Jul 9, 2014 | Change, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Last weekend the local tennis club of which I am a member had an open day. We marketed the day pretty heavily to the local community over the course of a couple of weeks, and got a great turnout. In order to ensure we could follow up, we collected the email addresses of visitors by offering entry to a raffle for a new racquet.
I have just completed transcribing the emails into our system, and considering how we may have done it better. A number of factors were absolutely obvious, and whilst they should not have been a surprise, the extent of the change evident in our collective behaviour was indeed a surprise.
- We asked for phone numbers, but did not specify mobile or landline. Every single number we got, which was every visitor except one, gave us a mobile number, not one landline.
- With one exception, every person, irrespective of age, gave us an email address.
- A quick look at the analytics on the website over the past few weeks shows that just over 76% of the hits have come from mobile devices. Whilst the numbers involved are not huge, the dominance of mobile surprised me.
I read, and talk about the switch to mobile every day, but it has been to date a theoretical fact, something I was aware of, understood, but had not brushed against directly to the extend that the general numbers indicated. Now however, the understanding of the numbers has a very personal dimension, and I have absorbed the lesson rather than just understood it.
Unusually for me I have been at home for the last few weeks, and I have been answering the home phone while my wife is away. In the two weeks, there have been quite a number of calls, every single one a telemarketer.
Why am I paying line rental? It seems it is to give telemarketers access. I think I will cancel the landline, the boss will never notice when she gets home, unless she really likes the sales calls.
Jul 8, 2014 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Success does not happen by accident, it comes from hard work, knowledge, insight and experimentation. In the case of websites there are almost a billion websites live (866k) in July 2014, the billion mark will probably be reached by the 4nd of 2014. This is from the first site, being put up by Tim Berners-Lee in August 1991.
This is a pretty useful universe from which to draw lessons, and we have learnt a lot about what works and what does not.
What works:
- Content that is Interesting and engaging and targeted for a specific group of people will attract their attention, rather than content that is more general in nature .
- Attractive, eye-catching design is essential. Humans are visual animals, design is fundamental to attracting and keeping attention. The more research we do in this area, the more we understand the basic rules, and they are rules that have applied from the dawn of human development. Disregard them at your peril.
- Simplicity. Also essential is a design that enables visitors to find the stuff they are looking for simply and quickly.
- Speed. Low loading speed is penalised by search engines, but more importantly, is penalised by casual viewers, who simply move on.
- SEO. At least basic search engine optimisation is both easy and essential, if you have a great site that cannot be found, nobody wins.
- Competitive. With almost a billion sites, the web is a competitive environment, and you need to be distinctive amongst your competitors. If you are selling machine tools, you need to look like you are the expert in machine tools, not real estate or life insurance, and the relative merits of your site to those of your competitors are important.
- Be there to help, rather than overtly flogging something. Your website is the front door to your business, make sure it invites people in, rather acting like a tout in a sideshow, and alienating almost all who pass.
What does not work, in a word, lots. Complicated, messy, poorly targeted, overtly sales driven sites that lack humanity. Just trawl through the sites of most of our federal governments agencies and departments to see some great examples of what not to do, while trying to be all things to all people. The easiest way to construct a list of “no no’s” is to do the opposite of the list above.
If you follow these simple guides, at least you will be on the right road.
Jul 7, 2014 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
www.thefarmery.com
How we deliver good quality food and water to an urbanised and growing population around the world is the challenge of the 21st century.
We have gone from a largely subsistence existence to a highly urbanised one in 200 years, a “blink” in the context of human evolution, and some would argue that in the process we have lost some of the “connection” to the food we eat, to our collective detriment.
The last few years have seen the beginnings of a movement back to food basics, and a greater interest in the sourcing, preparation and presentation of food. The “Masterchef effect” if you like.
Some consumers are starting to look for the source and provenance of the food they eat, as a way to ensure they are getting both quality and value. It is far from mass market, but not so far from the mainstream.
However, all change starts at the fringes, as a challenge to orthodoxy, and can rapidly become mainstream as the merits of the argument become known. Technology is changing our lives on a daily basis, but to date the manner in which we grow and distribute our fresh produce has been relatively untouched, but the change is now coming at us at warp speed with urban hydroponics and retail being combined in fascinating ways, like The Farmery, and almost all driven by innovative SME’s
Jul 4, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Have you created the best content you can, original, insightful, and engaging, that demonstrates your domain knowledge, but it goes nowhere?
No impact, no interest, even your friends do not read it.
It is a bit like throwing a party and having nobody turn up.
Maybe you forgot to send invitations, after all, psychics are pretty rare, so people need to know the party is on.
Creating the content is just the same, the creation is only a part of the process, you also need to market the content, and having done that successfully, then the content can be judged by the response you get.
So, following are four simple, common sense marketing rules to apply to your precious content.
- Have a strategy that promises to deliver the objectives, creating the content is not enough.
- Use data, not just your gut. The data is freely available, and enormously valuable, use it.
- Learn by doing. The oldest and still the best game in town is to experiment and learn.
- Remember always that creating the content just gets you a ticket to the game, not the automatic right to play, that comes from elsewhere.
Jul 3, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Management, Marketing, Small business
Have you ever been in a conversation where despite the language being clear, the subject of the conversation is absolutely muddled?
I have, many times, and it occurs particularly where there is an individual in the conversation who has a barrow to push, and irrespective of anything else said, responds from the barrow.
Now it is happening every day with websites I see.
The site is talking about themselves, their particular barrow, when those looking for something are not interested in their “news” they are looking for stuff that is in their interests.
B2B sites seem to make some pretty consistent mistakes, talking about:
- The size and geographic reach of their business
- What they have done to shape markets
- Their latest “innovation” which more often than not is just a paint job
- Their great record of corporate social responsibility
- The sustainability steps they have taken.
There are many others, but you get the picture.
By contrast, B2B customers seeking goods and services via the web are looking for:
- Information on how the product or service offered will perform
- Delivery and after sales service arrangements
- Evidence of the expertise claimed
- Technical information on the design and performance parameters
- An open, simple and transparent communication process pre and post sale
And so on.
The marketing challenge is to see your products and services from the perspective of the customers, and potential customers.
To me it seems blindingly obvious, but clearly, a large percentage of B2B web site managers have no idea, and their marketing needs some intelligent thought.
Jul 2, 2014 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Small business
Marketing technology is rapidly taking over from the hit and miss, ad hoc research, customer and prospect management, and performance measurement practices that have dominated to date. This is a particularly critical evolution for small businesses who are generally already behind as the game started.
As time passes, this marketing capability gap, and hence ability to compete with their larger, better resourced competitors is becoming increasingly compromised.
Simple things like having a website, are still beyond many small businesses. Often they give the task of “knocking up” a website to their 15 year old kids or the summer intern, think the job done, and wonder why business does not walk in the door.
According to the ABS, 60% of Australian enterprises of less than 5 employees do not even have a website. The penetration in Agriculture is particularly low, yet Ag is being touted as one of the saviors of the economy post mining boom!
There is clearly a disconnect between economic forecasters sitting in ivory towers, looking at survey data and the reality out in the boonies. Many small businesses in Ag do not have a website, or any digital connectivity for all the same reasons their city brothers do not, but also have the added challenge that access to the web is crap, they can often make a cup of tea while the home page of a searched site launches.
Digital competence is learned, the more you play with it, the more curious you are, the better you get at it. This is counter intuitive to the average 55 year old farmer, who manages risk in a long term, and very organised manner.
Small businesses have wonderful opportunities to compete delivered by technology, the gap created by the economies of scale available to their larger competitors are now increasingly obsolete due to technology, but a new form of gap has emerged, the digital capability gap, that is proving difficult for many to jump.
SME’s often just need some encouragement, a dose of curiosity, and access, then the gap can be rapidly filled.
