salesforce.com, UBarter.com, EqualFooting.com, Guru.com

*** MarketingToSmallBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips on Advertising and
Marketing to Small Businesses and SOHOs Online

June 7, 2000 - Vol. I, Issue 4
NEWS: IBM, salesforce.com, Network Commerce,
Ubarter.com, Guru.com
CASE STUDY: USA.NET
INTERVIEW: Angie Kim, EqualFooting.com
JOBS: Onvia.com, Staples

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NEWS:
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* IBM and salesforce.com Attempt to Dominate Small Biz
Marketplace with New Alliance
As the IBM e-Cities Tour heats up (see
MarketingToSmallBiz.com 5/30/00) so are their partnership
activities in an attempt to dominate the small business
marketplace. IBM’s latest new partnership, with
salesforce.com, “helps small businesses quickly and
affordably transform themselves into e-businesses.”
Which is hardly a novel idea these days, but definitely
an alliance worth watching as the many helping-small-biz
players begin to duke it out in earnest.
salesforce.com’s "monthly per user" pricing strategy is
greatly appealing to this marketplace. Plus, IBM has
tossed in incentives valued at $3,500 (!) for new
customers signing up before 7/31/00. We’ll be sure to
report on campaign results later in the Summer.
http://www.salesforce.com/ibm_text.html

* Network Commerce Snaps Up Ubarter.com
The consolidation trend among Web players in the SOHO
marketplace continues. Now, Network Commerce has
acquired online barter company Ubarter.com. For those of
you keeping track on your scorecards, Network Commerce
claims an established base of 700,000 businesses and
merchants, while uBarter brags its mainly B-to-B members
have conducted over $10 million in trading since last
quarter. Other properties in the Network Commerce
Business Network include b2bNow.com and FreeMerchant.com.
You can almost certainly expect to see more joining them
soon.
http://www.networkcommerce.com
http://www.ubarter.com
http://www.b2bnow.com
http://www.freemerchant.com

* Yea/Nay: SmartAge.com Has Got Some 'Splaining to Do
While visiting eGroups.com, we noticed a 120x90 banner ad
for SmartAge.com. The ad touted 2-For-1 Internet ads for
media buyers trying to reach small businesses online. We
almost chose this as our “Media Buy of the Week” until we
had too many unanswered questions. The bouncepage should
do a much better job of explaining who they are and why
we should buy before requiring us to register with them
(yuck.) Plus we had to jump through too many hoops
(spelled: more pages) to find SmartAge's Media Buyer
section which gave us better details. In their favor,
SmartAge is aggressively pursuing relationships with
major players, such as TalkCity, DoubleClick, Excite and
WebCrawler. But all we can say is, until they make it
easier for the media buyer to get to the bottom line
after clicking on an ad banner, they get a Big Nay.
http://www.egroups.com
http://www.smartage.com/

* Media Buy of the Week: Guru.com
Have you noticed how quickly Guru.com’s been growing
traffic? They’re up to 7 million page views per month,
with almost 150,000 registered users. This is a great
media buy for eretailers selling biz supplies -- 90% of
Guru’s users have purchased directly online with a $200
average purchase. Current advertisers include
OfficeDepot.com, OneCore, BigVine, eAlity, eFax and
FastCompany. Rate card for targeted banners is $45/m.
For more info contact tfochetta@doubleclick.com

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CASE STUDY: USA.NET
---------
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* Email Service Provider USA.NET Acquires Small Biz
Clients Through Vertical Portal Alliances

THE COMPANY: eMessaging service provider USA.NET offers
outsourced email functions, including management,
filtering and forwarding capabilities. Clients can
easily brand their own email service such as
userName@CompanyDomainName.com while delegating technical
support issues to USA.NET. This enables small businesses
to position themselves as much bigger enterprises.

ONLINE MARKETING: USA.NET's efforts rely heavily on
building alliances with dozens of vertical portal’s such
as Address.com, Colorado.com, holaHoy.com, Recruiters
World and Zworks.com. They incorporate USA.NET's Web
Messaging into their Web sites’ offerings. As a result,
USA.NET doesn't need much help in the word-of-Web or
word-of-mouse department. AltaVista reports over 10,000
outside links pointing to USA.NET.

PUBLIC RELATIONS:
USA.NET’s internal public relations department does a
great, cost-effective, job of generating interest from
new potential affiliates. Just last month, PR Director
Danette Lopez distributed an average of one content-rich
news release per week, announcing such prime business
partner wins as American Express Travel Related Services
and domain name registry Register.com. As a result,
industry analysts are quoted as acknowledging the
company's position as an industry leader, a marketing
achievement the best ad dollar can't buy.

http://www.usa.net
http://www.netaddress.com/

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Angie Kim, EqualFooting.com
---------
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* Angie Kim Of Equalfooting.Com On Top Tactics for
Affinity Marketing and Market Research

EqualFooting.com is the online marketplace for small
businesses in need of industrial supplies. Since its
founding in June 1999 with three employees, it’s grown to
more than 130 staff and is considered to be one of the
largest online industrial supplies catalogs with over
12,000 members.

Angie Kim, EqualFooting.com’s President and Chief
Customer Officer, is an acknowledged leader in the
marketing to small biz services industry and recently
appeared before the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee.
When MarketingToSmallBiz.com asked her about her personal
insights into what works for marketing to small business,
she gave us an earful -- based on her own first-hand "in-
the-trenches" experience.

According to Kim, there are really only two things that
work: affinity marketing and market research.

Kim is a big advocate of building relationships with
established organizations in order to build credibility
by association, especially if otherwise “people have
never heard of you.” Her own marketing efforts have
tapped organizations with millions of small business
customers. These partners market Kim’s site to their
membership by sending direct mail letters. These
letters, printed on each organization’s own letterhead
tell the story from their unique perspective of "why
EqualFooting is compelling to small businesses."

"Obviously, when your story is told through these trusted
partners, [it becomes easier] to get the attention and
the trust of the small businesses you're trying to
reach," says Kim.

Market research, Kim’s second line of attack, is often an
area start-ups skimp on to save money. Kim admits that
she once had the misconception that market research was
"really expensive," as in tens of thousands of dollars,
then a colleague suggested that she gather a group of
potential customers for research purposes. She treated
them "like employees," complete with perks.

"We promised them a 5% rebate on everything they were
going to buy on the next year at our site. That's a nifty
little thing that anybody can do, to very effectively
market and conduct customer research without having to
pay huge costs for it. We did it through emails and I
wrote them one by one directly.

We told them about the opportunity for people to get
involved with a brand new dot-com and to shape things. We
talked about putting links and some of their contact
information at our site. As we got press, we mentioned
them, referring reporters their way. We tried to be
creative with each one on a personalized basis. There are
only 80 people so it wasn't that big a deal."

Kim’s guerrilla market research tactics have allowed her
to continually obtain actionable market research directly
from her customers. This has paid off handsomely in a
more usable site, creating compelling service offerings
and partnerships with the players who can really make a
difference.

http://www.equalfooting.com

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JOBS:
----------
* Onvia.com Seeks Marketing Manager
Responsible for demand creation, positioning, and
outbound marketing for one of Onvia.com’s Business Units.
Key tasks include developing product positioning, setting
marketing objectives, creating and executing online
advertising, direct mail and email campaigns, identifying
and participating in key trade shows and events,
developing and managing collateral materials.
jobsUSA@onvia.com

* Staples Seeks Manager of Regional Contract Marketing
Inform field sales organization of marketing developments
and tools to enhance their ability to generate resumes.
Provide training for new sales initiatives. Coordinate
all local market activities in support of the Key
Supplier Program, including events, productivity fairs,
and product training. Works with field Sales Managers to
identify and develop local marketing programs. Reports To
Manager of Field Marketing. Renee.Pianka@staples.com

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MarketingToSmallBiz.com INFO
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