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Are you Buying what you are Selling?

I spent some time at eTail this week. For those that care, I think eTail is dying on the vine. Specifically, the content. Affiliate Summit  has surpassed eTail in content and Shop.org stands out as a clear winner for the online retailer. I don’t know how much longer eTail will survive – eTail West coming up will be pivotal for the future of the conference.

A favorite quote recently has been “in vino veritas” or “There is truth in wine”. As with DUI arrests, this latin phrase holds true at industry conferences. After getting through some of the regular pleasantries, I was able to get down to details with some of the vendors. A question I asked a number of them is if they would buy what they are selling. A surprisingly large number of the responses were “probably not”.

On the “buy side” of online marketing for my Clients, I am willingly subjected to a litany of sales pitches. As are all VPs/Directors/Managers of Online Marketing – it comes with the territory. Whether it is paid search management, clickstream analytics, new traffic sources, ecommerce platforms, email service providers – vendors abound in this arena.

My favorite question for these vendor-types is: “If you ran your own website, would you buy your technology/service?”. The key is to watch their face very closely immediately when you ask the question and 9 times out of 10 you will be able to see the truth. Then get ready for faux-confidence bluster.

If that fails take them to the bar, have them buy some drinks, then pose the question again.

Categorised in: Online Marketing

This post was written by DEP Ecommerce Consultants