Category Archives: Business & Marketing

How Google Audio Ads work (PowerPoint slides)

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The folks at ZDNet’s Digital Markets have some PowerPoint slides that illustrates how Google Audio Ads work. And this from Voices.com:

“Google has positioned the Audio Ads system to serve both top-level advertisers, as well as the advertising agencies themselves. The graphic also shows 75% of the transactions coming from the agencies, and only 25% from independent advertisers. This is likely because advertising agencies already have media planning and media buying personnel, not to mention existing relationships with local and regional radio stations.”

The lables in the little blue rectangles are: Radio Stations, Networks and Rep Firms. Which suggests that advertisers will simply have another option for placing their ads on radio stations. And if Google can make it easier or cheaper or more effective (i.e. feedback, reports, etc)… they’ve added value to the process.

George Carlin on mindless marketing blather

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AdRants points us to a wonderful 4 min bit of a George Carlin performance:

“More than half of what comes out of your mouth in that client presentation is mindless, pointless, idiotic sounding, space-filling blather. Don’t you want meetings to be shorter? Aren’t you sick of fake words that mean nothing? Wouldn’t you rather be actually creating something rather than killing it with the boatload of words you throw at it before you ever show it to the client? Of course you would. So stop talking like an idiot.”

I’ve been working hard in recent years to do more listening than talking in meetings with clients. I’m not there. I still talk too much. But I’m making progress.

The experiment I’m dying to try is to record (audio) one of the client presentations. And then transcribe it. That is when we will see just how mindless and pointless most of our blather is. The simple truth is, we can’t hear how dumb we sound while we’re talking.

Why you didn’t get the business

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Mary Schmidt (“Business Developer, Marketing Troubleshooter”) explains why you didn’t get her business. Her original list grew so long she’s posting these little goodies in three parts. Here are a few of my favorites from her first batch:

4. Your web site looks abandoned. (Copyright 2004? Are you even still in business?)
5. Your web site doesn’t tell me how to call you.
6. You never, ever answer your phone. It always go to voice mail.
7. You did more talking than I did in our first meeting.
8. You insisted on going through your entire sales presentation, slide by slide, line by line – even when I said, “I already know that” and “Yes, I already saw that.”
9. You talk about “solutions” but never tell me how you’re going to solve my problem.
10. You’re “invisible.” Like it or not, showing up in a Google search (or not) is a credibility factor these days.
11. You only call or email when you’re trying to sell me something.
12. You think having my business card with my email address is the same as having my permission to flood my inbox with junk.
16. Your “free education seminar” was nothing more than a sales pitch

This should be required reading before every sales presentation. Thanks to David for the pointer.