Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: marketing

  • The 360º brand

    “How do I advertise on LinkedIn? Asked a business owner at a recent workshop.

    While I answered that LinkedIn advertising probably isn’t the right path for many small businesses, one of my fellow presenters, Lara Solomon, disagreed and made the point LinkedIn is an important marketing tool.

    There’s no doubt about that as a marketing, rather than an advertising tool, all online channels — including LinkedIn pages — are important to businesses as customers, suppliers and potential staff check the web before doing business with an organisation.

    A good illustration of this was over the weekend when digital marketer, Raz Chorev, called out chicken chain Oporto’s for not training their staff on honouring Foursquare deals. Raz also made a point about censoring web comments which might be the topic of a future post, but really isn’t the issue here.

    Raz’s comments appeared on Twitter, Facebook and on web searches. To their credit, Oporto responded quickly by isolating the damage, explaining their position and learning a lesson on letting their staff know about all the offers they post.

    It isn’t just cranky customers posting on their own sites or any one of the thousands of review services such as Eatablity or Tripadvisor, we’re being judged on the comments of ex-employees, suppliers and even the quality and content of our own online utterings.

    our brand is out there, on line, all the time.

    A surly call centre, missed deliveries or billing mistakes all add up and damage our brands. Eventually, the massed weight of negative comments can overwhelm even the best, most expensive advertising campaign.

    Our brands, both as individuals and our businesses are bigger than just marketing, we have to make sure we are consistently doing the right thing by our customers, suppliers and staff.

    We’re in an era of accountablity which forces us to deliver on our promises. This is not a bad thing.

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  • a lousy little sixpence

    a lousy little sixpence

    A man walks into a bar and shouts “hi, I’m entering Big Phil’s Italian restaurant competition to win a free a pizza in exchange for irritating you fine folk”

    Would you drink with that guy? Or for that matter buy a pizza from Big Phil?

    Yet thousands of people are prepared to give away their online reputations in return for the chance of winning a pizza, getting a free mobile phone or getting the tab picked up at an expensive restaurant. It’s a great testament to the power of freebies.

    It’s a rather quaint that as many bloggers and Twitterarti are prepared to give the last rites to the traditional media channels, some are picking old media’s worst habits of payola and thinly veiled cash, or favours, for comment.

    The worst area for this is in the food blogs where a number of successful bloggers now post more reviews of PR driven freebies than another posts as the big, well funded restaurateurs find these blogs are good alternatives to the crowded review pages in the major newspapers.

    It isn’t just food bloggers though, we see this in the tech, fashion, travel and even the “mommy bloggers” field as enthusiastic PR agencies convince their clients, correctly, that these sites offer motivated and loyal readerships to their clients.

    The really sad thing is that the bloggers don’t need to selling out so totally, not writing about every freebie they’re offered actually increases the value of those they do write about.

    Another point of course is few bloggers live on freebies and in the case of the food bloggers, partaking in the town’s best eateries a couple of times a week is probably going to leave you dead, or at least with a severe case of gout, by 40 anyway.

    So what’s the problem? If a company wants to give something away to someone who is happy to talk about it, isn’t it a win for everybody?

    Maybe, but when you’re regularly taking freebies, the question becomes how many other things you talk about are freebies. More importantly, your reputation is now tied up with the products you are touting. Even worse, your brand becomes tied up with the agendas of public relations agencies in exactly the same way the old mainstream media has been.

    There’s a power inbalance here as well as the old media has it’s mastheads to stand behind. Should there be a falling out between the media outlet and the agencies or their clients, it’s rarely the newspaper, radio or TV station that loses if someone makes a fuss.

    A travel, tech or restaurant reviewer for a major newspaper or magazine can hide behind their employer’s good name and if a corrupt journalist moves on, their name will be quickly forgotten.

    There’s no such luxury for an individual blogger as their site’s credibility is their only asset and their online credibility is entwined with their offline, professional reputation.

    This isn’t to say bloggers or anyone else should take freebies, I’d be an unrealistic hypocrite to suggest that. Free samples and meals go with the territory of having an influential outlet or a big, enthusiastic audience.

    But perhaps it’s time for people to say “no’ to these online competitions that ask you to spam your friends and followers and for successful bloggers, maybe suggesting to some of these PR agencies that their clients would be better served buying advertising space on the sites rather than offering a free meal to later be dressed up as a review.

    Having a big, enthusiastic audience is a fantastic asset and a great achievement to those who’ve built those tribes of followers to their websites and twitter feeds. It’s an asset worth guarding and respecting.

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  • Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets

    An effective web presence that makes the most of traditional marketing, the Internet and social media is essential to for any growing business.

    The Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets workshop brings together three of Australia’s leading Internet and marketing experts; Paul Wallbank, Michelle Gamble and Lara Solomon to reveal the secrets of finding and keeping customers online.

    We’ll be covering how the Internet fits into your marketing plan, setting up an effective web presence and using social media to spread the word about your business.

    Thanks to our corporate supporters, Sensis, we’ll have an iPad to give away to one of our lucky attendees.

    Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets will be held in Sydney on September 28 where Lara, Michelle and Paul will show you how to get a cost effective presence online.

    Registrations are open now for a discounted early bird rate at the Marketing Angels website. Move fast as spaces are limited

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  • The good news difference

    Last week, children from around New South Wales gathered at the Sydney Opera House for The Festival of Choral Music. Over the four days the event is run each year, over 2,000 kids perform in the choirs, bands and ensembles.

    Sitting among the proud parents in the audience on one of the nights, I listened to the positive, enthusiastic and uplifting performances and wondered why we aren’t telling more good news stories.

    We all have positive stories about our businesses and there’s a demand for them; it’s no coincidence two of the most popular Internet clips of the year have been the Old Spice Commercial and Air New Zealand “crazy about rugby” safety video. Both are fun, upbeat and quirky messages.

    The Air New Zealand clip also shows how we can make what’s usually a collection of stern warnings into an entertaining topic. It’s also one of the few flight instruction clips that actually shows where the life jackets are, how the oxygen masks work and clearly explains how to share them with children.

    An entertaining and humorous message is worth a thousand dour and negative lectures. Let’s get some light into what we’re telling the world about ourselves.

    While we can’t afford to buy the NZ All Blacks or hire actors and former NFL players like Isaiah Mustafa, the star of the Old Spice commercial and follow clips taking messages through Twitter, we can be telling our stories through positive and entertaining messages.

    With our websites, newsletters, social media feeds and the traditional marketing and communications channels we no shortage of ways to tell the world what we’re doing; let’s get out and do it.

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  • Five free, easy and essential online business marketing tools

    Five free, easy and essential online business marketing tools

    The web has become the shopping strip of the modern economy, where potential customers see what every business has to offer without leaving their home or office. According to the the Sensis e-business report over 90% of businesses and 70% of consumers now do an online search before buying a product or service.

    So every opportunity to promote your business online has to be grabbed, even if you don’t have a website. Luckily there’s a range of free and easy to use services to help your business be seen online.

    Five of the easiest and most important free services are listed here and it’s best to use all five to help you get the most online visibility for your business.

    Google Places

    The first and most essential service every business needs is Google Places. Having a Places listing puts a business in the Google search results directly below the paid spots at the top of the page.

    It’s a pretty powerful location on the web real estate map and, being free, it’s hard to refuse. Given how Google is by far the most used search engine, a Places listing is essential even if you already have an extensive web site.

    Google Places  allows you to upload logos, pictures, descriptions, and other details which makes it an even greater opportunity to get the message out to your customers. For many smaller business, particularly those in the trades, a Google Places page may be all the web presence they need.

    Facebook Pages

    The marketer’s social media tool of choice, Facebook recently celebrated reaching 500 million users. For businesses, Facebook offers the Pages service which allows you to set up a page for your business.

    Facebook’s greatest advantage is it lets your customers talk directly to you and to each other. It’s an excellent way to bring your fans together and keep track of what’s happening in the marketplace.

    While setting up the page is simple, there are some sophisticated ways you can improve your Facebook presence. Facebook themselves have good tutorials and sites like SEO Moz have good examples of how to get the most from Facebook pages.

    Blogging platforms

    Until recently blogs were used as online diaries, today they have become a flexible, free and easy way to set up a web presence.

    The two biggest free blogging platforms are WordPress and Blogger. WordPress is the more flexible of the two while Blogger is quicker and easier to setup.

    An advantage with using a blogging platform is they are very easy to update and offer far more flexibility and customisation than the other free tools. Keep in mind you can use WordPress on your own website or take up the paid option to use your own domain.

    True Local

    News Limited’s online listing tool is important for Australian businesses not just because it connects with News’ online and offline publishing networks but also for their content sharing agreements with Google, Navman, Yahoo!7 and some of the mobile phone companies. This means a listing on True Local goes onto all of these services.

    True Local offers a number of listing levels ranging from free to $220 a year. Interestingly, News’ Premium service charges for much of what Google Places offers for free, which is one reason why Google is the preferred free site. True Local’s reach in both search, partner sites and offline channels makes it important for business to be listed on the service.

    Sensis Listings

    Telstra’s directory service, Sensis, offers a free Yellow Pages listing which appears in both their online and printed versions as well as Telstra’s online and mobile services. While listing here will mean you’ll get a polite but anxious call from a Sensis sales representative offering you a deal on a Yellow Pages paid ad, it’s still a very important channel given Telstra’s market share.

    As Ken in the comments has noted, Sensis don’t allow you to add a website address to the free listing. While this reduces the effectiveness of a Sensis online listing, it still means your business will appear in Telstra’s online and mobile searches, so it is an important channel to be listed on.

    These five tools are a great help for all businesses, regardless of their size or web presence, and each can be set up within in a hour. You could have all five working for you within a day.

    Get these free tools working for your business so customers can find you on the web.

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