Marketing Times (Issue 1)

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Contents STRATEGY

DIRECT MARKETING

4 The changing world of marketing 6 The forgotten business of setting marketing objectives

20 Group buying: what does it mean for brands and consumers 22 The role of email marketing in a multi-channel environment

BRANDING

CUSTOMER RELATIONS

8 Building your brand in challenging markets 10 A thing called love

24 This time it is personal: from consumer to co-creator

ADVERTISING

SEO

14 Target those who are “In the Market”

26 Top 10 search engine optimisation strategies for your website

MOBILE

MARKETING INDABA

15 Mobile marketing Marketing Times is published as a mouthpiece and communication tool for the annual Marketing Indaba.

The online version is a marketing industry platform that keeps marketers informed on industry news and events. Subscribe online to receive regular free e-newsletters. The printed Marketing Times is distributed free of charge to our list of marketing executives across industries.

27 Programme 2012

SALES 16 Who are the players in your sales team?

18 Does your advertising generate sales?

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www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

STRATEGY

The changing world of marketing...

by Walter Pike, The Digital Academy and Professional Business Speaker

The task of marketing is to spread ideas.

We want people to believe that buying our product or service is a good idea. We would like that idea to spread. In ancient times the idea spread when we provided something that people liked and they told their friends and eventually people came from miles around because they also wanted some.

We could spread the idea further by going to fairs and travelling from place to place.

Eventually people learned to read and write and ideas could spread further and last longer chipped in stone or written on papyrus. This was an expensive process and only really practical if one was very wealthy or very powerful and so ideas spread very slowly and not very far.

Our world was organised as kingdoms and tribes and by religions. When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press there were very few books, that invention started a slow revolution as it became much cheaper to spread ideas; a revolution which gave us the world as we know it today, as the printing press concept grew using technology from books, to newspapers and then to electronic communication media like radio and television.

Essentially, in this world if you wanted an idea to spread you did so either by talking to people one on one or by getting some space in a newspaper or magazines, and some time on radio and TV. Doing so was still expensive and access to the idea spreading machine was, and really still is, limited to those who have enough money or influence like celebrities or advertisers (essentially) and also governments who could enforce laws on the use of these broadcast media.

In the broadcast world we need to good at interrupting people.

So we had to become really good at interrupting people and we created a huge machine to get people together to create audiences and then to interrupt them doing what ever they are doing with an idea. We hoped that if we did that with enough impact they would notice and often enough they would start to believe what we had to say and it worked.

But it only works when people believe the source of the information. “It must be true. I saw it on television” or when the sources of

information are limited. “I can only find out about your product or service from the few of my friends who have experienced it or from you, your advertising, your brochure or your sales people”.

The problem then is to get noticed because our audience could choose whether they wanted to listen to our story or not. The reason they were reading the newspaper or listening to the radio or watching television was not to get our commercial marketing message. Hence, the growth of creative advertising agencies whose role is to get ideas noticed.

Then the world changed.

The internet arrived. Essentially the internet is a huge collaboration engine and started as being a place where people put data and shared it. Eventually there was so much data stored there that it was almost impossible to find. We needed a way to navigate this data, to find the information we wanted. So search engines were invented and a new industry started. The digital marketing industry whose role was to try and make sure that the people looking for our stuff or our idea found us.

This information was available to everyone everywhere at the same time, all you needed was connection to the internet and a device to read it. So all media started moving to the internet. Sure newspapers still printed on paper, but this could only spread as far as the delivery trucks could take them. So there was soon a digital edition available everywhere, same for radio, same for TV programs and same for one on one communication like telephones.

Audiences were huge. The whole world is the audience, but now the problem is not getting noticed, it’s getting found. So the search engine is developed and we Google things we want to find.

The cost to publish anything is free.

The same devices which are used to consume media can be used to create our own stories.

Now all of a sudden the cost to do so was zero because once we already had the consumption device we also automatically have the production device. The same things we use to consume content, computers, tablets and mobile phones can be used to produce content.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Now people could find what they wanted, they could follow the ideas of people whom they trusted and they didn’t have to rely on the crafted messages of advertisers.

2011 – the year of the protestor In 2011 Time magazine named the person of the year as the protestor, because 2011 could be seen as the year of the protests: from Egypt and Tunisia to Moscow, from the Slutwalk, to the occupy movement to the local Twitter blanket drive. These revolutions have one thing in common; the ideas that made them were not spread by broadcast media but through social networks. In the same month that the occupy movement started its protests in New York the protest spread to 90 cities in 80 countries and more than 600 communities in the US. This would not have been possible with broadcast media alone, there certainly was not enough money in the occupy movement to buy this, but the growth was remarkable and so it was newsworthy and it was carried by broadcast media.

The most important characteristic of this change has been the development of powerful social networks, networks of people grouped around and coordinated around ideas. It was this coordination around the idea that Mubarak should go that coordinated the Egyptian protest or that the economic system has failed. Normal people sustained the “Occupy” movement.

Marketing has changed because people have changed. This is the new world, a social world, a connected world.

This isn’t a discussion about whether digital marketing is better, or whether traditional marketing is better, because in fact neither is.

The marketing discourse needs to be about how do we spread ideas in a new changed world.

Communities and audiences are not the same thing.

In the broadcast world we spoke to audiences, in the social world we speak with communities.

Audiences are not the same as communities.

• Audiences can be seen as homogeneous, communities that have people performing a whole lot of different roles.

• Audiences can be seen as one dimensional they are there to listen or watch. Communities

STRATEGY have a depth, they collaborate, organise and do things.

• Audiences are temporary - they disband and move on whereas communities are robust and persist.

• Communities are an entire society with leaders, followers, discussion starters, instigators, networkers and with many other roles.

• Understand who the influential individuals in the networked community are and understand how you can assist them to carry out their role in the network community better.

• Help the community to be by feeding it with what it needs.

• Facilitate the group’s progress towards achieving its goals including recruiting new members and linking new networks into it.

The marketing and advertising community are treating social networks as audiences.

The industry is applying broadcast thinking to communities and they are missing a huge opportunity. Building large numbers of likes on a Facebook page is broadcast thinking, building a huge twitter following is broadcast thinking - you are merely trying to get an audience.

The entire debate between the various roles of the different players involved in the marketing and advertising industry is a redundant one.

Spamming your community with special offers (unless it is a community looking for special offers) is interruption thinking.

Here are some guidelines.

• Focus your brand idea on experiences. People talk about their experience.

• Understand that your community exists not bounded by channels and that the technology merely facilitates the group achieving its goal.

• Give them something to talk about.

• Listen to what they are saying.

• Give up any idea of controlling what they are saying, but help them spread your idea, by giving them the means to spread that idea.

Walter Pike is the founder of PiKE | New Marketing a consultancy that advises brands and advertising agencies on marketing in the social era and of The Digital Academy that trains people to provide the additional skills we need to operate in the social world.

He has a background in advertising, as a client services and strategy director, marketing as a national advertising manager and in academics as the Head of Faculty: Marketing and Advertising at the AAA School of Advertising.

We need our groups and networks to be able to be found so there is a massive role for traditional digital/search marketing firms. We will always need to build awareness and recruit people into the community and broadcast media will probably always be the primary tool for that and will have a reminder and discussion starter role.

But the key marketing role in the social era is neither of these. It is building experiences and then facilitating the spread of ideas of those experiences through the networks. That needs a whole series of different skills.

We don’t need big creative ideas because we are not interrupting. We don’t need campaigns, we need organisations that understand and analyse networks and how ideas spread, we need people who can nourish communities. MT

THE DIGITAL ACADEMY Tel: 082 444 7612 info@digitalacademy.co.za www.digitalacademy.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

STRATEGY

The forgotten business of setting marketing objectives

by Dale Hefer of Chillibush Communications

Do I really need to set marketing objectives?

In a word, yes! Without objectives, how do you justify spending? For that matter, how do you know where to start or what to do? When I was launching Chillibush to the market, I proudly told a very successful friend who owned an established business that I had detailed, weekly to-do lists of how to approach the market. Without batting an eyelid he said, ‘Rather make it a 15-minute to-do list’. That was excellent advice for me, as it kept me extremely focused on setting goals and making sure I achieved them.

Do your objectives sell widgets?

Call the objectives the ‘road map’, the ‘blueprint’, the ‘marketing to-do list’ or whatever; they are absolutely essential for marketers. Surprisingly, many companies are not ‘objectives focused’. Establishing the annual budget is most often merely a case of adding an inflationary increase to the amount of the previous year rather than formulating meaningful numbers based on objectives.

In the marketing community, one of the biggest weaknesses is the setting of retroobjectives, which are just a tad too flexible.

Neither do marketers stretch objectives enough. Most often a marketer will complacently stick to the predicted category growth rate rather than establishing some more hairy, audacious goals. Surely it would be better to see a marketing director really pushing for a big challenge and not quite making it, than cruising home with arbitrary success?

At Chillibush, we always press for some tangible expectation of the campaign we are to deliver. Having objectives is particularly useful for the creative team developing the campaign, as it emphasises the business component of the job at hand rather than being an open-ended brief based on creative principles. Given free rein on a campaign with no meaningful objectives to emphasise, a creative team will be just that – creative.

The work may look amazing, but may not sell the widgets it should.

With businesses constantly shouting for more answerability from their marketing spend, it is essential to make sure that marketing activity is undertaken with a purpose and a goal. Objectives will enable this. The following guidelines could prove to be useful in the establishment of your goals.

How to set objectives Be part of the big picture of the business ‘Marketing is the poor cousin’; ‘No one takes us seriously’; ‘Our budgets are the first to go’. These are some of the regular complaints of marketing people worldwide.

One of the biggest mistakes that a company can make is to isolate its marketing department from the cut and thrust of the business. Too often the marketing department is relegated to being a source of branded T-shirts or other giveaways.

Often this is a bed marketing has made for itself by not setting, measuring and sharing objectives with the brass. However, for marketing to play a meaningful role in the success and growth of a business, it has to be privy to, indeed be included in, the overall objectives of the company.

Every marketing objective should be derived from a business objective. If the marketing department doesn’t know what those objectives are, it is operating in a vacuum.

And if it’s essential for marketing to be hooked into the overall business imperatives of the organisation, then marketers should work as closely as possible with the financial manager in order to get income statements and updates for the product or service that is being marketed. At the end of the day, marketing has to drive the business turnover, and how can that happen if you don’t know what the turnover is?

So the first guideline in setting your marketing objectives is to make sure that you are aware of the overall business objectives or challenges. These sit at the top of the hierarchy and you need to develop marketing objectives which will assist in enabling these to be met.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Make them measurable and real Objectives that are not measurable are not worth the paper they are written on. I have spent many hours with clients trying to unpack lofty objectives that can only disappear into the ether on closer examination.

Stay away from nebulous goals because the more specific you can be with your goalsetting, the more credible your goals will be perceived by colleagues, management and other divisions. Although setting objectives that challenge and push you is a good thing, it is important not to fall into the trap of making them completely unattainable.

But also guard against simply listing goals that you know are totally pedestrian and achievable. A balance between reality and stretch is definitely the order of the day.

When establishing your goals, liaise with other departments. Make the sales and finance managers your best friends and glean all the detail you can from them. The more specific facts and figures you have, the more you will be able to establish exactly what you need to do from a marketing perspective to help achieve those numbers.

Remember that setting measurable goals will also provide real guidance to you in the implementation of your activities.

It’s all in the timing Needless to say, you will be drawing up a timeframe for each and every objective you set. This will vary depending on the type of business you are in, the product you are marketing and the nature of the objectives.

However, without a timeline, there is little point in an objective.

There is a growing trend in South African marketing towards more frequent objective reviews. This reflects the fact that business issues are constantly in flux. Gone are the days of the old ‘annual marketing strategy’.

The review of objectives should be dynamic.

Regular review against more user-friendly objectives makes marketing a dynamic

STRATEGY

discipline that is inherently part of everyone in the business, and not just the role of the marketing manager.

Sometimes the nature of the objective will mean it should be measured over a longer period of time. This does not mean that there should not be intermediate measurements. There can be lots of stages between start-point and the ultimate objective or goal. You may not hear the ringing of tills immediately, for example, but you should know via an intermediate measurement that you are still on track.

When I am setting objectives with clients, or for my own business, I generally work on a quarterly review basis. But before I get into the first quarterly goal reviews, I have a oneweekly or two-weekly revert review. This is for the collation of the information necessary for the formulation of the goals. People invariably underestimate the information required to set meaningful goals (such as sales forecasts), and I find it useful to actually list the gathering of the necessary information as an objective itself.

Every marketing objective, no matter how trivial or grand, should be duly recorded with its deadline. Be it a seemingly trivial activity such as sending a press release, or a lofty goal such as revising the perception around a brand, a date should be diarised for the review thereof.

Benchmark It may seem like an obvious thing, but you would be amazed at how many marketers do not launch their objectives from an established point. Benchmarking is critical for the setting and reviewing of any marketing objective.

Sometimes you may hit the jackpot and have a client that has the budget to enable substantial market research in order to establish the state of play before you get onto the field. Of course, not every client will have the budget for a market research exercise to establish the benchmarks. This isn’t a train smash. It is possible for you to do some dipstick research yourself when

your clients don’t have the budget.

Another excellent source of benchmarking information is sales figures. Source as much information as you can from the sales and finance manager for comparative purposes – whether by day, week, month, quarter or year, depending on your sales cycles.

Of course, benchmark figures need not just be perceptions of how a brand looks or tastes, nor do they have to be sales figures.

They could be attendance numbers at a function year on year, numbers of visitors to a hotel cross-referenced over a similar annual time period, or even the number of SMS’s received in an annual competition.

Include all the key players – buy-in counts In my years of experience working with the marketing departments of various organisations, I have constantly encountered the frustration that the marketers feel the rest of the organisation considers them to be solely responsible for the fate of the brand. This is a terrible situation for any organisation to be in. Marketing is the responsibility of absolutely everyone in the organisation, although the responsibility largely falls to the marketing department to make it an inclusive function. To ensure that this happens, marketing should involve as much of the business as possible in any form of objective setting. It is a mistake for a marketing team to sit down and develop objectives in a vacuum. Not only are they likely to be inaccurate, but a valuable opportunity to get buy-in and support from the entire business is lost.

with existing products, new markets with existing products, or new products into new markets. The last obviously constitutes the most risk but in some instances is the best option, given the current performance of the business. While most marketers will in all probability stick to the safer option of existing products in existing markets, the matrix does offer a useful reminder of the options which are actually open. MT Always have fun Objectives need not all be about number crunching and the general gnashing of teeth and pulling out of hair to get the perfect benchmark and crystal-clear direction! I always try to include a few goals that aren’t based on raw data and invariably these are the ones that people remember best.

In the early days of Chillibush when there were just a handful of us, I used to spice up the monthly turnover objectives with promises of dinners and other outings if the objectives were achieved. Such seemingly small incentives really seemed to fire up the team.

Dale Hefer started Chillibush in 1998 as a one-woman show. Operating from a rented garage she soon grew the business to the R1-million mark. Today Chillibush employs a team of 40-plus and has projected earnings of over R80 million.

Ansoff Matrix Sometimes a simple analytical tool can assist in objective setting. The Ansoff Matrix is one allowing marketers to consider ways to grow the business via existing or new products, in existing or new markets. It helps companies decide what course of action should be taken given current performance. Marketers are able to assess their appetite for risk by considering whether their objectives should be based on penetrating existing markets

CHILLIBUSH COMMUNICATIONS Chilli House 58 Jan Smuts Avenue Forest Town, Johannesburg Tel: 011 646 7152 dale@chillibush.co.za www.chillibush.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

BRANDING

Building your brand in challenging markets

by Kevin Gaskell, International Speaker

Challenging and unforgiving markets are the constant reality for companies seeking to build the successful companies and brands of the future.

for what they are – heritage and history.

Valuable, but only when aligned to the new reality of a changing market and changing customer expectations.

Unlocking the opportunities of the 21st century requires the winners to master the revolution in technology, globalisation and customer expectation which the new world of connectivity has delivered. Extraordinary opportunities are available to those companies which can meet the existing challenges of improved focus, reduced costs and enhanced efficiency whilst aggressively listening to and providing for the needs of the new customer.

Stepping into the unknown removes pretence. Whilst companies, leaders or marketing executives can prepare they can never be fully prepared. This step is enlightening, energising, and exhilarating. It forces creativity and fresh thinking. Real business pioneers look hard, explore the dark and unearth the scary bits. If the leaders listen aggressively to the market it will confess what it wants and why it wants it. From this information the future can be designed. The vision of success can be built, its shape forged and dimensions formed. Looking at the business from every angle will allow the leaders to paint the picture which they can share with all others in the team. Opportunity and creativity start where the comfort zone ends. Share the picture and make the change.

The winners will be those organisations which demonstrate a clear direction and drive rapid creativity, not as the exclusive domain of senior management, but as the focus of an extraordinary environment of performance which embraces every member of an aligned and passionate team. When this performance is consistent at every point within the organisation and is comfortably aligned to customer expectation of the organisation the basis for a successful brand is created.

1. Vision Many world class companies have been built, indeed some still exist! These great companies evolve and make progress despite, or sometimes due to, difficult environments.

This only works when the company has a clear vision of success and a team aligned to that vision. The team must understand how the vision of success translates into reality.

What does it mean for the customer, for the commercial partner, for the supplier? This is the beginning of the brand experience. There are three stages to building a truly exceptional organisation and a great brand: 2. Commit Actually make the decision to strive for the vision. Take the huge step of recognising that real success requires a big move forward. Do not lose sight of the brand benefits, values and heritage which may have sustained the organisation to this stage but recognise them

3. Connect The great brands and industry leaders of tomorrow will be those most able to encourage commitment. Commitment to a brand is generated by alignment – both to the values and processes of the organisation but especially to the needs of the customer. Don’t overestimate the value of existing corporate practice and familiarity. Some benefits carried forward from the heritage of the brand will be exactly that – benefits. Many others will not be and must be ruthlessly extracted from the organisation. In particular never, ever underestimate the sheer power of focus, passion and energy. Understand your customers, love your customers, and when in doubt, love them a bit more. They are the past, present and future of your business.

Only organisations and brands which implement an inclusive strategy can fully enjoy the astonishing benefits of an aligned team.

The role of the leaders is to create a world class mindset. Building a great brand begins with building an understanding of what that brand stands for; values, product, service and experience. Great brands believe completely that where you can’t outspend the competi-

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

tion you can certainly out think them...creativity is key. Driving understanding and focus through an organisation requires leadership skill and its application. Explore far and wide for better businesses and more able teams than your own. Observe and learn. Provide your team with autonomy and purpose and build in the time for the team to be creative.

Be absolutely unashamed about taking the best examples from other sectors and using them. Focus absolutely on building a better, more customer aligned organisation.

4. Create Great companies and amazing brands are not seen, they are not heard, rather they are experienced. Every point of contact with the organisation is the realisation of the brand experience. If one small cog fails the engine stops. Every person employed in the organisation plays a key role in delivering the brand experience, learning from each other, adding value, enjoying the process. When the experience is consistent and the team fully understand and accept responsibility for the experience magic is created. Every leader must demonstrate passion, determination and commitment. Skills displayed must include clarity of thought, communication, intelligence – and common sense!

By encouraging leadership throughout the organisation great brands demonstrate agility, speed and focus. The team must understand what they are expected to achieve and how they contribute to that vision of success. Focused activity, the development of improved processes and rigorous measurement of the effectiveness of actions taken and investments made will provide a basis for sustainable transformation. In challenging and unforgiving markets companies are seeking to improve focus, reduce costs, and enhance efficiency - or indeed all three! Success in achieving these goals requires clear and capable leadership. Such leadership is not the exclusive domain of senior management. The performance of organisations is transformed when competent leadership is demonstrated by all members of the team.

It must be fun for everyone involved. If it can

BRANDING be made fun for the team to contribute they will provide the brand with boundless enthusiasm and unlimited opportunity.

5.Conclusion The achievement of measurable objectives and financial results is necessary to underwrite the long term success of any brand or organisation. Great brands can only afford to invest in the future of the brand if the commercial results are appropriate.

To achieve sustainable success in the long term however it is critical that these dimensions are the result of the process of driving toward the brand’s vision of success and are not confused with the vision itself. Great brands are built on a set of values and principles which define the heart of the brand, which describe the customer’s experience and which illuminate the aligned actions of the entire brand team in building and rebuilding the brand experience in the face of competitors activity and market changes.

Integrity and commitment are core principles as the process of brand evolution and change must be predictable for all participants involved. When this transparency of purpose is enhanced by exceptional communication and explicit sensitivity to the needs of the customer all parties involved will share in the success of the brand. MT

About Kevin Gaskell Few people have led three of the world’s iconic brands to new levels of success and managed successful turnarounds of failing international companies. Even fewer have created a market leading business from an idea. Include experience of playing international sport and walking to both the North and South poles and you have someone with a unique set of skills.

Kevin draws upon these experiences and those of his ongoing chairmanship of a number of growing companies to share practical lessons of how people can be motivated to form teams which achieve extraordinary results. Recognised as one of the most capable leaders of his generation he uses an open and involving style to share with the audience the methods and techniques to drive their own business to greater success.

Kevin was appointed UK Managing Director of Porsche GB at the age of 32. Inheriting a business which was close to bankruptcy he refocused the team and in 5 years turned Porsche into the UK’s most profitable car company. After being recognised as ‘One of the top 40 managers under 40 in the UK’ he accepted the role of Managing Director BMW (GB) where he led the business to 4 years of record performance growing sales

by 40% and profitability by 500%. In 2000 he left BMW to create epyx; a business which became established as the UK’s standard ecommerce solutions to the automotive fleet sector. From 2001 to 2007 he was Group CEO of EurotaxGlass’s AG, Switzerland.

With his team he converted companies in 31 countries into a global leader in the provision of online data, systems and software.

He is a member of the board level taskforce of a UK Government institution supporting the turnaround of distressed companies and Chairman of a number of companies including the winner of the ‘2011 Sunday Times FastTrack’ award for the best private equity performance. Having played cricket for his country Kevin understands teamwork as well as leadership. He has put this into practice when climbing some of the world’s highest mountains and walking unsupported to both the North and South Poles to raise money for Cancer Research.

KEVIN GASKELL www.kevingaskell.com For speaking engagements contact: Unique Speaker Bureau www.uniquespeakerbureau.com Tel: 083 268 6057

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

BRANDING

A thing called love

by Neil Hart of Boomtown

Relationships are cultivated over a period of time and although we may be intrigued by the romance that awaits there are still rules to the dating game. Time needs to elapse before there is a certain sense of commitment which essentially leads to loyalty between two people and the reason for this is usually that aside from the initial attraction, trust needs to be built.

The same goes for building a relationship between a brand and its consumers, which would be grown and nurtured into love between a brand and its consumer. As with relationships, consumers tend to choose brands which understand them. Similarly to introducing our friends to other eligible friends, consumers are introduced to brands through word of mouth.

Essentially, however, the first three seconds of meeting someone is crucial and equally brands should use creativity through which to make an impression within the first three seconds of engagement. The three building blocks for a brand to create long term relationships are very similar to dating: creativity to create attraction, communication that builds trust and loyalty, and word of mouth to peers are three powerful activities.

Creativity creates attraction Customers love to see something everyday and simply done differently to make it more exciting and thus more appealing. The trick is to have the ability to look in order to see something different in the ordinary. This is where innovation comes into play and in order to differentiate your brand from being liked to being loved often lies within the brand’s ability to innovate whether through their products or simply their campaigns.

Case study: Aggreko An example of this would be work we did for Aggreko, a global leader in rental power solutions. Boomtown ���������������������������� not only wowed the mining and manufacturing industry with the innovative direct marketing campaign for Aggreko, but the Direct Marketing

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Association of South Africa (DMASA) as well. The Always On campaign won two gold awards and the overall Inkosi award at the 2011 Assegai Awards. The ‘always on’ concept created widespread interest and put Aggreko on the South African map.

Power outages remain a prominent issue in South Africa. Aggreko recognised this issue and approached Boomtown to help them infiltrate the mining and manufacturing industries in the S.A. market.

Boomtown needed to connect with a very specific audience and the messaging had to be uniquely packaged and effectively communicated. A three dimensional box was used to directly engage decision makers.

The box was unique and appropriate to the target which means we achieved being innovative to a technologically savvy market as well as connecting with the market in terms of what their specific interests would be.

previous year. Building customer loyalty goes beyond generic loyalty programmes and emailers, although these may form part of it.

With so many brands around it is becoming increasingly important to understand your consumer beyond their demographics.

When it comes to understanding your consumers, psychographic factors become key to gathering insights as you need to understand what makes them tick, who they trust and what their goals are. If one simply understands a consumer in terms of age, gender and LSM’s your communication will miss the human element of building relationships.

It is important that your relationship starts internally first. If your internal audience is not loyal to your brand, you simply can not expect your external audience to be. Sustain your internal brand with the same level of passion you would for your customers.

Connecting with connectors

The results where measured through the response rate of telephone calls and visits to the dedicated website allowing Boomtown to achieve its goal of supplying the client with leads. The consumers felt the love and responded with comments such as: “It’s one of the best marketing tools I have ever come across”, “VERY impressed!” and “Was very impressed! Enjoyed the entire experience.

Want to be contacted”.

Developing loyalty, the essence of a long-term relationship, should be an intentional activity Customer loyalty takes a long time to build, which is why it is important not to flirt to convert, but rather be open and authentic in your customer communication. Have a sales philosophy that emphasises relationship building. Think end-of-time friendships, not end-of-month totals.

Without customer loyalty, customers leave and you could end up sacrificing as much as a third of your sales per year just to get your numbers back to where they were the

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Word of mouth may be nothing new, but the extent to which word of mouth can travel on a digital space certainly is.

Peer marketing extends your sales force across channels you cannot buy, making it extremely valuable. This is specifically relevant when it comes to youth marketing, an audience that often base their decisions on peer reviews and are moving further and further away from traditional media channels focusing their attention and energy on the digital and social spaces available.

Case study: NMMU We realised this when marketing to potential university students. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University is a comprehensive university situated in Nelson Mandela Bay, and has been a client of Boomtown’s for a number of years. The university currently holds over 25 000 students across its six campuses, and is a market leader in tertiary education in the Eastern Cape province.

Boomtown needed to create a campaign on a tight budget that had the potential to go way beyond the effectiveness of traditional media. Boomtown realised that to maximise

SME

social, mobile, email

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BRANDING the budget, a successful viral campaign was the best solution. But how does one make a viral campaign go viral? The answer of which had the potential to create great success for the planned campaign and deliver return on investment. By aiming at the popularity of social media channel YouTube and the effectiveness of word of mouth, a campaign was conceptualised with the idea of culminating in an experiential event which would be seeded to a pre-existing database.

The campaign theme was A Better U (the result of a life transformed through education), graphically made up of elements which linked in with youth trends. The message behind the campaign was that a tertiary education at NMMU would result in a better you, hence the need to submit an application.

The initial open day campaign acted as a teaser, with 4000 entries being received for an iPad competition. This allowed Boomtown to build a database with names and email addresses. This database would be set aside as the seeding database for the upcoming undergraduate campaign.

Two months later Boomtown devised an activation to give the campaign momentum and take it to the next level. By teaming up with the exceptionally talented NMMU Choir, choreography was planned and songs were selected that had “You” in the lyrics. A flash mob concept was refined for the popular, multicultural Port Elizabeth shopping centre Greenacres. The flash mob experiential event took place on a busy Saturday morning, and was filmed using handheld video cameras.

A final cut was uploaded onto YouTube and seeded on Facebook. Boomtown then utilised the database and sent the link to each individual on the database. Instead of the cost expense of Facebook ads, an insight found that personal recommendations from peers received substantially better click through rates. Therefore a select group of ‘connectors’ linked to the target market was personally requested to post the link on their Facebook wall as a status update.

The experiential event was backed up by

traditional media in local press and radio.

The results of the flash mob were remarkable. Over 100 000 hits were received within two months and the NMMU gained exposure worldwide, drawing comments from every part of the world. The campaign resulted in great brand building through the tapping in of modern and local insights, while driving a message using two of its values Ubuntu and Diversity, which came out strongly in the flash mob.

The YouTube video was one of the fastest growing South African videos of the year.

The comments and responses on social media were overwhelming, and the video received hundreds of tweets, re-tweets, Facebook mentions and YouTube comments, with over 600 ‘likes’. According to an independent study, the NMMU flash mob video received over R400 000 Online Ad Value from exposure online – nearly 10 times the cost of production of the video.

In addition, the video was showcased on various radio stations, and received national print exposure and on the television channel eNews, earning an Advertising Value Equivalent of well over R300 000.

The campaign was able to capture the imagination of the public locally and internationally, and was an exceptional brand building tool. The exercise allowed NMMU to truly ‘Stand out from the crowd’ and positioned them as an innovative institution with a strong progressive attitude, all within a limited budget.

What should we remember?

Always remember that you are in a longterm relationship which needs constant nurturing and trust in order to grow. Before you can start cultivating this relationship externally, you need to create the love internally and then be innovative enough to be noticed by your consumers. Focus around a life-time value rather than a short term solution and always be creative in your approach while measuring what matters most. In brands as in life, always remember that a relationship is giving and getting and involves a two-way conversation combined with mutual benefits to both your brand or product as well as the consumer. MT

Deal breakers As with any relationship there are certain ‘deal breakers’ when it comes to brand love.

This includes: 1. Trying to force customers to love your brand. You need to earn their love by showing that you understand them and catering for their needs.

2. Playing it safe. Sometimes brands need to be risky in order to make an impact, often playing it safe is risky.

3. Speaking generically to a faceless target market. Customers need to be treated as individuals rather than ‘dear valued

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customer’. It is thus important to understand them as individuals through tribal mapping and psychographics.

4. Thinking marketing is not measurable.

We need to be able to measure the love for our brands and be able to adapt and adjust our tactics if they are not delivering the right result. We need to measure the important things.

5. Focus on creativity alone. Beyond creativity brands need to focus on changing their consumers’ behaviours and getting the customer to not only like the brand, but to love it and essentially buy it and buy it again.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

BOOMTOWN 1 Bridge Street South End Port Elizabeth Tel: 041 364 0180 neil@boomtown.co.za www.boomtown.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

13

ADVERTISING

Target those who are “In the Market”

by Warren Moss of Demographica

The holy grail of advertising is believed to be targeting. Technology has provided marketers with the ability to deliver advertising messages targeted to individual consumer profiles and needs.

This is based on the astonishing amount of personal information that marketers possess on individuals around the globe. We know more about our consumers than we ever have and we now have the ability to serve adverts based on individual behaviours, attitudes, demographics and finances because of this wonderful thing we call technology.

Yet the facts are telling us something very different. According to Google, click-through rates, on average, have fallen below one in a thousand on certain web-based advertising.

The big brother of personal information gathering, Facebook, has an average clickthrough rate of about five in ten thousand!

Tried and tested marketing practices of narrowly defining and targeting potential customers, needs a radical rethink. It is for this reason that Demographica, South Africa’s largest digital database advertising company, embraces the broadening of target audiences when planning promotions and special deals.

Some recipients of the advertisement might not be the in the market for the product or service, but may well have someone within their network that is. This is potentially very powerful as the passing on of the details of the promotion carries an inherent endorsement.

The “in the market theory” is very simple.

Basically, it says that you are only ever in the market for a product or service - meaning that all brands that are currently advertising will only be relevant to you if you’re in the market for that specific product.

For example, before I was in the market to buy a car, I would rarely notice any car advertising, however, now that I am in the market, I now see such advertising everywhere. The truth is, those adverts were always there, they just weren’t relevant at the time and were subconsciously blocked out.

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Now that I am ‘in the market’, such advertising has come to the forefront of my conscious. So, this brings into relevance the question of targeting… how much targeting can you really do, because you never know if someone is really in the market? It can be said that based on the ‘in the market’ theory, not all targeting works. Therefore marketers need to understand that although they may have a fantastic campaign and have ‘nailed’ their target down to a perfect ‘T’, one thing remains unanswered: is your target audience in the market to buy?

We are living in a digital age where campaigns and promotions not only have the potential to be shared across various mediums such as Facebook and Twitter but within these campaigns it is actually encouraged. That being said, sending a campaign to one person has the potential to reach often vastly-distributed audiences. In most cases these audiences are more in the market for your product as the advert has been sent to them by friends or family that know them far better than any marketer.

From an advertising perspective, the broadening of your target market vastly improves the possibility that recipients will pass the information on to interested parties in their network. This ability to quickly and effortlessly forward the information on is a key benefit in the choice between digital and traditional print media.

We are all part of inner circles or networks which include: parents, friends, siblings and work colleagues. The income bracket across our network is going to range quite significantly as will specific interests and hobbies. Brands need to open up their target market in order for their advertising message to be spread to consumers that have a higher potential to purchase.

Within the digital space, the power has shifted undeniably into the hands of the consumer who can now easily share, like, dislike, unlike or openly criticise brands to an increasingly influential, digital-savvy consumer, enabling most brands to react accordingly and in real-time based on the consumer’s feedback and responses.

Nowadays 68% of buyers and influencers use social media as their first source for

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

product information, according to the European Social Media and Email Marketing study, and that figure is rising.

So to make sure you’re not missing out on sales, you need to make sure you have an effective presence on all the major social networking sites. Advertisers and marketers need to rethink their targeting tactics. For too long assumptions have been made and consumers have been boxed in specific categories. Not every 20-something female is interested in Twilight, Sex and the City, weight loss and pink electronics. Targeting of audiences, therefore, should encompass the immediate and associated networks and influencers of the desired consumer.

No longer should you speak only to your 18 to 25-year old male living in Sandton. You should be speaking to his influencers, the people he trusts and is likely to listen to. MT Warren Moss is the founder & CEO of Demographica (www.demographica.co.za), South Africa’s largest digital email and SMS advertising company; they make use of email and SMS marketing as a way of branding, marketing, advertising, customer acquisition and sales. As a natural born entrepreneur, Warren’s A.D.D nature fits well with the business and his multiple achievements in life; the most remarkable being the founding of Demographica, being a finalist for the ABSA Jewish Entrepreneur Award and a finalist in the ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa Award.

DEMOGRAPHICA Block 2, 257 Oxford Road Illovo, Johannesburg 2196 Tel: 011 447 7373 info@demographica.co.za www.demographica.co.za

MOBILE

Mobile Marketing

by Russel Stromin, MD of Strike Media

Twelve years ago, when Strike Media was being harboured as South Africa’s first mobile marketing agency, we were asked by potential clients to produce a trailer to be pulled behind a vehicle in order to promote their brand or product. Clearly they did not share our vision of “mobile marketing”.

Today, there is over 100% of mobile penetration across the South African market, meaning that everybody has at least one cell phone. Therefore, it has become evident that mobile marketing is an essential element of the marketing mix. Television was initially referred to as the ‘first screen’, but as technology has advanced, cell phones have taken its place. This is because our cell phone screen is now the first screen we look at in the morning and the last at night. Mobile is a mass medium of such significance that it has even been utilised to overthrow governments (think Mubarak in Egypt).

Brands and corporates should be embracing mobile marketing and solutions in order to engage interactively and more personally with consumers. The cell phone is one of the only tools where you, as the marketer, can instantly create and manage a two-way dialogue between you and your customer.

There is a myriad of mobile services and offerings available that allow for simple and easy brand-consumer conversation.

Recent statistics emerging in the market indicate that the percentage of South African cell phone users with smartphones has more than doubled over the past year.

It is predicted that smartphone penetration in South Africa is likely to reach 80% by the year 2014 (Gartner).

The mobile industry has rapidly evolved from the early days of bulk SMS to the current craze of smartphones and apps that consumers revel in today. In South Africa, the smartphone market is largely dominated

by BlackBerry, which currently has 45-50% of the market. InMobi, the largest global independent mobile ad network delivers in excess of 5 billion mobile ad impressions to SA mobile web browsers per quarter.

From this, it is evident that the future will be faster, more connected and much more convenient. Thanks to our mobile phones, access to all information is literally at our fingertips. In Africa, a vast majority of the population only have internet access via their mobile devices. In most circumstances, the internet – for many people – will be viewed for the first time via mobile.

When the internet first reared its head in the early 90’s, it was said that if one didn’t have a website, one would soon not have a business. The same saying still applies, but this time to Mobi sites.

As Mobi sites first began to surface, it was recognised that most web designers assumed that the websites they had created would also simply work on mobile.

However, one cannot assume that a website will render appropriately on just any mobile phone.

Mobi sites are not merely scaled down versions of websites. One has to take into account the context of mobile rather than the richness of content typically found on the web. Mobi sites need to be uncomplicated and easy to navigate.

pervasive medium.

Strike Media offers turnkey mobile marketing solutions, from campaign conceptualisation through to creation, execution, monitoring, measuring and analytics. Marketing and incentives go hand in hand and as South Africa’s leading mobile marketing agency, we provide the most comprehensive mobile rewards system in the industry. Loyalty and reward programs have evolved from card-based to mobile, with an option to even choose your own rewards. Mobile vouchering and couponing with at pointof-sale redemption are also fast becoming prevalent in the market.

Picture yourself walking up to an event poster, holding your cell phone over said poster and by doing so, automatically triggering the trailer or promo of that event to pop up on your phone and begin playing.

Imagine that once you were done watching that trailer or promo, you would be offered tickets to the event and be given the option to send tickets to friends, as well as be given a means of entry in which you are required to simply wave your phone at the turnstile to gain entry.

At Strike Media, we can make it happen. MT

Properly developed Mobi sites need to ensure that the best possible user experience for the specific device accessing the site is correctly presented. For example, if a cell phone can support Flash, the Mobi site should deliver Flash. There are over 6000 different devices with varying screen sizes, browser software and input mechanisms currently in the hands of South African consumers.

Strike Media has invested a lot of resources into the design and development of a handset content adaption engine in order to provide the best possible user experience for visitors to Mobi sites. Just as potential customers automatically expect to be able to find businesses on the web, they are now expecting to find these same businesses within the mobile realm. As a brand, you need to make sure that your presence is available and marketed well in this highly

STRIKE MEDIA Unit 205A, Building 20 The Waverly Business Park Mowbray Tel: 021 447 4547 info@strikemedia.co.za www.strikemedia.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

15

SALES

Who are the players in your sales team?

by Lorna Powe of Sales Partners Cape Town

Selling is one of those areas of business that no one really wants to work in. Often seen as a lowly profession and shunned by many, it is the key to any business; after all no sales, no business.

You so often hear companies complain about their sales team. Complaints like: “they don’t sell enough”, “they over sell and leave production with a problem – the service or product can’t be provided”, or even “they just don’t do their administration!” I often get told – you either know how to sell or you don’t. People believe that either you are a born sales person or not.

What is it about sales? I believe it is one of the most underrated and misunderstood areas of business. No business can succeed unless sales are made. Selling produces the income, so the product or service can be produced.

When any one of us start a business we do so with a passion for the product we are supplying. This passion leads to sales. Why? Because we really believe in what we are doing so we are able to convince people to buy. Yet many a business owner – whether a two person business or a medium sized company with 300 staff – tell me that they are not a sales person. When this happens I know it either won’t succeed or it will start to fail. These people don’t understand the fundamentals of sales.

Sales is a process and any process can be learned by anyone. I’ve taught a retired doctor of 70 plus years of age to sell as well as youngsters out of school or college. You need to be driven and have a passion for what you are doing.

There has to be a reason behind what you are doing that is about more than just your salary cheque. You also need

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to be supported by a team. So let’s have a look at different angles of sales.

Sales People – Often people tell me they can’t find anyone to sell their product or service for them. The complaints are endless. There are different kinds of people and especially with sales people. In Blair Singers book “Sales Dogs” he talks about the different breeds of sales people. Most people think of the ‘car salesman’ stereotype. This type goes hard after you to buy the car, chases you down, gets the sale and then when something goes wrong does not want to admit it’s his job! We all hate that. That’s why people don’t want to go into selling because they think negatively about it.

What’s worse is we all think that is what selling is! It’s not.

Selling is about convincing and motivating people to buy. Blair call this type the Pit Bull – this kind of sales people are required for certain types of sales, opening a new territory perhaps, but not for building long term customer relationships, or for managing a team of sales people with different personalities.

This is often a mistake made by larger companies – the sales manager is a Pit Bull and they have no idea how to handle a team.

Let’s have a look at the other types of salesdogs: Golden Retriever – Always at your service, they have eternal optimism, in terms of customer service they are top.

Often smart and extremely thorough, they talk to people in soothing tones convincing them with their manner and are constantly in touch with the clients and prospects.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Poodle – highly intelligent, highly strung and dressed perfectly. They live and thrive in the world of flash and class; it may be a dream rather than reality though. These incredibly well connected people are simply great at networking through to the right person to get the deal. They constantly look for ways to reach people in the simplest way. They are excellent at marketing.

Chihuahua – these bright people are technical wizards and very intense.

They simply have to know all the details before they can go and sell something to anyone. They often talk very fast and happily stay up late to find out that last detail the night before a presentation.

Excellent in IT they are best when selling to other Chihuahuas.

Basset Hound – faithful old Basset Hound, will stick with you through thick and thin. Their ability to build strong loyal and lasting relationships is amazing. They often don’t look the best – think ‘Colombo’. Very tenacious they will get to know all about you and you will know about them to such an extent that you will want to do business with them.

Each of these breeds has a role in the sales team. If you don’t understand your staff and try to make a Basset Hound sell like a Pit Bull then sales will plummet – they will be de-motivated and not know what to do. During my time in large corporate companies here and in Europe we had annual appraisals where we got to know other people’s opinions about our strengths and weaknesses. We often went on training courses to ‘rectify‘ our weaknesses. Play to your strengths and let everyone else play to theirs - is a far more successful strategy.

SALES

Usually a sales team that is not performing is not playing to their strengths. In such a situation any incentives won’t work. They are simply not doing the right job in the right way that plays to their strengths. If this is the case, have a look at the team and who is responsible for what; as an example put the Golden Retrievers in customer service industries and areas of the business. They will up sell and cross sell like crazy. Put the Poodle into the trade shows and get them to do the presenting. Whilst the Basset Hound shines when there are problems and resolves them well, along with giving excellent advice and can be relied upon to ensure the customer chooses the right product.

Each breed has a different way to be motivated too. If you ask the Chihuahua to back up the team with the right data and do the preparation for a presentation and even the demonstration then they will be in their element, leaving the others who usually hate this part to get on with selling. Pit Bulls need to be challenged constantly, but make sure that you give them clear and concise actions to do. Anything that is seen as impossible by the rest of the team should be thrown to the Pit Bull.

How do you find the right people?

Key here is to understand what kind of salesdog you are looking for. What part of the sales process will they be involved in? What’s your product or service and what kind of people are in your market? Who will they be dealing with?

When you know this you can choose the right kind of salesperson. A Poodle will sell a vision to a company, whereas a Chihuahua will make sure that they understand all the technical details.

What really matters is that they have the right sales coach to ensure they are working in the manner that suits them and enhances their natural abilities. Sometimes it takes an outsider to bring out or point out the abilities of individuals in a team. Sales require energy and often this gets lost in the day-to-day business life.

The important relationship between marketing and sales cannot go without mention. The Poodle is the best to help cross from sales to marketing.

The key here is to ensure that they work together. Many times in larger companies marketing ‘forget’ to talk to sales and let them know about a great article in a magazine that the sales team could use to increase sales.

Or worse the marketing team forget that the sales team are those that know how prospects and customers react to the marketing messages. They know what works, and what does not. The collateral that marketing produces in larger companies is essential to the sales team. As long as these two areas of a business work together success is inevitable. However, it doesn’t happen very often.

Finally there are two things that most sales people forget about, practicing sales techniques and being accountable.

Usually management doesn’t implement these techniques, and if they do, holding the sales department to them is not achieved. There is a big difference between ‘event training’ and ‘implementation and coaching’. Event training has a purpose however unless it is implemented it has a high abandon rate and hence is not successful as a way to increase sales or the productivity of a sales team. Anyone may go on a training course, come back with a book after a day or two and implement a couple of teachings. After a week they

are often back to their old habits. It takes practice to change the way you do things. How are great athletes or academics successful – practice. Sales is a profession and unless the sales people practice their skills they will be less successful.

Accountability is making sure that you understand the numbers behind the sales you need to achieve. What key things do you need to do to get where you are going? Do you know? If not getting there is unlikely. The ultimate sales process is all about knowing your market, practice and accountability. If these three ingredients are not there...MT

SALES PARTNERS CAPE TOWN House Torbay Green Point Cape Town Tel: 021 434 3685 info@salespartnerscapetown.co.za lorna@salespartnerscapetown.co.za www.salespartnerscapetown.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

17

SALES

Does your advertising generate sales?

by Ed Hatton, The Marketing Director

In the midst of the current brand building wave, we sometimes forget that the end result of all marketing promotions should be to generate, hold or increase income.

This may be directly, by some form of offer, or indirectly, by building consumer trust in your company and its products. Income only comes from existing customers continuing to buy, new customers, or by increasing spend from either existing or new customers. If you cannot trace how a campaign will generate income whether directly or indirectly, and identify what type of income is expected, you may be wasting your money on prestige promotions.

Sales are really important Many small and medium businesses would like more sales income. They need to carefully choose the methods they use to get new sales enquiries, because marketing funds are scarce. At the same time entrepreneurs often do not have all the information they need to choose the correct promotion, the best media, and the ideal message.

Sadly a whole lot of money spent on marketing does not produce the desired results, or any result at all. The advertising may have been lost in the incredible clutter of marketing messages that consumers face each day.

The message may have been misunderstood by the potential customer. Or, sadly, it may be because preventable business mistakes that killed potential sales after the advertising did its work.

Your sales force has a major impact on the success of your advertising A lot of advertising invites prospective buyers to approach your company and either enquire or buy items. When the advertising succeeds and a customer engages with one of your salespeople, you should get value for your money spent by making a sale – but it does not always work out that way.

Prospective customers may not buy if the salespeople ignore them, if the product is not in stock, or not at the price advertised.

Sometimes making the sale will depend on the salespersons product knowledge or their ability to match appropriate products to a customer’s requirements.

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A lost sale Some time ago I looked for a new heater.

There were many types of heaters and air conditioners to choose from. I had seen an advert for a type of heater that seemed to satisfy my needs and I had been attracted to the special price, so I visited the store. This is a small chain of appliance stores which boasts excellent customer service as its differential to the big chains.

The salespeople could not give me any information on the size of heater I needed or comparative costs of running different systems. They could not even explain why some apparently similar devices in the range were almost twice the price of others. Their sales technique was to read the specifications on the packaging (why had they not bothered to do even that before?) and emphasise that the heater was on promotion and I should buy now. I walked out to the indifferent shrugs of the salespeople.

So no sale was made. But while we can smile wryly at the all-too-frequent yawning gap between the vision and mission statements of a company and the activity at the coal face, something had gone badly wrong here. Good advertising and a great price attracted a potential first-time customer, but the salesperson was unable to provide the information the customer requested, and disinterested in trying to find out. Can you imagine walking into a motor car dealership and talking to salespeople who do not know the engine size or fuel consumption of the car they are trying to sell you?

What went wrong?

Possibly the blame lies with the supplier of the heaters for not providing sufficient information or training for the retail staff, or maybe the retailer is at fault for not recruiting or training staff to be capable of translating needs into solutions. Perhaps the store should have clearly positioned itself as a supermarket, one where customers choose the products they need and don’t expect advice – but then why have the tribe of salespeople? Or it could be the salespeople themselves. They had clearly not read up about heating, or asked questions. Why were they so unprepared they had not even read

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

a brochure, a specification sheet or the features on the packaging before I appeared?

A reality check is needed here. A high percentage of sales made by retailers and many business-to-business sales are routine transactions where the buyer knows what they want and the salesperson takes an order or directs them to the product. But if a selling organisation starts to regard this status as the norm they face two unfortunate consequences: One is that the buyer never gets exposure to alternatives or options in the range, which may be better for his needs than the product that brought him to the store. The second is that the whole sales channel starts to get lazy, and becomes incapable of selling to any customer who does not specify exactly what they want.

Has it happened to your organisation? Have you allowed your salespeople to get lazy?

Would they rather chat about sport than increase their product knowledge? It may be worthwhile rethinking whether your salespeople can uncover needs and produce solutions. You don’t want me, and all the others like me to walk out of your store.

Don’t forget the rest While you go about fixing any sales problem you may have, examine other areas of your business for customer-hostile things that have crept in unnoticed. A key area is your company website, where the contact or enquiry page is sometimes an enquiry form complete with a CAPTCHA (the word in strange fonts that must be filled in to distinguish you from a robot) but no address, telephone number or e-mail. This is supposed to reduce spam and cold canvassing by salespeople.

Who is this technique serving? If I were a customer, wanting to find where I could buy the advertised product, or to get some technical details about the offer, and were confronted with only a form, complete with mandatory fields for e-mail address and cell number I would not be happy. On the other hand your IT manager is probably very happy because he has less spam to attend to.

Your management team may be happy that they have less pesky salesmen to fend off. If this is happening in your company instruct

SALES your IT people to deal with their problems without prejudicing customer’s interests, and teach your executives to listen briefly to offers – they may even learn something.

Admin people also need to be involved.

Murphy’s Law would delight in arranging that an accountant does a clampdown on excessive credit offered the day your ‘try it for free’ promotion hits the media. There are whole rafts of horror stories of switchboard operators or receptionists turning away potential customers because they did not know about a promotion. Could it happen to you?

An IT company, known for its machine-like efficiency entered into a joint promotion with one of its resellers. Strangely the excellent promotion did not produce any enquiries or sales. An investigation revealed that incoming enquiries were channelled to a sales support person, who, as usually with enquiries, dished them out in rotation, to each of their hundreds of resellers. The dealer which had set up the promotion had gifted his competitors with over a hundred sales leads. He was not happy.

Outside your control Of course it is not only your own company that can becomes its own worst enemy, many factors can contribute to failure of a marketing campaign. For instance the campaign may simply fail for unknown reasons.

Many creative, well planned and efficiently executed advertising and promotional campaigns just never influenced buyers. The market is a harsh judge, and even great messages can be ignored.

The campaign can fall victim to external events or unexpected circumstances. Arguably the greatest reason for failure is too little exposure. One, or a few adverts are quickly lost in the clutter. Trying to appeal to a wide audience with a limited budget means tiny and infrequent adverts in unfavourable positions.

Finally do not spend too little money on promotions or advertising especially those directed to a wide audience. If you can find a market niche and a way of talking to those prospective customers then use that, but under-advertising will usually just waste scarce budget. MT

The key is to find a niche and an affordable method to talk to those in the niche, one which will get noticed. If you can’t do this then use the money elsewhere, like retraining salespeople or increasing networking.

Do and don’ts I have not attempted to examine the fundamentals of good advertising or marketing in this article, but pointed out how easy it is to destroy the effect of your advertising by poor business practices and uncaring staff. My suggestion is to examine and test everything.

Use ‘mystery shoppers’, friends who buy and relate their experiences. Tell everyone about the campaigns and what they are designed to achieve. Get the whole team pulling together.

THE MARKETING DIRECTOR PO Box 873 Benoni 1500 Tel: 011 894 7618 info@themarketingdirector.co.za www.themarketingdirector.co.za Blog: http://marketingstrategy.co.za

Three Ring Circus has been staging shows in schools for more than a decade, bringing together marketers and educators to create top quality educational experiences.

We like to call it edutainment.

With more than 2 500 successful live shows under our belt, we know exactly what it takes to reach South Africa’s learners. We have redefined a marketing space, usually blocked. Our entry into schools is always educational. If we connect your brand to education, we can give you a space not readily available to marketers. We work with marketing departments, sponsorship and CSI funds. And we work to your specifications.

Our annual products focus on career and study options. Future Guide, our compact magazine, free to learners, does just that. At the end of each year, all Grade 12 learners need a place to study, funding, a bank account, cellphones and computers, accommodation, transport, clothing, toiletries, and for the girls, cosmetics!

We can incorporate your brand to fit into our products - or we can do something brand new for you!

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www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

19

DIRECT MARKETING

Group buying: what does it mean for brands and consumers

by Wayne Gosling, Joint CEO of Groupon South Africa

Group buying, a fairly new-concept introduced a few years ago, has proved to be a large industry with the most successful company being Groupon. It has been hailed as a web phenomenon for the way it is changing the way merchants market themselves around the world. By utilising the power of group buying along with other innovative marketing techniques to drive huge brand awareness, group buying is able to drive huge amounts of sales for both merchants and brands. However, some businesses still exhibit a degree of apprehension towards the massive marketing opportunity that group buying provides.

The concept of group buying is a good one and buying in bulk has always been a good way to save money. Harnessing this concept and the power of the internet to connect people into an ad hoc buying club to take advantage of bulk discounts should really be flawless. Group buying utilises the online channel and gives consumers the benefits of buying in bulk, while providing sellers with the opportunity to benefit from higher volume sales. It can be used to offer products and services at significantly reduced prices, on condition that a minimum number of buyers make the purchase.

On the surface the business model is perceived to be easy on the front end; however there are massive differences in quality of deals and service. It is best to keep your focus on our own brand and on making the customer and vendor experience as seamless as possible.

The way this works is that the website presents a deal with an attractive discount (ideally more than 40%). The service or product provider will specify how many deals must be sold to make it worth their while. Users can then purchase the deal and only when enough people have purchased the deal does it ‘tip’ and at that point all purchasers will be charged and receive a voucher by email to redeem the product or service at the discounted rate.

This means there is no risk for the service or product provider, nor for the website, as the deal is only valid once there are a certain number of purchasers. So everyone wins; the provider gets exposure and feet through the ‘door’, the website gets a cut and the consumer gets a good deal.

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What does this mean for businesses?

Some cases have led businesses to question the cost versus marketing benefit of the group buying model; debating whether the large discount placed on group deals makes the substantial marketing that is provided irrelevant. Smaller businesses are apprehensive about the possibility that they might be unable to deal with the scale of new business that group buying provides.

This is often due to staggering consumer reach of these companies’ databases, which may attract more customers than small companies can cope with. Group buying sites like Groupon South Africa feel differently.

The model has been able to provide just such a service for both start-ups and smaller companies and approach delivering Groupons for each business with a tailored, individualised approach based on market expertise and research from across the globe.

It is up ��������������������������������������� to the merchant whether or not they can handle the service. Once they walk in the door, it’s up to the merchant to provide effective service. The success fees for a brand/business using a group buying site like Groupon cover the cost of: • New customers being delivered to the vendor’s business and a chance to gain repeat customers.

• The exposure the vendor receives as a result of the email sent to the large, highly responsive opt-in database of subscribers (a very attractive demographic of young urban professionals).

• The editorial teams that create a compelling feature on the business.

• The business developers who collaborate with the business to define deal specifics and parameters that are mutually beneficial.

• Tools for the merchant to track customer redemption.

• Customer service and vendor management teams that facilitate a successful feature.

• And in Groupon’s case, the global power of the Groupon brand.

What does this mean for customers?

For customers, a group buying site like Groupon identifies with customers because it’s an excellent way to discover or rediscover new local experiences. The deal is the nudge consumers need to actually do something instead of just reading about it. It provides an easily accessible platform

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

for customers to browse, choose, purchase and enjoy activities and experiences that they would never have thought of or been able to afford before. The benefit for the consumer using this collective buying power is receiving from 50% up to 90% discounts on advertised items. It’s a great incentive to ask your friends and relatives to join in and take advantage of the “too good to pass up” deal so that an even better discount can be received by all.

With internet access becoming increasingly pervasive and hard-pressed consumers becoming increasingly bargain hungry, group buying is here to stay. This being said, we can see that group buying sites like Groupon South Africa can have a positive impact on brands and businesses if managed and handled correctly by both the site and the merchant. Groupon has created a powerful new marketing vehicle for local merchants which guarantees a large number of new customers in just a matter of hours. This innovative approach to e-commerce has brought millions in new revenue to local businesses all over the world.

With the increase in e-commerce business and the dawning realisation by “traditional” businesses that they need to move into the online sphere to survive, group buying may offer the most effective alternative with the least compromise towards achieving this end.

MT

GROUPON SOUTH AFRICA 12 Loop Street Cape Town Tel: 021 401 0700 support@mycitydeal.co.za www.groupon.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

21

DIRECT MARKETING

The role of email marketing in a multichannel environment.

by Barbara Ulmi, Graphic Mail

Email is alive and well. It is still the most cost-effective marketing tool, enabling you to reach people who have actually given you permission to communicate with them and who are therefore more likely to pay attention to your message and respond to your calls-to-action.

The medium allows brands to send messages according to their own schedule, and it allows consumers to respond at their leisure, while permitting a high degree of personalisation that gives you the capability to adapt campaigns to the individual needs of every recipient.

Within the past 10 years, email has become a top revenue generator for many companies, and even with the meteoric rise of other media, email remains at the heart of all online applications and will remain there for the foreseeable future.

But even so, times are changing.

New technologies such as smartphones and social media have emerged that are disrupting email’s traditional communication dominance and fragmenting audiences: With that said, each channel has its own strengths and has matured according to its own nature.

Mobile, for example, is an action-oriented medium where consumers are thought of as moving targets. The opportunity to engage consumers in a contextual manner based on knowledge of both time and location, with campaigns that provide increased interaction, is thought to be unrivalled in any other communications medium in terms of delivering the most relevant messages.

It’s no surprise then that 2012 has seen a boom in global mobile marketing efforts.

There are 7 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone and in some countries there are more mobile subscriptions than there are people. Thanks to the instancy of mobile, it takes only about 90 seconds for the average person to respond to

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a SMS. And due to the fact that one’s mobile device is always on and always connected, mobile coupons currently achieve 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.

Taking a closer look at social media - today, one in every nine people on earth is a Facebook user and Twitter sees an average of 190 million tweets per day. This is according to one particular September 2011 report, aptly titled “Stunning Social Media Statistics”.

Besides these sheer numbers, social media has shown a powerful ability to engage customers - right behind email. A 2011 Customer Engagement Report by digital marketing research group Insight Express shows that 72% of marketers surveyed cite email newsletters as most likely to result in a tangible improvement to customer engagement, 48% cite presence on social networks like Facebook and 46% cite micro-blogging sites like Twitter.

Mobile and social make good bedfellows.

The growth of the social networks over the last few years has been matched by the mobile internet; with smart phone sales approaching nearly 500 million units in 2011, with more than 10.9 billion app downloads happening within the past three years and with 50% of all page views on mobile phones in 2011 accounted for by social networks.

Tactics for success in social are very different from those in email. But email and social are alike in a very significant way: they are the only two permission-based channels.

Marketers who are good at email head into social with a competitive advantage - they already understand the principles of audience acquisition, relevance and engagement.

These statistics highlight both the staying power of email and the rise of social network and mobile use - the key now is how to pull them together to create effective cross-channel marketing.

Even so, you may still be wondering why a company that has built its communications

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

program on email should move its resources into social and also mobile?

Disregarding all the figures temporarily, just ask yourself the following question: is everyone you want to reach already on your email list? And if they are, are you able to provide them with relevant and dynamic communications 100% of the time?

Here’s the thing - if you’re not in contact with your customers via email as well as through social and mobile channels; you’re probably not reaching your audience with contextual messages right where they live, work and play.

In the following section we discuss some opportunities around the convergence of email with social and mobile, giving you insights into how to integrate and manage your cross-channel voice and leverage these tools to get better results: While it’s easy for marketers to understand why they should be integrating email, social and mobile, the real challenge remains how to do it.

At its most simple level, it’s merely about taking all the basic principles of email campaign consistency and applying them to your newer channels and platforms.

1) Start by embedding social media links into your emails This is one of the highest ranked email marketing tactics. But to avoid getting the cart before the horse, you’ll need to lay a solid foundation in social media.

It’s critical to identify where your customers are rather than making assumptions. To help with this there are many free third party tools that can provide insight about social site traffic by industry sector, to help you prioritise your social initiatives, such as Compete and Hitwise.

You can also make use of a data provider, like the US-based Janrain user management platform, who can help you access social data for your opt-in mailing list. This

DIRECT MARKETING

information is delivered at the individual level and gives you a snapshot of each consumer; including whether they are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goolge+ and etc. and certain elements of their public profiles.

2) Discover how your brand is being discussed and in what context Is there a buzz around a certain product or promotion? Are there complaints that need to be resolved? Are there suggestions or comments waiting to be addressed?

Start by monitoring blog posts and social conversations by setting up Google Alerts and using a service such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social to see what content of yours is being shared and talked about on social networks.

Next you need to look at what draws your customers in and brings them back for more - in other words - the ‘sticking points’. This is what ultimately brings home the business and is the most important information you can have at your disposal to run successful cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Use Google Analytics tools to see which parts of your website are the most active and which links, content, referral sources or conversations generate the most traffic.

Once you have taken these measures you can identify what motivates your audience and therefore design better programs in the future. With this data at your disposal you can also start thinking about deploying segmentation tools that will enable you to tie in campaigns across email, social and mobile channels based on individual preferences and analytic indicators.

For example, you can segment by gender, age, geographic location, or by preferred channel - which is critical to know when you’re looking to communicate with a specific customer.

3) Keep it clear, simple and consistent Email should work hand-in-hand with other digital messaging channels, and the efforts

made on each one should complement initiatives on the other. Here’s a simple structure for how to achieve integration: Step A: Create your email campaign and define the message with your subject line It all starts with a well-made marketing email.

One point to focus on especially is crafting a short and sweet subject line, at 50 characters or less; which should clearly state what your readers can expect from your email, what’s in it for them or what you want them to do as a result.

creator, easy list building features and key metric reports.

Mobile sites can have unlimited pages and GraphicMail makes it easy to upload videos, images (rendered automatically to the appropriate size and weight per device type), text and feedback/ survey forms. This innovative product marries mobile sites and push-marketing by way of a personalised web-link within bulk SMS marketing sends; enabling a message to be delivered directly to subscribers’ phones with a simple click-through from an SMS - channelling viewers to a graphicrich, personalized mobile site.

Step B: Translate your message to social If you have discovered that your subscribers are active on Twitter and Facebook, your task is then to convey the same message to this audience in a style that is appealing, according to the unique attributes of each platform.

Alternatively, marketers can also just run a simple bulk SMS campaign. As before, your message will need to be reduced - this time to 160 characters - including any contact details, a physical address or other supporting information.

By taking that message to 120 character frame in Twitter, you can create more interest and clarify your call-to-action. Add a #hashtag and use a shortened URL to save on character count.

It’s that simple. If you start with email as a campaign backbone, you have all the tools and resources already at hand to reach audiences anywhere and everywhere, with no need to create anything new. MT

A Facebook post gives you the opportunity to entice fans even more by expanding your message to 150 characters. Remove the #hashtag you used in Twitter and add a compelling graphic.

Step C: Take your message mobile Every email and social marketing message presents the chance to provide relevant motivators in a contextual setting to your mobile-oriented consumers.

Companies that can nail down their SMS marketing strategy will benefit from a wide range of new opportunities. However, it’s often difficult or too expensive for smaller brands to have their own mobile applications developed.

For businesses looking for an easy entry point into the mobile sphere, GraphicMail has developed an all-in-one mobile campaign tool. The hosted email, social and mobile marketing services offers a free mobile site

GRAPHICMAIL 18 Dunkley Square Gardens Cape Town Tel: 0860 106 135 info@graphicmail.co.za www.graphicmail.co.za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

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CUSTOMER RELATIONS

This time it is personal: from consumer to co-creator

by Derek Engelbrecht, Retail and Consumer Products Sector Leader at Ernst & Young

Consumers are harder to define, understand and please than ever before. Digital technology is altering not only how, where and when consumers shop, but is transforming their expectations of, and interactions with, all suppliers — from retailers and manufacturers to governments and utilities.

This upheaval has come so fast that many organisations are struggling to adapt their business models to keep up with the evolving demands of consumers and the escalating potential of technology. And one thing is clear: the future will be no less turbulent.

To get a clear picture of the new consumer and offer solutions to how organisations can keep pace with their shifting needs, in 2011, Ernst & Young conducted an extensive international survey.

The survey took the pulse of almost 25,000 people of all ages and backgrounds, in 34 countries, across mature and emerging markets.

It asked each individual detailed questions about their purchasing activities, preferences and perceptions across 10 different products and services, from food and beverages, to consumer electronics and public services.

Consumers were either asked to indicate their opinions on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible score, or to give a percentage rating.

The findings provide further evidence of the changing nature of commerce and valuable intelligence into contemporary and future trends.

New consumer trends: 1) Breaching the boundaries of market segments: colour-matching the chameleon consumer The chameleon is the natural world’s fickle player: changing its colour depending on its mood, temperature or the time of day.

Today, consumers have also turned chameleon: no longer displaying the behaviours

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of just one fixed marketing segment, they display a range of contradictory attitudes and preferences, changing their colours from one moment to the next.

The new, changeable chameleon consumer is making marketing more complex and demanding than ever before. They know much more but are harder to know and more demanding to please, sceptical of marketing and the established media, and as knowledgeable as any official “expert.”

These seismic shifts mean the old rules and roles of marketing need to change. The days when marketers could assign consumers to a socioeconomic segment, attract and inform them via ads in channels they knew customers trusted, and tell them where to buy the goods and why, are long gone. Gone too are the old restrictions on consumer power, when customers had limited access to product knowledge and were confined to set stores, locations and opening times.

Consumers are flexing their muscles. They are more fickle in their loyalty and yet keen to share insights and opinions to help co-create products and services. They demand to be known and treated as an individual, and want their virtual and actual friends to know every shopping preference they have and move they make — and they want the same information about their friends.

Consumers can no longer be easily categorised, and it is only those organisations that make real and rapid efforts to know and please them — and transform their entire operations to reflect their preferences — that will prosper.

2) Brand loyalty: a double-sided global coin Hollywood has A-list actors whose appearance in a film will guarantee box office success: some brands have a similar power. And as some actors are life-long stars, while others burn out overnight, some brands seem to get stronger and more iconic every year.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

But elite brands, whose very name and reputation virtually guarantee sales, are few and our survey shows that — in the developed world at least — the star attraction of brand loyalty is fading. As today’s chameleon consumers refuse to be filed in neat segments, so they are becoming less loyal to particular brands. They are informing — and making — their own choices.

3) From mass broadcasts to self-selection: consumer communication gets personal Customers have turned their backs on established media channels and are electing their own spokespeople. Traditional oneway marketing does not satisfy the need for interaction, equality and community that today’s consumers want and expect from communication.

Authority has moved from the detached to the personal; from national or international media channels to sectional or community blogs; from the objective expert to the known friend, relative or trusted blogger.

Our survey emphasises this dynamic pattern.

It shows that personal contact is the preferred communication channel across all regions and products: consumers globally give personal contact a strong rating of 6.6 out of 10, compared with 5.3 for online channels and just 4.9 for the traditional channels of print and electronic media.

4) The know-it-all, have-it-all consumer The internet was not responsible for creating consumers who want to be treated like individuals. Neither did it initiate scepticism about the partiality of advertising or a preference to get the “other side” of the marketing story. Nor did it create the impulse to discover the cheapest place to buy a particular product or to confirm whether it was in stock before travelling to a store. It just gave consumers the tools to make these things happen. And now they have happened, there is no turning back.

CUSTOMER RELATIONS The web has inverted the global power relationship. It has given consumers the means to have it all their own way. Shops need never be closed, out of stock or out of reach ever again and consumers need never, ever, ask a shop assistant for advice, information or a recommendation. They can know it all before they walk through the door.

5) The consumer to partner metamorphosis If a web “mashup” is an app that combines elements from several sources to create new services, the web itself could be dubbed a “social mashup.”

The internet brings together disparate people, experiences and cultures, and creates a new type of community, without traditional barriers, formality or geographical distinctions.

Everyone has equal rights, access and privileges: on the surface at least, this digital community is a democracy. Such “democratisation” is evident in the new, more equal, relationship between buyers and sellers. People no longer want to be seen as just consumers.

They want a transformed relationship: to come over to the other side of the cash register, to be beta testing new products, be part of the decision-making chain and central to how their service is structured, from end to end. They want nothing less than a business partnership.

Accustomed to sourcing information and shopping when and how they want online, and used to personalised web service, such as “remembered” delivery preferences, consumers now want bespoke service, on their terms, whenever they are dealing with a product or service provider from the beginning to the end of the shopping experience — from innovations they help shape to immediate and satisfying rewards for loyalty.

The implications for business: 1) Engage in dialogue with the consumer Organisations have to go back to basics and get to know their consumers if they are to develop strong and profitable customer relationships. They must engage in a different type of dialogue, characterised by a new way of listening and talking, in neutral forums governed by different rules. To complement this dialogue, and build their consumer understanding, they must invest in all possible analytics. Government authorities must also learn from this shift: citizens used to the swift and informal communications traffic of social media will not respond well to the remote formality of traditional bureaucracy.

2) Make service personal Equipped with new consumer insights, organisations must align their entire value chain to provide a personalised customer journey: from bespoke product and service variants and flexible delivery, to adaptable payment and communication options and cross-channel recall of customer preferences.

Personalised does not equate to solitary.

Shopping, whether online or face-to-face, must remain a fun and social leisure activity.

3) Provide an end-to-end brand experience Customer experience is the new brand: no part of the consumer journey must betray the marketing promise of the brand. Organisations must deliver a positive experience across every customer touch point, including all consumer communications. It is only by delivering an all-round positive customer experience that companies can build the strong and loyal brand communities that can protect their products from commoditisation and their reputations from tarnishing.

4) Deliver consistent multi-channel service

Critically, this metamorphosis cannot just be confined to the marketing and sales functions — although effective marketing is an essential tool in understanding the new consumer. Every link in an organisation’s value chain must be aligned to delivering the brand promise: from how products and services are designed and developed to choosing the right supplier and guaranteeing quality; from developing the right customer communication strategy to defining convenient distribution channels; from securing the optimum multi-channel experience to delivering firstrate after-sales services. MT Derek Engelbrecht is a partner and leads the Retail & Consumer Products practice of Ernst & Young in Africa. He is a Chartered Accountant by training with 14 years of experience. Derek has earned a Master in Financial Management from the University of Johannesburg in 2001. He has advised Consumer Product clients in various areas like: process reviews, cost management, project management, mergers and acquisitions, IT implementation and the implementation of shared service centers. Derek is responsible for managing relationships with key Consumer Products & Retail clients of Ernst & Young.

Seamless service across all channels is essential. Consumers demand consistency in pricing, quality and branding across the full service network, whether the components are virtual or bricks and mortar. As organisations develop their online capability, they must be wary of neglecting the face-to-face experience. Physical outlets will remain core to consumers’ preferred retail experience, but organisations must reassess the role and format of their built portfolio.

5) Make consumers business partners Empowered consumers expect to be able to influence organisations to behave in a way that suits them. Organisations must focus on developing collaborative relationships with consumers and find win-win opportunities for acting in partnerships. Opening up the research and development funnel to consumers, for example, both brings in the lifeblood of new ideas and builds consumer ownership and loyalty; involving customers in creating relevant loyalty programs ensures suppliers can build genuine affinity.

Conclusion: The digital revolution has transformed consumer expectations and behaviours and laid the whole world of products and services at their feet, and at a tap of a touch screen.

To engage and satisfy today’s more demanding consumers, businesses must transform themselves, as radically and as fast as possible, to offer a truly personalised service.

ERNST & YOUNG 52 Corlett Drive Wanderers Office Park Illovo, Gauteng Tel: 011 772 3000 derek.engelbrecht@za.ey.com www.ey.com/za

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

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SEO

Top 10 search engine optimisation strategies for your website

By Michael Fleischner | Marketing Expert, Internet Marketing Secrets

Although the concept of search engine optimisation can be somewhat complex, there are a number of basic search engine optimisation techniques you can use to improve your organic search results. Keep the following in mind when trying to achieve top rankings for your website.

1. Meta Tags Meta tags are simple lines of code at the top of your web page programming that tell search engines about your page. Include the title tag, keyword/tag, description tag, and robots tag on each page.

2. Create and update your site map Developing a site map is a simple way of giving search engines the information they need to crawl your entire website. There are plenty of free software packages on the web that can help you generate a sitemap. Once you create a site map, submit it to Google and Yahoo.

5. Use Flash content sparingly Content generated through java script or flash is a big no-no. Some webmasters like to use flash because of the presentation. If you must, use it sparingly, but only after your site has been properly optimised with basic search engine optimisation in mind.

6. Make sure that your website code is clean Keep in mind when optimising a web page crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. When programming your web pages, having W3C compliant code can make all the difference. Run your code through a W3C validator before promoting.

7. Place keywords in your page content Search engines scan your website and web pages for keywords. Shoot for a keyword density of between two and eight percent.

Google likes your page to be at the lower end of this scale and Yahoo at the upper end.

8. Submit your website to search engine directories It’s always a good idea to let large search engine directories know that you’re out there.

Submit your website URL to directories like Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ.

3. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML 9. Build links to your website All too often, navigational items are in the form of java script. Even though navigation technically still works in this format, it’s not optimised. Create your navigation in HTML to enhance internal links throughout your website.

Consider building a link exchange program or create one-way links to your site using articles or forum posts. All major search engines value the importance of your website based on how many others websites are linking to it.

4. Check that all images include ALT text 10. Stay the course Your image’s alt text is spidered by search engines. If you’re not including your keywords in alt text, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity for improved search engine result placements. Label all of your images properly.

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Good optimisation takes time. People expect to see results immediately. You may very well see improvements in a short period, but reaching the number one position takes time. Be patient.

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Learning to optimise your website for search engines takes time and patience. Start by applying basic search engine optimisation principles. If you’re new to website optimisation, or even a well seasoned veteran, begin by prioritising which pages are most important to you and go from there. Soon you’ll find yourself moving up the rankings. MT Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com.

MARKETING INDABA PROGRAMME 2012 Cape Town International Convention Centre

www.marketingindaba.com

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

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MARKETING INDABA 2012

Building an interactive platform for marketers

By Chris de Klerk, founder of Marketing Indaba and owner of CADEK Media

Welcome to Marketing Indaba! The place where marketers meet and where we aim to inspire, transfer knowledge and keep marketers motivated for marketing excellence.

At CADEK Media we build interactive platforms where industires can meet and network. Having a vision and a dream is one thing, but achieving it requires the buy-in from various stakeholders such as delegates, participants, speakers, suppliers, sponsors, exhibitors and staff.

We wish to thank each of these stakeholders for their support of Marketing Indaba and for empowering us to build this platform. We would like to see Marketing Indaba grow to an institution and important event in each marketer’s annual planning.

Marketing is a vast topic and includes so many different facets and angles that makes for interesting content. We always welcome the feedback from the industry and our stakeholders to keep our content fresh, relevant and current. Tweet @marketingindaba or go to www.marketingindaba.com and submit your ideas and suggestions by 31 December 2012 and stand a change to win one of five tickets to Marketing Indaba 2013.

We aim to stage Marketing Indaba in Cape Town on an annual basis and the dates for 2013 is set for 15 & 16 May. The conference will again take place at the CTICC and bookings are already open.

I wish to thank each delegate, speaker, exhibitor, supplier and my staff for making Markeing Indaba 2012 such a success.

We trust that you will meet new people, get new ideas and be inspired when you leave Marketing Indaba.

We look forward to welcome you back next year. Enjoy!

We thank our Media Partners

www.bizcommunity.com Tel: 021 680 3500

www.graphicmail.co.za Tel: 0860 106 135

www.cbn.co.za / www.gbn.co.za Tel: 021 423 4240

www.theevent.co.za Tel: 021 674 0646

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• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

MARKETING INDABA 2012 Admarula

56 Shortmarket Street Cape Town 8001 Tel: 021 468 4386 Email: tonel@admarula.com Web: www.admarula.com

Associated Printing

Print Park Birmingham Close Airport Industria North Cape Town 7490 Tel: 021 935 8800 Email: info@associated-printing.co.za Web: www.associated-printing.co.za

Bizassist Technologies /

SA Guide to Business Opportunities 26 Cnr Bathurst & Country Club Road Kenilworth 7780 Tel: 021 761 2531 Email: lena@bizassist.co.za Web: www.bizassist.co.za

CBN – Cape Business News

Tel: 021 423 6882 Email: steve@businessnewsonline.co.za Web: www.cbn.co.za

Chaos Theory

MFM 92.6

Johannesburg Tel: 011 265 2000 Email: order@chaostheory.co.za Web: www.chaostheory.co.za

FaceBox / Twin Peak Studios Pineslopes suites 100 Private Bag X7 Fourways North 2086 Tel: 021 794 2292 Email: lana@face-box.co.za Web: www.face-box.co.za

Isidima Brands

Pocket Media Solutions / Z-CARD®

2nd Floor, The Business Place Building 7 Anton Anreith Arcade,Foreshore,Cape Town 8001 Tel: 021 425 8416 Email: info@isidimabrands.com Web: www.isidimabrands.com

Jetline E-com

PO Box 52326 Saxonworld 2132 Tel: 011 566 0500 Email: info@jetline.co.za Web: www.jetline.co.za

PO Box 3426 Matieland, 7602 Tel: 021 808 3098 Email: sales@mfm.sun.ac.za Web: www.mfm.co.za

PO Box 16159 Dowerglen 1612 Tel: 011 340 6737 Email: leeanda@zcard.co.za Web: www.zcard.com

Softline Accpac

PO Box 781496 Sandton 2146 Tel: 021 555 0990 Email: Sharon.williams@sage.com Web: www.accpac.co.za

Unique Speaker Bureau (USB) Johannesburg Tel: 011 463 0478 / 083 268 6057 Email: paul@uniquespeakerbureau.com Web: www.uniquespeakerbureau.com

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

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CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 2012

Cyrus Rogers

Dale Hefer

Kevin Gaskell

Strategy

07:30 • Registration 08:30 Opening & Welcome

The forgotten business of setting marketing objectives Dale Hefer (Chillibush Communications) Marketing & Brand Leadership International Keynote Address Kevin Gaskell (www.kevingaskell.com)

Management

10:20 • Tea Break

Traditional vs Digital Marketing - WTF Walter Pike (The Digital Academy) Defining the new generation of consumers

Derek Engelbrecht (Ernst & Young)

Consumer engagement: Brands that love customers find customers that love brands Neil Hart (Boomtown)

Marketing Tools

12:50 • Lunch Break ‘In the Market’ theory - Market targeting and segmentation revisited Warren Moss (Demograhica) The emergence of Group Buying in SA - what does it mean for brands and consumers Wayne Gosling (Groupon SA - Joint CEO)

Sales

Is your advertising generating sales?

Ed Hatton (The Marketing Director) Discover the secrets to an effective sales team Lorna Powe (Sales Partners Cape Town) Closing remarks at about 16:40

Neil Saffer 30

Neil Hart

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za

Derek Engelbrecht

Notes

Day One: 9 May 2012

15:00 • Tea Break

Walter Pike

__________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________

Warren Moss

Wayne Gosling

Ed Hatton

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 2012

Liezel v/d Westhuizen

Katlego Maboe

Andrew Brand

Day Two: 10 May 2012 08:30 Welcome Putting the plus (1+) behind Google - how social is changing online marketing Brett St Clair - Head of New Products, Sub-Saharan Africa , Google SA Track 2 Traditional Marketing

09:15 E-Marketing Workshop

Presented by GraphicMail Barbara Ulmi / John Sherriff

09:15 Branding Workshop

Presented by HKLM Sean McCoy

10:30 • Tea Break

11:00 Mobile Marketing Workshop

Presented by Strike Media Russel Stromin

11:00 Direct Marketing & Database Management

Presented by TransUnion Neil Saffer

12:30 • Lunch Break

13:15 Social Media Workshop

Presented by World Wide Creative Mike Perk &Fred Roed

13:15 Public Relations Workshop

Presented by HMC Seswa Corporate Communications Johanna McDowell

14:45 • Tea Break

15:15 Search Engine Marketing

Presented by Google SA Declan Hollywood

Johanna McDowell

Notes

07:30 • Registration

Track 1 Digital Marketing

Brett St Clair

15:15 Retail Marketing Workshop

Presented by Ninety9cents Andrew Brand

__________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________

Closing remarks at about 16:40 Please note that the programme is subject to change without notice

Lorna Powe

Barbara Ulmi

Sean McCoy

Russel Stromin

Mike Perk

Fred Roed

www.marketingtimes.co.za | MARKETING TIMES May 2012 •

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Upcoming Industry Events Marketing opportunities:

• Attend, network, be inspired and learn from the experts • Share your knowledge and speak at our conferences • Sponsorship and branding opportunities exist at all events • Exhibit / display your products or services to our delegates • Advertise in programme books • Insert your sample or brochure in visitor bags Retail Indaba

Retail Indaba

Business Indaba

TourismBiz Conference

Agriworks Farmers Expo

Winebiz Conference

Marketing Indaba

19 & 20 July 2012 • CTICC, Cape Town Retail to shopping centre management www.retailindaba.co.za

2 August 2012 • Cape Sun Hotel, Cape Town Managing and growing tourism businesses www.tourismbiz.net

30 August 2012 • Spier Estate, Stellenbosch Marketing and sales of wine www.winebiz.co.za

CADEK MEDIA

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Business Indaba

Agriworks Farmers Expo

17 & 18 September 2012 • CTICC, Cape Town Inspiring entrepreneurs, business owners and managers www.businessindaba.co.za

8, 9 & 10 November 2012 • V/D Stel, Stellenbosch Focus on equipment for farmers and facility managers www.agriworks.co.za

15 & 16 May 2013 • CTICC, Cape Town Conference for marketing managers www.marketingindaba.com

Above events are owned and organised by CADEK Media Call us to discuss your marketing / branding needs at these events Tel: 021 855 4750 • info@cadek.co.za • www.cadek.co.za

• MARKETING TIMES May 2012 | www.marketingtimes.co.za