My own piece of the Internet
 
Category: <span>Marketing</span>

Category: Marketing

So what went wrong?

As an IT veteran, I’ve spent many an anxious  night watching terminals waiting for the load to drop, a server to come up, or just looking for meaning in GB’s of log files. It sucks bug time. So I feel sorry for the technicians associated with Click Frenzy who right now are working feverishly to get the servers back up. They would be wondering what hit them and the marketing folks would be caught between congratulating themselves for accidentally making the right call and calling the IT folks to tell them how much money this is costing them. When the …

Will Click Frenzy work?

Inspired by the success of Cyber Monday, the post-Thanksgiving online sale in the USA, an Australian online retailer group have decided to create an Australian version – Click Frenzy. The online sale, which the promoters say will stop a nation, runs on the 20 November. With participants like Myer, Target, Just Jeans, Portmans, Dotti, Dick Smith, Bing Lee, Ted’s Cameras,  SurfStitch, StyleTread, The Iconic, DealsDirect, and Booktopia, Click Frenzy has created a pretty big buzz in the past week with reports in the print and tabloid media. Power Retail, the promoters of Click Frenzy reported that after a profile on A Current Affair, traffic to the Click Frenzy website spiked massively. Click Frenzy is an exciting …

Australian fashion brands and sports dominate Facebook

I was talking with a colleague about the BONDS Facebook page today admiring their 600K+ likes when she challenged me to find another Australian brand with a higher number of likes. I’m happy to say that I did. A few things stood out. Australian fashion brands dominated the rankings. Global surfing brands Quiksilver and Billabong led the charge with over 1 million likes, followed by BONDS. The NRL leads the AFL by around 30 thousand likes. Interestingly, the NRL fan site, my-nrl.com, has slightly more likes than the official NRL site. Holden has over 200K followers, no doubt on the back of …

Online takes work

A small business I provided some advice had launched a website in a space with low competition and high margins, and the results were pretty good for a small investment.  They had knocked up a site, launched some paid search ads, put in some rudimentary processes for managing enquiries, and like the results. The problem was that the site had stopped growing. What was missing was the kind of consistent maintenance and content creation to engage buyers, rank well in Google, and learn from your mistakes. I find many people not familiar with the intricacies of online marketing and ecommerce …

The recipe for online success

When I was just starting out in the web game in the 1990’s, I met a bloke just back from working in London and about to open a restaurant. He wanted to change the way Melbournians ate fine food. There would be no mediocrity. Every ingredient would be individually sourced and the finest available. The staff would approach hospitality as professionals, not as students with a part time job. The sommelier would be a verified expert at pairing the finest wines with the finest food. The venue, whilst humble would be in a great location, have parking and be easily accessible …

Zing is not my thing, what’s wrong with the latest Australia Post campaign

I just saw a new Australia Post ad promoting their parcel delivery services to small to medium businesses in Australia. The ad encourages businesses to “zing their thing” and apart from being a little trite (zing = speed), I liked the ad. It tells the story of a small business that makes Zing and becomes wildly successful. And guess what, they need a flexible delivery service to meet the needs of their rapidly growing business. The ad is backed by a website http://www.zingyourthing.com.au/ which builds on the idea that Zing is every product, every idea, every dream, which is of …

.xxx coincidence or copycat

This morning I noticed that GoDaddy and NetRegistry had almost identical facebook posts. First GoDaddy posted: Then a few hours later NetRegistry posted: Is it just the domain registrar Zeitgeist or is there some copycat marketing going on? .xxx is a curly issue for many in the industry so there is a chance that some market probing (sorry) is underway by both GoDaddy and NetRegistry. However, I have my suspicions that NetRegistry was scratching for relevant content for their Facebook page and were inspired by the big Daddy.

Are uneducated consumers extinct?

The other day I had a healthy argument with an old school marketing guy about uneducated consumers in a commiditised market. His contention was that uneducated consumers still exist online.  Like marks in an old style side show they wander blindly through the buying process and good businesses make good margin from them. This worried me a little.  I think that the Internet has made it so much easier to find information about products and pricing that novice Internet users can become very well informed consumers very quickly. The newbie might not be a gun online marketer but they have …

The web makes every business a media company

I was reading in The New York Times about how Google is now a media company and it struck me that the Internet gives every business the opportunity to be a media business or at least think like a media company. Firstly, what is a media company?  A media company is a business engaged in the production or distribution of media.  Most sales,  leads,  and opportunities result from their media activities. News Ltd is an obvious example of an old style media company trying to make it in a digital world.  Google can be seen as a new style of …

What utilitarianism can teach us about product development

Building something truly useful is a fantasy for most designers, entrepreneurs, and product people. Most will build something that is a reasonable copy of something truly useful and along the way convince themselves that it is gonna be great, that the folks are gonna love it. The truth is that there are very few transformative tools with a genuine utility. Transformative products create a new space for utility by solving a problem that we didn’t know we had. Twitter, Facebook, Google,  Get Satisfaction, Amazon’s EC2, Amazon are just a few businesses that have become an integral part of our lives …