Some interesting and provocative stats. What we say to businesses however is that they to develop a strategy and a systematic approach to harness the power of social media.

Ask yourself this; in the last 2 months, privately or professionally, to research a product or service that you are interested in buying, have you:

• answered a direct mail advertisement (3% of those asked answered yes)
• gone to mainstream media (magazine, radio, television etc) (22% of those asked answered yes)
• looked at print Yellow Pages? (3% of those asked answered yes)
• gone to Google or another search engine? (100% of those asked answered yes. YES 100%!)
• tapped your online social networks and received a website address that you have visited (80% od those asked answered yes)

Search Engines are clearly the primary means of getting found by potential customers.* And 85-90% of search engine visitors don't look past the first page of results. Isn’t it time you stopped reverting to the old traditional methods and seriously engage with a medium that delivers results?

*Social media is fast catching up. To read about social media click here

Optimisation Will Help You Generate More Business Online

Need more compelling reasons to conduct a Search Engine Optimization(SEO) project and to get your business ranking on the top of Google searches?

• 93% of users worldwide use search engines to find websites (Forrester Research).
• More than 92% of searchers never search for brand names (DoubleClick).
• 85-90% of Google users don’t look past the first page of results.
• 87% of people who are ready to buy use the normal (‘natural’ or ‘organic’) results, not the sponsored/paid listings.
• 73% of global chief executives (CEOs, CIO's, etc.), say that they prefer to find out about new products online.
• 100% of customers see the first, second and third results in an organic search. Whereas only 50% see the first result in the sponsored listings (PPC/paid ads). And only 40% see the second paid result, and 30% see the third.

So what are you waiting for??!
 

This short video introduction provides as overview of how Bua Consulting helps clients understand our strategy and our approach to adding value to business by the correct adoption of technology.


 

The extract below is from an excellent article by Ann O'Dea which was in the recent University College Dublin Business Connections magazine. This extract is from http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/15074/special-events/basic-business-rules-still-apply

For clients wishing to read the full article please contact us and we will make our copy of the magazine available to you.

Readers in Ireland may be interested in attending the Digital Landscapes Conference in Dublin on 3 March 2010. For more visit www.ucd.ie/growingireland

Digital Landscapes: Basic business rules still apply

There can be no doubt that existing and emerging technologies can play a major role in business growth, but they are complementary rather than a replacement for sound business strategy and practice, says Prof Damien McLoughlin who chairs the Digital Landscapes conference in March.

Prof Damien McLoughlin of UCD School of Business will be chairing the Digital Landscapes event on March 3, and he cautions against losing perspective when tackling the seemingly complex world of new technologies and trends.

“The whole digital area is exciting and entertaining, probably in equal measure, but I think what is really important is to keep the excitement and entertainment in perspective,” he says. “I think it is changing the business environment in a very fundamental way, but it’s not changing everything, its not changing how we use core tools in management.”

That said, the new digital world has presented business with some fundamental challenges as well as positive changes, he says. “One key area is that it is absolutely impossible now for brands not to engage with the idea of integrity, so we continue to see all sorts of brands – Dove, Lynx, Coca-Cola, Nike, take your pick – being held to account by consumers who are dialoguing with each other about those brands.

“The big challenge for businesses as a result is how to engage in that dialogue. I think there are two ways of doing it. Firstly you have to participate, and secondly you can’t participate in a discussion where you have no credibility. That means that where brands have had practices that are not appropriate, or things they hoped in the past people wouldn’t find out, then they can’t engage honestly in that dialogue.

“That is something we have known for a while, but I think it will become even more widespread,” says McLoughlin. “The best example for me is the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. I think it was very courageous by Unilever to get involved in that. It’s a superb campaign, and it spoke to a certain segment of women in a very positive way. As a father of two daughters, I appreciated the ‘Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does’ message.

“However, today if you go onto YouTube and search for the Campaign for Real Beauty, you’ll find Unilever’s commercials, but you’ll also find a response by a guy called Rye Clifton, pointing out that, while Dove has put out this message about real beauty, the very same company uses a very, very different portrayal of women in their promotion of Lynx (Clifton ends his videos with the tagline ‘Talk to your daughters before Unilever does’). There is a contradiction there and Unilever needs to do something about that.

“Take another example. Innocent sold a part of its business to Coca-Cola recently, and the first thing that happened in a very, very public way was that customers of Innocent – not the shareholders, not the financiers, not the distributors, but the people who buy the product – called the company to account on a company blog where the founders of the company participate in a very real kind of way. I think that’s a good thing, and I think that is the future.”

A positive thing for business, says McLoughlin, is that this new type of dialogue imposes the need to learn new skills. “I’m thinking here about members of senior management whose assistant prints out emails for them to read at home in the evening, who own two mobile phones and that’s it. It’s very difficult for a person like that to appreciate things like Twitter, Facebook and so on. So that’s something businesses are going to have to grasp.”

Segmentation is key

The good news for sound businesses, says McLoughlin, is that many of the basic rules of business still apply. “Segmentation, the absolute core of marketing, and hence the core of growth strategies for businesses, is still as important now as it ever was.

“One of the perceptions is that more information means more power to customers, which means prices falling, but I think as the online phenomenon progresses we are actually seeing something of the opposite.

“We have a whole series of social networking sites – Bebo, Facebook etc – but those companies are not particularly profitable. One of the problems is you can have a Facebook page with your family, your friends and your business contacts on it. But do you necessarily want to have the conversations you have with your family online to be the conversations that you have with your business contacts? That for me is a challenge.”

McLoughlin points instead to LinkedIn’s business model. “What LinkedIn offers is a social networking site for people who wish to be connected to useful business contacts. And guess who out of these sites is making money? It’s LinkedIn. The reason for that is its segmentation strategy – it speaks to a particular need, which is to connect people to other business contacts.”

Ultimately, consumers will engage in, and pay for, what they perceive to be of value, says McLoughlin. He points to the newspaper industry, which is struggling with the online model and how to monetise their content. “Yet you look at the Financial Times, which has little trouble getting people to pay €250 a year for an online subscription. It’s seen as a business expense for an important service. I don’t think in a month of Sundays people will pay that for a generalist daily newspaper. So you’re back to effective segmentation.”

It comes down to looking at the information consumers have, identifying specific needs, and charging accordingly, says McLoughlin. “People will pay for what provides value for them and that’s the same as it always was, whether it’s in the old economy or the new economy. Business should be reassured by that.”

According to research done by Nielsen in October 2009, Australians spend the most time on social networks.

This was reported on in detail in Economist 30 January 2010.



For an interview with the Economist reporter Martin Giles click below.
 

This week we conducted a workshop with an independent film production company with regard to developing an online marketing strategy for their upcoming production. (More on this in future blogs)

While conducting our research prior to the workshop it struck me that the internet, and its potential for innovation, has been under-utilised by the smaller independent production companies in this industry to get a leap on the big players. Having said that there are some notable examples of innovative use of internet to generate hype, awareness and to build community around movies. (By big and small players)

Read the Wired article for more on Indie use of the web (we covered one below)

Below are some good examples from Mainstream and Indie productions:

1. Snakes on a Plane: This movie was perhaps the first to make extensive use of the web. Fans were given access to a Wiki where they could contribute to the script, fans also created posters and short movies online. This created significant hype before the movie was launched. IN addition a telephone campaign was launched where fans could send a semi-personalised message from Samual L Jackson to a number of their choosing.

^{For more go to:}

^{http://snakeplay.pbworks.com/}

2. Cloverfield: More recently the movie Cloverfieldwas supported by an internet campaign that sought to play out the story of the movie in the online world. Characters on the movie had their own blogs that were updated to correspond with important dates in the movie. Fictional products used in the movie were given their own corporate websites and fans were even asked to provide feedback for the development of new products. News postings were also put on YouTube to cover some of the major events in the movie. This was an extremely clever way to build up the sense of anticipation about the movie and was a truly immersive campaign for fans.
The movie also made use of more mainstream ideas such as widgets with embedded video, which were used to create a viral campaign, allowing fans to post the widget on their webpages, blogs and social networking pages.
http://www.moviemarketingmadness.com/blog/2008/01/17/movie-marketing-madness-cloverfield/

http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/

Created websites:
http://www.slusho.jp/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KarNwKx5mGY

http://jamieandteddy.com/

3. Starwreck - Finnish director Timo Vuorensola released a Star Trek/Babylon 5 spoof on his Web site in 2005.
Star Wreck proved to be the beginning of a journey into related short films, fan productions, chat boards, and a role-playing game. Between sales of DVDs, merchandise, and TV rights, the franchise netted upwards of $400,000 — enough to fund his next movie.

See http://www.starwreck.com/ for more

Do you have any good examples to share? Contribute your thoughts in the comments box below.

Bricks and Mortar retailers are building new strategies and tactics to take on e-tailers.
Report from the Economist, 26th November 2009.
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14973087

SHOPPERS on Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in America, which falls on November 27th this year, are notoriously aggressive. Some even start queuing outside stores before dawn to be the first to lay their hands on heavily discounted merchandise. Last year berserk bargain-hunters in the suburbs of New York City trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death. Despite the frenzy at many stores, however, the recession appears to have accelerated the pace at which shoppers are abandoning bricks and mortar in favour of online retailers—e-tailers, in the jargon. So this year Black Friday (so named because it is supposed to put shops into profit for the year) also marks the start of many conventional retailers’ attempts to regain the initiative.

E-commerce holds particular appeal in straitened times as it enables people to compare prices across retailers quickly and easily. Buyers can sometimes avoid local sales taxes online, and shipping is often free. No wonder, then, that online shopping continues to grow even as the offline sort shrinks. In 2008 retail sales grew by a feeble 1% in America and are expected to decline by more than 3% this year, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade body. In contrast, online sales grew by 13% in 2008 to over $141 billion and are predicted to grow by 11% in 2009, according to Forrester, a consultancy.

Online sales now account for 6% of all retail sales in America (up from 5% in 2008) and that figure is expected to reach 8% by 2013. E-commerce is also growing in Europe and Asia, where online sales in 2008 totalled $60 billion and $40 billion, respectively. In Britain, internet shopping now accounts for nearly 4% of total retail sales, according to Planet Retail, a research firm.

Online-only shopping sites such as Amazon and eBay, two e-commerce giants, have thrived in the downturn. Amazon’s sales rose to around $5.5 billion in the third quarter of the year, up by almost 30% from a year before. Listings, chiefly from commercial vendors, have surged so rapidly on eBay that its website briefly crashed on November 21st.

The range of items available online is also growing. Amazon has started selling groceries. Consumer-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble (P&G) are encouraging the sale of things like nappies (diapers) and laundry detergent online. At the opposite extreme, the internet is also being used to sell luxury goods. Fabergé, a defunct jewellery-maker known for its gem-encrusted eggs, relaunched in September. It will not open any shops but will instead operate only online.

The shift in spending to the internet is good news for companies like P&G that lack retail outlets of their own. But it is a big concern for brick-and-mortar retailers, whose prices are often higher than those of e-tailers, since they must bear the extra expense of running stores. Happily, however, conventional retailers are in a better position to fight back than last year, when overstocking forced them to resort to ruinous discounting. Inventories are about 15% lower this year. Some big retailers, such as Saks and Target, have recently reported rising revenues and margins.

The most obvious response to the growth of e-tailing is for conventional retailers to redouble their own efforts online. The online arms of big retailers are performing well, on the whole. Saks, for example, saw online sales rise 9% in the nine months to the end of October while sales in its stores fell by 19%. The company expects online growth to outpace sales in stores for the “foreseeable future”, says Stephen Sadove, its boss.

The concept of “multichannel” shopping, where people can buy the same items from the same retailer in several different ways—online, via their mobile phones and in shops—is gaining ground, and retailers are trying to encourage users of one channel to try another. Growing online traffic may actually increase sales in stores too. According to a spokesman for Macy’s, a department-store chain, every dollar a consumer spends online with Macy’s leads to $5.70 in spending at a Macy’s store within ten days, because consumers learn about other products online and come into stores to look them over before buying them. Many online retailers offer tools that let people locate the nearest outlet that has a given item in stock.

Retailers are also trying make shopping seem fun and exciting to counteract the economic gloom. One common tactic is to set up “pop-up” stores, which appear for a short time before vanishing again, to foster a sense of novelty and urgency. Following the lead of many bricks-and-mortar outfits, eBay recently launched a pop-up in New York where customers could inspect items before ordering them from kiosks.

Shoppers are increasingly looking for an “experience” when they go to stores, says Jack Anderson of Hornall Anderson, a branding and marketing firm, and are no longer interested in purely “transaction-based bricks and mortar stores”. Apple, which encourages customers to try out its devices in its stores, is considered a pioneer of this strategy, and has attracted many imitators. The Walt Disney Company, for example, is rumoured to be redesigning its stores to attract shoppers looking for entertainment, with new features such as “magic mirrors”, which will allow children to play with Disney characters.

Stores are also trying to lure customers by offering services that are not available online. Best Buy, a consumer-electronics retailer, has started selling music lessons along with its musical instruments. Lululemon athletica, which sells sports clothes, offers free yoga classes. The idea is to bring people back to its shops regularly, increasing the likelihood that they will develop the habit of shopping there.

Another great hope is that mobile phones will come to the rescue of conventional retailers. Some consumers already use internet-enabled handsets to shop online. But many analysts think a technology called near-field communication (NFC) might boost sales at stores, by allowing shoppers to scan products with their phones to learn more about them, and then to pay by swiping their phones at the till. Unfortunately, NFC will not be widely available for some time—too late to help harried retailers through Black Friday.

Written by Rieva Lesonsky

Remember the famous Tom Hanks line in the movie A League of Their Own: "There's no crying in baseball"? Apparently, entrepreneurs aren't crying in their beer either. According to a study just released by ThomasNet.com, the online site that connects buyers and sellers globally, "despite challenges that are out of their control," business owners are both optimistic about their abilities to ride out the rest of the economic storm, and also expect to grow this year.

An overwhelming 76 percent of those surveyed in the semi-annual ThomasNet Industry Market Barometer believe the economy will improve by the second quarter of 2010 or sooner. And 35 percent actually expect their businesses to grow this year.

These people are not delusional; over half saw a dip in their businesses in the first half of 2009 (most of them lost customers). But they are determined, as one survey respondent said, not to participate in the recession and to focus instead on changing the way they conduct business.

But the most interesting part of the survey was how these businesses chose to fight their way back to business growth. Most decided to essentially reinvent their sales strategies. To find out more, I spoke with Linda Rigano, executive director of strategic services at ThomasNet. Rigano says 70 percent of the businesses decided to institute new sales tactics, specifically by:

• Increasing online marketing
• Expanding into new markets, particularly internationally
• Exploring new channels of distribution

Nearly 40 percent are tackling the problem by innovating and creating new products.

There's a good lesson here for all of us. As Rigano says, in times as challenging as these, "You can't go back to your old ways." To survive, "you've got to do something different."

Perhaps the easiest way to start reinventing and reinvigorating your company is to take a good look at your Web site. While it's important to have a solid Web site with good content and navigation that's easy to use (as well as a price list, a fact I learned years ago from another ThomasNet survey), Rigano encourages entrepreneurs to develop a strategic online sales plan.

This may sound intimidating, but Rigano says you should look at your offline sales plan and replicate it. For instance, if you were hiring a new salesperson (offline), your first step would be to "identify your business objectives." To help you do that online, ask yourself, "How can my Web site help me meet my business objectives?"

The next step, advises Rigano, is to consider your customers, both existing and potential. Determine where those customers are shopping, what they're looking for, and what actions they take when they find it. Rigano advises that you consider what customers are asking for and find a way to bring it online. Do your customers currently call you? Make sure you list a toll-free number on your site. Do they compare your products to the products of other vendors? Build an online comparison engine that customers can use. Engage in e-commerce? Make sure customers can get a price quote or fill out an online purchase order.

The key is to make it as easy to do business with you online as it is offline, since the more business you conduct online, the lower your overhead is likely to be. If you're selling products, it is crucial you offer an online catalog. In the Market Barometer survey, many respondents decided not to tackle that on their own. Instead, they reported that they focused on their "core strengths" and turned to experts for help creating online catalogs or developing new sales strategies.

How much of a difference can this make? Rigano cited a client who, after posting a new interactive online catalog, saw a 15 percent jump in sales for the year. This client reported that the new online catalog was the single largest contributor to the increase.

Rigano says there are two common mistakes small businesses make when moving some of their business online. The first is not paying attention to metrics. You need to know how many people come to your site, how much time they spend there, what pages they're looking at, and how often they are abandoning their shopping carts. And check your metrics as often as you would check in with your salespeople. The key, according to Rigano, is "to arm your Web site with the same ammunition you would give a real salesperson."

Asking the wrong question may be the second big mistake you make. Too many business owners ask, "What do I want customers to do when they come to my site?" Instead, ask yourself, "What do customers want to do when they come to my site?" and design it accordingly.

This week President Obama noted the important role of small business in leading the nation out of these challenging economic times. If the optimism and strategic thinking of those answering the ThomasNet Market Barometer survey are any indication, better times may be right around the corner.

http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/sales-selling-sales/13271108-1.html

This 2008 presentation from the Zappos Ceo provides some great insights to building a successful company.

Create the right culture, recruit the right people and great customer service for which they are renowned in the US will follow.

Over the last number of years, social media companies, and the tools they have developed, have received ever increasing column inches in the business press. It seems when real news is sparse business columns get used up telling us how the latest social media tool is being used by a large company or a quirky celebrity to do something fuzzy like generate awareness or grow their brand.

Naturally as an internet advisory company, these articles are of interest to us and we are constantly trying out the new technologies mentioned. However when we discuss social media tools with our clients they are not interested in hearing about the new features the latest social media tool offers. Small business wants to know one thing: how can social media add value to my business. The problem with articles on social media is that they don’t address the issues of delivering value to business.

Thankfully this area of the internet is maturing and we are starting to see the emergence of some approaches that promise to deliver value from social media.

The first thing to recognise is that every business is different, with different products and services, and even more importantly with different customers, with different behaviours. To get value from social media a company needs to begin with this understanding.

Forrester Research outlines a simple framework for implementing social media in its latest book “Groundswell”. It is called POST which stands for People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. This is an approach we favour.

People: Begin all social media initiatives by analysing the people. What is your target market? How are your customers segmented? Once you know who they are you can start to understand how they interact on the internet and with social media in particular? Forrester Research has developed a social technographic s ladder to describe customer behaviour in relation to social media. It recognises six types of profiles: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives. You need to understand where your customers fit on the ladder. This will tell you whether they are ready to embrace a social media initiative and, if so, how they are likely to engage with it.
Objectives: What are the business objectives of the social media initiative? Are you looking to build your brand? Do you want to listen to what your customers have to say? Are you looking to generate sales via social media? Forrester lays out five key objectives of social media (all related to interaction with the customer): listening, talking, energising, supporting and embracing.
Strategy: What is your strategy? How do you want to change your relationship with customers as a result of social media? Every business will have different strategies. However every business should have a strategy and a tactical plan outlining how you are going to achieve this strategy?
Technology: Interestingly, and as with all good technology projects, the technology comes last! Only when you know what you want to do with the technology should you begin implementing it. As with all technology implementations, have a good process to ensure you choose the right technology provider and implementer (we recommend developing a functional specification matrix, or at the very least a simple decision matrix (see http://www.bua-tools.com/decision_matrix/).

In conclusion, The POST approach will ensure organisations adopt a business oriented approach to social media that will ensure value is delivered to the organisation. For more on Social Media and the forrester tools outlined above visit www.buaconsulting.com/social_media