A combination of internationally-inspired, Australian-designed and affordable garments coupled with an intelligent approach to social media and ecommerce seems to have struck a chord with Australia’s fashion-conscious women.

Show Pony has had it’s fair share of print exposure, but it’s in digital that company founder Jane Lu is seeing her greatest returns. By working Facebook and generating exposure in fashion blogs, Show Pony is connecting with its customers where they most commonly congregate — online.

With close to 33,000 Facebook fans, Show Pony uses a simple but effective engagement technique of inviting customers to tag themselves in promotional photos to win the profiled garment. Not only does this increase engagement on the page, it spreads the promotion directly to the customer’s social network through their public feed, dramatically increasing brand awareness.

In order to streamline purchasing, Show Pony has kept its online shopping experience as lean as possible. Garments come in only four sizes with no colour variations, making it quick and easy for shoppers to make a decision. Further, by focusing on moving sale items online, Show Pony continues to drive traffic to their site, while simultaneously freeing up space in their three Sydney retail stores to focus on current season stock.

It’s an approach to digital that indicates Jane Lu — formerly in corporate finance with KPMG and Ernst & Young — understands that both online and offline marketing and selling are substantially different exercises; to achieve success in the highly competitive world of fashion, you need to give the right kind of attention to both.

To check out Show Pony’s Facebook page, click here.

Show Pony Fashion Show, September 2011

As mentioned, this video really got my head spinning. It begins with one logical and familiar example of outsourcing (creating content for a website) and then takes the process to the… wait for it… EXTREME!

(Because Pete’s an outsourcing ‘extremist’, see?)

It references a Market Samurai product called Article Samurai. While I’m personally not familiar with the tool, I do appreciate the importance of content creation — if you have a desire to build an online community, improve your website’s visibility in search engines or simply want to position yourself as an authority.

Content Leverage System

YouTube is now the world’s second biggest search engine, with over three billion videos viewed daily and 48 hours of video content uploaded every minute.

Join Internet video and search guru Jim Stewart as he reveals the 5 critical steps for creating and delivering web videos that stand out without breaking the bank.

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When: Thursady, 23 Feb 2012, 12-noon
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*By registering, you are agreeing to allow the data collected to be shared with the sponsor of this event, Citrix GoToMeeting. Anthill will not share this data with any parties not involved unless indicated.

Best. Sickie. Ever!

Well, Matthew Broderick is clearly still no teenager. But this clip suggests that he hasn’t lost his zest for adventure. (Or the big bucks.)

Clearly crafted to appeal to the maturing Gen X market, this Honda ad has been released as an an attempt to score a pre-Super Bowl touchdown.

While traditional advertising budgets are decreasing, Super Bowl advertising costs are on the rise — not because of the vast number of people who watch ‘the game’ but because of the even vaster number who share the ‘made to be viral’ clips before and after.

Could it be that the most sought after marketing metric has shifted away from ‘Views’ to the more ellusive ‘Share’? What do you think? (Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?)

Ferris Bueller, 2012

Besides its fundamental impact on the broader Australian economy, it has led to changes in consumer behavior as foreign goods became cheaper. It opened up the floodgates for imports, giving rise to specialised sites such as Online Shopping USA that help Australians navigate the tricky global online shopping market.

Last year, it was the weak American dollar that drove Australians to U.S. retail sites. This year, it is likely the mother country, Great Britain, as the pound weakens. With the Australian dollar hitting a 27-year-high against the British pound, online payments processor PayPal is predicting a surge in online shoppers who flock to British stores.

“Smart online shoppers are taking advantage of the global shopping mall and know where to shop for the best deals,” said Elena Wise, Acting Managing Director, PayPal Australia. “We regularly see changes in the spending patterns of our four million active customers in response to fluctuating global currencies and the most popular corridors from Australia continue to be the US, the UK and China.”

Ironing out shopping protocol

Just as domestic entrepreneurs have been quick to seize the advantages of a rising Australian dollar, overseas traders have been quick to sense the opportunity and create an enabling environment.

Over the past year, U.K. retailers, among others, have sharpened their focus on selling to Australian consumers, according to PayPal. Many offer reduced and free shipping, local pricing and simplified returns policies. These include some of the leading retailers: TopShop, eBay, ASOS, Oasis, Figleaves, and Book Depository.

PayPal, which enables online commerce for four million active account holders in Australia, still has issued an advisory to shoppers. Check shipping times, sizing, protect your digital footprint and avoid sharing personal information, it said.

On the flip side, the strong Australian dollar is seen posing significant challenges to domestic retailers throughout the year, even though consumers still prefer to shop from Australian brands.

“Australian retailers are being challenged to compete on a global stage and we are now seeing established Australian brands fighting back against international competition by offering a truly integrated approach to retail,” said Wise. This approach merges retailers on and offline presence, allowing them to use their established offline footprints as a competitive advantage to win back the consumer.”

One of the most common causes of business failures is a failure to understand all there is to know about the market and the potential customer. Entrepreneurs need to gain this knowledge even before developing a product or service.

Here are three marketing questions you should ask yourself and answer to succeed in business:

#1. Do you target people who really need your product/service now?

If you sell headache medication, do healthy people need it? Maybe when they have migraine, but not now. If you are trying to sell handguns to young females, do they really need one? Maybe when someone tries to rob them but it may not be a priority. They may well prefer to spend that money to shop at Myer.

The key to selling is whether or not your target consumers need the product now. Ideally, you need to target a group that absolutely needs your product/service now. In this situation, consumers also would be more willing to pay a higher price.

The lesson I learned from selling CRM (customer relationship management) software is this: Most companies simply didn’t feel a compelling need to buy the software now.  The businesses I targeted could easily delay purchase of the software or choose cheaper low-tech alternatives such as Excel, Outlook, or Google Docs.

On the other hand, if I had targeted businesses that hire many sales consultants, track their complete sales process from lead generation to post-selling activities, or have a massive customer database, I may have enjoyed better success.

The lesson: It is simply not enough to say everyone is a potential customer. You need to identify the customer who will buy now.

#2. Is your market big enough to fulfill your dreams?

If you want to log revenues of $10 million in, say, five years and you seek a 5% market share, that means the market must be worth at least $200 million. Now, where does the $200 million come from?

Every entrepreneur must research his market before even developing a product or service, especially if he seeks to raise capital. Christopher Golis, in his book, “Enterprise & Venture Capital,” says venture capitalists would pass up any opportunity if the potential market of the business is lower than $100 million. Thus, it is important to have a clear understanding of the market — its size, geography, competitors and pricing, among others.

You can get reliable data about your market from local libraries or the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and could even consider buying vital data from a market research company like IBIS World (http://www.ibisworld.com.au/).

#3. Do you know how to stay ahead?

If yours is one of 10 sushi bars next to each other on a street, why should people buy from your store, rather than the nine others?

It could be taste, price, special packages or a long-established branding or reputation. Regardless, it is important to have a distinguishing competitive edge by way of one or the other feature. It doesn’t work to say my USP is “good customer service.”

In today’s business environment, good service is a necessary requirement to run a business, but not a sufficient one to run a successful business.

Consequently, the key to business success is to acquire a competitive advantage that your customers appreciate and to retain that edge over a period of time. Can competitors easily copy your product or service? Do you own and leverage patents, design rights, copyrights or trademarks? Even if you do, can your protect your brand through costly litigations?

If you have honest answers to the three questions, you are well on way to building a successful business.

Edwin Lucas is a co-owner and Business Development Director of Digital Office Builder, an online business development company in Melbourne. He has a passion to help small business owners, and aspiring Gen Y and Gen Z entrepreneurs, leverage online technology and raise capital in order to grow their business smarter and faster.

Plenty, says Soup, an advocacy marketing agency distinguished by its extraordinary faith in word-of-mouth campaigns.

The Sydney firm’s experimental Soup Lab has developed what it claims is a “world-first” Facebook app of its kind and embarked on a research project with Dr. Lars Groeger, a marketing lecturer at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, to measure the reach and value of “branded conversations.”

Shorn of the jargon, what Soup’s app — developed by Soup Lab’s Fred Wang — does is find how people carry on their offline conversations on Facebook, and vice versa, in the modern networked world. It analyses friendship networks on the world’s most popular social networking site and compares them with real-world conversation tracks.

“Much like the exploration into reach and frequency, this application and research project aims to uncover the nature of conversation overlap in the marketplace and how it affects purchase intent and behavior,” Soup’s Head of Insights Scott Taylor said.

Mining Facebook networks

“The methodology of the research delves into a largely untapped Facebook environment and allows us to visualise how offline conversations play out across friendship networks, ultimately understanding the impact of conversations and the return-on-investment of people talking about your brand,” he added.

Soup ran the campaign for the first time for an alcohol brand launch for which it did a word-of-mouth campaign. Participants were asked to complete a short survey on Facebook that Soup analysed maintaining anonymity.

What the agency discovered is this: “Combined, the 360 friendship networks received represents a network of more than 77,000 friends with over 600,000 friendship ties between them.”

The campaign uncovered some strong ties between offline conversations (word-of-mouth) and online conversations as seen on Facebook. Two key findings establish their importance in the world of communication, marketing and branding.

One, people physically spoke to 60% of all their total groups on their Facebook networks; and two, 50% of the surveyed people said most or all of their offline friends are part of their Facebook networks.

In the specific campaign, Soup found that 19% of all “conversations” — offline and online — were repeated by multiple persons, demonstrating how offline and online reinforce one another in ways that reinforce the brand.

“Ultimately the key outcomes of this research are the ability to put a context and story behind WOM results and better understand the how and why of social structures and conversation pass-on, proving impact and visualising conversations and reach,” said Taylor. “Ongoing, we can look at the impact of multiple word-of-mouth messages on purchase intent and lasting advocacy.”

Taylor presented results of the research at the WOMMA conference in Las Vegas in November. He and Groeger are due to co-present the research at the ESOMAR conference in Asia in April.

Since its founding in 2006, Soup has delivered word-of-mouth campaigns for clients such as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Huggies and Sony. Last year, its army of 100,000 ‘soupers’ carried the agency to the Blackberry People’s Choice Award at the regional Telstra Business Awards for New South Wales. It also was named one of BRW magazine’s Fast Starters and last year won an award from Anthill magazine.

Soup is led by founder-CEO Sharyn Smith.

Customers and businesses alike are opting for the online medium to save time and money. Today, most traditional brick-and-mortar businesses offer customers the option of online purchases and many businesses have ditched the storefront for the website.

What does this do to traditional sales force?

Customers prefer to browse FAQ pages online, rather than encounter in-your-face sales representatives. When needed, they quickly email enquiries or call a customer service representative. It’s predicted that field sales force teams will no longer be required in the near future. With their days numbered, why are so many industries still insisting on hiring a strong sales force?

Take the pharmaceutical industry for example.

Thirty years ago, I started my sales career as a pharmaceutical representative. Back then, field sales force teams were common and were a key source of information about new pharmaceutical products.

Today, time-strapped doctors and dentists no longer would rather go online research information in a more convenient, simple and cost-effective way, or to even place orders. But, to my surprise, I found a few months ago that nothing much has changed in the pharmaceutical industry. The “information regurgitating” field sales teams were still the norm.

To ignore the rapid changes could be perilous for businesses. It is important that companies adopt modern strategies and revamp their customer-focused field sales teams. Businesses can no longer take their customers for granted. The new-age customer is tech-savvy and with a click of a mouse can be just as informed on a product or service as the sales representative.

Let me offer three quick tips that can help businesses implement a sales process that is relevant to the customer and adds real value to field sales teams:

Get online, quickly. Businesses need to set up effective online channels to allow customers to buy genuine products at reasonable prices. If businesses don’t create this, other less reputable businesses will fill the gap and eat their lunch.

Deliver insights, not information. If a business is to invest in a field sales team, retrain your sales team to deliver more than just product monologues. It serves nobody for them to go out and repeat information that the customer already knows or is not interested in anyway. Sales reps who bring valuable insights into the latest innovations or techniques, or help with growth ideas, achieve bring real value to customers and produce better results.

Change, change, change. Adopt the mantra of change and spread the word across your enterprise. Sticking to what once worked is not good enough. You will only be left behind in the rapidly changing world because competitors are thinking strategically and accommodating for the sales shift.

Sue Barrett is a sales expert, business speaker and adviser. She founded Barrett Consulting to provide expert sales consulting, sales training, sales coaching and assessments. www.barrett.com.au.

Note: this statistic is over 12 months old. Recent figures suggest the mobile browsing is now as high as 70%.

According to Gartner research, by 2013 more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online.

Walk into any city or urban café and you’ll see people using their mobile devices — from mobile phones to tablets — to research products and services. These devices provide a completely different experience to that of the personal computer; to communicate effectively, your business will need to redesign and simplify the pages of your website.

Want proof? A recent survey by Compuware found that 40% of users turned to a competitor’s website after a bad mobile experience.

How to build a mobile website

The good news is every website is already mobile — all mobile browsers can access any website.

But not every website is optimised for a mobile browser. There are the basics you must factor. Flash is a big no-no — iPhones don’t support it and will just display an empty box where the flash component is – while nice big, fat buttons make a site ‘thumb friendly’.

To build a top-notch mobile website, you have to put yourself in your users’ shoes and understand what they’re looking for and how they will consume that information.

People searching on mobile devices are generally not sitting at a desk with a cup of tea beside them. Chances are they’re walking through a car park, phone in hand, trying to find somewhere to buy a last-minute present. Therefore, it’s vital that the design of the page is easy to navigate with only necessary information, sans clutter.

Best of both worlds

Remember, you can have a mobile website as well as a regular one. When a user visits your website, clever technology determines what browser they’re using.

If they’re using a regular desktop browser, they’ll be directed to the main website; if they’re using a mobile browser they’ll be directed to the mobile website. All the user needs to do is enter the one URL. Simples.

Still not convinced?

We’ve now reached the image-based portion of our article.

To highlight why it’s important for your business to have a mobile website here are two examples. Both of these websites sell Nutcase helmets online.

Website one: NutcaseHelmets.com.au

Open this website by clicking on the link above. If you’re browsing from your PC you’ll get your bog-standard website. However, view it on your mobile phone and you’ll be redirected to this page:

Website two: Toyssale.com

Toyssale is the website that came up first in my Google results when I was searching for Nutcase helmets on my mobile phone.

On a normal browser the website doesn’t look too bad and chances are I would have clicked around and, if the price was right, I would have been comfortable making a purchase.

But I wasn’t on a normal computer, I was in the car on a mobile browser, and this is how the website opened on my phone:

I had to zoom in to read different parts of the page and, while the navigation is ok when using a normal browser, it was awful on the mobile phone.

As you would expect I was back to Google quick smart to find a better mobile site for what I was looking for.

The app V mobile web debate

If you’re considering a mobile app rather than a mobile website, we will always recommend you mobilise your website first.

In most situations users are going to look for you via a browser; if you’re going to search for any type of product or service on your mobile phone you’re going to search the mobile web, not an app store.

Anthony Gherghetta is the mobile creative director at The App Studio in Melbourne.

Centryc Solution’s MeTag integrates offline and online channels to deliver positive brand experiences.

Its Luna Park My Experience implementation was recently awarded the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Marketing Excellence Brass Ring Award and Best Digital Marketing Campaign. Globally, amusement parks earn a cool $24 billion annually – that’s twice the Australian motor vehicle manufacturing industry.

Billed as the Oscars of amusement park peeps, Luna Park’s win acknowledges the wowza factor of teaming real-life experiences with social media for marketers.

Here’s how MeTag My Experience works…

Luna Park launched My Experience in July 2011. It’s a high-tech solution that automatically adds real-time social interaction to its in-park experience.

Guests can share their experiences through automated Facebook updates including instantly posting ride photos, status updates and their Extreme-O-Meter rating based on how many rides they go on.

My Experience incorporates near field communication, multi-channel campaign, SMS, email, web and Facebook.

MeTag a group effort

It takes an entire village to create a real-time social interaction platform. My Experience is the result of several months’ development between Luna Park Sydney and Centryc, utilising technologies from Pitney Bowes Business Insight, RFID N PRINT, Unique Micro Design, Fuji Film and Modapt.

Centryc founder and CEO Dave Aicken says: “The Luna Park team deserves this international recognition and much more.”

“Innovative value-add is important to every ‘experience’ business. Integrating social media and multi-media channel marketing help Luna Park to engage each and every guest – even when they leave the park.”

Now watch the video…

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It was once said with humour: “I know that half my advertising works. I just don’t know which half.”

Such a sentiment is no longer likely to raise a smile. This is because smart marketers (including business owners) now expect a return on investment (ROI) from their marketing (like duh).

So, what brought about this change in expectations? One player in the mix was undoubtedly Search Engine Marketing (SEM). In this first installment, we introduce SEM, and why it’s important for ROI.

SEM is a clever wee abbreviation used to describe Search Engine Marketing. Why is it worth an acronym? Aside from being a verbal mouthful (don’t you just lurve tech speak), over the past 10 years, or so, it has become wildly popular with business builders and marketers.

The cause is simple. SEM has proven itself to be a manageable, transparent and generally affordable way to increase a website’s traffic and provide brands with better visibility on search engines (and the like).

Search Engine Land describes SEM as an umbrella term that encompasses search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques and pay per click marketing. Advertising services by Yahoo! and free knowledge channels like Wikipedia have resulted in a distorted definition that moved SEO away from SEM. This early definition may rock some peeps’ worlds but, to keep things simple for us foolish mortals, we prefer to use the term SEM to define paid search marketing.

Paid search marketing (also known as pay per click and cost per click marketing, just to keep things interesting) is usually achieved by buying ad space on search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing and of course, Google.

Why SEM whoops traditional advertising’s patootie

Don’t confuse paid search marketing with purchasing ad space in a traditional advertising market such as a newspaper or television channel. Search engines act as the great equaliser; small and large businesses compete on a level playing field due to its cost effective model.

Need more reasons to heart SEM? It’s got advance reporting tools a-go-go. That means businesses can tie each ad click to the term that triggered the ad, the dosh they paid for that click, and the profit generated by – you guessed it – the click.

Gone are the days when marketing gurus and business analysts failed to determine what percentage of advertising costs resulted in a positive ROI.

By comparison, print, radio, and television advertising may provide a rough estimate of the people your ad reached out to or the number of eyeball views it caught, but it’s impossible to tie each sale to the channel it came from.

SEM is now used by hundreds and thousands of businesses to reach a global audience and get more customers at a fraction of the price they’d have paid for traditional advertising.

The big kahunas

Now that you’re all over SEM, it’s important to understand the options that it provides and how you can use them to your advantage. Though there are several PPC channels on offer, here are the four biggies:

1. Google AdWords

2. Yahoo! Search Advertising

3. Microsoft Ad Center

4. Facebook Ads

Many businesses use all of the above for promoting products and services but, if you’re a SEM newbie, we recommend that you ease yourself in with AdWords.

It has a fairly simple user interface, making it easy to navigate and create advertising campaigns.

Another argument that works in AdWords’ favour is the wide reach that Google offers. According to the stats, AdWords can help you reach more people than Yahoo! and Microsoft combined.

So, why would anyone use AdWords?

As a business owner, you have only one goal: better profits and a positive ROI. (OK, so two goals.)

AdWords helps you achieve exactly that. Wouldn’t it make you happy if every penny you spent in advertising or marketing your business was accounted for?

It should go without saying, but just in case: to understand how SEM can help in calculating your return ROI, it’s important to know what ROI is.

For online advertising, your ROI is the ratio of your online advertising costs and the profits you generate through these mediums. And, as your mother will tell you, profits must always exceed costs.

What tools does Google AdWords have to help achieve ROI?

Sophisticated reporting tools

Advanced reporting available in the AdWords interface is useful for generating hourly, weekly, and monthly reports that provide insight into key metrics like cost per click, conversion rate, keywords that generated maximum revenue, and weak performing keywords. Knowing this data can help you eliminate keywords that are dragging down your ROI while increasing the CPC for profitable keywords.

Analytics linking

If you’re not already in the know, Google Analytics is the preferred free web analytic program. Its suave features make ecommerce tracking a breeze. All you need is a bit of code that must be put on all pages of your website. Analytics gives you the information required to calculate your ROI and tie it to the channel it came from, allowing you to segregate profits according to organic sales, online sales, AdWords sales, and so on. This helps you in determining which advertising channels are earning their keep.

If you don’t want to get into the intricacies of advanced Analytics set up, conversion tracking is a good alternative for measuring advertising success. (And it’s part of the AdWords package.)

Keeping it simple

When starting out with Google AdWords, it is advisable to read the Help Center for an advertising 101. Video tutorials, seminars, and presentations make it easy to understand the process and help you create a successful advertising campaign.

The app was recently put through its paces for a new beverage brand. A group of 360 participants were asked to complete a short survey and grant Soup permission to anonymously collect and analyse their friendship networks, representing 360 ‘Facebook friendship networks’, a total network of 77,000 ‘friends’ and over 600,000 ‘friendship ties’.

To sift through the data, Dr Groeger and Soup used social network analysis tools, enabling them to examine participants’ friendship networks in terms of their size, structure, overlap and key individuals.

So what did they discover? We’re so glad you asked…

• Participants have, on average, 210 friends on Facebook, ranging from 50 to 1158 friends

• 50% of participants stated that almost all of their ‘real offline friends and family’ are also their Facebook friends

• 70% of conversation happened along very strong friendship ties; 27% between medium ties; and only 4% along weak ties

• Conversation partners have up to 80% of their friends in common

• More than 20% of total conversations across the campaign were multiple exposures, meaning that a participant had more than one conversation about the brand

Dr Groeger said: “This new app allows us to differentiate between frequency of conversations and actual reach. So far this has not been possible.”

“The implications are highly relevant for any marketing manager who wants to accurately compare a WOM campaign with other media channels in terms of reach, frequency and ROI.”

“While there has been a large amount of research into WOM and viral marketing, our knowledge about how WOM actually spreads from one person to another is limited and the topic remains a mystery for many marketing managers.”

“What Facebook and other social media platforms allow us to do [is] cut through these limitations and time constraints and instantly access vast networks.”

“We are trying to de-mystify the WOM phenomenon.”

So, savvy retailers are taking matters into their own hands by attracting new customers, generating repeat business, and improving campaign analytics with easy-to-execute mobile marketing programs.

In 2010, more than a third of Smartphone internet users conducted price comparisons of products on their mobile phones before going to the store itself, with almost a quarter doing so on the shop floor.

In 2011, these figures are expected to grow significantly, with comScore reporting a 500% increase in mobile web traffic and Gartner predicting mobile web usage will soon overtake browsing from PCs.

Reaching out to customers through their mobile handsets has other benefits for retailers. It allows for highly personalised marketing activity and the ability to create immediate incentives to drive customers to stores.

Location tools can also be used as part of the communication and all activity can be tracked and measured to show a clear return on investment.

Despite these compelling reasons, there are a significant number of retailers that haven’t yet developed a strategy to target customers through their mobile devices. For these businesses, here are three ideas to get started.

1. Create a mobile opt-in database

Encouraging customers to register their mobile numbers is an important starting point. The easiest way to do this is to buy a keyword and shortcode through a mobile services provider.

This creates an automated system where customers can text the keyword to the shortened mobile number (e.g. text CARD to 19954536) to register to your database.

To encourage registrations, it’s important to show an immediate benefit (e.g. 10% discount in store today) and to display the keyword and shortcode prominently in store, online, and in your existing marketing channels.

By creating a database, retailers can instantly begin targeting customers through SMS, a simple and cost effective way to begin mobile marketing.

Research shows that 90% of SMS messages are opened within three minutes of being received, and 99% are opened overall.

These text messages can be used to deliver timely and relevant offers, encourage foot traffic and repeat customers. If used as part of a wider mobile strategy, they can also link through to dedicated mobile content such as store finder tools, exclusive offers, and/or mobile coupons.

2. Create a mobile website

Given the wide variety of mobile devices on the market, a mobile website can offer a much wider reach than a device-specific app and can also be used effectively as part of a wider mobile strategy, for example as a landing page for an SMS campaign, allowing you to track click-through rates.

Thought should also be given to what content is more appealing to someone browsing via a mobile device rather than on a PC.

Helping people check store locations or opening hours, promoting that day’s best buys, or encouraging opt-ins to an SMS service can all be more effective on mobile than your normal web content.

3. Create or enhance loyalty programs

Mobile communication delivers a higher response rate and therefore a significantly increased ROI from loyalty programs. It also allows retailers to accurately time the moment messages are read and which customers receive them, allowing offers to be highly targeted, interactive, and compelling.

As a consumer, if I get a special offer for a complementary item to something I’ve already purchased, say insurance for a TV or boots to go with my jeans, I am going to be much more likely to convert on that purchase.

Mobile can be used to distribute coupons and loyalty cards, with unique codes that can be scanned at the point of purchase and their use tracked and evaluated. This can eliminate altogether the need for consumers to carry all those plastic loyalty cards.

Also, by eliminating the need for expensive print and distribution, mobile loyalty campaigns can be much more cost effective and friendly to the environment.

Did you know:

• There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers in the world, equating to 77% of the population (Nielsen 2011);
• 71% of adults say they won’t leave the house without their Smartphone. (Google & Ipsos 2011);
• 47% of Australian Smartphone internet users have used mobile internet to find out more about a product or service to support a purchase decision and 37% have purchased goods via their Smartphone (Nielsen 2011);
• That in 2011 Amazon will have transacted more than US$2bn via mobile;
• eBay predicts US$4bn or more in transactions via mobile in 2011;
• Predictions suggest mobile will be the primary internet access route within 2 years.

In short, the mobile device has become an acceptable, and in many cases preferred, highly effective and rapidly growing consumer channel to market – is your business taking advantage of this?

With over 10 years’ experience spanning various markets including the U.K., Europe and the U.S., Roger Woodend works with major global corporations including BP, Samsung and BT. Since his arrival in Sydney, Roger has secured an MBA from Macquarie Business School. Readers can write to roger.woodend@2ergo.com

The Anthill Masterclass has already helped hundreds of Australian business owners, marketing professionals and web developers embrace the future of marketing and get real results from their websites and social media.

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