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Enquiry Management: Avoiding deadends ...

It is probably stating the obvious, that in order to Qualify Enquiries and progress to Nurturing Prospects, it is essential to capture appropriate data regarding the Enquiry. Unless this is done, it is simply not possible to build a CRM database and progress prospects through the Sales Funnel.

Or is it that obvious, given that their are many examples of companies who fail to capture data. For example, we recently came across a company, who went to the trouble of pre-announced the availability of their product via a PR campaign and trade shows, and in addition provided a website with the ability to "preorder" their product. However their Sales Funnel terminates, at the "Where To Buy" page of the website, with the message ...

"Sorry not currently available in your area". 

Note: Branding has been removed from the example web page, to protect the identity of the site owner.

Although this is obviously intended as a "holding statement", the site offers no other options to Register visitors, thus no data is captured. Therefore the company has no possibility to proactively follow up with appropriate communication, when the product does become available in the area.  The company are therefore discarding potential leads.

ROI Measurement.

Appropriate data capture of enquiries is the fundamental building block  for any Lead Management programme and enables more robust measurement of the effectiveness of Lead Generation activities. Instead of relying on simplistic measurements, such as Advertising Equivalent Spend, Site Visits, etc, which focus on potential awareness, it becomes possible to measure the effectiveness and velocity of the Sales Funnel, based upon measurable Leads and Conversions.

 

Behaviour is branding ...

For a few weeks now, our SugarSync service, has not been working. (See, "Sync with added sweetness"). This might seem a strange point, to start a brief blog on branding; however there are two reasons, why we are taking the time to comment ...

PRODUCT: Its only when we had the service stop working, that we realised, the true benefit of SugarSync. Having to go back to using USB memory sticks and external hard drives to sync data between PCs, compared to the simplicity of the service, was areal reminder of the true power of the service.

BRANDING: If behaviour is branding, then their Customer Service team are delivering the SugarSync brand, as surely as the Marketing team, with their approach to Blogging, PR etc.

Having used many email or Internet only customer support services and gotten used to the slow, faceless, indifferent support, the team at SugarSync stand out from the crowd. They have managed to turn a potentially faceless customer services route into a positive experience. 

A special mention goes to Burhan, the CS Marvel, who resolved our issue ... thank you.

** For the sceptics ... SugarSync is not a client of Light the Fuse **

Sync with added sweetness

After choosing our email solution, the next largest IT challenge our business faced was data backup and synchronisation. How could we ensure all our company critical data is kept safe and that project critical data is made available to those who need it, regardless of location, across multiple PCs and Laptops?

For the last few months, instead of using Outlook as a filing cabinet or fiddling around with USB memory sticks, we have been using SugarSync. This Backup and Synchronisation service meets all our business needs and is highly reliable, fast and incredibly easy to install, set-up and use.

Take a look at their free 45 day trial. It's worth the effort and you don't have to enter any credit card details to sign up.

Things to do today - Check your Google keywords!

From today, Google have implemented a major change to their trademark policy in UK and Ireland. This change, brings the policy for these countries, in-line with that already used in the USA and Canada.

The policy change effects the use of trademarks as keywords to triggered an Adword or Sponsor Link advert. From today, "keywords that were disabled as a result of a trademark complaint and investigation will no longer be restricted in the UK and Ireland."

In effect, this means that Brand X, could now trigger an Adword or Sponsored Link advert, through a keyword that matches a trademark, owned by Brand Y. ( Brand X is still not allowed to use trademarks owned by Brand Y in their own Adword adverts.)

The practical effect of this change is easy to demonstrate. Yesterday, a search using Google, on the term "hsbc", returned only natural search results. In this case, returning results for HSBC Bank, with no Adword or Sponsored Link adverts.

The same search performed today, returns Adword or Sponsored Link adverts for two independent sources of financial advise, "GoCompare.com" and "BestInvest", in addition to the natural search results.

The policy change opens up some new and interest on-line campaign opportunities, as a company could now trigger adverts on a rival companies trademarks. Undoubtedly this is a clever move by Google, as it will obviously have a positive impact on their revenues. Trademark holders will now have to bid to protect keywords relating to a trademark.

To make sure you are getting the most out of Google's Adwords programme and to keep traffic flowing to your site, remember to check your keywords, today.

It may also be worthwhile monitoring, how your direct and indirect competitors are using your trademarks, in their campaigns ...

Should you pursue a "Second Life"?

We recently discovered a legitimate business reason to sign up to Second Life. It's something we have been meaning to explore for some time, but never managed to find the time.

For those of you not familiar with "SL", it is described by its creators, Linden Research Inc, as "an immersive, 3-dimensional social interaction environment. Second Life is not a game. There are no set rules that cause action to happen; there is no goal; and there is no set actions that will change your status or result in a challenge. There are no quests." ... so what is the point?

Linden provide the infrastructure, platforms, e-commerce tools etc, but the world itself, is largely "created by its residents" (of which there are currently just under 10,000,000). Think of SL as a 3D version of the Internet. Instead of the traditional web page and URL, you are immersed into a 3D landscape, which you navigate using your avatar.

These postcards from SL, should give you a flavour of the environment...

... browsing for goods in a shopping mall. Need a new shirt? Maybe that tattoo you always wanted? Something for Real Life (RL)? Sony Ericsson have a virtual representation of their CeBit 2007 stand here, giving away free Walkman W880's. The stand is still there, but deserted, except for a sad and lonely "survey bot", they forgot and left behind. Even now it's, still doing research on the Sony Ericsson brand.

... at a beach front disco. Apparently some residence come here to dance in the evenings. Although this looks like a nice (but deserted) beach front disco, its actually a group of radio stations, streamed live audio from RL. Unsurprisingly, they are mostly "disco" rather than "talk" radio stations.

Just like the RL Internet, there is much that is creative and novel in SL. There is still more that is distasteful, weird and to be honest, pornographic.

As the day/night zones traverse the globe, the dominant resident nationalities shift from South East Asians, Europeans and then through to Americans, giving some areas a very cosmopolitan feel. In our brief tenure, we met people from many different countries, America, China, France, Philippines, Japan and Slovenia, to name but a few. Which brings us to the social networking side of SL. Friends come to chat in the open or via IM, with presence being used to show your friends on-line status. We spent some time chatting to a husband and wife, who for much of the time, lived in different time zones. As well as texting or IMing, they would met together in SL, to dance, play games or just to sit on the beach. Some people do however take advantage of the 3D graphics engine, to (publicly!) practise advanced social networking theory, in groups of two, three and occasionally more!

But wait a second...

It is obvious from the time we spent in SL, that it is a cosmopolitan and sometimes vibrant environment, that could be exploited to market brands, deliver novel services, generate new revenue streams and even collaborate on projects. However before everybody rushes out, signs up and starts developing, there are some important differences to the traditional Internet that need to be considered.

• Population Density: Although Linden claim just under 10,000,000 residents, we never saw more than 50,000 on line at the same time (Linden did claim 440,000 users dropped in, during the seven days prior to 1st October 2007). However given the shear size of SL, this actually represents a very low population density. We found most areas desolate, more reminiscent of a ghost-town. Combine this with the wide RL geographic spread of the residents, the odds of reaching your audience are slim to say the least. For example, we were chatting to an avatar from the Philippines, who had been in a year and never met anybody from the same country.
• Search Engine: The thing we found constantly frustrating, was our inability to search for anything useful. There is no equivalent to "Google" in SL, thus undertaking any "topic" based search almost impossible. The closest analogy we have is, imagine trying to find a Jimmy Choos shop in Kamnik, Slovenia, when all you have is a street map and you don't know any local residents.
• Brand Appropriateness: Some brands may not sit comfortably in such an environment, given the adult nature of some areas of the world. In the RL Internet, Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign website, may sit on the same server as Playboy Magazine, and go unnoticed. In SL, there would be nothing to stop Playboy setting up a store next to Hillary's for all to see!
• Economics: Due to the way the economy is structured and exchange rates between Linden $ and US$, nobody is going to get rich selling services in-world and transferring money out. The main economic benefit, could come through starting the transaction process in SL, then complete the payment externally, thus avoiding the need to use Linden $.

Organisations should not be fooled by the hype surrounding Second Life, this is no marketers Utopia. With its current population and inadequate search facilities, the opportunities to incorporate SL into a traditional marketing campaign are limited. Some interesting possibilities do exist and will be explored further, however until such a time as these short comings are resolved, opportunities will be restricted to the largest global brands or to niche applications.

In deference to the residents, we can see the appeal (some of us being former D&D fans), however to truly take the next step, there are some issues that Linden need to be addressed.

• Mobility: The great strides taken by other social networking sites, have to a large extent been underpinned by fully embracing mobility. Second Life is currently locked into a tethered experience, which for some will be a step backwards, regardless of the benefits the 3D engine delivers.
• Stability: In our time in SL, there we two "rolling system restarts" to implement bug fixes. The first did not go well and caused outrage on some of the unofficial SL blogs. According to many residents this is not an unusual phenomena and there is much dissatisfaction.

In all, we are glad we found the time to explore SL (even though it soaks up time more efficiently than a black-hole), but we were disappointed to find that the commercial opportunities are currently more limited than we had hoped. We did however, met some truly interesting people with fascinating stores to tell. We wish them all the best in their Second Life, what ever it is they hope to find.

Next time your in SL, remember to say "Hi!" to a stranger. It might just be one of us!

Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended.