The mobile shopper
This will sound like a broken record but mobile shopping was, is and will continue to be on the rise at a rapid rate through 2012. See our previous post on the smartphone revolution and ask yourself, “Is my website mobile ready?”

Tribal communities
Embrace tribal marketing and “expect a loyal following from your customers.” Create your tribe by using any marketing medium from a TV ad campaign through to social media.

Business blogging
Businesses are becoming more aware of the influence of blogging for creating dialogue, positioning yourself as an expert, becoming a resource, developing new relationships and search engine marketing.

Social media
Social media has no doubt been one of the fasted growing mediums of the past decade with businesses already reaping the benefits.

Quality content
Blogging, social media, eNewsletters, videos, whitepapers, etc. are useless unless you have quality content worth sharing. 2012 will see businesses master more ways to up the quality of content their distributing.

Working with other businesses
Collaborating with other businesses not only widens your service offerings, but is also a cost effective tool. “The key is to find non-competing businesses that are willing to also support your business.”

Thanks for your continued support throughout the year.

Our office will be closed from 23 December 2011 and will reopen on 9 January 2012.

We hope you enjoy your break and return refreshed… ready to take on 2012 with us.

Whilst a visually pleasing website is important, being able to easily maintain it yourself (especially if you’re a small business) should be one of your top priorities when considering your new web page.

Not only is this a cost effective exercise (saving graphic designer fees) but a time saver as well, allowing you to make instant updates at your convenience. This is especially relevant for homepage updates to offers, opening hours, product stock availability, etc. Additionally, the changes should be made easily without affecting the general usability of the site.

The end goal is a website that balances quality design with user friendly maintainability.

We love talking web development and design. Let’s talk.

ADMA Grand Prix Award Winner – NAB’s Break Up Campaign
Launched on Valentines Day this year, the campaign promoted the fact that NAB was “breaking up” with the other banks.

Some of our favourite stunts were of NAB apparently interrupting a Westpac Bank meeting…

And NAB disrupting an ANZ meeting at sea…

See the other videos at youtube.com/user/NAB

Lester Wunderman Effectiveness Award – Expedia’s New York on $50 Campaign
Here’s what you can do with the $50 flight booking fees charged by some other online travel agencies…

Gold Award for Digital (Apps & New Development) – Pedigree’s Dog-A-Like app
Built on the idea that dogs resemble their owners, this fun app uses facial recognition technology to match you to a dog from their database. Learn more here.

The study surveyed 1,700 CMOs in 64 different countries across 19 different industries, with results showing the top two areas they feel most unprepared for are…

* The explosion of data among the industry, customers, brands and products – 71%
* Social media – 68%

Are you a marketing executive who shares these concerns? We can help make sense of the numbers and more importantly, tell you how best to leverage them. We’ll also talk to you about social media strategies unique to your business.

Let these US numbers do the talking…

* B2B companies that blog generate 67% more monthly leads compared to those who don’t.

* 69% of marketers are shifting their budgets towards social media.

* 41% of B2B advertisers are winning customers through Facebook.

* 86% of B2B companies are using some form of social media (e.g. LinkedIn and blogs), compared to 82% of B2C companies.

* Social media helps B2B marketers improve search results.

Read last week’s post on the B2B social media landscape and let’s talk about how we can help your business sell to other businesses.

Before you embark on your next campaign, consider these key points on the current B2B social media landscape…

- Social media campaigns for B2B and B2C should be approached differently.
- The last 12 months has seen a decline in consumption of some of the main B2B collateral types including product brochures, white papers and case studies. These are patterns not likely to be replicated in the B2C arena.
- There is a rise in the use of mobile to view B2B collateral, but not as much as in B2C.
- A Demandbase study cited corporate websites as the top lead source for the marketers who were surveyed and yet only 20% felt that their websites were used to its full potential.

Let’s talk about best practice in use of social media for B2B.

The first paragraph. Make sure you capture the reader’s attention in the first paragraph. This is where you should prove…

- you’re aware of the reader’s industry;
- have given their business situation some thought;
- the rest of the letter is worth reading.

What you can do & the facts that prove it. Describe what you do and back it up with solid results.

Get to the point. Don’t be afraid to tell the recipient what you want.

Next steps. If it’s your intention to follow up with a phone call, say so in the last sentence.

Considering a brochure as well? Stay tuned to next week’s post.

- When you hire a list, you are technically supposed to use it once only.

- If it is a ‘Mail Only’ list, you can only mail to its recipients once. Similarly, you can only call someone on a ‘Mail & Telemarketing’ list once.

- List owners are said to include random dummy records in their list. If you are caught trying to contact a recipient more than once, there are considerable implications for your business.

In summary, we still recommend our clients buy a list, rather than hire. Your initial outlay may be more, but it is worth the flexibility and peace of mind.

Not interested in hiring or buying? Read our tips on building your own database.

Before investing in a Prospect Relationships Management (PRM) system, most people start with a basic Excel spreadsheet that should include the following columns, in order of:

- First name
- Surname
- Business Title
- Business Name
- Address 1
- Address 2
- Suburb
- State
- Postcode
- Company URL
- Industry Code of Business*
- Email
- Telephone Number (Switchboard)
- Telephone Number (Direct Line)
- Telephone Number (Mobile)
- LinkedIn Public Profile Address**
- Notes

We recommend not including a ‘Form of Address’ column as many first names can belong to both a Mr. and Mrs.

*Using Industry Codes to categorise businesses can be very useful for analytics and will assist with direction of your next B2B campaign.

**As a B2B marketer, we cannot recommend LinkedIn enough. We’ll be speaking more on LinkedIn in the coming weeks.

Prefer to hire or buy a list instead? Read our thoughts on that here.