Web Marketing^TM

Welcome to our end of year newsletter.

Trevor and I would like to thank all of our great customers that we have worked with in 2010. We appreciate your business and look forward to an exciting and prosperous 2011 for all of us. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year.

Observations and Trends

In this post I want to share with you some of the things I have been finding during my research to help you market your business in the new year.

Over the past year I have noticed that many of my friends and family have dispensed with using a land line phone. With Mobile rates dropping and the new smart phones taking a grip it seems that there is a shift in the way we should be marketing our businesses online.

According to a recent survey 16% Of Australians Use Smart Phones.

Matt Bruce, managing director of Nielsen’s online business, says now is the time for Australian companies to be developing mobile sites if they haven’t been working on them already.

“I think certainly, now is the time. Everyone has been talking about the big change in smartphones, and obviously the iPhone is the most well known of these. We’ve seen in our figures that smartphones are a killer model for internet use, and people are using them more. Businesses should be building sites that work well with smartphones.

But it isn’t just dedicated mobile sites that should be developed. Bruce says businesses should pay attention to growing trends such as searches for maps and location-based queries.

So this is a growing trend in the market place that people are adopting the smart phones at a rapid rate. While iPhones dominate the market the Androids ( all the other iphone clone smart phones) are starting to see rapid increase in sales.

This opens up a whole new way to market your business and part of this will be the adoption of QR Codes.

Google Pushing QR Codes

Google has made it clear that it’s a big proponent of QR codes, despite the fact that few people in the United States and Australia have heard about them let alone used them but they’re huge in Japan.

Google has mailed QR code stickers to over 200,000 local businesses across the country and many large businesses are starting to adopt them in advertising, magazines and other media. Facebook is also experimenting with QR codes for its location services.

In doing a quick search I noticed that many of the Australian Banks and corporations are stating to talk about QR Codes. This from Westpac.

Telstra Using QR Codes

Telstra announced in June that they’ll be introducing the software to read QR codes on their NextG handsets as a free download for customers. And from the sounds of it, it will happen automatically – so you don’t even need to do anything.

According to the press release, Telstra’s planning on using the QR codes to offer, among other things:

“the latest news, sport and weather information; music files; maps; store information for later if you’re in a hurry; tickets to shows; video presentations that give users guided tours, how-to information and trailers; links to social networking sites and special discount offers.”

What is A QR Code

A QR Code (it stands for “Quick Response”) is a mobile phone readable barcode that’s been big in Japan forever, broke into Europe a while back, and is now getting traction in USA and Australia.

In it’s simplest sense think “print based hypertext link” – simply encode a URL into the QR Code and then point a mobile phone (or other camera-enabled mobile) at it. If the device has had QR Code decoding software installed on it ( usually a free app), it will fire up its browser and go straight to that URL.

But it doesn’t stop there – a QR Code can also contain a phone number, an SMS message, V-Card data or just plain alphanumeric text, and the scanning device will respond by opening up the correct application to handle the encoded data appropriately.

Basically what it means is that you can embed different information in a 2 dimensional bar code. It could be you business details which will then be added to their contact app, it could be a discount coupon or as Google is doing a link to your Google places account.

Examples:

They can be used on stationary, shop windows and a myriad of other applications. You can simply create one here.  If you have a smart phone simply take a snap shot and it will add me to your contacts. Make sure you have a free QR Code APP installed.

So imagine someone comes into your business and wants your details. You could have this code on a card, as a sticker etc and they would simply take a snap shot and add you to their contacts. You may have another one on the front of your business taking them to a discount coupon or your website or your Google places listing and so many other applications.

I think these could be huge because many of the major players are starting to adopt them.

Blogging And Marketing

All this year we have been encouraging you to add blog posts to your site and this will be become even more crucial in 2011. Because we have developed most of your sites on the wordpress platform we can seamlessly convert your site to a full mobile site without affecting its appearance on your computer.

In fact we have done it with this site already, so once again if you have a smart phone, simply type in our web address and you will see it at work. We will be rolling this out for our paid up customers early in 2011.

Blog posts are not only a great way to create SEO friendly content but also are great for mobile content.

Google Maps and Places

In 2011 we want to make sure you all have your google maps and places set up for your business. Again this is great for mobile users however it is also a great way to get even more exposure for your business in the online community.

After doing a lot of research and doing some for customers this year I have found the best way to get your listing ranking well is to get customers to review your business and also to do citations.

Citations are simply listings in other local business directories and while this take a long time to add your listing to each directory I have been training one of my students to do it all for you.

This will mean that your business will get a lot more exposure over many different areas.

It can be hard to get customers to go online and add a review so why not plan a simple form for your customers to fill in and then we can add them for you.

Personal News

As many of you know I live in Thailand and when not working on your websites and marketing I train orphans and underprivileged young people in web design and graphics so they can get better jobs or start their own businesses.

We do this for free and our business covers all the expenses associated with these projects.

In 2011 we will be training some of the more adept students to be able to run the courses which means we can help even more get a better start in life. We are also training a couple to do some of the more tedious tasks to get your sites more traffic and better listings.

We will be spending our Christmas with an orphanage in Pattaya making sure the young children have a great time.

Summary

Business is all about getting as much exposure as possible. Using some of the above techniques will definitely help you get more customers and make more sales.

The secret is to capitalize on what we are doing for you. A short article to your local newspapers etc about how you are embracing new technology etc could land you a nice prime article giving you even more exposure.

I will keep you up to date when we will be releasing these new services.

Thanks again for your support this year and look forward to working with you in 2011.

Regards

Quentin and Trevor