Star Creek Energy's New Website

Today, JDM launched Star Creek Energy's new website. The website features table-less CSS, SEO best practices and positions Star Creek and it's senior team members as leaders in their field.

Take a look and let us know what you think: http://www.StarCreekEnergy.com.

A LITTLE ABOUT STAR CREEK ENERGY COMPANY

Star Creek Energy, based in Houston, Texas, creates oil and gas exploration projects using geology and geophysics. They invest, along with their partners, in prospects and exploration plays with compelling reward-to-risk ratios. Most of their current projects are in North America, but their geoscience staff has international experience.

The State of CRM

Sales Force Automation (SFA) and its big brother Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms have taken off in recent years, but what's the current state of the CRM market and what barriers to adoption still exist?

According to Silverpop (an engagement marketing solution which blends CRM, SFA and marketing automation together), Salesforce.com is the most popular solution by a landslide, accounting for almost 40% adoption by the several hundred surveyed (see graph).

What's more astounding is the lack of adoption. About 20% reported using no CRM solution at all. What's the disconnect?

The answer is, for a majority of B2B companies, CRM platforms are a valued asset to senior management and a necessary evil to sales and support staff tasked with learning and using the solution daily.

The solution?

First off, CRM and SFA solutions are all based on similar GUIs and use similar terminology, so when the sales team learns one platform, learning a different one is cake.

Secondly, solutions like these are supposed to be tools, not "TPS Report" hoops for them to jump through. Demonstrate the solution's value to team members, enforce its use above all other methods of communication and watch as adoption skyrockets.

As a former client put it to his staff, "If it ain't in Salesforce, it doesn't exist!"

What's a "Sprite map?"

Here's a great website development tip to improve SEO visibility and website load-time.

I'm sure you've heard of a site map and its value for SEO, but a sprite map is completely different. When you put an image in a web page, the browser downloads the image as a separate HTTP request. That means, every image is another HTTP request. For example, if the site's main navigation has six links, each with a rollover image, that's 12 HTTP requests (not to mention the initial request for the page).

Each HTTP request for an image file is about 50 bytes in size. If you compile all your most used images into one big image file (a "sprite map"), you condense those 12 HTTP requests down into 1 HTTP request. More importantly, you save all of the file size overhead for 12 different files and HTTP requests for each. Using a little CSS you can simply display the appropriate part of the sprite map at the appropriate time and place.

There is an added bonus to sprite maps—less markup (or code). More and more search engines look favorably on a high ratio of text to code. Using sprite maps instead of hundreds of lines of JavaScript rollovers and tons of wasted space calling each image separately means a fast-loading, well indexed web page with all the functionality of before.

There's tons more marketing tips where that came from.

JDM's Dictionary of Marketing Jargon

Marketers love our jargon. To help make sense of the endless abbreviations and made-up words, we at JDM took it upon our self to write our own Marketing Jargon Dictionary.

You can view the dictionary or click on any of the double-underlined links littered throughout our new website.

Keep in mind, The Marketing Jargon Dictionary is a work in progress. Suggest your favorite marketing jargon for inclusion in the dictionary in the comments section of this post.

JDM 2.0 Launch

Codenamed 'JDM 2.0', JDM's new website was launched today amidst much anticipation (PRweb).

JDM has refreshed our website every year since our incorporation. This time we wanted our outward appearance to match the talent and expertise contained within.

Take it for a spin at: http://www.MarketingHasEvolved.com/

The new JDM site features:

• Table-less, W3C compliant markup
• Advanced SEO within a refined JavaScript GUI
• Contextual Help (Marketing Jargon Dictionary)
• CRM Integration (sugarJDM)
• Client Portal (myJDM)
• Mobile-Friendly Website (JDMobile)
• Online Social Network Integration
• Direct Marketing Automation
• Real-time Campaign Management/Analysis

Andy Boyd, the lead developer on JDM 2.0, puts it best: "We wanted to demonstrate how JDM's technical expertise serves the overall strategy—not the other way around."

So, what's next for JDM? Two words: "Project Blitz." Stay tuned to Big Marketing Ideas for the latest.

Online Marketing Can Kill Your Brand?

On InfoSys' blog, writers Simon Harper and Zoe Schagrin argue:

There is no doubt that new technologies are causing a permanent shift in the way companies and consumers communicate. But what makes these new channels so attractive – low cost, ease of implementation, global reach – also makes them dangerous for companies who don’t understand their nuances or just how drastically digital marketing has evolved. Some of the biggest names in business have entered the new digital marketing arena with good intentions only to wonder "how could it have all gone so wrong?"

Keep in mind that online marketing blunders aren't the domain of small firms making rookie mistakes as some might think. Some of the biggest names in business have made equally large mistakes recently as outlined in these high profile examples.

According to InfoSys, online marketing mistakes are often due to one of the following:

• A lack of transparency or authenticity
• A hastily assembled campaign due to the easy ability to create and distribute digital content
• The digital campaign is a "one off" and not integrated with the larger marketing message
• Failure to monitor the message after launch and/or the lack of a mitigation strategy
• An inability to balance controlling and protecting the brand while providing consumers a voice

Companies must acknowledge that this is no time for amateur-hour, as savvy consumers leave little room for silly mistakes.