The internet hype machine is going into overdrive this morning over the announcement that Facebook is launching a bunch of new features. Some people are calling it a revolution comparative to the launch of Twitter and an EPIC change. So what are these new features and what impact are they really going to have?

The two big updates are

• Pages will become more like Profiles, moving brands into the general social sphere
• Subscriptions will allow user to delve deeper into other peoples information stream and Publisher will allow users to selectively broadcast information
  

These updates will be launched with a Home page re-design with updated news feeds and filtering of friend lists and apps.

So firstly the biggest change is squarely aimed at increasing the ability for marketers to engage with users, firstly “Pages” which are used by Brands etc will now act and feel like standard “Profile” pages. This will allow brands to move from being segregated from the primary Facebook experience to becoming intimately involved in a users social process. Mark Zukerberg is playing down the obvious advertising and marketing opportunities that this opens up saying in his blog, “Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations, Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations.” Basically what he means by that is that now a brand, organisation or personality will be able to post updates directly to every persons Wall associated with that Profile which will then be visible to all of their friends etc. That is a massive change giving brands both a massive opportunity and huge responsibility!

The second massive update which is aimed squarely at taking on Twitter will allow users to share their information with an unlimited number of friends. The updates, according to Facebook, can "be brief messages" similar to Tweets or longer ones that include photos and videos. When combined with the Pages update allowing brands to communicate in a similar fashion may allow Facebook to out-Tweet Twitter.

To check out the new look check out Barack Obama and Britney Spears

For brands there are a few updates that need to be made in the next couple of days to ensure that your ‘Profile’ is ready

1. Ensuring that a profile picture for the Page is set.
2. Configuring tab settings - both choosing the “landing tab” for non-Fans and choosing who can write on the Wall.
3. Rearranging boxes on the Boxes tab, if necessary.
   

For more info go to Inside Facebook

I understand the motivation for all of these changes in terms of increasing the ROI for business and pushing more information into the data stream. I do wonder however, if brands can be trusted with this much power in a social network, but I guess that is the answer, hopefully users will ‘out’ any brands that abuse the system and will ultimately self monitor in much the same as Wikipedia or the big fuss about the new Facebook T&Cs. If previous Facebook updates are anything to go by you should be prepared for a rocky ride over the next couple of months while they sort out the teething issues however, all brands should sit up and take notice because this could just be a very interesting way of engaging with your audience.

What are your first impressions?

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing

So you’ve heard about this new micro-blogging service called Twitter? Or may be you haven’t. Well here’s a brief 101 which might help you understand how you can leverage the power of Twitter for your business.

Professionally
Carl, our Sydney GM, uses Twitter to keep in touch with industry colleagues who often post useful information and links. It’s also a great way of seeking help or advice, by posting a question on Twitter, your followers can respond and offer ideas.

Marketing
Businesses can post news and announcements via Twitter, new products, sales, promotions etc.

Customer service
Companies can use it as a way to build relationships with their customers, receive feedback and ideas and suggestions.

Here’s a great example of how Twitter was used in the recent US election countdown by Tropicana: http://anorangeamerica.com/ the idea here was to track keywords related to either candidate and to display them using info-graphics, whilst linking it cleverly to the brand message ‘Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets: We’re not red. We’re not blue. We’re 100% orange.’

More about Twitter here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Update: Annemarie Hunter from Reseo has written a much better blog post about Twitter over here.

Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney

Labels: Social media, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web marketing

I just came across this site http://www.wetellstories.co.uk/, more experimentation by Penguin in the world of Web 2.0. Penguin already impress with their online ventures, with Web sites such as amillionpenguins.com (a Wiki novel), Spine Breakers (a community around books for teens) and Blog a Penguin Classic (blogging and user-reviews for Classic books).

In We Tell Stories, there are six stories being added over the course of six weeks. They have a different theme for each week’s story;

• Week 1 (The 21 Steps) is a Google Mash-up story, which is a really cool idea and works really well. Unfortunately (in my opinion) the story is poorly written and too obvious. I didn’t read the whole thing, maybe it improves?!
  
• Week 2 (Slice) is a story told through blogs and Twitter
  
• Week 3 (Fairy Tales) is like a Choose Your Own Adventure, or a personalised book. Not particularly exciting in my opinion.
  
• Week 4 (Your Place or Mine) is a story written in real-time, which is interesting.
  
• Weeks 5 & 6 are yet to be released.

Apparently there are elements of an Alternate Reality Game too, but it’s not clear to me exactly how this fits with the site, further exploration is needed.

With many of these initiatives, in particular We Tell Stories, it raises the question of whether people are willing to read books online (or on-screen). Maybe not just yet, but once e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle support proper Web-browsing (and high speed Internet) e-novels will be set to take off.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Design and Usability, Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing

Here's a rap tutorial about how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site. Nice!



Carl Panczak, General Manager, Sydney

Labels: Search Engine Optimisation, Web marketing, Web standards

This week Hitwise released new numbers on Australian browsing habits. Rather disturbingly for online retailers, visits to shopping sites accounted for only 5.93% of Australian Web visits for the week ending 9 February 2008 - almost half the number of visits compared to the US or UK. Once again it appears Australia is lagging behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to embracing the online retail concept.

Now it would be pretty easy to spend the next couple of paragraphs pointing the finger at Australia's diabolical broadband penetration and listing the endless other reasons for Australia's slow uptake of online retail. Instead I thought it might be a bit more interesting to take a look at some of the areas where Australian online retailers have experienced success to date and some of the areas that are going to lead the eCommerce charge in Australia over the coming months.

1. Niche markets
If you can find a niche and deliver something consumers can't get elsewhere you're likely to have success in online retail. If you're a start up it's even better as online retail has generally lower start up costs than ‘bricks and mortar’ enterprises- as well as access to a much wider audience. Miijo is an Australian company that has successfully done just this: nabbing a niche market for designer fashions and accessories that you can't buy anywhere domestically.

2. Global brands
Australian brands with loads of international recognition but not necessarily international distribution are also prime candidates for online retail. If it is difficult for international consumers to access your product then setting up online retail capacity to service these customers is going to ensure that their dollars go straight into your pocket. Surely this is better than their money going to bootleggers or to savvy eBay resellers. Australian denim brand Ksubi has recently worked with us to do just this - and we're currently working with another iconic Australian brand on a similar eCommerce project.

3. Big brands
A large investment in bricks and mortar doesn't mean that online retail is necessarily a waste of time. While online retail isn't likely to become your primary source of revenue any time soon, it can act to provide your customers with choice when it comes to buying your product. It can also defend your brand from competitors who might not be so shy when it comes to eCommerce. Customers already know your brand and are likely to have fewer reservations about purchasing online from your store. You needn't put your whole inventory online either - why not consider starting small or having online-only products to assess your customer’s individual requirements for online retail. With the recent launch of Sportsgirl's online store I'm certain that we'll see a number of other big Australian fashion brands follow suit in the coming months.

4. Proven successes
Certain sectors are already more successful than others when it comes to online retail. If your product is travel or music or personal electronics then it's likely that you're already one step ahead of the game. While these sectors are crowded and competition is fierce customers in these areas tend to be more used to purchasing online and are more likely do so again meaning that the market is there for a well planned and executed new competitor. I'm sure a couple of years ago Flight Centre would have laughed you out of the room if you'd told them Web Jet was going to be a major market force for domestic flights.

What I am trying to say is that Hitwise's statistics and the general gloomy impression of Australia's online shopping habits should be no cause for alarm amongst aspiring online retailers. The market is only going to grow and while it's still small there are still plenty of opportunities to be had.

Bradley Grinlinton, Senior Account Manager

Labels: Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing

I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by a true viral pioneer at last week’s Creative Social in London. Ed Robinson is co-founder of The Viral Factory, a London firm specialising in viral marketing, who have been behind-the-scenes on many of the most famous (and infamous) viral videos that have spread over the past six years.

It was a fantastic presentation (thanks Ed), and my main take-away was the change that has occurred in viral videos over the years. As Ed talked through many examples, there was a marked evolution from slapstick, violent and comedic short pieces towards more filmic productions.

Ed explained that changes in the way viral is distributed and consumed has bought about this revolution; virals used to spread by forwarding email attachments. Fast-forward to a land filled with spam and email security – it’s no surprise that in a Web 2.0 World viral videos are primarily viewed on YouTube, MySpace and viral portals such as Kontraband.

With broadband standard, file-sizes are no longer an issue, as a result viral videos are becoming longer and production values higher - viral has mutated from GIF animations to Cyber Grand Prix.

Some recent examples by The Viral Factory show how these trends have influenced their creative work for Samsung and Levis. Interestingly, even with healthy production budgets, the home-grown aesthetic is still popular. Are the public naïve enough to believe this is amateur’s at play, or do they just not care?

The famous Sony Bravia ‘Balls’ campaign went viral before it appeared on TV, and Ed hinted that one of their videos may soon be used as a TVC. Dorito’s screened a 30 second user-generated ad(the winner of a competition) during half-time of the Super Bowl. The lines are blurring between viral and above the line advertising. But as we have seen many times before, good quality content that delights, amuses, surprises or rewards the viewer can be a winner in any format.

What do you think is the future of viral? Make your comments below…

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing

Marketers know that in order to execute successful campaigns, all channels of communication with customers require at least one call to action. The Web is absolutely no exception. In fact due to information overload, it demands even more candidly communicated calls. Calls to action extend much further than buying and include subscribing, donating, applying, submitting, bookmarking the page, contacting, referring to friends, discussing, getting help or support, or simply getting involved.

Visitors make a decision about whether or not to stay at a Web site very quickly, usually within a few seconds. Does your Web site convey its three most important calls to action within 20 seconds of a visitor arriving at your home page? If not the action they may well take is to hit the Back button.

Being an avid internet user myself, it’s all too often I see a corporate Web site simply displayed as an electronic brochure and find myself hitting the Back button or typing in another URL.

It all comes down to content. The right words will capture the attention of visitors and drive them to action and the wrong words will lead to distraction. "The goal of content is to expose business value and articulate it in a way that matters to the customer," leading subject matter experts Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg write. "Great copy persuades the reader to take action."

Studies of shopping behavior show that consumers tend to be more likely to buy something if they are asked to do so. Even panhandlers who ask for money on the street are much more successful than those who just hold out a cup or a sign!

So perhaps you are a charity or government department and you don’t have a commercial purpose in the sense of selling goods and services; however you still want to generate a call to action: an opportunity for the visitor to say, "Yes I'm interested!"

Every time you write a piece of Web content, you should also write at least one call to action at the end of that content. That's maximising your chances of converting a visitor to a prospect.

You may think that putting a simple contact form on your Web site will generate leads, and sure enough if you have a totally unique product or service it will generate a few. But most businesses operate within a competitive landscape, one with similar products and services. The best way of generating as many sales leads as possible is through demonstrating how and why someone would want to contact your company.

The whole idea is to get the users of your Web site to do something, or to direct them to a page or section of your website that you would like them to see. To do this, provide links within a product or service's descriptive content, and direct them to an online contact form that contains those same link texts. Links like "Receive a product demo", "Take a tour of this property", "Learn more about xyz" are all effective ways to directing your Web site visitors into a course of action.

By doing this you answer both fundamental questions; Why am I contacting you? (eg. for a product demo) and How do I do it? (eg. by following this link to a contact form).

Namita Davey, Project Manager

Labels: Design and Usability, Web marketing

Looking at your site’s conversion rate seems to be a forgotten measure of a successful Web strategy. Instead, it’s more common to hear “we need more traffic”.

The conversion rate of a Web site is simply the ratio of the number of visitors who complete an action to the number of visitors who view the site. For example, if you had 30 sales out of 500 visitors your conversion rate would be 6% = 30/500.

If you actually had a conversion rate of 6%, you should be happy. The reality is most sites will have a conversion rate of less than 0.5%. This means you need 200 visitors to generate one sale.

Before ramping up an online marketing assault, it makes sense to improve your conversion rate first. An average pay-per-click visitor might cost you around two dollars. Working with the scenario above, if you wanted 10 sales you need to invest $4,000 in pay-per-click advertising.

If you could improve your Web site conversion rate from 0.5% to 2% you would only need to invest $1,000 to achieve the same result. Likewise, for the $4,000 investment you’d yield 40 sales instead of 10.

Let’s say your objective for the year was to achieve 10 sales per week:

Scenario A (0.5% Web site conversion rate)

520 sales = 104,000 visitors * 0.5% conversion rate
104,000 visitors * $2 ppc cost = $208,000 investment

Scenario B (2% Web site conversion rate)

520 sales = 26,000 visitors * 2% conversion rate
26,000 visitors * $2 ppc cost = $52,000 investment

The difference in investment between scenario A & B to achieve 520 sales is $156,000

There’s lot of assumptions in this example, and every Web site business is different, but principle of conversion is universal. The bottom line is; if your conversion rate is low, it’s an expensive exercise to increase sales just by driving more traffic to your web site.

Investing to improve your conversion rate through quality Web design & strategy creates leverage and a significant return on investment.

Tim Fouhy, Managing Director, Australia

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing

If you're like many Australian marketers a significant part of your online budget is currently being spent in reaching prospective customers... driving traffic to your Web site... filling your sales funnel. In fact Australian business spent in the order of A$620 million in 2005 (60% growth over A$388 million spend in 2004) on banner advertising and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and are expected to spend in excess of a staggering $700 million throughout 2006.

Dropping customers into the funnel is a critical part of the sales journey and generally, a function, marketers perform quite well. We're probably not so well-renowned, however, for converting prospects into customers... especially in the online channel. Which means a significant portion of marketers’ budgets are going up in smoke.

We're all aware of the financial benefits of the retention of existing customers, in contrast to the acquisition of new ones. And therefore if the objective of our acquisition strategy is to acquire with the intent to retain and grow, then we need to convert a significant portion of qualified leads. The dirty ROI acronym seems to be raising its ugly head again!

So how do we move prospective customers through the sales journey and past the narrow neck of the funnel?

Firstly, we need to understand the different types of customers we have and what their characteristics are (segmentation).

Secondly, we need to understand why these people visit our Web site. In terms of the acquisition activities, what stories are driving them to the Web site and what are they expecting from this experience?

And thirdly, now that we have the traffic, we need to understand how our visitors interact with the Web site.

People visit our site with varied intentions. For example, a person may come to our Web site in order to:

• Research a product or service
• Research in order to compare prices
• Buy a specific product or service based on prior research
• Browse without intent to buy

People who visit the Web site with each intention generally exhibit different behaviour. Therefore, if we can link that behavior with a specific segment we can understand how to best guide each segment along the customer journey and identify what barriers are preventing us from a sale.

Consider a 'financial services' Web site where there is great diversity in product offerings. We might consider segmenting people by 'sex' and 'age' (which can be triggered by the person 'self-identifying' via a number of means such as specific 'age-related' content) and then refine the segment based on prior interaction.

So, for example, if a 35 year old male looks at content related to travel insurance then it is more than likely that he may also be interested in additional home insurance given his absence from his home. This being the case (and assuming we have also qualified that he is in fact investigating this insurance for himself), we can serve up an offering that not only meets his insurance requirements but additionally removes the barrier of time-consuming and confusing product comparisons based on age, sex and other variables.

We have provided him the most appropriate and efficient solution by simply 'listening' to his actions and in doing so we have a greater opportunity to convert.

Listening to our customers is the critical path to conversion. Sam Walton, legendary founder of Wal-Mart, said it best, "Whenever you get confused, go to the store. The customer has all the answers, and all the money.

It's pretty simple really, and the key to good marketing. In terms of online marketing, all we have to do is gain the insight and understanding of the customer's journey by 'listening' to the data captured by our customers’ interaction to understand what’s happening now, combined with our end goals, to determine the barriers to sale.

If we know what the barriers are, then we can remove them.

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing

If you're reading this article there's a good chance you're a marketer. You're probably a marketer who knows that the online channel is powerful and has earned its place within the marketing mix. And like a lot of marketers, you'll probably be the first to admit that it's hard to keep track of the changing world of online marketing, but are willing to try. The good news, then, is that you are not alone. However, there is some bad news too...

I'm guessing you're like most Australian marketers and struggle to demonstrate the value marketing brings to your organisation. And that's probably because you're not in a position to demonstrate how the activities that you perform contribute to the bottom line. As a result, you never get the budgets you want, spending half your time begging the CFO for additional dollars and the other half developing online campaigns that you know are going to fall short of the mark (because you don't have the budget to do it properly).

But don't despair, there's hope - and money - available to you. It's just a matter of knowing how to release the finances from the vice-like grip of your CFO. And it doesn't have to be as difficult as it sounds. CFO's tend to more easily distribute budgets if they know what the impact of the spend is on the bottom-line. Fortunately, that's pretty easy to do in the online channel, because almost everything can be measured if engineered correctly.

So what do you need to do?

Step 1. Define Objectives

Know what you are trying to achieve. Are you simply attempting to drive traffic, and if so, how will this affect the bottom-line? Probably very little. Or is your objective to sell, and if not directly, then indirectly? Hmm... I wonder which is the more attractive option to the bean counters?

Step 2. Develop the strategy

Know exactly how you are going to achieve those objectives. Have you written a marketing plan? What's more convincing: hyperbole or a documented approach backed up by research? Reduce perceived risk.

Step 3. Calculate the risk

Know what the benchmarks are for the activities you wish to perform. If your Web site is not eCommerce enabled, then make sure you understand the impact that customer loyalty has on sales conversion.

But before you move to Step 4, you need to address a critical part of the story - measurement.

If you want ongoing budgets, if you want buy-in from the CFO and the rest of the management team, if you want to actually get results, then you need to measure.

You must have the framework that will allow you to measure against your objectives and the trip-wires to allow you to identify any barriers that prevent your customers or prospects from making that journey.

We all know that marketing is not an exact science. It's very difficult to get things completely right the first time. We must understand what works and what doesn't - and then fix what doesn't and improve what does.

And be prepared to share (i.e. communicate to the CFO) the good with the bad. The bad does not look so bad when you can identify where the problem is and then recommend how to fix it.

And finally ...

Step 4. Sell the Concept

Understand that while you shouldn't have to, you do in fact need to sell the concept to the CFO (or whoever else it is that holds the purse-strings). In order to do so, you must (a) clearly communicate what you plan on undertaking; and (b) clearly communicate the financial benefits of the activity. Don't set unreasonable expectations but demonstrate that your objectives are in line with their objectives. Trust is critical in sales... but you know that.

Labels: Process and Methodology, Web marketing