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Maxys Personalising the Web
Maxys - Personalising the Web, looking at digital media communication and internet video for business sales and marketing.
Tags >> small business
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Posted by Administrator in word of mouth , Unique Selling Point , small business , Public Relations , Marketing , Management , Experience , Engagement , Differentiation , customer engagement , Customer , business , Branding , australia
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Trouble reading this - view online http://www.maxys.com.au/20090804189/News/Latest/maxys-report-august-5th-2009.html
Maxys Report - August 2009
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Hi and welcome to the August '09 Edition of Maxys Report (and CLIVE).
As customers we all love personal service and appreciate when businesses make that special extra effort - the small gift, the waitress/ waiter that remembers your name and daily order.
 As sellers we're always looking for the creative edge, without innovation and improvement we're on the slide towards commoditisation or worse - customer irrelevance.
Historically economic challenges help us focus our attention on media return on investment. The current economic cycle is the same, with one exception: the Internet and social media are now perceived as indispensable marketing tools and the ones getting increased investment.
BUT although online media has fundamentally changed corporate communications and advertising the fundamentals of marketing and customer service are still the same.
In Melbourne the other day I did a web search for "best coffee" - the search result practically useless - other search options included -
- raise the question on Twitter
- just look to see where the most people like me are getting their coffee.
- ask someone/ call a friend (sorry Eddie)
- don't have a coffee (joke!)
- travel up to Brisbane to Campos
An hour later after a great retail experience I spoke briefly with the owner of "Be Cafe" off Collins - he has over 100 competitors within a 500m radius and customers who travel blocks - "every detail counts"
Interestingly the cafe doesn't have a website (less than 40% small businesses in Australian do) and globally recently departed Starbucks is recognised as one of the leaders in online social engagement.
Unlike a Snuggly, one size doesn't always fit all.
 For small businesses, web investment is a Catch 22 - if you're not online, your content can't be indexed, searched, linked, shared and generate a return.
From a searchers point of view we get poor results so rely on other methods.
There are intermediate portals or networks which aggregate smaller websites and data - think Ebay, Yellow Pages, Total Travel etc but that's not the same as a direct connection.
For every business, big or small, on top of website management there's now this whole online social media engagement thing - customers and people talking about you and your products - the days of ignoring your website and online social media are numbered.
Today the average visitor:sale conversion rate for retail sites is less than 1% - (that leaves a lot of room for improvement).
Every website needs to feel like walking into a store - to meet, greet, engage, built trust and engage.
At last month's CLIVE ALIVE event, our panel talked about "creative differentiation" to cut through web clutter and engage audiences.
There are many online business successes (both small and large) that have defined their online niche
Author Iggy Pintado has a click through rate of 17% on his video. New client Aussie logos has seen web site visitor bounce rates drop 7.5%, pages viewed up 11.5% and sales up 4.5% so far.
This month sees the Online Retailer Conference in Sydney.
It will be interesting to see what Gerry does over the next couple of years.
"You have to sit by the side of a river a very long time before a roast duck will fly into your mouth. Read my lips: everybody has to sell. Consumer companies, tech companies, ministers, authors, artists, teachers, environmentalists... everyone has to sell something" Guy Kawasaki
Cheers, have a great month - any feedback please send me a note or call
I love this (for all us old Aussie web nerds) - the History of the Australian web
Maxy
 CLIVE ALIVE Event - Wednesday 5th August, Sydney, 6PM, Clock Hotel, Surry Hills, FREE
If you're in Sydney Wednesday afternoon then please feel welcome to join us for our 2nd "CLIVE ALIVE" event. These events aim to bring together Australian film makers, media and advertising types, clients, publishers and Internet experts to focus on the growing Internet video opportunity and "humanising the web".
A very short but informative video of our first event can be seen here
Please see web for more information: http://www.meetup.com/CLIVE-ALIVE/
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Posted by Administrator in Twitter , small business , Public Relations , Promotion , internet marketing , Influence , Humanise , Engagement , Differentiation , australia , Attention
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The A-List (or Aussie J List)
An Aussie online marketers dream list - Australian journalists Twitter list. 
Last night a much more updated and comprehensive list of Australian journalists on Twitter appeared on the web - certainly more interesting and valuable then the content of the Governments website censor list.
What is interesting is how the relationship between your PR department (for most small businesses themselves) has now moved even more into cyberspace.
The Good Old Days of the Long Lunch
In the good old days you or your PR company would write a press release and then send it out to journalists you knew or wanted to know.
Better still you go out to lunch (still my much more preferred approach) or have a beer at the pubs around Surry Hills or Park St (if in Sydney).
Your Press Release would have a great header to get attention, the opening paragraph written to quickly summarise the key statement. The content all written in a way that would be easy to quickly cut and paste if your journo had an urgent deadline and needed 100, 200, 800 words to fill.
As you may know Twitter is limited to just 140 characters - not a lot you can say.
In the same breath - we are getting better at quickly shortening and filtering information.
Creating Brands Online
For a long time conventional media has been a long way behind online's speed of communication - there are a number of reasons - production values and media economics.
In digital marketing to create brand you'd focus at identifying early innovators and influencers who spread the word through to early adopters and so on.
Twitter, Facebook and other online social networking applications have been great tools for being able to rapidly communicate to your followers, create discussion and interest.
The idea being your readers then blog and share your product, news, video or article.
Eventually this groundswell of "interest" hopefully touches an investigative journalist from the mainstream media who then produces an article, a radio or television interview and broadcasts your story to the masses.
Remember, TV is still the 800 pound video guerrilla, radio feels more personal and the lines between online and offline newspapers and magazines are rapidly blurring.
So what happens when the mainstream media moves onto Twitter en masse - The Oprah's , a list of Australia's Top 100 journalists (below).
There have been a few lists of Australian journalists on Twitter (see end of post), but this one is a little different, and much larger.M, Australia’s top 100 Journalists and news media people on Twitter, Apr 2009
I suppose the first thing you do is follow them with the aim of the journalist following you back and the beginning of a relationship.
Stepping in the journos shoes I can imagine their email Twitter alerts as this list becomes popular. It'd be like walking into online equivalent of a high speed desperate and dateless dating service or the only "sheila" at a poorly organised B&S Ball.
Fact is - we are all already bombarded with emails and information. What makes you and your Tweet something that will get cut through and be of interest?
As always, its the first 12 seconds of attention that counts.
Entertain to Inform, get Creative, Personalise the Experience.
The Search for Australia's Top Bloggers and Influencers It's hard enough for the tech savvy to keep up and stay in touch with the latest online trends and developments so you can imagine the challenges for most businesses and the general population. I remember a conference I spoke at in June to about 100 new businesses and asked how many had email (95%) websites (50%) through to Facebook (20%) and Twitter (1%) From an online marketing perspective a majority of new customers begin at Google Search. To rank highly you need to optimise your website for search engines. One of the most important elements of SEO is links coming into your site. The more people write about you the better your website ranking and so on. How do you increase market awareness on the web? Case in hand - for the rollout of our CLIVEvideo Project I've been deeply interested in online social media as an online marketing channel - you know the stats - 1 in 6 minutes online now spent on social sites like Facebook. This interest stems from my old pub days around customer service as a USP with customer word of mouth marketing - for the pub it took time but we ended up with high quality, loyal, repeat customers - a sales force of thousands. From an online perspective the idea of targeting and developing relationships with Internet influencers and early adopters who then help spread the word. In a lot of ways this approach of targeting influencers is not much different than the old PR and publicity days of a relationship with a journalist; reporter or politician but in the new online world of heavily fragmented media - influence is also heavily distributed. The Search The search for Australia's top 100 Australian Bloggers and influencers took me to Meg's Top 100 Aussie Bloggers list a month or so ago. Funny, Meg, the author of the blog has a photo from Illawong looking back over the Woronora River to my childhood home at Como...but I digress. I was keen to see who was blogging and what Australians were blogging about. Australia as a whole hasn't really embraced blogging from a social marketing perspective. I subscribed to a few of the blogs I liked - either via RSS feed or simple daily email using technologies such as Feedburner. For a month or more I then let it breathe - wanting to get a feel for the type of content being written and help understand a few of the writers. One blog I'd been following was Gary Hayes, Director Australian Film, Television and Radio School and LAMPS At some point you feel confident enough to comment on an article and dialogue begins - you move from a consumer of content to a commentator. Forresters Research Last Wednesday Gary featured CLIVE on his blog and was speaking at a conference I was going to the next day. Creativity on the Web Thursday night Chris (Creative Director RidgeFilms and CLIVEvideo project) and I headed into the Museum of Sydney for a debate on creativity and the web put together by old friend Rachel Slattery from Slattery IT. Speakers included - Martin Hosking, Chairman of building and construction collaboration provider Aconex [old BANGitUP and CADX competitor and who just raised $107m two days before the financial market collapse) and founder of art community Redbubble;
- Gary Hayes, Director, Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP);
- Angela Thomas, Lecturer, English Education, University of Sydney;
- Therese Fingleton, Project Manager, Australia Council;
- Jeff Cotter, CTO, SIMMERSION Holdings
The debate was whether the internet is helping unleash creativity. What opportunities are there for the creative on the internet? The enormous potential of user generated content, the new business models and whether the technology is driving or restraining creativity. The debate was good and I was introduced to leading Aussie blogger Lauren Papworth and social media/ Twitter champion (Silkcharm) Twitter I'd been experimenting with Twitter for quiet a while - I have Ubiquity feeding into Twitter which then populates my Facebook status but never really delved into too deeply. Could Twitter be the thought leaders I've been looking for? A search for Australias top Twitters http://www.shiftedpixels.com.au/blog/2008/10/australias-top-50-twitter-influencers.html I check each and look at their webpage and blogs, subscribe to a few and follow. I was very impressed to see Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter. Twitter can connects CEO's directly with their customers - hmm very powerful. I play around and download twirl, hmmm, Twitter is microblogging, like an online SMS broadcast. Gawd, another communications system I have to incorporate It will be interesting to watch this unfold.
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Posted by Administrator in Unique Selling Point , small business , Relationship , Promotion , Marketing , Differentiation , Competitve Advantage , Branding , Branding , Attention , advertising
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A refreshing article on building your business online an article that I will refer to in my next blog/ email newsletter to friends and clients. It's amazing with all the type about press a button type advertising and marketing how many businesses haven't looked in the mirror and asked themselves what is their point of difference ? What is in it for the customer? How does your product or service benefit them? What is your relationship with your customer (and that takes effort) and the market.
If customer attention is scare - then basic supply and demand economics prevails. As more and more people embrace these techniques then like most television advertising the technique becomes less effective - customers filter and don't pay attention. To get attention - you need to entertain - the need for your marketing message to cut through - the message has to be relevant to the customers needs and wants. People buy from people - it is the relationship they have with you and your brand, the face to face, belly to belly that is arguably the most important. Regards
Scott
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