Content Marketing Today

Is Microsoft’s Small Business Content Marketing Running Out Of Gas?

New website stalls out completely and provokes unfortunate puns!

Microsoft just launched what might technically be called a website but is more properly a lame product promotion page with a gimmick that is far from unique.  You have the chance to win 5000 gallons of gas.  Wow!  Nobody ever thought of that before.

The new site, bumptheslump.com, targets small business owners with the nominal mission of helping them get through the current economic slowdown. Actually, calling it a website is giving it too much credit.  It’s really a webpage with links to five different Microsoft products.  Although these links are disguised as business tips, their disguises would not have fooled little red riding hood.  Don’t try this with your content marketing campaigns.

Here’s hot tip number two from the Microsoft site:

Windows Vista can save you as much as $70.77 in energy costs per PC per year compared to a typical PC not running Vista. It saves you money and lets you give Earth a little hug.

Even if this was true–and it’s hard to imagine somebody at Microsoft spent enough time to prove that you could save roughly $.20per day per PC–that is not much of a justification to invest in Vista.  In fact, 1000s of small business owners are still clinging desperately to Windows XP for fear of all of the intellectual energy they would have to expand in upgrading their PCs.

Bumptheslump.com is a most unfortunate departure from Microsoft’s excellent track record of providing great small business content. This lame marketing attempt offers virtually no content of value.  Of course, there is that 5000 gallons of gasoline at the end of the rainbow.

As a small business owner, I can use all the help I can get. But none of us will get any help from this marketing misfire unless, of course, we luck  out with the gasoline. In fact, that’s the only way anybody can get mileage out of this effort.