Road Scholars Marketing and Social Media Blog

LinkedIn Shown To Be Better For Lead Generation

2012-02-03T13:59:00.000+11:00

The last few years has increasingly demonstrated the value of social media marketing sites for generating qualified leads for businesses. However the comparative benefit of the various mega platforms was until recently not clearly expressed.

However a recently released study conducted with over 5,000 businesses by leading Social Media firm HubSpot, has demonstrated that traffic from LinkedIn was found to generate the best visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher (277%) than either Facebook (.77%) or Twitter (0.69%).

As well when you looked at all the traffic that came through on all platforms, LinkedIn's conversion rate was again better than social media in total, with LinkedIn having a 2.74% vs. 0.98%.

Perhaps we should have been able to predict that LinkedIn would have been the most efficient, lead generating engine in the social media realm.

After all LinkedIn is about business and professional networking. Unlike the others, it has never pretended to be anything else. The reason you join LinkedIn is to raise awareness amongst your target market about you, your firm, your brands, Etc. And from the perspective of the person seeking you out whether it be another business or consumer, their focus is also going to be shall we say 'transactional'.

Suffice to say, what ever other social media platforms you're on, LinkedIn is now a must.
And what about for you. What has been the most effective social media or other lead generator?

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

New Social Media Marketing Survey Continues to Show Positive Results for Businesses

2012-01-27T11:39:00.000+11:00

New Social Media Marketing Survey has reveals multiple areas of benefit for businesses.

A recently released Social Media Marketing survey undertaken between September and November 2011, surveyed over 700 social media marketers to ask them amongst other things, what they saw as the main benefits to their business for using social media marketing as a promotional tool.

By far the biggest perceived benefit according to 88% of the 700 plus respondents was the ability to gain increased brand awareness within your target market.

As marketers we have always been acutely aware of the importance to raise awareness of our business and brands as a first step in the process that ultimately leads to product sales.

Almost as impressive is the second most reported benefit with 85% of the marketers surveyed reporting an increased ability develop a dialogue and engage the customer or prospect.

If we use the AIDA model as a guide with Awareness-Interest-Desire- and Action, we can see that the first two parts are well and truly positively impacted by social media according to the results of the survey.

It's reasonable to assume that with increased awareness and interest comes an increased level of desire and so it shouldn't surprise anyone that almost 3 in 5 (58%) of the respondents also felt that social media activities also led to increased sales and partnerships such as strategic alliances, with around 2 in 5 (41%) also feeling that social; media allowed them to save costs.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority (75%) plan to increase their social media marketing expenditure during 2012.

I suspect that in the next 3 to 5 years the only thing that will change is the degree to which businesses increase their expenditure each year, as social media continues to emerge and gain its place as a legitimate option to more traditional promotional tools.

What about your business. Are you planning to to increase social media spend in 2012 and if so where?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Google Announces Google + Now Integrated into Google Search

2012-01-21T12:44:00.000+11:00

Google has recently announced that Google Search now formally Integrates Google+ content into its standard results.

With this additional information, Google will have the potential to evolve into a search engine that not only lists information but has greater insight into understanding the relationship between the people with a new feature being the personal results.

The net effect of this will be that have more specific and tailored data based on the publically available data from the Google+ social networking platform.

As I said recently in an earlier blog post, numbers and growth rate aside, Google+ continues to come in a big way. Facebook beware.

Please feel free to share what do you think will be the next service Google+ may be or what you'd like to see them develop?

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Google+ Continues To Grow and Grow

2012-01-12T12:42:00.000+11:00

Google+ just had just experienced its largest traffic month up 55% from November, 2011.

According to key research firm Experian Hitwise, Google+’s total monthly US visits have grown by 55% from November, 2011. Specifically some 49 million visits were registered during December, 2011 which was the best result thus far. In more recent time it has been suggested that the current numbers are even higher and in fact have broken through the 60 million mark.

This period of sustained growth underpins Google+ continued strong appeal and promotion, and despite Facebook still being the undisputed gold medallist of social networking sites, given Google’s' extraordinary daily traffic, the potential for Google + to one day challenge Facebook is not so difficult to imagine in the not too distant future, based on some key product features and differences.

What is also clear is that Google which has undeniably made mistakes in the past in this social media space, has learnt from these previous false starts and is wisely including sensible and practical functional service differentiations that will make Google + a must have for any business in 20102 and beyond as it maps out its marketing plans.

In the end however it is unlikely that it will either be a case of one or the other. I suspect most businesses are very comfortable with the notion of being on several of the key social media sites and platforms concurrently and accepting that they all play a part.

Twitter Set to Follow Facebook and LinkedIn with Company Pages

2012-01-06T09:39:00.000+11:00

Hello everyone and welcome back for 2012. A year that will no doubt prove to be exciting, unpredictable and filled with more extraordinary advances in how we market ourselves to the world.

To begin with,as some readers I'm sure will already be aware, Twitter have now come up with there own version of Corporate Pages, along the lines of Facebook fan pages and LinkedIn company pages.

Up till now of course Twitter have adopted a similar strategy to what Google did with Google +
in that they only allowed a small number of privileged larger and well known firms such as Coca Cola,to start a page, again trying to create the same type of buzz around the place that Google where able to do with Google.

No doubt in time any and all businesses will be allowed to join and start their own page, so that they will be able to leverage it against the other marketing platforms they also have.

Naturally we will do a full review once we at Road Scholars have been included and can report as too the relevant utility and functionality of these pages.

So until next time, good kuck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

Big Winner and Loser for 2011

2011-12-29T09:26:00.000+11:00

As 2011 quickly comes to an end, it is perhaps a good time to look back and ponder who the big winner and losers are for the year.

Although there were many incredible successes for 2011 I think it would be difficult to go past Google as a worthy winner.

Google continued to refine and develop all its existing products, and significantly brought out Google + where it now legitimately has a product that can in the not too distant future, rival Facebook as the worlds leading social networking site.

Through this the value of perseverance was also highlighted as Google learned from earlier mistakes and brought out a quality alternative with some true aspects of differentiation and genuine business insight.

That is not to say that the product is complete. Far from it there is still a long way for Google to to in refining its platform such as allowing businesses to generate vanity URL's for their business pages as seen on Facebook.No doubt this and other refinements will come in the not too distant future. Suffice to say Google + is an enormous achievement and worthy of your attention.

The biggest loser on the other hand (on a more abstract level), is all of us collectively with the death of Steve Jobs and the loss of one of the worlds great developers and pioneers.

It is now well known that Apple were all but broke after Jobs left the firm, and were it
not for his timely return to the firm, Apple would today would almost certainly be gone.

So the baton for its future success now passes to others that must sure that the iPhone 5, The iPad 3 and all the other cascade of products continues at the cutting edge of computer and IT standards.

What about you. Who would you nominate for the best and the worst of 2911?

And as 2011 quickly draws to a close, let me say a Happy New Year to you all and until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Twitter Announces New Improved Profile Pages

2011-12-17T15:11:00.000+11:00

Last Week Twitter announced on it's blog a new version of Twitter
where they have attempted to simplify the design in an attempt to make it even easier to follow the people and organisations you are interested in, connect with those people and generally expolre the Twitterverse.

This new layout willbe seen both from computer and mobile access to ensure a consistensy for each member regardless of the platform. Accordingly TweetDeck has also been modified to reflect this latest set of changes.

Twitter has made it clear that it will gradually roll out these changes in the next few weeks, however you can seen the changes now on mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Android.

To obtain early access for your computer, you can log into Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android and download the updates.

Let us know how useful you think these changes are.
And finally let me wish everyone out their in the wonderful world of the blogosphere a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Recent Survey Confirms SEO is the Most Sought After Promotion for Small Businesses

2011-12-09T17:15:00.000+11:00

The recent “merchant confidence survey” from US based lead-gen company MerchantCircle/Reply.com, conducted a survey in November 2011 with 2,500 US small businesses, and has found that search engine optimization (SEO) is the most preferred marketing channel that SME's would choose if they could choose only one.

The businesses being surveyed were each asked the question: “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?”

Understandably the choices included several possibilities reflecting the wide variety of choice available to businesses today including: Social media platforms, PPC, SEO, mobile and traditional advertising media. With a staggering 70%, SEO was clearly well ahead of the chasing pack of other key options.

As well it is highly significant to think that coming into 2012, “traditional media” defined as radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and direct mail, was ranked ahead of both Social Media and Paid Media, with newspapers being the highest ranked of the traditional options.

What's even more interesting is that the most common tool used amongst 70% all the respondents was Facebook. Apparently the conclusion here,is that even though SME's are using social media but to less than spectacular effect.

What we need to ask then is, is SEO more powerful or is it that we need to better educate SME's on how to effectively monetarise social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube?

What are your thoughts? Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Census Data Provides A Rare Opportunity For Perfect Demographic Data

2011-12-05T18:26:00.002+11:00

Rarely are we in a better position than right now as marketers to be able to be more certain about the specific potential size of any target market locally based on either demographics or psychographics. This is of course because of the recently conducted statistical, national census.

We all know how difficult it is to be sure about the data that we base our decision making on, but for now at least we all have access to an almost perfect representation of the national profile.

Incredibly when I ask students and clients about how they go about breaking down their market and validating segment sizes and attitudinal and behavioural data, rarely if ever do people respond with the answer that I'm looking for. Namely "I call the ABS and purchase the latest report".

For the record not only is this data incredibly current and accurate, but concurrently incredibly inexpensive and oozing with information that properly used will deliver true insight about your target audience, who they are, where they live, how much they earn, etc., etc.

It goes without saying that the more time passes the older the data will get and yes, potentially inaccurate. But for now it is the real Mc Coy.
So don't wait, don't hesitate. Either call the ABS or visit them on their website (www.abs.gov.au) and search out all the incredible data that may very well lead you to better defining your audience and what USP you may be in a position to offer them that others can't.

Let's hear how you go. And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Why Are Key Success Factors So Important to Know When Target Marketing

2011-11-29T15:31:00.000+11:00

A while back you may remember that I did a post on the key criteria for determing how you know what potential market segments are the most viable for you, as an important preface to choosing which segments your business will and wont target.

As a key step to effective target marketing, you need to be able to isolate what the key success factors (KSFs)are for each potential segment and match these up with your businesses ability to deliver this aspect of product or service.

So in other words the KSFs are essentially must haves that if you don't have or can't arrange to have, means you will lose if you compete in that segment against rivals that can provide those essential aspects of the product or service being sought after by the target market audience.

For example if you are looking to start a restaurant and are seriously considering a pizza style parlour, you will certainly need to provide the following KSFs. To begin with you will need to provide a large assortment of pizzas. They will need to come in a least 3 or 4 sizes. You will need to be able to buy soft drinks with those pizzas and probably even desserts. Etc.

Failure to consistently provide these will mean you are not providing the minimum acceptable level of service expected by your would be clients.

Now of course doing all this, still will not mean you have a meaningful point of difference to differentiate you from other rivals but at least you are in 'the ball game'.

Differentiation is another important topic which we will look at in future blog posts.

What about you and your business what are the the KSFs for you.

I hope this is of help to you and until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Comparing Time Spent On Each of the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter or Google +

2011-11-14T23:10:00.000+11:00

As the debate about which of the big three social media marketing platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Google +)is more effective, some important information about the average time spent on each site has recently been released by Nielson.

Allowing for rounding up, Facebook leads the pack with 21 minutes, Twitter 13 minutes and Google + at 6 minutes.

Simply put the longer members stay on the site the more engaged they become and the more likely it is that your business objectives will eventually be met.

Obviously these numbers are averages across all members on each site and do not take into effect the specific average of superior pages and content quality of those accounts. However there is a clearly established trend demonstrated towards longer times spent each day on Facebook.

Although there is no need to select one over the others simply put, Facebook with its 800 million and longer session times remains the first choice for may social media marketing campaigns.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.

Segmentation is (Still) Not a Dirty Word

2011-11-03T16:27:00.000+11:00

It's amazing how often segmentation gets brought up during marketing workshops or generally by clients these days. Years ago the question would be along the lines of: 'should we be segmenting our market?' I think people with greater business insight these days know that with ever increasing levels of competition and in an attempt to remain relevant to your preferred audience,the answer is most certainly yes, so the more likely question being raised these days is normally along the lines of: 'how do we know whether to pursue a specific niche or not?'

Much, much better question to be asking. And the key to answering it is to know what the key criteria for evaluating market segments are.

The criteria most commonly used to evaluate whether or not to target selected market segments are:

(1.) Ability to be quantified - A market segment must be quantifiable, e.g., what is the potential number of customers? How much are they willing and able to spend?

(2.) Ability to identify groups with similar needs – For market segmentation and subsequent target marketing to be done successfully, it is vital that you are able to identify and group together people with similar needs that the business can fulfill.

NOTE: These needs can be based on product usage, product attributes, location of business, benefits sought by customer or on any other appropriate dimension.

(3.) Actual size - A market segment must be big enough i.e. are there enough customers? Do they have enough money to spend?

(4.) Ability to communicate with the segment - With few exceptions, most market segments can be reached on both a promotional and distribution level. The critical factor is whether the net cost to achieve and sustain this communication is within acceptable levels, so that your business can effectively communicate with this segment.

When these criteria are used individually and collectively, the business will be able to gain additional insight into the respective viability of different segments.

I'd be interested to know if you have done any evaluation of segments that exist in your market place.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Emails Vs. Social Media. Does it have to be a choice?

2011-10-27T18:08:00.001+11:00

Interesting that some of the recent email vs. social media effectiveness data is filtering down through the community, and surprisingly being quoted back by people who traditionally have had very little interest in anything related to marketing before.

Case in point this week when one of my clients sent me a recent review that took a position that emails were more effective than social media marketing activities.

As someone that's been involved in marketing for 30 years I never tire of seeing people have these 'grade 5' type arguments about who's better, as if there has to be a clear winner and loser.

Well news flash. They are both useful, strong and proven in marketing, and as part of a balanced and blended promotional strategy will both provide value.

Although they will do so in slightly different ways.

Let's start with email. Certainly it's been around longer and more people have email accounts than social media accounts, proving that the potential audience will be bigger. Very true. However the real drawback with email is that the laws that have evolved over the last decade or so against spam, are quite severe and it goes without saying that email is really only for existing clients that have given you prior approval to communicate with them (by way of a double opt-in process).
Naturally once that has been lawfully done, email becomes a viable and sustainable channel through which your business can communicate over time to customers.

Social Media on the other hand has been around less time and has less people involved in it. However unlike email you can communicate with prospects, qualified leads and former clients as well as current clients alike.

As such it can help you gain a raised market awareness within all of these groups in an open, social and engaging way.

Clearly, this is not a black and white, two dimensional argument. There are serious shades of grey here and all businesses should include elements of both of these promotional tools to their marketing plan to help ensure success.

Let us know. Which one do you prefer and why?

And until next time, good marketing and good luck.

Daniele.

Do You Really Digg It

2011-10-21T22:32:00.000+11:00

Lately I've been asked several times about what's the best way a person can leverage an article that they have written.
I think I should preface this response by saying that what is often written to this question assumes that you have a well written, informative, current, humorous or challenging article that will for what ever reason engage the reader on some level.
If any of these things apply to you and your article, read on.

To begin with you can always submit your article to the major journals and magazines that specialise in your area and whose target audience perfectly matches your own.
Writing for magazines carries a lot of prestige and certainly helps you to position yourself quickly as an expert in your field.

Away from printed media, there are also article submission directories that receive electronic versions of articles and publishes them on the web. Providers such as ezine.com well know and widely read.

And yest another and for some inexplicable reason one of the best avenues for articles around on the web, remains largely under utilised. Namely news sites such as: Digg.

The concept being that articles on any topic are submitted and referenced on the site and readers get to vote on the quality, relevance and ultimate usefulness of the piece by either voting to 'Digg' it or alternatively bury it.

Clearly still finding their place within the overall, social media marketing landscape, social news sites I suspect have the capacity to grow in popularity and become a more prominent platform moving into 2012 and beyond. If you haven't already done so, give it a go and see how you go.

And until next time, Good marketing and good luck.

Daniele.

Remembering Steve Jobs. Innovator, Visonary and Technological Icon.

2011-10-12T20:28:00.000+11:00

With the sad news of Steve Jobs recent passing I think it's fitting to pay homage to a man that has forever changed the way we communicate and interact with each other.

With a seemingly endless list of technological initiatives and breakthroughs including the global icons of: Macs, iPods,iPhones, and more recently i Pads, Jobs lead the charge for better, faster and more functional technology.

But as much as this man being an unparalleled IT genius he was quite clearly also a marketing wizard with a singular talent to interpret people's unmet needs and translate them into these amazingly advanced and yet always practical pieces of hardware art.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple's board said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

Like so many wonderfully talented figures before him, Jobs died at the early at of only 56. We can only imagine what other advances and refinements he most certainly would have come up with given better health and more time.

In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

I'm sure that these words fall into the realm of timeless wisdom and I know they certainly resonate with me, and perhaps you as well.

Thank you for all that you've done Steve and may your after life be as brilliant as your life on Earth. R.I.P.

And until next time, Good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

LinkedIn : Not the only professional networking choice but still the best

2011-10-06T09:05:00.000+11:00

I must admit I am writing this weeks blog post partially out of a sense of frustration in regards to how many businesses I know who have still surprisingly not taken up the opportunity to be involved on the LinkedIn networking site.

I know some people even now will be thinking yes but surely your social media goals will dictate what sites you use or don't use. This is true to a point but some things are a must and this is doubly true especially B2B businesses.

Where do you start outlining the advantages of this amazing networking platform.
Currently LinkedIn has over 120 million active users globally and unlike Facebook its primary focus is business not social.

This means that people go there unashamedly looking for win - win, business opportunities that can be mutually beneficial to both parties.

So it is important to get involved and I mean now. As LinkedIn's size and influence continues to grow, there is also an expectation that serious businesses will be listed there and well placed in terms of profiles, recommendations and general activity to put them into the mix of firms that may be considered for a specific project or task.

Over time we will look at several of the key linked features and how they can be used to leverage success for your business, but for today the message is simple and direct.

Get involved now.And if you're already involved, maintain your input, focus and commitment to your LinkedIn professional network.

Please let me know what your favorite LinkedIn feature is. Personally I love LinkedIn questions.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Facebook Crashes Through the 800 Million Barrier Mark

2011-09-30T16:39:00.000+10:00

It's incredible to me that so recently I was having a discussion with a student telling them about Facebook's amazing growth to 400 million, and here we are a year or so later and it has redoubled in size to 800 million. Newsflash then. Facebook is for real and isn't going anywhere so get on board now.

With this in mind the last couple of weeks has also seen the latest set of changes made to the Facebook layout.

Of the latest batch with include:

- Changes to the News Feed: Where Facebook now ranks them according to what you've been interested in the past, and the recent stories are in chronological order.

- Smart Lists: The ability to subdivide our network into separate subgroups e.g. co-workers, friends, family, etc. where we have the ability to follow the messaging of individuals within a specific group.

- The Subscribe Button: A new feature that allows an individual the choice of making their personal data more accessible to the public by allowing them to be able to see your public updates.

As is with most of the changes in recent times the jury is still out on what will be and wont be significant from a business point of view.

What do you think the most major change has been and how do you plan to leverage it for your business?

As always thanks for reading and until next time, good marketing and good luck.

Daniele.

New YouTube Video Editing Capability

2011-09-24T15:49:00.000+10:00

It is interesting to hear that as of this week, YouTube have included a video editing facility, which now allows users to make changes to existing videos rather than have to redo the video away from the platform.

For example if you wanted to change an existing element of the existing piece such as adding sound effects, changing the soundtrack, or remove part of the video you can now make these edits routinely.

The other big advantage to making any proposed changes on the YouTube platform is that it allows you not forgo your existing video counts with any comments already made by way of retaining your original video identification.

This feature will essentially allow members to make on the run improvements to the quality of videos and by inference the capacity for them to be more likely to be shared around.

Obviously as the worlds second biggest search engine, ensuring that your videos have all the right SEO boxes ticked will always be a key success factor to get the best ranking, but with tools like this you can now look to improve the quality of the video as well as it's organic ranking.

Google Offers Growing

2011-09-15T23:53:00.000+10:00

As the feedback around Google Plus continues to clog the internet highway and the unending comparisons between it and Facebook continue, one potentially very useful product that is largely going under the wire is Google Offers (currently in beta in Austin, Boston, Washington D.C., Denver and Seattle. The product has been available for some months in the Californian Bay Area, New York and Portland. Essentially Google Offers is an incentive form of online advertising.

It has tremendous potential especially in its ability to drive more local traffic. The offer made by a business is made up of a heading, pictures, a Google Places listing with the businesses address and general backgrounder of both your businesses function and exactly what you're offering your audience.

By way of the Google platform, any interested consumers can register with Google Offers and periodically receive communications via e-mails from Google on daily offers from their local. Consumers taking up the offer will pay online and download redeemable vouchers that they exchange with the business at the time of the purchase or transaction.

The concept used here is not new, but is proving to be very effective and no doubt will be expanded to include non US markets in the future as the search for value is certainly a universally attractive concept.

The cost to the businesses in the US is around 2 to 3% of the transaction cost, as well as a minimal transaction fee of 30 cents.

As marketers continue to find new and exciting ways to target qualified prospects and add value to them, Google Offers may when it hits our shores present us with another viable option to blend in with our other existing online and offline promotional tools.

Please let us know how do you think your business may utilise this type of service and of course don't forget to follow us for automatic notifications for all updates.

And until next time, good marketing and good luck.

Daniele.

The Five Don't Do's for Retail Marketers

2011-09-08T15:57:00.000+10:00

Last week we look at things you should do as a retail marketer. So this week let's look at the opposite side and focused on the 5 things you should never do.

1. Assume you know what the customer’s needs are.
Perhaps the fast way to ensure any retailer fails is to assume you know what the customer wants.
Leading Australian market researcher, Frank Domantay (Managing Director of Decision Insights) says: “Successful businesses routinely do customer research that allows them to understand what they are doing well and what they are not doing so well.”
This research can be in the form of a survey, one on one interview or focus group. With the results directly feeding in to strategic planning for the retailer and
often being the first indication for the need to change some aspect of the business or it's product offerings.
For example a recent survey done by a local Melbourne based, medical clinic found great dissatisfaction by patients in the approach by the front office staff.
As a result, the staff was retrained on both customer relations and social style training.

2. Try to market yourself exactly like your competitors do.
To fully understand how important this point is, you need to understand that the customers need is really made up of 2 things. Firstly:
The met portion of the need which are the elements that customers are already satisfied with and secondly, the even more important unmet need, which is where the real
opportunity lies to standout from the crowd. Now if you for example, your business follows your competitors blindly and mimics everything they do, you will basically be meeting the same met portion of the need and leaving the same unmet portion of the need.
An example of a retailer that did not follow its larger rival's example, was Dial a Dino's Pizza. They were the first to include free home delivery and as a result differentiated themselves in a
way that not only made them successful, but ultimately compelled the market leading Pizza Hut to buy them out or risk losing market share.

3. Take your customers for granted.
The ongoing support of key customers must also be acknowledged with incentive schemes designed to reward and maintain customer loyalty, as well as drive demand for future purchases.
These schemes do not need to be complex. Trendy cafe Buddha’s Belly offers a simple scheme on their business card, where they offer a free coffee after 5 purchases. Simple but effective.
Larger organisations like Subway have a similar card that offers a free drink after 8 purchases of their subway sandwich. These are simple ideas that work.
It's important to remember that for a lot of businesses the 80 / 20 rule applies. That is that 20% of your customers generate 80% of your business.
The bottom line is, know who the 20% are and reward them for their support.

4. Fail to strengthen areas you have identified in your business as weak.
There is no doubt that a business is only as strong as its weakest link.
You may have a great product but if it is incorrectly priced, poorly promoted or not consistently available in the store due to unreliable suppliers, it will fail. These or any other ongoing weaknesses must be promptly addressed to ensure the businesses ongoing success.
For example, critically acclaimed 12 part miniseries Camelot, after its first 2 issues, suffered from an irregular printing schedule due to unreliable product suppliers which caused the
series to fail. Today's consumers are more aware and less tolerant than they have ever been and any ongoing weakness your business has that it does not seek to overcome, will translate into lost customer loyalty and sales.

5. Lose your overall perspective and work / life balance.
As important as it is to perform well and run a profitable business, retailers must always be wary that the business has the potential to take over your life and leave you with an imbalance between your work and the rest of your life. This is a complex issue but there are some key strategies that can help.
1. Schedule time outs and honour them.
2. Take a time management course that will teach you to be more efficient with your time.
3. Learn the power of delegation, once you have established that an individual is capable of doing that task or role.

Summary:
It is well recognised that many retail businesses fail in their first 5 years of operation.
Many of those who have failed, failed to respect the 5 must do's and the 5 must not do's of small business.
By following these rules laid out in this and the previous post, you will maximise your chances of not joining their ranks.

Please let us know if you feel that there is another key don’t do you’d like added to this list.

And until next time, good marketing and good luck.

Daniele.

Five Must Do's For Retail Marketing

2011-09-04T00:06:00.000+10:00

As the retail sector becomes increasingly competitive and even major retail chains are known to be struggling to meet financial objectives, it becomes even more important to focus on the key strategies known to drive performance.

Here are five that you may want to consider and apply to your retail business.

1. Observe your market carefully to capture opportunities and trends early.
Businesses need to be able to look at the key factors such as technological changes, in social attitudes, changes in government and legal regulations, which can profoundly affect their business.
This is to both take advantage of possible opportunities for growth and also to help avoid threats that may harm their business. Usually the business will have no control over these market factors but still needs to react quickly to their presence.
For example: Many successful retailer selling fur coats suffered greatly reduced demand and sales because attitudes towards killing animals for fur changed drastically in the eighties and made fur coats virtually redundant.
Another example is that one third of all photo printing stores that operated in Australia ten years ago have now shut down. This is because the technology changed from traditional film processing to digital photography. This meant new equipment, more training for staff, the need for more capital, etc., with the result being that those who were not well prepared or able to afford the change went out of business.
From a positive perspective of following positive trends early, renowned cellular skin specialist Dr. Vivienne Finnegan, director of Melbourne based Vitality Plus, has positioned herself as the ‘celebrity skin guru’ by regularly updating her expertise abroad by studying with the recognized authorities in cellular regeneration in Switzerland and the United States.

2. Be aware of your businesses relative strengths and weaknesses.
Any retailer (especially an SME) must be very objective about it's relative strengths and weaknesses if it's to survive and grow. Unlike external opportunities and threats that the market offers you which you can not control, internal strengths and weaknesses can be controlled and changed by the retailer. For example: leading Melbourne based, creative design firm Fine Design realising that only one staff member had expertise operating a newly available printing software CAD program, quickly arranged for additional training to raise the skill level of the other employees to protect itself if this one employee were unable to use the program. As well by having a complete inventory of your strengths you will be in a better position to take advantage of any opportunities that may be around.

3. Look for groups of customers with similar unmet needs you can meet.
In most markets, you will find smaller groups of customers that exist within the overall market that have similar needs and can be grouped into market segments or niches.
If the retailer can provide a product or service that can meet this common need, then it will do well by targeting that market niche.
For example: Retailer: Easy Tone Studio in Melbourne offers an exercise studio that offers exercise equipment with a difference. Rather than the standard gym equipment, it offers assisted exercise where the machine exercises that area of the body passively. This can be used for: older people, people recovering from illness, injured athletes, etc.
Although these are all different groups, they have a similar need for assisted exercise. Suffice to say, Easy Tone has differentiated itself from other gyms, and is highly successful as a result.

4. Know exactly who your customer is and what you need to deliver to keep them satisfied.
Most small businesses retailers make the mistake of mass marketing. In other words they try to sell their product or service to everyone in the market. Simply put, different people need different things.
Therefore it is critical to look at your market and make a decision about exactly what part of the market you want to target for your business and what their specific needs will be.
For example, The Athletes Foot sells only running shoes for athletes and runners. They are known to have the best range of brands, shoe sizes, fitting equipment and general expertise in fitting to ensure the correct size and shoe for any foot. In short they have an area of proven excellence. They know who their customers are and they deliver a personalised product for each. This is the true essence of marketing.

5. Acknowledge and reward those people who contribute to your success.
In most businesses, your staff will be a combination of high performers, average contributors and occasionally low performers.
Suffice to say, it is imperative that you identify your top performers so that you can acknowledge their efforts and reward them accordingly.
Traditionally larger firms lead the way by having incentive packages that not only reward individuals for the period just gone, but also involve rolling incentives over 2 or 3 years, to act as an effective retention tool for key staff over a longer period.

What are some other key's you think we should add to this list. Please let us know.

Next time to balance the ledger, we'll look at the 5 don't s for retail marketing.
But until then, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Social Media and Advertising. Friends or Foes

2011-08-26T07:14:00.000+10:00

Yesterday as sometimes happens, I found myself participating in not one but two separate business conferences, and interestingly I was asked virtually the same question came up at both events. Specifically if advertising was still valuable now that social media marketing was continuing to play such a powerful role?

It's a great question and the answer lies in the fact that social media is as we all know, about engagement and forming networks of like minded individuals with a common interest, passion, problem or need. Advertising on the other hand is all about mass marketing and getting your message out to a wide group.

The problem is this. Advertising works by increasing the level of awareness of you, your brand or business generically and reinforces the relationship you have with your market if you have one. If you don't, it reinforces that as well.

In other words it will be like a blank billboard with little value if the connection is not already there to support it.

This fact was made clear to me several years ago when I had just taken over as product manager of some major pharmaceutical brands and on doing a review of past spending, I found that my predecessor had been poring in a half a million dollars a year to a specific medical journal despite the fact that the product appeared to be receiving little or no benefit from it.

on doing a little research with a group of doctors, I found that they all agreed that if they were not using a product then just seeing ads of it in the magazine would have no effect. In short, no relationship equals no sale.

Interestingly when I cancelled the remainder of those ads, I was able to redirect those funds back into an innovative program designed to give the doctors exposure to using the medicine in a specific group of patients, as a basis for (wait for it) forming a relationship. Result millions of dollars increased revenue that year.

So yes advertising can and is still an effective option today, but needs to be properly applied when there is already an existing relationship, to remind people of that relationship.

Hope this sheds some light on this issue. Please let me know your thoughts a s well.
And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Google Swoops On Motorola

2011-08-18T15:05:00.000+10:00

It has now been announced that Google is in the process of buying mobile phone giant Motorola for an estimated US$12.5 billion.

In yet another example of a market leader understanding the diversified nature of modern day marketing, has purchased a key platform that will add to its existing strength in the areas of search engine marketing and mobile software, to add one of the most progressive and iconic brands in the mobile marketing world.

With the seemingly unstoppable rise in social media marketing, and allied to that the continual migration of social media usage going from traditional personal computer and laptop viewing, to now people engaging via their smart phones and now tablet devices, Google is acutely aware of the need to vertically integrate its product offering.

To highlight this, Facebook has recently announced that around one in three of its members routinely access Facebook via their mobile devices and these people are twice as active as those who don't. With over 750 million users currently, this means that over 250 million people are clearly voting on their preferred modality and it is clearly a trend that will continue into the future with experts predicting that more people will be using social media via mobile devices than computers by 2016.

All things considered, this may end up being on of the smartest purchases Google ever makes. What are your thoughts on it and who else do you think they should consider buying out?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Twitter Now Allows Picture Sharing

2011-08-11T16:24:00.000+10:00

After what seems to be years of Twitter users screaming for some form of photo sharing, is now available to all users, Twitter has now recently revealed its exciting new photo uploading function.

Originally made available in June this year, it now gives Twitter users the ability to add photos to any of their tweets.

To do so, you will see there is a camera symbol at the bottom of the “What’s Happening?” box on the Twitter site at www.twitter.com.

By simply clicking on the symbol, any user will now be able to nominate a picture to upload.

The tweets that do contain a picture will also have a link to: pic.twitter.com, as well as a thumbnail of the original picture.

Have you been using this feature at all. If so how.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

I Want to Blog Every Week, But Where Do I Get The Content?

2011-08-05T22:28:00.000+10:00

I have often heard that people (as the importance of blogging) becomes increasing clear, say that they want to blog but are not sure where the ideas come from week in and week out.

This mindset presupposes that the blogger whether it be Chris Brogan or Fred Brown needs to do everything themselves. This is simply not the case. In most instances, the better known bloggers in every area occasionally beg, borrow and very (rarely) steal from other sources.

One classic example of this that is widely available to every blogger is the very under hyped resource of: Google Search Stories (GSS).

GSS provides copious amounts of video footage that can help augment the videos and content that you provide yourself.

It works the way Google always works. Namely by searching for content on a particular subject and then provides the best examples for you to peruse.

Let’s face it, some weeks the creative juices may not always be flowing. Writers are not machines and sometimes it's nice just to be able to get some other content of interest and sharing that with your network.

Here’s some food for thought. Good blogging is about providing good content consistently. N one ever said it always had to be your own.

What other sources do you know that provide quality content?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.