Give In Order To Receive

My Grandmother taught me that the best thing about presents is the giving, not the receiving.  There is great pleasure to be had in giving something to someone that they truly appreciate.

To solve someone else's need or want is a great human gesture.  We humans are social creatures and the act of giving is at the heart of all great relationships.  

It seems true in life that by giving we create goodwill and goodwill has value.  Reflecting on this, I realised that great relationships can exist between companies and a) their customers and b) their employees. And it all starts with giving.  Giving people what they need.

For example, every time I call my bank, they answer my phone call almost straight away.  When I get through, they answer my question, they are friendly and helpful.  I am a very satisfied customer and if ever get the chance, I tell my friends what a great bank they are.  I have been a loyal customer for over 15 years and will probably be for life.

My bank attracted my attention because they solved a problem for me.  My need. In 1997 my need was that I didn't want to have to walk down the high street to the bank. It was an inconvenience.  They promised 24/7 telephone banking (and later, when the time came, they provided all of this online). They made it easy for me to switch my account from my previous bank and they gave me a cash reward to say thank you.

They provided me with what I wanted, where I wanted it, when I wanted it and how I wanted it.  And they did it with a smile.  I rewarded them with my business and my recommendation.  It's a very positive relationship.

I realised that the positive relationship between a customer and a company has many similarities between an employee and a company.  Especially when it goes right.

Do you manage people?

If you do, don't you wish your team were as positive about you and as loyal to you as I am to my bank?

Here it seems lies a fundamental truth; your team are your customers and you are the customer of your manager.

Yes, people management is actually marketing.

In life if we solve other people's problems and provide people with what they need they will pay us for what they need.  That's business.  Any business is in business because it solves a problem or fulfils a need for it's customers. Give in order to receive.

Just as different customers have different needs and companies provide products and services to meet these needs, people working at those companies have needs.

You have needs and wants.  You need money to buy food, pay the rent.  You probably you want a purpose in life.  You will need to feel important and that what you do with your life matters.  You want to feel in control and therefore free of unnecessary anxiety.  You might want friends and need social stimulation.  Maybe you want to learn, develop and grow as a person.  Maybe you just want recognition and a "thank you".  You want information.

Employment can provide for some of these needs.  Just as great companies spend a lot of effort to understand their customers and provide what they need, I believe really great managers spend time to understand what their team truly need and want and figure out how to provide it.  Employees reward the company with their effort, creativity and loyalty.

(Note: people don't always know what they want.  Phone manufacturers used to think that what we wanted was a smaller and smaller phone.  It turns out we wanted a big flat screen.  We didn't know that. True needs are often hidden, often driven by emotion not logic.  Your team might say they want to be paid more.  This might be not their real need.  Their real need might be say, freedom to act, recognition or purpose. It's often these deep needs that are most powerful).

Think about the best manager that you ever worked for. Think about the best company that you ever worked for.  What needs and wants did they provide for you?  And did you give your effort in return?

When managers succeed, it's because they provide for these needs.  The need could be a training opportunity, it could just be encouragement and praise, it could be a fancy job title, it could be the freedom to make decisions, it could be a company social event, it could be a clear vision of what the company is trying to achieve, it could be the sharing of useful information.  When a manager or company gets this right, it seems like magic.  It's not magic, it's marketing.

Management is marketing?

Kind of, yes.

First of all then, what is marketing?

Here's the best definition of marketing I've ever heard...  "Marketing is creating and value and extracting value"

• Creating the value is defining a product or service that people are willing to pay for.  It includes amongst other things the function, the packaging, the place, the design.
• Extracting value how we get people to pay for that product or service. Communication, pricing etc.

If managing people is like marketing then it is all about creating value for employees and extracting value from employees.  So many managers focus on "extracting value" when in fact the focus needs to be on "creating value".  By creating more value, it's easier to extract value and to extract more of it.

Think about the relationship a company has with it's customers...

The best kind of customer is an advocate.  The advocate will tell everyone and anyone about your the great product and service.  Every business wants more advocates.   Then, there are repeat customers.  You like these.  Even if they are not advocates yet, you hope to make them into advocates.

At the other end of the scale are the detractors.  Those who really dislike your company and tell everyone about it. You need to convert these and save this relationship before it damages your business.

Now think about employees in the same way...

Employee advocates are what I call "multipliers".  They not only do a great job, they cause others around them to do a great job.  They do this because their needs are met. Repeat customers are your "adders".  They turn up every day and do good work - solid, dependable, but don't necessarily cause others to do a good job. The detractors are your "dividers".  They not only do a poor job but they cause friction, discontent and misery around them.  You need convert them or remove them if you can't.

Therefore, address needs and wants to build “multipliers”.

If you can provide for their needs, these multipliers will go the extra mile, they'll absorb themselves in their work and they’ll recommend the company to friend.

So many managers act as if they are the customer.  In a way that is perhaps technically correct.  At least that's the way the money flows.  The company pays a salary after all.  I however propose that this is a fundamental error to think this way and although it's counter-intuitive, we should start to think the other way around. Employees are customers.

If you agree with this approach, as a manager, there are implications;

1. Identify what your team need and want (at both an individual level and as a group)

2. Provide it

3. Continuously seek feedback if you are on the right track

4. Show appreciation

  

People management is marketing - the company is the product and the employee is the customer

Do you agree…?

Stay on the Yellow Brick Road

The path most travelled and the path of least resistance are often the same.

On a recent supermarket trip I was at the check-out.  I saw the usual chewing gum, cooking magazines, batteries and chocolate on display.  High profit items that customers impulsively buy as they wait to pay for the rest of their goods.  I wonder, if supermarkets had to rely on people only buying what they came to the shop to buy, would they actually make a profit at all?

On this occasion, I had to deal not only with the persuasion of my inner self ('hmmm, I really fancy some chocolate right now') but also with the persuasion of my kids who were asking for lollipops and magazines with free plastic toys.  To avoid giving in to my kids I felt it necessary to not yield to myself as well.  In the process, our local supermarket missed a few extra pounds profit and our family saved some unnecessary expense.

Marketing folks have of course always understood that to generate a customer response they need to place the goods and services as close to the customer's existing path as they possibly can.  The supermarket checkout is a classic example and has been taken to new extremes these days by almost every retailer.  If I try and buy a bottle of water at the airport at the newsagent or chemist I will inevitably meet with a queuing system that sees me waiting for the next available checkout whilst I have a chance to view almost all the high profit impulsive purchase products that the retailer has to offer.  Chocolates, crisps, suncream, ear-plugs, travel pillows, tissues....the aim is to convert paying customers to higher paying customers.

Marketing folks online also get this.  Why do you think Google Adwords has been so successful at generating results for marketeers?  Because the potential customers are already there.  In this case the challenge is not to convert an existing customer, the challenge is to acquire a new customer.  As we know that potential customers are already on Google (and we know their intentions from their keywords) we can take advantage of their existing path and offer them our products and services.

Likewise with TV advertising.  You wouldn't ask parents to 'please come downtown tomorrow to view the new home cleaning product advert on a big screen'. No, you'd probably put the advert on a kids TV channel hoping they'd see it whilst they watch TV with their kids.

The best way to make change happen is to find and use the path most travelled.

Managers in businesses however don't quite get this.  If they have a program of change that they want to achieve, they need to think marketing and they need to think about distribution channels, paths and existing behaviours.  So many don't.

It's essential to start thinking about internal comms in the same way as external comms.  Who are my audience?  Where can I reach them?  How do I integrate my message into their existing behaviour?  How can I get the results I want from their existing environment?

In a previous job, our tech team were trying to figure out how to build knowledge and awareness within the customer support team about how our products worked.  Their solution, although commendable for the effort put in, was ineffective. They decided to create blog and wiki where they would explain how things worked.  New posts would be available by RSS feed.

What needed to happen for this to work was that all the customer support people needed to have a separate login for the wiki.  Then, they all needed to configure their email client to pick up the RSS feed.  Then they needed to remember to check the RSS feed folder in their inbox on a regular basis and read the articles. Sounds dead easy if you work in tech. It failed.

Imagine if our supermarket had a separate room for all of their high margin add-on sales.  You had to go there specifically in order to see the product offerings.  And you needed to pick up a separate basket in order to carry these products to the check-out in addition to your main trolley.  They wouldn't sell anything would they?  Of course, not.

The path most travelled is why the supermarket check-out system works for the add on sales.  The path most travelled is also the reason the tech wiki failed.

For the tech wiki project to work it needed to use the systems that the customer support staff were already using on a daily basis.  There were three; the company back office system, the CRM database and email.  Anything outside of these three systems was irrelevant because support staff were busy enough dealing with these three systems to think about adding another.

So, when trying to introduce a change to an organisation, focus on making your change happen using existing pathways.  Making change happen is hard enough.  Having to create new pathways at the same time makes it even harder.

As a bonus, not only is the path most travelled the easiest place to introduce your change, it's also the path of least resistance.

No matter what their discipline or function, the more a manager thinks like a marketeer, the most likely he or she will succeed.  Be where people are and be where they are receptive.

Find and use the path most travelled. It could be your yellow brick road.

Local Business SEO - The Game Has Changed For 2011

Local businesses need to realise that for 2011, there is a step change in search engine marketing.

The old rules of SEO no longer apply. I'll explain why, then I'll suggest some key points that local businesses need to think about.

So - what's changed?

This morning I noticed that the traffic to one of my most visited pages on my blog had seriously dropped.  In early 2008 I wrote about "Raja-Fashions Tailor-Made Hong Kong Suits, Online Meets Offline". It was an experiment, to see just from copy writing using the right keywords I could achieve a good search ranking for "Raja Fashions". Just for kicks.  And it worked.  Number 2 in Google for "Raja Fashions" after the business itself.

In the last two weeks, traffic to this site has halved.  Looking at the reasons why made me realise that as far as Google is concerned, the game has changed.

What's happened now is that instead of being number 2 in the results, high up on the page, Google has massively increased the amount of screen space it uses for the relevant local business result.  Now the "place page" has taken centre stage.

Now as you can see, my blog isn't seen on the screen.  I can count already 17 links to the Raja Fashions site, 4 links to their place page and a two links to "more results from rajafashions.com".

(Now - I am stuffing this blog entry with lots of Raja Fashions keywords, but in this case I'm just doing to tell the story, I'm not doing it to try re-claim my ranking, that's for sure! Although, I can recommend having a high ranking page with lots of opinion on it to use as leverage when you're dealing with a Chinese salesman and you're negotiating on price - but that's another story...)

3 important implications for local businesses...

1. Claim your place page.

Local businesses need to claim their place page more than ever.  These pages will get more traffic, make sure the information is complete and accurate.

2. Design your website navigation with Google in mind. 

Local businesses need to make sure that their website navigation has key call to action and information categories on the menu so that these links are the links shown on the Google results page under the main result.  For example if you were a restaurant, you would want a "Book A Table" link on your primary navigation and a landing page for that purpose.  As well as having the booking interface on the homepage as well of course.

3. Bid on your own brand name

This will push all the aggregators even further down the page because you're claiming the top slot on the page. More real estate for you.

Strategically, here's how I read the situation...

Google has always struggled to sell to local businesses.  They've not got a sales force, unlike yellow page companies or Groupon.  So - they need an automated touch point.  By pushing the place page they do two things.  They drive more traffic to place pages so that local business owners start to take notice.  In parallel, aggregators have to pay to be seen because if you're aggregating local businesses, you're not going to get the same returns that you used to on SEO as there's less and less first page screen real estate to be seen on - so better PPC revenues.  Then, they develop their own automated promotions engine on the platform, coupons, vouchers etc.  Groupon, watch out.

London Restaurants: Ignore Foursquare.com At Your Peril

A new social network just hit London: Foursquare.com.

Already big in the US, I am willing to stick my neck out and predict that this will develop faster in London than swine-flu.

If you're just getting your head around Twitter, you'll need to step one step further to "get" Foursquare. Once you do, I think you'll realise this has huge potential, as a network phenomenon and as a marketing tool.

The basics.

OK - so you log into Foursquare.com and create an account. What next? You invite others to join and be your "friends" (just like Facebook). You then download the Foursquare app to your smart phone. Ready.

Now, you are on the move, you go out in the evening, and when you arrive at a place (bar, restaurant, concert venue, event, coffee shop, whatever), you "check in". On your phone you simply load the app, it uses the phone's location to identify known venues in the area and you select the one you're at. Simple as that. Then - you can see which of your other friends are also there. Maybe there's friends that are out on the town that you didn't know were out on the town. You decide to hook up on the fly.

Here's the bit you need to pay attention to if you are a restaurant.

First of all, make sure you are listed. The initial list of London restaurants is seeded by WCities, and there's loads missing. Once logged in you can add your place in the "add things" link in the menu. If you're listed, people will be able to "check-in" to your venue easily.

Secondly, there's a competitive element to FourSquare. The person who checks in the most to a venue becomes that venue's "mayor". This person is your most loyal Foursquare customer. They will be visiting you a lot.

This means that you can create a loyalty scheme on this platform. "If you are our mayor, simply present your phone and you will get a free drink". As people to compete to become your mayor, you get mentioned in a whole Facebook / Twitter universe and your brand awareness soars. It's all online and it's all free.

Sounds far fetched? Maybe this year it won't be, but I can see this becoming big for a certain demographic. Huge. The future is just around the corner.

Here's a useful blog post on how to get the most out of Foursquare.com as a user.

Livebookings On CNBC

Dragon says "I'm in"...

Great piece on CNBC yesterday. Live interview with Niklas Eklund CEO, talking about boosting restaurants' profitability.

James Caan, of Dragon's Den Fame, gave his approval.

5 minute clip...

Seven Steps To Heaven

Where online marketing fits in creating customer value, and what this means for return-on-investment calculations

Ecommerce is relatively young, but it’s maturing fast. Increasingly there are few businesses that don’t / can’t exploit the online channel as a route to market.

Many have used online marketing to great effect, and there are plenty with experience and success in areas such as email marketing, SEO, paid search and affiliate marketing.

Of course, the great thing about these methods is that they can be measured and spend can be justified with the success that it brings. However, all too often these channels are viewed in isolation and success is sometimes simply measured by the number of transactions that can be directly attributed to the relevant email, affiliate or search campaign.

It’s clear to me however that to measure success, online marketing investments must be viewed in their context of the overall marketing strategy.

Getting back to basics - what is marketing?

Marketing is concerned with creating value for customers and extracting value from customers.

Long term value creation is based on sustainable competitive advantage, which is derived from the ability to provide superior value for customers and provides the reason why customers consistently buy from one company rather than another.

In ecommerce the value we can provide for customers is based on a number of different factors, including, but not limited to...
- Price
- Choice
- Filter and choice selection tools
- Ease of purchase and payment
- Brand reassurance (if the site is well known)
- Personalisation
- Reviews / advice from other customers
- Delivery and shipping
- Customer service

When we spend money on marketing activity to communicate our proposition to our customers and our potential customers, we are doing three things...

1. Bring new customers (acquisition)
   
2. Generate repeat purchases from existing customers (retention)
   
3. Generate more revenue per customer (development)
   

Given the above I think it really helps to understand WHY you are investing in SEO / PPC / Affiliates / Email etc. A good starting point is to think about customer value and then think about how much a customer is worth to you over their lifetime.

I’ve been a customer at Amazon.co.uk for about 10 years now. I may well be a customer there for another 30 years if they don’t screw up. Clearly, whatever activity they did 10 years ago to get me on board worked, but importantly, it must be measured not against my initial purchase but on the total lifetime customer value.

Over 10 years, I have purchased 190 items. I just checked, on my account history, it’s all there! Plus I rented DVDs on a subscription for 3 years. I am probably worth to Amazon about £4,000 over the 10 year period. PLUS – being a fan I’ve recommended many people over the years.

My first order was Steve Redgrave’s book of rowing, £16. Great book. I don’t know how much Amazon had to spend to acquire me as a customer, but I know for sure that if they had measured their marketing investment on my first purchase only, they would have got it completely wrong.

How to calculate a lifetime customer ROI...

CUSTOMER VALUE
[Price] x [Annual Volume] x [Customer Years]
+ Referral Value
+ Promotional Value
= Total Customer Lifetime Value

VALUE CREATION COSTS
(Cost of Acquisition)
+ (Cost of Retention)
+ (Cost of Development)
+ (Special Requirements)
+ (Marketing Overhead)
= Total Value Creation Costs

TOTAL VALUE = (CUSTOMER VALUE - VALUE CREATION COSTS)

On a really simple level, to gain a sustainable competitive advantage any business needs to provide
- the best customer value (however the customer judges value)
- and the best return on marketing investment over the full customer lifecycle

To help put this into perspective, I find the following model useful.



It shows the key stages in “owning” a customer and for each stage; specific promotional goals are required to achieve the customer response. For a company to be truly successful they need to draw potential customers through all stages.

These stages are the steps by which customers receive and use information in reaching decisions about what actions they will take. From not knowing about your product/service to recommending it to others, there are 7 steps to heaven.

The highest marketing costs are usually for the first stages, on the left. The biggest returns come from the stages on the right.

Now to the crux of what this article addresses...

Where do all of the “online marketing” methods fit on the model above? By understanding this, you have a framework to better present your marketing spend in its proper context.

Awareness: Does the customer know that the product/service exists?

• Online PR, social media marketing
  
• Finding a link to the product when doing a Google search on a relevant keyword (PPC / SEO)
  
• Finding the site on a search from their mobile phone
  
• Clicking on a banner advertisement
  
• Seeing a reference from a known company (contra deals / competitions)
  

Interest: Does the customer think that product might meet their needs?

• If the customer does not know what they are looking for: inspiration is needed, ideas and suggestions
  
• Special offers can drive interest for price-sensitive customers
  
• SEO/PPC must match on specific keywords used and tailor the ad copy to that interest
  

Evaluation: Does the customer have enough information to make a decision?

• Build great content. Photos, maps, specifications, availability
  
• Peer reviews and expert reviews, the community can provide the content
  
• Provide booking services that allow customers to compare and contrast options. Search and filter tools are needed to narrow down choices
  
• Create a shortlist, share with friends (collaborative decision making)
  

Preference: Does the customer choose your product to purchase?

• If the customer already knows that they want a specific product and they search by product name, be sure your PPC / SEO / affiliates takes them directly to the product
  
• Have the product in stock
  
• Ease of purchase (payment methods)
  

1st purchase: Can the customer make a purchase easily?

• Always available, real time, 24/7
  
• On all places where the customer might be (as many websites as possible – affiliates, plus own website)
  
• SMS / email confirmations. Delivery and shipping instructions. 
  

Repeat purchase: Can you easily communicate with existing customers and maintain a relationship with them?

• Make it easy for your site/product to be found again through search 
  
• Maintain a customer database
  
• Email marketing
  
• Segmentation / personalisation of messages
  

Advocacy: Is the customer so impressed by the service that they tell others and generate even more business?

• Customer satisfaction emails
  
• Customer reviews
  
• Guest recognition and personalisation
  
• Case studies and customer-based PR stories, distribute online
  

I find that looking at online marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy helps to provide a better understanding of how to calculate a meaningful return-on-investment beyond the immediate gratification offered by same-session conversion metrics.

What’s obvious to me from the above is that not only is online marketing core to the success of an ecommerce business, but that website product management is also clearly a marketing activity. Often there’s confusion about who owns the website functionality. To me it’s clear; it’s part of the overall customer experience, and forms part of the marketing mix.

One important final note; as we are all different as individuals, so are companies and products. There are some products that do not lend themselves to a lifetime customer value view as much as others. Products or services that are bought infrequently need to mainly address customer acquisition, whereas products or services that are bought frequently or repeatedly required much more emphasis on retention and development.

I’d love to hear comments on how the above list could be expanded. If you have any thoughts about what should / shouldn’t sit on the 7 steps to heaven, let me know!

Don't Be Mediocre, Be A Generalist

Here's a problem. Most e-commerce websites suck. They're average, sub-optimal.

They suck. If they were high street shops you'd see what I mean. Some would not be signposted. My mother would not be able to find anything she wanted in the store, let alone figure out how to pay. They might not even be found if you called directory enquiries. Lighting would be poor, there would be no space to park and you'd be unsure if you were being served by rip-off merchants or a legitimate business.

Sure, there are some great websites out there. A few. However, because web customers are in many ways "invisible" to the businesses that are trying to serve them, site managers running these sites get away with mediocrity.

Small businesses or large businesses, the problem is the same.

In small businesses you need an all rounder running your web business: he or she needs to be able to do a bit of everything and do it really well to be effective. These all-rounders are few and far between. So - good websites for small businesses are few and far between.

In a large web business, you end up with different "specialists" taking on different roles. You get the design team, the merchandising team, the online marketing team, the tech team, the product planning team, the analytics team, etc. They are all brilliant at what they do. Brilliant.

Just why does the site that you end up with suck if they are brilliant? The really great websites are the ones where the teams do "joined up thinking". The site design team know something about SEO. The analytics team knows something about PPC. The product planning team understand affiliate marketing. If they all understand the basic principles behind all of the main disciplines, you'll do fine. If not you can end up with mediocrity. Division of labour brings pockets of excellence and general mediocrity.

The solution to me is clear: every person involved in delivering the website and running it should be familiar with the basics of how all the main disciplines work.

I will give somple examples of what are these "key disciplines" that are needed to overcome mediocrity and suggest 5 tips on how to acquire those skills. I don't for a moment suggest that anyone can be an "expert" in all of these areas. What I am suggesting is that everyone in an ecommerce business that can affect the business results needs to be a "generalist" and be fluent in the basic principles.

This is true whether you are a one-person site manager doing everything or whether you are a specialist in a big company.

Consider ecommerce websites to be like high street shops. If you are running a traditional "bricks and mortar" business, you need to do three things...

1. Attract customers
2. Persuade them to buy when they come through the door. (And ideally, maximise this so that they
buy more than they would normally have done).
3. Encourage them to come back to shop again and become a regular "repeat customer".

Quite simply, running a website / web service is all about customer acquisition, conversion and retention.

Acquisition

Retail is all about selling the right product to the right person at the right time. So to get this right, there's some preparation needed in terms of customer insight / research, developing a brand, building a proposition, product planning & strategy, business case modelling. Then once you have a product you need a communications plan, (including, but not excluding online PR). On a technical side, you need to understand search engine optimisation (3 core pillars; site structure, content and reputation), search engine marketing (paid search), affiliate marketing, social media optimisation, RSS, blogs, ad serving.

Conversion

Here, the most important discipline is user-centred design, also information architecture, followed closely by merchandising techniques and understanding effective calls to action. Think about good error handling, optimising shopping "funnels", accessibility, compelling copy writing, tactical promotions and you might just have scratched the surface.

Retention

Plenty to learn about here too, from email marketing to direct mail (CRM), use of confirmation emails, special offers, customer database management and that's just scratching the surface.

And more...

Underpinning all of the above is a good understanding of web analytics (for traffic sources, keyword analysis, conversion tracking - and a whole lot more).

And to get stuff done, to make it all happen they also need to understand a little about technical things like technical architecture, software development methodologies, project management techniques, be a great tester.

To add some real flavour to the mix, key principles of many academic disciplines come in useful, economics, sociology and psychology.

And to be effective in business generally, you need to know about HR issues for the countries in which you operate, be a great manager, have good negotiation skills, know a little bit about contract law.

If you find someone who does all of the above well and them let them loose on your website - now you're talking! Also, point them my way, I'd love to meet them!


So - if you're just starting out...

5 tips to become a great E-commerce "generalist"

1. Work with great people

We learn so much from working with other people. Put yourself with the best you can find and learn from them. Soak it up.

2. Apply yourself

This industry is only about 10 years old. Most of the so called experts became experts by just applying themselves and learning from their mistakes. You can too.

3. Attend training

If you can, go on specialist training courses. There are few places such as e-consultancy.com where you can get a kick start

4. Read, read and read

You can never read enough. Some of my favourite books are listed here if you need ideas.

5. Have a go

For me this is the most important advice of all. Have a go! I didn't know anything about setting up RSS feeds until I had to do one for this blog. Figure it out, and just try.


One day, most websites will be great. Until then, if you are a "generalist", go make some money!

"The General"

Q & A on Restaurants and E-marketing

I recently had a chat with the guys at e-consultancy.com about Livebookings Network (My day job).

We talked about which types of restaurants are making the best use of online marketing and what other opportunities are out there for its aggregated reservations model...

Livebookings has been around for a while now, as has the idea of online bookings for restaurants. How well has the idea caught on with consumers and what types of restaurants have made the biggest strides on the web?

Livebookings Network as it currently exists has been around for two years, having been created in 2006 by the merger of two restaurant reservation system providers – Livebookings in the UK and Loghos in Sweden. The ambition then was to build the business model and prove it would work in our core markets of Sweden and the UK.

Having done so, the plan was to go for a second round of funding and take the business model further geographically. That’s what we are now doing. We are now focusing on expanding through Europe – to France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and throughout the Nordics.

Our most mature market is London. There, there is a wide range of very sophisticated, fine dining restaurants that are looking to maximise their covers. It is obviously better to get two guests per chair in an evening than one, as it doubles your turnover. So a lot of those restaurants are using complex software solutions to manage their reservations and many of them are then connected to online distribution networks, such as ours.

The more advanced restaurants are also using a lot of online promotional activity to drive bookings, such as special offers to fill their shoulder periods. It is often difficult for restaurants to fill every session throughout the week so if you can put together offers for those periods, such as between 6pm and 7pm for the pre-theatre dining crowd, you have more chance of maximising your profitability.

What about consumers?

Consumers are getting used to the idea of booking online. The majority of our bookings come through a la carte bookings but we do see major spikes in booking levels when we run a significant promotional campaign around events. Many bookings also come from secretaries that are reserving tables for their bosses.

In terms of how big the market is, we do know that around 62% of UK consumers are searching the web to decide which restaurant to visit, according to a study conducted by the American Express Hospitality Monitor last year. So that’s a lot of people deciding which restaurant to book online.

Our mission is to make sure that when people have made that decision, our services are in front of them. We focus on a B2B model, rather than spending a large marketing fund on creating an audience for our own site. We focus on people that already have the audience and visitors that are willing to book.

Read the rest of the article at e-consultancy...

Timing Is Everything

Email marketing can be a powerful tool. Like all tools, you need to use it carefully.

This example wasn't a disaster, but it did make me laugh...

I was sitting on the Eurostar train in Paris, waiting for it to leave and my Blackberry buzzed to let me know I had new emails. So, without much else to do at the time, I checked the email.

It said "Just got back from Paris? Tell Ted all about it."

Great timing eh? I know the new train link is fast, but it's not that fast!

The email continued....

"You've walked down sun-filled
boulevards. Dined in some of Europe's
finest restaurants. Watched the sun set
over a city, spread before you like a
bejewelled cape.

Now you're back in the real world
and bursting to tell everyone about
your experiences. Even Ted from the
accounts department.

Try telling Ted and you could win a
weekend break to the Eurostar
destination of your choice"

It should have read....

"You've walked down crowded metro
platforms. Dined in one of Paris'
cheap creperies. Dodged the rain
through narrow pavements to get back
to a cheap hotel room.

Now you're heading back home to your
real world and dying to see your family
again. Work is over for another week
and Ted from the accounts department can wait.

Tell Ted how little you spent on your trip
and you could go back again soon to the
same fleapit for another meeting, (but
you'd rather not if you had the choice)"

Two lessons learned:

Email marketing should always
- have content relevant to the audience
- be sent at an appropriate time

I don't mind though, it made me laugh.

Restaurant Online Marketing Workshops

According to the American Express Hospitality Monitor, 62% of customers search the Internet to decide which restaurant to visit.

If you are in the restaurant business, there's a great new free workshop that you can go to start learning about how to get your business online. Not only is online marketing now an essential part of the marketing mix, but it is the most cost effective and successful form of marketing that a restaurant can engage in.

Livebookings Network are running a series of workshops around the UK, focusing on providing practical advice to restaurateurs on the topic of online marketing.


London, Thursday 24 April

Topics being covered...

Email Marketing - Creating and measuring email campaigns to your existing restaurant customers, capturing valuable data and delivering promotions.
Expert speaker: Matthew Kirby, UK Managing Director, Fishbowl Marketing, www.fishbowluk.com

Search Engine Marketing - Basics and benefits of search engine optimisation for restaurants looking to attract traffic to their websites and capture more customers as a result of improved search engine rankings.
Expert speaker: Warren Cowen, Chief Executive Officer, greenlight search engine marketing, www.greenlightsearch.com

Effective Web Design - Implementing effective web design, the importance of maintenance and maximising opportunities available through your website.
Expert speaker: Keith Davie, Creative Director, Salad Creative, www.saladcreative.com

Time: 9.30am coffee, croissants and networking
10am start – 11.30am
Venue: Slug and Lettuce, 80-82 Wardour St, London, W1F 0TF
Cost: FREE to Livebookings Network members. Membership is free.
£25+VAT for non-members (includes breakfast)

If you sign up to the Livebookings Network on the day, you are refunded the cost of your Workshop place.

Booking: Book Online: www.livebookings.co.uk/workshops

Get More Traffic To Your Blog From Facebook

One way to get visitors to your blog is to get your blog posts in front of an audience that might want to read them.

And one place that your audience might just be hanging out is on Facebook.

If you have a Facebook profile, there's a neat application that you can add to dynamically display your blog posts on your profile.

First of all get an RSS feed set up for your blog. A good place to do this if you haven't already done so is at www.feedburner.com.

This will give you an RSS feed URL for your blog.

Then, log into Facebook and go to the Blog RSS Feed Reader application and add it to your profile.

In the configuration, add the details of your RSS feed url (For example, mine is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/davidnorris), and configure how you want the feed to appear on your profile.

Then, every time you add a blog post it will appear on your mini-feed. It takes your blog to your audience rather than asking your audience to come to you.

Checking my Google Analytics account, I can see I'm now regularly getting referrals from Facebook as a result. Nice.

Virtual Flowers, Whatever Next?

Now you can send your loved ones a "digital bouquet" of flowers.

This is weird. Call me old fashioned, but there's something lacking when your flowers are sent by email!

What's even more weird is that you might want to actually pay for it!

In the States, www.bokayme.com/ are offering you the chance to send your loved one a digital bouquet. Woopy-dee-doo! AND -you can pay $3 to customise your bouquet. Bizarre.

Still, it will create lots of inbound linking for their parent company, news chatter, blog posts, viral marketing.

Mile High Club

Marketing was always meant to be this simple: pimp up your campaign with some sexy images and you're onto a winner.

In response to the age old problem, "how do I get more subscribers for my email newsletter", Cheapflights.co.uk go viral with a saucy microsite that let's all of your air hostess (or air steward) fantasies come true.

I won't say anymore except to be careful about getting too excited, this is pretty hot hot hot.

Click on www.enjoyyourflight.co.uk and have a cold shower at the ready.

Why Can't I Find You On Google?

Yes, we've all done, it, Googling our name.

I'm as guilty as the rest of them, but I have the challenge of competing with a footballer, a sculptor and a senator for getting a ranking. David Norris - it's hardly a unique name.

More and more "name searches" are taking hold as we "Google" our future employers, our future employees, dates, friends and celebs.

Can you be found if you Google your name? If so, what do you get? If you're in business, your professional repuation will increasingly depend on what people read about you online.

A new start up has just launched that aims to help us all get found. The site is still in Beta, so if you get in there now, you might get a listing for free before they start charging.

It's called lookuppage.com.

Here's how it worked for me:
1. Sign up
2. Create a simple profile
3. I received a call the same day enquiring about how I heard of the service and they explained more about their plans
4. The next day I found my page at www.davidnorris1.com through Google - it was listed in the paid ads! (I didn't pay for the ad - they did)



Interesting business model here. They buy me a domain, pay for PPC, it won't cost them much. I tell all my friends, they sign up, and soon their user base expands fast virally. When they get enough critical mass, they start charging for premuim services and work with corporate accounts. If this works, sales focussed companies and small businesses with low web presence will be eager to get a quick low cost visibility for their key people.

It's great too because I get a legitimate link to this blog from the new page, every link helps!

So - you've nothing to lose, go get your page now before they start charging.

Raja-Fashions Tailor-Made Hong Kong Suits, Online Meets Offline

The joys and perils of buying a suit from the other side of the world.

Here's an example of where the internet and modern communications have transformed what's possible. Online meets offline, personalised service in a mass-market, off-shore manufacture, on-shore sales - it's a whole world of opposites.

If you know me, you'll know I'm tall and slim. The "slim patroller" they used to call me in the day. Getting clothes to fit me is very difficult, never mind a suit. I can get the fit on the shoulders only to find no length in the sleeves and a tent around my middle. Trousers that fit my waist don't reach my ankles.

Recently into a new job, I thought it was time to invest in a new suit. I managed to squeeze 10 years out of the last one, but the poor old thing had had it's day.

This time I thought I'd try a tailor made suit (for the reasons mentioned above), but I didn't want to spend a fortune on Saville Row.

I'd heard of Raja Fashions before having seen their adverts in the papers. You might have seen them too - they talk of a Hong Kong tailor, Mr Daswani, who travels the world (mainly the UK and the USA) to measure up clients for his team of tailors in Hong Kong. You're promised high street prices, but tailor made quality.

(Offline advertising for brand awareness)

I recalled the name so I went online and searched Google for "Raja" and "Hong Kong Tailors" and sure, soon enough I found their site. On the site, I found a list of dates when he would be in London, and I could make an online reservation from the site for the date and time that suited me. As it happened I had a 3 week wait before my Saturday appointment at a Kensington hotel suite.

(Online lead generation and appointment facility)

I was kind of expecting to see Mr Daswani, but no, the room had 4 younger guys from his team, with suitcases of fabric samples, tape measures and credit card swipe machines. Very quickly I was being seen to by "Dennis" (I'm sure that's not his real name) who very quickly started to take details about what I wanted. I said I wanted 2 suits, one simple black one and a slightly more fashionable brown pinstripe. He measured me up, and asked questions about various options I had such as type of vents, width of lapel, angle of pockets, number of pockets etc etc. To be honest I wasn't quite sure what I wanted, it felt uncomfortably fast and I was getting flustered. Maybe that was his technique. Moving so fast I was caught off guard on the negotiation front. I was expecting to pay £300 to £400 per suit. In the end, with upgraded fabric, nice lining etc, I was looking at £650 a suit. I also went for a white shirt (only £50), so the total bill was a whopping £1350. Ouch. Whilst I was being distracted by a guy taking my photo, my credit card was already being processed and only 25 minutes after walking in I was leaving wondering how on earth I managed to just drop that kind of money and would I get what I wanted?

(Old fashioned pen and carbon copied paper, and a "tiger" for a salesman)

I was told to expect my suits within 4-6 weeks. 3 weeks in and the shirt arrived. Great fit, just that it was a little tight around the collar. I don't usually wear a tie, so I let it go. It was great to have a shirt that didn't flap across my chest and was long enough on the sleeves and tails.Being cotton, it has shrunk a small amount too. I thinkif I were to order more of these I'd get and extra 1/2 inch on the collar.

(International parcel delivery)

I waited for the suits, but they didn't arrive. 7 weeks in I emailed Raja Fashions in Hong Kong and was told by reply that they had despatched about 3 weeks previously. I was given a Parcelforce tracking number which I looked up online. It's at this point that I started a period of 4 weeks of stress trying to get my suits. I don't think I'll go into the full details here (it warrants it's own blog post) except to say that the parcel had the wrong house number on it, it was apparently signed for and delivered at an address 4 doors down, by a name not heard of by the owners of the house, with the suit no-where to be seen.

Given that this happened at Christmas time and I was having to deal with Parcelforce's customer service centre (think: impossible call routing systems that have none of the options that relate to your situation).... well, you can imagine.

(Automated UK customer "care" - nothing of the sort!)

Three weeks later I had manage to confirm that the suits were not where Parcelforce said they were and was just about to call Mastercard to re-claim my outlay, when Raja Fashions confirmed that they would re-do the order and send the suits over within 2 weeks. I had almost given up.

(Email Hong Kong customer care, this time with results)

Sure enough to the day, my suits arrived and I was this time given an SMS to alert me of the delivery with a choice to choose a different day if the proposed day didn't work for me. Nice touch. Shame they didn't do this first time around and I might have managed to get the suits.

(SMS customer alerting)

My suits arrived in a cardboard box, slightly crupmled after their journey. I tried them on straight away with some nervousness. It was 3 months of effort, a signficant amount of stress and a fair chunk of change to get this far.

The result? Spot on. Absolutely fantastic fit. I sighed a big sigh of relief and looked forward to wearing my new threads.

I had to take the jacket of one suit to the local dry cleaner to get the crumples steamed out of the arms, but that was no big deal.

I've since enjoyed wearing my new suits and I must say, the feeling of tailor-made has me converted. It's lovely good quality wool fabric, feels very sharp. There's no going back to M+S again now.

Would I use Raja-Fashions again?

Yes - I think I would. I am very very happy with the end result. The process to get there was very stressful, but I think to be honest I was just unluckywith the delivery. Raja-Fashions redeemed themselves by re-doing the order once they were sure that it had gone missing.

I've got my next appointment in 6 weeks time. A supply of shirts is in order I feel!

Apart from my personal story, the story here is of a very successful business that is a real mix of all possible ways of doing business: offline advertising, online lead generation and appointments service, face to face sales, old-fashioned payment systems, off-shore manufacturing, personalised goods, international delivery, email customer service, SMS delivery alerting. By locating in Hong Kong but by travelling to their customers around the world, Mr Daswani has created a compelling business model that is going from strength to strength. Good for him I say. Good for me too, the lanky odd-ball that I am.

Web Marketing Tools 2008

Jeremiah Owyang, a web-strategist and Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, has just published a useful up to date at a glance guide of the many forms of web marketing.

If you want to check in on what all of these terms mean and how they can be used, his article is an excellent reference point.

The Many Forms of Web Marketing:

1) Corporate Domain
A) Corporate Site
B) Portal Strategy
C) Microsites for Segmentation
D) Interactive Web Marketing
E) Intranet
F) Extranet
G) Regionalization

2) Search Marketing
A) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
B) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

3) Out Bound and Syndicated Web Marketing
A) Email Marketing
B) Invasive Marketing
C) Syndicated Content and RSS

4) Brand Extension
A) Web Advertising
B) Contextual Advertising
C) Sponsorship and /Cross branding/Affiliate
D) Social Advertisements
E) Widget Advertising

5) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing
A) eCommerce/Rating Sites
B) Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
C) Syndicated Marketing
D) Podcast Marketing
E) Blogging
F) Widget Marketing
G) Online Video and Live Streaming
H) Instant Messaging, Presence
I) Tagging, Collective Tools
J) Voting Features
K) MicroMedia
L) Infinite Other Flavors

6) Virtual Worlds
A) Virtual Worlds
B) Online Massive Multi Player Games
C) Online Games

7) Related Mediums
A) Internet TV (IPTV)
B) Mobile Content

8 ) Experimental: To Watch
A) Portability of the Social Graph
B) Vendor Relationship Management

Read the full post with detailed explanations at www.web-strategist.com

What Is Customer Engagement?

You can't hide from your customers.

I don't know about you, but I've noticed a recent trend evolving whereby the term "customer engagement" is becoming increasingly prolific in online businesses.

There's been a lot of comment on the subject throughout the net, and if you want to get the definition, context and background, you'd do worse than read the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

If I was to explain what it is to my Mum, I'd most likely say something like...

"Well, until recently, companies had all the power when it came to communicating with their customers. They controlled their message through advertising and traditional marketing. In recent years, thanks to the rise of the internet, consumers increasingly have a voice, whether it be through blogs (Mum says: "What's a blog?"), posting product reviews, creating fan clubs around a product or indeed, the opposite: groups of disgruntled customers. Communication has become two-way. As such companies or organisations that embrace this and invite comment and involvement from their customers are more likely to be successful in the long term. The loyalty of their customers will increase and they will reduce the risk of being seen negatively if something goes wrong. Conversely if they bury their heads in the sand and ignore connecting with their customers they risk it back-firing in their face when all their competitors get it right".

I welcome this trend. It makes sense that companies are held accountable for the quality of their service and product. It ensures that competition does not just depend on price alone.

Just as "conversion" and "usability" are now well understood by many (and equally misunderstood by a surprisingly large number of companies), "customer engagement" will develop a following, experts will emerge, books and research will published and it won't be long before the majority of large E-commerce companies have a "customer engagement strategist" in their marketing team. We'll start to see standard vocabluary (i.e. jargon), measurement systems and sub-disciplines.

This week I was talking to a friend who had been at a management meeting of a small off-line company. They were talking about "the internet", what they could do to attract more business through their website etc. One person suggested adding a blog, allowing the company to post news and allow clients to comment. The immediate reaction was that this was too "risky", "what might be posted? - it could damage our reputation!".

Yes, it's true, you might get the odd negative comment, but these days disgruntled customers are able to get this out to an audience whether you let them or not. It's better to show you're interested and get a relationship with your customers. Better still, deliver a service that means that your customers will always be postive about their experience.

Until companies can take that leap of faith, they will still sit in the 20th centuary. There really is no option now for companies, especially online ones, to hide from their customers.

Social Networking Sites Are The Fastest Growing UK Online Brands

Neilsen Netratings' recent report showed that of the 10 fastest growing UK online brands, three were social networking tools (Rock You!, Slide and Bunnyhero labs), one was a social network (Facebook) and one was a professional network (LinkedIn).

Networks arrive, take hold, and surge. They reach a tipping point where suddenly they mutate like a contagion and take over the inboxes and phones of the country. Not surprising therefore that they dominate the top 10.



However, it takes a very special network to hold out. Remember Friends United? It was the "Facebook" of 5 years ago. Now, it's history. Today's users are fickle. What is cool to this generation will be old hat to the next. So you can expect networks to rise and fall like the tide. They arrive fast, they die fast. Only the lucky few survive.

However, despite this cynicism, I must admit that it seems that the age of the network has arrived. Is it a blip in the history of the internet or an era that will last? Time will tell.

In the meantime, what to do?
1. If you are creating a network, make sure it has some real value.
2. If you are in the business of promoting your product, you have to embrace the networks, or get left behind.

View the official Nielsen release here.

Geo-tag Your Location

Geo-tagging is a way of tagging a website to describe it's location.

This is particularly useful in the case of say a restaurant or hotel website or any other webpage that is about business in a specific location. If a page is tagged, other websites and search engines will recognise its position. You will most likely get better rankings for localised search requests.

Geo-tagging uses latitude and longitude coordinates.

One of the simplest ways to tag a page is to add meta tags in the page header using the following syntax:

meta name="geo.placename" content="New York, NY, USA"
meta name="geo.position" content="40.757929;-73.985506"
meta name="geo.region" content="US-NY"

(The numbers above are latitide and longitude coordinates).

If you are not sure what your location coordinates are, you can find it on a map the following website and generate your tags: Mygeoposition.com

Increasingly as mobile phone users take their world with them in their pocket, a user's location will be an important point of reference and can be triangulated from GPS technology to nearby businesses and services on the web.

Consider that the iPhone (estimated to have 500,000 users in the UK by the end of the year) has Google Maps built-in.

Giving a site a location in cyber-space has never been more important. If a business has a locations it needs to communicate that address to the wider world.

Last Days For Last-Touch Attribution?

News in from the PhoCusWright annual travel conference in Orlando this week was that there is a Doubleclick product coming that will enable multi-variable attribution for purchases.

Typically online marketeers use a "last touch" rule to attribute sales to a marketing channel using cookie technology.

Consider this scenario...

1. User first visits site through an affliate link
2. Later they come back via a paid search link (PPC) for the destination site
3. On their third and final visit (when they purchase), they type in the brand name to Google, click through on the natural organic results

Typically the booking is attributed to the last paid marketing channel. In this instance it would be paid search. This is often referred to as "de-duping" marketing channels. You don't want to pay the commission twice, so you pay the last touch point.

However, it was the affliate that created the initial introduction. How come the affliate doesn't get paid? In the real world of bricks and mortar that just wouldn't happen - everyone would get their cut.

If Doubleclick can produce something that allows a fair and reasonable distribution of marketing costs by channel for each transaction, and if this is adopted as an industry standard it will be a major coup.

A couple of implications if this is approach is adopted...

1. The value of SEO will become more transparent. Early purchase lifecycle "long tail" touchpoints will show their true worth
2. Affliates will deploy new strategies based on the new ROI models that they will face
3. PPC efficiency will be a truer reflection of actual spend

My guess is this move must be in Google's interest given Google's attempted takeover over Doubleclick. If multi-variate attribution were to show that PPC were less efficient that it currently is, companies would reduce their spend and put it into other channels. I'm not sure Google would want that.

Mind you, the Doubleclick deals is still far from certain. Yesterday the EU commission refused to approve the proposed takeover and the Federal Trade Commission has yet to rule on the merger.