LIAM EAGLE: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

WHIR Magazine, March 2009 - The Marketing Issue

We're really rolling now with the notion of the "marketing issue," which has been a yearly installment in the WHIR magazine calendar almost since we started publishing in print.

One of the great things, editorially, about coming at the same issue on a yearly basis like this is that it provides you with an always-growing foundation of past effort on which to base your new examinations. It's an opportunity to explore a new angle with each pass.

This is the case with our marketing issue. In the past we've looked at devising a marketing plan, and we've looked at the specific tools available to marketers. With our March 2009 issue, we set out to address some basic either-or questions web hosts face in their marketing endeavors.

The foremost among those decisions is whether, and to what extent, a web host ought to outsource its marketing operations. In this issue, Dennis McCafferty, a long time WHIR contributor looks at the nuances of that decision, weighing the advantages and challenges of building an in-house marketing department and working with an ad agency.

In an article I wrote myself, I examine some of the similar conditions around the world of PR, and the advantages of handling some of these tasks in-house versus outsourcing them to a PR firm.

Veering away somewhat from the either-or angle, WHIR regular Wayne Epperson contributes a feature on the emergence of social media as both a venue for traditional advertising, and a resource for a new kind of communication between hosting companies and their customers.

And in our regular examination of a value-added service, Esther Bauer offers a discussion of unified communications, and looks at how offerings based on that service model might work into a hosting company's business.

There are a few choices at the heart of any marketing plan. And we hope this issue of WHIR magazine will help you to be a bit more informed in the making of those choices.

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