Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • Why online listings are an essential business tool

    Why online listings are an essential business tool

    Online listings with the major search sites are free and effective. Even more importantly, those listings form the basis for many of the location based services that are springing up on Smart Phones. This article originally appeared on the 19 January Smart Company Business Tech Talk column.

    Since Global Positioning System (GPS) equipped smartphones arrived on the market, we’re seeing all kinds of location based phone applications springing up.

    Recently I’ve been playing with two of these services – Foursquare and Urban Spoon to find there are some lessons for businesses in how these products work.

    These services are terrific at telling you where the nearest cafes, service stations or places of interest are, although at the same time I’ve noticed how inaccurate some of the business locations can be.

    Often, particularly in the case of Foursquare, the wrong spot has found its way into the system because customers have taken a guess at the address, added the details while on the way to or from the business or just simply got the location wrong. Which can be awkward, particularly if your competitors are closer to the incorrect location.

    So it’s worthwhile getting your businesses address correct on these services. Fortunately, it isn’t as hard as having to track down every single one of these new services and spend hours plugging your details into them.

    The most important single service is the Google Local Business Centre, as many of these location based services use Google Maps. Every business should be on this already as the listing is free and the information also feeds into Google search results. If your organisation is correctly listed here, it will appear in all Google searches for your product in your neighbourhood.

    Microsoft are in this market too with their Local Listing service which feeds into Bing results in a similar way to Google’s service. Like Google Maps, it’s free and listing only takes a few minutes.

    The traditional advertising medium for most Australian small businesses has been in the Yellow Pages. Sensis also offer a free listing which will get you in their maps and directories (although to get a priority listing you’ll need to pay more).

    So check your details are correct on all these services, it only takes a few minutes and given most customers, particularly in the business-to-business markets, use the web to research potential suppliers you’ll probably pick up a few customers just by having the right details online.

    With mobile internet usage expected to overtake desktop surfing in the next few years, it’s critical your details are correct on these phone applications which customers are going to increasingly rely upon.

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  • How marketing and business are interwined

    Entrepreneur magazine discusses changing your definition of marketing. Dan Kennedy has some good examples of businesses that have used tools such as membership and market positioning to grow, but I’m not sure they can be treated as marketing.

    All of the examples; Starbucks, Disney, Florida timeshares, barbers and gourmet pizza shops illustrate some great business models which is exactly what they are; ways of doing business that engage the customer and sell a better product.

    The marketing aspect is simply telling the story of why the business is better, unique or why it does something so well.

    One of the problems with marketing is it’s often about telling porkies, not about describing the product or why the business is unique. This type of marketing fails when the customer finds they’ve been sucked in.

    In the past, big brands have been able to get around this by using mass media to shout it louder and stronger on the idea that if you repeat the lie often enough, people will believe it.

    Marketing is part of your business DNA, you have to tell your story to get business. The key is to be telling a true story based on your product’s strengths.

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  • The new business tools

    Probably the biggest highlight of a fast, hectic 2009 was November’s X Media Labs in Sydney which illustrated just how the world is changing as a result of new media channels, faster Internet and more powerful computers.

    The organisers of X Media Labs, Brendan Harkin and Megan Elliot, describe it as “a meeting place uniquely designed to assist companies and people get their own creative ideas successfully to market, through concept development, business matching, and direct access to world-class networks of creative professionals.”

    Brendan and Megan held the first event at the Sydney Opera House in 2003 but have since relocated to Shanghai. The Chinese connection was strong with the guest speakers including property developers and social media entrepreneurs.

    Wang Xing, founder of Chinese social networking sites, Fanfou and Xaionai impressed everyone with the size and growth of the Chinese Internet market. It left no doubt where the eyeballs and where the wallets will be as we continue into the 21st Century.

    More challenges were presented by Zheng Xaioping, founder of property developer BAZO, who went through the growth of Chinese cities and the directions government and investors are taking within those cities.

    A local success was Zareh Nalbandian of Sydney’s Animal Logic who showed some behind of the behind the scenes footage of Happy Feet and a US advertising campaign for fast broadband featuring a jet engine assisted shaved rabbit. It illustrated how exciting, quirky and innovative work is being done in Australia.

    To show the US isn’t out for the count, Susan Bonds, president of 42 Entertainment, showed how bringing together many strands of the online digital media tools created a massive alternative reality game for the movie Dark Knight.

    Probably the most exciting presenter was Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin from the University of California’s Santa Monica Nanotechnology Allosphere. Her talk, a version of which is on the TED website, showed the possibilities in the new economy as arts, science and technology come together.

    Not everybody has the resources of the US National Science Endowment, a big movie studio, or the Chinese government to support their projects, but as Brasserie Bread showed a few months back you can create a buzz using some of these tools quickly.

    That’s the challenge for all of us over the Christmas break – to figure out how we can harness the power and opportunities the second decade of the 21st Century is going to present us.

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  • Riding the hype cycle

    Riding the hype cycle

    Despite the Google Phone only existing in a couple of photographs, the device is making headlines as the new “iPhone killer” and there’s no doubt early adopters are asking “should I wait for this new phone?”

    It’s a tough life on the bleeding edge – the life of an early technology adopter features long days breathlessly waiting for the next hyped up product with short periods of extreme disappointment when the latest uber toy fails to live up to the marketing promise.

    To explain how hype works in the tech sector, the consultants at Gartner invented the Hype Cycle.  The cycle explains how a typical product is released in a wave of publicity that drives it to the “peak of inflated expectations”.

    Eventually the bubble pops and the widget plunges into the “trough of disillusionment” where users either abandon it or suffer the taunts of their friends and workmates.

    Over time, those persistent fans find what the widget does well and it begins to crawl up the “slope of enlightenment” as the believers convince others the product really is good for something.

    When enough people accept the widget as the best tool for a certain job it settles on the “plateau of productivity” where it happily sits until a better mousetrap comes along.

    In reality some widgets move faster than others and not all make it over the peaks and plateaus. A look at the 2009 cycle shows some products that have taken a decade to approach the peak of inflated expectations while others have simply been abandoned by their makers or the market before they’ve completed the journey.

    For business owners, most focus on the tools that have reached the plateau of acceptance. This is partly because wasting time on a new device that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to squanders an entrepreneur’s scarcest asset.

    The other main reason for avoiding hyped products is they carry risk and most business owners have enough risk in their lives to satisfy even the most adventurous tech warrior.

    None of that means we shouldn’t be looking at new gadgets and ideas – the world is moving fast and those who don’t adopt new technologies and concepts will be left behind. But just be a bit careful of the hype and unrealistic expectations of what the latest new thing can do for you.

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  • Quality: The essential ingredient

    “We can’t pay for speakers, we have to cut costs!” said the conference organiser when asked if the day’s presenters were being paid for their time.

    Most of the event’s sessions featured speakers who were at best going through the motions. Thankfully no-one on stage had a book, training course or a box set of DVDs to sell.

    The sad thing was the event itself was a great idea and the organisers have a genuine belief and passion for what they are doing, but I’m not sure that came across to the day’s participants.

    What this showed is how important quality raw materials are to a product or service and if you skimp on materials, you end up with an inferior product. in the case of conferences and conventions it’s the speakers who are the materials.

    This is as just as true in any business and if you’re in a market where there are lots of inferior products, and there is no shortage of third rate conferences out there, then you just commoditise your product.

    Every day we see this in the technology industries – cheap, me too products and services that have no differentiation from the competition except on price.

    So it’s worthwhile thinking about the raw materials in your business. Are you providing your customers with a quality product? Or is your only selling proposition cheap, cheap, cheap?

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