Also encouraging is the list of magazines leading the charge in terms of ad increases, including titles such as Fast Company – at a whopping 31.4% – Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek and Entrepreneur.  If business magazines are seeing increased ad sales, it seems clear that B2B companies are increasing their ad budgets – a good indicator that we’re pulling out of the economic doldrums.  Hopefully it also means increased IT budgets at the end user companies that are reading all these business magazines.

Another positive indicator is that fewer magazines shut down in the first half of the year – 87, to be exact, way down from the 279 that closed shop in the first half of 2009. And 90 new magazines were introduced, which I find almost astounding in this economy, even if it is way down from the 187 new publications during the same period last year.

Call me an optimist, but I’m looking at both of these tidbits as good news.

Case studies – or “KACE Studies” as the company calls them – are all over the KACE web site.  Big, fat customer quotes scream out from practically every page, with smiling, happy customers glowing about various KACE products.  Click on the Customers tab and you’ll find a long list of customer case studies, many in both written and video format.

If you’re a potential client checking out KACE, this is powerful stuff – actual customers, nearly 3 dozen of them, who you can see and hear telling about their experiences with KACE products.  Clearly, KACE figured out that the effort it takes to pull these case studies together is well worth it, especially when you can parlay the interviews into multiple marketing pieces.

End result: KACE can now write its own success story, as last month it was acquired by Dell.

Part 1 of the series focuses on “Developing a Compelling Point of View,” and offers a prescription for ensuring that your white papers actually say something interesting and have a “novel point of view,” as Bloom principals Bob Buday and Tim Parker put it.

Most white papers, the authors contend, “are treated as writing projects, not as structured initiatives to develop a compelling point of view.  Their emphasis is on phrasing an argument, not on building it.”

The key to developing a paper with a point of view is to sketch out your argument by addressing a series of issues, including: the target problem, shortcomings of current solutions, an overview and detailed explanation of your new solution, barriers to adopting the new solution and how to overcome them, followed by a call to action.

While I completely agree with that approach, I was a bit taken aback by the insinuation that companies aren’t already following a similar approach when they produce white papers. In my experience, that’s pretty much exactly the tack most companies want to take – and they get no argument from me.

Buday and Parker go on to tout the importance of concrete evidence to back up assertions in the white paper, with the most forceful being customer case studies. “Several surveys have shown that what managers value most in white papers is learning about how other companies solve problems,” the authors say.

I couldn’t agree more and this is an area where many companies do indeed fall down. Lining up customers to reference in white papers typically seems to be an after-thought. It’s a topic I always bring up on a project kick-off call, and one that typically results in silence or low groans on the other end of the line.

Yes, it can be a chore to get customers to agree to play ball, but the payoff is enormous. If you play your cards right, from a single customer phone interview you could not only get valuable content for your white paper, but a standalone case study, numerous customer quotes for various marketing materials, perhaps even a podcast.  It’s true that some companies have strict rules about not appearing to endorse products but most don’t.  Generally, IT folks are more than happy to opine about their vendor choices and enjoy seeing themselves quoted, especially when their results have been positive. The exposure puts the IT exec in a positive light as much as it does your company.

And exposure is exactly what you’ll both get if you follow the advice in part 2 of the Bloom Group paper, which discusses various ways to use social media to spread the word about your white paper to the right people.  Go beyond the bloggers, the authors advise, and come up with op-ed pieces drawn from the original ideas in your white papers that you can pitch to the online editors of leading business publications.

You can even build web sites around the point of view represented in your white paper to generate an online community of people interested in the topic.  “This means a white paper marketing campaign never needs to end—as long as the service or product that it supports is still being sold,” the authors say. Food for thought indeed.

Part 3 in the series has yet to be published but will focus on the biggest obstacles to producing and marketing white papers in the manner the authors describe.  I’m guessing time and resources will be two big obstacles, but will keep an eye out for the last installment to make sure.

I ditched Verizon phone service back in the late 1990s when the town in which I was living signed on a competing cable company that offered phone, Internet and TV service in one package. It was a no-brainer from a price perspective. The thought of getting rid of Verizon and its always-aggravating customer service was a bonus.

Fast forward to 2009, when Verizon FIOS came to my neighborhood.  Again, it was a combined phone, TV and Internet package that was attractive, especially the speedy Internet service which would let me replace the shaky one from the cable provider in my new town.  And being some 10 years removed from my last dealing with Verizon (save for the cellular variety, with which I’ve never had a significant problem), I apparently forgot why I disliked the company so much, or maybe was indulging in wishful thinking that things had changed.

I have now come to the brutal realization that they have not changed a lick.

Late yesterday afternoon, the Internet service in my home went out. After the usual rebooting of the computer and router failed to do any good, I called Verizon tech support. I was on hold for a few minutes before reaching a tech, who spent a few more minutes with me before determining it was a billing issue and sending me to the billing department. Again I was on hold, this time for more than a few minutes, before a customer service rep came on. Again I had to give my phone number, address and so forth – which drives me absolutely crazy in an era when such information should be easily passed from one department to another. After looking into the issue and finding nothing wrong, the rep put me on hold – without telling me why or giving me a chance to request I not be put on hold, which I most certainly would have.

This time the wait was interminable.  And when someone finally came back on the line, I found I was back in the tech support department where I started.  After lots of back and forth with the tech, he was about to put me on hold again. I protested and instead asked him to take my cell phone number and have his supervisor – or whoever – call me back. He was gracious enough to do that but still – by this time I’d been on the phone for more than an hour.

A few minutes later, the supervisor called me back only to say there was nothing he could do.  The billing department had indeed put a hold of some sort on my account and there was no way his department could remove it and restore service. There was also no way for him to transfer me back to billing – by this time, billing had gone home, half of them no doubt laughing about the poor sap in Massachusetts who would be wholly without Internet service for the night. The best he could do, the supervisor said, was have someone from billing call me after they arrived at 8:00 the next morning.  Fine, I said – the earlier the better.

After 9 a.m. the next day, I decided to try again rather than wait for a call that I had little confidence would be coming. I told my sad story to the woman in the billing department who, of course, wanted to put me on hold. I protested, asking instead for a call back rather than risking another interminable hold time, especially since I was on my cell phone using prime time minutes.  That was impossible, she said.  “No it’s not,” I said. “I’ll give you my phone number, you have your supervisor, or whoever, call me back.  It’s easy,” especially for a phone company, I thought, although I stopped short of saying so. No, no, it’s impossible, she insisted.  Just can’t be done. “That’s absurd,” I said, and gave her my phone number anyway. I told her if I was on hold for more than about two minutes, I was going to hang up and expect a call back.  She couldn’t guarantee that, she said, then placed me on hold.

I was bluffing, of course, and stayed on hold for a good 6 or 7 minutes before, suddenly, the music stopped, yet nobody came on the line.  I had been disconnected.

By now I’m getting pretty peeved, which is to say, screaming into the dead phone.  I decided to try my local Verizon store instead. The woman there was very nice and tried to help but ultimately just wound up giving me the customer service number that I already had.

This story is going on way too long so suffice to say that I called the number again, told my story, again, and after being on hold, again, and again, finally got someone who could help.  Turns out the issue resulted from my moving my phone service from Verizon to Vonage about six weeks earlier (because Vonage is less expensive and has better features). Verizon ties its billing to the phone number, so when the phone number went away, billing couldn’t cope.  So naturally the only thing to do was shut down my Internet service.  At least, that’s pretty much what the rep said, while trying to blame the whole thing on Vonage.

Whether there’s a moral here for marketers, I can’t really say. But here’s one thing I know for sure: if your company has truly good customer service, that’s something you can trumpet. And I’d say it’s perfectly reasonable for marketing folks in companies that don’t have good customer service to offer helpful suggestions to their customer service colleagues so they can turn their ship around.  Here are a few:

• Implement systems whereby you capture customer information once – whether by keypad or spoken word – then never ask for it again, no matter how many different departments the customer gets transferred to. This is especially true if you work for a technology company, because customers expect you to be good at this kind of thing.
• Offer to call the customer back if hold times exceed 4 or 5 minutes. The first time this happened to me, I was admittedly suspect, but when the company came through, I simply could not have been happier. I don’t recall which company that was but another that did it recently was Sonos, which makes a really cool wireless, multi-room music system that you should check out.
• Even if you don’t offer to call customers back, empower customer service reps to do it on their own, especially if a customer asks.  It’s not hard. You take down a phone number and call it when you’re ready. We do this all the time in the real world, or at least we used to before we started emailing and texting everyone.
• When you encounter a customer who has clearly had a bad experience, offer them something to make up for it. Maybe it’s extending their support contract by a month on the house, a gift card to Starbucks, whatever – it’s a just a nice gesture that doesn’t cost much and can help you win back a customer who you may otherwise lose. Or who may decide to blog about you.

OK, enough. But man, I really do feel better!

But if your survey is to have any credibility, you need to tell people how many qualified respondents it is based upon.

This came up today because I was poring over the results of AdMedia Partners’ 2010 Market Survey, its 16^th annual survey of executives with leading media and marketing services firms, the results of which are covered in another post. I was initially attracted to the survey because it appeared to be based on a huge number of respondents – more than 7,400.

At least, that was my take after reading the survey methodology, which begins, “This report is based on a Web-based survey of more than 7,400 domestic and international executives in the advertising, marketing services, digital marketing, marketing technology, media or digital media businesses and related venture capital/private equity investors.”

Just to be sure that meant more than 7,400 respondents, I called AdMedia Partners. As it turns out, that figure reflects how many folks got the survey; the company doesn’t disclose how many responded. In the survey’s 16-year history, that’s just always the way it’s been done, says AdMedia Partners managing director Seth Alpert, although he’s not sure why. I tried to get a ballpark response rate out of him, but all he’d say was that it’s on par with “the norm” for such undertakings – whatever that is – and that it was less than 50%.  (My sense was that he wanted to tell me, that he couldn’t think of a good reason not to – but I’m guessing.)

To me, it’s not only a mistake to fail to disclose the number of respondents to a survey, it’s a disservice to your audience, which deserves to know whether your results are based on 20 opinions or 2,000.  I’ve done lots of surveys in my time, mostly as features editor for Network World, when we had a series of surveys we did each year. Always we were concerned about getting a high response rate so the results would be statistically valid, especially for our salary survey, where it was important to get enough responses for each geographic region. If we didn’t have enough responses for a specific job title in a given region, we’d fess up that the sample wasn’t statistically valid, give the results we had, and let the reader decide what it all meant.

Any company that wants to use survey results as part of its marketing strategy should follow a similar path. While the Web has made surveys far easier to conduct than in the days when we relied on snail mail, it’s still not exactly easy to get a high number of responses. But resist the temptation to fudge the response rate, or to simply not disclose it at all – the credibility of the survey and perhaps even your company is on the line.

First, the good news – sort of: folks are optimistic that the worst of the recession is behind us, with 68% believing we’re in an economic recovery. Consequently, they expect an increase in advertising budgets, with a median increase of 3% overall and 10% in interactive advertising.

While a 3% increase is certainly better than the 5% decrease in the prior year’s survey, it’s still not much. In fact, it’s 40% less than the 5% increases respondents in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 surveys reported.  On the other hand, you’re probably getting better deals for your dollar so maybe it’s a wash.

Where things get really interesting is in perceptions of online content companies and social media.  Nearly half of respondents (45%) consider growth opportunities for sites that focus on user-generated content to be overrated, while a whopping 63% think the same for social media sites.

At the same time, however, when asked about plans for expansion in 2010, 78% of respondents indicated one or more online marketing sectors, with the most popular choice being “word-of-mouth/social media marketing” at 55%.

So, respondents consider social media to be overrated, but that’s not going to stop them from expanding into social media.

Now I’m not bashing social media here; I do think it has a role to play in marketing.  I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t.  But from survey results like this, it’s clear that there’s no shortage of confusion over what that role is and how effective social media will ultimately be.

Of course, where there’s confusion, there’s opportunity. So I’d say marketers are right to get into the social media fray and try to figure out what works.

One, these folks have been following the carrier market for more than two decades and they know what they’re doing. In my reporting days at Network World, I routinely turned to Rosemary Cochran and Rick Malone for analysis of the news of the day and they never disappointed.

Two, when I talk to end users about the WAN services they use (typically as part of my work recruiting speakers for Network World’s IT Roadmap events), I consistently hear about carrier Ethernet. And what I hear is nearly universally good.  The services are easy to implement  – it’s just Ethernet, after all – and offer great performance.

Carrier Ethernet is an area that should be ripe for some good case studies, as it’s a real success story. I know (because I wrote them) that NTT America has churned out a couple, on clients including Internet radio station Pandora and hosting company SoftLayer, resulting in some good coverage.

“If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store,” the posting says.

What about people who might want such offers?  Some great location-based apps are available for the iPhone. I use one called AroundMe that’ll give me a list of nearby restaurants, gas stations, hotels, movie theatres and lots more.  If I click on restaurants, I’m probably looking for a place to eat and there’s a decent chance I haven’t already decided on one. A nicely targeted offer of a discount could well sway my decision – and I’d likely welcome it, frugal sort that I am. And if I take it upon myself to download an app knowing full well it comes with location-based ads, then what’s the harm?

I hope for the sake of GPS-aware marketers and discount-hunters alike that Apple soon changes its tune on this decision.

None of that appears to be happening at Penton. Rather, according to the company’s press release, the restructuring “will result in the elimination of $270 million of the Company’s debt.” How do I get in on that kind of deal? It reminds me of an episode of “The Office,” where the boss, Michael Scott, thinks that merely shouting the words “I declare bankruptcy,” would make all of his debt go away. Not too far from the truth, apparently.

But there’s more: “Further, there will be no management changes or change in control of the Company.  ‘Operationally, nothing will change during this debt restructuring,’” according to Sharon Rowlands, Penton’s CEO.

I know times are tough in publishing and probably the Penton management team includes some talented, upstanding folks. But if a company manages to mount $270 million in debt, enough to force it into bankruptcy, shouldn’t some changes be made?

In the course of finding folks who can present on the various topics covered at the events, I talk to lots and lots of practicing IT professionals.  I mean lots.  I talk to them about what projects they’ve implemented lately and how the projects went, to get a sense for the topics they’d be able to talk about at an IT Roadmap event.

Consistently, the topic I have the most trouble finding folks to speak about is network management. This is a topic that I’ve followed to varying extents for about 20 years, dating back to when it was part of my beat as a Network World reporter in the late 1980’s and early ‘90s.  Back then, the big topic was being able to remotely monitor and control various pieces of network and computing equipment from a central console – a la HP OpenView or CA NSM.

It strikes me that things haven’t changed all that much. The products are out there, to be sure, but an awful lot of folks haven’t implemented them. The reasons they cite most often are purely budgetary – they just don’t have the money.  As a result, many favor open source products that they acknowledge are somewhat less functional – but it’s hard to beat the price.

I suspect many of these folks are going to run into trouble as they look to take advantage of technologies including virtualization and cloud computing. Every time a new technology comes down the pike, it brings with it its own set of management challenges.

Virtualization and cloud are no different. Just consider the challenges inherent in managing applications that may be running on multiple servers at the same time, of multiple operating environments on the same piece of hardware and of virtual servers that may move from one physical environment to another.

If you’re in an IT shop that isn’t quite up to snuff on the network and systems management front in the first place, then you want to implement virtualization and/or cloud computing, you’re going to be that much more behind.

Of course from a marketer’s perspective, that should be a great opportunity – virtualization is all the rage and there’s a strong case to be made that IT shops can only get the most out of it if they have proper management tools.