Internet Marketing and Digital Media Strategy Sydney Australia

3.30AM in the morning, a drink of water needed. You kick your big toe on the obstacles your loving partner strategically placed in the hallway - hate that!

Your head a bit foggy, a big day yesterday, a couple of beers or more with some clients/ friends at the local pub. Business is so much more pleasurable when you enjoy the company of your clients. It's less of the typical master - servant relationship and more a partnership - hey, BUT you still need to perform.

It's a great old pub, run down but full of character (and characters). Once it was an early opener catering primarily to the local fishing fleet, now its customer base move towards tourists and the broader local community. You don't find pubs like this in Sydney anymore.

To survive it will have keep up with the times, the economic conditions have changed and customer buying behaviour along with it.

The fact is the pub can no longer rely on what has worked in the past - it's a matter of constantly innovate or fade out. If they are not competing for your and my attention and dollars then someone else is or will soon be. We have so much choice. With a couple of clicks, a search, compare websites and offerings, reviews comments and decide.

It won't be long before the pub is knocked down and rebuilt - you can see a big open veranda overlooking the river and eventually a marina down the front.

Today, unless all your customers are local or well informed then no business can continue to ignore the importance of the Internet for their long term survival. The web is now were most new customers hear about and begin their search for your and my products or services.

In many ways this old town is a bit like the internet and advertising - the old established marketplace models have changed. From an advertising perspective over the last five years the effectiveness of the traditional ‘interrupt and repeat' model of advertising has decreased. Customers today and in the future will have so much more choice and as every product marketer knows brand loyalty is decreasing.

A few stats to chew on with your beer nuts and Coopers.
• 87% Australians online by 2010
• 13% of our time awake is spent online and
• 1 in 6 minutes of that time is spent on social network sites like Facebook and Youtube.

The result,
Businesses have to compete not only in the physical realm of delivery but much earlier online - targeting innovators and early adopters who spread the word of what's cool or not. As technology becomes more mobile and more pervasive in our lives then other customer referrals importance will only increase.

Does your website "cut through" and engage with your customers? What are they saying about you?  Do you know?  Do you care?

"G'day Jerry, Bill here, maaaatttee, listen, some bad news, the campaign sucks, people hate it, I'm pulling the plug...it's OK Jerry...don't get upset, look maybe we look at an online video tv show or something like that, I'll get my marketing guys onto it Jerry, Jerry!"

According to Digg - Valley Mag, Microsoft dumped it's anti-Apple campaign ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Big Bill just into the second part of the $300m campaign. The Microsoft spin doctors are out there telling everyone it was planned, maybe/ maybe not (I’m writing about it). Bad news spreads like wildfire but blind Freddy can see that the battleground here is not the desktop but a positional play by Microsoft to launch a new mobile Google killer.

If you don’t know the background this was Microsoft's attempt at being cool and funny like the much loved Apple ads.  Who has time to watch something this long ( I stopped after about a minute)?    

It wasn’t! It missed the mark completely – way too long, too high brow, too complicated, too hard (a bit like Vista) and not funny, whatever message was in there was lost.

I also read that in the first time in history some people were feeling sorry for Microsoft – LOL not sure that’s the type of response you want from the market.

Interesting - Why do some messages “cut through” and stick while others fail?

Apples market share continues to increase and the comparison between the two is a great case study but honestly does anyone really think MS cares too much right now?  Apples market share is what 15%-20%? The real inroads will occur when the major internet interface is your mobile phone and in this space Apple is way ahead.  

On one side Steve Jobs (head of Apple) has done a great job (excuse the pun) in understanding the market and in particular curving a niche in the creative space and positioning and targeting innovators and early adopters. My film director mates and designers are fully branded advocates!

On the other side Microsoft has never been cool, rich yes, cool no, it serves to point the business was founded on someone else s hardware and it’s early adopters were accountants (not that there is anything wrong with that).  My PC buds aren't nearly as passionate.

From a selling perspective it's interesting to look at buyer behavior - don't get me wrong my first home computer was an Apple IIe nearly thirty years ago but I gave up on computer branding and advocacy a long time ago.    

Microsoft does well at the majority of late adopters and laggards in the market – those computer users who are simply happy to email and browse the web using Explorer. BUT today’s computer space is no longer driven by spreadsheets – it’s driven by creativity and communication and this is where Apple "excels" (excuse the irony). Personally I still use my trusty old PC – it does what I need to do.

The question is – would I consider a Mac next time around?  Now's there's a change!