How LifeSize Runs a Tight Partner-Ship

If your products are distributed through partners or retailers, then your success is influenced by the quality of their web site. Of course, manufacturers have always had to police their distributors to some extent, but the internet has certainly complicated the process. In any circumstances, if you have affiliates or influencers who link to your web site, then good marketing requires that you give them some direction. A recent Marketing Sherpa case study includes information about how LifeSize Communications excels in this area, featuring Megan Lueders, Director Worldwide Marketing Channels. "She started with only 20 partners, but now has more than 120 external sites linking directly to her site from a page with keyword-optimized and LifeSize-relevant content."

MarketingSherpa: Case Study #CS811, 2007-Nov-15.

[Leuders at LifeSize] developed a process to build two-way links between her Web site and industry partners and resellers....Rather than simply linking to partners’ homepages, she required partners to provide a direct link to a page with relevant content about LifeSize Communications. To make it easier on partners, she provided an "SEO 101" document with step-by-step advice on how to create a search-optimized link. Tips included: keywords to include on the page, specific copy to paste into their own sites for certain products, and the precise location on the LifeSize site to link back to.

How Brands Make Friends

Collecting all the data in the world will not make the target your friend. Facebook, ePinions, and StyleHive make it possible for people who have nothing else in common to band together and compare data about their suppliers. Have you been treating your targets like human beings? Do they have warm, fuzzy stories to share about you?

HubMagazine.com: Is Friending ending CRM'ing?, Nov-Dec 2007, by Charlie Tarzian

We have built these monoliths of web and email infrastructures. We have names in our databases. Certainly, some of us even have sales histories to go along with those names and that help us tee-up that never-ending, all-you-can-eat email machine with a constant flow of relevant and timely offers. But that doesn’t mean you have “friends.”

We have email and e-CRM summits, e-sales planners and sales enablement tools. We have call centers that interact on the web with a caller. We sometimes even have face-to-face meetings.Yet, if 92 percent of Americans surveyed by Roper Reports (2004) rate word-of-mouth of friends and family as being among best source of ideas and information, then decisions about brands in people’s lives are conversations we are generally not a part of.

How to Sustain a Fair Price

E-Commerce systems now allow most companies to test and find optimal prices that will maximize either volume or margins, but even more important is developing a pricing system that feels predicatable and fair to your customers. When The National Academies Press, the book-publishing arm of the National Academy of Sciences, began making PDF editions of its books available, many members felt the PDF version should be free. Fortunately for the long-term health of the organization, they decided to run tests of different pricing models.

[email protected]: Marrying Marketing Science with the Front Lines. 2007-Dec-12

Pope said that because of the success of the pricing model, NAP decided to offer free downloads for users in developing countries and free downloads of titles which were lagging in sales. As Internet downloading popularity has increased, the PDF pricing was raised last year to 85%, Pope said. "The fact that I am still employed and standing in front of you means that we have been financially self-sustaining," Pope noted. "We have taken out profits and invested in the web site." Page views have soared to 18 million a year. Pope has been sharing the NAP findings with other leading booksellers, including Amazon.com, at industry conferences.