This is an advertisement for the doctor‘s services. Regular programming will resume with tomorrow morning’s post.

In this morning’s post, I outlined a sequence of steps that consulting services providers can take to return to business as usual and put this recession behind us. Based upon the conversations I’ve had over the last nine months, I know that many of you could use some help, especially in marketing and thought leadership. In this post I’m going to outline what I can do to help with respect to the points I brought up.

• Focus on a Niche
  It is important to focus on your strengths. If you have options, and can’t decide which ones to pick, I can help you with market research, so that you can make a fact-based decision.
• Establish Thought Leadership
  The best consultants are, by definition, doers. They’re usually not the best writers, marketers, or self promoters. I can work with you to get the thought leadership out of your head and onto e-paper. Then I can help you put together compelling white papers, talk outlines, webinar outlines, and other thought leadership pieces that will help to establish you as a leader in your (supply management) niche.
• Create Brand Awareness
  The best way to to create brand awareness is to be constantly visible. The best way to be constantly visible is to have your logo where your market already goes, which is:
  • the site most likely to be found by a supply management professional (your search traffic comes here),
  • the only blog in the space ranked on all five external traffic engines (SI is #1),
  • the blog that is consistently ranked #1 on Ranking, Quantcast, and Compete, and
  • the blog that is”hit” an average of 4,500 to 5,000 times a day from over 1,500 unique IPs.

  So put your logo here on Sourcing Innovation.

• Outline an Organizational Path for Long Term Success
  In an uncertain economic climate, it is important to create a plan that will allow a client to maximize your services over the long term, and maximize their own success. Because of the large number of entities whom I talk to, I have a unique perspective that cuts across consulting, vendor solutions, and end users. I can help to refine a practice area for maximum impact.

This is an advertisement for the doctor‘s services. Regular programming will resume with tomorrow morning’s post.

In this morning’s post, I outlined a sequence of steps that solution vendors can take to return to business as usual and put this recession behind us. Based upon the large sampling of companies I’ve talked to over the last nine months, I know that many of you could use some help in at least one area. In this post I’m going to outline what I can do to help with respect to the points I discussed.

• New Product Development
  I’m an enterprise software architect, an expert in optimization, modeling and analysis, and a PhD in computer science. I’m familiar with most of the solutions on the market. As a result, I can help you to:
  • understand the strengths and weaknesses of your architecture,
  • understand the strengths and weaknesses of your product,
  • understand where you are unique and,
  • understand what you can do next to offer the most value to your current and prospective customers.

  As I’ve pointed out previously, a downturn is an ideal time to focus on the strengths that will allow you to capture significant share when the economy recovers (and when your competitors are just waking up).

• Marketing
  An easy way to gain product visibility is to advertise on the Sourcing Innovation web site, which happens to be:
  • the site most likely to be found by a supply management professional (your search traffic comes here),
  • the only blog in the space ranked on all five external traffic engines (SI is #1),
  • consistently ranked #1 on Ranking, Quantcast, and Compete,
  • “hit” an average of 4,500 to 5,000 times a day from over 1,500 unique IPs,

  SI offers you an unparalleled opportunity if you want to reach serious supply management professionals. And, SI has a very affordable open pricing model, so there is no guesswork as to cost/benefit.

• Thought Leadership
  If you’ve got great ideas, but have a hard time putting them to paper in a manner that’s both clear and compelling, I offer both public label (through the Illuminations) and private label writing services.
• Training & Curriculum
  In addition to my background in many different types of supply management technology and processes, I also happen to be an experienced professional trainer and former university professor. I can help you identify the right training program for your employees (and your customers), assist in developing custom training programs, or deliver train-the-trainer workshops, depending on your needs.
• Process Improvement
  I can review your development processes, integration processes, and management processes and identify areas where you can go lean and mean. In addition, I can help to bridge the gap between business process execution and technology development, and help you understand how to improve your products and services to better support your clients.

I know that for some of you, a significant problem is a C-suite or an over-extended VC that’s running scared. Sometimes all that is required to break this cycle of fear is a category expert to back you up when you present a case for being aggressive now, as opposed to later. Even if you need help with something not on the above list, feel free to reach out and contact me. If I’m not the most appropriate individual to help you, I’ll happily connect you with someone who is. After all, once you get back on track, you might just realize that the right thing to do is innovate … which is what this site is all about.

Sourcing Innovation gets thousands and thousands of hits per day. A significant amount of that traffic consists of thousands of new visitors directed to SI from search engines like Google — spend management professionals who are searching for real information, not just reading blogs for entertainment.

Why are these visitors coming to SI?

Is it because the doctor knows some magic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques? No.¹.

Is it because Sourcing Innovation manipulates traffic with aggressive ad-word campaigns? No.⁵

Is it because Sourcing Innovation has a deep content archive consisting of almost 1,200 content rich entries and 866,000 words? Yes!

Simply put, when a supply management professional enters into a search engine one of the common spend management search phrases, Sourcing Innovation is where he’s directed.

SI not only has more search phrases in the top 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 than any other leading supply management blog, but it also has more search phrases in the top 10, 20, 30, 50, and 100 than any leading supply management publication. That’s right; new buyers are more likely to find Sourcing Innovation than any other blog, and they’re also more likely to find Sourcing Innovation than Purchasing, Supply & Demand Chain Executive, or the Supply Chain Management Review.

But I don’t expect you to take my word for it. Here’s the method, and the results.

I started with a list of about 30 search phrases that cover the topics that are normally written about on Sourcing Innovation, Spend Matters, Supply Excellence, and e-Sourcing Forum (the top four blogs focused on supply management, as per third-party traffic estimation sites). I then used eight common methods of search phrase generation (including competition research, search phrase discovery, Google suggest, Yahoo! search assist, and Ask type-ahead search suggestions) until I had a corpus of 99 search phrases that I believe (1) accurately cover the range of topics that supply management blogs and publications discussed, and (2) reasonably cover the search terms that would be entered by a supply management professional. (see the Complete Corpus).

Then, on Friday March 13, I retrieved the search engine rankings for Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters for each of these search phrases in Google (59%), MSN (6%), Yahoo (15%), and Ask (3%), which together represent 83% of the search engine market share. I verified that the other search engines did not differ materially from Google, so thenceforth I focused solely on Google. I then retrieved the Google search ranking for each of the terms in the Corpus for each of the top six supply management blogs and the top five supply management publications. In terms of the number of search phrases in the top 10, top 20, top 30, top 50², and top 100², Sourcing Innovation was first in every category. The top blog only had 4 search phrases in the top 10 and 6 in the top 20 compared to Sourcing Innovation‘s 9 and 13. The top publication fared better, but not much better, with 6 phrases in the top 10 and 8 in the top 20.

So what does this mean? Let me summarize.

SI is the only supply management blog that is currently ranked by all of the “big five” traffic ranking sites (Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, Ranking, and Traffic Estimate). SI is the top ranking supply management blog on Quantcast and Ranking, and the next-to-top ranking supply management blog on Alexa, Compete, and Traffic Estimate³. Furthermore, Sourcing Innovation is nearly twice as likely to be found though a search engine than Supply Excellence and more than three times as likely to be found through a search engine than any other supply management blog.⁴ SI is also, on average, three times as likely to be found through a search engine than any of the traditional print publications.⁴

And that, my potential sponsors, is why your traffic is coming to Sourcing Innovation. So… why aren’t you here?

¹ There are no magic search engine techniques. Any SEO company that gets you a top 20 ranking overnight uses “black hat” search engine optimization, which is a big no-no. If their shenanigans don’t get your site banned from the search engines altogether, which is a very real possibility, you can at least be assured that your ranking will disappear overnight the next time the search engines adjust their search algorithms to combat the latest black hat techniques.
² Although very few surfers go beyond the third page, top 50 and top 100 rankings are relevant because a continued effort to add quality content around these search phrases will result in a progressively higher ranking over time.
³ Spend Matters wins on these ranking engines, though not by much on Compete. Note that Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters tend to trade off the number one spot on Compete and, for better or worse, Traffic Estimate tends to parallel Alexa.
⁴ Assuming a random search term, which you have to assume because you never know a priori what a supply management professional is going to search for.
⁵ Sourcing Innovation does no advertising of any kind. It doesn’t need to. And now you know why!