Marketing Matters

Google Announce Record Profits - most of them were Once Yours

2011-09-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

Website owners the world over are expected to pay in excess of 52 Billion dollars trying to secure and then maintain search engines page one rankings for their websites in 2011. The uncontested global leader in the Search Engine market space is Google with annual revenues in 2010 of 29.3 Billion Dollars and second quarter 2011 growth of 32% over previous year http://investor.google.com/financial/t...ables.html. With only 15.8% of traffic clicking on SEM (Search Engine Marketing) ads the advertisers ability to sustain this level of expenditure has to be questionable. With SEO (Search Engine Optimization) programs delivering a whopping 84.2% of Search Engine traffic, choosing SEO over SEM seems to be a simpler business choice.

Problem is SEM and SEO is that are limited by the number of website that can be displayed on page one and with tens of thousands of websites competing for this space the determining factor is not the look, feel and content of a webpage but the price the website owner is prepared to pay for the privilege. If you doubt this in any way then have a look at the Google's revenue growth.

DNO the SEO Revolution is just what the name implies a fresh idea that will revolutionize the way website owners are able to secure a page one ranking.

Remarkably simple and highly effective, the DNO strategy cuts deep into the customers DNA confirming the thought process behind the way customers use Search Engines to find products/service on the internet. The strategy allows website owners to secure permanent page one rankings for less than $100 and unlike SEO and SEM where these ranked positions can only be maintained by paying 16% more each year DNO will never cost another cent.

SEO, SEM and DNO Cost Comparisons

2011-09-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

I watched my first SEO(Search Engine Optimization) commercial on TV in Australia this morning.

Reload Media are offeringa guaranteed Page-One Ranking from between $3,000 and $20,000 PA. if youare interested have a look at their website for more details. http://www.reloadmedia.com.au

Thiscompany also offers, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) guaranteed Page-One Rankings from $4,000 to$22,000 PA.

With84.2% of website visitors clicking on SEO ranked listings why, would anyoneconsider paying $22,000 annually when the SEO program offered by the same companycosts $20,000 and delivers 503% more traffic?

Moreimportantly why would anyone pay more than $100 because that is all it willcost to use DNO the SEO Revolution.

Comparative costs over 10 years

SEO= up to $200,000
SEM= Up to $220,000 plus 16% each year based on Google's forecast growth rate$469,069
DNOthe SEO Revolution = Buy a copy of the book $16.95 plus $80

Implementthe DNO strategy and put between $200,000 and $469,069 on the bottom line ofyour P&L.

Seemslike the choice is simple to me.

SEO Outperforms SEM

2011-09-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

Independent research confirms 84.2% of Search Engine users click on organic (SEO) listings compared to 15.8% for SEM (PPC) ads.

So why will SEM advertisers spend over 52 Billion Dollars in 2011 when they could spend a lot less to SEO their website.

I guess the answer to that is, SEO is not an exact science and is incapable of delivering permanent or for that matter even sustainable results.

Why is DNO the SEO Revolution, because it delivers permanent page one rankings for under $100. For one of my clients recently I secured number one position on page one of Google for a brand new domain name in only one week at a total cost of less than $100 and that included, purchase of the domain name, 12-months hosting and website development.

If that is not a Revolution then I don’t know what else you call it.

Compare the options:

SEM

Costs: $5 a day = $1825 $50 a day = $18,250, plus 20% every year to stay on top
Results: Page one from day one conditional on you paying more than anyone else will
Permanence: As long as you are prepared to pay, $0.01 more than your competitor will
Volume of traffic: 15.8% of clients who search relevant keywords

SEO

Costs: $3,500 initially and $350 a month to maintain ranking
Results: Possible page one ranking within 3 – 6 months depending on competition
Permanence: No permanence as this is a highly competitive activity
Volume of traffic: 84.2% of clients who search relevant keywords

DNO

Costs: $100
Results: Page One Ranking within a week
Permanence: Permanent results
Volume of traffic: 84.2% of clients who search relevant keywords

Website Development Tips

2011-09-20T19:07:00.001-07:00

Recently I searched the term "website development process" on Google to determine what the industry considers the process to be. I was disappointed but not surprised to lean that only two of the top ten website developers mad any reference to the use of Keywords and in both instances, the reference was casual.

The ten websites varied slightly in opinions but all included the following, analysis, specifications, design and development, content development, code development, testing, promotion and finally maintenance and updating.

This traditional approached to website development is responsible for the creation of numerous first class design concepts that are both easy to navigate and very informative for the visitor. They are also responsible for producing websites that are poorly ranked by the Search Engines or incapable of being found other than by their URL.

Only one of the websites promotes the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and they recommended the process be started at the end of the development process. For the life of me I cannot understand why these so called "specialist" recommend doing this work at the end of the development process given this approach would require significant change to all the work performed thus far.

This industry needs to re-evaluate its approach to website design. Throw away the tradition approach and start building websites from keyword research that confirms what Search Engine users use to find product/services.

Keyword identified from keyword research should be used as part of page URL, page title, page description and H1 Tags, they also need to be included in the page metadata keywords.

Why is DNO a SEO Revolution

2011-09-20T19:06:00.001-07:00

Why is DNO a SEO Revolution? Traditionally the SEO process occurs post website development, square peg, round hole, bigger hammer. DNO is a profoundly simple research methodology that defines the DNA of your customer, identifying the keywords they use to find your products/services and how many times those keywords are searched each month on Google.

Using this customer DNA to refine existing websites or develop a new websites is just part of the process. DNO the SEO Revolution results in a perfect fit, round peg into a round hole, but this is just the beginning. DNO takes the process to a new level, delivering permanent page one search engine rankings.

Importantly, you will never use SEO to secure or maintain a page one ranking ever again.

Take the money you are currently spending on SEO and put it straight on the bottom line!

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or Pay-Per-Click advertising is one guaranteed way to gain a page-one ranking, as long as you are prepared to pay more than anyone else does for the privilege!

Imagine owning two or three of the top ten page one rankings on any Search Engine. Would you still feel the need to run a Pay-Per-Click program just to have a presence on page one? Scale back your SEM programs and put this money on the bottom line as well.
With an acknowledged 15-25%click fraud https://dld.bz/aqawX in the industry are you really getting value for your money or is someone else pocketing your profits?

To find out more about DNO the SEO Revolution and how to gain multiple Permanent page one rankings for under $100 and return profit to your bottom line, you will have to buy a copy of the Book. Importantly you had better buy a copy before your competitor does because you will not like what happens if they act first.

Definition of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

2011-09-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

A process constantly tweaking the use of keywords and page content to improve website relevancy in an effort to secure a page one top ten Search Engine ranking against thousands of competing websites who are doing the same thing.

By necessity, the SEO process is a never-ending competition where todays winners can be tomorrow's losers based on the skills of SEO professionals and any changes the search engines make to their Page-Rank algorithms.

I liken the process to purchasing the rights to advertise on the most highly visible billboard in town one that guarantees the best possible exposure and highest possible conversion rates.

Assuming your SEO Expert is smart enough to secure this billboard position and then is capable of maintaining this ranked position you may get to keep your billboard location for a little time. Stop performing the SEO process, fail to keep abreast of Page-Rank algorithms the Search Engines make or simply allow yourself to be outsmarted by another SEO expert and your billboard advertising could be relegated to a side street or worse still some back lane location where it will never be seen.

Internet Statistics

2011-09-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

From its humble beginnings in 1968 at Stanford Research Institute, the Internet has grown well and truly beyond the expectation of its inventors. Reflecting on the following statistics it is almost impossible to imagine these same inventors, could have visualized the growth this technology would achieve, not to mention the impact it would have on society.

When you consider that 1.97 Billion users globally, perform over 300 Billion searches for products/services offered by 255 Million websites, it's not hard to understand why a small percentage of these websites owners are prepared to spend collectively in excess of 50 Billion Dollars to secure prominent Page-One search engine rankings, and as incredible as it sounds Google, are forecast to increase revenues by 20%.

Email Statistics

262 Billion spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
2.9 Billion email accounts worldwide.
25% of email accounts are corporate.
107 Trillion emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
294 Billion email messages per day.
1.88 Billion email users worldwide.
480 Million new email users since the year before.
89.1% of emails were spam.

Images Statistics
5 Billion photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
3000+ photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.
130 Million at the above rate, the number of photos uploaded per month to Flickr.
3+ Billion photos uploaded per month to Facebook.
36 Billion at the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos Statistics
84% of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
14% of Internet users that have uploaded videos online (USA).
2+ Billion videos watched per month on Facebook.
20 Million videos uploaded to Facebook per month.
2 Billion videos watched per day on YouTube.
35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
186 online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).

Social Media Statistics
30 Billion pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
70% of Facebook’s user base outside the United States.
20 Million Facebook apps installed each day.
152 million blogs on the Internet.
25 Billion tweets on Twitter in 2010
100 Million new accounts added on Twitter in 2010
175 Million people on Twitter as of September 2010
600 Million people on Facebook at the end of 2010.
250 Million new people on Facebook in 2010.

Web Servers Statistics
39.1% Growth in the number of Apache websites in 2010.
15.3% Growth in the number of IIS websites in 2010.
4.1% Growth in the number of nginx websites in 2010.
5.8% Growth in the number of Google GWS websites in 2010.
55.7% Growth in the number of Lighttpd websites in 2010.

Domain Name Statistics
88.8 Million .COM domain names at the end of 2010.
13.2 Million .NET domain names at the end of 2010.
8.6 Million .ORG domain names at the end of 2010.
79.2 Million country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
202 Million domain names across all top-level domains (October 2010).
7% increase in domain names since the year before

Website Statistics
255 Million websites as of December 2010.
21.4 Million Added websites in 2010.

Internet Users Statistics
204.7 Million Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
110.9 Million Internet users in Africa.
63.2 Million Internet users in the Middle East.
21.3 Million Internet users in Oceania / Australia.
1.97 Billion Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
14% Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
825.1 Million Internet users in Asia.
475.1 Million Internet users in Europe.
266.2 Million Internet users in North America.

How to Shorten Sales Cycles in an Economic Downturn

2009-12-23T14:40:00.000-08:00

Pleasure on sales teams to achieve forecasts in a time of economic downturn is exceptionally strong. With the loss of business confidence, we often see lengthening sales cycles and low quota achievement while companies struggle to keep their heads above water. Many businesses are forced to cut cost, eliminate waste, and often freeze their spending.

Organisations who have continued to spend in the downturn have engaged in intense due diligence through various online sources, such as consumer-generated content forums and other third-party information providers, to ensure their purchasing decisions will deliver the best outcomes for the investment.

The hard reality for sales representatives is that the time-tested practice of "putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time" is becoming more of a challenge.

In order to meet the demands of this new selling environment, top companies are implementing sales intelligence initiatives as a way to improve the effectiveness of the sales force and enrich the quality of leads in the sales pipeline.

Companies who view the current economic climate as a prominent factor in their decision to incorporate sales intelligence use prospecting tools or industry news sources to improve sales effectiveness.

Building more complete profiles on their current customers and prospects for segmentation purposes equips the sales force with relevant information on key accounts and industries is essential to future sales growth.

Top performing organisations better understand the business challenges and corporate hierarchies of prospective clients resulting in a more effective method of mapping products and services to the prospect's needs and shortening the sales cycle.

Business Intelligence is essential to any organisations ability to weather the business confidence storm and so it’s not surprising the successful ones use CRM to maintain this intelligence.

Don’t think for a minute companies who use CRM solutions will automatically achieve their sales forecast when business confidence falls away - they will struggle as well but the amount of time it will take them to rebound is shortened and often leads to much stronger achievement against forecast post business confidence rebound.

Google’s Proposed Online Marketing Changes for 2010

2009-12-21T17:43:00.000-08:00

With the strong competition provided by Bing and more recently the potential Bing/Yahoo competition, Google has been developing changes designed to maintain market share.

Google Caffeine, which Google is introducing early in the new year. This is a major overhaul of its search engine and will no doubt will cause many a marketer some sleepless nights as the total fall-out becomes evident.

Online marketers are bracing themselves for the full impact of Caffeine. Will it mean smooth sailing or a roller-coaster ride for online marketers.

The introduction of "Real Time" search which will be featured in Google's SERPs. This will make the social media sites like Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace... much more important. Again, the implications for online marketers could be enormous since many can now reach the first page through a different route. Will it also mean more "Real Time" spam? But more importantly, will it mean a greater marketing opportunity for the online marketer who exploits it?

Google has made it known that site-loading times will be a ranking factor in the new improved Google while proper and correct page coding will also be more important if you want your site to be at full advantage. Broken links will be a big "No-No", while linking out to important related sites will be a big plus.

In order to please the end-user, Google is also moving more towards "Personalized Search" which will make SEO and ranking in the top spot for your chosen keywords a total nightmare for many professional SEOs and online marketers. If everyone can choose their own top results, isn't SEO more or less, a lame duck.

Will Google's main competition come from an unlikely source, such as big name multi-national corporations who are moving their operations online. Can these big-name keyworded domains start directly pulling in the majority of the web's traffic, making all search engines secondary? As people become more web savvy, will they go directly to what they're looking for on the web, bypassing the search engines altogether - including the mighty Google.

Overall, the changes to Google, will make next year one of the most interesting times to be pitching anything online.

Marketing Plan Template

2009-12-20T15:28:00.000-08:00

On The Mark Marketing announces the release of its Marketing and Business Plan Template and linked Spreadsheets.

The Marketing/Business Plan Template combins 10 fully integrated Excel Spreadsheets and graphs that will help you reshape your business and increase your sales turnover and profits.

All you have to do is enter key product, sales and competitor data into the spreadsheets then follow the step-by-step guidelines to ensure all of the essential elements of your new marketing/business plan are covered.

No matter what your past experience or professional qualifications the Marketing Planning Template and spreadsheets will provide you with the confidence to develop a finished plan and then work the plan to achieve your Sales and Profit Targets.

Business Diagnostic Tool

2009-12-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

On The Mark Marketing announces the release of its Business Diagnostic Tool.

All you have to do is answer 44 simple questions ranging from sales turnover, productivity and employee performance figures. The Business Diagnostic Tool analyses your data and provides a unique insight into your business.

The Tool produces a 70-Page report, outlining areas your business can improve performance, pinpoints areas of weaknesses, assess the likely consequences of these weaknesses if no action is taken and develops "what if" scenarios based on a range of possible actions.

This Business Diagnostic Tool has been run by a significant number of businesses in Australia and was heavily subsidised under a NSW Government Business Development Grants Program to encourage businesses in NSW to engage in a planning process designed to increase their profitability.

On The Mark Marketing has taken the concept and developed it into a self-Assessment Business Diagnostic Tool incorporating linked Excel Spreadsheet and Word template designed to produce a 70-Page report for the investment of $450.00.

Previously, reports produced from this Tool were sold for $10,000.00.

After reviewing the 70-Page report, you may feel the need to develop a comprehensive Marketing Plan incorporating strategies, assign responsibilities, action steps and deadlines and on an ongoing basis measure the ROI of your marketing initiatives. If so then On The Mark Marketing encourages you to look at our “Marketing Planning Template”.

As The Market Wobbles

2009-12-13T22:12:00.000-08:00

In an ideal world, marketing would be self-supporting, always pay back multi-fold what it costs to execute, and be effective in reaching every potential buyer in the appropriate sector all the time.

Unfortunately, in the real world, sales are driven by constantly changing factors and economic forces. As a result, the need to fully understand current market conditions and forces that drive buyer behaviour are more important than ever.

Without a comprehensive plan based on this knowledge, marketing budgets are at the mercy of perceptions most of which are flawed, skewed, marred by history, personal experiences of senior management. Many have absolutely no precedent.

Today's recessionary conditions are fertile resurrection grounds for a plethora of Marketing Myths which, all too often, results in an organization's demise. These include:

Myth: "Our brand is strong enough not to need support for the duration of the downturn."

Fact: Few brands are strong enough to survive without advertising, product promotion and customer service support. Brands are like delicate houseplants - they need attention, support, bolstering, and polishing, (the marketing equivalent of nutrients, light and water) - or they will wither and shrivel to a shadow of their former self. This is not a position you want your corporate brand to be in when the growth engine for the economy revs back up.

Myth: "If we cut back on marketing spending, we can use the money for other things internally, and increase the budget when things get better."

Fact: Studies have shown that once that budget gets cut, it takes a Herculean effort and a strong internal champion to boost it back to its former levels, and even if it does increase, there are much stronger conditions of ROI attached to its implementation. Once those funds are allocated elsewhere, they tend to stay there - after all, that other department doesn't want to give them up either.

Myth: "Nobody's buying anything, advertising and promotions are a waste of money."

Fact: Many studies conducted by prestigious business publications and university think tanks have come to the same conclusion based on the data they gathered global companies: Those that reduce their presence in their key service markets are in a far worse position in terms of profitability, market share and market competitive presence when the downturn eases and profitability growth returns than those that maintain their marketing activity levels. Those companies that are so bold as to increase marketing activity stand a great chance of taking market share from their less aggressive competitors and can rule the category if the downturn lasts long enough.

Myth: "We can cut back [on marketing] now, and then ramp up quickly when things get better."

Fact: This strategy has proven disastrous time and again, especially for companies that have inefficiencies inherent in their design, or product delivery channel. That inefficiency won't allow them to "ramp up quickly", since by that very inefficiency they will effectively always be "late" when timing the market - they are not market leaders but laggards, and thus the ramp-up activity gets started late relative to the buying cycle, and their more nimble competitors have already beaten them to the punch.

Myth: "We should examine what's working for us, and cut out everything else."

Fact: This is not really a myth, but a knee-jerk reaction to a short-term slump in sales gross. Good marketing departments should be doing exactly that on a perpetual basis, not just when times are tougher. Why would any marketer worth their pay continue programs that didn't work, effectively dragging down performance across the board and wasting money?

In addition, there should be metrics built into any campaign so that there is a way to "take the pulse" of its success, and mid-course correction is possible to boost effectiveness and increase ROl on a continual basis. Further, in some channels, there is a cumulative effect that blurs perceptions of what's working and what are not-interdependencies exist between channels that are not planned or scheduled but that live in the customer's mind and trigger sales inadvertently. Cutting out what can't be measured accurately hampers this effect, dragging down results with no apparent reason.

Myth: "Marketing spends more money than any other department, they have the most room to cut budget."

Fact: While spending may be a measure of power in some corporate structures, at least informally, return is really what counts when its budget review time. Marketing is one of the few departments that can actually point to contributions they make directly to the bottom line. There is a proven cause-and-effect relationship between sales gross and marketing expenditure for larger and enterprise-size firms. Increased spending in the IT department might yield long-term benefits, but better servers don't often move more product, unless the product is server space. Cutting the marketing budget only reduces the opportunities available to build market share, boost product awareness and memorability in the mind of the consumer, and dampens profitability in the long run.

Myth: "All of our competitors are pulling back advertising and media expenditures to save money, so we should, too."

Fact: This kind of lemming-like sheep thinking can destroy your company! Your mother knew better than this when you used the excuse "All the other kids are going, why can't I?" and her response was likely something along the lines of "If the other kids jump off the bridge, are you going to jump, too?"

Despite being competitors, their financials likely look a bit different from yours, and it's foolish to think that you can mirror their moves and be successful - at best you will be equal! The smart money here is being used to take market share from your more timid competitors, by increasing presence and exposure, and cutting other less-than-mission-critical expenditures for a short period to accomplish it.

Myth: "We should downgrade the quality of our marketing materials, use a cheaper creative agency, and mail out less frequently to save money."

Fact: This set of moves will actually cost you both in the short- and long-term. You might save a very small incremental amount on cheaper paper, shorter, smaller brochures, cheaper handouts, smaller tradeshow giveaways - but the damage you're doing to your brand and the resulting poor reflection on the company as a whole does far more damage than can ever be repaired by spending those few dollars later to try and fix it. Not to mention shaking the confidence of your customers by giving them a visual representation of how poorly your company is performing!

"They must be in trouble, this looks like cheap junk. Maybe I'd better take my business to the other company that's likely to be around to support their products down the line," is the thought you're promoting by reducing quality in your publicly released materials.

Good design often costs less than bad design, due to fewer creative iterations, fewer miscues, greater effectiveness and higher return. Jumping ship from the agency you're with if they are delivering on dollars spent just to save a little money is foolhardy. The ramp-up time for a new agency to learn your needs, your products, your style and your brand will just about be exhausted by the time the average recession is over, and it will have cost you more to get the same level of productivity in that time, just in time to reposition for the new economic conditions.

When times get tough, the tough get going in the marketing department, providing the market with visual evidence of your corporate strength, your leadership role in the sector, your expertise in the market, and the supportive strength you offer for your products and services. Don't believe the doom merchants who want to slash your marketing budget, reduce your headcount and reduce the quality of your materials. Everything you do in this area reflects on the health of your company, and cutting here shows the most and helps the least.

Why Has The Australia Economy Rebounded So Quickly

2009-12-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

Simple - There was nothing wrong with it in the first instance

So there you are standing in a conference room with a couple of hundred other people and you hear someone yell, Fire, Fire! Instantly everyone starts looking around the room for smoke. You can’t see any, but everyone in the room is getting jumpy and the dead silence that hung over the room when the word fire was first heard has now turned into a hum of chatter.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a group of people start moving towards the fire exit and you watch as this casual movement turns into a brisk walk. The noise level goes up a notch as one of the people in your group says, “com on we had better get out of here quickly”.

In no time at all the crowd is moving rapidly to the exit and you have convinced yourself you can smell smoke. People are now running towards the exit sign, tripping over each other and a sense of panic fills the room.

As you burst through the exit door and make you way down the fire stairs, you feel for the first time anxious about your safety. Finally, the exit door is right in front of you and you make your way outside the building.

Looking back at the building, your eyes scan the building for smoke but none is to be seen. No smoke, no fire, nothing but a whole lot of panicked people concerned for their life and wellbeing.

I am sure you have heard the names Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but do you know the history behind these organizations?

Well here is a little history for you as reported in the SMH Tuesday November-4-2008:

The US housing market was dominated by two companies set up by Congress, known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (their real names are too complicated). From 1938 to 1968, the US secondary mortgage market was monopolised by Fannie Mae, operating as a government agency. In 1968, to help balance the federal budget, Fannie Mae was converted to a private corporation. To offset this private monopoly, Congress chartered Freddie Mac as a competing private corporation.

The system worked well until 1995, when Freddie Mac began receiving government credit for buying or guaranteeing lower-quality mortgage debt from lower-income borrowers. By 2003, it was obvious bad credit was infecting the system and President George Bush recommended a legislative overhaul. The reform was blocked by the Democrats because it would restrict financing for low-income housing for minorities, a critical part of the Democratic base.

At the same time, another guardrail was being dismantled. The private debt ratings agencies, most notably Moody's, were becoming overwhelmed by the quantity and complexity of financial instruments being issued by the banks.

In 1999, a prominent Democrat, Howell Raines, chairman and chief executive of Fannie Mae, began a program, which eased credit requirements for lower-income borrowers, especially "minority" applicants. Raines is African-American. In 2006, the Government filed suit against Raines to recover some of the $US90 million in income he had made at Fannie Mae based on overstated company earnings. The suit was settled this year and Raines fined about $US1 million.

Although he is now regarded as a culprit in the credit scandal, Raines is an adviser to Senator Obama. His predecessor as chief executive at Fannie Mae, James Johnson, is also an adviser to Obama's advisory team. After arriving in Congress, Senator Obama received $US126,349 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the second-highest amount given to anyone in Congress.

It is difficult to convey the cost of these decisions but try getting your head around 20 trillion dollars. If you were to multiply the entire Australian gross national product by 75, you would get an approximate sense of $US20 trillion, which is roughly the combined weight of the United States national debt plus the losses in American asset values sustained so far in the current financial scandal.

Following is just one example of the crisis and how people were drawn into this trap.

While earning a salary of $US21,000 a year, Leesa Robinson assembled a property portfolio worth almost $US1 million in 2006. The 45-year-old single mother had started buying houses after watching late-night infomercials. Several lenders provided home loans totalling $US800,000 so she could buy eight rental properties in working-class, inner-city neighbourhoods in Milwaukee.

Half were purchased with no money down. All but one of the loans came with high-interest, adjustable rates. During 2007, she lost all eight houses and went bankrupt as Milwaukee's mortgage crisis hit primarily low-income, predominantly African-American neighbourhoods, where borrowers with meagre financial resources had received loans to buy property or refinance their mortgages. Many mortgages unravelled within months. The median time from the date of the loan to the filing of the foreclosure suit was 427 days.

A majority of borrowers had a troubled financial past before they received mortgages. Nearly a quarter of successful loan recipients had previously filed for bankruptcy. However, financial institutions, real estate agents, mortgage brokers and appraisers raked in upfront fees before the risky loans were packaged and on sold to Wall Street. Now, as taxpayers finance a $US700 billion bailout, tens of thousands who have lost their homes will not benefit.

What this story from Milwaukee hints at, but does not expressly state, is that the US Government is going to have to spend a vast amount of money to solve a problem it helped create.

So let’s get back to the FIRE!

There was no fire in our building. What we heard were cries from the building next door. A poorly regulated building who’s economy is in deficit, whose financial crisis is now claimed to be our financial crisis. The building management have sunk $US700 billion into propping up the problem they created in the first instance.

Our building on the other hand is well managed and is well regulated. The banks in our building won’t lend $800,000 to a person earning $21,000 a year. Our building management operates with a significant surplus and has done so for the past 10 years. This well managed building with all of its surpluses is giving $10 Billion dollars to its tenants to stimulate the buildings economy.

So answer me this!

Why is the Australian Dollar drop to $0.67 cents from a record high of $0.96 cents only to rebound to $0.92?

Why did the Australian Government need to spend $40 Billion dollars stimulating an economy when the only thing that was missing was confidence in ourselves?

So let’s get down to the R word - Recession.

Our building is not on fire and Australia was not in a recession until we talked ourselves into it.

From a marketing perspective those companies who continued with their marketing efforts while their competitors cut, trimmed or reduced will emerge from this R period with a substantial increase in market share.

10 Basic Points to Better Planning

2009-12-13T19:05:00.000-08:00

July 1 often heralds a time to reflect on your business achievements over the past financial year. Have you grown? Gone backwards? Or are you treading water?

When the economy is growing fast, it’s easy to succeed without much attention to marketing. However, the economic future today isn’t looking rosy.

What do many businesses do when there’s a downturn? They try to lower their costs of course. In theory this is fine, but often the first thing to be cut is marketing, particularly advertising and promotion and that’s a great way to ensure your sales go down!

So, how do you develop effective marketing strategies to sustain you during these times?

1. Start with a marketing plan
Small and medium businesses often see the development of a marketing plan as a waste of time and energy. They rush into the implementation of their ideas in an effort to be “doing something” often wasting more time and money communicating with prospects that don’t have a need for their service or product or are not as profitable.

2. Analyse your market
Your market is the overall industry in which you compete. You need to analyse your market so you can gain an understanding of your business’s full market potential and identify new areas of opportunity.

Ask yourself:
· Is my market growing or declining and why?
· Which segment of my market is most advantageous for my business to compete in?
· Which factors are changing my market (e.g. seasonality/trends) and how will they affect the future of my business?

3. Know your competition
Thoroughly investigate your competition. Find out their strengths and weaknesses and how they compare to yours. Write their marketing plan. This will give you the intelligence to anticipate their moves and pre-empt them.

4. Focus on the customer
Effective marketing strategies begin and end with the customer. Ensure you maintain existing customer relationships. It costs far less to conduct business with an existing customer than to attract new ones. Develop a profile of your most profitable customers. Know their needs, business pains and media habits. You can then use this profile to attract new customers and communicate with them more effectively.

5. Perform a SWOT analysis on your business
Assess your strengths and weaknesses from your customer’s point of view. Then look at the opportunities and threats - those things outside your control that will have an impact on your business. From this analysis develop a list of key issues that need to be addressed.

6. Identify your key points of difference
Do you have a compelling customer value proposition? You can gain a competitive edge in your market by knowing and communicating your key point of difference to your target market. Ask yourself, “What do I offer that makes me unique?”

7. Set realistic objectives
Be realistic about what you need to accomplish and how long it will take. Your marketing objectives should be relevant to your current marketing and business issues and move you towards achieving your financial goals.

8. Think geometrically
The best way to grow your business is geometrically – by enlarging the size of each transaction, engaging in more transactions per cycle with each customer, tapping into the enormous referral power of each customer and of course, getting new customers through traditional avenues. By focusing on all four directions at once your business will grow.

9. Track and measure your marketing
Measuring your marketing tactics will save you valuable time and money. A simple way is to ask every customer. “How did you hear about us”?

10. Learn from your experiences
Continually speak to your customers, research your competitors and analyse your business and market to ensure you are taking advantage of all opportunities available. If something doesn’t work – don’t be put off – chances are you will know what went wrong and why, so your marketing activities will only become more effective and improve your business results year after year.