If you are the owner of a Christchurch business reading my interview with Lee Suckling in today’s “The Press” about how people in Christchurch are using location based internet services like Foursquare and are wondering why business owners engage the services of an independent online marketing consultant like me this article is for you!
Keeping a lid on the amount of money spent on online marketing is vital to commercial success in a small market like New Zealand.
The key to cost-effectiveness for a small NZ business owner is to learn about online marketing and then to become engaged in the process as part of your daily routine. The most effective way to learn more about how to improve your online marketing right now is a free 15 minute discussion with an independent online marketing consultant – please contact me today to organise a suitable time.
The benefits of becoming engaged with your businesses online marketing and social media are more than just the savings you make not having to pay someone else to do it.
After 15 years of thinking about the needs of New Zealand art buyers at NZ Prints, talking to customers, listening to compliments and complaints, reading thousands of emails, blog comments, comments on Facebook (and underpinned by analytics and keyword research) I can sometimes feel almost supernaturally in tune with our customers. I guess you could say that I am “in the zone”. By knowing the different kinds of customers we have so well and knowing what kind of art they are looking for I can have such a strong intuitive sense of how to connect with them via an email promotion about something I just know that they will like. Or if we should be working on curating a new category of NZ art for them to choose from (after much debate about the meaning of Kiwiana in New Zealand art we launched a Kiwiana collection recently based on customers asking for Kiwiana gifts and gallery owners referring to all non-Maori contemporary New Zealand prints as “Kiwiana”).
This kind of connectedness is business gold. But you have to know the tools to use and how to plan an online marketing strategy to guide you. This is where independent online marketing advice from a business perspective can really help you start off on the right foot. For a free initial 15 minute discussion of what you need please contact me today.
Last Thought: This connectedness is obviously not a manufactured shell of customer engagement around the outside of the business but the kind of affinity that can only be built up over time. Online marketing and social media facilitate this process but like most internet marketing it is simply old fashioned marketing being done more effectively (it’s just like being the store owner who knew all her customers by name and what they “usual” was but with thousands rather than dozens of customers). I have found a great case study on this topic at my local supermarket where a processor of primary products has responded to customer concerns about farming practices in a flawed way that is extraordinarily instructive. I’m writing an article on this topic at the moment but am waiting for the business owner to respond before publishing. Please subscribe to my blog or check back here again soon as articles like this on what not to do are sometimes more useful than another list of best practice!
