has left, they can't fill any open seats - at least until they arrive at their next stopover or final destination. By cancelling flights, what is happening in effect is that they are redistributing these customers onto other flights that are less than full - even if those other flights are with another airline that will require some sort of financial compensation. I would imagine that after paying for seats from these other airlines and a few upgrades here and there, it's still more cost effective to do this than to have flown the cancelled flight. This gives airlines the trump card to play at the last minute once they already have you as a confirmed customer for a specific date pushing you out into sometime in the future to "optimize their inventory".

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Hostingcon and travel delays

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:17:52 -0400
Many of the Hostingcon sessions have been commented on by various bloggers and unfortunately mine was not one of them. Due to two flights being cancelled, I had an unexpected overnight stay in an airport hotel in Toronto meaning that I didn't arrive until 6pm on Monday night - 24 hrs later than planned and 9 hrs late for my presentation. I had many people mention to me that they were in the room ready for the session and disappointed when they heard it was cancelled. Firstly I'm sorry to those of you who showed up. Hostingcon will be sending out copies of the presentations however if you would like a personal overview or clarification of the presentation, I would like to offer you the ability to reach out to me via phone 604 731-5530 or by email - info @ ebridgemarketingsolutions.com for any questions you have. As it turns out, the next leg of my travels to Columbus OH also resulted in huge delays and took all day to get from BWI to Columbus due to flight cancellations out of La Guardia (over capacity issues). I think I might follow this entry up with a side discussion about marketing and the airline industry. I have a few theories to test and I'm interested to hear your feedback. I hope the rest of you had better luck than I did.

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Unconventional advertising - Part 2

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:22:27 -0400
In writing about inexpensive forms of advertising or promotion, I asked you to think about "sudden attacks sprung from hiding." Did the term "ambush marketing" come to mind? It's a form of marketing or advertising that lets you enjoy the benefits of sponsoring major events, without actually paying big bucks to be a sponsor. I know, I wrote about ambush marketing a few posts back, but it deserves revisiting.

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