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Luke Ellery - Racing Car Driver Y
oung gun racing car driver and Sill Marketing PR client, Luke Ellery, is getting prepared to race in the Formula Ford support race at the upcoming Formula1 Grand Prix in Melbourne. Luke has been awarded a Confederation of Australian Motorsport Rising Star scholarship in 2009 but is keen to seek new sponsors to help his 2009 campaign to win the Australian Formula Ford championship. If you see a benefit in sponsoring him and gaining some valuable TV airtime throughout the year then give Sill Marketing a call for more details. â–
Age: 19 Lives: Mt Waverley, Victoria Works: GMP racing Products (race parts supplier) Started Racing: 1998 2009 Racing Schedule: Australian Formula Ford Championship Car Raced: This year will be a Spectrum 011c - 1600cc Twin Cam Formula Ford Team: CAMS Rising Stars / Borland Factory Team 2009 Goal: To win the Prestigious Avon Rookie of the year Career Goal: To race in America in the Indy Car series Racing Career Highlights: Winning the 2007 Victorian Formula Ford Championship Winning the 2005 National Go Kart Championship Series Racing Career Lowligh: Engine exploding at Phillip Island when running at the front. Likes: Driving the racecar so hard that it is on the edge of its capabilities. Dislikes: Getting involved in somebody elses accident. 3
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The Times They Are a-Changing As Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are a-Changing”. And what a change it has been in the world of marketing. To appreciate the changes we can simply compare the avenues we have to market our wares today compared to 20 years ago.
of the workplace take a hold. With even greater choices available to spread our marketing messages and more cost effective mediums available to us, a volatile mix can be created if shortcuts are taken in developing our marketing strategies. To add salt into the wounds, the pressures in the workforce to produce outcomes faster can lead to the inevitable. Ineffective campaigns.
20 years ago the internet was unknown to most. Print collateral was the mainstay of marketing campaigns though the timeframes in production were extensive thanks to the need to cut film to form artwork. The use of computers was becoming more widespread ...do something. and what did we do without a fax machine? In today’s world our marketing communication methods have almost doubled thanks to computers and the internet.
Act. Put your best foot forward and force change.
Modern computers allow us to develop artwork that was once dreamed about in timeframes unimaginable. The internet allows us to communicate faster, efficiently and economically. Take email marketing as an example. In the last two years Sill Marketing has seen a 100% growth in the requests to develop promotional emails to a point where we produce on average 4 email campaigns a week. Clients have seen the cost effectiveness of these style of campaigns as well as the ability to quickly get a message communicated. So all of the advancements in computing and the internet have created new ways to market but how do we need to adapt in this changing environment. Fundamentally we still need to maintain the principals of marketing but often we see these principals compromised in the never ending pursuit to cut costs. We sometime lose sight of concepts such as value and effectiveness as the pressures 4
There is one recurring theme that runs through my mind when confronted with that question as to how to grow sales. Do something. Action is required otherwise what is being experienced now will continue. Just like a patient in an emergency ward the needs resuscitating, doctors react as fast as they can to change the outcomes.
So my first advice to businesses that are confronted with declining sales is to do something. Act. Put your best foot forward and force change. I have often recommended to companies that are faced with declining sales to start communicating to their customers. What to communicate is quite simple. Focus on what you have to offer. It might be a new product or a special price promotion. Sometimes something is better than nothing as something can be improved whilst nothing is constant. A common question I ask clients that may reject my suggestions is what are the alternatives to choose from. If the phones aren’t ringing with enquiries for your products or services then you can only rely on good fortune to turn your sales around. So if you want to grow your sales then do something about it and get promoting but never lose sight of the fundamental marketing principles in order to develop effective campaigns. ■
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SEO Basics I
t’s amazing how having a website for our businesses is something we consider as mandatory. Well if this is a true assumption then consider how many businesses exist in the world that have websites. And now consider how your website is going to be found amongst all those websites.
Enter Search Engine Optimisation Search Engine Opitmisation, or SEO as more commonly known, is what web designers do to maximise the chances of your website being found when people search online via search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Before we explain a few of the basics about SEO we must make you aware of a few things to keep in mind. Firstly the race to rank as number one in Google is not an easy task. Secondly be very wary of businesses that claim to improve your website ranking in short periods of time. Thirdly being number one will come at a significant financial cost. If I have not put you off SEO and you are still reading this article then the bad news is done with and the rest is all good. SEO involves developing a website that makes your website
appealing to search engines and in particular the most highly used search engine, Google. To do this we must first understand how Google works. If we know this we can then work out how to make our websites Google friendly. So here is what Google say about how they rank websites: The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and queryspecific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.
PageRank Technology PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.
Hypertext-Matching Analysis Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We >>>
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>>> also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query. Still with us? Let me explain in simple terms. When search engines were first developed, the main thing search engines did was search for matching keywords within websites. As more and more websites came about, a smarter way of ranking relevant websites was required. Come in Google. Google not only looked for matching keywords but wanted to validate that the websites being ranked were useful. So Google developed some elaborate search algorithms to rank valid web pages against search criteria. As Google states, “Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results”. So Google’s aim is to not just find a web page that meets the search criteria but find one that is valid and recognised as being valid. How does Google do this? Well if I knew all the answers I would be a billionaire but the smart people at Google are always staying one step ahead of we mere mortals and constantly revise their criteria making it harder for us to maintain high web page rankings. But there are a few things that we do know about the Google algorithm that can help us get a higher page ranking and here they are: • You can’t fool Google to give you a higher page rank with fancy web code. It is a lot smarter than that. • Google highly rates websites that have many links to them. They assume that if other web pages are sending traffic to another website that it must be worth a look. • Google loves content. The more content on a webpage the more its little algorithm can go to work validating a match. Now don’t think you should start filling your pages full of text as imagine what the webpage readers would think of that. Take a realistic approach to content. • The actual web addresses you choose for your websites is 6
gaining more importance in the Google algorithm. • There are some ways to influence Google rankings with some web coding but these methods are gradually becoming less valuable to the Google algorithm. So to improve search engine ranking what can we do? There are two methods in which to improve search engine rankings. • Organic SEO • Sponsored Advertising Organic SEO is where search engines automatically find your website and rank it. From a coding point of view it involves web coders designing your website to be as friendly as possible with the Google search algorithm. The task of Organic SEO is not just something for the web coders to address but also the marketers. We need to ensure that the keywords we know that people are using to find our website are strategically placed within your website. This is often called SEO copywriting. Sponsored Advertising is where we pay to appear high up in Google rankings. Google brand their sponsored advertising program as Google Adwords. Google Adwords allows you to setup keywords in which you would like your website to appear when searched for. We can
S define how much we are willing to pay to be ranked higher up in the Google adwords ranking. This ”pay per click” model will automatically bill the account holder when a web surfer clicks on your link that appears in the Google Adwords searches which are commonly found at either the very top of Google searches or down the right hand side of the google search window. The higher you nominate for your pay per click amount, the higher your Google Adwords ranking. You have full control over your budget with Google which is very easily managed via the Google Adwords website. The timeframes in which you will see progression in your Google ranking varies depending on the type of SEO strategy you choose. An Organic SEO strategy will take a minimum of 6 months to see significant movements in ranking with ongoing work required to finetune your website to be more attractive to the Google Algorithm. The Google algorithm also takes time to recognise your website further delaying the movement to the top of the charts. Sponsored Advertising can give you an almost immediate higher ranking. The higher your pay per clock value the higher the rank in the Google Adword components in the search window. For those looking at improving their Google ranking, we recommend a combination of Organic and Sponsored SEO initiatives. Your budget and willingness to rank as high as you can will determine how high you can go. Ongoing evaluations are required on your visitors searching criteria via your web statistics and web coding and copy refined to suit those search criteria. For more short term results a Google Adwords campaign can be established with an ongoing review to maximise the return on investment.
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Where Do Old Race Cars Go? Whether you are a motorsport or car fan or not you probably at sometime have seen racing cars on the news or sports programs. Is it just me or do you ever wonder what happens with the race cars after their teams replace them with new cars? Anyone that knows me would probably say it is probably just me. Anyway if you were wondering where old race cars go I have found out where. They end up in the hands of race car nuts and find their way back onto the track at historic car racing events. >>>
So achieving a high Google ranking is achievable with a clear strategy, time and ongoing evaluation and attention. For more information or a proposal to search engine optimise your website give us a call at Sill Marketing and we can start your movement up the search engine ranks. ■ 7
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>>> One such event was recently held at the internationally renowned Phillip Island racetrack with a field of rare and exotic cars delighting the crowds. Cars including rare Formula 1 and Le Mans cars from the 80’s and touring cars from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s took to the track, prepared as immaculately as they were when they were first built. Quite surprisingly, these historic cars are often more expensive to buy than modern day racing cars proving that cars can be a great investment if you buy the right one. The most expensive cars being driven on the day were valued at over 2 million dollars. Historic car racing is one of the fastest growing forms of motorsport with full fields of classic vehicles in most classes of racing. So once a racing car always a racing car. ■
Photography by Sill Marketing
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Event Marketing Client Church St. Enoteca Project Develop Event Promotional Collateral Solution Sill Marketing were provided a brief from the management to develop some creative in-restaurant signage and a DL flyer to help promote an upcoming event. The simple yet stylish design works well with the decor of the restaurant whilst effectively communicating the message. â– 9 9
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With Sill Marketing Sill Marketing Video Services If you are seeking to communicate your solutions in a different way, then consider a video casestudy. Sill Marketing provides end to end HD video services from script writing, shooting, editing and disc burning. Contact Sill Marketing to see samples of our work or to evaluate how we can help you with our professional video services.
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Contact Sill Marketing for more information and pricing. 10
Ph: (03) 9529 4988
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Sill Marketing Pty Ltd. 9/161 -165 Greville St, Prahran VIC 3181, Australia Ph. +61 3 9529 4988 Fax. +61 3 9529 4390 Email: info@sillmarketing.com.au
www.sillmarketing.com.au