Recent project was making this short video of NZ’s top selling art prints for NZ Prints. Most useful lesson – allow a finite amount of time to make the video. Making it as perfect as you can with a deadline is more productive than an open ended project that is not released until every tiny detail is completed to plan.
Tag Archive for 'Website Promotion'
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!
Five years ago pages on the internet didn’t seem to change that often. My common searches would return well-known pages in a familiar order. But during the day now I am constantly updating pages on sites I work with to reflect the latest news for customers and visitors. It’s remarkable how dynamic the internet is becoming – a swirling pool of ideas updated and annotated by a community of readers and visitors.
The commercial core of websites aren’t changing a lot – the best e-commerce design and functionality of five years ago still works today. This is a relief to store owners who aren’t faced with upgrading the nuts and bolts of their stores – because changes right now are around connecting with your customers better. Progress in this area relies on Twitter or Facebook – which stand alongside your website, woven into its fabric for sure but not part of its scaffolding. The investment here is time – something that startup businesses may have in abundance if customers are still a bit thin on the ground!
In website promotion improvements are continual and I am revisiting two areas I have spent time researching before that I am planning to learn and do more with this year. I am dusting off my web analytics experience and I really want to make some videos! There are two articles at the top of my reading for this – one on Video and SEO and this one on Analytics.
Working with a client this morning I found this cost effective web hosting solution. $US3.45 per month! You don’t have to generate many sales or enquiries if that is all you are paying to have your website hosted.
Antony created this website in two hours for a total cost of $NZ27.95 (to register the domain name antonyellis.co.nz for one year). The ongoing cost of adding new pages, updating content and measuring visits and conversions is $0. Expanding your business online is not expensive.