Adobe Business Catalyst
Posted on 10. Sep, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing
Adobe Business Catalyst
We have just started playing around with Adobe Business Catalyst, and it is AMAZING! This is a fully integrated ecommerce system that gives you the power of multiple software suites, easily controlled from one central interface.
Faster WordPress – WP Super Cache vs W3 Total Cache
Posted on 03. Sep, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, Web Design, Wordpress
We had a few websites hammered by big traffic recently, so we started playing around with CDNs like Amazon S3 and the like. After getting some pretty good gains from using S3 for video, we thought we would turn to our own website to see if we could increase the load times here.
After getting achingly slow reports from Google Webmaster tools, we realised we could spare a few hours to play around with WordPress to make it go faster. After what seemed like forever hacking around with the .htaccess file and WP Super Cache, we realised that, you know what, there has to be a better way Kevin.
So, like all good scientists, we benchmarked ourselves over at Load Impact. Below is the report we go from them.
Australian Election 2010 Videos – Who is winning the battle?
Posted on 17. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, Election, Marketing
| The Good: Good use of “Testimonial Style” Good location
| The Bad: Does anyone really talk like that? A list of complaints isn’t going to WIN votes
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The 2010 Australian election is less that a week away, so I thought I would have a quick look at who is winning the battle for minds with video. Within the last eight years, across two election cycles, the rise of the internet, youtube and twitter has caused political communicators to change their tactics as they try to adjust to the way people consume media. Julia Gillard was already caught napping when she told Australia we should be “moving forward” over and over again at the election announcement. Twitter lit up with people counting the number of times she had said it. To make matters worse, her advisers don’t seem to care that people were already sick of the phrase before she uttered it.
Traditionally, withing advertising, you have to win the heart, and the mind will follow. Political parties are mostly poor at understanding this, content with listing off each others failures or successes in the hope that viewers are at home playing a game of i-spy. As a further example of how bored Australians have become with the “he-said- she-said” negativity, former Prime Ministerial wannabe Mark Latham and wastobe Kevin Rudd have had more quality air time than the other to contenders.
The Labour party’s video above is an attempt at winning over the hearts of working people in Western Sydney. Western Sydney is a key marginal seat and is being judged by other commentators as a bell-weather for the whole election. It certainly does a good job of engaging the viewer, with a good use of sound and dialogue. However I would question the value of listing complaints, which will probably do more to turn people onto other parties and independents. Another part of the video that doesn’t sit well is the language. All those embedded clauses makes it hard to follow, which takes people away from the message.
| The Good: Great language Easy to follow Positive message
| The Bad: Less engaging than a testimonial No emotional tie ins The message could become saturated
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The Australian Liberal party’s main video above could not have been more of a contrast. Overall the positive message is good, and the way Tony Abbott speaks makes it very easy to follow. However over the course of an election campaign, I don’t know how long a message like this will last. Once everyone understands the main position points of a party, the video could just become background noise. There is also a missed opportunity of giving the viewer something to relate to. A quick look at Liberal Party.TV shows that they don’t have any “testimonial” style videos created. This could become a huge missed opportunity as the election moves into its final days, the message will become saturated, and people will probably start saying “I agree with what the Liberals stand for, but I just don’t like Tony Abbott.”
| The Good: Great use of emotion Great use of “action” Subtle Positive
| The Bad: Light on qual. information Unfortunate use of “move forward”
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The Greens’ main video again uses a completely different style. It is far more subtle, uses far less information, and is the only one to show the “action” part of voting. Even though they have a budget many times smaller than the other parties, the Greens have probably produced the most effective ad. It has some detail in there, it gets the message across clearly, and it has the “real” factor. The voting part of the video may well be critical. Studies into the effect of influence has shown two BIG reasons to show the audience what you want them to do. The first is, unless people can imagine themselves taking that action, they won’t do it. If you want to get someone to alter their behaviour, the best this to do is show someone having a great time doing the new action. Second, you want people to be able to place themselves in the moment of voting, and you want to place the suggestion that they should vote for greens. Otherwise there is no emotional anchor for the action of actually writing down the vote.
The only real problem they may come across is that the video is a little light on information. Whilst it engages the viewers with the main issues of the election, it does not really show what the Greens are going to do about any of them. However, with both of the major parties content to sling rocks at each other, I don’t think they will need to list action points.
As far as the quality of the videos goes, the Greens seem to be ahead. In terms of money spent, we will probably have to wait until the end of the election, however it appears as if Labour, and their trade unions, have it by a nose. How the Greens will benefit from this is, again, something that is yet to be decided.
7 Marketing Blog Posts You Might Not Have Heard Of
Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, SEO, Web Design, blogging, marketing sydney
As we recently wrote on our top blog posts, I thought I would find some of our favourite, but lesser known, posts about Marketing in Australia and post them here for you all to read. You can read about marketing all you like on websites like B&T, Marketing Mag and Mumbrella, but these blogs are the ones that offer unique and interesting insight outside of the mainstream.
Why the media love the Sex Party
Written Bret Treasure over at Free Beer, this is a witty look at Australia’s favourite party. Talking about cynicism, idealism and boredom in the media, this post hits the nail on the head over the political process, in the media, in Australia, especially in the lead up to an election.
More Healthy advertising Needed for McDonalds?
An interesting look at the marketing of McDonalds. McDonald’s has recently taken up a lot of space at Customs House at Circular Quay in Sydney. The playground is part of the new McDonald’s campaign ‘inner child’. The Defectors Blog is a good one to browse when you are feeling low. With their aim to “REVOLUTIONISE MARKETING and change the way we interact with the new empowered and “connected consumer,”” how can you not want to read what they are thinking?
Foursquare in Sydney Australia
Some interesting test ran by Social Media News into the popularity of Foursquare amongst users in Sydney at several locations in Sydney. They found that whilst foursquare is still relatively absent from the majority of the population in Sydney, Its clear Foursquare is getting high usage from Media professionals and business workers.
Applying the Four P’s of Marketing to AdWords
A great post by Reload Media on why you should get back to basics with your adwords campaign. Using the example of an Acoustic Guitar sale, they show how you can cover the four P’s in Google Adwords. They claim that the trick with Search Marketing is to create ads that possess an even balance of creativity and detail about the advertised product/service.
Is it Direct Mail or Junk Mail? Analysis of an inner city mailbox
It seems Chris Maloney is a spirit brother of ours, because his views on Junk Mail could have come from this blog in itself. As we have posted before, what is the point of posting something that is just going to go bin-bound. Over a preiod of one month, Chris received 25% of it was addressed to people who no longer live here and 50% of the mail received was unaddressed. Teh most painful thing about this waste of money is that it takes only a few more minutes of thought and only a small percentage more in costs to make this marketing work! We are with you Chris!
Are Facebook Ads the most effective advertising there is?
Echoing one of our own posts on the use of social media in marketing, Charlie and Business2 looks at a case study of Facebook marketing and how it worked for him. Claiming that Facebook.com is already breaking even on this advertising stream, Charlie showed how Facebook marketing can be targetted and very cost effective. Another great tit bit is that Facebook is not just for kids, as there are more people using it over 40 than under 20.
Crisis Management Means Doing The Right Thing
Brendon over at Tailored goes through some local problems with a positive steroids test at their surf lifesaving club. Brendon does a great job of using the case study to show how anyone can crisis manage just by acknowledging the issue and taking steps to make things right. It seems that even BP could have learned from Brendon.
Our top 9 Blog Posts
Posted on 11. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, SEO, blogging
Seeing as our blog has gone from strength to strength, and now has a fairly strong readership, I thought I would show you, and summarise, our top 9 blog posts;
Online Advertising Comparison – SMH.com.au/Fairfax
We decided to create an ongoing series of posts on the choices available to marketers for online advertising. This post was one of the first we produced and was one of the longest. We also did posts on Stumbleupon and a few other online advertising options. We are still waiting on a response from Reddit, Digg, and anyone from Google Adwords. SMH were the first to get back to us on what it means to be an online medium in the advertising market, and they were certainly one of the most thorough.
Evaluating Content Sharing Methods
We took a look at a few different content sharing methods, and how to use them as a marketer. It was a broad overview, but it seems to have been quite timely for some readers, as it is our second most read post in the last 6 months.
Tough Mudder – A Marketing Case Study
Tough Mudder is every action man’s fantasy. It is a grueling seven mile race through muddy hills, cold water and burning bales of Hay. What started out as part of the Harvard Business School’s Business Plan contest is swiftly becoming a rising star of endurance races in America. During the Business Plan contest, judges felt that getting 500 people to put themselves through hell was a little optimistic. However in our post we walked through the things that really worked for Touch Mudder and how other marketers can learn.
Hidden Pizza Restaurant – A Wasted Opportunity
This was our biggest and most controversial series of posts. We still think it was a wasted opportunity both for Sensis and the pizza market in general. At the moment we are working on our own version, soon to be released. Most of the companies we work for are pulling back on their Yellow Pages advertising basically because of the reasons we outlined in this post.
A Comparison of Social Advertising – Digg, Facebook, Reddit
This was the kick start to our posts on social marketing and how you can use it for any business. Although we did not get ANY comments from the media we studied, we did dig up a lot of case studies. We found enough data to convince us that social media marketing can work and is great value for money. In the same way that businesses are sceptical of setting up a blog, or really starting any conversation with their customers, they are sceptical of social media. They really shouldn’t be.
Free High PR Directory Search Engine
This is a tool we built for us and our clients to search over 400 directories and find the best ones to list in. This is not just from a SEO point of view, but also from a traffic point of view. There are some directories that now give us over a third of all our traffic. As long as the directory is in your niche, and targets the keywords well, there is no reason why you should not try to list in them. We would question the value of spending time listing in more than 10 or 20, especially those that are not ranked well
Marketing Trends for 2010
We wrote a great overview for the marketing trends for this year. Covering mobile marketing, keyword inflation, smartphone apps etc, we went over the lot. One of the things that is certainly coming true this year is adwords cost creep. One of the major reasons for advertisers moving to other media is that the cost of advertising on Google is become prohibitive to all those without very deep pockets. We are hoping that by the end of the year Google will have a solution, but for now, it is just not worth looking at for most advertisers.
8 ways law firms can use social media
We were lucky because this post got picked up by a could of law blogs and it was promoted around the web. Obviously we can actually write well. It also proved the old addage that there is nothing like a list, at least as far as blog posts go. The main aim for the post was to show that even law firms can use social media in their marketing mix. Also social media does not have to be about facebook and getting friends. Linkedin can be used for recruitment and Digg can be used to track industry trends.
10 ways plumbers can improve their direct mail flyers
This post was in response to a swathe of plumbers that started knocking on our door, not just to offer to unblock our drains, but because they are working in a competitive market, and they want to increase their market share. There are a lot of things people can do to increase the conversion rate of their marketing, not just the usual test, test, test. The main thing Plumbers need to do is try something different from their competitors. There are loads of plumbers out there trying to get their slice of the same pie. The best thing you can do is invent your own pie and fish in a different pond.
Cheers to us! – just some of our recent triumphs – ecommerce, SEO, DMOZ
Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing
It has been a crazy year, with so many exciting projects going on, that sometimes it is easy to forget what you have done and how far you have come. So I thought I would launch the week with a small pat on the back for ourselves for some of the major events that have taken place, we have launched and that have rocked our world over the last two or three months.
Baby and Home
We have now launched and gone into SEO mode on the new Baby and Home website. Baby and Home offers some excellent, exclusive, products, for delivery across Australia within ten days. They already stock products like babycubes, Brother Max Bibs and a whole range of other great products. Over the next few months we will be working on building the website profile, ironing out the bugs, and helping add another 40 to 50 products to the website.
DMOZ
We got our first listing in DMOZ!
Product Packaging for Target
We finished our latest round of product packaging for a new product going into Target in the next few months. We actually can’t show you examples here, because it is all still top secret. However, once we are up and running with it, I am sure we will be able to tell you all about it!
We are STILL Hiring
As always we are on the look out for the most creative, most talented graphic designers. In the last 4 months we have taken on another 4 consultants in the areas of SEO and product design. Together, they bring around 80 years of marketing and design experience with them. He hope to expand our range of services offered to our clients, so that we can continue to grow your businesses in ways you probably never dreamed.
Comodo Partner
As part of our ongoing quest to offer the full business service, from conception to initiation, we have partnered with Comodo to offer SSL and ecommerce security products. This now allows us to streamline the build process of your ecommerce store. It also allows us to comfortably advise clients on the right levels of security for their business.
SEO Services
Our continued expansion of SEO services has meant that we now offer the full range of opportunites to best position our clients websites. We have access to our own exclusive Australian directory as well as our own range of SEO products such as directory and article search. We now have over 30 Australian companies relying on us to raise their rankings in search engines.
Sales Conference
Throughout July we took part in the marketing of a sales conference by one of our best clients LSE consulting. Within two day sthe conference was over subscribed, and for a time they considered moving to a new venue. I am sure we will have videos from this event up and running soon!
There is plenty more exciting news coming up! We hope that you will get to be a part of it!
Old Spice Commercial – The Making of a Modern Legend
Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media
If you have been living under a rock, you probably don’t know who the rugged man is above. This is Isiah Mustafa, who is the new hero of the latest Old Spice ad created by Craig Allen and Eric Kallman of Wieden + Kennedy. The video is below.
There is so much about this Old Spice commercial that is amazing. Filmed over three days the video takes our hero from boat to beach to horseback all in one take. How is it put together? Thankfully most of your questions are answered by an interview between the directors and Leo of Twit.
What makes this old spice ad move from great to legend is the follow up. If you visit the old spice You Tube account you will see video responses from Isiah to a massive range of viewer input. Including the creation of Voice Mail thanks to some industrious people at Reddit.
On pretty much every metric this video has worked. It may not make you rush out and buy Old Spice, but it will make you consider it next time you are shopping.
What makes this legendary?
It was the follow up. The fact that the videos created after the inital commercial are just as funny pushes the campaign into over drive. Suddenly the Old Spice brand is engaging. The brand and the videos suddenly become compulsive viewing.
9/10 People Like Brands on Facebook
Posted on 16. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, Social Media
A new survey conducted by Exact Seek has found that 90 percent of people using Facebook have become “fans” of a brand. This virtually proves without a doubt that a balanced, multi channel, integrated marketing program is what every business should be engaging in.
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With success stories like Rita’s Italian Ice how can any business not look at social media as a cost effective method for building their business. What Lorel Marketing Group, the team behind Rita’s, did well was they integrated their online marketing, including their social media stratagy, with their offline.
Facebook Advertising – Find Managers
Posted on 12. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, marketing sydney
Facebook, and for that matter MySpace too, has the stigma of being just for kids and people who have just had a baby/got engaged/married etc. However, its reach has spread beyond its college campus roots of and more and more “C-Level” users are signing on.
We did some analysis of the users of Facebook, and came up with two interesting groups of users;
Facebook marketing group A
Estimated reach: 10,000 people
* who live in Australia
* who live in New South Wales
* between the ages of 25 and 50 inclusive
* business, marketing, sales, marketing sales, management accountant, entrepreneur, marketing manager, accountant, technical support, company director or account manager
* who have graduated from university
Facebook marketing group B
Estimated reach 25,280 people
* who live in Australia
* between the ages of 30 and 50 inclusive
* company director, director, director human resources, director operations, director marketing, director sales, ceo, managing director or managing partner
Both of these groups have a suggested CPC bid of 0.62 – 0.87 USD. That means for less than a dollar per click, you can get your brand in front of some of the highest level business people in Australia. This is great value for money, especially when you see that Google has an average CPC for keywords like management and marketing well over $2.
The reach is certainly nothing to be sniffed at, however is pales in comparison to LinkedIn‘s reach of 117,778 users at the same seniority. However the downside is the suggested CPC bid is $4.93 – $5.81. At a 1% conversion rate, that means a $500 campaign will net you barely one strong lead through LinkedIn, but may net you as much as 8 leads through Facebook. Also, the added benefit of Facebook is you can link up to your “fan” page and start interacting with your targets instantly.
The statistics for Facebook marketing become more and more interesting the more you dig into it. Looking for software engineers based in Sydney?
Estimated reach
2,680 people
* who live in Australia
* who live in Sydney
* who like software, software engineer, software developer or software architect
Social network marketing is becoming more and more slick and mainstream, Colgate used social media as a major part of their launch strategy for their Wisp product.
Are there any more social networking marketing successes out there?
How To Increase Web Traffic & Boost Leads (a dentist’s guide)
Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by Marketing in Marketing, SEO, Web Design
SEO experts seem to claim all the time they know the number one secret to building your position in search engines. Usually you will see them claim that links are the key, or that content is the key, or that site design is the magic tool. However most of them forget one key thing, and that quality traffic is what businesses, especially dentists, need and sometimes having a huge number of links, and building a large website just are not going to bring in the patients. Of course, having great content that is meaningful and helpful will build links and traffic. Also great content could be used once on a blog, and then syndicated through a newsletter, a podcast etc, it does not have to just be a blog.
However, here are 8 tips and ideas to generating quality leads that you may not have considered.
- Build multiple link sources. The above graph shows where this website gets its traffic from. As you can see, referring websites make up almost a third of our traffic. We are always working to get linking, blogging partners to write reviews, write about our articles, or provide an alternative point of view. We are also always working to find businesses that could do with our help in exchange for a link on their website. In fact, if there are any readers out there that want some FREE SEO ANALYSIS, we will do so in exchange for a link. Just comment below with your web address and we will contact you.
- Niche Directories. We are listed a lot of directories, both to get relevant links to our site, but also because they are great traffic builders. Three directories make up about a third of all referring traffic. Don’t just look for directories that give you a free backlink, or claim to be “seo directories”. Look for directories that list businesses in your niche and your local area. Use google to “find dentist list directories” and consider paying for a premium banner. Do not ever pay for a link in a directory that will give you no traffic.
- Video. Consider putting together a short video on your services, on the benefits your clients have gained, on how you are helping save the world from cavities. We have created several videos for clients, and they represent the source of up to a quarter of all the sales leads that come in.
- Industry forums. Four industry forums represent another quarter of all our traffic. We use the forums to build our brand, provide quality advice for people who need marketing help, and to learn what are real concerns of potential clients. Use signatures to intriduce yourself, and provide a key offer or tool that people in those forums might benefit from.
- Engage with other blogs. Blogs need information like the normal newspapers. Why not offer to write a guest post? At least write an insightful comment on something they have written. What about if you offered to allow them to write a guest post. Again there are about 3 or 4 blogs that we work with that contribute a large portion of the traffic for us. Also make sure you use trackbacks on your posts, (this is automatic with WordPress.)
- Engage with traditional media. Send out press releases to your local newspapers. Conduct a survey of your patients and publish the results. Offer support to newspapers in the form of writing about their articles or pointing to their website.
- Social Media. Social media can be a great way to build traffic, but don’t let it guide you in everything you do. The bottom line is, make sure you read reddit, digg and other people’s posts on facebook. Make sure you have a facebook fan page, so that your clients can interact with you. Use social media to find out what are the hot topics, and write about them!
- Newsletters. Some of our clients use newsletters pretty much as their number one way of building traffic. They only send out emails to those that have given their permission, and they use it every month. Each newsletter has content that is important and timely and it drives clients back to their website. As a dentist, you could write about reducing cavities, snoring, teeth grinding and so on.
Do you have a great way to build traffic? Is there something you do that drives clients to your website?