Why listening to your customers IS important!

Make your website Work for You!

It is the words of the customer that are indeed the most important Clarissa Mattingly, Managing Director of Different Australia says. You must facilitate your customers. Too many organisations say, "We have to redesign our website- we have to make it more up-to-date", and it is those organisations who fail to meet the needs of their potential customers. Do not just choose a technology and go ahead with it, ask the customer what they want from the site.

80 per cent of changes made to an online project after its launch are because of unseen user requirements.

63 per cent of all software-related projects blow out their budgets as a result of unmet user needs.

TIP: The more finished it looks, the more resistant people are to recommending changes.

FREE FOR ALL

Free SMS? No big deal. SMS without a catch? Now, there's something worth pursuing. At least, that's what 19-year-old CEO, Aaron Hornlimann thought in February of 2005, when he came up with the idea for his now-booming computer-to-mobile texting company, Intazaar.
"We're certainly not the first company in Australia to offer people the chance to send a free test message from their computer to a mobile phone," laughs aaron, "but we're the first to offer the service without any scams"
By scams, Aaron refers to the nasty little sms marketing techniques that scare most of us off free texting offers-having our contact details on-sold to marketers, having our phone bombarded with advertising spam, having a lengthy advertising slogan sit at th end of every 'free' text message we send, or receving five 'free' text messages only to find that we'll be charged for others. "With Intazaar, you simply register with us via our website", says Aaron. "Then you build your address list and and can send 30 free texts a day to any mobile in Australia. We will never spam you, on-sell your details, charge you or run a slogan on your message." So, how then does Aaron make a buck? "When you register online for free SMS, we have you fill in a form detailing your address, age, sex and occupation. The information you give us is confidential and we don't pass it, however it allows us to compile very specific demographics about who is visiting our website. We approach companies who are marketing to similar demographics to see if they'd be interested in posing advertisments on our website-not 'pop up'screens though, they annoy people. If the advertisers place an ad on our web pages, we charge them for pleasure of being able to target their specific market." Really, no website pop-up screens? "Truly," says Aaron "We pride ourselves on ethical marketing. All along i was told I'd never be able to offer free SMS unless we resorted to scams, but after opening in September 2005, we had 60 0000 peole register for our free SMS by December. Now we're addy 4 000 users a week and have in excess of 148 000 Intazaarians! People know they can trust us." To register for Intazaar's free SMS, visit www.intazaar.com.au

IP Toolbox- Using Intellectual Property in your business

"The complete guide to intellectual property in your business-only a click away.

The IP Toolbox is your online guide to the practical use and management of intellectual property (IP) in your business. This comprehensive, easy to understand tool is only a click away- and available free online, whenever you need it!

So if you're in business, developing an idea or provide business advice visit
www.ipaustralia.gov.au/iptoolbox"

-australian anthill, Oct/Nov 2006.

Start-ups beware!

"The internet is quickly becoming the main "shop front" of most businesses, so it's very important that start-ups should not assume that their desired trading name and/or the preferred names of their products or services are available as com.au or net.au domain names.
Nowadays it is important to check the availability of com.au and net.au domain names of the products and/or services your business plans to offer. It would obviously be pointless marketing your brand, product or service if the corrosponding com.au or net.au domain names weren't available.
You can check the avilability of all.au domain names using the 'whois' lookup at www.auda.org.au"

-australian anthill, Oct/Nov 2006.

A loan for marketing...

Another excerpt from australian anthill magazine...

"National finance provider Standard Capital has recently introduced a product to assist growing companies finance marketing activities. Called the Business Builder Marketing Loan, this product is used for sales and marketing purposes. It requires no real estate security and is designed so that repayments can be made from a prearranged percentage of business cash receipts. For example, loan repayments are calculated according to an agreed percentage of sales income. In this way, repayments reflect the success of the marketing campaign and its ability to increase sales volumes. The loan can only be used for a number of pre-determined marketing activities, such as website design and printing."

Tips for Internet Security

In the Oct/Nov issue of australian anthill magazine, Ankit Fadia offered his top tips for small to medium sized businesses...

"...install a basic firewall- there are a lot of freeware firewalls. Just download one and start using it. Patch your system regularly. Run windows update regularly. Have a good anti-virus and update the virus definition files. And choose a good password."

No faking - we REALLY do LOVE our customers!

Our customers here at The FRANK Team are everyone from teachers, to careers advisers, to school students, to uni students, to corporates, to other young entrepreneurs and even our staff (especially the newbies!); we work with many different people. Today I read a totally awesome piece of advice that had a lightbulb go off in my head that said "we do totally LOVE our customers, LOVE helping them, hanging out with them and building relationships". None of that love is fake, you know just cos they pay the bills you have to love them....none of that - we truly LOVE working with all of them and making amazing things happen! This totally shows in the work that we do, and wonderful feedback that we get - and is what attracts people to us.
How can you let your customers know you LOVE them today? For us, we are organising a little birthday surprise for one of them - we can't wait! And then putting together a FRANK welcome kit for our newest team member (think FRANK DVDs, chocolate, inspirational books and quotes!), I will then get to responding to some emails from some young people asking for advice on starting their businesses.....arhhhh life is good! And that is just the morning :)
Go and enjoy the LOVE!

That gem of advice I got, is here for you now: (and yes, it came from my dad the marketing genius, Michael Kiely!!)
I hit a big home run during an Ogilvy & Mather international training course when I was with the agency (when it was truly O&M). Ken Roman, the President, was interrogating the class in Socratic style (look it up) when he asked "What's the best thing you can do with your clients?" Without thinking I blurted out: "Hang around with them." Ken, who earned the role of President by his client handling skills, took the cigar out of his mouth (it was the mid 80's) and thundered his approval: "Hang around with them!" It was a defining moment in my career. I was marked for advancement after that and was made creative director within a year. Because building a strong personal relationship is the key to building a strong business relationship.
Trust is the essential ingredient. If a client doesn't trust you to always act in their best personal interests, you are going nowhere. Simply hanging out with them, and enjoying it, should come easy. If it doesn't, put someone else on the business. Faking it doesn't work, either. People know when they're being snowed.
€ ARCHIVES of "MICHAEL'S MARKETING-THOUGHT-A-DAY" can be found at http://marketingthoughtaday.blogspot.com

Cheers
Jessica Kiely