CleverNews June 2009
What’s News at CleverLink
What does our local MP Sharon Bird and US President Barack Obama have in common?
It could be a co-incidence, but … while the CleverLink team was working on the new branding (logo, letterhead, business card design and Website) for Sharon Bird, MP for Cunningham, we received an email from the US President Barack Obama asking us for support!
Sharon Bird and her PA, Alison Byrnes, have long recognised the talents of the CleverLink team. Initially, we had the honour of helping Sharon with her website, hosting it, and training her staff in web technology. More recently, we have had the task of refreshing her brand and making it more corporate and vibrant. While many businesses may expect some delay in the decision and approval process when dealing with government agencies, CleverLink team completed the branding project and approval within two weeks… without having a single face-to-face meeting and our client was totally impressed with our work.
So what does this have to do with the US President? As you may know, Barack Obama also utilises the Internet to promote his message and organise supporters. It is well known that he took advantage of the technology at hand. For his predecessors that might have been TV or radio, for Mr Obama online media was key to his campaign success and he continues to use online capabilities to reach his goals.
Business leaders can learn from this to achieve the same for their business. In the email that President Barack Obama sent CleverLink earlier this month, he seeks 100,000 donors to donate $5 or more to support the health care reform campaign. This man is very specific and we salute his clarity and his use of “the right tools at the right time”.
Internet marketing is fast, cheap and so very effective. Make use of it!
There is no doubt that President Obama (or his staff) may read this message as their office would have a Google Alert set up to monitor and manage their reputation online! (If you do – send us your feedback, Mr President!)
And CleverLink can help YOU with your branding, website, online and offline marketing and support you with the right tools to achieve your goals at the right time! Contact Us for an obligation free quote!
Client Spot Light
Hydromet
Hydromet is an ASX listed company who have been a client of CleverLink for almost a decade. This Australian owned industrial residue treatment and recycling company is a pointer of environmental processing technology in Australia because due to its unique treatment and recycling of industrial waste residue it offers an environmental solution to often difficult heavy industry waste disposal problems.
Now, Hydromet are initiating a fantastic new environmental initiative revolving around the recycling of automotive batteries (cars, trucks etc). By forming partnerships across Australia with companies involved in the automotive industry (repairers, batteries sellers, etc), Hydromet have organised drop off points so you can get rid of your old batteries safely, for collection and recycling. They hope to recycle up to 36,000 tonnes per year.
This initiative not only helps our environment, but also the health people in third-world countries who are recycling illegally exported old batteries by hand and suffering the lifethreatening consequences of lead poisoning. To find out more go to www.hydromet.com.au
If you would like CleverLink to help you with your website or other marketing, please contact us today
Up Coming Events
Why not join us and reap the rewards.
Call today on
(02) 4284 3600 or email
service@cleverlink.com.au to book your place and experience all this in an environment of knowledge, encouragement and support!
Business Expresso : Thursday 30th July 2009 will be our 7th meeting
If you’re in business, whether you’re an owner or key employee you are welcome to join us. We guarantee this think-tank is an intensely valuable and effective way to generate big ideas, leverage resources, discuss strategies and take your business from warm to scorching!
Prepare to be heard, to share your knowledge and to make real breakthroughs with the help of your peers. We would love to see your there!
Latte, chai tea & cappuccino, two kinds of profiterole and lively conversation…
If you’re in business, whether you’re an owner or key employee, you are welcome to join us. We guarantee this think-tank is an intensely valuable and effective way to generate big ideas, leverage resources, discuss strategies and take your business from warm to scorching!
So come along and prepare to be heard, to share your knowledge and to make real breakthroughs with the help of your peers. We would love to see your there!
We had a great rollout to our latest Business Expresso. Almost every seat was taken and the conversation this month revolved around ‘Innovation’. What it is and how to develop it.
Over coffee and Baker Street’s gourmet sweets, representatives from the local business community, including the big end of town (Access Business Lawyers, Horizon Credit Union, National Australia Bank, Fenton & Associates …), shared ideas and proposed solutions for innovation in the present economic climate; plenty food for thought!
If you would like to join us for our next Business Expresso - on 30th July –it’s never too early to reserve a seat! Numbers are limited, so reserve your spot NOW.
Power Words
Do your words create sales?
Persuasion, influence and your ability to communicate with pictures will always be at the foundation of your sales conversation success.
When you write marketing materials, your job is to communicate why your product and service meet your markets specific needs. And often complex services and products need to be “converted into pictures” to help readers see the big picture.
Read this and pay attention to what goes in your mind:
- Have you seen our website?
- Is your wallet made of leather?
- Does your son own a red jacket?
Did you picture your wallet, a red jacket or a website? These are questions that require you to mentally experience something before you can answer them; these questions got inside your mind in order for you to picture them and that’s powerful. But what does this mean to you?
What this means is, there are certain ways of giving “instructions” to people and helping them to take certain actions by simply using this style of ‘sensory’ language. If you can make your words turn into pictures – and get inside your readers mind - you will influence them. You can try it yourself or you can enlist a professional to do it for you, so you can concentrate on what you do best and relax in the knowledge that your words are now working for you.
If you would like to see your writing compel your readers toward your product or service, why not go to our professional writing page for more information about our services or contact us to discuss your requirements.
PS. Our team has also helped many authors to turn their words into books. Go to our book cover design & printing for more info.
Traditional Marketing
The Marketing Rule of Seven
Many of us know the number seven is a magic number. For example, it is believed that many of us cannot hold more than seven things at a time in their working memory; a person’s cells have regenerated completely in a seven year period; and a person can change totally within seven years - from the way he/she looks at life, their education level or social circumstances, etc. The idea of ‘seven’ as a magic number is also used in marketing.
For example, did you know that there must be seven contacts between a buyer and a seller before the buyer feels comfortable enough to do business with the seller? This is called “The Marketing Rule of Seven” and it suggests that once seven exposures have been achieved, your target will make a subtle, subconscious connection to your message. So… don’t quit too soon! If you think your marketing doesn’t seem to be generating the result you expected, keep the marketing task going until you have hit more than seven times in different ways.
You might try:
- Marketing on your own website
- Banner ads
- Pay per click
- Brochures
- Face-to-face appointments
- Letters or branded postcards
- Promotion products
- Sponsorship, etc
“The Rule of Seven” utilises the marketing principals of brand recall and brand recognition. You may wonder why you see the same television add on the same night multiple times. The answer is to create brand recall and brand recognition. So when you have a need for the particular product or service, the one that comes to mind is the one you have seen multiple times recently.
Brand recognition is simply the ability for consumers to be able to identify your brand from memory, even though they have also taken in a host of information throughout the day.
Generating Web Traffic & Increasing Your Opportunities
One of the more important factors in establishing a high result on Google search pages is the actual traffic or number of site visitors that enter your site.
While building a site, using search engine optimisation, link building and other methods will give you the best chance of achieving a higher ranking, generating constant traffic will maintain and increase current rankings. And obviously, the more people that visit your site mean a higher number of possible conversions.
So , how do we generate a constant flow of traffic?
More traditional marketing media such as newspaper ads, TV & radio commercials are great ways to drive traffic to your site. For more modest budgets letter box flyers, yellow pages ads, promotional postcards, billboard advertising, company brochures etc., can increase awareness and direct customers to your site.
Integrated Marketing Communications is the term given to linking all your marketing activities together. The aim here is to create a synergy among all the messages that are sent to the customer - your marketing should have the same look and feel and the same or similar message. For example, if advertise a special offer on the radio, you need to repeat that on your website and in your newspaper ad and/or letterbox drop. At the same time, you need to make sure your web address is in your radio ad, newspaper ad and your letterbox drop promo.
“Studies have shown that the effectiveness of these ads is increased when they refer to a web site”
The internet does not replace existing traditional marketing channels, but it is a powerful addition. TV & radio ads, newspaper ads cannot inform the customer of absolutely everything the company would like them to know. However by linking in the web site address to these media there is an avenue where potential customers would like to find out more can go.
The secret is to create a synergy between all the marketing media you use. Even your humble business card and letterhead can contribute!
If you would like to find out more about creating an effective integrated marketing communications plan please don’t hesitate to contact us
Best Practices in Web design (Part 2)
Continued from May Newsletter …
7. Make your customer service telephone number easy to find on your web site, either in the header or the footer. Also give visitors alternative ways to contact you such as email or an online form.
8. Site maps are an excellent way for your visitors to know what is where on your site, all in one convenient place. May users will start there and bypass the navigation menu and search functionalities.
9. Provide printer friendly functionality for content heavy pages, so that the site visitors can read your materials offline in a familiar format.
10. Error pages should be written in plain English, not technobabble. They should also offer the user exit options or alternative remedies and if possible explain why the error occurred. You can include technical explanations below the plain English version since they give the technical users an idea of potential solutions and are also useful to site managers if the visitor is requested to report the error. You will also need to provide users with an avenue to do this.
11. If an item is out of stock, inform your customers of that fact as soon in the selection/buying process as possible. Customers who spend time searching for, locating, and selecting a product will become irritated if they find out the item is not available when they go to check out. A well designed database will ensure that customers are only offered products that are currently in stock.
12. When using icons use only widely recognised icons such as the shopping cart icon. We’ve all seen icons that are not readily understandable so ensure that you use common icons and also label them so that users will immediately understand their meaning.
13. If you would like site users to be able to circulate pages of your site to their friends, colleagues and acquaintances ensure you make it easy for them by providing a “e-mail this page” functionality throughout the site.
CleverLink can help you improve the look, feel and functionality of your current site or we can design a new site from scratch. See our web design portfolio or Contact us today for a no obligation free quote!
Digital Marketing & SEO
Bing! Here comes Microsoft’s new search engine
You may have heard that Microsoft has recently launched a new search engine. Early signs are very promising for ‘BING’, Microsoft’s ‘Decision Engine’, and it seems to be much more than a rebrand of their former Microsoft search engine brand, MSN Live.
Right after Microsoft launched Bing, there were already indications that users were quickly warming to this new search engine. (Just a few days after its launch, Bing had already passed Yahoo as the #2 search engine in the U.S. according to StatCounter).
As Bing grows in popularity, it will become increasingly important for small business owners to leverage this and begin optimising their site(s) so to gain maximum exposure.
How to make BING work for you
Recently Microsoft released a PDF about Search Engine Optimisation called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. The majority of the PDF describes the frontend of Bing, and how this may impact site owners, however it does touch on SEO for Bing also, which is where business owners need to focus.
Google have provided site owners with SEO advice for quite a while now, through both their help center and in their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, so do check those out if you are interested in hearing their stance on SEO. Google’s documentation is a lot more instructive, providing their top guidelines for site owners, in order to allow their site to be easily crawled and indexed by search engines.
How the Bing search engine generates results:
Categorisation: matches search query with similar ‘categories’ instead of the searching for simply the term you typed in. An example of this … if you search for lord of the rings, you may see a category for “wallpaper” as many people search for “Lord of the Rings Wallpaper”, or you might see “actors” or “characters” as Microsoft have identified this as a movie.
Long tail opportunities: same concept as above but focusing on a different area of the page. So as an example, if your site is about Laptops, then you could optimise for brands you might sell (Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, etc) or even target a specific user group like “laptops for students” and make a page specifically for that.
Best match: Another new feature introduced is what they have called “best match”. Bing may show one result, although this may included the internal links of that site. So how this works is, when Bing is confident that the first result is what the searcher is looking for, then it will be tagged as the “best result”. What makes this “best result” feature different to traditional results is that it will contain additional details about the site, such as phone numbers, links and a box for searching within the site.
In some cases this will be the only result that appears on the page, which Microsoft says their teams chooses only when they have high confidence in the result as well as the query volume being high.
If you don’t want your site to appear as the best match, don’t want the internal site search surfaced, want to correct the phone number that appears, or want to remove links, you can request that by emailing Microsoft.
Document preview: This feature provides users with additional content from the site in a hover window which allows searchers to see the content of the specific site that has appeared in the ‘search engine results page, without having to leave the SERP (result page) until they are ready.
This feature may help searchers find the content they want without ever leaving the SERP at all, however it also means they may not necessarily enter your site at all.
Flash extraction: Microsoft has stated that Flash built websites are responsible for 21% of all empty descriptions in their index. They are not saying they can do “limited data extractions” but are now able to generate descriptions for one third of those.
Use of microformats: Microsoft is encouraging the use of microformats, but states they are not using this data for crawling, indexing, and ranking. This is very much similar to that of Google and Yahoo. You can learn more about the Google microformats here (AKA Rich Snippets)
Local listings: In Bing the local results are more prevalent, than its predecessor (Live). Make sure to add your site to their Local Listing Center to be featured in these results.
If you would like to find out how SEO and copywriting can increase your returns, call us on 11300 721 837 or email service@cleverlink.com.au
Website of the Month
Food for My Brain
Don't Stop Innovating
Did you know that Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox are three innovation-driven companies founded during the Great Depression? Your ideas, even during this economic slump, have the potential to turn into something very big and strong. Go for your dream and vision – don’t let external factors affect your internal strengths.
Too many challenges turning up all at once can create stress, but a few at a time are good for us! Challenges make us aware that our processes and systems are not perfect, challenges sharpen our minds and skills – they can also help to hone our characters. Next time you have a challenge to solve – ask these questions:
- What do we need to do right now?
- What are the options?
- Where should we start?
- Who is the best person to handle the situation?
Go to Food For my Brain Web site to explore brain food! If you would like to learn more about Camtu’s positive approach to success, take a look at her book, Aim High Fly Fast: Creating a Wonderful World for Yourself and Others
Positive Mind
 |
Many people will walk in and out of your life,
But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.
Anger is only one letter short of danger.
If someone betrays you once, it is their fault;
If they betray you twice, it is your fault.
Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.
om the mistakes of others.
You can't live long enough to make theurself.
Friends, you and me....
You brought another friend...
And then there were 3....
We started our group....
Our circle of friends....
And like that circle....
There is no beginning or end....
Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is mystery.
Today is a gift.
Author - Unknown
|
Clever Tool Box
In May 09, CleverLink hosted a master mind group and our topic was :
How to achieve business efficiency through information technology: how to achieve more output with fewer resources
Here are Some Business Efficiency & productivity ideas we would like to share with you:
- Automating and streamlining processes: Automation is getting the project or task to complete itself. No sweat and labour – accuracy will be better, too!
- Get the systems in place early to cope with growth.
- CRM is the first software any business managers or owners should have! CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
- Create your own guidelines and follow them through. Use ‘business decision support systems’ if you have access to it
- Online tools: online meeting, training, banking, work flow, blogs, networking
- Strong backend systems to support your business
CleverLink can certainly discuss with you any of the above area and help you to streamline your business and help you to achieve your productivity and efficiency
