Myths and the Internet

There are common myths that are emerging about the internet. While most of these are concerned with the fact that a webpage will drive customers to your business regardless of whether it’s networked to other WebPages, properly linked to industry sites and properly optimised, the major myths are as follows:

1. Myth One: Customer acquisition

This myth is that you can always acquire customers online.

This is very naive. Customer acquisition can be made online, but only if you marry it with a proper marketing program that has a complete communication strategy behind it.

You need offline business and advertising to create awareness of yourself on the internet and to build brand loyalty. Only by giving access to your website, and exciting the customer through awareness and interest so that they will go to the site, will you be able to create customer acquisition.

A website that is not communicated about or to any of your customers sits in absolute space doing nothing. A website that is referenced on all copy, print-advertising, letter-head, invoices, etc. drives customers to inquire and to find out more about you online.

You need the push of online advertising to support your traditional marketing and advertising material, and you need the push of marketing material to take customers to your internet site. You also need to establish a reliable and responsive position with customers. If you have brand awareness and some loyalty, then it is good to get immediate action via the internet. To do this you must be able to respond quickly to any inquiries online so you need trained staff who can respond to e-mails quickly, and you need to be constantly checking your website and inbound e-mails to make certain that you respond quickly to anything the internet presents to you.

The internet can also be useful for competitive strategies, as people who are visiting the website are anonymous and unseen. You must research the competition online, shop online, enquire about particular products and services, and find out how responsive and competitive your competitors are.

You will then have a better idea of what your customer offer and value proposition is. You can then exceed the expectations of your competition, and position yourself to be a better proposition for customers who wish to use your products and services. However, your website should be communicated to them so that they can easily find these products and services online.

The internet can create a fighting brand, which gives you an opportunity to offer products and services at different prices, styles or qualities to different segments of the marketplace, including additional distribution channels. In this way, it can help you to acquire another range of clients and to diversify your business.

The same principles, however, apply to your existing internet site. It must be communicated to clients, existing and potential. It must be capable of being referenced by those who hear about you and want to know more about you, via search engines, etc. Therefore it must be optimised, advertised and it should be promoted through traditional, as well as other e-channels with a distinct brand, image and value proposition.


2. Myth Two: The internet is a great marketing and communication channel

The internet is a great real-time channel that allows customers to get access to information about products and services now. They can do this on a global, national or local basis in what is a crowded global market.

The trouble is that to compete on this basis, because the internet is so successful, you must be up to date with your website. It must be optimised and it should have the latest architecture and navigation design that is appealing to search engines such as Google. Merely having an internet does not create a good marketing and communication channel.

The channel has to be created to overcome the “noise” of all the other channels that attract people who are surfing and watching on the internet. In addition, your site must be so appealing that it will overcome the noise of people who are multi-tasking, listening to music and probably not giving full attention to the site they are looking at. Your site must grab them and it must communicate in shorthand. It must hit the spot with focussed communication, and detail exactly what they can get from your site in minimum time, otherwise they will click off and leave you.

There is a decided change in customer behaviour and how people are receiving and communicating in today’s modern society. Customer behaviour that belonged to the 80s and 90s has been left behind. The new internet generation wants to be able to make decisions quickly. They want to understand the way in which you work as an organisation and the way you serve customers quickly and efficiently, and they want to invest only in those sites that give them the information they need.

This creates security for the future transactions and gives them return on investment for the time they take to find you. If you do not do this, you frustrate them and not only do they click off, they don’t come back, and you lose the opportunity to be attractive to a large number of your consumers. Remember, most of them read the screen, not paper, so the information must be ready for online consumption.

You must develop your site in such a way that you control the information that you give them and give it to them in shorthand very quickly. Organise the navigation so that it meets their expectations and takes them to areas where they can take action and learn about your products and services. You must enable them to contact you and follow-up and do business with you that is explicit and easy online. You must provide evaluation tools that allow them to follow-up with you if they are not satisfied, if they are confused or if they want further information.

In all of this communication, search engines are the hidden manipulators, watching, matching interests to those desired by online consumers through their choice of sites, key words, etc. The trend towards good sites getting all the attention is gathering momentum as search engines become more sophisticated and commercial in gaining revenue from the internet. Those not prepared and ill-equipped will miss out.


3. Myth Three: Good websites Equal Good Marketing

There are many excellent websites around that appeal to the IT industry and to web-designers, and may even appeal to some customers and the owner’s ego. Having a great website with good visuals and great copy that you feel is state of the art is not important if it does not drive customers to your bottom-line.

You must design your website so that it appeals and is competitive with direct online competition, has the right key words, is attractive to the search engines and it optimised and meets the requirements to list in the top 10-20 sites in its field of activity. It may not be the type of site that you will “crow” about, but it has to have those aspects, otherwise you will not get to the customers. It’s about them, not you.


4. Myth Four: Marketers do not understand the internet, therefore web-designers should be used

Marketers understand how communication channels and platforms work. They may not always have the technology, but they can marry the e-Technology with what makes excellent marketing sense and, through research, what makes sense to their customers. Marketers are better qualified to write copy for the website and for customers than IT people, publication relations, arts students, editorial staff or others that engage in the pursuit of literature or word-smithing.

What is needed is focused, accurate and timely information presented in a logical way that leads to a call to action and a sale. Flowery or obtuse language only confuses and frustrates web-users and will leave them wondering why you have engaged in the pursuit of internet communication.

Marketers also understand the need to be compliant online, to be secure, to appeal to search engines and to protect the consumers that visit their site. They always place importance on customer relations, including email contacts, comment sections and customer complaint handling and evaluation.

5. Myth Five: The internet builds clients and loyalty over time

We can undo the loyalty and clients’ attractiveness very easily if the organisation has a website and is not customer responsive. A good website attracts customers, but can also expose poor systems and structures that protect and enhance the website.

If you attract customers and then cannot follow-through with your customer service, then they will rate you poorly where ratings are available, they will leave you for the competition or, with the click of a button, they will just leave.

There is now emerging a new consumer behaviour in which the consumers have control of the marketplace through the click of a mouse. Good marketers understand that. If we intend to service these online customers, we must continually get feedback from the market, we must get our site right, and we must utilise it to constantly improve and innovate online and through all of our marketing support systems. We need to listen and be empathetic to the consumers because they can click us off more so then they ever did with TV or through the flip of a magazine page.

Questions you need to constantly ask are:

• What do they want online? Generally they want a full portfolio of your products and services, or a quick indication of your business before linking to a shopping cart.

• How long will they stay online? They will browse it for 20-30 seconds and then, if they don’t get what they want, they will leave.

• What do they want to see? They want to see products and services presented to them in a manner that suits their particular needs, culture and in the contemporary style of that market segment. You need to talk their language, write their words, use appropriate visuals and navigation processes that appeal to them.

You can check this out and understand it by looking at competitive sites that have done well, and reviewing articles and market research. Whatever you do, you must make it simpatico to the market needs and not develop lots of pictures because you like them, or like lots of copy because you like to write. It must be tailor made for the human behaviour and sentiments that is explicit through those performing sites for specific target markets.

• How good does the site have to be? Provided it has been well constructed, optimised and kept up-to-date by someone who has an understanding of the fusion of marketing and e-commerce, the site will be great. A site that stays unattended and goes stale will cease to be attractive.

The internet is a world of continuous improvement. Because of the profitable returns from internet, you should invest to keep your site up-to-date otherwise it will start to publicise that you are a poor marketer, you company is not competitive and you should be avoided. More importantly, this will be transferred by “word of mouse” across related networks and social media, rating sites, etc., which means the website then becomes a liability.

When businesses engage in marketing in the traditional world, they had to “place” advertising, check to see if it was in the newspaper or magazine, pay the agency or media, review the advertising for future publications, and plan ahead to get key “spots” that attracted attention. Why then do we see “lack of time” to manage and plan websites today, and neglect of improvement and attention to website detail and copy?

The online world will become more expensive to participate in, so investment of both time and money now will create a great return on investment and marketing legacy for those who get it right and manage it now.

Marketing in the Internet Era

Today there is no shortage of products and services, only clients.

Today it’s important to be competitive in more than one aspect of marketing. Traditional marketing and internet marketing are extremely important in this mix but, more importantly, social media as well.
The advent of the internet has expanded the marketing concept, and allowed marketing executives and companies with a marketing driven approach to provide their own communication platform directly to the world, without having to be filtered by trade magazines, trade stands, access to newspapers and public relations, etc.

What has changed in marketing during the internet era?

1. Benefit cost analysis. The greatest change has been the advent of internet activity that allows companies to go directly to their customers and to their market segments online.

Previously, Yellow Pages and other traditional methods of marketing and advertising made it difficult for companies to go directly to their market, and the costs associated with this were extremely high. The traditional sales force was an essential part of any company wishing to market and sell to customers locally, nationally and globally. We see that costly salesforces today are declining and instead, companies are paying more and more attention to online and internet activity, as well as supporting this with direct brochures, newsletters, etc.

The cost benefit of the internet has been addressed in our previous newsletter, but we have many clients that have been spending up to $40 000 with Yellow Pages who can now reach the market, get greater results and much more effectiveness with a budget of $4-8,000 ($700+ a month).

In addition, they can “push” the marketing factors on a variable basis to suit geographical markets and time periods/ scenarios more effectively through the use of Google ‘click’ online advertising and through the constant attention to social media and optimisation of their website, combined with good website design including landing pages.

2. The interface between the internet and marketing has strengthened. In the beginning, around 2003, after Competitive Edge had been in business providing internet services for nearly four years, the marketing activity was still very much divorced from having a website on the internet. The two powerful forces are now joined, and e-Marketing and internet provide a dynamic fusion that gives a strong, powerful “push” and “pull” platform for contact and influencing customers and potential customers, both internationally and locally.

The interface between marketing and the internet has integrated, especially where many of our clients are using the internet as a basis for presenting their credentials, their corporate image, their value proposition and even their products online.

The salesforce as a success “tool”, is becoming more dependent on using the internet as a presentation and influencing device. Hardly a minute goes by without a customer somewhere demanding to know your internet address and being able to look at who you are, what you offer, how you offer it and how good the proposition is online, even if they are in front of your salesforce.

Many of our customers are facing an increasing challenge because the space and connection between marketing and the internet is so close. The major challenge comes in the form of customer complaints and customer relations management. If services are not provided on time, or products provided are faulty or not up to quality, then social media, where people spread the word by mouse, has become an absolute nightmare for companies that cannot perform. Keeping the internet close to, and in sync with your marketing is of the upmost importance today.

Customer relations and the internet factor are also extremely important and part of the new development of marketing in the internet era. Customers demand to be able to locate you ‘on time’ through the internet. They do not want to hang on to phones or listen to voice activated systems. What they want to do is to email you or contact you online or, better still, go to a website where you have provisioned for them to leave a message. This ‘just-in-time’ or “fast-food” contact between customers, suppliers and organisations is becoming critical to those who want to succeed and grow.

The internet is more than another ‘hype’ factor. The internet provides real benefits and drives customers to the bottom-line and, as we can see with an online shop, can actually carry out the full sales, marketing and closing the sale function for you while you are doing other things within your business.

As such, the internet is probably the most powerful strategy and marketing weapon that you have within your organisation and yet, while most of our clients have approached the internet with this viewpoint, many people in business are still leaving the internet out in the “web-land” space.

The internet is a critical tool for creating, transacting (fully or partially), and retaining sales.
The internet has also come into its own as an important companion to marketing, in the way that it provides the communication and selling platform that we mentioned above. Never before have companies had the chance to provide their own individually focused and targeted communication online to the world.

It is a virtual publication platform that you can use to tell the world via blogs, or website changes what you’re about, what you offer, how you offer it, who you offer it to, what the price is, what the terms and conditions are, where you wish to operate and what particular value proposition you can give to those customers through performance.

As such, it should cannibalise a lot of money that was previously spent on publications, advertising and promotions which could never be measured efficiently. It puts advertising and promotion into a domain where you can, through Google analytics, find out exactly how successful you are with the promotion money you spend. You can work out a return on investment and you can develop budgets around that return on investment (ROI) and compare it to the use of a salesforce, the use of third parties, the use of agents, the use of other merchants, etc.

The measurement and performance factor, as mentioned above, is critical to being able to work out how effective your advertising and marketing spend is. The internet has provided this tool for the first time in modern marketing history.
The internet is very cost effective. When you look at the cost of a sales person at the sophisticated sales level, which could be around $200 a call, right through to the Berri Fruit Juice cash van salesmen at $150 a call. The internet can buy you a lot of power at $5-6 per click value. This value of $5-6 per click is very high and, in many cases with key words you could be paying as low as $1-2 per click.

Therefore it provides extremely good value although, over time, this value is going to become less available. For those companies that are in a growth phase, now is the time to start investing in your corporate image and buying online while Google is still going through the throws of growth and the price of click campaigns is extremely good value, and good competitive traffic is still relatively “thin” in many categories.

The internet does change the marketing process. It changes the focus of marketing, and makes marketing more of a “think global” activity. The internet also changes the way in which we speak and communicate as it is a shorthand and fast version of how we use and contact the market: this has changed how people communicate. It often makes it very difficult for the businesses we approach, as many of them are used to writing long articles and communicating with lots of “speak”.

In the internet world, you should be able to deliver your message succinctly and with a focus on content. If you can’t do this, then you will lose in this new era.

How does the internet affect the sales role? Well, we’ve already addressed this in points above, but now it is important to consider how you can place more of your selling online and less of it in a person in a car travelling around meeting customers face to face. While this face to face selling has been effective, and may still be effective for you, and your product or service may demand that particular approach, you have to consider that most clients today do not have the time to meet face to face for 1-1.5 hours. They want to do it as quickly as possible online, and they want to communicate with you and get the message quickly. Therefore, rethink how you sell and how you use the internet to make certain that when your people visit, you get the most return for your sales dollar..

How does the internet affect the market research role? Well, traditionally market research was done face to face, and it was done with clipboards, through focus groups and through questioning clients, and through annual reviews, etc. Those days are gone.

At Competitive Edge, a market research company of nearly 30 years’ standing, we hardly do any research face to face, and most of our research is done via internet or via sending out evaluation forms or quick-format questionnaires that the clients can easily score on scale questions, etc.

However, the internet does provide access to clients and to information that was never available before. Trying to contact 30 clients nationally was a nightmare in previous times, but today you can do that online, via the internet, and get a reply in 2-3 days. More of our clients should be focussed on using the internet for research purposes, and for constantly checking their supply, performance, delivery, corporate position and image online.

How does the internet effect business to business marketing? Well, business to business marketing has never had such a good communication channel as the internet. It is so easy to talk to a client on a weekly or monthly basis and just to keep up-to-date with short sentences or paragraphs, information on product launches, etc. without bothering the client too much or jumping in a car to go and see them.

All of this adds to the effectiveness of client relationship and client contact, which is of paramount importance in business to business marketing. The consultation and relationship sales approach is much easier with the internet than in previous times.

Has the internet killed Direct Mail? Well, Direct Mail was an era in which there was a revolution, because clients could suddenly reach mass markets with specific, persuasive offers that could yield immediate results. It was a cheaper form of communication than advertising in magazines, trade journals, attending large conferences and trade-shows, etc. In its day, it was very cost effective.

However, Direct Mail has a cost which includes postage, graphics, printing, etc. whereas the internet does not. You can easily develop your own direct mail using Photoshop software and, in most cases, you can deliver the mail through your newsletter or even online as part of your internet site. This makes the internet very cost effective and, in this way, it has killed a lot of traditional direct mail. The role of Direct Mail, in many cases, has slipped to second place to the internet.

Today, Direct Mail is used to support the internet, or even to “push” clients to the internet, so in that aspect it is a persuasive tool for getting clients to go to the internet and look at the website, online shop, blogs or articles you have written as a basis for protecting, gaining or maintaining business.
How effective is your benefit selling? Traditionally, Australian companies have engaged in feature selling. They put down as many features as they can about their product or service, and hope that one or two of these will ‘hit the mark’ and get through to the client.

In the internet era, the marketers have to be focussed on benefit selling.

They should do their research and find out, either through face to face approaches or via research techniques, the major benefits clients are looking for in particular sectors and via particular industry groups. Once this is established and the major benefits have been ascertained from the long list of potential benefits that anyone can gain from your product or service, then you are in a stronger position to present these.
Presenting a long list of features on your webpage or through other internet or online facilities such as email campaigns, newsletters, etc. is a waste of time. Clients, as we have said above, want “fast-food” direct results for their online efforts. They want it now and they want it quickly, so you should be able to “nail down” the key/ dominant benefits and deliver them to your clients in a quick and efficient method if you wish to gain from internet activity.

Customer responsive was always an important part of marketing. Customers who get a quick response were always impressed and they always felt that they had received good service. Nothing has changed. The internet era, however, has assisted marketing by making a quick response very easy.

Even if you can’t deal with a client at that time, you can email them back and tell them you have received their message and let them know you will get back them today, or even in two hours time (note emails should be good for only 24 hours). In the letter writing or Direct Mail era, this was extremely difficult. Even in recent times, when telephony improved and the telephone, through voice-activated systems, etc. became a major tool for customer responsiveness and communication, there were blockages with menus, problems with getting through to particular departments, etc. The internet is a great tool in this situation.

The internet, via the email, cuts through all the traffic and goes directly to the desk of the person whom you wish to contact, and develops and nurtures a relationship with the contact/ client. Being responsive has never been easier and you only need two lines on an email to let them know you’re in touch: you have received their message, you’re acting on the proposal, you’re following up on the product, etc. etc. In this way, marketing in the e-Commerce era has really gained from the internet.

Marketing via the internet offers real-time connection with clients and decision makers, as well as giving you value chain connections.

Internet maintains real-time database activities as well. This enables you to quickly locate, via your database, people’s number, email address, or their other details. It also enables you to make an increased number of sales calls and contacts on a regular basis, as you are not writing long letters or trying to deliver mail, you are merely responding on a just-in-time basis, and you can actually run quite numerous call plans for clients.

The use of the internet, however, brings with it some essential key skills that must be practised and revised on a continual basis. These skills include the core marketing essentials and processes that make marketing and conversion from marketing to sales success a reality. These are:

1. Succinct strategic communication.

2. Call to action. Always ask for the order.

3. Product and service portfolio. A range of options for products and service purchase.

4. Customer feedback and contact processes and channels.

5. Customer contact and call programs to ensure that responsiveness it maintained.

6. Continuous improvement and focused activity around products and services. Both on the web and in real time, products and services age more quickly in the internet age.
7. Feedback on customer contact and purchasing decisions and quick changes and adaption to the fast-moving market that we live in.

8. Critical product and service requirements, which includes follow-up on service satisfaction and new product launches.

9. Competitive behaviour online and through service product delivery. You must be able to know what your competitors are doing, and adjust your competitive traditional and online strategies to make sure you retain your competitive edge. If you don’t do this, then your clients may know before you do, via online activity, and go elsewhere.

Customer Retention

Once a sale has been made, the customer is then part of your client base and needs to be communicated to and nurtured so that you do not lose the customer in the future.

Apart from natural changes to the customer’s lifestyle, the customer moving away, or other events that affect the relationship, the organisation should be able to retain the customer for a long period of time, provided they service the customer and provide them with the stock or services that they need.

Customer retention is an important event in the cycle of the sale and in the development of customer preferencing for your brand, product and services as well as in the attainment of loyalty and advocacy which sees them referencing you widely to their networks and friends.

Most organisations do not have in place customer retention systems. Once the sale is made then the sales force is the major thrust for maintaining, retaining and gaining new customers. This means that the customers usually have to ‘find their way’ through the organisation in terms of seeking out products and services, and in maintaining the relationship with the company through transactions.

Customer retention will become most important in the future, and this has already been shown through the development of online sales and marketing, whereby customers are even more remote through the online internet system. In addition, the consolidation of markets and the increasing competition thrown up by online services and organisations, means that the maintenance and protection of market share, which includes the customer base, is an ongoing battlefield.

In retaining the customers the last bastion of customer advocacy and retention is usually the complaint handling division or centre within the organisation. Within small or medium enterprises (SMEs) this is usually done by the office staff or the manager, and in medium companies, again, there may be no complaint handling centre or no complaints system.

Large companies have complaint centres, but these are often dysfunctional and are often very product and service centric. They are used to handle complaints due to system break-downs, due to non-delivery of product and services, because of stuff-ups in accounting procedures, product and contractual arrangements, etc. As a result, retention is secondary in the mind of the customer service representative, and often the idea of their job encompassing customer retention is secondary to them ‘getting it right’ for both the organisation and the system.

In this process the customer suffers, and the organisation often loses customers that are unnecessarily ‘pushed out’ of the organisation because of poor attitudes towards customers, poor response to their enquiry or problems, and lack of respect and recognition of their rights as customers.

Our study, ‘Consumer Sentiments, Emotions and Advocacy NOW’, done in 2009, explicitly shows that the major reasons that customers become dissatisfied and leave organisations are as the chart below demonstrates:

WHAT ORGANISATIONS NEED TO DO BETTER

Source: National Consumer Sentiments, Emotion & Advocacy Now 2009. Copyright © Competitive Edge

The customer complaint handling section of an organisation is the last chance for the organisation to get it right for the customer. Once the customer ceases to deal with the complaint centre and gets angry, upset or just switches brand – which happens in 86% of the cases where there is no satisfaction through complaint resolution, according to our 2009 study – then the customer is ‘lost’ to the organisation and moves to another brand or alternative products and services gained through other means (Do it yourself activities, etc.).

Failure to retain the customer and failure to recognise what is often the ‘last chance scenario’ with customer complains creates huge cost to the organisation. When this customer is lost they not only go to another competitor, who is then empowered through their sales and revenue stream to be even more competitive and to have an even greater client base than your organisation, but they also take with them valuable revenue stream that is lost to your organisation.

In the past, the attitude seemed to be that if they left, we could easily replace them with another customer, and that was the job of the sales force. Today, unfortunately, the sales force is becoming an expensive resource, and many of the sales force are not even directly in touch with the consumers with the growth of middle-man services, agencies, franchises and channel captains in major markets; furnishings, finance/insurance, electronics, computers, food retailing, etc.

The result is that getting to the customer is an additional problem for the sales force, as well as getting time as people are time-poor, and there is also the cost of travel and the resources to underpin the salesperson which is very expensive.

According to a Dartnell survey conducted in the USA as far back as 1992, the support costs for a salesperson were around $14,000, training and development was between $4,000 – $5,000, the average sales revenue salary around $58,000 and in total, the cost of a sales call was calculated at $98, very close to the $100 mark.

Given the passage of time, the cost of the salesperson today is probably in the order of $150-200, when you consider the salesperson to be somebody who could be selling berry fruit-juices from a merchandise truck, or an industrial salesperson visiting clients on a regular basis, or a service based consultant for finance, insurance, etc.

This raises two issues on the cost of the resource expended to replace the customer, verses retention of the customer:

1.   The gap between most of the cost of a complaint centre one hour block, which is estimated between $56-60 according to a recent poll by ourselves, and the cost of a salesperson at between $150-200, is approximately $90-140. This means that when the customer ‘leaves’ you are having to outlay between $90-140 to get another customer to replace them. In addition there is the cost of reach.

2.   A salesperson can take on 660 calls on an average year where they visit retail or wholesales customers, or even when they deliver insurance, finance banking, or handle goods and services at a store level. Even if these figures increase to 800 calls, then after 800 customers you have to add another salesperson to handle the retention level (note: this also includes repeat calls to customers). This is assumes that the customer is not always selling new customers as well, which in that case will reduce the ability to replace customers who have left.

The result is that losing customers through failure to retain them through proper complaint handling procedures is a major problem for organisations, and a major cost to their bottom-line profits.

In our recent study, already referenced in 2009, we found that only 14% of consumers around Australia felt that the customer complaints handling procedures were not properly and adequately addressed within the organisations, and that the ‘customer service’ person often did not have the authority and ability to handle their complaint properly. This means that 86% of the organisations are not properly organised for customer retention. The likelihood of this cost escalating in the future. Especially with the growth of social media, Twitter and other means where people ‘spread the word’ about the organisation to their friends, networks, etc., and through the internet can increase the loss of sales and the turnover of customer affecting or minimising the best ‘bottom line’ performance of organisations.

Churn, or turnover, is never good for an organisation whether it be stock, customers, distributers, etc. This must be addressed by organisations, and quickly.

The first step is to acknowledge that the complaint handling procedures is the last place where customers will do business with your organisation before they leave, often in a disgruntled mood, affecting or discouraging other customers. As such, it is the last chance to get it right and to retain customers who could stay with you for years and years as loyal customers. Again, our studies show that once customers have their complaints handled to their satisfaction, 72% of them return as loyal, and often more loyal, customers to the organisations.

Therefore, organisations should be seeing the complaints handling procedures area not as a cost of $56 an hour where they try to get so many calls handled per hour, and try to limit customers to 5 to 6 minute turnaround time. Not only does this increase the tension, anxiety and lowers the retention rate, but it affects profits (ROI). They should see it as a profit centre where they can retain, gain and maintain customers for the long term.

A customer that’s already dealt with the organisation is liable, applying common sense principles, to purchase more in the short term because they are familiar and trust the organisation and have some degree of customer preference or loyalty to the brands, products and services than a new customer who may be more tentative.

In addition, the new customer is in the field of potential customers, and therefore is an addition to the organisation and will increase bottom-line exponentially, but the customer who is a replacement customer will just maintain status quo. Finally, the bottom line benefit of the customer is the difference between the costs of the sale for the salesperson to replace the customer as against the cost of the call-centre for the retention transaction. It is also the multiplier effect of the transactions and profits associated with those transactions of the customers over time.

The concept of the leaky bucket has been around for years: if you fill the bucket with lots of water and it has many holes in the bottom, then you be putting more water in the top quite often than is necessary because of the holes in the bucket. Increase the holes in the bucket (lack of customer handling procedures and training and development and intent), and the bucket will empty quicker, therefore affecting your bottom-line and giving you lower returns on investment.

Many companies today explain their reduced profits to economic conditions, to lack of rationalisation, poor performing divisions, etc. but the base of everything that we do is the customer.

The customer is the greatest asset in the organisation. If they are not handled properly and you have churn and turnover, and your sales force is trying to replace customers rather than gain market-share from new, additional customers, or gain potential customers from other areas or ‘near’ competitive products and services, then you are risking the bottom line of your organisation.

You can control this result!

There is no doubt that a change in culture is needed to see customer complaint handling procedures, training and development, and the development of proper processes to handle customer complaints as a profit-centred approach to the business.

This is common sense as every part of the organisation, even the accounting division, is involved in trying to get money back to the organisation, retain customers, and increase the bottom-line. In this sense, everybody in the organisation is a sales-person, and everybody must respect and be involved in retaining the customer. Calling them complaint centres or customer service centres is not enough: you need a more definitive statement about what the intent of that organisation is. Customer relation and retention advocacy would be a much more advantageous cluster of words to use.

Time is capital superior to all profits.

Writing Well for the Web

Sourced From
McGovern, Gerry, Killer Web Content. London: A&C Black
Website:www.clickz.com

Getting Started

People read differently on the Web, so you need to write differently for the Web. Surprisingly, very few websites take the time to lay out their content in a way that will maximise its readability. An important point is that it is more difficult to read on a screen than from paper. This means that if you want to be read on the Web, you must write and lay out your content in a simpler, more straightforward manner than you would in print. If you want to ensure that your content has the best chance of being read, focus on:

• Shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, and shorter documents.
• Plentiful use of short, punchy, and descriptive headings and summaries.
• Larger font sizes and sans serif fonts, because they are easier to read.
• Straightforward, factual prose.

FAQS

In what way do people read differently on the Web?

They scan, moving quickly across text, always looking in a hurry for the content they need. They are very fact-orientated. People don’t read on the Web for pleasure – they read to do business, to be educated, to find out something – so they like to read content that gets to the point quickly.

People like reading short documents, with links to more detailed information as appropriate. If a document is long, and people really have no choice but to read it, a significant number of them will print it out. In general, however, long documents tend to go unread.

Why do so many people regard Web content as poor quality?

People don’t trust the content they read on the Web because they come across so many websites with poor publishing standards. The Web gives everyone access to the tools of publishing, but giving someone a word processor does not make them a good writer.

Too many websites lack proper editing standards. They also translate documents that were prepared for print directly to the Web; this may save money in the short term, but if people don’t read the content, it is pointless. Some websites deliberately try to mislead people with their content. All this gives a poor impression to people who use the Web.

Is writing for the Web a difficult skill to learn?

It is not easy to learn how to write well no matter what the medium is. However, writing for the web is about concentrating on the facts. You don’t need flowery prose; instead, you must be able to communicate with really important stuff in as few words as possible. This is not an easy thing to do, but with practise most people can master the basics.

Making it Happen
If you’re not read you’re dead

The connection between writing and reading is one that is not always considered: a surprising number of organisations create vast quantities of content without asking some obvious questions:

• Is anyone interested in reading this content?
• Is it written in a way that is understandable and easy to read?
• How are we going to let people know that we have just published this content?

Less is More

Writing is rarely about quantity, but it should always be about quality. Less is more, particularly on the Web. It is easier to writing 5, 000 words of waffle than 500 words that are succinct but 500 words is what is needed on the Web.

Editing is Essential

One of the primary functions of editing is to get a long draft into shape. As George Orwell put it: ‘ If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it’. We all have pet phrases that we love to put into sentences whenever we can. They may sound good to the writer, but often add nothing to the meaning of what is being communicated. The Web is about functional writing. Get to the point as quickly as you can. Then stop.

Keep it Short

When writing for the Web:

• Documents should rarely be longer than 1, 000 words: 500 to 700 is a good length to aim for.
• Paragraphs should be between 40 to 50 words.
• Try not to let your sentences go over 20 words.

Write for the reader, not for your ego

When writing, always keep in mind who is you are writing for. If it is the sales rep, the technician, the support staff, the customer, the investor? Will they understand what you are writing about? Don’t writing to please yourself – write to please your reader. One mark of a poor writer is the use of big words and convoluted phrases. The good writer is clear and precise.

Focus on the Headings

Headings are important on the Web for two central reasons. First, people scan, so the first thing they often do is to look for headings; if the heading doesn’t attract their attention, then they probably won’t read any further. Second, people use search engines a lot, and the most prominent things in a page of search results are the headings. The heading really has to sell the Web page and convince the person to click for more information.

Writing headings well is an art, but here are a few rules that will help you get the basics right.

• Keep them short. A heading should not be longer than five to eight words.
• Make your point clear. For example ‘Nasdaq crashes to record low’ is more information than ‘Apocalypse now for investors!’. When talking about a severe stock-market downturn.
• Use strong, direct language. Don’t be sensational, but at the same time don’t be vague, and don’t hedge.
• Don’t deceive the reader, for example by using ‘Microsoft’ in a heading just because you think people will be more likely to read it. Remember, the job of the heading is to tell the reader succinctly what is in the document.

Use subheadings

In longer documents it is always a good idea to use subheadings, as they break up the text into the more readable chunks that readers like. Subheadings should be used every five to seven paragraphs.
Summaries: the who, what, where and when

Next to the heading, the summary is the most important piece of text. It should be descriptive, not wandering or indirect. Tell the reader what the document is about, and who, what, where and when the information relates to.

Getting down to write

’No man but a blockhead ever wrote . . . except for money,’ according to Samuel Johnson. Sound advice. Writing is not easy but someone has to do it. The first rule of writing is reading: if you are asked to write a technical paper, read how other people write them. Read how they are written on your own website, on competitors’ websites, in industry journals. Find a style that works well and copy it; use its techniques and approach to structure. Don’t plagiarise, but never feel ashamed of finding quality writing and learning from it.

Learn how to edit

Even if you have an editor, you still want to send them a draft that is well written. Here are a few steps to follow.

• Get a first draft written and don’t throw it away.
• Leave it for a while – have a cup of tea – then print it out, or make the font size larger so the text stands out more.
• Read it as if someone else wrote it. Be severe. Ask questions such as: Is it written in a way that the reader can easily understand it? What is the writer trying to say here? Is this sentence or paragraph necessary? Has the writer covered all the essential facts?
• First drafts are often too long. When preparing the second draft, cut ruthlessly, maybe by as much as half.
• Use your word count carefully. When you are asked to write something, always ask how many words are required. If you are not given a word count then decide on one yourself. Keep it as low as possible.

Explore collaborative writing

Computers and the Internet make collaborative writing far easier, and as a result it is becoming an increasingly popular approach to writing content. Collaborative writing works well if:

• The writers spend time working through the objectives of the writing exercise, and reach agreement on such necessary matters such as style, tone, and length of the piece.
• There is a lot of content to be written that can benefit from the input of multiple disciplines.
• People can be given defined segments of content to write, and/or the different skills of different people can be used, for example when one person understands the subject well, while another is a good writer.
• There are professional processes in place to facilitate collaboration.
• The writers know and respect each other.

Common Mistakes

Not focusing on the needs of the reader

A surprising number of websites fail to consider who their reader is, simply adding content for its own sake. If you ignore the needs of your reader, then your reader will ignore you.

Putting non-Web formats on the Web

Translating a 40-page Word document into HTML is a simple task; persuading someone to read it is another job entirely. Have you ever tried reading an Adobe PDF file on a screen? It’s a painful experience. How many of your customers have read that PowerPoint presentation you translated into HTML?

Putting every piece of content you can find on the Web

The Web is not a dumping ground for content. You might have 50, 000 documents, with only 5, 000 suitable for your website. Publishing the other 45, 000 simply wastes your readers’ time – not something you want to do.

Poor editing

It is almost impossible to create quality content without sending it through a professional editorial process. No matter how good the writer is, their content will always benefit by having it checked over by an editor.

Long, rambling documents

If, after reading the headings and summary, the reader hasn’t grasped what exactly you are trying to communicate, chances are he or she will click the Back button. Online readers are ruthless about their time.

Sources
McGovern, Gerry, Killer Web Content. London: A&C Black
Website:www.clickz.com

When is copying a crime?

As a web-based organisation, and as a consultancy, we have over many years of research and strategy development and web development, been involved in studying our competition and using other sites and magazine articles, publications, university papers etc. as benchmarks for developing our own thoughts and even extending our own thoughts so that we can assist clients and engage in continual learning within Competitive Edge.

Of course, there is a fine line between understanding concepts, undertaking designs and publishing material where there may be ideas and concepts sparked by material, designs and developments already within the marketplace and merely copying these and passing them off as your own creativity and innovation.

Media watch is an organisation on Channel 2 that has grown out of the current practise by many suburban and regional newspapers and even major newspapers of taking articles from publications here and abroad and republishing them with slight changes under the signed hand of a contributing editor. Many of the newspapers are constantly brought to ‘heel’ for this practise.

In the marketplace today, however, there are serious consequences attached to breach of copyright and passing off material as your own or even downright plagiarism.

We have had a recent example of this. We undertook a brief for a New Zealand company and travelled to New Zealand to attend a meeting and to spend time with a client and to outline how he would approach the development of a fairly sophisticated and integrated website for their organisation. They responded by giving us the business and sending a deposit cheque so that we could start on the business.

Unfortunately, over time they did not deliver the material required to get the process underway and within six months they wrote an e-mail saying that they had decided not to proceed and could we send the money back. This is a breach of contract and we’re probably within our rights in not sending the money, however we felt that we’d persist with them and give them more time to see what they needed, and how they could use our services so things were left up in the air.

During this time, unbeknown to us, in the early stages, they had taken a site that we had developed on the mainland here in Victoria and virtually copied the outline of this website and they had even used the same colours, the same navigation headings and without much disguising and, without much disguising, had taken a map that had been developed and even the graphics on the map and placed this on a website designed by ‘unknown hand’. They are now demanding their money back.

This led me to look at what is the situation with copyright, especially web-pages, because some of our clients would not like to have their sites copied completely and we also feel it’s a responsibility of ours to point out to other clients who are looking at competitive activities and benchmarking their sites in the marketplace, the dangers of copying competitive sites or being ‘too close’ to the creative hand and visual representations of their competitors.

We are not against understanding the competition or even benchmarking against the competition, but we are against people taking others concepts and creative and making them their own and passing them off as theirs.

The law in the UK that sets the precedent for which the Commonwealth law and laws in New Zealand and in other Commonwealth countries are drawn, says that if a concept or design or thought or idea is ‘confusingly similar’, then this is breach of copyright and/or plagiarism. This sounds vague, but now the law is becoming very precise and it will not entertain copyright or ‘passing off’ without awarding serious damages or penalties that can include prison, in the most dire circumstances.

Aboriginal artists are one group that have recently been part of this new move and there are now pieces of art that actually have attached to them the requirement that the original artist receive a percentage of any increase in the value of this artwork as it goes through successive owners and auctions/sale over time.

Back to the client that we were talking about. This client has engaged in serious replication of our work, and at no time has acknowledged the source of the design, the creativity or the original thought, and it could be said that they used the briefing stage to gain ideas, and possibly, always had in mind that they would not be using our company as the implementer of those ideas.

Apart from the breach of contract in terms of payment and then withdrawal after many months of the business, and then their demand for repayment of the initial deposit, they have with complete knowledge of a similar site on the mainland, published and utilised their website with borrowed designs, graphics, etc.

If you find that you have competitors copying your website, so that the design, navigations, colours, etc are ‘confusingly similar’ to yours, or directly a plagiarism of major proportions, then we would like you to tell us about them because we would assist you to prosecute and to make sure that these people cease and desist such actions.

If you are thinking about copying a site, then don’t.

If you are employing a web-designer or web-based organisation, with skills such as ours, then ensure that, when you finish the website, that you get a sign-off on the website so that you have ownership, because unless you do this, then the creative aspects and the designs aspects of the site including the total layout and look belong to the original creator or artist just in the same way as a photograph belongs to the original photographer, and you will have no intellectual copyrights in regard to that piece of work.

- David Higginbottom

Saying Thank-You

It takes nothing to say thank-you, except the two words.

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the ability to say thank-you in today’s society. Saying ‘thank-you’ is something you say like ‘G’day’, or ‘Goodbye’ but it doesn’t seem to carry the same impact, and it is not used in relation to the serious acts of good faith and acts that exceed expectations where a thank-you is definitely required.

When you’re in business, I’m sure that all of you will appreciate that there is nothing better than receiving a thank-you for excellent work, or work in which you’ve engaged and excelled to create a maximum benefit and payback for your client.

Yet, many clients still do not know how to say thank-you.

After thirty-two years in business, let me tell you, that when clients say ‘thank-you’ to me they get rewarded handsomely and even over-rewarded, because we work hard for them and we’re constantly motivated to make sure that they succeed. Those people who believe that saying ‘thank-you’ opens the gates for rorts such as overcharging, under-performing, etc, are disillusioned. While this could be a risk of saying ‘thank-you’, the greatest risk is that you demotivate and devalue your work in the eyes of the provider, the sub-contractor, the art-source supplier, etc, and as a consequence you may receive less effort, less interest and within the organisation. There can also be problems motivating individuals to perform on your work.

My advice is that you should think about the "Thank You" phrase when you are trying to do work, especially leading edge work or work that involves serious thought, brain-activity above the ordinary, etc, and consider saying thank-you more often. You will get a great result, you will become important to the supplier, and the person that performs the activities and functions for you, and I’m sure that you’ll be amply rewarded.

After writing this I felt it may be a bit corny for our newsletter. Then I sat in front of the desk of an excellent furniture salesman and heard him say thank you for the order in a demonstrative way. It did not sound corny. It sounded polished, professional and sincere and I know the retailer would have been pleased to hear it. So I published this

- David Higginbottom

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable

This article caught my attention, and I wanted to share it with you.

It is written about transforming your business, but it has wider and more significant application in regard to websites. These, unlike a business, always go through continual transformation, and they need the Purple Cow thinking to be really effective.

For both your business long term, and your success on the Internet, I hope you enjoy this article.

Getting Started

In his book, Seth Godin tells the story about when his family left the city to drive through the countryside and were (initially) excited at the sight of grazing cows. After driving for a few hours however, looking at cows got boring: the only thing that would have been worth their attention, Godin says, would have been a purple cow.

This feeling can be translated to a commercial setting. While the inventors of aspirin, or the frozen pizza, built their fortunes by selling a new product, today customers’ needs are by and large met and already provided for in an increasingly competitive, saturated market. To succeed, one must market a “Purple Cow”, an iPod or a Frappuccino. While the original marketing mix included such “P”s as Price, Product, Position, Publicity, Promotion, Packaging and Permission, the mosti important “P” in the future may prove to be the “Purple Cow”.

Why Read It?

To excel, organisations need to distinguish themselves from the competition: in this book, marketing guru Seth Godin likens the art of being recognised and of leading a market to a cow in a field in the countryside that will only be noticed by a passing driver if it is coloured purple. His book is a manual for creating the remarkable and standing out from the crowd. With customers increasingly satisfied – even spoilt – organisations have to find ways of not just meeting their needs, but exceeding them and finding entirely new ways to deliver value.

Contribution

1. Death of a salesman

Godin’s first contribution is to challenge conventional marketing and public relations wisdom that ascribes success to “share of voice” in standard media streams such as newspaper and television advertising. He highlights that even Coca-Cola’s fantastically expensive adverts do little to sell more cans of soft drinks and argues that the end of what he calls the “TV-Industrial Complex” with the saturation of global communication, places more emphasis on being people’s first choice, rather than simply a close second.

2. Know your business and be passionate about it

By understanding exactly what your business or product is, you can target your marketing more exactly and prioritise tasks. Godin uses most of “Purple Cow” to explore practical examples of remarkable products and services. What they all had in common – from the maker of an internal combustion engine to a publicist for the plastic surgery industry – was a strategic focus on using their unique selling points to meet a previously unexplored market. A market for luxury iced coffees did not exist when Starbucks first marketed its Frappucino”, but by doing something different, they created a profitable product.

Knowing what makes your business and customers tick will allow you more opportunity for success than ever before.

3. Brainstorm and reinvent

Many marketers and salespeople understand the importance of being passionate about their product, but what about developing a product that compels people to make decisions with the same passion? Godin cites salt as an example. For years, it was a commodity manufactured in vast quantities with greater economies of scale but diminishing returns. Manufacturers are increasingly realising the benefits of selling handmade, luxury brands – for instance, those targeted at gourmet restaurants – that add value in new ways and for which they can charge a premium.

By developing radical, maverick products, or by re-inventing old products so that they meet new needs in creative ways, marketing is at its most effective.

Context

The importance of being passionate about your product and of creating remarkable marketing strategies has been discussed by management guru Tom Peters (“The Pursuit of Wow”), and the way ideas travel through populations has been studied by Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point”.

Godin, self-proclaimed ‘agent of change’, argues that most marketers treat these concepts as fads and fall back on tried and tested but boring channel marketing strategies and advertising, hoping that word of mouth will do the rest.

With consumers spoilt for choice in a global market place, learning how to create a “Purple Cow” is essential. In a trouble-beset global economy, the only way to create a truly winning product is to be revolutionary. With increasingly flat, globalised communication, customers reject otherwise decent products, seeking only the most extraordinary and unique.

Source: Business Essential, A&C Black Publishers, 2009.

Further Reading: Seth Godin: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable. London: Penguin, 2005.

Web Thinking is Always Customer Driven

This is a report on web thinking and blockages to successful web performance written recently while visiting the USA and Canada.

“At the time of writing this I am in Canada, having crossed over from the US in the last two days.

I am carrying a small Acer notebook computer, and enjoying the privilege this provides in terms of being able to plan my itinerary online, which includes searching for good hotel rates, getting buses and trains, booking online, and arranging rental cars. I have also been able to stay in touch with the office, finish some reports, and search for areas of interest online as we go.

Wifi is fairly readily available in the major cities and at hotels, but generally unsecured. You can look, but you must go to a FedEx office if you want to make secure bookings, check bank accounts etc.

Wifi should be more secure and more freely available, and if you are in the tourist industry, this is an opportunity for leadership over the competition in the future.

Overall I would say that our websites are superior to those in the USA and Canada where very simple websites persist for many businesses. For others, the websites are poorly designed and do not have the strong promotional ingredients and functionality you would expect from the "home "of Internet and business.

I have made this observation over the past three years, and this year it has been easier to claim a superior position for Australia, probably due to the fact that we are becoming more professional online, even at the trade and small business end.

We know the interest in our e-Success courses has increased dramatically, and the knowledge and creativity of our businesses participating in these programs has also risen substantially in the last two years. Yellow Pages in Canada is struggling, and is advertising on TV. Print generally is suffering, including major newspapers, which continue to search for a new competitive edge for what is a mature and declining life cycle positioning for their industry.

However, I am amazed at how much print, and investment in print advertising there is in North America. This is probably why our web and online capabilities are starting to move ahead of theirs. They are still very reliant on traditional marketing mediums and this shows.

Now to some points I would like to make regarding the frustrations that emerge when you are online dependent for a 3-week period.

The conclusion I have reached for most of the problems with online and e-Commerce solutions is that the accent is on the technology of the Internet, rather than on how the technology can be adapted to human behaviour. Human behaviour in terms of modern marketing has been developed since the 1950s, just after WW2. This is the time when marketing emerged in the US and the modern consumer economy was born. The digital age, technology and web/Internet economy we are now immersed in is only really 10-12 years old.

The result is that the culture of the consumer economy developed by marketing since the ‘60s is well entrenched in terms of consumer sentiments, emotions and habits in the way we search for information, make decisions, and perform transactions.

If the new creative geniuses of the digital age are not conversant, or not well connected with consumer behaviour, or neglect this in preference to technological enhancements, then the technology becomes the focus, and appeal and empathy with consumer behaviour is sacrificed.

You see this in the websites and online information when you are totally dependent on the new source of communication, from information search to online booking and transaction.

Here are some examples:

1. Most websites ask you to enter in booking dates and times. When you go to the pop-up calendars, they are slow. Only the top line appears on the screen and you have to continually scroll down.

If you cannot book on those dates and you return to the home page or booking page, the information you have already entered is lost and you have to begin all over again. Not very consumer friendly, frustrating, and enough to make you go to another site in desperation.


2. With some sites, you are half way through booking and making plans because you have to refer to paperwork, itineraries etc., and the website time expires. Who in their right mind thought of expiring the website without any idea of how long it takes on average to complete the transaction?


3. Some sites have small pop-up ads appearing in the middle of the transactions, which include mandatory fields such as names, emails etc. they take over the screen and force their messages on you. Hardly conducive to doing more business.


4. There seems to be a big problem with price. Most highly ranked Google ads, including those with Click campaigns and paid advertising positions, entice you with price offers. When you go online, you can’t get to the price unless you fill out 4-5 screens of mandatory data, choices of options etc. Even then the price is not firm, as you have to then go through another list of options with value added services and extra prices to get to what you think would be the “joe average” price for the service or product.

At this point you are totally frustrated, and in many cases you not only give up on the site, but you give up on the Internet and reach for a telephone because what you have eventually found is offered is not anywhere near the final solution given online, or the final product or service you want.



You hate the site, you hate the brand, and you hate the web designer for wasting your time. Isn’t the Internet supposed to be fun, time efficient, and full of good solutions that meet your individual needs with the help of the search engine optimisation, descriptors etc.?


5. The telephone. I just said that when you’re frustrated you reach for the telephone but …… the number of sites you go to where you have great difficulty finding the telephone number, or even the contact address, is amazing.

I’ve already stated that the digital age should understand established consumer behaviour since the ‘60s. Yet, just like voice activated complaint systems on the phone, good brands and good companies here are hiding telephone numbers online, either deliberately or through poor programming, or opting for 1800 numbers or call centres which drive consumers mad. A web page that drives consumers away is not the central focus for e-Success business.


6. The staleness of sites is very apparent. Many sites have obviously not been updated, and have old articles, seasonal offers etc. Dating the site by not keeping it up-to-date is a sure-fire way of turning business away.

Simple two or three page sites should be banned. There are far too many in North America of these do-it-yourself high school projects. Sites with flowery details, amateur photos (photos that do not capture what you need to see), without any details and specifics such as a map, an address, a telephone number, specifics on the product or service, price, time frames, performance ratings, and easy-to-use online payment systems. An email would help too.


7. Big business is a big offender. I went to the American Express site as I needed to make contact with them about travellers cheques. Their telephone is unattended on the weekend, and there was no way to email them, and no list of contacts for the East and West Coast, or major cities.

I needed to contact the ANZ Bank in Australia. Online was difficult, so I went to the phone. The operator wanted a whole lot of details from me so my phone bill got to $30 before I could give him the card number I wanted stopped. By the time I over-rode him, I lost signal. An email would have been very simple. Listening and getting essential details from me would have been easier.



There is a great saying at the TD Trust Bank in Canada that all businesses could listen to in terms of consumer behaviour. It says, “There are people on both sides of the counter.” Businesses today seem to be of the opinion that customers are not people, and that consumer behaviour is actually consumer compliance. They don’t listen, they don’t respect clients, and they often treat them like idiots. In the digital age, it is so easy just to make to contact, or to switch to another site. I didn’t call back the ANZ Bank, and I couldn’t email them because their site is poorly designed. Their voice activation didn’t handle my category.


I could go on and on.

When we begin to build new websites/ communication platforms online, or re-enhance old websites, we begin with a consumer brief in the hope that the client understands how their consumers behave. This brief is critical to the success of the site. If they don’t know, we ask leading questions to examine what they need to find out before we develop the site further.

The reason we have e-Commerce and online expertise at Competitive Edge hasn’t changed since we began business in 1980. It is to understand consumer behaviour through research, observation and analysis, develop strategies to create the most competitive appeal to the selected targeted consumer groups, and communicate this effectively so we maintain, gain and retain viable and profitable customers.

Understanding and appealing to consumer behaviour continues to be the key to traditional and e-Commerce marketing success. Programming skills, web development and design, and all facets of the digital communication age are tools to enable this to be achieved with greater time effectiveness, cost efficiency and customer “reach”. They are not the end in themselves, and never will be.”


David Higginbottom

The Benefit of Online Email Campaigns

Around 1985, I met a marketing professional called Vin Jenkins who had been contracted to write a series of small books for Australia Post on the emerging science of direct mail marketing.

I had met Vin when I was at Monash University in Marketing. He asked me to describe and document how I thought direct mail interacted with the other promotional and communication techniques in marketing, and how I saw the relationship of direct marketing to TV, radio, magazine and print, etc. The section I wrote formed part of a published set of books on direct marketing sponsored by Yellow Pages.

When I think back the emerging role of email campaigns is similar to the emerging role of direct mail at that time

Over the last year, we have become very active in running email campaigns for a number of progressive clients in our customer base. We have become involved in many recent campaigns and because of this all our email experience has developed rapidly through suppliers of email databases and contacts in the e-Commerce industry. There is generally not a lot of information available, just like in the early days of direct mail.

What is oblivious is that email campaigns are growing faster and having more influence on direct marketing than direct mail campaigns in the 1990’s.

In addition emails are much more acceptable and widely read than direct mail even in its most progressive marketing days. It’s acceptable to get a 10% readership (quicker and easier to read) and at least a 5% response for an email campaign which compares much more favourably than the better estimates for good direct marketing campaigns, usually around 3% readership and response.

While direct mail in my opinion, is in a mature to declining phase in its life cycle, email marketing is in its infancy and take-off phase in the life cycle and has many contributing years ahead for marketers and savvy SME’s.

For those companies that collect emails, probably in preference to telephone numbers, this technology offers tremendous opportunities at a very cost effective budget, provided it is not treated as direct mail online. It needs copy that is professionally written like good direct mail with a thorough understanding of the target market consumers, their sentiments, and consumer behaviour.

The benefits list below is a combination of my thinking and Rajiv’s thinking, so it is a mixture and fusion of traditional marketing overlaid with today’s technology, and time and cost constraints.

Here’s how we see it:

1. Email campaigns are very cost effective. If you have your own list, they are cheap, cheap, cheap to send. If you don’t, then you can purchase a list of around 16,000 clients selected (sample specific) to your profile and target market for around $2,400 a cost per reach of 15 cents per customer. Much cheaper than the stamp and envelope alone, and guaranteed to get to the reader and get read.

Note: the cost can go up if you want specifically targeted professionals, individuals or difficult to access markets.

If you are using your own email list (customer database), a bounce rate (the rate of emails bouncing back to the server) of 10% is acceptable.

For a purchased list of emails a bounce rate of less than 10% is usual, however the email campaign is costed on the basis of a click through rate of 25% (This means 4,000 customers of the 16,000 customer emails will actually click and visit your website / landing page)

The cost of the purchased emails per click through is 60 cents – still cheaper than the envelope and the stamp.

The primary role of the email campaign is to get the consumer to act on an offer within a short time period. It is not a platform for just attracting attention or building corporate loyalty etc. Its major design is to get a “here and now” (viral) offer on the table in a short and efficient timeframe using emails that have a succinct offer that can be acted on with the click of a mouse (click through) or payment by credit card etc.

Consumer behaviour dictates that when the email is received it is easy to read, short in length, the offer is apparent and concise, and the action required (if they want to take up the offer) is easy and quick to enact, and time frames for response or delivery of the service or goods are acceptable and precise.


3. Emails are not like direct mail where the offer builds and builds, often with a story line. They get straight to the point in the same way as an advertisement with a coupon for a cash back or a prize.


4. Email campaigns can open the door to continual or successive offers based on membership, loyalty, or repeat purchase. They suit all industries, just as direct mail. They can be used for legal services, e-Commerce, insurance, banking, travel, hospitality, lifestyle and wellbeing, health, automotive, real estate, etc. etc.


5. Email campaigns must have professional copy that talks to the individual with some knowledge about the way they think, act and buy. It must have immediate rapport with the reader, but it must talk to them in a personal and individual way so they will not delete it as “another person wanting to sell me something”. They will want to open the email because it has a topic and initial opening line that captures their interest and creates desire.


6. Email campaigns should be run over short time periods. The offer, acceptance and delivery should take no longer than two weeks, and preferably should be concluded within 10 days. Otherwise, why use email, which is a quick response communication tool?


7. It doesn’t matter if everybody emailed does not take up the offer. If the offer is genuine, trustworthy, without gimmicks, and strikes at the needs base of the recipient, then brand reinforcement and interest will strengthen that person’s future relationship with your organization, whether they be an established customer or an emerging/ new customer.

Emails are therefore unique. In our case study it costs 60 cents to get a click through for 4,000 customers, yet all 16,000 customers (another 12,000) get positive reinforcement of brand, product / service and organisational image and credibility.


8. In the past, direct mail response rates of 1.5% - 2% to specific offers were seen as good to excellent. Similarly, email responses of around 3% should be your target, but 5% is achievable and this is considered good to excellent. There is also a “pass on” rate where the email can be forwarded to friends and colleagues.


9. There is no reason why you can’t use a trial an email campaign using your existing customer base, and then once you are satisfied, extend the email campaign to a purchased email database for your specific customer. This way, you can see if your existing customer base can be extended and successfully replicated through email online campaigns.


10. Whatever you do, do not use email campaigns to “go fishing”. They must be Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, give a definite Response and Time result. They must be S.M.A.R.T.

David Higginbottom
Competitive Edge (Asia) Pty Ltd

Juggling the Critical Success Factors For Real Online Results

Google is just over 10 years old since its commercialisation.

During that time, web developers and marketers have been trying to decipher the best approaches and methodology for optimising their position and ranking on Google and associated search engines, the second best being Yahoo in Australia.

Google has, on many occasions, “let the cat out of the bag” by outlining optimum strategies for success on their search engine. A “cat and mouse” affair in which they give enough, but not too much, to let online marketers, web designers and web users into the secrets of capturing the best positions on a search engine.

All the time they are working with a huge globally backed workforce to change the way in which they are gaining revenue streams, delivering services, and maintaining relevance and competitive advantage in the fast moving e-World. You have to get used to the idea that we are always coming from a behind position in trying to utilise this new and marvellous online marketing tool for business optimisation, just-in-time communication and business networking, in addition to the social and community contributions that search engines make.

Just yesterday we were optimising the website design and rebuilding framed websites and websites with strong Flash and visual architecture that appealed to us, but today it will not gain us credibility with Google and other search engines. We have all worked really hard on clean, seamless navigation and good copy with strategic key words that appealed to the search engines and our online customers. We have worked tirelessly with meta tags and linkages to get it right.

We were just getting there when Click campaigns, landing pages and key word density parameters started to invade the new paradigm. We have had to adjust to websites that have good appeal, not only to ourselves, but to our customers. But this was still not enough.

We then began to analyse the best way to deliver key words, titles and copy that was organised to make the search engines position us and rank us on the first page.

We even became “first page conscious” and wanted companies like Competitive Edge to guarantee this position when our stale website came out of the “cold” in its re-incarnated form and began to meet optimum parameters for Google and other search engines. We were not content to hear that we would have to wait 3-4 months for Google to rank us for the new website. We wanted it now.

Unfortunately, the game had escalated and now the copy we wrote is becoming as important as the web design, navigation and optimisation provided usually by outside experts. Our copy, which had been satisfactory for our clients, has now become even more important for the search engines and our linkages have to number in the hundreds. Most of us have dreaded writing copy at any time, but now we really needed help. We have had to update the copy and home page regularly to meet the “new” aspects of the website that the robots, who regularly visit, want to rank in our site.

Our website was becoming a major marketing tool that had to be professionally managed on a weekly basis. Not some site that we did with our cousin, student son or daughter, or the graduate down the road, and forgot about.

We have to watch our domain for competitors who positioned against us, and we have to understand how our site is faring on a regular basis through tracking and monitoring our unique visitors (no longer Clicks), their time of visit, length of visit, pages visited, key words used, how they got to our site, etc.

We now need to make changes and make them fast, so we need a Content Management System that would allow us to post copy, changes and pictures, and present our website in a dynamic and “new faced” manner on a continuous basis. This is becoming difficult, but necessary, because everyone is on the web and they want to see our site, and we need it to sell using phone, email, introductions, referencing, and ready access from a search engine that can find us and rank us for customer convenience and use.

Google is in control and we have to publish, present, blog, Twitter, Utube, and do everything we can to appeal to the social media, online videos, and the new mix of just-in-time multimedia and social media.

This is becoming arduous, but for those who can grasp the critical success factors, there are great rewards. Combined with good web strategies, strong in-house traditional marketing, and a competitive online site, businesses of all sizes are now able to drive customers to their site and to their bottom line in a cost effective manner.

The online is becoming the lifeline for many businesses, and those who cannot keep pace become the businesses that work with the residual traditional markets that are dwindling in size, volume and viability.

What can you do?

Understanding and tracking the success factors, and maintaining a website as an operational and marketing tool on a daily basis is a necessity today if you want to reap the combined rewards of online and traditional marketing. Even traditional marketing relies on online support, and the total organisation requires online efficiency.

The key factors that need to be juggled are numerous, but they can be summarised as follows:

1. A dynamic tracking and monitoring capability, supported by online statistics of your website performance.

2. A comprehensive Content Management System that you can work.

3. Excellent domain names and landing pages that assist target marketing.

4. Continuously improved content, with a great supporting mix of excellent visuals and clean and contemporary site design.

5. Key word analysis, understanding, and support for your core business positioning and value proposition.

6. Clean calls to action that direct the customers to an outcome for their invested 1-2 minutes on your site.

7. Strong, powerful links to your site, with directories and allies and partners.

8. Optimum use of titles and layout to maximise search engine preference.

9. Continual search engine optimisation and refinement. It will never be finished.

10. Competitive analysis of your major competitors in your defined market space.

Welcome to the new e-World where e-Success is earned from real online results obtained by strong, committed competitive and analytical behaviour. The world of web design and strategy supported by professionals who study how the Search Engine (Google) game is played, and when the rules dictate different winning strategies.

Goodbye to the “I have a website” world.

We are always open for business. You can call Competitive Edge or email us if you want to know how to be a better e-Juggler and compete for profitable, viable business online now and in the future.

03 9853 1899 / comedge@comedge.com.au / http://www.comedge.com.au/


Do not fall behind because the game is changing and the challenge is continuous.

Erratic Government Grant Policies Hamper SME Business & Export Growth

One of the greatest inhibitors to growth in Australia is the constantly changing policies at the influential levels of government.

While industries, on the whole, go about their business on a daily basis without any reference to grants, there are a number of companies that can look to government grants and identify these as being influential in achieving success, particularly in exports.

Exports are one of the areas where government is influential. Many countries we deal with have a centralist government policy, or have a history and culture of government with great influence and a high degree of respect in their respective societies. To this end, working with government is an advantage, and one that should be seized on by most Australian businesses contemplating exports to most parts of the world.

The problem with the government, however, has been their oscillating policies between supporting small business and supporting large business. In this uncertainty, medium business usually does quite well, especially those companies in the $20-40 million turnover bracket.

If we include these medium size companies with small business, they are actually the powerhouse of Australia and the future that the government should be looking to. But lately I have noticed that there is a trend back to supporting big business, and forgetting about the small end of town.

This is a pity because every time the government changes policy, it sends businesses confusing messages. This creates inequality for the small and emerging medium size business, and it rewards big business which if examined, apart from the mining industry and certain key sectors, on the whole cannot grow because of the nature of our society today.

I would not have great difficulty stopping people in the street, even those who do not know much about business, and asking them about the future of large companies. Most of the people would (except for mining, telecommunications, and energy) express the view that we are not going to see great numbers of new large companies emerging in our society today. Merger and acquisition is the way to grow because large companies “eat each other up” in their tremendous appetite for quick growth and they are not prepared to “do the time” with entrepreneurial or generic growth and development.

Large organisations feed on the medium and emerging entrepreneurial companies driven from the small and medium size sector. This trend has been accentuated by the growth of the web-based companies that can emerge and grow to a substantial size very quickly. Because of their culture and their strong entrepreneurial base, companies such as these, that embrace new technologies and new market opportunities, are more capable of fast growth than those in the more “constipated” larger organisations where there are many checks and balances on risk, idea generation and the general motivation to follow, invest and achieve new and exciting market growth opportunities.

Where am I going with this?
Well, what I’m saying is that small to medium companies are the powerhouse of the modern society and will continue to be, aided and abetted by online web-based technology. Large companies will be very static and will continue to flourish in our society, but will not be the area where we will see great replication or emergence of new business ventures.

If government wants growth, rather than re-investing most of its successful funding programs in the same companies time after time, then it must push towards where the growth is.

The growth is in the small to medium business (SME) area.

My frustration is not only this, but the frustration that the grants available are being purposely targeted to the large companies, starving this sector of much-needed support and funding at a time when our world economy is under pressure, and at a time when we have many business growth segments in our society that cannot be supported because of this lack of funding.

One good example is in exports. Government departments and agencies at Federal, State, and even local government level, are all dedicated to expanding exports. Austrade has offices that reach out into local government areas, and are often aligned with business development areas created by State Governments. In most grant situations, government ask for export potential or export achievements as part of their funding process.

Many small to medium companies can demonstrate a pathway to exports, and many of them can even demonstrate exports (due to the growth of online e-based commerce) that have added to the bottom line, even in early years of growth.

However, the problem is that under the Export Market Development Grant (EMDG) currently administered by Austrade, many of the small to medium companies can get very little return on funding for their export effort. This inhibits their ability or their desire to go into exports.

I have worked in exports for 32 years, and I find it very disappointing that a company that makes strides to captivate or follow up on export leads, or even to visit markets and create export opportunities, gets very little funding under the current EMDG.

Under this grant, a company gets $10,000 deducted immediately from any export expenditures to pursue export opportunities. If they travel overseas, say to Japan or America, attend a trade fair, follow up with another visit, which is usual in the first year of operation and necessary for business development and relationship creation, then that first $10,000 is easily spent. At this stage, they have received no extra funding. They are at zero return. If they send samples, entertain an inbound visitor in Melbourne (which most of them do not do because they are not very inbound conscious), or they complete another trip overseas within the yearly period stipulated by Austrade, they might get up to $15,000 or $17,000 in eligible EMDG expenditure.

Taking out an odd side trip for a visit, which is usual when most people go overseas, they may be able to claim $15,000. In total, they will be lucky to get 50% of the $5,000 they can claim (remember $10,000 comes off the initial claim), leaving them with $2,500 for their effort.

It is no wonder that small business is disillusioned with the government. Consultants such as ourselves often find it hard to convince small businesses to get proactively involved with exports. It’s no wonder that small business considers that the grant returns are not really substantial, and not worth seeking when, on a daily basis, they are fighting for cash flow, trying to achieve high levels of growth, and trying to stay afloat in their initial growth years despite any huge growth in the actual market segment in which they compete.

Governments should make an exception for small businesses or emerging businesses, and they should make it more lucrative for them to achieve these grants. Large businesses, by the nature of their size, can afford to put $50,000 into an export opportunity, send three staff to a trade show to man the booth etc., and can easily achieve a $25,000 or $30,000 rebate from Austrade, giving them a powerhouse for future export growth based upon their initial investment and export thrust funded with the help of the government.

It is difficult for a small business struggling to get overseas with $15,000 - $20,000, to make this initial leap, and to gain the necessary “beachhead” for export growth.

We are an island. We depend on exports. Exports are essential for our future growth, and we must have exports that are greater than the materials we take out of the ground. We need an export market grant that truly reflects the nature of our business today in Australia, and the tremendous growth that small business creates for Australia today. In the future, it is the SME vision that underpins our growth, not the large end of town consisting of the major corporations.

We also need an emphasis on urban and regional SME growth with creative and contributing grants. By definition, large organisations have had their contribution and should be self-funding.

If you are interested in strategic advice on exports and the Export Market Development Grant, please call us on 03 9853 1899, or email us on: comedge@comedge.com.au