Soft Promotion

Keeping your name in front of your target audience is not always easy.

One of the things that many people overlook is offering modest discounts to company's employee bases directly through their HR departments. Not to say that this is always easy, but you need to know how to go about it.

An example would be the Nothnagle CorporatePerks program. Essentially, Nothnagle simply extends the concierge service that they provide their home buyers and sellers out to employees of Rochester area corporations.

The cost to Nothnagle is nothing but time, and the rewards include keeping their name in front of employees of several large Rochester based corporations, as well as providing additional business opportunites for their partner vendors.

The benefit to the employers that use CorporatePerks in Rochester is the ability to offer a no cost benefit to their employees.

Sometimes it's the simple things that get the job done.

Rochester Business Still Kicking

In a time where it's difficult to find good news about many Rochester area companies, especially the pillars of our corporate community, there is some still out there. I thought this article about Kodak was intersting:

Irvine, CA (PRWEB) October 24, 2005 -- Just as how the key ingredient of
Viagra® was initially developed as a heart medication, Kodak’s Document Imaging
high-speed commercial scanners were originally designed for scanning documents,
such as checks. In fact, the http://www.kodak.com/ website still lists their scanners under the
“Business and Government” category, rather than cross-marketing it to the photo
industry. But, if Mitch Goldstone is right, things are about to change and just
in time for the peak holiday retail season. The timing is also important because
of the recent natural disasters which ruined generations of treasured family
photos and erased many businesses and organizations’ pictures too.“With
hundreds-of-billions of treasured family photos awaiting to be digitally
transformed and preserved, I am convinced that Kodak has a blockbuster on the
level of Pfizer’s leading prescription medication,” explained Goldstone,
president and CEO of 30 Minute Photos Etc. and www.30minphotos.com. MORE

PDF of the full story

All it takes is an Idea

Proving that low priced merchandise can make you a boatload if you move the right volume, I submit for your approval MillionDollarHomePage

So this industrious young man uses blogging to sell pixels on a website. You can place a link to your site in the pixel. So far, he's sold 423,000 of them. You do the math.

So all it takes is an innovative idea, and you're a millionaire.

But there's more to it than that. Once he had the idea, he had to get the word out. And appears that word of mouth (word of email) and blogging were his biggest 2 promotional tools.

Makes me think blogging is STILL underrated by major corporations and other companies.

Research Dynamics Partners with VirtualScopics to Provide 'Imaging CRO Services'

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ --

In a partnership agreementeffective September 9, 2005, Research Dynamics Consulting Group andVirtualScopics, LLC previously announced that they have signed a non-exclusivepartnership agreement to co-market their clinical research services andtechnologies. Lorraine Ellis, President and CEO of Research Dynamics states, "This is avaluable addition to our clinical research capabilities and brings state ofthe art technologies to our clients. As part of our strategy as a technologyCRO, this partnership is another unique tool we have adopted that brings realvalue and cost savings to our sponsors for their clinical trials.

The advancedimaging technology provided by VirtualScopics clearly meets these objectives." "We are looking forward to a rewarding partnership with Research Dynamics.Their experience in servicing large studies, will prove to be a valuable toolfor VirtualScopics," stated Rosemary Shull, Director of Client Development,VirtualScopics. Sponsors who choose Research Dynamics to manage their clinical trials,specifically in the areas of Oncology, MS and Alzheimer Disease, will now havethe option to utilize VirtualScopics' unique biomarker imaging technology.

This technology allows faster and more accurate efficacy assessments,resulting in reduced patient sample size, better dosing, reduced trial lengthand a better understanding of the disease process. Research Dynamics' value package to the sponsor includes medical imaging,24/7 web based project management information, EDC capabilities and othercost-savings technologies.

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Anyone know anything about these firms?

Affiliate Marketing

If you are in any way responsible for your company's website, you should already be aware of affiliate marketing. There's two separate facets to affiliate marketing, with one being accruing a pay for performance sales force for the products or services your company sells, and the other being leveraging the traffic your website sees that DOESN'T buy from you.

A brief tutorial on affiliate marketing can be found at my site Webster Internet Marketing.

Kodak and IBM

While it was always well known that Kodak relied on IBM for their IT infrastructure and other consulting, they now have agreed to let IBM manage their credit and collections division as well. (If I recall the news story correctly.)

We're certainly seeing some nice opportunities for marketing firms and other consultants to play in bigger spaces than they may be now. Looks like the battle cry for Kodak will continue to be "cheaper and better"...

I hope they see the results they are looking for.

A little humor...

Since my last post about the state of affairs in Rochester was a little depressing, this should give us a quick lift.

Apparently, these were from past employee reviews at several different companies... - KW

Performance Reviews
"Since my last report, this employee has reached rock bottom and has started to dig."

"This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won't be."

"Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."

"When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."

"He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle."

"This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

"He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

"This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

"This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better."

"Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together."

"A gross ignoramus — 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."

"He certainly takes a long time to make his pointless."

"He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."

"I would like to go hunting with him sometime."

"He would argue with a signpost."

"He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."

"When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."

"If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."

"A photographic memory but with the lens cap glued on."

"Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."

"Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming."

"Has two brains: one is lost and the other is out looking for it."

"If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."

"If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."

"If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."
"It's hard to believe that he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."

"One neuron short of a synapse."

"Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."

"Takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes."

"The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead."

"Just a way to whittle away a few minutes of retirement."

"His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity."

I would not allow this employee to breed.

This employee is really not so much of a has-been but more of a definite won't be."

"He's been working with glue too much."

"He has a knack for making strangers immediately."

"A prime candidate for natural deselection."


Any more to add to the list?

A little lesson on blogging

I just turned on Verification for posting of comments. You will have to type in some letters when you attempt to reply to any of these posts on the blog. It will eliminate the comment spam you see showing up here (the fishing site, the car auction site, etc.)

I left it open as a little demo on how to be careful with blogs. The folks that posted those comments anonymously weren't even here reading this. They post all these with web robots.

So, lesson learned, and on we go.

Delphi Throwing Knives at NYS Law

From WHAM13 news:

Miller said, "We're paying more than three dollars an hour for workers comp in
New York… I think it is a responsibility of the New York legislature to address
that promptly, and I hope I've brought some attention to that."

We've known a while that the costs of insurance and other related employment
expenses have been high in New York, but these comments from Delphi really drive the point home. Whoever takes over GRE for the long term will be fighting an uphill battle from the start. - KW

Web Marketing

I'm in the process of setting up a little consulting business, essentially at this point to augment my current income. I'm interested to see what comes with it over time.

I have about 2.5 years of internet and affiliate marketing experience, and in discussions with other business owners in the Rochester area, it's becoming apparent to me that most people think having an effective website is either too hard or too expensive to do.

I plan on telling them otherwise.

My site, Webster Internet Marketing, was launched yesterday. Obviously, it's in the very formative stages.

I will keep you posted!

The Pumpkin Cannon

A little off topic here, but I heard the farm at the corner of Oatka Trail Road and Parmelee Road has a pumpkin cannon they are firing every hour on the hour. That location is just outside of Rochester, in what I believe to be Mumford (maybe Wheatland).

They fire all the pumpkins that can't cut it as edible or carvable. I guess they travel about 800 feet.

I'll be heading out there this weekend, and be SURE to post back about my findings. My understanding is that they shoot them at old trucks on a hill.

Keeping it organized

One of the tools that I've found highly valuable in organizing my sales efforts is Salesforce.com. The Personal Edition of the software is free for a year, and IMHO, it beats working out of ACT! or Outlook for maintaining a clear marketing message and keeping your contacts informed and in front of you.

You can start a free 30 day trial of their full blown edition from their site, and for those of you looking for a top notch CRM solution, it's the only way to go.

Anyone else using it here?

How to get involved

If you're interested in contributing to this community, there are a couple of ways to do it.

Underneath each post, there's a link that states 0Comments or the 0 is replaced with whatever number of comments are posted. If you click on that link, you will be able to add any comments you wish.

The better way is to go to Blogspot.com and register (it's free). If you wish to become a heavy contributor, I can add you as an author, and you will be able to create new posts. Anyone who is an active author can have a link in our links section.

Why are links important to me?

There are a couple of advantages to have a link on our page. 1 advantage is that you will pick up some extra vistors to your site. Another is that search engines, such as google and yahoo, follow links around the web in order to rank the importance of specific web pages.

And since this site is about Rochester, if you have a Rochester based service, links from here will make your page look better to our friends at google. The more inbound links FROM QULAITY SITES you have, the better off you are. By quality, I mean that google will see the word Rochester on our site, and if it sees Rochester on your site when it goes through our link, it will rate your page as more important for the word Rochester. I could go on and on about linking, but I will do it in separate articles.

Getting noticed on the web

One of the items I was looking at today, although I'm a little dubious of how it could help real estate firms because of how dynamic our product list is, is Froogle.

Froogle essentially gives merchants an opportunity to leverage Google's 60% search share to display their individual products free of charge. Of course, you need to have a website, as well as a data feed of your products, in order to participate.

I would be more interested for my own purposes if they would take RSS feeds for a product list, but that doesn't seem to be an option right now.

A true data feed, done in Excel or CSV, needs to be uploaded to Froogle. Since our products are dynamic, we would need to upload a feed everyday, which is time consuming. But if your product list is more static, it could be a gold mine, especially if you ship nationally or internationally.

Has anyone here in Rochester taken a run at Froogle? I'm interested to hear some results.

The Purpose of this Blog

I'm starting this blog in order to create a community in Rochester, NY for sales and marketing professionals. The blog, in it's entirety, should almost be considered a free tip club, and also facilitate the sharing of strategies and ideas for sales and marketing, both on the web and in other media.

I have 7 years of sales and marketing experience, primarily in wireless, but most recently with Nothnagle Realtors. I'm not an agent, so I promise I won't be begging for leads through this blog :).

To that end, I want to stress that although I will consider this blog an open forum, I will prune away any posts that might be construed as overly "salesy". Feel free to have fun, and talk a little about your product or service so that we understand what you do, but don't try to sell it to us, unless you are looking for assistance with a sales pitch.

Finally, I want this blog to be primarily for people from Rochester and Western New York. There are lots of outlets for people to write about other places, and I think that Rochester, and most of Upstate New York is in an interesting period in their "growth", so a lot of the sales and marketing info will be unique to this region.

So post away with comments and questions, and best of luck to all of you in your sales and marketing efforts.