Six Serving Men Blog

In the last month two significant Digital birthdays have occured with The internet itself and Google reaching 40 and 10 years old respectively.



Google celebrated (and marketed themselves) with an excellent collage of their fantastic growth over the last decade 

 

So as Google enters those traumatic teenage years it will be interesting to see how they develop - what's next and if the internet copes with any mid Life crisis!

2010 will no doubt see a continued growth in advertising expenditure targeted at the Internet as companies continue to invest in Digital channels   
  
Source - Ofcom's Sixth annual Communications Market report   

A recent e-consultancy report into website conversion rates highlights the potential missed opportunities that companies are ignoring by using their web capability solely as a static brochure. This is particularly relevant given the survey participants are drawn from a more digitally aware population. 


Moving forward the clear commercial advantage for companies who start treating their website and associated digital assets as a Sales person rather than as a Receptionist!  But this means applying the same disciplines.

Social Media continues to challenge Financial Analysts and Business Owners alike. As the use of social media develops and evolves there is much debate to understand the time, effort and money they should invest and the business results they should expect.   

Stephen Baker in his Business Week article - Is Twitter worth $1 Billion highlights the conundrum of placing a financial valuation on the business whilst the commercial model continues to remain unclear.

Meanwhile business owners and managers are trying to establish how to capitalise upon the increasing range of technologies.

However in the rush to "join in" it appears that many businesses are falling into the trap of Ready Fire Aim. 
Working on the basis that "Strategy without action is futile, and action without strategy is fatal", the key question that need addressing are 

• What do you want to achieve, before determining the tools to implement it.
• How do you measure, monitor and manage your activity ongoing.  

A precursor to strategic objectives is understanding your market and social media can povide an insight into a subset of your existing & propective customers. But how important is that subset ?   

An interesting tool is the  Forrester's Social Technographics® that classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation in Social Media - Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives - Further info click here
 
It provides a simple high level snapshot that won't povide all the answers, but will help identify some of the questions to address 



Let us know what you think or to contact us to discuss how your business should / could benefit from Social

The increasing awareness of tools such as Google analytics and website optimiser have made people focus upon the importance doing something they have done subconciously for years – Experiential learning.

From an early age we have all learned from our experiences i.e. doing something expecting a certain outcome, reviewing what actually happened and then refining our thinking and ideas. This Do-Review-Refine (or Kolb’s learning cycle) process is in built.

However how many companies actually embed or institutionalise this process in their ongoing business development activities. The web has thrown up lots of information but to (mis)quote Albert Einstein ”not everything that can be counted counts”. 

The British Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) have an approach that

1. You should always learn from your mistakes
2. It’s quicker, cheaper and easier to learn from other peoples

Even organisations such as the British Standards Institute in PAS 124 recognise the need that your digital presence should be in a continuous state of beta – But in order to profit from this companies need to be aware of what they are trying to achieve, what they are achieving and then reacting to benefit from their learnings.

Without putting in the regular disciplines of validating experience against expectations many companies are not benefiting from Learning from their mistakes – The definition of madness is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result!

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We hope you find the content and information about our business relevant and we'd welcome your feedback as this site evolves and grows.

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As the economic downturn continues, 2009 will lead to a more companies focussing on how they recruit and retain their customers. 

The 2008 Christmas retail figures highlight the increased dependence consumers place upon the internet and it’s importance in any companies marketing communication mix. Whilst the internet and the digital space have provided companies with a wealth of data and enhanced capability to communicate directly with their prospective market has this capability been reflected in the experience of consumers ?

For example email marketing has evolved over the past few years and whilst companies have adopted it have they really embraced and using it effectively

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) National Benchmarking report 2007 proposed the value of £9.11 for each (permission) email address – http://econsultancy.com/blog/2148-9-11-the-value-of-an-email-address 

In 2008 monitoring the promotional emails from 24 UK businesses across a range of companies recieved in 2008 has highlighted a range of email practice. Some companies adopting an ad-hoc send now and then whatever the outcome, with others believing the shout load and often to ensure submission approach 

Despite not opening 105 emails from them over 2008 one company is optimistic if they believe the 106th is going to be the clincher ! Is this a case of “never mind the quality Feel the width” and begs the question has relevance actually evolved beyond just a buzz phrase.

At number 5 in recent Revolution article http://www.brandrepublic.com/Revolution/News/872526/12-things-need-know-2009/ the value of £20 per email was put forward – 2009 being the year of Retention!

On the basis of an email list of 25,000, are organisations really managing this £1/2 million Asset effectively ?

Without recognising, valueing and treating their data as an asset rather than a list companies will continue to spray and pray. The companies who Recognise, Understand and most importantly develop their email equity are the ones who will suceed in the Customer Crunch.

Sometimes holding a mirror up to your organsation helps to identify where you are on the spectrum and most importantly what you can do about it. http://www.6sm.co.uk/why_companies_use_us

Barack Obama’s recent election success was built upon a robustly defined & well executed digital strategy. To find out more see our video - The First Internet President

The election result could have been predicted by the engagement shown on the candidates own web pages

or on social network sites e.g.

that highlight how the Obama digital campaign performed and delivered.

Having a quick view of the UK main political parties current web presence http://www.conservatives.com, http://www.labour.org.uk, or http://www.libdems.org.uk/ highlights that they are all at different stages of digital adoption. 

(Ongoing see how the sites develop by looking at
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.conservatives.com,
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.labour.org.uk 
or, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.libdems.org.uk/)

With UK broadband penetration, developing technology e.g. iPhones etc opening up the web, and the UK population becoming more web proficient, will the web become a key battleground in the next general election ? Whilst our election system is not meant to be ”presidential” the ability of Messer’s Brown, Cameron & Clegg to engage with and be embraced by the UK Digital community will be critical.

To see if / how this pans Six Serving men have set up our election/web monitor http://www.6sm.co.uk/ukwebelection.html & will update this post regularly. Let us know some ideas of the key metrics we should use and we’ll add them as appropriate.