So have Australian organisations followed the trend and built mobile websites?  well to be honest from my experience the answer is no – there is certainly disparity when it comes to the number of consumer-focused mobile websites that actually load properly on phones. Research from Google supports this - 80% of Australian businesses do not have mobile-optimised websites, and many businesses confused having an app as sufficient to having a mobile strategy. 

So with a massive audience out there surfing the internet via their smart phones – here are some statistics to justify budget spend on a mobile site:

• Two in five Australian smartphone owners use their device for search daily, which exceeds the equivalent usage in the UK and Germany.
• For small businesses, 49% of smartphone owners have used their device to research and then call stores, with 45% using their devices to find a shopfront location.
• Top actions people are doing as a result of a smart phone search - people are calling businesses, visiting their websites. One in three have made a web-based purchase from a business as a result of doing a local search. (Source: Ryan Hayward, APAC mobile product marketing manager for Google)

So ask yourself – how can people buy from you if they can’t navigate your website on their smartphone?

I know what I’m going to do - Best Case Scenario’s website is going to go mobile!

Contact me if you are interested in building a mobile website, our consultants have been researching this for some time and have the information to get you started on your way.  

Well the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI) published their research report ‘Senior Marketing Monitor 2011’ early December. Usually I open reports with an air of dread, expecting to see results such as ‘marketing professionals are not valued in the organisation’, ‘marketing budgets are experiencing constant cuts’ etc…  

However, the 365 senior marketers who completed this survey are a pretty positive bunch and hopefully represent most marketing professionals in Australia.  They are certainly more positive about the role and influence of marketing: Most senior marketers (80%) feel positive about the role and influence of marketing in Australia

The good news is that smaller organisations and not for profit will grow marketing budgets the most, with social networking and online advertising as the top communication channels.  It’s obvious they need to remain competitive and are taking positive steps to protect themselves.

Here is a summary of the results taken directly from the research report – to see the entire report visit the AMI web site - http://www.ami.org.au/index.asp

Marketing Budgets

At a total level, we forecast that senior marketers will oversee marketing budget increases of about 3.5% in 2012 (similar to forecasts about 2011 and about half of what was forecast for 2010).

Of the organisations who are expecting an increase (about 38% of all organisations), an average budget increase of nearly 20% is expected. Organisations with smaller turnovers, Retailing, Not for Profit and Professional Services will grow marketing budgets the most. Financial Services and Manufacturing are both budgeting for small marketing budget declines.

Marketing Priorities and Challenges

Measures to increase sales and customer acquisition have been the top marketing priorities for 2011, both being much more of a focus than last year.

Shifts in Communications Channels

The use of social networking, online adverting and direct marketing as communication channels continues to grow, with most marketers having increased usage of these media channels and very few having decreased usage. Traditional media channels such as TV, radio and print advertising are still being supported by a steady proportion of marketers.

Marketing is rated way down the scale, with only 3% saying Marketing is influential and Sales and Product development, engineering in the lead.

What’s happening Marketing Executives?  Are we still thinking tactically and not putting enough strategy into our roles? Is it because we still feel like Marketing is going it alone with the marketing function? (other research findings from Gartner a few years back).  

Well, I appeal to all marketing executives worldwide to change perspective and think about ways to be more influential in your organisation – here are some links to my previous blogs that may help you along the way… I have been going on about this topic for some time now, so it’s dear to my heart, marketing empowerment is key to drive success.

Marketing and Professional Development

Sales First, Marketing Later

Marketing Strategy, Too Busy for it?

I like this concept and have seen it work with some of our clients, however, it does take patience and understanding that this type of marketing may not result in immediate sales – it’s more of a relationship marketing approach and can be used in conjuction with other marketing activities (perhaps ones focused on immediate sales/results).  Over time drip feed marketing will pay off, and ensure your sales pipeline is full.

Here is a very simple of example of how it may be structured:

• Decide on your triggers – it could be simply that as soon as someone opts-in, they go through a series of email touches.
• Decide on your campaigns to match triggers – for example all new opt-ins will get useful free product tips and recommendations.
• Take this a step forward and monitor your prospects behaviour, have specific micro-sites relevant to different products or industry sectors - then track visitor ratings to each micro-site.
• You may then decide to drip feed more relevant content based on content popularity

This is a very simple example, but gives you an idea of how something so simple could prove to be very valuable in terms of creating campaigns that will have an impact!  Happy Drip Feeding!

On behalf of one particular client I study their event data very carefully for common trends regularly – so marketing tactics can be tweaked pretty much immediately depending on the findings.  From a strategic marketing perspective it’s also extremely useful.

My love for Excel Pivots – has shall I say ‘excelled’ (pardon the pun!) – Window 7 has certainly come a long way in terms of Pivots, it’s so much more user friendly and intuitive than ever.

Using event data is just one way of understanding your clients and prospects – it really doesn’t have to be rocket science analysis, keep it simple, use the data you collect on registration such as job title, location etc… and use this to its full potential.

I’m happy to demonstrate to anyone how to do a quick analysis on a Pivot – it will only take 5 minutes!

‘It’s just a sales opportunity for people who have something to sell’

In some cases that is very true, but most people at networking events aren’t really like that – so take the ‘sales persons’ card and just move on!

‘I don’t know anyone – who will I talk to?’

There is no doubt you are not the only person thinking the same, just make sure you have a prepared introduction or go with a networking expert friend or colleague and learn from them, it will become second nature to break the ice.

‘My customers aren’t even there’

Networking shouldn’t be viewed purely as a lead generation exercise, I would say try and find some partners who work in the same industry and share a common market. You’d be surprised how I have generated new business from a contact that wasn’t even a potential client, but a very useful partner.

So next time think of networking as building relationships – not a selling opportunity… I’m telling you it really is the best way to build fruitful relationships.

Let me share with you Best Case Scenario’s very own data cleansing methodology – an actual example used successfully on a client (names have been changed to protect our clients identity).

Please feel free to use this for your own needs, or give us a call to talk through what you are trying to achieve and we can give you some no obligation pointers!

Glossary of Terms

ClientX Data Management Project Scope

-        Data audit – identifying data error types in the system for example – job title’s missing

-        Cleanse both member and non-member data Tier 1 to Tier 4 outside legacy system

-        Customization of fields of Target System e.g. prepare filed mapping document

-        Prepare cleansed data for import into Target System

-        Oversee migration of data into Target System  

-        Ongoing maintenance of data for three months)

Project Benchmark/Metrics- Data Quality

Data quality is a state of completeness, validity, consistency, timeliness and accuracy that makes data appropriate for a specific use.

Data quality pertains to issues such as:

• Accuracy
• Integrity
• Cleanliness
• Correctness
• Completeness
• Consistency

Data Cleansing Methodology

Best Case Scenario will manually cleanse data, since all the errors cannot be automatically cleansed for example, if a contact has left a company.  The chosen method will be planned carefully to achieve the objective of elimination of dirty data.  Project timelines and detail will be released if this proposal is accepted. 

Residual Dirty Data

Achieving 100 percent data cleansing in reality is not possible. Despite all the efforts, there still exists a certain percentage of dirty data. This residual dirty data will be reported, stating the reasons for the failure in data cleansing.

Phase 1 – Client X Customers (Tier 1 & 2) Methodology
Leverage relationships with existing Tier 1 & 2 board/committee members to assist in identifying a ‘data champion’ within an ClientX organisation.

 For example – on average there is 150 contacts in Tier 1 organisations

Due to the large quantities of contacts at Tier 1 in particular – we recommend running a campaign based on requesting and encouraging champions to assign individuals within the organisation that would benefit from ClientX deliverables.   Sending ‘champions’ data sheets full of contacts is a very daunting task and it would be unrealistic to expect this individual to update data on behalf of ClientX.

Best Case Scenario recommends an online campaign, where champions can update contact details directly online as opposed to working with spreadsheets. 

Step 1 - Champion would fill in the basic contact information

Step 2 – Best Case Scenario follow up with contacts for additional ‘profile’ information

Phase 1 (Part B):  Focus on Tier 3 & 4 Members
This would be a more passive cleansing approach based on a series of emails asking contacts to update their profiles.   Assumptions could be made that if:

• Contact email bounced after three emails (i.e three times) then this contact is made inactive.
• Contact whose emails do not bounce, and they do not fill in the profile information these contacts will be called dormant contacts.
• Contact who open emails, but do not complete the profiling– will be called active contacts.  
  
  We can prioritise further cleansing techniques here, for example the group who open emails but do not complete the profiling information – we can telephone these contacts.

PHASE 2 - NON MEMBERS

Conduct a data inventory/audit of all data sources within ClientX of non members (including data outside the legacy system).

• Legacy System
• Pockets of data held within the secretariat
• Alpha database
• Media/PR database
• Non IT members – Government agencies

PHASE 3 - NON MEMBERS (Consolidation of other states e.g. Queensland)

 This will target non-members from other states who have not run their data through the legacy system, contacts we currently do not have access to.  Once Phase 1 & Phase 2 is complete we will address this Phase and discuss a plan on how to approach this.

It’s great to read success stories such as these – this change resulted in an increase of 125% of unique readers and time spent on site increased by 106%.  Of course this was supported by other marketing activities such as a targeted direct mail piece and a follow up call to those industries.  It just goes to show that a simple re-focus such as this returns great results.

So if you are hammering away with a product focused structure on your website, think about an industry focus and a good story to back it, don’t forget your metrics either.

Did you know there is actually a term out there called ‘black hat’ activities?   such as, keyword spamming, comment spamming (take a look at some of my blogs for this), hidden text in all its forms, and even competitor sabotage known as “Google bowling” (buying spammy links for a competitor and then reporting them).

Because SEO firms are compensated for high rankings, often without disclosure of how results were achieved, there’s a big temptation for SEO firms to cheat a little – or a lot – as the “ends justify the means.”

If you are currently working with an SEO vendor then protect yourself by taking the following steps.  

Disclosure of tactics.  Your SEO vendor should be able to provide you with a breakdown of what activities were performed each invoice period. If your vendor is reluctant or unwilling to provide this information, that should be a red flag. It’s a good idea to ask your SEO provider for a report of all links acquired each month so you can do a personal audit.

Know who is performing the work. It’s not uncommon for SEO firms to outsource activities like link building to countries where labor is cheaper. Offshore SEO’s often promise X amount of links for $X, which may come from link farms or comment spam. Your SEO firm should be well informed about the techniques used by third party help, and should always be up front about which activities are sub-contracted.

Don’t fall for the old tricks.  How did you find your SEO firm? Did you reach out to them or did they reach out to you? If you were “spammed” with an unsolicited offer, there’s a good chance the firm has a culture of spam.

So, let’s see if I get any SEO hijackers at the end of this blog

As marketing professionals we really need to invest time in understanding the customer a little more. If you think about it – what actually happens in most campaigns is that it is product driven, the product is created and then marketing have to push it.  In addition any marketing copy is influenced by corporate brand guidelines and sometimes these guidelines are so inwardly focused it neglects who you are really trying to target.

The basic foundation that needs to be in place for successful relationship marketing is to understand the customer by looking at their behaviour, beyond the interaction with your brand.

Relationship marketing means understanding who the targets are, what motivates them, engages them, what they read online and offline and what products they are interested in.  Understanding all of this, will get marketing professionals to a place where they can connect with a customer and engage them with relevant material.