Eureka

Tips for Better Virtual Meetings

2012-08-30T15:40:00.003+10:00

With more than two-thirds of business executives engaging in virtual work, virtual meetings are a standard feature of the business landscape. But of course that doesn't mean its easy to navigate through.

I came across this great article from Harvard Business School on some great tips for better virtual meetings.

1) Be Very Interactive

One reason virtual meetings do not flow as naturally as in-person meetings is that establishing camaraderie at a distance is difficult. Yet it can be achieved if the meeting particpants make an effort to engage with their colleagues from afar.

2) Use Technology To Enhance Collaboration

Technology that enhances two-way communication and active collaboration can make virtual meetings almost like being there - one team at a Fortune 100 company experienced a stunning 90% drop in decision-making time in virtual meetings after it put technology to work. Useful high-tech tools include virtual rooms for attendees, white board functionality for note taking, voting tools for anonymous feedback, cameras so colleagues can see one another, collaborative online presentation capability, informal chat rooms for side discussions and the ability to raise your hand virtually and ask questions.

3) Reserve Meetings For Two-Way Communication

Have you ever attended meeting where all you did was listen? If one-way meetings are bad in person, they're deadly over the phone, especially when participants are scattered across the globe and it's the middle of the night for some.

4) Level Ths Playing Field

It is common in virtual meetings for some employees to particpate while sitting together in a conference room, while others are alone in their offices or other locations. Employees in the conference room have the benefit of side conversations with their colleagues and shared coffee breaks. The individuals not in the room may feel excluded and wonder whether their input is equally valued.

5) Establish A No E-Mail Or Instant Messaging Policy

This is obvious, but it's worth emphasizing: just as it's rude to have side conversations during a face-to-face meeting, it's rude to converse an email or instant messaging during virtual meetings. To encourage compliance, try what one team did: it decided that anyone who broke this rule would be assigned the next item. The prooved a highly effective deterrent!

Pros & Cons of Pay-Per-Click Advertising

2012-08-07T19:00:00.000+10:00

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a very populat form of driving traffic to a website, especially to a brand new one.

Google Adwords is the leader of PPC engine and I guess followed by Yahoo Search and MSN. No matter which one you choose to start with the process are similar - you decide which keywords you want to target, write an ad and are charged every time someone clicks it.

Anyways, lets analyse the pros and cons of PPC as a traffic source.

Pros

PPC traffic can be turned on and off instantaneously. Once you have done your keyword research, you can be up and running in less than 15 minutes.
It is very targeted, since you can decide the time of day and the location from which your ads should be seen.
Its the ideal method of testing how your website converts. You can run as many tests as you want, with the goal of improving your conversion rate. PPC can help you refine your website before using other traffic sources.
While in banner advertising you pay by impressions (an impression is when someone sees your ad), in PPC you pay only when someone clicks. This means you are paying only for the actual traffic Google is sending you.
Adwords is also a good way to quickly test if there is a market for a new product not yet developed. The marketer can perhaps perform a survey on the landing page to learn if theres interest on a new item/and/or technology possibly entering the marketplace.

Cons

Google Adwords is a very popular way of driving traffic. The more people use the system, the more it will cost to achieve the top position. Depending on how many advertisers are in your market, it is uncommon to go over $1 a click for the top spot.
You can't rely solely on PPC. It is easier for a competitor with deeper pockets to outid you.
Since Adwords seem so easy at first, many advertisers do not invest the time necessary to track the ROI of their investment. They just turn their campaign on. Only by tracking your campaigns, you know which keywords don't convert and can exclude them from your campaign.

Can you make money managing social media?

2012-07-13T13:26:00.003+10:00

Our advertising agency have asked us many times before if we would want them to manage our social media stuff for us.

Of course I would think that everybody should do their own social media because of the "authencity" value. But I am also a realist. If people want to out-source their social media and there is a buck to made, it will actually happen somewhere. I also believe that there is some value to a consultant or agency helping people along for the some period of time.

I am not going to name brands but I have seen some big brands with some amazing and sophisticated social media marketing programs. These companies are beggining to make correlations between "share of voice" and true marketshare, using listening platforms to track micro-trends and taking location-based marketing to a whole new level.

Of course these companies have the resources to hire the biggest agencies and best minds in the world to help them navigate social media labyrinths and determine a strategy.

For medium-sized companies. I guess unless you are an elite brand, most companies are desperately confused about what to do about social media. But most of these companies at least have the vision and budget to hire an agency to get them started on social media marketing.

For small businesses - I really believe that social media can provide an advantage to most small businesses, but that doesn't mean it actually does unless they are working on it! Now why isn't it happening?:

They are overwhelmed by the concept and dont know where to start
They started Facebook page and nobody "liked" them so they quit
They understand the concept but don't have the time or resources to do anything consistent and meaningful
Their marketing budget is tied up on traditional marketing and they don't have anything left for something new
When you bring it up, they stare you down and tell you they dont need Facebook or Twitter.

The new category of social media gurus are trying to teach best practices and perhaps do some hands-on social media management. My take is the most of these efforts eventually fail because you are communicating for somebody else, which is probably not sustainable, and the labour cost to actually do this stuff is so high and the results so undefinable in the short term that businesses lose interest.

I am also coming across more small agnecies offering social media packages - e.g. one facebook update, tweet a day and one blog a week. I am not quite a fan of this approach because it intstitutionalises lazy marketing. But it is happening. A lot.

I think the only viable long-term solution for most small businesses is to get some coaching and learn step by step plan to eventually create a culture, an organisation and an actionable strategy appropriate for the company resources and budget. This seems to be the approach that will work best.

Social Media ROI: Myths, Truths, Measurement

2012-05-13T14:07:00.002+10:00

Since we are embarking into the social media scene at work, I have been researching on how we measure social media. Question: Is the way you calculate social media ROI the right method? And are you meeting your business objectives and goals? If you answered YES to these questions, YAY!!!

But even that, are you 100% sure you are doing it the right way?

Like my boss, many are still skeptical about marketing via social media and some claim its not really measurable as it's difficult to get the benchmarks and without the metrics it seems diffiult to claim that a strategy really worked. I feel that way, but it might be because I don't have all the numbers to plug in yet.

But for online marketers like me, its a high priority because they:

need to improve effectiveness
need to improve integration with other marketing
feel pressure to report quantified outcomes

But before we discuss the best way to measure our social media marketing, we need to set business metrics which are basically goals and KPIs of our marketing strategies. If its just because "our agency advised us to do it" or "our competitor is doing it too" then, please think about the reasons more deeply.

Examples of some typical social media business goals:

Gather competitive intelligence
Engage with customers and prospects online
Maximise reach of content and messaging in social channels
Support existing sales and marketing campaigns
Support recruiting and retention efforts
Build a customer community to provide support and advocacy

Now to get to ROI, these metrics have to be turned into business benefits -a combination of tracked data and outcome data, which are not directly connected to social media. e.g. total sales, number of test drive requests, registrations, etc.

I think its quite important to consistently measure ROI of a lot of things..as long as it concerns the growth of our company, in the end we want to knoe whether our investment will pay off or not. Of course its true to listen more to the customers and start engaging with them (by talking with them but first listening to them). I think this is an investment as well..

Social Media Marketing: We need to measure it! (or do we not?)

2012-05-06T12:43:00.001+10:00

Social Media Marketing has received centre stage in today's marketer's planning plateau. E.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, etc.

Marketers are curious about this "new" channel to market especially given that many studies depict a sense of postivisim in it. However, the reality is social marketing is something of a black box, marketers inject programs into the black box and cross their fingers at the output.

Perhaps the standard quantitative notions of approach to analysing data (bounce rate, CTR, regression, path analysis, etc) may be cast aside for qualitative methods? Afterall social being social requires the need for verbal and face checks, no? or perhaps we should just get companies to state their objectives and we just track certain metrics. Do we really need to measure it? I think that is the question. Or should we just let social media play its role and just cross our fingers and hopefully the spread of its positive will correlate positively with profitability and hope that we can control the spread if its negative.

Well what are your thoughts? There are many different ways to see how many people see what you create, but is there a way to get a true sense of how well your Social Media Marketing is doing? For all the measurement metrics and stat softwares out there the only number we should be looking at when determining the success of our Social Media campaigns is the same thing we look at any campaign. Its the only thing we judge each of our social media campaigns on.

I came up with pros and cons of some of the top measurment methods:

Number of followers and Likes -Does it really mean anything? Obviously its great to have an audience, but usually 35% of followers are competitiors, people you know in the industry, etc who are really not there interested in your product/services. So who are you really helping? Bottom line, an audience is great and any form of media is valuable. Its also far less expensive than an ad in the newspaper or TV .
Engagement. Some will say that the number of follwers are useless if you don't have a high engagement score. I guess the real problem is that the majority of Social Media users don't really interact to brands on those sites. They sit and watch.
Revenue - Let's be honest. Companies/Brands get into Social Media to get new clients, increase revenue and not really into making new friends. Social Media marketing is just a piece to the great Marketing pie and cannot sustain a business on its own. Like all of us know, u require awareness to purchase and hopefully turn that purchaser into an evangelist for your brand.

By looking at the question re. "measuring" if by measuring it means counting friends and followers it really doesn't add much so to me that sort of measurement can be skipped.

Virtualizing a File Server

2012-04-12T20:31:00.000+10:00

We are in the middle of a project to replace a new file server and were suggested to virtualise our file server. As you can imagine, this is a large project for us. We have a lot to consider and plan out before moving forward. All in all, it has been an eye-opening endeavour.

One of the biggest challenges is deciding on how the new implementation would look. Our next decision is regarding the server itself. I like the idea of easy portability and hardware independence.

Our current physical server is without warranty and one of the two power supplies has fried. The security in the server is not exactly coherent or structured. We are also out of space and apparently not backing up entirely.

We were curious when asked to consider implementing a virtualised server environment. If I am not wrong, a virtual file server is a system consisting of one of more virtualised devices that store computer files such as documents, sound files, images, audio and video files. The server can be accessed by workstations or application servers through the Fileserver network.

File virtualisation can be limited by scalability, which can involve the number of file systems, files, servers or I/O input/output) performance. The file virtualisation platform must also be interoperable with the current infrastructure so that it can work with existing storage systems and switches.

Brand Reputation and Search Engine – Correlated?

2012-04-09T20:06:00.001+10:00

I was reading Advertising Age this afternoon and read an article titled "Search Shifts Means Visibility Must be Earned, Not Paid". Does this infer that brand reputation and search engine optimisation are correlated? If so, this has many ramifications.

I believe marketers should devote more attention to SEO rather than SEM, as the title in Advertising Age suggets. Consumers look to the internet for information and education to help them make a more informed decision.

In the fase paced interconnected world that we live in today, consumers are going to talk about your company regardless if you have entered the online space. So even your offline campaigns, customer service, product quality with be talked about online. And of course these conversations can make or break your brand reputation.

As part of SEM, one of the variable of getting higher rankings, content needs to be refreshed and of course rich in information can be a very powerful variable in pushing up brand name in Search Engines.

Consumers want to know more about the company/brand and read about reviews and feedbacks from current customers. But hey isn't that a way social marketing? People are searching, people are also perhaps in engaging in long-tail searches on your company and brand. So having good or bad press on search engines may be a deal winner or breaker for you - depends on how it swings.

Somehow this is no longer PUSH marketing but PULL marketing at play. Not new I might say, in the past we have always trusted our friends more than advertisements anyway.

So concluding, I personally feel that brand reputation and search engine are correlated - be it good or bad reputation. Search marketing now is not just about generating leads, it is also a strategy in itself that goes beyong selling a product.

What are your thoughts?

Social Media for Businesses – A Reality Check

2012-03-21T19:30:00.000+11:00

For years now I have been trying to introduce the idea of social media to my boss who practices very traditional marketing strategies. I think I am geting closer but there's still a lot of convincing to do.

Here are just some pointers on some social media techniques I put in place:

Use tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter etc) to better engage your customers, and these are just tools. Social Media marketing is a strategy in itself.
Nothing will replace a face to face meeting – not even Social Media marketing.
Markets are getting smarter – you listen to the customers – and there is also alot of unhappy customers out there. You can get an anti-your company blog. But hey which company doesnt want to listen to those unhappy customers. On the contrary these companies give you a chance to better improve yourself.
Use Social Media to understand the customer and give it to them better. They use Social Media tools to listen to the conversation about the company in real time.
Companies should embrace the opportunities Social Media entails – think beyond the unhappy customers, on the contrary convert those unhappy ones to happy one and they will be your evangelists.
Listening is one thing, participating is another. Its very important to listen first and understand first and then response especially in this fast paced world we live in now.
Large companies especially cant afford to sit on the sideline, have to get in now before you get left behind especially now that a growing number of customers are spending a fair portion of their time online.
Social Media gives you untapped opportunities and allows you to listen in to conversations about your brand and as a result allow to you understand where you stand, how you can improve and as such deliver better value.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

2012-02-07T21:55:00.001+11:00

Here are just some of the Social Media Marketing Monitoring tools that I use. Some are retty good and some not but nevertheess still works.

Google Alerts
TweetBeep
Watchthatpage
Trendrr
Trackur.com
Google Trends
Blogpulse

Please feel free to add to the list for those I’ve missed out. Thanks!

Authentic Marketing in Social Media – Paying People to Seed Comments – Trust

2012-01-30T14:32:00.002+11:00

In media such as prints, TV ads, consumers will understand and recognise that these are all paid advertisement and they are perfectly fine with that. After all, this fact is known from the outset.

However what if this is not known from the outside? A trend that I see, from conversations with friends, clients and agencies is the notion of seeding conversations in Social Media. For example, firms employ (and pay of course) individuals to post comments on blogs, forums and such as to create a favourable image for the product and hope that it will generate more traffic and of course generate leads.

Is this right? I don’t know – Well for me, I hate to read comments that are not genuine especially if I found out later that this was a paid post or comment – some one who is employed by the company in question. I would lose credibility in the site or for that matter the product – trust is built in incremental steps but once lost, it falls exponentially – isn’t trust (and candidness) the bedrock of social media? Trust is one of the antecedents (drivers) of Word of Mouth (WOM).

From a marketer’s stand point, sure WOM is something they wish to achieve i.e. a result, by seeding comments, would one lose that trust if found out?

But I can understand from the agencies’s point of view is that it generates discussion in the comments section. Afterall social media is interaction and its success stems from conversations.

What are your views, I’m keen to hear them out.

Social Media humanizes your brand?

2012-01-28T22:15:00.001+11:00

I think so! But do you think firms are more concerned about "negative comments"?

You bet! Of course that really depends on how the interaction is conversed online. Social media gives business the opportunity never befper to access consumers honest and candid feedback

You bet! of course that depends on how you interaction and converse online. Social media gives firms the opportunity never before to access consumer’s candid feedback and of course business are given the opportunity to respond and relate back to the consumers.

The "problem" I see though is that a significant number of companies still treat social media as a channel for sales. Firms should think beyong that and use social media as a means to better interact with their customers and garner feedback.

Though I have heard is that firms seem to be only concern about one major point - what if someone gave us a really bad feedback? Can we delete bad comments?, etc, etc. Fixating on negativity.

If you think about it, businesses should really be asking how they are going to engage with their consumer? Social Media did not invent critisicm. Businesses have always dealth with complaints via phone calls, email, face to face. So how different is this?

The Ultimate Guide for Top Internet Marketing Products Exposed

2012-01-25T20:10:00.000+11:00

The World Wide Web is filled with a lot of things. But as an Internet Marketer, you should be more particular about your competitors. Everybody wants to have a piece of the action. Everyone wants a share of the market. Obviously if you are not competitive enough you won't be earning much.

Like everything in life in order for it to have your online business succeed you have to invest in it. The basics would be a good domain name, web hosting and a marketing strategy. If you choose well in these aspects, your business could reach great heights.

Not all Domains and Hosting Providers are the same. It is necessary that you get the most reliable web host in order to provide continuous service to your customers. When choosing a web hosting service and domain, be sure to go for a server that can handle your security and expected traffic in the long run.

A good Online Marketing Strategy, on the other hand, could take your business to the top of search engine results for optimum target visits. Being on the top position would drive unique visits to your site, which could translate into sales in the immediate future.

Your choice of Online Advertising Strategy would put your website in key places of the internet for maximum profits. Advertising is a way to reach out to potential customers. If your ads are on the right spot, you'll get an assurance of reaching your sales quota for the day.

There are many online marketing products and packages available today to help you in promoting your online business. The problem now is in choosing which one would work for you best. But how would you know that if everybody else says that their marketing product or strategy would work like magic on your business? There's only one sure way to go about it - by consulting authentic customer reviews.

With a portal that can provide first-hand, accurate information about a certain marketing product that's currently circulating over the internet, you would be able to come up with the best choice for your business. This portal is powered by consumers themselves. Customers, users, or subscribers of a certain online marketing, advertising, or hosting package are then encouraged to add their reviews, recommendations, and feedback - both positive and negative - about their experiences in any of the marketing packages and strategies they have availed of. These would then serve as a guide for everyone, including professionals and novice internet marketers. If there is a new online marketing product recently released, consult customer reviews first before buying it for your own use. This way, you would know if the product could really help you or not.

Things to Consider Before Designing Your Next Website

2011-03-19T11:11:00.001+11:00

There are probably dozens and dozens of ways for approaching the initial stages of creating a website. You could sketch out the entire concept on paper, use Photoshop to create a beautifully rendered visual representation of what the site will look like, or cut your teeth right away on some nice HTML and CSS coding.

So, is there one right way to go about this? Yes! The best way to mock up a website is to use the technique that will be the most effective for your particular project.

Not a very helpful answer is it?

Well let’s dig a little deeper, then. In this article, I am going to distinguish between creating mockups and building prototypes, and then look at five different areas that can help you determine which approach might be best for you.

Mockups and Prototypes
So, let’s start by examining the key differences that I see between mockups and prototypes.

In my view, a mockup is a static graphical rendering of what the final product should look like. In this instance, the focus is entirely on appearance, with the intention of demonstrating exactly what the final product will look like. This certainly has its benefits, but can also be very limiting through a lack of interaction. There may be styled menus and buttons, but they will all be part of the static image and thus remain entirely unclickable.

A prototype, on the other hand, is more about functionality and experience. It’s a bare-bones version of the website, designed to demonstrate exactly how the site will actually work. Drop downs drop down, buttons are active and links are clickable. The idea is to test the key functionality of the site before getting into all the aesthetics. It’s not always pretty, but it works.

Some people might argue the semantics here, but this is now I distinguish between prototypes and mockups, and these are the definitions that I will be using as we work through the concepts of how you might choose to begin creating a site.

Look at The Purpose of the Site
Considering the purpose of the site should really one of the first steps in any web project. From this, you can determine what kind of approach you want to take for the design in general. Is the site primarily content driven? In this case, the emphasis should obviously be on the content. Of course, all sites should be about their content, but in this case we’re talking specifically about structuring content (usually textual). For this kind of a site, you might want to start with a prototype, into which you can pour different streams of content, and test how they fit into the overall design.

The same could also be true of a web application, such as a custom email client or a new, niche-based social networking site. The purpose of these sites dictate that they will be highly interactive, putting an even stronger emphasis on user interface and user experience. As such, starting with a prototype might be more ideal than creating a static mockup.

On the other hand, if the purpose of the site is primarily a simple and static information site for a company, then using a mockup might be the better approach. This will allow you to concentrate on building the appearance of the site and designing the graphical aspects of the around the company’s brand. This can also work very well if there are only a few pages of very basic content.

Look at the Graphical Requirements
You may not always know exactly what kind of approach you will be taking with a site right off the bat, but it can be helpful to determine how you want to approach the graphical aspect of the site. Obviously, this will have a very strong influence on whether you want to begin your design process with a mockup or as a prototype.

For sites that have an extremely high degree of graphical complexity – such as large oversized headers, carefully integrated and textured backgrounds, or any other kind of extensive imagery – it only makes sense to start with a mockup in Photoshop, in order to maximize the visual integration of these various element. With sites like this, the graphics often play a more prominent role, serving as a visual compliment to the content rather than simply a structure for the content. A mockup can help perfect those graphics.

On the other hand, if the site will make use of a primarily minimalist design or if the graphics will mostly encompass icons, logos and other “contained” elements, then creating a working prototype could be the best route. In this kind of a scenario, there is often little if any need for integrating various graphical elements into each other, meaning that creating the full site in Photoshop may just end up being more work than your really need to do. Conversely, creating a prototype will leave you with a solid foundation of code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc) to work from after you get those first bits of feedback from your client.

I would never suggest that any designer compromise quality for increased speed (though, of course, we need to be realistic and able to work within timelines), but if choosing to build a prototype over a mockup (or, perhaps, vice versa) will save you time without effecting quality, then that might certainly be the best route to take! Your time is, after all, one of your most valuable assets.

Look at the Audience
Like any kind of media, a website is pretty useless without an audience. It’s just a bunch of 1′s and 0′s sitting out there on a web server somewhere, probably costing you or your client money. As such, the audience is going to play an extremely important role in your design, and can effect the manner in which you approach the entire project.

For instance, if you are designing a blog targeted at CEOs and other high ranking executives, you will probably want a very streamlined and traditionally corporate look. Such a site would likely use few integrated graphical elements. Actually, the chances are it probably wouldn’t use any. Instead, it would likely have a simple white background contrasted against a single support colour. There would likely be a basic content area and at least a single sidebar (possibly two). A header or logo, a few icons and some photographs would probably be the extent of the graphics. This is another case where starting with a basic prototype may be your best option.

However, if you were designing a site that was targeted primarily at children and pre-teens, you would be dealing with an audience that would be much more interested in something full of fun and energy than would our CEOs. In this instance, you may want to create something that was much more interesting and graphically rich, perhaps with a fully rendered mascot character, bright colours and/or a uniquely shaped navigational system. This would be another case where beginning with a Photoshop mockup might be of great benefit to you and your design process.

Why your business needs a succession plan

2011-01-20T22:37:00.002+11:00

There's an elephant in the room that no-one's talking about..

Really the average man now lives until the late 70s and women live an average of 83 years. About half of all Australians ages over 30 can, at some time, expect to get sick or injured to the point that they can no longer run their businesses.

Planning for the future is put in too-hard basket by many business owners caught up in the day-to-day running of the business. What little time they do have to work on the business (rather than in it) is spent drumming up ways to generate higher profits, manage cash flow and reach new customers.

It is important to look ahead, think and plan about the future. So crucial is succession planning to the future that highly successful entrepreneurs start working on a succession plan the first day of business (if not earlier).
Whether you've brought a business or started one from scratch, what ou plan to do with the business and when should be thought about and documented. Do you want to sell the business, or is it your retirement fund? Do you want to hand it down as a family business? As a business owner don't you owe yourself, your dream and the people associated with your business the respect to have a plan in place that tells staff, family members or parters what to do if you can no longer come to work due to death, accident or illness. Every activity undertaken in your business carries on as usual. This means customers can expect the same impressive experience they're used to, profits aren't likely to dip, and anyone associated with the business can carry on as normal with the same level of trust they hae always had.

94% of small business owners don't have a documented succession plan at all.

If you make the effor now you will become part of a such small minority of business owners that you cannot imagine the competitive advantage at sale or handover time.

Succession plans are also vital if you plan to rely on the ongoing income from the business to fund your retirement. A solid plan means very profiient management of the business going forward and you can rest assured that any family members who rely on income generated by the business will be well looked after.

Whether you plan to sell all or part of your business or hand it on, a succession plan enables you to work towards implementing and refining systems and processes to the point that the business can run just as well without you as it did with you.

Customer value = competitive advantage?

2010-07-29T14:11:00.003+10:00

Customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, customer value, etc. This "marketing literature" has been forward that customer loyalty and customer value is a source of competitive advantage.

Marketers have always been insisting and promoting the notion that in order to compete in this competitive market – one must provide superior customer value relative to competition. But really what is customer value?

I found this simple formulat on Google. What are your thoughts?

Customer Value = (Quality + Emotional appeal + meet expressed needs + a hosts of other benefits) / Price.

What would you do when something negative is said about your brand?

2010-07-20T20:21:00.000+10:00

It takes years to build your brand to what it is today. A lot of hard work but really it only requires one minor incident to bring it down. Similar to the notion of "trust". Trust takes a lot of time to build but when the trust is lost, it drops by leaps and bounds.

My view is though one may completely take control of its brands in the online space, one can minimise these negative effects, for example you can control the negative spread of viral marketing. Here are some of my tips:

1) Draft an internal social media plan for everyone in the company - this would signal to your team that your actions offline and online concerning your brand name is made answerable - of course most companies does not have a plan like this in place. But since the social media is growing at an exceptional rate don't we all need a plan like this? Ideally you should be on the online space listening to what's going on in the market place.

2) IF it does happen, you have to make sure we quickly respond to the problems. In the online word, speed is the most important:

- If you know the originator of the spread for example a blogger, you can perhaps contact the blogger to have a link back to our official response. Most readers/customers appreciate the other side of the story.

- If you don't know the originator (in most cases), you can draft a response on our website and submit that page to SEO. This would ensure that viewers/customers would be able to see your response on the first page of Google.

- By using Twitter as an advantage.

That’s all I can think of for now. But I am really interested to hear of what you would do or have done to control the negative bad mouthing of your brand name.

Social Media...what are your thoughts?

2010-07-14T15:45:00.001+10:00

What are your thoughts? How do we use the technologies within social media to further promote our business? Why do we even bother about social media when there are so many other technologies we marketers could use?

Two questions to ask ourselves:
1) What are our business objective of using social media?
2) How do we measure social media according to our business objectives?

But really, the main question for me is...Is social media suitable for all companies? Are companies just following the band wagon?

I feel that it ultimately boils down to the company’s objective and its means of competition and how they view social media. If the culture of the organisation is pretty much conservative and bounded by heaps of regulatopms perhaps social marketing is not the right platform for them.

But this is just my opinion. Let me know what you think..

Online Marketing Decisions for 2010/2011

2010-07-06T21:02:00.001+10:00

I am trying to develop some online marketing strategies for this new financial year. I have listed below here some online marketing decisions that we have to make for this year. They are as follows:

The best way to engage our customers and to be more relevant to them.
How to maximise "behavioral targerting" in direct marketing/email marketing, search and social networking efforts.
What is the budget or ratio budget contribution for online media such as affliate marketing programs.
The best way to leverage social media.
What are some of the other emerging technologies to include in our online marketing plan.

Best methods to measure sales and movements, proving it's ROI.
How much of the other offline marketing budget should be shifted/moved to online marketing plan.

So do share with us your thoughts. Which of these do you think is the most important and what other online marketing decisions do you feel that we need to consider for this financial year.

Tips To Strengthen Your Online Ad Campaigns

2010-07-04T18:57:00.007+10:00

Here I have some tips to strengthen your online ad campaigns without streching too much of your budget. I am sure you have heard about some of the amazing ROI which can be made through PPC advertising on Google, Yahoo and even Bing! I have heard return of up to 300% or even higher with this form of advertising. But there are other ways we can use to trim the fat from our search advertising campaigns.

1. PPC is not for everybody

When PPC works, it really works. But you can lose your entire ad spend if you don't monitor your PPC campaigns properly. As with everything else in business it's always best to be realistic about your chances of success in all your marketing campaigns.

2. Use Web Analytics
It is very important to know how effective each of your keywords and advertisements are really driving traffic to your website. Non-performing keywords should be cut and removed, conversely pay more for your best placements.

3. Website Optimisation

If you do not have a tracking on your website and haven't been optimising your website's ability to convert visitors into buyers, your ads ranking will appear infrequent, buried within search result pages Most importantly you will only be capturing the actual buyers but missed all the potential buyers.

By understanding website optimisation and conversion optimisation, you can easily double the return of all your ad spend. You probably won't be able to compete for the best possible placement for your ads. As a result, your ads will appear infrequently, buried deep within the search results pages.

4. Don't Use Budget Caps

In one of my previous consultancy role, I was given a very strict budget on Google AdWords. I was given a $50 budget clicks per day. On the surface, it was an excellent way to ensure that we did not overspend on the campaign..but I learned to realise that it was a bad idea.

What I was doing was forcing Google AsWords to decide on my behalf about where my ads will appear. For some weird reason, they ended up "optimising" my campaigns so that all my ads appeared in places where it no one seemed to look. The result? I got to stay within my budget but my campaign performed poorly.

So my advice is not to use it. A much better practice is to set your bids conservatively and of course by monitoring your spend.

5. Let Your Competitor Take The Top Spot
Bigger companies and brands tend to be more aggressive about bidding for certain terms. As a result, they bid aggressiely to ensure their ads appear near the top of the search results. I have read somewhere that advertisers appearing at the top of the side search results pay an additional 50% per click, which results in far higher campaign spends for what amounts to a small amount of increamental traffic.

So my advice is to let your competitors to have their spot. By bidding a little lower and spending a lot lesser you will probably drive nearly the same amount of traffic.

That's the 5 tips I have learned and discovered and hope that you find them helpful. Do share with me what other tips you use to further strengthen your site's presence on the internet.

Websites And The Tools You Can Use

2010-07-02T15:03:00.003+10:00

Creating a great website and promoting your business via search engine optimisation and social medias can be really interesting. Through my experience in managine websites online, I have realise that its a painstaking learning process to start and market and online business.

I love social media marketing. It's an extension of search engine optimisation and represents a powerful medium - us. I hope that by sharing my journey of discovering SEO and how it works you can shorten your own learning curve.

I am not a slick, savvy e-marketer, but I have learned by eavesdropping, experimenting, googgling, reading and mostly participating in blogs and forums. As I have struggled past the first few mile markers on this apparently endless path, I've frequented wished someone could have guided me. I was looking for a simple, step-by-step, everyday language guidance. So, I have decided to leave a few of those trail markers on my blog to help my readers.

First, a few quick definitions (according to Wikipedia):

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - is the practice of maximizing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site (such as a blog) from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing ("SEM") which may deal with paid inclusion. The theory is that the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
Social Media Marketing (SMM) - is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message.[1] In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms.[2] However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.[3]

Viral Marketing - The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.[1][2]. Usage of the term "search engine marketing" has been inconsistent. The trade association Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO), and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM by Forrester Research, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, and industry expert Danny Sullivan.[3]. However, the New York Times restricts the definition to 'the practice of buying paid search listings'.[4][5]

OK, I can already imagine the old-school, traditional marketers out there shaking their heads. Right, why should we care about social media like Facebook and Blogs? Because according to Social Media Statistics, more than 50 million visitors have logged into Facebook just end of last year. In early this year, more than 10 billion photos appeared on Facebook and photo traffic peaked at more than 300,000 images served per second. So you see now why a little SMM might be a very good idea?

I asked myself, "If I am a customer in search of my product/services, how would I find me?" I started searching Google and there I was. Seeing me on Google was a strange and wonderful experience. Unfortunately, I appeared nowhere near the top of the list and people rarely click beyond the second page of the Google listings. So how to work my way up to the top of the charts?

SEO my friends, SEO. Listening to conversations with my classmates (who mind you are all top of the notch marketers)..I hear "SEO, the strategies, tactics and techniques for driving our business to to tp of the search engines' list".

Honestly, SEO is so simple its almost frightening. Always use a keyword-rich domain where possible. Place your keywords in the top portion of you page and iclude them in th the title of the page. Then, use variations of the keyword phrase naturally through the copy.

Drive more traffic to your site. I installed site meter web analytics on my new website. Then, I set the site meter to e-mail me each week, sending me detailed reports about my visitors, their locations and what they'd viewed.

Blog about your passion, and do it consistently. I discovered Blogger.com, a site owned by Google. Setting up my blog there, I found how frighteningly easy it was to establish a second web presence--three clicks and I was there. Following the advice of Problogger, I knew I needed to update frequently and stay consistent. I began updating the blog continuously and developed a great little network of loyal readers who became regular visitors. The counters on my site meter increased, and I saw more visitors per day and a longer stay for each visit.

Get connected through social media sites. Everyone in my family has a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter page. From what I've seen, I'd bet even dogs are setting up "walls" on Facebook and are using them to meet French Poodles. Heck when I was a dog owner, I set up a profile for Mikey in Dogbook, in fact I participated in several forums and blogs as Mikey.

Facebook is more than a big wave; it's an internet tsunami--in a good way. Most important, Facebook gave me a tool for connecting to old friends, and friends of friends, and friends of their friends who used to be friends. You get the idea. A couple of my Facebook pals had downloaded its mobile application to their PDAs, and they got text messages each time I put up a post on my page. So, I added Facebook posts to my daily to-do list. Right after I blog, I post something on Twitter and Facebook. They both alert my multiple networks that there's something exciting happening in my world.

Stay in Touch. Be helpful, and give simple but useful answers. Twitter asks you simply, "What are you doing?" I keep things fresh at the website and Twitter when I can. Twitter also helps me begin word-of-mouth promotions--the internet equivalent of whispering, "Hey, have you heard . . . ?"

Update or redesign your original website to include tantalizing new features. The word-of-mouth concept posed a tiny little conundrum: Whispering campaigns require salacious little secrets. If there's no sensational, useful content that's helpful or interesting, there's really no point in whispering. Nobody wants to know that you just had lunch. Therefore, I found myself scratching my head and wondering how to create something interesting and useful. For me, video was the answer, and a simple one, too. Try animoto.com, and you'll see what I mean about video creation being easy. You can upload it directly to YouTube, adding more content to your channel; JingProject.com and ScreenToaster.com are a little more work, but very powerful. They're tools to create new videos of your desktop tutorials, presentations and personal videos.

Obviously, the internet gives us a lot more tools for inviting and engaging traffic, but all our technological sophistication must not carry us too far away from the basics: People still want good products at fair prices, delivered by trustworthy and charming characters who know their stuff and how it works.

How to Rise Above Office Politics

2010-06-30T16:18:00.005+10:00

Going to work in the morning can sometimes feel like walking on to the set of a soap opera aka the bold and the beautiful.... with intrigues, rivalries. Honestly it can be a nightmare to navigate through it all and actually get some work done! Throughout my career, I have never experience such an intense political environment to what I am experiencing now at my current work place.

I have listed below some "tips" which might be able to smooth your path and make the office environment a much more pleasant place to be in.

1) Avoid office gossip

Gossip can also unfairly poison your opinions of your colleagues and influence your judgement if you have to take decisions which affect them. Participation in gossip is usually the fastest entry point into office politics – usually the person who is letting you in on the latest news is consciously or subconsciously trying to align you with their point of view, or negatively dispose you towards their ‘enemies’. Gossip is very often a two-edged sword: ‘whoever gossips to you will someday gossip about you’, so the Spanish proverb goes.

All of the above sounds like common sense; the chances are many of us realise the destructiveness of gossip and yet continue to indulge in it at the same time. Taking the decision to avoid gossip often requires overcoming your fear about standing out from the crowd. However, it might be possible to take that stand tactfully: one good trick is to deflect the conversation with a question about the gossiper’s own life – they will invariably relish the chance to talk about themselves!

2. Place long-term harmony above short-term gain
If you happen to disagree with a colleague over the best approach to an issue, try and take your own ego out of it and stand in their shoes for a moment. Office politics often tends to focus on the person rather than the idea, so try and detach one from the other in evaluating the competing approaches. In many cases, there may be little or no difference in the effectiveness of the two rival approaches, and it may be best to just go along with the other idea to keep harmony. A 90% perfect solution done in unison can often be better then the 100% perfect solution which was only achieved at the cost of civil war.

Whatever happens, don’t let a situation build up past the point of no return. It is very easy to hold a grudge against someone as a result of something that didn’t go your way; however these attitudes have a way of hardening into something permanent, to the stage where you feel totally unable to approach that person. Try to keep the lines of communication open to everyone, however slight.

3. Respect others’ territory
Often people regard their office competencies as their ‘territory’ and will jealously guard them against all-comers. They might feel they have absolute expertise in the area, and are seriously put out if people even question them about what they were doing. Often the best approach in this case is just to let them at it, and keep your own tendency to feel ‘you know how to do everyone’s job better than they do’ in check. But what if you genuinely do need to make a suggestion? One thing which has worked for me in the past is to draw the person concerned into a conversation on their area of expertise, and genuinely listen. Often this ‘territory’ attitude comes from a feeling of insecurity that no-one values their work, and listening in this way creates a space of trust where they feel you value their opinion, and helps to lower their barriers. It also helps if you aren’t defensive about your own territory, and judge any suggestion on its merits rather than by who said it.

4. Don’t get sucked into the promotion whirlpool
Of course, one of the main causes of office politics is because we are hoping to advance within the company, leading to the temptation to keep an eye on potential rivals for promotion. What we don’t realise is that all this worrying about others is essentially a lack of faith in ourselves, and that all the problems mentioned in the first three points – gossiping, territory etc. – are just ’shortcuts’ we take because we are afraid we won’t go places on our performance alone. But conversely, not indulging in these behaviours demonstrates strength, courage, tact and a feeling for managing people – qualities which many companies would kill for! You shouldn’t be afraid about standing out from the crowd for the right reasons – it could pay you back more handsomely than you think.

But now what happens if the gossip is about you? It happens that regardless of how well you have followed this advice (and I do as a rule in all aspects of my life) that one will become sucked into office politics as the object of said politics, i.e. people fight about you, because some dislike you and others don’t. That WILL happen, no matter how good you are at willingly avoiding getting into office politics, especially if you are put in a position of responsibility. Most people end up having some sort of responsability in an office at some point.

Well, it’s important to keep it all in mind. Let me know what your thoughts are in this?

Internet is no longer the "New Media".

2010-06-29T13:25:00.001+10:00

I have noticed that many seem to ignore the fact that the digital space has been around for more than a decade. Really it is no longer the "New Media" as what traditional marketers, agencies or media owners are trying to "convince" in the corporate world. There is a new generation of digitally savvy users out there who are ready to take the digital world by a storm. All so ready to experiment, explore and be part of the global online citizen.

I remember having my first computer when I was between 6-9 years old. It was an old cluncky, brownish looking thing which I didn't think you can hook on to the internet with. But all the computer then did for me was..yes..GAMES! I enjoyed playing the "limited" games on the computer so much that one day the computer gave up on me. Oh well..

Then when I was bout 14 years old, my father brought home a beautiful laptop from the States and I was in love. I was in awe with the power of technology and yes was in love with the internet. I spent all my free time on the ever so famous IRC chatroom. I was hooked. There was no looking back after that.

Comparing the technology we had back then..gosh so much has changed. Who cares about IRC when we have MSN, Gtalk, Twitter and Facebook!

The maturing digital community has created a critical mass that is so large, large enough for us marketing profesionals to market, measure and to understand the different behaviors aspects of the different segments within the market.

This is the insight which is sadly not practiced (as much as we would like) in the marketing profession as measuring and analytics is not a discipline which most practicing industury marketer prefer to engage (sadly but true).

Is there a reason why?

Personally, I feel this lack of using the technologies we have available to our fullest will come back to haunt us as the digital space (moving forward) offers the best and most effective means to target our customers with the lowest possible cost, to measure and access our customers' preferences. I believe it is only through this insight that the marketing professional can make evolutionary changes to their products and services to match their customers’ changing needs.

Marketing leads

2010-06-27T12:19:00.001+10:00

When planning your marketing efforts, should you cast a wide net to find lots of leads, or a narrow net to find highly qualified leads? Here's how to decide.

Should your time and money be spent in a concentrated fashion, courting a few potentially extremely valuable customers or should you cast a wider net, spreading your contact information as far as possible, in the hopes of catching a larger number of less individually valuable customers?

The answers depend on the type your business is in, the breadth and sophistication of your audience, your price-point, and the complexity of what you're selling. For example, consider the marketing of expensive, complex items such as passenger jets or nuclear power plant turbines. The volume of prospective customer contacts generated by your marketing is less important than reaching the correct high-quality contacts with a very deep and sophisticated marketing approach. For jets or turbines, relatively few people are critical to the purchasing decision. It's more important to reach them than thousands of people who don't matter.

Conversely, for inexpensive, simple items such as makeup items, volume of buyers is important. Marketing for maximum market share and end-consumer awareness creates success.

To understand the tradeoffs, consider:

Quality (higher cost per lead)
Quantity (lower cost per lead)
Why the tradeoff exists and matters

Understand those three aspects, and you'll understand when each marketing approach should take precedence, and what "taking precedence" actually entails in tactical terms.

Quality (Higher Cost per Lead)
When product price is higher, complexity of product or installation is higher, or value per deal is concentrated in a few larger deals, the quality of leads has a direct correlation to sales efficiency and success. The valuable audience you need to market to will consist of only a few specific individuals. In this situation, accurate targeting of marketing efforts is of more importance than the volume of contacts created. Why? Cost. It's likely that the purchase process will be extensive and extended--that each prospective customer will require customized, in-depth education about your offering and its benefit to them.

So it's important to exapand marketing efforts on only the correct contacts. More research and planning time spent before programs launch, and investment in higher-value marketing programs focused on a select few individuals will result in more revenue.

Consider these examples of how such tightly targeted marketing programs might differ in implementation from more mass-market-oriented programs:

E-mail: Instead of using mass-mail-merge and large purchased generic lists, send a personal e-mail to the target contact from an analyst related to the target company, with a "cc" to the marketing or salesperson from your company being introduced. .
Seminars: Don't hold large, anonymous hotel or stadium-based events; rather, arrange in-person meetings or small executive-level forums or individual lunches. .
Direct mail: Instead of generic postcards, send direct mail via FedEx, with a personal note from you, as your company's CEO, on wedding-invitation-quality cards. .
Materials: Instead of generic case studies, use specific examples as applied to the target company's own systems, cost structure, and environment, showing detailed knowledge and understanding of the most important issues, and how your solution helps.

In sum, high-touch personal marketing will always improve the quality of your leads if initially directed at the appropriate market. But such marketing is expensive on a cost-per-lead basis. You won't be exposed to as many people, so success depends significantly on the ability to tightly define the target audience prior to spending on them.

Quantity (Lower Cost per Lead)
When the product price is relatively low, number of units sold is relatively high, and individual deal size is relatively small, large numbers of sales must be made for the business to show revenue growth. In these circumstances, your marketing goal should be a lower cost per lead, so that you maximize the number of people you reach on your fixed budget. Usually a quantity-driven product has a short purchase process, and one where decision authority is minimally permuted within an organization: only one person needs to be convinced of your product's value for you to make a sale.

Marketing efforts can thus be relatively straightforward and minimally customized, using larger volume and lower cost-per-target programs. Standard marketing programs might include:

E-mail to lists purchased from magazines or trade shows.
Webinars or open seminars by city.
Direct-mail postcards.
Mass-produced materials, with generic case studies by industry.

With the above caveat in mind, allowing your marketing message to depersonalize--to regress to the mean--can actually have a beneficial effect on lead flow, as your programs seek to attract as many as possible of the specified (large) segments. Put differently, a specific message applies perfectly to a narrow set of individuals; a general message applies less perfectly to everyone. So when choosing between quantity and quality, err on the side of quantity (within limits)--as by giving yourself more options when selecting prospective customers, you will likely increase your overall revenue.

Why It Matters
More is not always better. Lead generation costs money, and if you generate too many leads--in that your ability to follow-up on leads is overwhelmed--valuable leads are ignored and lost as opportunities.

Since the only thing worse than a prospective customer who hasn't heard about you is one who wanted to buy from you and was ignored (as far as they could tell, you couldn't be bothered to contact them and take their money), you need to balance the value of annoyed lost customers against nonacquired customers.

What do you think is the true meaning of creativity?

2010-06-18T11:42:00.001+10:00

Do you get it? Well.. I am sure you did. The cartoon above tells us a lot about creativity, doesn't it? But what do you think is the true meaning of creativity? Is it just a catch/made up word for finding innovative solutions?

Creativity is a word that have been used over and over again especially in the advertising and marketing industry.

Before I get into it, let me first bring out the academic side of me (:P), to what is the definition of creativity.

From wikipedia:
Creativity is the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality. The process involves original thinking and then producing. The process of creation was historically reserved for deities creating "from nothing" in Creationism and other creation myths. Over time, the term creativity came to include human innovation, especially in art and science and led to the emergence of the creative class.

From Human Motivation, 3rd ed., by Robert E. Franken:

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. (page 396)
Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

need for novel, varied and complex stimulation
need to communicate ideas and values
need to solve problems

In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown. (page 394)

Interesting perspectives of creativity from the above two sources and I do feel the same. However as a person who likes to confuse things even further, here’s my attempt. Creativity is just something that I either consciously or sub-consciously create a solution which departs from the norm that tackles (or solve) the heart of the problem.

What do you think?

All ad agencies will tell you they are creative, afterall they are in the creative industry, its in their blood. Perhaps just ask them, what does creativity mean to them? And how do they measure creativity? a link to sales figures? to bottom line? cause there is a belief out there that if you can’t measure it you can’t improve it? does it apply to creativity? I wonder…and waiting to be intrigued.

What is an RSS Aggregator or an RSS Reader?

2010-06-12T18:38:00.002+10:00

I keep seeing and hearing about RSS, XMS and RSS feeds. My husband who is also our Lead Developer once explained to me what it is. But honestly, as a marketer in this digital arena I barely have a clue of what they are. So I decided to do some research on it.

Ain’t jargon fun? RSS really means Really Simple Syndication and it’s a simple data-only version of a web page or what they call a web log. Now, why is this interesting? Because apparently it’s then easy to write programs which we can track XML formatted data stream and let you know when there’s a new material added to the site.

The problem is, I don't want to check 100 RSS feeds any more than I want to visit 100 Web sites every day, and that's where aggregators come in. Whether they're standalone programs, plug-ins for your favourite Web browser or email program, or Web-based services, RSS aggregators remember your subscription list, check each site on a periodic basis, and alert you to any new articles that have been published.

If you’re not thinking, wow this is cool then you are spending too much time visiting web sites! To scan headlines of just a dozen sites on an hourly basis would probably be a full time job and if you need to need to keep abreast of your industry, as I do, then you wouldn’t have any time to actually do anything else.

There are a few programs you can download that are RSS aggregators (or RSS readers, basically synonymous) for Windows and MAC. A few of the most popular are FeedReader for Windows, NetNewWire for MACs.

Don't like having yet another application running? Always a short cut with technologies. Apparently you can graft RSS capabilities into your Web browser (or run Firefox or Safari / which have elegant built- in RSS capabilities) or your email program.

Finally, you can subscribe to an RSS aggregator Web service which gives you a custom Web page that includes the newest information from your hand-picked RSS feeds.