Reinventing Australia’s Economy with Innovative Thinking: Insights from the Honourable Minister Damien Tudehope

As Australia begins the slow exit process from lockdown, it’s important for businesses to take stock, get advice, think about opportunities to restructure and look at online opportunities.

Netstripes Founder – Dinesh De Silva sat down to discuss all this and more in detail with the Honourable Damien Tudehope – Minister for Finance and Small Business.

Australia’s Federal and State Governments have been working on economic relief packages on a massive scale since the pandemic started. With several initiatives implemented to provide a safety net to businesses that have been severely impacted by covid-19.

According to Minister Tudehope, the Government is focusing on two main strategies; the first is the financial impact on SMEs and the stimulus packages the government have passed to alleviate the financial burden.

NSW current financial relief for businesses

The second strategy is state funded initiatives – including that of a billion dollar spend on employing more people into government programs such as cleaners, manufacturers, and business advisors to facilitate SME owners. All this in addition to opening up public courses for people to reskill.

Seek the right advice for your business model

More emphasis has been placed on the Business Connect Program which provides advice to business owners who need help getting through this period.

The minister went on to state that all business owners should be seeking advice on their business model right now, whether it be from their lawyer, accountant or a business advisor. “This strikes me as something really important because of all the packages that are available. Whether it’s the federal or state government, it is really important for people to get advice.

They need to know what benefits they are entitled to. If their business model has the potential to restructure, and if so, what financial packages can they claim. These are the sorts of things that they should be doing now to make sure they reach the other side of the crisis,” he further added.

State sponsored negotiators

The Office of the Small Business Commissioner has enrolled an additional 80 mediators for lessors and lessees who can’t reach an agreement in relational to rental obligation. The aim of the mediators is to be a facilitator, rather than a Government imposer.

By facilitating arrangements between the two parties for the best solutions, it provide equal opportunities and benefits for both parties. Minister Tudehope stated that this is the best conclusion for business. Whereas if the two parties were to appeal to the government to impose solutions, it would inevitably end with one or both sides failing to reach a satisfactory outcome.

Innovation is the key to business reinvention

One of the biggest questions is how do we look at our businesses and restructure? NSW has already seen plenty of innovators emerging from the pandemic. From the liquor industry turning their manufacturing model from producing alcohol to producing sanitizer. To the food industry engaged in the ubereats or deliveroo type economy, now delivering items beyond F&B.

There’s opportunity for more people to be a provider to government. The state is looking for businesses that can manufacture ventilators and other essential items that are in demand.

Increased funding for government programs

NSW has increased funding for programs like TAFE which now provides free courses for anyone interested in learning new skills. So far, the state has seen over 80,000 people take up new opportunities to up skill.

Minister Tudehope explained, “We’re potentially asking people ‘have you looked at opportunities of having either you or your staff take advantage of a TAFE course to gain some accounting skills or some other skill?

While business is potentially down, they can use this time productively, pivot the business, and make it more effective for when they come out of this. Or alternatively, look for more business opportunities in a cyber-world we’re potentially living in at the moment?”

Innovation driven economy

The blueprint for the future of NSW, which was created by the Productivity Commissioner, prior to the Covid-19 crisis, identified that a major necessity in 2020 was to be an innovation driven economy. Commenting on this research, Minister Tudehope stated, “We have had a very large emphasis on innovation hubs both at universities and the CSIRO.

As a government, we ought to look at opportunities for startups and innovators to be a great contributor to the economy of NSW going forward. Potentially, to reinvent ourselves in the manufacturing space because there is a shift in the world economy at the moment, and Australia will have to become more reliant on its own manufacturing industry.”

“Just as we came out of the GFC, the way out of Covid-19 is going to be the innovation industries, and those things which they bring in terms of ideas for the future.” – The Hon. Minister Tudehope

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Bespoke Catering Pivots It’s Business Model to Serve Customers During Covid-19

Learn how Fabio Funai pivoted his business’s model and strategy to include new services that enabled him to continue catering to clients and increasing revenue during covid-19.

The Company

Established in 2014, Bespoke Catering was founded by Fabio Funai. With a strong background in the culinary and hospitality industry, Fabio and his team worked closely with their clients to understand their vision for corporate and high-end private events. Fabio’s vision was to provide a flexible, innovative, collaborative and exciting events.

The Problem

The impact of Covid-19 and the social distancing rules introduced, posed the biggest and most worrying challenge that Fabio and his family have ever had to face.

It meant blanket cancellations of all events, and their business and business model was threatened. Therefore, he needed to do all that he could to save his business.

The Solution

Fabio has been a client of NetStripes for some time, and naturally turned to us for assistance. He attended a Digital and Innovation Seminar run by NetStripes in 2019, where he learnt how to build a strong digital infrastructure with the right strategies, tools and marketing in place. Fabio transformed his business from catering to physical, high-end private corporate events to:

Bespoke Catering’s new services during covid

In addition, Fabio attended a one-on-one digital advisory sessions at Netstripes where he was able to hone his knowledge in digital strategy and asses his business goals to suit the situation.

“The digital advisory session was an eye-opener because as a small business, you spend most of the time in operations so strategy is not something you have time to think about. So, it was really beneficial to sit down and really think what the steps to become successful are. The strategy session helped us to asses our goals and identify what the client requires and how to market it correctly.” – Fabio Funai

The Results

Fabio made small changes to his website to introduce the new services. Since he already had a world-class design that created a sense of instant trust and credibility with visitors, his hard work paid quickly off

Click here to view the Bespoke Catering Website

When it came to marketing, the only thing he did was a weekly email (which had zero cost) announcing his change in business strategy during Covid-19 and his new offers to customers. The first of which, provided results within just a couple of hours of sending the email. This delivered a much-needed confidence boost for the business, as more orders kept coming in during the week.

The numbers have been encouraging since, and although it is still in its early days, Fabio Funai and his wife Danielle have been powering on bravely executing upon their new business model and catering to the several hundred orders that are coming through.

They are hopeful the current situation will soon pass, however, they are no doubt exemplary in their approach.  Credit to Fabio and his team for acting decisively to make the change as Covid happened!

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Flat Rock Brew Café beats covid-19 Pandemic by Bringing the Pub Experience Home

See how Karl Riseborough changed his business’s strategy and reinvented the business model to continue serving customers and increasing revenue during covid-19.

The Company Flat Rock Brew Café is family-owned and located in Sydney’s Lower North Shore, serving hand-crafted beer brewed onsite, along with great food and wine. The café is run by Karl and Jenny Riseborough, long-time local residents who have kept their community at the heart of their operations.

Since its opening, Flat Rock Brew Café has practiced environmentally sustainable practices, this and its sense of community have garnered a loyal local following of all ages.

The Problem The impact of Covid-19 and social distancing regulations introduced, sent their business plummeting to unsustainable levels, as was the case for all cafes.

Their business model which catered to serving dine-in guests and walk-in guests who would order take away, was now threatened with zero footfall.

The Solution Karl attended the Digital and Innovation Seminar run by NetStripes in association with the Willoughby Council in 2019. With the help of our experts at the Digital and Innovation Seminar, Karl learnt how to build a strong digital infrastructure with the right strategies, tools and marketing in place.

Karl also learnt from examples of businesses who used digital strategies to take advantage of times of economic gloom, and how to look for opportunities during times like these.

Click here to view the Flat Rock Brew Cafe website

The Result Using the knowledge and skills he learnt at the seminar, Karl shifted the gears of his business, and created a virtual version of the physical brew café which catered to a loyal set of local clientele.

He did this by setting up online ordering with the options for pick-up or home delivery of his hand crafted beer. He created three options of ordering to give his clients more choice; they now had the choice of 1L – Squealers, 2L – Growlers or 500ml Cans.

Karl used social media strategically to get his new message “an intimate pub experience at home” across to locals of his new offering and business model, and he ensured his online platform was extremely efficient, with the ability to action deliveries on the same day if ordered by a certain time.

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Government Initiatives to Support Businesses During Covid-19

With the Covid-19 pandemic battering the global economy, the Government’s decision to provide financial assistance through a stimulus package and grants is a wave of relief among small and medium sized business owners, but how do they actually work for us?

Financial Stimulus Package The stimulus package includes payroll tax changes, a tax-free increase from $900,000 to $1 million and a deferral of payroll tax for businesses with payrolls over $10 million for a period of 6 months.

JobKeeper Payment Program Under this program, businesses that have been affected by covid-19 can register for a temporary Government subsidy that enables them to claim payments for employees when revenue has declined. Employees will receive a fortnightly payment of $1,500 per person from 30 March 2020, for period of up to 6 months.

However, do note that both employers and employees must also meet certain requirements to prove eligibility for Jobseeker Payment.

The JobKeeper Payment is also available to sole traders. People who are self-employed can register their interest in applying for JobKeeper Program via The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) from 30 March 2020.

Support for Small Business Apprentices and Trainees Employers can now apply for a subsidy of 50 per cent of the apprentice’s or trainee’s wage paid from 1 January 2020 to 30 September 2020.

Support is also available via the National Apprentice Employment Network, who are in charge for coordinating the re‑employment of displaced apprentices and trainees.

Backing Business Investment (BBI) – Economic support for growth For a limited period of 15 months, businesses will receive an incentive to support investment and economic growth over a short term period. Businesses with a turnover of less than $500 million will be able to deduct 50 per cent of the cost of an eligible asset on installation, with existing depreciation rules applying to the balance of the asset cost.

Assets must be acquired from 12 March 2020 and first used or installed by 30 June 2021 to be eligible.

Relief For Financially Distressed Businesses The ATO will tailor financial relief for businesses that are currently struggling due to covid-19. This includes a temporary increase to the threshold at which creditors can issue a statutory demand on a company and the time companies have to respond to statutory demands received.

This includes temporary relief from personal liability for trading while insolvent and temporary flexibility in the Corporations Act 2001 to provide relief from provisions of the Act.

*Businesses need not apply for these measures as they have already gone into effect for a period of 6 months.

SME Guarantee Scheme For SMEs impacted by Covid-19, the Government will provide a guarantee of 50 per cent to SME lenders for new unsecured loans to be used for working capital. This will enable SMEs to access additional funding to support them through the upcoming months.

SMEs with a turnover of up to $50 million will be eligible to receive loans amounting up to $250,000 per borrower. The loans will be valid up to 3 years, with an initial 6 month reprieve on repayment.

Increasing the Instant Asset Write-off Threshold From $30,000 to $150,000 This new relief measure will support over 3.5 million businesses, which is estimated to be over 99 per cent of businesses in Australia, and expected to decrease $2.5billion in taxes paid by businesses over the next two years. The eligibility criteria has been extended to cover businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $500 million a year (an increase of $50 million).

How Does it Work? The new write-off threshold provides cash flow benefits for businesses that will be able to deduct purchases of eligible assets each costing less than $150,000. The threshold applies on a per asset basis, so eligible businesses can immediately write‑off multiple assets.

The instant asset write-off goes into effect from 12th March 2020 until 30th June 2020.

Before applying for any of these relief measures, please check with your Accountant or Tax Advisor for more information on your individual circumstances and eligibility of your business.

The information in this article was compiled and sourced from www.business.gov.au/ a government website for the Australian business community.

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Bizruption Sydney At The Star – Futurising The Way We Do Business

February 17th marks the first Bizruption for the new decade, and it was certainly an evening to remember. Bizruption Sydney at The Star welcomed over 200 entrepreneurs, industry leaders, investors and guest speakers to connect through discussions on innovation.

It was also a memorable evening for us at Netstripes as we unveiled our new branding and a new, exciting bootcamp designed for business reinvention.

But, the excitement doesn’t stop here! Keep reading to check out the highlights of Bizruption Sydney.

As always, the event started with our fabulous MC, Ms Sonia Wray welcoming guests to Bizruption and getting everyone pumped up and enthusiastic with her amazing energy. She made sure everyone shook off their Monday blues and was focused on the great presenters and invaluable stories being shared.

Kicking Things Off With Pitchfest

The Pitchfest challenge was a great way to kick off the evening and get the room buzzing. Business owners were separated into small groups and challenged to do a quick 30-second business pitch to their peers. Not only was it a fun and adrenaline-rush activity, but really a chance for them to practice, practice and practice.

Indeed, the finalists did an incredible job, some so convincing it had the room intrigued and ready to visit and support their businesses. Hopefully, finalists’ pitches have inspired others to work on and improve their business pitch.

Discussions On Technological Innovation In 2020

Our first guest speaker for the evening was Christina Gerakiteys – Co-CEO of SingularityU Australia. Christina spoke about the influence of exponential technologies like artificial intelligence and digital biology, and how businesses can benefit from innovative thinking to improve not just the way we do business, but humanity as a whole. Some interesting food for thought!

Next up was Alexandra Sloane, Head of Marketing at Facebook for ANZ, who spoke on the critical role social media plays in breaking down communication barriers and helping to share new ideas and businesses with more people around the world.

She also touched on the importance of accessibility to digital tools and the positive impact that it can have when used to create meaningful change to communities, especially to those affected by bushfires.

It was an honour to have our guest speakers attend Bizruption, and both Christina and Alexandra shared lots of great advice with the audience during a panel discussion and subsequent networking session.

Introducing The New Netstripes! Bizruption Sydney set the stage for the launch of our new brand identity. Netstripes Founder Dinesh De Silva spoke about the dawn of a new decade, and how it was time for SMEs to assess their goals and think about how they can do things differently to keep up with the changes in digital innovation.

At Netstripes, we practice what we preach, which is why we completely reinvented and repositioned ourselves in the new decade by changing our brand identity and the services we’ll be offering in the New Year and beyond.

We changed the way we do things so that our core vision and what we really stand for is clear – to empower small and medium businesses to innovative and grow their business.

In addition to our new branding, we also reinvented our services and introduced our new 3-day power-packed bootcamp ‘futurise’.

“We looked at reinventing our business because we practice what we preach. So we wanted to create something that the small and medium businesses whom we serve can come and learn how to reinvent their business. However, instead of taking months or years doing it the hard way through trial and error, they can do it through immersive learning in a transformational way in just 3 days.” Said Dinesh.

Designed exclusively for small and medium business owners, futurise covers 14 modules, each created to impart business owners with the knowledge they need to enhance their business.

To Learn More About Futurise, Click Here.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our amazing guest speakers for joining us at Bizruption. It was our greatest pleasure to have them at our event, yet alone address the small business community.

Also extending our thanks to our fabulous sponsor The Star Sydney for providing us with a great venue for Bizruption. Special thanks to Alison Smith – Group Executive of External Affairs and Jon Stewart – Head of External Affairs at The Star for their support. Thank you to our inspirational MC Sonia Wray for hosting the night and giving our guests the best Bizruption show possible.

And of course, not forgetting all the business owners who made the time to come and attend our event. Thank you for attending and helping us spread awareness on the urgency of digital disruption and business innovation. We hope Bizruption has inspired everyone for even greater success and connected like-minded entrepreneurs together in our business community.

For more information on how Netstripes can help your business become digitally engaged in the New Year, check out our Innovation Suite package or book a free consultation with our digital specialists.

To view more photos, check out our Facebook page and don’t forget to like and follow us!

Source by – The NetStripes Team.

9 Things To Consider If You’re Running A Business

Running your own business is incredibly exhilarating – and scary. There are so many challenges to navigate through and no way to ensure that any of it will work.

If you’re thinking of starting a business in the new year, or are already on your entrepreneurial journey, it’s important to consider several factors to ensure you’re well-prepared for the uphill climb.

For that reason, here are 9 things for entrepreneurs’ to consider when running a business.

1. Are You Doing Something You Love? If you’re setting out to do something you think would be successful instead of something you are passionate about doing regardless, then you need to rethink what you’re doing. Building and then running a start-up requires a lot of time, money and personal sacrifices along the way.

If you’re not fueled by passion at every step you take, you will end up doing a job you hate. – Get some quiet time and contemplate what you are really passionate about – what were you really create to do in this world. How can you be of real service to the world?

2. What Customer Problems Are You Resolving? Have a clear vision of what problems you are trying to resolve for your customers and then make sure these problems are excruciating problems for your prospective customers… our solutions must be like painkillers as opposed to vitamins – vitamins are optional, but painkillers will be hunted for by people in pain.

The internet makes all this research super easy – simple google searches done to a plan will provide you much needed preliminary data that you can then further refine by one on one interviews with up to 5-10 of your ideal customers.

3. Setting Clear Goals Now that you know what problems you are resolving – Set a clear vision of what goals you hope to achieve – how many customers you seek to serve what revenues will you achieve – set them high – as Michaelangelo said, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

4. There Will Be Many Failures Along The Way It would be perfect if your business immediately takes off and brings in revenue, but that rarely happens without any bumps along the way. You will encounter several problems, big and small, but that’s all a part of the learning process.

The main thing is to learn from your mistakes so you do it better the next time. Additionally, when your goals are clear and you are passionate about them – challenges you find along the way will be way easier to be met and acted upon successfully.

5. Statistics Are Important But Don’t Be Ruled By Them People love to throw around statics about companies failing and strategies that do and don’t work. Don’t let that deter you from following your passion. Statistics are just numbers and numbers can’t replace the resourcefulness of a determined mind.

This is really an important aspect of starting any business. It doesn’t matter what kind of statistics you have because at the end of the day, statistics alone shouldn’t be the deciding factor for your business decisions.

Use data powerfully! Do your research on the market, what needs are not being met, how much pain is that causing your prospective customers, what is the size of the opportunity in your local area, your state, in your country and then globally?

Talk to your ideal customers, understand first hand the problems they are facing, the extent of those issues, how these issues are affecting them personally and from a business perspective, what solutions are currently available. And are these solutions working, where do they fail, what will it mean if these problems are resolved for them?

6. Managing Your Costs Depending on what kind of business you have in mind, running it can be costly. So, make sure you create a budget that will give you the finances to back up your ideas and a buffer for any hidden costs. If you find yourself spending way over budget then stop immediately!

Take a moment to go over everything, and then scale down. It’s always better to start off small and then slowly build as you gain more knowledge and experience.

7. Get The Knowledge You Need To Succeed Read – a lot! Follow some webinars and programs that provide you with the immersive knowledge and confidence you need to succeed. The right knowledge will save you years of struggle, instead of learning the hard way through trial and error. Some mistakes can be fatal, so get the right knowledge first.

The more knowledge you have of your business, the industry, customers etc. the better you will be at making decisions. And don’t read up on just business books either, acquire a collection of biographies, motivational books, success stories and anything else that can help prepare you. Furthermore, if you don’t have time to read, audiobooks are a great way to consume information while on the go.

8. Get Professional Advice It’s always wise to seek the advice of professionals when embarking on your entrepreneurial journey. This will help to avoid pitfalls you wouldn’t have previously been aware of and set you on the right path. Even after your business is up and running, consider going back for a review session, to see what areas could be improved.

9. Don’t Neglect Yourself Building your own start-up is stressful, time consuming, and will have you up all-night going over paperwork. But, always remember to take care of yourself first – this means signing up at a gym to making sure you exercise, eat right, and relax. Spend time with your family and friends, nothing is more important than that.

When a business owner is in a positive mindset there’s is generally 80% of success in any organisation. So ensure you have strategies to manage your state and mindset. Meditation is an excellent practice that can help. In addition, listen to audio books (audible) and videos (YouTube) that will help you manage your state of mind and levels of motivations.

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Message From Our CEO – Dinesh De Silva: Welcoming The New Decade

Firstly, may I wish you and your family all the very best as a brand new decade dawns upon us.

The new decade brings with it new opportunities with hope and new aspirations. In addition to these new opportunities, it gives us the means to exclude what we don’t want to carry forward into the New Year.

This holiday season, I would like you to reflect over the last decade. It’s important for all of us to begin by writing down and acknowledging all of our achievements – give yourself the credit you deserve, which is something a lot of us don’t do enough of. Take note of the things that didn’t work in the last 10 years too, and what could have been executed better; and rather than seeing them as failures, look at them as lessons.

Ask yourself now, what lessons have you learnt that will help you over the next 10 years?

Whatever industry you may be in, growth is a dominant factor. 2020 gives us the opportunity to relook everything, not only from a business perspective, but an individual perspective as well. How have you grown over the past decade? How do you want to grow further, over the next 10 years? What new projects do you want to launch in the coming year? Be it business or personal, the only way to get to making dreams a reality is in setting and then achieve worthwhile goals.

Equally important is a review of our existing goals and considering whether or not to reset them. Are they too conservative?

Having met over 5000 business owners in the last three years, much of the time, I think we play too safe. A result of being too conservative, and defensive, is getting attacked by competition, or being caught off guard without a plan – a fine example being environmental issues like the drought. Sometimes, attack is your best form of defence, and by attack, I mean setting the right goals. When you’re setting those goal, make sure that it’s something worth achieving. Take a risk. Put yourself out there a bit more. Once you’ve agreed on the goal, it’s all about setting a strategy to get there.

Here’s a small tip from me, for a simple strategy in getting to your end goal; identify the top three or four things that you must do if you want to achieve this goal? Not the whole 10 or 20 things – just the top 3 or 4 things you must do? Once you set the top three, these can be your goals over a period of time – set a goal for 12 months.

What are the top things you need to do to work towards the goals? Think about the things you are currently doing that are not delivering results. What are the habits? Let’s identify areas that are not delivering results. Are they habits? bad investments? Are they activities?  If they’re not delivering results or value, reassess the situation and stop doing those things. You could be working on the wrong set of customers, focusing on the wrong products or services.

Once you assess the situation and you choose to pull the plug on the people and things that aren’t working out, you will suddenly find yourself with more time and more resources.

Now use that time and those resources to enable you to start putting into action the top three or four must do’s on your list, which will help you get to your end goal.  While you’re at it, get some outside help. It’s not going to be any less challenging in 2020, so seek out the right expertise to take you to another level and offer a fresh perspective. Come to us for an hour of digital growth advisory. That one hour of advisory you spend to build a strategy can give you that leap you deserve.

Finally, on behalf of my team at NetStripes, I would like to wish all our clients, partners, friends and families a holistic growth in all aspects of their lives in the coming year, and very Happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

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5 Benefits Of Using Data Analysis To Grow Your Business

Data analysis is a topic that gets a lot of lip service in today’s world. Although it is not a novel concept for small and medium businesses, it’s the big companies that primarily use it to their advantage. The rest are still struggling to understand its real value and to use it in a way to derive business growth.

To ensure that your business doesn’t get left behind, we compiled a list of five benefits of using data analysis to grow your business.

Helps Identify The Right Client For a small business owner, one of the first hurdles of digital marketing is understanding where they can reach their customers. Is it through advertising, a website or social media channels? To understand their online behaviour, you need to identify your ideal customer first.

Start off by going through your last 20 transactions and analyse each customer. If the information you have is not sufficient, give them a call or schedule a meeting with them saying that you’d like their feedback on your product, service, and business.

When you’re trying to get a deeper understanding of your customers try to look at it from these perspectives – the type of customer, what they purchased, the pricing range, what problems were they trying to resolve, what questions they asked, any concerns they mentioned and did you enjoy working with this client.

The more data you have, the easier it is to categorise customers into different groups, each representing a unique customer persona. By analysing your customer base, you are in a better position to identify your customer personas and know which of these personas are the most valuable to your business. This will help you target them better.

Validates Decisions And Removes Biases Data analysis also removes biases and helps businesses make better decisions. Many business owners tend to seek advice from family and friends or marketing gurus when it comes to making important decisions concerning their business. This will not always provide the best results because these advises and tips are not based on data that is related to your business.

If you’re wondering which social media channel you need to invest your time on to engage with customers, instead of opting for the channel you or your friends prefer the most, find out where your customers spend their time online. This will remove biases and preferences and ensure that you’re spending your time, efforts and money on the right channel which will lead to better engagement and therefore results.

Understanding your customers’ interests can give you an insight into their online behaviour. This will help you reach them on their preferred platform using content that resonates best with them. If you have identified customer personas that are important to your business as suggested above, this will help you to come up with a strategy to target them.

If you’re in the business of selling bikes specifically for kids then your ideal customer is a mother of young children. Find out if your ideal customer is active on Facebook groups, a space that is gaining a lot of popularity to share stories and gain tips. You can find Facebook groups categorised according to interests in Groups, which is just under the Explore tab on your news feed.

By implementing decisions that are backed by data, instead of opinions and biases, you have the potential to reach more people that matter to your business.

Supports Continuous Improvement A business can grow in leaps and bounds if its strengths and weaknesses are recognised and improvements are made consistently. By analysing data regularly, you can find out what’s working and what’s not for your business. Using this information you can make effective improvements to your business and the processes involved to achieve better results.

Perhaps you have a website that is old and not mobile-friendly. A recent analysis of your website using Google analytics showed that most of your customers view your website via their mobile phone and you one look at the bounce rate on Google Analytics shows that majority of web visitors leave without nearly immediately without any interaction.

This data is invaluable and will highlight that the issue you have may not be in your marketing but your website is not converting the web visitors (traffic) to leads and sales.  A deeper look may also reveal that those who remain may abandon their purchases half-way because they struggle to find the check-out page or due to a similar reason.

Based on these findings, now might be the right time to invest on a mobile-friendly website with a professional branding, and a design layout that engages the visitors within the first 2-4 seconds with a strong value proposition to your ideal customer. You can also improve other non-performing pages and usability issues such as easy access to the check-out page.

Once you have improved your website or got a new one and reduced your bounce rate you are now in a position to market to your business and also look into using retargeting advertising to remind customers of your business and any abandoned purchases.

The Digital Growth Sessions are fully-funded by the NSW Government to provide you with the best in digital expertise. Book Now

Minimise Costs And Increase Efficiency Conducting regular data analysis can help your business minimise unnecessary costs and increase efficiency. Ideally, a business should monitor its website and social media channels weekly and spend more time at the end of each month analysing this data. By doing so, business owners can identify which marketing and promotion strategies are not working and make informed decisions to stop promotions or adopt an alternative method which is more cost-effective.

For example, if you spend a lot on Facebook advertising, analysing the engagement and revenue it brings can help you decide whether it’s something you should continue, amplify or if it’s time to try something different. Similar to Facebook advertising, you can also analyse other channels that you’re investing in to bring in revenue and make it more profitable for you. These could vary from promotional activities to offers, find out what’s working and focus on that channel.

If you want to know more about Facebook advertising and how you can make it work for you, click on the link to read more on Facebook budgeting.

Helps You And Your Team Be On The Same Track Whether you’re a small or medium business, having all your team members on the same page helps you run a smooth operation. By monitoring and analysing your business’s data regularly, you have an insight into what’s truly driving your business and bringing in the results.

If your salesperson has noticed a sudden interest in fitness activities in your locality and communicates it to the rest of the team then they can come up with content and marketing strategies that can cater to this demand again once they have validated the sales persons observations using data that is often at our finger tips.

To derive the best results from data analysis, teams need to communicate their findings and discuss strategies together. This will help everyone to be on the same page and also keep track of their progress as a team.

Tools To Help You With Data Analysis

Google Analytics This is a free service provided by Google to track the performance of your website. The platform allows its users to identify many crucial factors of their website including, the highest and lowest performing pages, devices they use to access the website and insights to their audience, in terms of location and times they view the site.

Google analytics provides sufficient data for businesses to come up with a comprehensive analysis of their website and their customers’ journey on their site.

image source: Klipfolio.com

What To Look Out For? User – This refers to the number of unique visitors to the website. This metric will help you understand if a particular page on your website generates more interest compared to another.

Bounce rate – This is the total percentage of users who visit a website and leave immediately without any further clicks on the page.

Session – Google Analytics starts recording a session as soon as someone visits your website. This includes the time it takes for the page to load and the session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Every click, pageview, and transaction is tracked during this time frame and is counted as one session.

Average Session Duration – This metric tells you how long on average a visitor stays on your website. It’s calculated by using the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) with the total number of sessions.

Pageview – If a user is loading or viewing a page on your website that is counted as a pageview.

Social Media Analytics Each social media platform offers its own analytics dashboard. Facebook Insights, for instance, provides a detailed breakdown of the performance of a page and posts published on that page. You can learn about who is engaging with your page, their demographics, and location. These will help you understand what kind of content works best for your audience and how much money and time you should be investing in social media platforms. Similarly, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn have analytics dashboards.

image source: socialmediaexaminer.com

What To Look For:

Engagement – Likes, shares, comments, and clicks fall under this category. These metrics are a good indicator of how well content is performing on Facebook. Actions like sharing, commenting and clicking, in particular, show that the audience is displaying interest to connect with the brand apart from liking it.

Click Through Rate – This takes the number of clicks a post gets and divides it by the number of impressions. A low CTR means you have a high number of impressions and a low number of clicks and that your content isn’t resonating with your audience.

Reach – This metric indicates the number of people who see your content on Facebook.

Impressions – This number tells you how many times a post has been seen

Email Analytics This is another important platform if your business sends regular emails to a customer base. By understanding and analysing metrics below you might be able to improve the content in your emails to ensure that your brand gets the attention it deserves.

image source: agencyanalytics.com

What To Look For:

Open Rate – This tells you how many times your email has been opened.

Clicks Rate – This number tells you the interaction the subscriber has had with your email by clicking links on the email, whether it’s to visit the website or read more.

Action Rate Over Time – This metric will help you identify what time your subscribers are most interested in taking action with your emails.

Conclusion Data analysis can no longer be ignored by small or medium businesses anymore. The benefits it brings to a company are invaluable and all business owners should make a conscious effort to invest the time to understand their business’s data.

Growth cannot be achieved if you are not willing to look at the results and fine-tune your strategies to cater to customers’ needs and wants. As mentioned earlier, this can lead to a streamlined operation that minimises unnecessary costs and focuses on how you can serve your customers in a more meaningful way.

Setting Goals For Your Business In 2020

As we inch closer to not only a New Year, but a new decade, this is the perfect time to start creating goals that will take your business to the next level of success in the New Year.

The challenge is creating a plan that’s ambitious enough to inspire (always aim high!) but practical enough to implement and quantify. This is where setting SMART Goals can help you.

But First, What Is A SMART Goal? Goals are an important part of every aspect in a business and provide a necessary sense of direction, focus, and significance. By setting goals, you are providing your business with objectives and targets; SMART goals take that one step further.

SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

image source: google images

Specific: Your goals should be clear and answer the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where and why).

Measurable: The goals should have specific criteria that can be measured to determine accomplishments

Attainable: The goals needs to be realistic and achievable.

Relevant: Your goal should relate to your overall business goals and factor in current trends in your industry.

Timely: Your goal should have an end date.

As a result, a SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria to help focus your efforts and increase the odds of achieving that goal. So, where do you begin? Here are a few pointers to help you set your goals for your business in 2020.

Start By Reviewing 2019 Before you set goals for the coming year, it’s important to review the past year – what you achieved, what you didn’t and why? Were you serving your ideal customer? Were there risks that could have been avoided? Were there missed opportunities?

Write down all the goals you had and milestones on one document (Google docs or excels sheets work fine) and then take a moment to review the successes across the whole year as well as areas that you think require improvements. This gives you the motivation to take into your evaluation for next year’s plan.

Many small business owners get so caught by the details of running a day-to-day business that they forget the reason why they started – the unique value proposition which they offer customers.

Before you can create new goals, you need to understand who your customer is, what value proposition you offer to customers, and what your competition is currently offering in the market and where there are gaps for a new entrant. In other words, you need to do some market research as well.

Think About Your Vision For The Business When planning your goals it’s essential that they fit into the overall vision you have for the business. Any goal or strategy that you implement should align to the larger vision of the business and contribute in the long run. Remember the 5 W’s when considering your businesses overall vision. This provides a good starting point for planning all your goals and affords you the opportunity to assess whether your overall vision seems outdated for your current needs or requires adjusting.

Set Your Twelve-Month Goal Before we jump into any new goals for the year, we first need to create the financial goal for the business. Setting your financial goal is an important step toward growing your business and becoming financially secure. The ultimate objective in any business is higher revenue, but cost reduction has diminishing returns and organic growth has its limits, so acquiring a healthy, cash-flow can lead you to positive earnings.

One way of creating your financial goal is by reviewing the Life Time Value (LTV) or average revenue of your ideal customers, and then forecast your acquisition goal for the coming year. LTV can help define several economic decisions in a business including marketing and sales budget, resources, and profitability.

Once you have your financial goal, you can work on your other major goals for 2020 – you can break them into monthly, quarterly or even year-end goals depending on your resources and business model if that’s easier for you. Remember, completion of these goals should be a clear signal that you’re getting closer to achieving your vision. And because these are SMART goals, each of them should have specific criteria that can be measured to determine the success rate.

Say you have some form of marketing leads growth or customer retention goals? Whatever you decide on, they should have quantitative measures to track them. For example, “60% repeat customer ratio” as a goal is much easier to measure than “Deliver good customer service.’

Set Up A Brainstorming Session For Strategic Initiatives Once you have your goals in order, it’s time to start thinking of strategic initiatives that will help you to reach your goals.

An ideal way to do this is to focus on creating 3 main critical success factors (CSF). These are best described as the means and/or desired results, as well as the action.

Here Are a Few Examples:

Consider conducting a SWOT Analysis of your business to help you with this. A SWOT analysis is a strategic initiative that helps you understand your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The outcome should increase your value to your customers and differentiate your business from the competition.

If you work solely on your own, it may help you to sit with a professional strategist to review your goals and define a strategy to work on that focuses on multiple projects for that year, which in turn will add up to realizing the annual goal. If you successfully complete your strategic initiatives, you’ll be on the road to achieving your annual goal.

The Digital Growth Sessions are fully-funded by the NSW Government to provide you with the best in digital expertise. Book Now

Prioritise Initiatives While it would be great if we could work on every strategic idea we have, the reality is that most businesses have limited time and resources. Because of this, you will need to prioritise the strategic initiatives you have created in order of importance and benefit to your business. Focus on your CSFs, and everything else should follow after in order of importance and requirement in the business.

Fill In The Knowledge Gap Based on the CFSs, it’s not uncommon to find yourself uncertain about many areas of the business. Especially if you feel there might be a significant knowledge based gap that’s causing the problem. One way to get over these hurdles is to keep yourself up to date with the latest news, skills and tools for your business.

Whether it’s attending a workshop, reading e-books or blogs and even online webinars, continuously learning will not only help your business to grow, but you as well.

Review Your Goals Finally, in an effort to avoid your goals from being put in a drawer only to collect dust and be forgotten about, track you progress with KPIs and set a date to review them. In addition to that, make sure you have a process for making changes to your plan as the year progresses. Adjusting goals (whether you overshot or undershot) shouldn’t be perceived as negative – it’s something that’s compulsory in order to keep moving forward.

Key areas to measure include:

Conclusion Creating new goals for your business takes time. Don’t waste hours listening to opinions of what you should be doing or what may or may not work. Instead focus on getting data about previous goals, create budgets, consider your resources, and make smart decisions on where you want your business to be next year. It’s important to stay motivated, follow through with your plans and focus on the task at hand to achieve success.

5 Ways To Optimise Your Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting campaigns are an effective form of digital marketing which has the potential to turn prospective customers into paying customers through the use of specific ads based on their behaviour online.

If you’ve never run a retargeting campaign before, do read our blog How can a retargeting campaign benefit your business?, to learn more about how these ads works.

To sum it up – retargeting is advertising to people who have already visited your website. As per research, over 90% of first time web visitors leave without making a purchase or signing up. They also typically get busy and may forget your brand and end up buying elsewhere. Hence, retarget advertising is a great way of being front of mind to these people and bringing them back to your website.

Whether you’ve just started testing campaigns or you’re a seasoned ad expert, here are some easy tips to help take your campaigns to another next level.

Understand The Buyer Journey Understanding the buyer journey is an important part of any business and is particularly important when it comes to retargeting campaigns. Similar to the marketing funnel, the buyer’s journey begins with a cluster of customers at the top of the funnel in the awareness stage and ends up at the bottom with fewer people in the conversion stage.

image source: medium

Retargeting campaigns are designed to capture more consumers as they pass through the funnel, but they are only effective if you understand who you want to see the ads and when. If there’s one thing all marketers agree on, it’s that you must have a detailed understanding of customer data and the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. That means understanding what’s successful and what’s not. Which customers are converting on which channel? Which ads are working best for revenue?

Improve Your Audience Targeting If you’re targeting everyone with your advertising, then you’re doing it wrong. People will visit your website for different reasons. When a prospective customer visits a particular web page, they are displaying different buyer intents. It’s possible that they aren’t even planning to buy your product, but simply comparing it to a competitor product. The key with retargeting ads is to match your ads with your audiences’ intent.

For example – If your business is running a catering service and someone visits your website page about your evening buffet service for summer weddings, you want to segment that group into a custom audience titled like “summer wedding” or “evening buffet” If you want it broken down even further then segment groups for “evening wedding in Sydney”.

image source: addthis

To improve your advertising, create various audiences based on what your visitors are interested in. You can also create retargeting ads for social media channels, so depending on which channels your target audience is active on, test out a few ads on these channels.

Watch The Frequency Of Your Retargeting Ads Ad frequency is often overlooked when running campaigns, but it is something that we should be thinking about in terms of improving the overall performance. High frequency can have a negative impact on buyers. It can be seen as annoying, invasive, and even worse – it cause prospective customers to associate irritation with your brand.

When you’re setting up your campaigns, make sure to set an advertising frequency limit of about 2 per day. If your audience sees an ad more than twice, either turn it off after a few days (giving them a break from the ad) or change the imagery so they have something new to look at.

image source: defunktional

Experiment Until You Find The Best Offer A retargeted ad should ideally send a visitor to a website page which they previously visited, however, offering incentives in retargeting ads are also a great call-to-action. If you’re not sure what your incentive should be based on, take some time to analyse your traffic. Whether you plan on offering a discount or free resources, first find out what is reaping more traffic? This could be a product, service or even a blog article.

Once you’ve pinpointed a few pages with high traffic – take it a step further by analysing conversion rate for each of them. In simpler terms, what’s the total number of conversions from a specific page compared to the total number of visitors? The higher the conversion rate, the better the incentive.

Don’t Ignore The Power Of Emotional Advertising While it would be nice to believe that we all act rationally when we go shopping, the truth of the matter is that emotions play a large role in our shopping decisions. A straightforward list of product features will appeal to the rational mind for some users, but it has no effect on their emotions. Our emotional side doesn’t care about features and ease of use, it wants to see, feel and imagine the benefits it could make in our lives.

image source: forbes

Brands like Nike and Coca-Cola are famed for their emotional and heartfelt ads. The Sainsbury Christmas advertisement “Mog’s Kitchen Calamity” features a Christmas-esque story complete with furry pets, snowflakes and a soft-spoken narrator, a perfect example of a brand eliciting strong emotions and connection by utilising the “feel good” Christmas spirit.

It’s important to target both sides of potential customers in your retargeting ads. Speak like a friend, not a sales person. They’ve already shown some interest in your website, now bring them back with a reason that speaks to their heart.

Remarketing can be a valuable tool in your marketing strategy and we hope these tips help you with your next campaigns. If you’re not experienced with retargeting or just need a helping hand, consider consulting a digital specialist to help you incorporate it into your strategy and set you on the right path.

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HOT OR NOT: Digital Marketing Trends You Need To Know Before 2020

With only one month to go, 2020 is almost upon us. Not only is it a new year but an entirely new decade as well. Yes, let that sink in! As you prepare your business for new challenges, risks, and growth in the upcoming year, here’s a list of the hottest trends in digital marketing that every small and medium business owner needs to know before 2020.

The Power of Videos 2019 has been a huge year for videos, especially on social media. When it’s done right, videos can be fun, interactive and informative. While many still prefer to consume information by reading, the number of people who would rather watch a video instead is rapidly increasing. In a fast-paced world, where everyone is time-poor and convenience is highly valued, videos seem to be the perfect answer.

image source: oberlo.com

So how can you adapt this to your business? For many business owners, the first obstacle in doing video content would be “I’m camera shy” or “I’m not sure what to say” or perhaps that nagging self-doubt feeling of “I’m not sure if people would want to listen to me.” We assure you, every YouTube content creator you’ve come across or motivational speaker has had to overcome one or more of these obstacles at some point in their lives.

Start small. Talk about what you know best: your business, your customers and how you can improve the quality of their lives. Videos perform better when it’s informative, interesting and connects to your audience on a personal level.

If you’ve already identified your customer personas, pen down a few video ideas that will take them through the customer’s buying journey. Make sure to focus these videos on their pain points, needs, and aspirations which will help you create a better relationship with your audience.

Voice Search Similar to videos, voice search will also be big next year. In 2018, it was found that 57 per cent of Aussies are using voice search (iProspect). Research also shows that Australians are adapting faster to voice search compared to their counterparts in the U.S. So one thing is certain, these numbers are only going to soar through the roof by next year.

image source: dialogtech.com

If you’re looking to jump on the bandwagon of enabling voice search for your business, one of the key things to focus on is getting search engine optimisation (SEO) for voice search right. Factor in the differences in the use of language and words when people type and verbally interact.

For example, someone would type “best pub parma near me’ and say “What is the best pub for parma near me”. So ensure to include long-tail keywords (which specifically describes what your audience might be looking for). As a result, voice search queries tend to be longer and have three to five keywords in length. Note that the search will include words like who, how, what, where, why, where and when and that you will have to fine-tune content to answer these specific questions.

If you want to take advantage of voice search, list your business on all the relevant platforms including Google My Business, Apple Maps, Bing and Yelp. This will help voice assistants such as Google search, Siri, Alexa, and Cortana find you during a search query.

Capitalising on online reviews will also help your business rank better on voice search so ask your customers to review your business on sites like Yelp and Google My Business. Coming up with a few keywords that are most suitable for your small or medium business will also increase your chances of being ranked better.

Augmented Reality

Both, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are not new concepts but their roles in our day-to-day lives are going to increase in 2020. With AR, more businesses will be able to offer personalised service whether it’s through their website or app to help customers make informed purchases.

Major companies such as IKEA, Kia, and Coco-Cola are already using AR technology to provide a personalised experience to their customers to solve different problems. Whether it’s demonstrating how certain furniture may look in a specific space by using an app or a visual introduction to new features of a car, AR is sure to change the customer journey and how we purchase.

If you’re interested in using augmented reality to give that extra advantage for your small or medium business, here are a few ways you can use it.

Include an AR marker on your printed catalogues or product packages, so with the help of an app people can access additional information or even make a quick order online.

If you’re in the field of real estate, augmented reality can be very useful in demonstrating a realistic presentation of the property. With a host of affordable AR apps available for this specific industry, this will help small scale businesses raise their standards.

Cybersecurity With over 23,000 Australian businesses reported to have experienced some form of cybercrime in 2019 (CIO Australia) the importance of cybersecurity is without a doubt crucial in 2020.

Business owners, irrespective of their size need to understand that their websites can be the target of a malicious cyberattack if they do not take necessary precautions. If you’re a small or medium business owner looking to set up your business online, make sure to have a thorough conversation on the different aspects of cybersecurity with the website development agency.

image source: stanfieldit.com

As much as growth, increasing leads and conversions are a priority for your business, protecting it from cyberattacks is a responsibility that should not be ignored.

Digital privacy is another area of cybersecurity business owners should be aware of to safeguard their data as well as of their customers’. Here are a few key steps you can practice to protect the digital privacy of your business.

Ensure that your website uses an SSL certificate and the HTTPS protocol especially on pages that collect sensitive data. Both the SSL certificate and the protocol use a high-level of encryption to secure data that is being communicated.

Multiple people using one login and password make it very difficult to find out when a privacy breach occurs. Therefore, make sure to use individual login accounts and strong passwords to protect against access via login credentials.

If your business has multiple accounts on different platforms, use Password Manager to create and retrieve strong passwords without too much of a hassle.

Personalisation We may share the world with 7.7 billion people but we’re all looking for a personalised experience that will make us feel special. Thankfully, no one is tasked with the mammoth obstacle of trying to please 7.7 billion humans. But the sentiment still stands true. In the new decade, more people will be looking for information, services, and products that are catering to their needs. Irrespective of how small or large your customer base is they all want a personalised service or experience. So how do you create content that will resonate with all of them?

“The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, ‘This was written specifically for me.“ ~Jamie Turner.

Companies including Coco-Cola, Amazon, and Netflix have been using personalisation to connect with their customers for years and are seeing great results. A personalised video campaign done by Cadbury in Australia, matching a Dairy Milk flavour to users based on the different elements from their Facebook, saw a huge increase in engagement and conversion rates.

image source: campaignlive.co.uk

Although these may be big brands with bigger budgets, small and medium companies can also adapt personalisation to their marketing campaigns. To get this formula right, you first need to understand your clients, their needs, their aspirations and problems better. Then create content that will resonate with them and help them solve their problems. If you’re looking for more information on personalised contenting marketing, click on the link to check out our blog post on it.

Chatbots Chatbots is another trend that has had massive growth over the last few years. In 2016, Business Insider predicted that over 80 per cent of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation by 2020. With months away from the New Year, many big brands have transitioned to using chatbots to manage different areas of their business, mainly customer service.

The use of chatbots can benefit a company in multiple ways including guaranteed customer satisfaction and saving time. As chatbots are capable of handling customer queries at any point of time and providing accurate information (if it has been programmed appropriately), this will have a direct impact on a business’s conversions and sales figures.

image source: i-programmer.info

A small scale business can use chatbots in numerous ways. The chatbot’s most well-known function is providing customer service which frees up a considerable amount of time for a business owner. As chatbots can retain a lot of information, they can use this to better help future users and provide recommendations to customers influencing their decision-making process.

You can also use chatbots to automate the sales process from start to finish. Businesses can also look into using chatbots with more advanced features such as streamlined payment systems. This will provide customers the ability to complete a transaction without leaving the chat interface and make regular purchases as easy as clicking a button.

Social Messaging Apps Social media has become one of the biggest necessities in the modern-day world whether it’s for personal or business use. Similarly, the popularity of social messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Viber, WeChat and Snapchat has been increasing and will continue to do so in the coming years.

image source: statista

With the combined number of users of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat, surpassing Facebook and YouTube, it’s time to look at using these apps to reach your customers. With over 55 billion messages been exchanged daily on WhatsApp alone, businesses must find out which messaging apps their customers are active on.

Since social messaging apps allow personalisation, small and medium businesses can use this to their advantage to send personalised messages directly to customers. This will help improve engagement as well as enhance the overall customer experience and relationship.

Once you identify which platform your customers are active on, you can use it in multiple ways to interact with them. Whether it’s to provide information regarding your products or services, boost sales, invite customers for events or as a customer service platform, the options are numerous.

Visual Search Visual search is another trend that will gain momentum in 2020. As indicated by its name, visual search allows people to upload an image and conduct a search based on it to get specific results. Platforms such as Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, and Pinterest are providing this option to users to help them track down exactly what they are looking for.

In the case of Google Lens, it recognises objects and landmarks through a camera phone and provides additional details regarding the search. Bing Visual Search will help users find details of specific elements within an image, which can be very useful.

image source: the verge

If your business sells interior décor and a potential customer happens to see a specific wall hanging they like on an image found on Bing Visual Search, the detail view will provide more information on it including where it can be purchased. Pinterest introduced a visual search tool called Lens to enable users to take a photo of an item to find out where to buy it online.

If your business falls under the categories of fashion and beauty, home décor, food, products, travel and vehicles, visual search will help you boost your business and leads. Using multiple high-resolution images, the right keywords describing your products, optimising image titles and descriptions, are just some of the few ways you can optimise your business for visual search. Don’t forget to add alternative text and include captions for every image you upload to increase the chances of your products being discovered.

5G network 5G (Fifth Generation) is still in its infant stages but will make a huge impact in the world once its functionalities are properly rolled out in the coming year. It will influence nearly every industry including IT, transportation, health care, manufacturing, agriculture, education, and entertainment.

As of now, 5G’s new features include greater speed in transferring data, increased response speed, network slicing and the ability to connect to more devices including sensors and smart devices simultaneously.

These features will pave the way to a plethora of opportunities for all businesses including small and medium-sized businesses.

image source: statista

5G’s ability to connect to multiple devices simultaneously will enable small businesses to conduct their operations much faster which will enhance customer experience and satisfaction.

Through network slicing, operators can split a single physical network into multiple virtual networks that can be tailored to different types of services or customer segments. This means a business can have its private 5G network customised to its needs. Network slicing also prevents cyberattacks from spreading from one virtual network to another which increases user experiences for businesses.

With 5G’s super-fast internet, small and medium businesses are also being offered the chance to take innovation to the next level. Whether it’s creating video experiences for customers or giving 3D presentations at meetings, conferences or events, businesses will be able to provide an enriching visual experience to its customers.

Conclusion In short, all the trends we’ve been seeing in the last few years – videos, voice search, personalised content, augmented reality, chatbots, social messaging apps, and visual search are going to play an active role in 2020. Additionally, cybercrime is also going to be on the rise, so make sure to take adequate steps to get your business secured in the coming year. Most importantly keep an eye on 5G which set to revolutionise the operations of every industry.

So these are nine digital marketing trends that will make a big impact in the New Year. Let us know if you agree and what you’d like to know more about.

How To Rank “ZERO” On Google And Increase Your Digital Presence

Position Zero, also known as featured snippets placements was introduced by Google in 2014, but has been largely ignored by most businesses since then. But what is position zero, and why does it matter for your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy?

What is Position Zero? Position Zero (P0) refers to the first result that shows on Google search results above SEO listings. Better known as the featured snippet, the P0 is designed to answer search inquiries, without needing to click any link in the listings.

If you’ve never seen a snippet before, here’s an example:

As you can see in this screenshot, the snippet displayed in this search has a numbered list from a travel blog. However, Google has chosen to display an image from a different website than the one it took the list from. That is why Alt text (alternative text) in images also plays a role in SEO.

Where Do Snippets Come From? Back in the day, before Google even existed, search engines including Yahoo used directories created and managed by humans for search information. As content continued to increase on the web it became impossible for these people to keep the directories updated. It’s at this point that the search engines started using algorithms and AI curation.

When Google launched the Knowledge Graph, its information database, it was based entirely on human-curated data from sites like Wikidata. You can see an example of this data in “Knowledge Cards,” For example, this card appears on a search for “who is prime minister of Australia”

The answer is short and factual and comes from the information curated by Knowledge Graph.

Although Google tries its best to match queries to answers in the Knowledge Graph, they can’t avoid the obvious limits of human curation. There are several questions that don’t fit within the Knowledge Graph model. For example, if you search for “how does Australian minister work?” (pardon the awful syntax), you will be showed this snippet:

Google’s solution to this question was to search the billions of pages in their index and generate an answer in real time. If you go to the source page, in this case the Parliament of Australia website, you’ll notice the text in the snippet is taken directly from on-page copy.

However, it’s not as simple as taking content from the first paragraphs and sticking them on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). Google searches for extremely relevant results and has been fine tuning this since launching P0.

Position Zero Plays A Key Role In Voice Search According to Google statistics, 20% of all searches are voice, and that number will continue to grow in 2020. P0 is essential for voice searches because it’s the snippet that gets read out during a search. This is just another reason to optimise your content for P0 – otherwise you could miss out on voice search traffic and leads.

How Do You Get Ranked On P0? Keep in mind that P0 is very unpredictable – a search that produces one snippet will show something entirely different an hour later. But getting that position even once can provide so much of visibility to your business, which can lead to website visits, leads, and eventually more revenue for your business.

To get your business on PO you need to check two criteria’s:

Firstly, you must be ranked organically on the first page of results for a particular query. Secondly, your content should effectively target the question asked.

Let’s first focus on the first criteria. While you do need to be ranked on the first page, you don’t need to hold first position, although it certainly doesn’t hurt, but in general, P0 URLs are taken from the 1st search result down to 5th position.

For the second criteria, your content, keywords and formatting are all factors that Google will take into consideration when picking snippets.

What Kind Of Content Should You Create? To make your content worthy of Google’s attention, it’s helpful to take note of the 5Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) when creating content.

image source: emaze.com

To makes things easier, ask yourself this when creating content: is the answer a matter of fact? For example, a question like “When is Labour Day?” is going to be pulled from the Knowledge Graph. Although human curation can’t keep up with the web, sites like Wikipedia still contain a massive amount of information. So these types of questions won’t produce snippets.

Instead, most snippets appear for “What”  “Why and even “How” questions since these can’t be answered with a simple explanation. A benefit of this is that the snippet summary often appears as a teaser to a longer answer. This summary can add credibility to your business while still attracting clicks to onsite content. For example, a search for “word to pptx” brings up a snippet for a “How to” page.

What Format Will Work Best For You? Snippets are available in different formats including:

How To‘s How-to searches will almost always trigger P0 results. For example, the search “how to grow grapes” yields the following P0 information.

Most “how-to” searches yield snippets with results that have step-by-step instructions to guide searchers through the process. You could also choose to opt-out the numbered list for an infographic.

Comparisons Most people want a quick comparison when deciding on brands or products to purchase. This P0 result for “Colgate vs crest” gives a summary of the competing brands with a link for searchers to learn more.

Pricing Information Searches related to pricing display P0 results which give searchers helpful breakdowns of how much they should expect to pay whether on products, services or travel. Want to know how much it costs to travel in Sydney? Here’s some information in the form of a snippet.

Lists This is one of the top searches in the purchase process and they make great P0 results. Been wondering what the top-rated skincare brands were? Check this list of “skincare brands”.

Videos You may occasionally find videos on P0 – like the above formats, the videos are answering some form of search so the key is to make sure your titles are clear and target a particular keyword’s.

Whichever format you are more comfortable working with – just make sure your topic is both:

Optimising Your Content For Position Zero Now that you know all about P0 and what types of content Google prefers, all you have to do is learn how to structure your website content. The basic formula for how to rank in P0 is:

If you are still unsure about the kind of content you need to create or how – pay attention to snippets in your niche industry. Check out what your competitors are doing, what kind of answers they’re providing and which formats they use.

Once you have this information you can figure out which areas you can improve to land your website in Position Zero. Alternatively, book a free consultation with our digital specialists who can help you go over your content strategy and optimise it for Position Zero.

Social Media Trends To Watch Out For In 2020

With an estimate of 3.48 billion active users, social media has connected people and businesses in ways we wouldn’t have imagined 10 years ago. With the dawn of a New Year and new decade, the influence social media has over lives and businesses is only going to increase.

To help you plan your social media strategy for the upcoming year, we compiled a list of social media trends that will make the biggest impact in 2020.

Audio on Instagram Stories Instagram stories have seen a huge increase since its launch in 2016. As of January 2019, there are 500 million accounts that use stories daily. If you’re already using stories to interact with your followers, that’s excellent! In 2020, audio is going to play a huge role in stories. Many bands are already using music and voice to make it more interactive and interesting.

Buffer recently posted a story on Instagram where the text that appeared on the post was readout. This added a sense of auditory presence to an otherwise ordinary or perhaps even boring post. While we recommend that you start using videos for your stories, experiment with adding voice or music and see how your followers respond to it.

image source: bustle.com

Shoppable Posts When shoppable posts were launched in Australia in 2018, it changed the way people shopped online. It allowed retailers to turn their Instagram accounts into virtual stores, providing an easy and interactive shopping experience to consumers. With the seamless transition from Instagram account to the retailer’s website, the buying journey was shortened to scrolling and a few clicks. So you can see why its popularity is increasing in the New Year. More people are choosing to engage in online shopping than actually having to visit a shop.

Companies like Incy Interiors, Country Road and Myer are already using Instagram shopping to sell their products. This is a great tool for small and medium businesses who are looking to expand their customer reach using social media. However, there are a few things you need to know if you’re planning to get on board with shopping on Instagram.

For more details on shopping on Instagram and their policies click on the link.

image source: theverge.com

Shopping on Explore With a separate feature dedicated to shopping on the explore feed, Instagram is connecting brands and users from around the world. The feed is curated according to different interests and behaviour of the user, offering a more relevant and individualised shopping experience to customers. This feature serves a dual-purpose of connecting genuine customers to businesses as well as providing shoppers a hassle-free shopping experience based on their taste.

Videos In the coming New Year, video content is going to get bigger and better. From Facebook, Instagram, YouTube to LinkedIn, all research and data are pointing towards a huge increase in videos. With 85 percent of consumers wanting to see more video content from brands (source –HubSpot), more people are actively using videos to influence their customer’s purchasing behaviour.

So if you’re looking for a reason to start on video content for your business, there’s no time like now!

Big brands such as Nike, Dove, and Gillette have tackled subjects such as sexist assumptions, beauty stereotypes, male behaviour, and sexual harassment through their video campaigns. These videos went viral and resonated with millions across the world.

While it’s true that the companies have big budgets and entire teams working behind these campaigns, the number one takeaway should be that when you create videos focus on telling stories that matter to you as well as your audience. At a time where people are looking for authenticity and connection, genuine content will have a deeper impact and resonate better with your followers.

image source: squartech.com

YouTube With over 1.9 billion active monthly users, YouTube is the second most popular social media platform in the world. So naturally, when video content increases in the New Year, YouTube’s popularity is going to soar through the roof.

From educational how-to videos to brand messages, more people are subscribing to channels on YouTube to learn, discover new ideas, products, and services.

If you’re looking to expand your customer reach and share content that has the potential to make an impact, starting a YouTube channel is something you should consider for your business.

Micro-influencers and Facebook Groups We have all heard of how influencers with millions of followers can impact the aspirations and purchasing behaviour of their audience. However, now more people are relying on individuals they know and trust instead of celebrities or well-known influencers who they cannot relate to. Consumers are looking for honest reviews and want to be told the truth.

This is why micro-influencers, ideally from your community will be able to create better relationships with potential customers who are from the same group. Communities will see them as a trusted friend who they have something in common with as opposed to a hyped-up influencer.

In 2020, the number of micro-influencers and community Facebook groups will see a significant increase. Social media will serve as the platform for communities to engage in one of the oldest yet one of the best ways of advertising and promotion: word of mouth.

If your business is looking to participate in Facebook group discussions, go to the group feature on explore and find groups that are associated to your industry and interests. Join a few groups and provide useful information to create engagement.

image source: buffer.com

Social Media as Customer Service One of the first things we do when we want to visit a new restaurant, café, bar or store is to read their reviews online. And when we have questions, we prefer sending a message via social media instead of calling them. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have really shined through as customer support and service tools in the last few years. In the New Year, social media’s role to provide this service is only going to increase.

So remember to always make time to engage with your followers on social media, whether it’s liking a comment or leaving a ‘Thank you’. How you interact with your followers and customers online reflects your business and ultimately its reputation.

Conclusion Here are the key things you need to keep tabs on the social media front for the coming year. There’ll be an increase of videos on all social media platforms and audio on Instagram stories. Interactions and engagement between retailers and consumers around the world will increase as a result of shoppable posts and the shopping feature on Instagram.

Businesses will have to rely on micro-influencers to do their advertising and promotional work for them as more people will turn to Facebook community groups for recommendations. And importantly, YouTube is going to be big next year, so start thinking about what kind of videos you’d like to create.

As we prepare to welcome 2020, we must keep ourselves updated with the latest trends to help us improve interactions with our followers which will eventually lead to better relationships and ultimately a higher conversion rate.

Digital Bootcamp And Become A Digital Innovator

The life of an entrepreneur isn’t easy, especially in today’s digital age where everyone is chasing their own vision of success online. While the internet has opened up amazing opportunities for small and medium business owners, it is also filled with thousands of other businesses all fighting for attention.

Business owners have been told to get a website, get on social media, create Google ads and SEO, and having done all that; after spending all your time and thousands of dollars, when you don’t get results it can be very frustrating.

This is a big issue for business owners and entrepreneurs alike. How do you get results – how do you exploit the opportunity the internet presents every business? There are few basic principles of success and there is a process, most importantly it’s about understanding digital strategy for your business.

With 57% of the world’s population now digitally connected, digital marketing and innovative thinking plays an important role in ensuring your business stands apart from competitors and thrives online. And with digital innovations and technology constantly evolving daily, it’s so important to get the ‘right knowledge’ to keep up.

Now, hold on! You don’t need to go and spend thousands of dollars learning from the best. The Netstripes Digital Bootcamp was created specifically to assist the needs of Aussie small and medium businesses in need of a digital transformation.

At Netstripes, we believe a successful business should always start with a strong digital foundation to meet the needs of the online market, that’s why our CEO and Founder, Dinesh De Silva has carefully curated a 2 half-day program intended to deliver awareness and deep insights on what’s needed to succeed in the digital world.

The digital bootcamp program is also a part of the Business Connect program, a dedicated and personalised NSW Government program that provides trusted advice to help start or grow small businesses, but more on that later.

The digital bootcamps are held regularly throughout New South Wales and are customised to suit the needs of each community and industry we work with, whether it be farming or wineries to consulting services such as legal and accounting. So you can be sure the unique challenges your business faces are being addressed.

Still not convinced this might be useful for your business? Here’s a peek into our Digital Bootcamp itinerary to help you decide:

Day 1:

Small Business Digital Readiness We will be kicking off the bootcamp with digital readiness and innovation for small businesses, and why it’s so important for your business. We’ll also learn how to build a roadmap to your business goals by going through several aspects of digital readiness such as the do’s and don’ts, marketing traps to avoid and the essentials steps of digital engagement that all small business owners should know to be able to reach prospective customers.

By understanding the skills and knowledge needed to build a strong digital presence, it becomes much easier to develop your own strategy and become a digitally ready business within the frame of you budget.

2nd Session: Customer Personas & Buying Cycle Do you know who your ideal customer is? It’s a simple question, but one that a lot of small businesses haven’t asked themselves yet. Unless you work in the FMCG industry, no business has a “one size fits all” solution. There are just some people who won’t value your product or services.

That’s why it’s so important to identify who your ideal customer is, what are their needs and wants, and their buying behaviour—and that’s exactly what we’ll be covering here. From defining what exactly an ideal customer looks like, to actions you can use to discover and connect with your own, this segment is sure to have you channelling your focus and reworking your strategy.

Day 2

3rd Session: Design Thinking & Lean Startup At this stage, we’ll be focusing on innovation principles for every business, and take a look at case studies of businesses that have implemented these principles to achieve success. You’ll also be introduced to the validation board and how it plays an important role in converting a business idea into a tested product or service that makes you money.

By using the board correctly, small businesses can put together all their ideas, propositions and assumptions into one ‘blueprint’ that can be tested and measured. Through this method, you can find and eliminate bad assumptions that could be harming your business model and then set your priorities and watch your startup ideas quickly take off.

4th Session: Growth Hacking for Small Business As a business owner, building your company is one of your top priorities, but as a small business owner, you know that’s easier said than done. You might lack the budget for major marketing promotions or the time to focus on strategic growth, especially when there are so many other areas you have to oversee. So, how do you overcome this?

The answer is growth hacking. This refers to the widely used method of combining and experimenting with your marketing channels, sales segments and multiple strategies to identify the most effective and efficient ways to grow a business.

In the final segment, we’ll be looking at growth hacking and why it’s so important for every small business to master it. We’ll also discuss how to start the growth hacking process, decide on what strategies work best for different businesses and how to implement them in a way that is measurable.

All the digital bootcamps are very interactive and are presented by Dinesh himself, so you know you’re learning from someone with years of experience in the industry.

In addition, you can follow up the bootcamp with our Growth Advisory Sessions – these are a total of four 1-on-1 sessions with our digital specialists, and they are funded by the Business Connect program so they are completely free of charge for small businesses in NSW. You can even book an advisory session without attending the bootcamp, to discuss your business goals and concerns with our specialists.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us for more information.

A Holistic Digital & Marketing System

A 12-month program that uses digital strategy, online branding, expert guidance and professional marketing to help you achieve your goal.

Affordable And Easy Ways To Building An Effective Email Database

As most of us know, it costs businesses more money to attract new customers than to keep an existing one. Focusing on customer retention is a valuable long-term solution for increasing your businesses revenue and maintaining sustainable growth, but it’s not always easy to cultivate brand loyalty.

One way to do it, is to create content that adds value to your customers’ lives. While there are several ways you can do this, email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to reach your audience, if done correctly.

We’ve all subscribed to a newsletter or two at some point in our lives because we wanted to know more about a particular service, person or product. The biggest brands like ASOS or even cosmopolitan cultivate customer loyalty, and in doing so, create brand advocates, by providing valuable content such as special offers, promotional materials, news and events in their branded newsletters.

There is no easy way of growing an email database – it takes patience and a clear understanding of your ideal customer to build a quality database.

In this blog, we’ll cover a few tried-and-tested strategies to build an email list.

Only Ever Send Valuable Content (And Never Spam) Think about your own emails which you open and those you delete immediately. You probably never waste time opening emails that you don’t believe will provide value to you or your business in some way. So why would you expect your customers to be any different?

When you ask for your customer’s email, make sure that whatever you’re sending them, whether it’s exclusive news about a product or service, a coupon or early access to a new product or an insightful ebook, adds value to their life.

Create a Promotional Pop-Up Ad A pop-up might sound annoying at first, but timed pop-up ads are a great way of building an email list. The pop-up ad can appear either when a visitor lands on the homepage or after they spend a certain amount of time on a landing page.

image source: keywordbasket.com

A popup with relevant content on a page that gets a lot of traffic has a higher chance of gaining subscribers. For example, you could offer a discount on a particular product page, or a site wide discount for first time purchases.

All the visitor has to do is type in their email address to receive it. When setting up these ads, make sure your current email subscribers are excluded from these popup ads to avoid irritating them.

Create a Timed Pop-Up Survey Sometimes a website visitor needs a few moments to get to know your business before you can start pushing registration forms on them. To build your email list, you could try reaching out to visitors on specific landing pages with surveys related to that content. A simple survey with a yes or no question is the best option to start with since most visitors are often deterred from signing up when the form is too long and they don’t have the time.

A great example of this is the survey used by the University of Alberta to increase their email list. The popup ad worked so well that they saw their subscriber list grow by almost 500% in one year.

image source: neilpatel.com

Pop-up surveys like these only appear when a website visitor remains on a landing page for a certain amount of time, say 10 seconds. At this point your visitor has shown interest in the content, so ideally they should be more inclined to sign up for your emails. If you feel like the ad is working, you can refine the content and add more information.

Offer Free Resources This is one of the best ways to gain potential customers. Everyone wants to learn more about things they are passionate about and free, relevant information from a credited source is something no one would pass on.

image source: business2community

Offering your customers ‘knowledge based products’ such as ebooks, interviews with industry leaders, case studies, tips, and presentations provides them with the kind of valuable content that they want, and making it freely available (they only need to sign up for it) much more desirable.

Promote Your Email Newsletter On Your Social Media Channels And Email Signature You might not have an extensive list of email subscribers, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a network to communicate with. If you have even one active social media channel with a large fan base or businesses you communicate with over email, why not use those connections to build your email list.

You could try pitching a newsletter on your social media accounts – the people who follow you already like you, but aren’t necessarily people who would sign up for emails. Give them the option and review results to create targeted emails for this audience.

image source: designbundles

If you’re not keen on promoting email newsletters among your social media followers, you can include a clickable link in your email signature that directs to a blog post or landing page with subscription CTAs. You are in constant communication with a diverse group of people via email, and when they get value from your mails, they may want to explore the option to click a links and get to know your business better.

Social Media Contests Another way to collect emails on social media is by running competitions on your pages and asking people to enter with their email addresses.

Here are just a few ways you can multiply the number of email leads your contests generated by making them as participant-friendly as possible.

Host A Networking Event

Lastly, if you want to take things offline and try something different, consider hosting an educational or networking event that draws prospects to your business.  Not only will this help you meet new people and gain new contacts, it also helps to create an engaged community. If you’re not comfortable doing this on your own, you could co-hosted with other key influencers in your industry or industry bodies.

Now that you have the basics covered, you’re ready to start building your list of email subscribers! And once you have a substantial list, you can continue to build on the brand loyalty and even use your customers as advocates to further promote your business, by way of referrals. If want to get started now, but don’t have the time or you’re simply not sure where to start first, don’t worry, we’re here to help. Simply book a free digital growth session with our digital specialists and they’ll help you get on track, the right way.

3 Email Marketing Tools To Help Grow Your Business

Email marketing is a powerful tool in any internet marketing strategy. Years ago, it was the only digital marketing tool available for businesses and bloggers, and now, it plays an essential role when pursuing current and potential leads for brands.

When compared to the ‘fun’ social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook, email marketing is often considered a mundane form of communication. However, ask any digital marketer and they’ll tell you that building your email marketing campaign should be top priority from day one.

Nevertheless, using email marketing requires a lot of tasks to manage such as:

This can be a very overwhelming, especially for a small business that might not have a lot of employees, or none at all. That’s why email marketing services, also known as marketing automation tools or system, have become valuable for businesses to manage their email lists in a convenient and process driven way.

What To Look For In A Good Email Marketing Tool or System?

A good email marketing tool should enable you to create engaging email newsletters with an easy to use interface in addition, you should be able to easily manage contacts, experiment with A/B testing (testing two versions to see which gives a better result), email segmentation and track the performance of each campaign. All these features can create opportunities to find new leads and convert them into customers, as well as manage your relationship with existing customers.

Having said that, here’s a quick look at some of the most popular email marketing tools and how they can help you.

1. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the more popular email marketing tools in the world, primarily because they offer predesigned templates and a free service plan. It is relatively user-friendly but when compared to several other email marketing tools, they offer less in the way of automation options. You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and many other ecommerce platforms, ideal if you are running an online store.

While the lifetime free plan sounds amazing, there are strings attached. The free option only allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan also omits key features like send-time optimization, advanced targeting, multi-variant testing etc. you are also obligated to display their branding in all your emails.

Last but not least, support for the free plan is restricted to emails, and that’s definitely not okay if you plan on building a business. Their paid plans start from $10 per month for up to 500 subscribers, and then increases with every 500 subscribers.

Some of MailChip’s main features include: Customization – Use predesigned template or customise your own email from scratch. Integration – Integrate your email campaigns with shopping carts and customer relationship management CRM systems. Mobile Distribution – Use Email Beamer (an email that connects to custom audiences in Mail Chimp) to send a campaign from any email app or your smartphone, without having to log in to MailChimp. Facebook Integration – Use Facebook to make connections, add fans, and get the word out about your newsletter.

2. Campaign Monitor

A highly regarded home-grown Aussie business, Campaign Monitor is widely used by leading companies in Australia as well as overseas. The email service has a pretty simple interface that is easy to navigate, and features like a drag-and-drop email builder and pre-designed templates to help create emails.

You can also personalise and segment email campaigns to send focused emails and track results. The service also provides a full analytics suite to track campaign performance, ideal if you’re sending out multiple email campaigns weekly.

Campaign Monitor offers three service packages with the basic package starting at $9 per month. However, the basic package only allows 2,500 emails per month (the other two are unlimited) and doesn’t include the analytics suite or marketing automations. Something to note is if you don’t plan on sending email frequently, they do provide the option of paying per campaign. Additionally, Campaign Monitor offers 15% off on their service packages to non-profit businesses.

Some of Campaign Monitor’s main features include: Drag and Drop Email Builder – Choose a predesigned template and easily edit it with one click. A/B Split Testing – Test different subject lines and messages to fine-tune your campaigns. Contact Segmentation – Build targeted segments and create campaigns tailored to individual needs. Security – Grow and store your lists in a secure, permission-based environment. Social Media Integration – Promote your campaigns on social media sites. Insights Analytics Suite –You’ll get insights on how to improve your campaign strategy. The suite includes geography, acquisition and engagement per campaign. Sign Up Forms – Build your email list with pop up registration forms on your website. Support – The service offers fee personal coaching and support by phone, and email.

3. Infusionsoft

Better suited for experienced marketers, Infusionsoft is an advanced marketing automation service that provides an integrated CRM system and intuitive interface. Like the other two services listed, Infusionsoft offers the option to choose predesigned templates or design your own emails. However, when compared to the other services, it is definitely not cheap.

The basic package which only provides users with marketing automations and CRM services starts at $99 per month, and as your contacts grow, so will your monthly fee. Integrating an e-commerce portal or trying to manage a sales pipeline will cost an additional $118 per month.

If you can look past the hefty fees, Infusionsoft does offer quite a lot of features, but another downside is that because of its numerous features, users need to invest a large chunk of time to learn how to use it properly to make the most of it. There is a basic training panel that you can browse through for guidance and video tutorials, but if you’ve never used an email marketing tool before, you will need some time to work it out.

Some of Infusionsoft’s Main Features Include: CRM – Managing your leads information is relatively easy although it requires quite a bit of scrolling through a small window. Marketing Automation – create segmented campaigns, landing pages and web forms, integrate social media platforms and track website visitors. Lead Scoring – Lead scoring and distribution tools make it possible for businesses to identify “hot” leads and improve overall productivity through visual lead scoring. Sales Automation – Along with pipeline management, lead scoring and distribution, there’s also sales reports on key performance metrics such as conversion rates and revenue. This makes it easier to understand where campaigns have been successful and where they are under-performing. Analytics Suite – Track and export campaign data to review performances. Support – The quick service offers which offers support by phone, email, and live chat.

Final thoughts There are dozens of email marketing services out there, and they’re all packed with different features that can help you to optimise your email campaigns. If you are not sure which one will work best with your business needs or which price plan to start with first, book a free 1-on-1 digital growth advisory session with our digital specialists to find an email marketing tool that suits you and your business needs.

Facebook Budgeting 101

As a small business owner, finances are something you’re bound to be very stringent about. You are willing to spend money only if it’s worth it and has an ROI on your business. While Facebook is a good social media platform for business especially for brand awareness and to bring in new leads, getting Facebook budgeting right can be tricky.

You listened to your friends and various marketing gurus and invested in Facebook advertising but it is yet to show any tangible results. You’ve just ended up spending more time and money thinking it would generate better results. Now you’re frustrated and you’re asking everyone how much you should spend on Facebook advertising before you pull the plug.

While Facebook might be a popular medium for opinions, it’s a platform solely based on algorithms that are essentially math. Mathematics and artificial intelligence have no consideration for opinions. So what works for your friends might not necessarily work for you because your business and customer base is different.

Before getting down to calculating how much you should spend on Facebook advertising, ask yourself these questions.

Let’s go through these questions to help you gain clarity on where your business stands at each of these points.

Is My Ideal Customer On Facebook? Are you on Facebook for the sake of being on a social media platform or are you 100% sure that this is where your ideal customer spends their free time? While an online presence is very important for a brand, you must distinguish the differences between the two. If you know that this is where your customers are then coming up with a strategy and budget will help your business. But if it isn’t, you need to find out which channel your customer uses and focus your attention on that. There is no point in investing your effort and money on a platform that doesn’t reach your customers.

How much should I spend on Facebook? It is a frequently asked question by many but the answer depends on several factors including the nature of your business and customer base.

Essentially, there are two types of Facebook advertising: boosting a post that you’ve shared on your timeline and creating an ad specifically targeting your audience. Boosting a post gives you the option to select a budget, duration and audience according to the demography and location. However, a Facebook ad goes into more specific details where you can define the objective of your ad whether it’s to generate traffic or a lead to ensure that your money is spent on the goals you want to achieve for your business.

In short, you could spend $1 per day by boosting a post, because that’s the minimum Facebook would let you spend. If you do that for seven days and look at the data of its performance, you will know in just seven days for a small investment if your post is working for your audience or not. But if you’re looking to create Facebook ads then you need to know some key metrics to make sure you get the results you want.

Metrics You Need To Know Before Advertising On Facebook

The Lifetime Value Of A Customer (LTV) This number is basically how much a customer would spend on your business during his entire lifetime with you. E.g. – if you are a Yoga teacher, your client may come to you three times a week and pay you $10 per class – that would sum up to $30 per week and over a year it would $1500 if the client comes for 50 weeks. Now, most good yoga teachers tell us that they retain their clients for up to 10 years. Even if you retain the ideal client for 3 years the LTV is $4500.

Knowing this figure is extremely crucial for your business as it determines the profitability of the future relationship with a customer which will help you make better decisions for the growth of your business.

Often business owners don’t know the value of their LTV and hence make the mistake of not spending enough to acquire clients. The issue here is often we don’t achieve the potential of our business. For example, if the yoga teacher worked on the basis I only earn $10 per session then I don’t have much money to spend acquiring the customer. The LTV also gives you an insight into what your customers’ friends and family can bring into your business if you get your marketing and advertising right.

How To Calculate LTV? There are many versions of calculating LTV, however, because we want to focus on the ideal customer, here is the simplest way

Follow This Step By Step Guide.

A. What’s the value of a transaction of your ideal customer

B. How many purchases would the customer make during a year.

C. What is the average lifespan of your ideal customer

LTV = A x B x C

Finally,

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Once you determine your LTV, you need to find out the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This number will indicate how much you should spend on advertising, in this case on Facebook.

The simplest formula for this is,

CAC = MC / CA

MC = Marketing costs          CA = Customers acquired

MC and CA need to be calculated from the same time. To determine a more accurate number, consider all marketing costs, including salaries and expenses on events.

Now that you’ve learned the Lifetime Value of a Customer as well as the Customer Acquisition Cost, let’s find out how you can use these numbers to figure out your Facebook budget.

E.g. – If you receive five leads and one is converted to a customer, your conversion rate stands at 20 percent. Let’s assume that your Customer Acquisition Cost is $30 and that a Customer’s Lifetime Value is $1000.

If your monthly goal is to convert 5 new customers, you would need a total of 25 leads. So consider these numbers and calculate your Facebook Budget for a month.

Customer Acquisition Cost ($30) X number of leads for a month (25) = Facebook budget ($750)

If you invest $750 a month, you may get 5 new customers with a lifetime value of $1000 each, totaling to $5000.

If you think this number might be too steep for you especially if you haven’t had any leads in the past, start with a lower budget and then scale up depending on how well the campaign performs. Now that you have a clear idea of some of the key metrics of your business, you will be able to make budget adjustments backed by data instead of random guesses and gut feeling.

Important factors to consider

Calculating these numbers is easy but you need to give it time to generate the results you want. There isn’t one formula that will work for all businesses, so take time to test, review and fine-tune your Facebook campaign and budgets frequently till you get the results you want to see. If you’re looking for tips on Facebook strategy, check our online learning sessions with Digital Marketing Expert, Dinesh De Silva.

Disclaimer: The numbers provided are as examples for your guidance. Exact figures for each business differs based on multiple factors including industry, geography and competitive positioning. We recommend that you work with a Digital Marketing Agency in Sydney, who can provide you with guidance, calculating these important figures to your specific business.