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Blog posts tagged Actinic
Editor’s round-up: That’s enough about the election – let’s talk about exhibitions. And the election.
April 30, 2010
Whenever you cover an event – particularly one that goes on for a while – you always ask yourself the question ‘How much is too much?’.
I’ve been asking myself this in relation to our election coverage. We’ve got blogs, news stories, a poll, a list of election things we like and we’ll be doing 24-hour coverage of the election as it happens.
At the outset we intended to do a just a little on the election. But when I look at the list of what we’ve done, I see the little has become quite a lot. But how much is too much?
Personally, I don’t think we have done too much – though I’m sure we’ll be very ready to call a halt next Friday. The reality is that this is one of the most important elections of modern times and its ramifications will be felt for years, especially by small businesses. After all the fuss of The Budget, there’s been remarkably little spoken about small firms by the parties during this campaign.
Across the Donut websites, we’ve been trying to provide a bit of a corrective to this. Over on the Start Up Donut blog, in particular, we’ve got Donut MD Rory MccGwire’s thoughtful analyses of key election issues for small firms. Actually, these are some of the best things I’ve read on why small firms matter to the UK and what we should be doing to help them (and I’m not just saying that because he’s my boss).
Enough about the election already!
Anyway, that’s enough about the election; let’s talk about branding and exhibitions. I’ve been working this week on the next issue of MyDonut, our monthly e-newsletter. The next one is due out on 13 May, so sign up if you want to receive it. This issue I can promise a fantastic article on small businesses and branding by our very own Rachel and a very inspiring profile of Sadie Hopkins of the York Coffee Emporium written by Start Up Donut editor Mark Williams.
We’ve also been thinking about exhibitions. That’s because it’s the Business Startup 2010 exhibition at the Excel Centre in London in a few weeks and we’ll be there as exhibitors (do come and say hello). To mark its impending arrival, next Tuesday we’ll be posting some excellent material on what you can get out of attending or exhibiting at trade fairs.
Sticking with exhibitions, I managed to slip away from the office on Thursday to get to the Internet World exhibition at Earl’s Court, where I’d arranged to meet Chris Barling, CEO of Donut sponsor and e-commerce software firm Actinic. We had a good chat about the future of the Internet, which I’m sure will emerge in the form of content at some point.
Anyway, it turns out Chris was one of the e-commerce pioneers, having started Actinic in 1996. Like me, he feels the Internet is revolutionising the way we think about the world - not just the way we shop or search for information. In particular, we talked about the cultural shift that’s taking place before our eyes during this election campaign.
No, that really is enough about the election
Ok, I know I said “That’s enough about the election” but it’s looming behind everything and I just can’t escape it. Remember the days when a certain notorious red top could brag “It was the Sun wot won it”? Could that happen now? No. And the main reason is that the influence and reach of traditional print media is being undermined by the Internet at a rate I just hadn’t appreciated until the last few weeks.
With a very few exceptions they just don’t seem to get it. For example, a couple of days after the first leadership debate, the right-wing press mounted a vicious attack on Nick Clegg, who had unexpectedly emerged as a threat to their man’s majority.
Not long ago this might have destroyed him. But now it has inspired an explosion of satire online. The ironic hashtag #IBlameItOnNick became a trending topic on Twitter; outraged blogs were written and shared by the hundred; the comment boxes on the websites of the newspapers in question were flooded with protest and mockery - to such a degree that comments were shut down in some cases.
The print media have been made to look like dinosaurs by this activity. They just aren’t used to people answering back. Sure, they have influenced this campaign, but they look increasingly out of step with the modern world. New media is beginning to demonstrate the power to bring about social change and the old media isn’t entirely sure what to do.
And the moral of the story is...
What has this to do with businesses? Well, it shows how quickly technological developments can change culture and make something that seemed so central to our lives suddenly seem quite redundant. In the mid-1990s, Chris Barling licked his finger and felt which way the wind was blowing. He made a good call, and what he began as an innovative company is now an everyday part of the modern business landscape.
If businesses as large as News Corporation and Associated Newspapers can be made to look out of date, how safe do you feel?
Customers, who wants them?
October 23, 2009
The customer may always be right, but are they the right customers?
One of the customer’s of my company (Actinic) was incredibly picky about how their business wanted to use our software. We are a mass market, low price supplier and we’ve sold tens of thousands of products and services, so we normally can’t make changes for individual companies who typically pay a few hundred pounds each. However, this particular customer was very persistent. So one of our product managers contacted them, spent ages discussing their requirements and subsequently we agreed to make some changes. Responding in this way was exceptional and it cost us much more than we could ever make in sales from the particular guy.
But this customer isn’t at all grateful. In fact, recently they have become even more critical, and have continued to cost us more in support than almost anyone else. Would it have been better if we had said “no” in the first place?
Without sounding too critical, the customer in question doesn’t appear to be particularly successful, and I’m sure it’s not a coincidence. If someone can’t understand the business needs of their suppliers, they probably don’t know how their own customers tick either.
Some clients are very demanding, and whatever you do they are never satisfied. I’m not talking about customers upset with poor service, who need helping. Nor am I talking about customers that need a lot of handholding. Nor about customers who buy the wrong product, who should have their money returned. I’m talking about customers who fundamentally don’t understand the trade-off involved in human and business interactions.
Although the circumstances I’ve described are rare, they aren’t unique. My guess is that this applies to maybe one in two hundred customers. The cost in time and demoralising impact on staff makes it more difficult to give good service to everyone else. As a result, I am coming to the conclusion that for this small minority, we would do better to suggest that they do business with our competitors.
It’s critical not to provide our customer service team with any excuse for bad service, so there are some dangers in adopting such measures. However, applied incredibly carefully to a very small minority, surely it’s time to review the relationship with these sorts of customers?
Online Advertising Regulation - Pulling Together?
August 04, 2009
I'm not sure if anyone has really noticed, but recently a fairly important document was published over in the good 'ol US of A. The document, imaginatively titled "Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising" is, I believe, the last ditch attempt by the industry to avoid the hard line of US government regulation on the online advertising industry.
This document was compiled by a major trade group made up of execs from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others. The objective would appear to be to appease Washington and consumer groups who believe we are being tracked too closely online.
Having read through the fairly lightweight 55 page document I have to say its fairly open to interpretation. The proposed self-regulation seems to focus on data collection between the numerous online ad networks. But though this would be a move in a positive direction, it is implying the ad networks will agree to work together.
In practice however, this is a seismic shift away from the real world. Both Google and Facebook jealously guard their (or our) data. For this to be adopted and for the ad networks to avoid Washington's red tape there will be some very interesting developments in online advertising in the next few years.
Personally I feel if this self-regulation is adopted, including a stringent set of opt-out policies, it's going to be a step in the right direction, but it remains to be seen how big these steps will be.
You can read the document here (warning pdf), and if you're in online advertising it might be a good idea.
The Real Thing?
June 22, 2009
You can argue that the aim of marketing is to build momentum. You need to raise awareness and establish how people perceive your brand. Traditionally this worked well, but I have news for you -- attempting to set perceptions is becoming an increasingly dangerous strategy.
You may recall a marketing campaign that had the sole intention of altering your perception of a brand. A soft drinks manufacturer who specialised in blackcurrant-based drinks had complaints about the sugar content and related tooth decay. This caused it to launch a low sugar version. It even had the cojones to sell it as “Toothkind”. The rebranding promoted health benefits and claimed four times the vitamin C levels of rivals.
The inconvenient truth proved the product wasn’t good for your teeth and one drink in the range had negligible vitamin C! This little oversight cost the company significant sums of money. But the real stinker was the “corrective advertisements” it was forced to run on national television.
It’s always been dangerous to try to build a false perception. Now the rise of social networking has upped the ante. There has been a seismic shift in our abilities to interact and talk to each other, and to build or rubbish brands that annoy us. We are the mob, and the mob is now all seeing. If you are bluffing, it won’t take long for people to find you out.
It’s simple; the quality of your offering builds the perceptions. These will be based on fact and customer experience, not marketing spin. Ignore this at your peril.
Saving the Lemming
May 26, 2009
Recently I have become utterly obsessive about ecommerce and business site design. This began after I spent a few hours reviewing a friend’s Pay Per Click (PPC) invoice. Apart from rivalling the deficit of a national bank his campaign was providing little success. Delving a little deeper, his problem turned out not to be traffic, rather his site has all the basics wrong.
While there are many techniques for running lean and successful PPC campaigns I want to take a step back to look at these fundamentals.
It’s easy to spend a bucket load of cash on PPC (trust me, I have done it). However, the very first objective for any site owner should be to create a site that achieves its aims. Using ecommerce as an example, this is about converting browsers into buyers. If you can get the principles right, driving traffic should be a secondary and relatively easy objective.
Anyone that’s played the popular 90’s computer game Lemmings will know that leaving these suicidal creatures to meander as they please will result in disaster, usually of the dead Lemming kind. The problem isn’t the lack of Lemmings -- there are enough for everyone -- the problem is the route you have devised for them generally ends up in the spiky pit of doom. Business websites sites have the same tendency, but we just call it ‘goal conversion’.
Ask yourself, what are the goals of your site? They could be anything from a sale, contact form submission, lead creation or a click somewhere. These goals are the foundations of your site -- the routes for the Lemmings -- and anything else is secondary.
Once you have identified these goals you need to optimise for them. It’s an essential and often painful process, but one where you need to be ruthless. Anything detracting from a goal conversion needs stripping away without mercy. Conversely, the message for any areas that need strengthening, is fix them now!
It’s only when you are happy that your site meets its goals that spending on PPC makes sense. Just press that button and let the Lemmings jump!
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