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