A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

1. If there’s a problem, be in constant communication about it. Waiting for a problem to get better rarely works and almost always makes it worse. People may dislike dealing with turds, but it’s better than a whole pile of shit.

2. Developer says: “2 weeks max.” Translation: “4 weeks minimum, 6 weeks realistically.”

3. Man it feels better to be positive and people dig it. 5 creative, cheerful interactions almost always out-produce 50 slog-fests.

3.5 Spending time on specs and requirements upfront saves headaches later on.

When you think B2B new customer acquisition strategies, what comes to mind? Referrals?Tradeshows? Cold-calling? Eek?

Here are some great B2B ideas that will get the lead flow moving.

1. MarketFish: Purchased email lists have a bad rep for a good reason — questionable sources, over-emailed list members, and spam complaint shit storms in the making. MarketFish, however, has created a transparent platform where you can go directly to the list source, most of them reputable names, and zone in on the demographic that fits. Once you find the right list, their platform will do the sending, meaning you capture all the leads without the spam complaints.

2. Google’s Display Network: Been burned by low lead quality through Google Adwords? Well, did you try the Display (formerly content) network? Unlike search, Display Network allows you to target demographics and exclude sites that send poor traffic — some test-and-learning can quickly narrow down to a few quality lead sources.

3.  Content partnerships: Biz dev deals are time consuming. However, a content partnership with a non-competing but complimentary service provider can be pay huge dividends. You have a blog; they have a blog. Why don’t you write for each other’s blog? Better yet, you promote your webinar to their email base and vice-versa. For customers, you’ve upped the value ante, and now you have a whole new crop of prospects.

4. Create a video of you loving on someone’s brand. Then send the video to as many email addresses, Twitter accounts, and LinkedIn groups as are relevant. Could they resist joining a phone call?

5. Comment on this blog post. Admittedly, this isn’t yet a proven technique, but why not give it a shot and test it out?

REI, the biggest retailer of outdoor gear, does a lot of things well but probably none is as brilliant as its return policy. You can return anything, at any time, regardless of how much you’ve used it for a refund or replacement — no questions, no argument, nothing but a friendly smile.

A few days ago to launch this site I started a new hosting account at HostGator and was disconcerted to find that the site was slowwww. After bugging the coder to tell me what he’d done wrong, he convinced me to call Host Gator. It turned out they were having issues with the server. That’s fine. What wasn’t fine was that the customer service folks refused to give an ETA of when the issue would be resolved or agree to send an email notifying me when it was solved — I’d have to keep checking their support forum. They also wouldn’t issue any credit on the phone; instead telling me I’d have to send an email to some customer service box.

Then the site completely went down. I called back. Same story. Wouldn’t tell me when I’d have the site back, no email notification when back up, no compensation over the phone.

I wouldn’t have even thought to write this had the phone rep agreed to ping me when the server was fixed and given me some token discount so I felt like I won a small battle. Host Gator team, was it worth alienating a new customer not to change your policy of notifications and phone downtime compensation?

Btw, for a great uptime monitoring tool, check out: Pingdom.com.