Online on a budget

Looking to optimise your online marketing spend? Get the basics right but be prepared to think outside the box as well. Kevin Kevany consults some experts on the subject.

If you thought mobile online marketing might simply have been last year’s over-trumped digital aphrodisiac from the manufacturers of smart, portable devices – think again. Sure, it is volatile and dynamic out there, and therefore difficult to predict as to what is merely hot and what will endure.
We’re only a few months into the new year and Vodafone has announced 4G (Telecom and 2Degrees will follow) and a study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, has just found LinkedIn is the most popular social media tool among the fastest-growing private companies in the US. More than 80 percent now use the professional networking site (up from 73 percent in 2011), while their use of Facebook has declined, from 74 percent in 2011, to 67 percent last year.
It’s all heady stuff. However, Nicole Crump, director of Tactix Marketing, a specialist marketing consultancy, cautions that SME owner/managers should embrace online marketing, “but not get carried away with the gee-whizz stuff”, and ensure they get the basics right, to “build a solid foundation” in a rapidly evolving environment.
“For many people thinking about how to approach online marketing the focus will fall on two obvious standouts – the company’s website targeting fixed and mobile visitors, and social media,” says Crump.
“Both of these properties are, to differing degrees, key to effective communication with the end-user/customer. We use them to showcase our wares, highlight product differentiators and ultimately to develop a sense-of-need in the customer.
“However, what many SMEs tend to overlook – and something that larger organisations work hard to optimise – is the power of the online portal for internal communication with channels, resellers and staff.”
She believes this is one of the most effective and often misused properties a company has in its marketing arsenal.
“When proposing a marketing plan to clients, we put a lot of work into not only the customer’s journey to purchase but the company’s journey to sale. It is important to ask not only what the right message is and where the customer sees it, but also which messages they receive from resellers or sales staff.”
Crump believes this is where online portals can prove invaluable in effectively managing the message coming from the sales channel, which she considers to be one of the most important for any company which does not control its own point-of-sale.
“For this reason, we typically suggest around three quarters of an online budget go solely into investing in a strong online portal for channel staff. Take care of the people who sell your product, and they will take care of you.”

Be there, be seen, be heard
Paul Dennis, a director of Forge Online, had a lot on his plate when we called. As well as launching the ‘online’ Forge business, he was pushing the button on self-service print websites, merging another business, and moving premises at the end of the week. He’s another who has earned his spurs in the local marketing arena.
Dennis, too, believes marketing skills and experience is the essential primary base for any application of technology. He also cautions against SMEs setting up websites with companies which use their proprietary technologies and never relinquish ownership. He favours ‘open source’ websites – the recent choice of global giants, like CNN – which he believes are ‘the future’.
“The day you stop paying is the day your website, with all its content and links, disappears. We use a different model; with us, if you decide to part company you still own the website. We maintain loyal customers by adding value each and every month. Everything we do is measurable.”
“So we are not just another ‘love and leave you’ operation,” says Dennis.
Forge Online has a simple service offering:
1. Be there (online).
2. Be seen (so you will be found over your competitors).
3. Be heard (convert to sales via proactive communications).

“Add responsive design,” Dennis says, “and we are capable of attracting and converting traffic and ensuring what you present online appears correctly, automatically, on all receiving devices. Simple really. No techno mumbo-jumbo.”
Plus they offer the skills and experience of Ognish Ghoshal, ‘chief tactician’ at SEO (search engine optimisation) company Searchtactics, a strategic partner to Forge Online.
“Most businesses have woken up to the fact that just ‘being there’ is not enough. Being seen is now a critical ingredient to being successful online,” says Ghoshal.
Forge Online will guide and educate clients as to what is possible and selectively tailor anything from email marketing to websites, to their need and style.
The Forge website is packed with household brands, local and international – including Auckland’s MOTAT museum, which uses a selection of their offerings, across digital and print.

More responsive design
Zeald has scooped Best Web Developer at the Eset Netguide Web Awards for the past two years. It is generally regarded as a national leader in the game, especially when it comes to responsive design – ensuring that whatever device the customer uses, she/he will get the appropriate information in a readable and logical format. That’s not as simple as it sounds.
“Before a SME wants to go the next step, to accommodate mobiles,” says Zeald’s website results specialist, Joseph Clements, “they should ask whether that is where the majority of their business comes from and, equally importantly, whether their existing website is sound and effective from a customer’s perspective.
“A fundamentally bad and outdated website adapted to handle mobile devices remains a bad website, in terms of its real purpose.”
Zeald is a leader in ‘responsive design’ – accommodating whatever method you use to log into the website, and providing the ability for you to click through and dial – a significant enhancement and convenience.
Restaurants, locksmiths, plumbers and retailers, in particular, have welcomed the new functionality.
Clements emphasises that an authoritative website delivers simple information, logical processes and measurability – ‘doing the right things’.
“If you ask visitors to your site to be detectives to get the information they need, you’ll lose them and they’ll go elsewhere. It comes down to common sense, research and analytics. It is almost certainly not about 17 choices.”
He believes Zeald’s leadership is based on resources and having the correct tools to deliver websites which produce measurable results monthly and are adaptable to market changes. He is distressed at the number of businesses he comes across which have no idea of the effectiveness of their marketing spend in whatever format they’re involved in.
“The industry is no longer speculative. Today we can provide tailor-made solutions at a very competitive price. We can get as good a result out of ‘heat mapping’ the clicks of users on a website today for a couple of hundred dollars, as a $20K eye tracking system. That’s got to be good news for any SME owner/manager looking to get results and still control costs,” says Clements.

Tightly targeted leads
Onform Signs director Jared Percival is sold on Yellow because it frees him up to get on with the face-to-face marketing he is clearly good at. He is a typical SME on a growth path. But the bottom line is always a concern in a tight and competitive market.
“I was really sceptical the first time I was approached by Yellow, as I had set up Google Adwords, which I found easy, but not all that successful,” he says. “But they won me over almost immediately by getting customers who were interested and were readily converted to sales; unlike the hit-and-miss of mail drops and random adverts I’d been trying.
“One of those customers has become a regular and with good service from us, I’d like to think, has led us to other parts of that expanded organisation. That meant our commitment to Yellow was covered by earnings from their tightly targeted leads.
“Being in the signage business – banners, flags, vehicle signage, sky-signage, multi-site through to the latest LED displays – Yellow immediately understood we needed to have linked videos on YouTube,” says Percival, who has just opted to increase his spend this year, and likes the fact Yellow ‘doesn’t over-promise; but you need to do your part’.

Enhanced AdWords
Google Adwords, recently ‘enhanced’, are a cornerstone of the digital and mobile marketing universe. Nothing much happens in this space without Google Adwords getting in on the action somewhere along the way. It is ubiquitious: ‘competitors’ largely add-value.
An AdWords-enhanced campaign makes it easier to reach people across all devices with the right ads, based on their specific location, time of day and device type.
Enhanced campaigns can help simplify the way you manage your campaigns for targeting across multiple devices and locations. Some of its main features include:
• Powerful advertising tools for the multi-device world: Ability to manage your bids across devices, locations and time (for example, bidding higher when showing your ad on mobile devices or to users who are within a half-mile of your store).
• Smarter ads optimised for varying user contexts: Ability to show the right creative, site link, app or extension based on the context of your prospective customers and the devices they’re using.
• Advanced reports to measure new conversion types: Ability to track new conversion types, such as calls, digital downloads, and conversions across devices. In enhanced campaigns, you’ll be able to use new features on four types of ad extensions: call; app; sitelink; and offer extensions.

Not unexpectedly, Tony Keusgen, Google’s country manager, is excited about the enhanced Google Adwords release and views it as a key factor in growing the number of local enterprises with a website, from a lowly one third.
“A presence online for any SME in New Zealand has to be an advantage,” he says. “There are more local searches for lawyers than Lady Gaga; and more people looking for plumbers than the PM.
“There has been a tremendous transformation in the way consumers, using a complexity of devices, go about doing business, virtually 24/7, from anywhere and everywhere. What our enhanced package does is remove the layers of complexity; increases immediacy; and relevance – be it providing a touch-to-call function when you’ve locked yourself out of your Dunedin apartment at 9pm and urgently call a locksmith on your mobile, or you’re a developer in your office wanting to get an estimate on locks for an office block needed later in the week, and have the time to read through an informative website.
“Our new offering is a significant leap forward and builds on the success we initially achieved with Google Adwords,” Keusgen says.

Kevin Kevany is an Auckland-based freelance writer.
Email [email protected]

Taking health online
Due to a decrease in consumer spending in the retail space after the difficult economic period brought on by the earthquakes, the Staveley Street Pharmacy in Christchurch adapted in order to survive by expanding its business into the online space.
Not only did it do great business, it also learned a lot more about its own business along the way.
A DHB funding change also meant that relying on processing a high number of prescriptions was no longer a reliable way to turn a profit in a capped funding environment – which made the pharmacy realise that the Internet was the way to go.
They started www.healthexpress.co.nz – an e-commerce website that offers over 8000 pharmacy products, delivered nationwide within one to two business days.
“Our website means we can carry more products online than we do in store, which leads to great prices nationwide,” says Jeff Ross of Health Express/Staveley St Pharmacy.  
“We can operate from anywhere with Internet access and service a national customer base, so people can shop when it suits them.”
With a small pharmacy budget in a tough economic environment, the next challenge for Health Express was getting the word out there about their new website.
“When we launched in August 2012 we needed a quick solution to get people’s specific product searches leading to our site. Google AdWords helped us get our website out there, and we had our first sale within 24 hours of turning it on.
“We also noticed our 0800 number started to ring more, and now 25 percent of our website sales come from Google AdWords, with a budget of around only $30 to $60 a month. It’s a very economic way of supplementing website traffic and provides us with a way of connecting with people out there looking for the products and services we offer.”
Health Express also has a blog, uses SEO and has a Facebook and Google+ page.
“Using our advertising budget online gives us the ability to reach more people through the Internet so we can really scale up our sales and are not just limited to the Christchurch market,” Ross continues.
Google AdWords has also given Health Express helpful data on what to stock, what keywords to use and what sells online by analysing local search data. This gives them the ability to make all sorts of decisions in their business, maximising their e-commerce potential.
Now thriving online, Health Express is looking forward to expanding their reach even more.
“We now have the ability to get product up on the website and to receive traffic in less than 24 hours. It’s exciting to think of what we will be able to achieve in the future,” says Ross.

Improve your SEO using other people’s websites
Did you know that what other websites say about you is just as important to search engines as the content on your own website? Search engines consider websites that lots of other websites are linking to, to be better quality, and will therefore show them further up the page.
You can easily find out who is linking to you by using the free and easy tool, Open Site Explorer. By plugging your URL into it you will be able to see a few stats about your links. The real valuable information is under “Inbound Links”. Here you can see exactly what websites are linking to you. For bonus points try plugging in one of your competitor’s URLs and see who’s linking to them. Chances are they have links from a directory or blog that you could also get a link from! There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of sneaky online espionage.
By Casey Hartigan, Zeald blog.