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I’ve never been a particularly big fan of the PSP, and I don’t own one myself. Still, partly through its own merits and partly through the efforts of some highly motivated and skilled hackers, the PSP is definitely a cool little toy. It’s got an admittedly extremely good screen, great graphics, a number of very good games, and an incredible homebrew scene. Now, it’s been reported that the latest firmware update, v. 3.30, comes with 6 months of free wifi access through T-mobile hotspots. That is pretty awesome, and definitely a great step toward making up for many of the less-than-friendly things Sony PR has said over the past few years.
Additionally, Gizmodo reports that Sony is developing a system for fans of Arsenal, the British soccer team, to view the game on their PSPs while they are at the stadium. This is pretty cool news – definitely, sometimes a screen will give you a better overview of things than actual seats, depending on where you are sitting. If this expands, it could definitely be a really great feature of the PSP.
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Search Engine Land posted an interesting article today, on B2B search. They report that in Q206 only 59% of B2B marketers used search marketing. This figure is a bit dated, as we are about to start Q207 next week, but it seems fairly reasonable. The agency I work for, Overdrive, has a large B2B focus. Many of our accounts are B2B, where we focus on lead generation and getting new prospects as opposed to directly generating sales, unlike B2C. We’ve been extremely successful with most of our clients, both through PPC marketing and through SEO.
Search marketing is really cool because 1. it targets prospects when they are specifically looking for what you are selling and 2. because it is measurable. Unlike traditional marketing, where you just throw your message out there in places you hope prospects will look, with search marketing the prospects come to you – they are taking the initiative to search for what you are selling, so they are in a more receptive mode for your pitch. Secondly, when you spend $10,000 on a magazine ad, you have no idea if it actually was directly responsible for bringing you more business or not. With search marketing and online forms, you can track with pretty good accuracy where someone came into your website, and you can directly determine your return on investment from your search marketing efforts.
Quoting the end of the article,
Furthermore, the research firm identifies search marketing as a potential “killer app” for B-to-B customer acquisition efforts. Those of us who have been working on business-oriented search marketing programs for years couldn’t agree more. We have the data and case studies to prove that for many companies search marketing is the most cost-effective method of lead generation and customer acquisition they deploy.
I believe that we are at the beginning of a major and long-lasting growth trend. Early adopters move over: B-to-B search marketing is going mainstream!
I couldn’t agree more.
