Today is Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Marketing and Sales

Google (GOOG) disappoints speculators; ad revenues hold up; cash managment is the problem

At least Google (GOOG) isn’t blaming its disappointing earnings report on global warming, the weather or even oil prices.

Instead, Google says in this report by Reuters that it didn’t earn as much interest income as expected because it spent some $3.5 billion on an acquisition, and hedging currencies cost more than expected.

Thus, the 8% drop in GOOG’s stock price in extended hours trading after the company announced its results was all a big mistake, according to at least one analyst.

If so, GOOG may go up Friday instead of sinking on the news that its earnings only rose 35% from a year ago.

But its charts, which are shown here, are all bearish, and maybe the stock will reach its bearish price objective of $465 after all. The stock closed Friday at $533.44. In after hours trading, it fell to $492, well below its all time high of $741.79 per share. Prior to the earnings announcement, Morningstar.com said GOOG’s fair value is an estimated $625 and gave the stock three of a possible five stars.

What matters for GOOG is what happens to consumer spending. If consumers reduce their spending, advertisers will cut back on their ad spending on Google and in the print and broadcast media. But a drop in oil prices could cut gas prices and give consumers more confidence about the economy. This would help Google.

So speculators should keep close eyes on department store sales, new car sales and what they and their neighbors are buying or not buying.

Analysts don’t think Google’s prospects will be well known for several months. The economic outlook is pretty uncertain.

I don’t own GOOG but my investment club does.

For educational purposes only. Investigate before you speculate.

 

How to use Yahoo Pipes to track mentions of your organization on the Web

I’m reading Always On, Advertising, Marketing and Media in an Era of Consumer Control, by Christopher Vollmer of Booz Allen. I’ll review the book for FAR and here soon.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about Church of the Customer by a couple of other social networking and marketing consultants.

There I found this post on Yahoo Pipes, which I want to followup on as soon as I get time. The link is here.

Can Microsoft overtake Yahoo, Google?

Microsoft (MSFT) has a chance to parlay its strengths in technology and display advertising and growing skepticism about the effectiveness of pay-per-click search advertising into long-term wins against Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), according to the cover story in the May 19, 2008, are here. Of the three stocks, only GOOG has a bullish point and figure chart price objective. Reuters offers data on all three companies here.

Based on the BusinessWeek story and my experiences as a web surfer and pay-per-click advertiser, this is how I see the relative strengths of the three companies:

1. Resources for the technological and marketing wars: Microsoft is stronger than Google, but not much, and both are a lot stronger than Yahoo.
2.  Technology that will make search and advertising work for advertisers: Microsoft beats Google beats Yahoo.
3. Pay-per-click search advertising: Google has a 75% market share and Yahoo is way ahead of Microsoft.
4. Display advertising technology and market share: Yahoo is a bit ahead of Microsoft, and both are way ahead of Google.
5. Traffic on web sites: With 500 million unique visitors a month, Yahoo is ahead of Google, which beats Microsoft.
6. Content: Yahoo beats Google beats Microsoft.

Microsoft is making a major pitch that pay-per-click advertising is way over rated, and as a former advertiser, I’d have to agree. Pay-per-click fraud is still a big problem on Google and Yahoo, I think. But will display advertising be better? I notice the ads and only click on them accidentally.

For small business advertisers, Google is still the best deal. And it’s the only place Mac owners can use their favorite computers instead of their WinTel backups.

Full disclosure: I do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned here.

For educational purposes only. Investigate before you speculate.

Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index (sm) will make Healthways (HWAY) a global brand

One way to make a company a global brand is to make it the source of critical, exclusive data such as the Dow Jones or S&P indexes or the J. D. Powers ratings of autos and other products. The disease management and preventive care company, Healthways Inc. (HWAY), has joined with the international polling company, Gallup, to create the Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index (sm), which will give Americans a measure of their individual and collective health and well being.

I recently profiled HWAY here.

Healthways’ president and CEO, Ben Leedle, explained

How can banks and small businesses capitalize on social networking, personal CPM?

J. P. Hannan, a media guru, offers some intriguing ideas about social networking, personal CPM and online advertising over at Seeking Alpha.

 

Tools used by bloggers useful for investors, small business owners, market researchers

The whatsnextthing.com blog looks at the research tools top bloggers use to find information and keep up with their industries and key words. You can track keywords and stock symbols on the major search engines, which will e-mail news about any key-word you specify.

I’m old fashioned, I guess. I surf the web and read blogs, newspapers and magazines.

Join our message board to discuss stocks, business, health care, politics

The Business Word message board is where you can comment on blog posts, stocks, business issues and problems, health care and health insurance issues and even national and local politics. Click here to see the forums.

While blogs like this are mostly top down enterprises where the bloggers start threads and conversations, message boards are bottom-up ventures in the sense that both the blogger and members can start threads. Message boards generally foster more open discussions, are easier to post on and are easier to moderate for spam and other undesireable content. I will try to participate in most threads, and I’m hoping we can develope communities of serious investors, options traders, technical analysts, health care policy wonks and business owners. If the political forum takes off, that will be a bonus for this politics and news junky.

American Red Cross, blood centers handle warnings about old blood badly

The American Red Cross and trade associations representing the mostly not-for-profit blood centers are failing to respond appropriately or even ethically to a major meta study by the Cleveland Clinic researchers that found the use of “old” blood puts patients at risk. MSNBC.com’s JoNel Alecca has the best and most complete report on the study. USA Today published a a decent story, and, most impressively, provided links to more information for readers who want to dig deeper into the story. I’ve been able to find only one blog that is even mentioning this story.

American Red Cross and other blood centers are trying to

What it takes to attract readers to your blog

Some top bloggers offer their blogging tips to Paul Boutin.

 

Capital One’s joinslingshot.com attracts me with an ad in the Rocky

Capital One Services Inc. (COF) has launced http://www.joinslingshot.com, “the new business marketplace designed to bring Denver business owners and customers together.”

The ad promoting the new site that

 

Why regional newspapers are cutting business coverage; how to fix it

Newspapers’ business sections typically have been edited and written by journalists who love the big national stories and are too lazy to dig out the local stories. That newspapers are cutting business coverage is discussed by Ken Doctor over at Content Bridges. Hat tip to SeekingAlpha.com.

Most business journalists are liberals, and they go for the negative, scandal story over the positive profile of a local employer or industry sector such as printers, agribusiness firms, bankers, Realtors, etc. Even worse, local business sections pander to advertisters such as retailers, auto dealers, Realtors, home builders and supermarkets. Coverage of those advertisers is 95% puff and 5% news. This saps their credibility as business news sources.

Creating a successful business section is not that hard. Just cover the local markets and employers. Report on contracts municipalities have up for bid. Report the winners and losers in local and state government contracting. Report on both publicly-owned and privately-held local employers, investor-owned, not-for-profits and nonprofits. Cover local charities as businesses and employers as well as do gooders. Make local CEOs of all types of organizations high-profile personalities, reporting on their failures as well as their successes. Cover the rumors. Rumors sell papers. Readers sell advertising. Increased advertising would pay for the labor-intensive coverage.

The problem with most newspapers is that they’re run by sales people (publishers) who hire lousy editors and skimp on the editorial product.

Should small businesses’ employees be encouraged to blog?

Corporate blogging has been discussed a few times on this blog. Lee Gomes takes a stab at explaining the pros and cons. But he doesn’t address the problem of finding employees who like to write, know how to control their opinions and know their company and how to make their bosses and company look good. For more of my opinions on this, search this site for “blogging” and “blog.”

PR, SEO, social media marketing are all pretty much the same

Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuation says, “Comparing SMM SEO and PR Tactics is Pure Poppycock.”

I don’t agree. They’re all about opening doors, and smart marketers evaluate them all for their employers and clients.

Should you publish a wiki on your web site?

What is a “wiki” and how will it help you mobilize your employees, retain clients and customers or sell equipment and supplies?

Westminister Wiki Business Consultants recently started a blog to sell their services, but isn’t doing the job. (This is my 49th post on business blogging. Search “blog” in column three.)

What’s missing?

Posts. The owners post infrequently, which means they’re not building readership.

Content. This blog appears to be written by techies who don’t know how to market their services. They don’t do a good job of defining a wikipedia or even link to one in the pioneering http://www.wikipedia.com. Nor does the blog give good examples of how a wiki might be integrated with a small business’s web site.

www.expressionengine.com is the web site for the creators of the content management system I use on this site. Back in September, 2006, I participated in this this thread on how to use a wiki.

This was my contribution (click on headline):

Small business blogs and news sites abound; some are worth reading, some not

Owners, creators and buyers of small businesses can find hundreds, if not thousands of articles and blogs about running, starting and buying small businesses online.

Some of them are very good, and, of course, you have to wonder about others.

USA Today’s Rhonda Abrams, for example, has published several articles on small business each month for almost five years. She seldom writes about buying technology for small businesses, but here she writes about the buy or lease question. It’s an interesting article that would benefit from a few links to more detailed articles and online calculators.

The Wall Street Journal’s wsj.com includes a very professionally produced section for small business owners. At first glance, the articles appear to be boiler plate. But if you click on the “technology” tab, you’ll see a lot of interesting articles for companies in the technology business as well as for those shopping for new technology solutions. The wsj.com Small Business reporters frequently “ask an expert,” and they get some good advice on, for example, outsourcing technology. My only complaint is that the article is pretty short and doesn’t really explain what “outsourcing technology” means. It probably means outsourcing system administration or web site administration, which is something more interesting to larger “small businesses” than to organizations with only 5 or 10 employees.

Nevertheless, someone thinking about starting a business could spend a couple of days on the wsj.com Small Business site. (Subscription may be required.)

Smallbusiness.com’s wiki is very interesting. I’ve linked to their directory of small business technology weblogs. This could be very useful, but the first blog I clicked on had only two posts, and they were made almost a year ago. Somebody’s not keeping the links current, but if you’re shopping for technology, you might want to check out some of the blogs and the wiki itself.