Thoughts on Building a Business

Sensis undertakes a quarterly Questionnaire on business confidence for Small Business, called the Business Index. The June 2009 questionnaire focussed on how Small Business was utilising technology and the Internet. It had some very interesting results that I thought I would share with you.

Business Computer Ownership

• 97% of all businesses used a Computer
• The highest usage is Communications & Business Services, Finance & Insurance and Health & Community at 100%
• The lowest usage is Building & Construction at 90%

Business Internet Connections

• 95% of all businesses use the Internet (up from 34% in 1998)
• Finance & Insurance the highest users at 100%
• Building & Construction the lowest at 87%

Business Internet Usage

• The main use for Internet in Small Business (97% of connected businesses) was email and communication
• 92% use it to look for information on Products and Services
• 83% use it to access Online Directories (such as Yellow Pages)
• 78% to place orders for Products and Services
• 78% to pay for Products and Services

Consumer Internet Usage

• 90% of Households have a Computer with 85% having Internet
• 78% of all Australians used the internet to research Products and Services
• 61% ordered Goods and Services
• 41% used a Social Networking Site
• 41% read a Blog
• 27% belonged to an Online Community
• The biggest increase in usage for the last 12 months was the number belonging to an online community (up 7%)

So what does this all mean. Well to be blunt, it means that if you don’t have an Internet Presence, than you are not being serious about growing your business. But don’t worry if you don’t have a website, only 56% of Small Business have a website.

Now forgive me as I get onto my Soapbox, but I find this astounding. The Internet is arguably the fastest growing area in our life. More and more people are using the Internet for not only research, but connecting with other people and businesses. This is only going to grow as Gen Y becomes more influential in Society. Yet there are still a large number of businesses out there refusing to get on board.

Recently we’ve seen businesses seize opportunities with Government funding in Water tanks, Solar Panels and Insulation and develop their businesses to take advantage of these. Yet many of these same businesses are still resisting the Internet.

So as Professor Julius Sumner Miller asked – Why is it so?

This is the million dollar question, but I believe that it boils down to 3 main reasons:

1. Don’t really understand the Internet and what it takes to develop an Online Marketing Strategy
2. Believe that it’s expensive
3. Or just refuse to embrace technology

So if you don’t have a web Presence, I ask you – which one are you?

Download the full Sensis eBusiness Report

I came across this amazing video on Youtube with interesting Stats on Social Media. It reinforces my opinion that any Business that is serious about growing into the future should focus on their online presence. The Internet (and Social Media) is here to stay, so don't get left behind.

 

If you don't have time to watch the video, some of the key points to come out of it are:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of Gen Y have joined a social network 
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• The years taken to Reach 50 millions Users: 
  • Radio - 38 Years
  • TV - 13 Years
  • Internet - 4 Years
  • iPod - 3 Years
  • Facebook - 100 million users in less than 9 months
  • iPhone applications - 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
• China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
• 80% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé
• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook
• The 2nd largest search engine in the world is YouTube
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. Some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica and 78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily
• Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations 
  • Only 14% trust advertisements
  • Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  • 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
• Hulu (a TV Show Download site in the US) has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
• According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are in Downloadable format
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
• In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
• Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
• Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

For sometime I have been a fan of David Blain and have probably referred him to some of you. He is Scottish (we won't hold that against him) and has a really good take on Internet marketing.

Anyway, he has just released his latest version of "The 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing". This covers what he considers are 13 key strategies to maximise your internet marketing and is a really easy read as well as being incredibly informative. He has released it on a site called scribd.com, which is a really interesting site. It is essentially a Youtube site for Articles.

So I thought the best way to show you both, would be to embed David's article in my blog and you can then see both. So here it is - enjoy!

The 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing

Your website isn't your be all and end all of Marketing. As much as I stress the growing importance of the Internet in your Marketing Strategies, it is still only a part of it. This month I wanted to discuss where your website fits in and what are the advantages.

Lead Generation

This is generally what people think a website is all about. They think that if they get a website, people will find it and then contact them to buy their Product or Service. This does happen, but probably not as much as you'd like to think. To achieve this, you really need to take Search Engine and Website Optimisation seriously (can be expensive) and consider Google Adwords etc to drive traffic to your website.

Credibility

Websites are becoming more and more important for your Business's Credibility. The majority of people will research your business on the Internet to decide if they trust you enough to buy from. A recent builder client of ours lost a sale because the prospect couldn't find out anything about him on the internet.

Support other Marketing Strategies

Websites can improve on your other marketing strategies. A good example of this is Yellow Pages Online. You and your competitor ads all look similar, but if yours has a link to your website, then you have more chance of converting the sale. Our clients with Yellow Online ads, get a lot of visitors to their sites from these ads. Similarly, Google sponsored research showed a large number of prospects viewing a newspaper ad, will conduct further research online before purchasing from that business. See the full report here.

Customer Support

We all know that your easiest sale comes from existing customers, so make sure that you look after them. Your website can be used for such a thing, with Support Forums, Feedback Forms, Downloadable Forms & Info Sheets, Secure Zones and Customer Support Ticketing to name a few. Use you website as a way for your customers to communicate with you.

Email Marketing

I've saved the best for last. I truly believe that email marketing is the one must have in any business. Research shows that if you don't contact your customers and prospects every 90 days, they will start forgetting about you. And if they forget about you, they may buy from someone else. Email Marketing allows you to easily (and virtually for free) send out regular Newsletters with useful info (and maybe some buy triggers) to your database. It is even more effective if you use it in conjunction with your website.

These are not all the ways you can use your website, but is hopefully enough to help you stop thinking about websites as purely a lead generating tool. With the growth of the internet, you need to start thinking of ways to use the internet to improve all that you do. If you haven't talked to someone who is up to date with the latest technology in the last 2 years, then you should.

Download the Website Strategies info sheet for a more info.

In a previous blog post about how Twitter can help market your business, I mentioned that it was originally designed to keep Gen Y up to date with their friends. Now I personally find this concept incredibly strange and way over the top. Which is why I loved the video below when I stumbled onto it on Youtube. Now as much as I laugh at the original concept of Twitter, I do believe that it has potential in a business sense (see my previous post).

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Afterall, Business isn't always about being serious.