Tag: Customer Relations

If you're going to give something away, you need to know what the value of it is and what your ROI is. Too many people are caught up in this 'giving stuff away for free and hoping money happens later' thing. I'm guessing that's because they're afraid of selling.

If you're going to give something away, you need to know what the value of it is and what your ROI is. Too many people are caught up in this 'giving stuff away for free and hoping money happens later' thing. I'm guessing that's because they're afraid of selling.

Regular Anthill contributor Steve Sammartino published an interesting post on his blog this morning. Steve is in the process of tweaking the pricing model for his company Rentoid and relayed a nugget of advice offered to him by fellow entrepreneur Chris Pearson (founder of Skitch and Comic Life).

Companies can no longer hide behind the “official company line” or rely simply on media spend to influence the public’s thinking on any given subject. Take the recent tempest caused by on-air remarks made by conservative US television commentator Glenn Back when he called Obama “a racist”. Ignore social network-driven campaigns at your peril.

The events surrounding the death, last week, of Sydney businessman Michael McGurk have attracted greater intrigue and speculation than a Sopranos cliff-hanger. How someone can build a career on intimidation and extortion is beyond this author's imagination. However, the fascinating events surrounding McGurk's demise have got me thinking. What can we, as business-people, learn from the tactics of a stand-over man? Fortunately, I have only one resource to rely on. Gangster fiction!

In part four of our series on the capital raising cultures in Australia and the US, San Francisco-based Steve Anderson explores how Australian and New Zealand entrepreneurs can best prepare for securing local investors.

Take Paul McCruddon, a London-based blogger and digital strategist at Imagination Digital who grew weary of brands believing that his time was less valuable than their own and decided to take matters into his own hands.

Today, the Australian Federal Minister for Small Business, Dr Craig Emerson, officially launched a free phone service that will provide advice and support for people running and working in small businesses.

To coincide with today's relaunch of the oodles.com website, Sherlock and his team are inviting Twitter users to suggest a tagline for their online car rental platform. The author of the winning tweet tagline (twagline?) as chosen by Oodles staff will receive $1,000 cash.

It usually manifests as a long monologue that starts with: "Get a Mac - they are perfect" then trails off, without punctuation or breathing, into an extensive list of Mac failures and bugbears. When they catch themselves, they add, "But they are still brilliant. You should get one!"

Seth Godin speaks to the Grandfather of entrepreneurs Richard Branson on how he turned the theft of stylish pepper shakers on Virgin Atlantic flights into a great marketing ploy, while also setting a decision-making example to his staff.

Seth Godin speaks to the Grandfather of entrepreneurs Richard Branson on how he turned the theft of stylish pepper shakers on Virgin Atlantic flights into a great marketing ploy, while also setting a decision-making example to his staff.

You might have cut staff, discounted your prices, rationalised expenses and seem to be working harder than you ever have to make less money. However, in all this change, have you sat down and spent the time on comprehensively reviewing your marketing?

Last year, the continued emergence of online consumer voice and choice collided with the global economic downturn, delivering consumers both the will and tools to demand a greater level of accountability from their financial service purchases. Enter HelpMeChoose.com.au...

"I want to make sure readers in Australia can buy online at the same price as readers anywhere in the world," said the Booktopia.com.au CEO, Tony Nash.

You know your idea is a winner and it won’t take much effort to get it off the ground, but you're not in a position to throw money at it at the moment. What are you going to do with a zero dollar marketing budget? Use your brain and get creative.

I often joke that it takes 100 cups of coffee to get a new start-up funded. Not because the investor is one out of 100 but because it takes a long time to get the story polished.

If you haven't already been tweeted the news, TechCrunch's editorial staff found itself in possession of over 300 private documents last month, direct from the private email account of Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Questions of ethics and privacy aside, the contents of these documents offer some salient insights on the startup process from one of the world's most successful digital companies (if you view massive user adoption without a clear revenue model as a measure of success).

If you haven't already been tweeted the news, TechCrunch's editorial staff found itself in possession of over 300 private documents last month, direct from the private email account of Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Questions of ethics and privacy aside, the contents of these documents offer some salient insights on the startup process from one of the world's most successful digital companies (if you view massive user adoption without a clear revenue model as a measure of success).

I have several arms to my business, but one of the main ones is the events we run. We're currently in the process of filling a three day event and have been using low-cost preview events to do this. At every single preview event, I get someone asking me, "How do you keep filling your rooms?!"