The Pit - IMI Trust

Marriott International Hotels has annouced that its website Marriott.com will shatter its revenue record in 2006 by generating nearly $4 billion in sales.

The have a world-class brand and world-class facilities but thousands of other companies don’t have the online penetration they do.  How did they achieve these online sales?

Simply put, they have made the website compelling for the user to make a purchase.  Marriott have conditioned the user to make their purchasing choices through the website.  They have done this by having these features:

• Easy browsing of the website so users can pick dates, locations, iteneraries very easily
• Good photography of the locations so people can visualise each place
• Favourable rates from offline purchases
• A variety of different rates with different inclusions so there is no need to call an operator for ‘non-vanilla’ requests
• Immediate reservation / ticketing so there is immediate purchase satisfaction

All this and there is a great email marketing campaign where discounts are offered to hotels within your specified region and there is continual cross-selling and upselling of products that would interest you.  City and Destination Guides provide ample information for the location of travel and there are options to book events at your destination too.

Easy Decisions To Make

The consumer is armed with all they need to make the right buying decision.  There is no reason to phone to make an enquiry or go to a travel agent.  All the necessary information is at a click.  So people are comfortable with this system. 

The hotel booking service by Marriott has conditioned the user to believing their website is their main, and most useful, shopfront.  This is where the travel industry has go it so right with online airline ticketing is also massively popular.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you have a finance business or a florist or a funeral director that you can’t condition your users to think the same way.  Give them options and information to make their buying decision and they will. 

This is why online stock trading has become so popular.  Many investors conduct their own research and are comfortable making the trading decisions themselves.  They can do this because the end-to-end process is all covered online.  Technical tools, research, immediate pricing, comparison pricing and so on, is all immediately available to the user so they can make a buying decision. 

With the internet and your website the principles are that simple.

The newspapers and investment magazines around Australia seems to be hooked on trading CFD’s (Contracts For Difference) on the ASX (Australian Stock Exchange). Actually, there is very little editorial coverage of the CFD ‘phenomenon’. Most of the ink is on advertising the platforms on which to trade this relatively new instrument.

An analyst on CNBC claimed that approximately 50% of trades on the London Stock Exchange are CFD trades now dwarfing all the other instruments in the multi-billion dollar derivatives market. Australian investors are trading just a fraction of that number but the figures are anticipated to explode over the coming months.

Because of this, many players are scrambling for market position. How do you get ahead when there are so many people vying for market share?

We have recently been engaged by The Sharemarket College to assist marketing the SMC Trader online trading platform. One of the challenges we have is competing in a very competitive market.

A few months ago at the Melbourne Traders Expo there are booths 3×3 in size with companies all attempting to sign you up. As an investor how do you choose which CFD provider to go for?

The Sharemarket College is fortunate enough to have a brilliant product that offers investors state-of-the-art tools to facilitate their investment. In addition, they have over a decade worth of testimonials from their clients that have been through their investment education courses. But how else can you appeal to the average investor?

Do you look at the advertisements in Personal Investor, AFR Smart Investor and Intelligent Investor and think ‘That deal looks good, where do I sign up’? Do you read the ‘advertorials’ in Wealth Creator Magazine or Your Trading Edge and think they contain the right information to make an informed buying decision. Do you ask the man standing in the middle of the Sydney Investment Expo wearing an ‘I Hate CMC Markets’ T-shirt what his opinion on who’s the best CFD provider? I don’t think he will be trading CFD’s with CMC.

As an investor, the choice can be difficult. As a CFD provider trying to claim ‘that’ investor, the road is even more treacherous.

IG Markets, judging by their front-page advertisement on the Australian Financial Review, are offering a good deal. Low commissions on trading they advertise. Low commissions sound good but you’ll find that the discounted rates only apply if certain trading criteria are met. They are making a cut somewhere that’s for sure. They have to. That one advertisement would have cost around $15,000.

There are a dozen other entities all trying to earn your dollar and most show great examples of how NOT to go about your marketing. If you ever want to see poor marketing in action, you will commonly find these two elements.

1. Reduce trading commissions.
2. Throw amazing amounts of money at blanket marketing which offers no real benefits, but mentions your discount trading.

Sounds similar to the IG Markets marketing plan. Effective? Probably. But it may not be as efficient as it should be.

Other domestic players like Macquarie, Sonray Capital Markets and Tricom use a more corporate model. Day trading, online trading, full service brokerage and whitelabelling and referral plans. This is in own right is effective and profitable but they want a slice of the ‘mum-and-dad’ pie too.

The CFD trading revolution has fully hit Australia. Funnily enough, the centre of global trading, the US, doesn’t allow its citizens to trade CFD’s. The rest of the world can trade CFD’s on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq with no problems.

And we will… The Online Trading industry in Australia is going to massively expand over the next few years. CFD’s are going to play a major role in that expansion and we look forward to enjoying the ride.

We’ll be working on promoting the SMC Trader until the end of 2007 so we’ll definitely give you updates on how it goes. If Commsec and ETrade, start issuing statements that they’re numbers are falling then assume we are doing well.
That should happen anyway as both are really limited in both functionality and product offerings. It’s true.

To view the SMC Trader go to http://www.smctrader.com  and to view the SMC Cafe, where traders meet, go to http://cafe.smctrader.net  

Job applicants that want a job where they can ‘travel’ can send their applications right here.  What a 10 days.

• Gold Coast (our hub) to Brisbane, then back to base
• Gold Coast to Sydney
• Sydney up to Cairns via Gold Coast
• Cairns back to the Gold Coast (for a change of clothing)
• Then, finally, Gold Coast to Melbourne and back 

I really must learn the art of appointment booking. This also explains the lack of blogging recently.  Sorry.

Please Note That Trips Were Longer Than 5cms In Real Life 

Brisbane
We met with clients to discuss processes they need to implement to streamline their services and become more efficient.   Their processes were too ‘key person’ specific.

Technology allows businesses to provide consistency. Relying solely on humans for the support of your clients can cause serious problems.  Do not remove the human element completely but support your staff by underpinning their role with strong systems.

The reason.  The potential impact of losing just ONE client is:

• You can lose the upfront profit a sale will generate
• You can lose any ongoing trails or commissions that sale will generate
• You can lose any referrals that client can provide
• You can lose the sales, trails & commissions from those referrals and their referrals
• You lose the potential to upsell any new products
• That ONE unhappy client will tell lots of other people and ruin your reputation amongst their peers

Can it be emphasized enough the amount of loss suffered from weaknesses in company processes? 

Sydney
The point regarding loss of reputation leads me nicely onto the next stop of the trip, Sydney for the “Banking & Financial Services Reputation Management Summit”. Hosted by Frocomm Australia, the event was focused around “Trust and the Impact on Reputation”. 

One of the speakers at the event was John Brogden, CEO of Manchester Unity and former Opposition leader in NSW.

This event confirmed for the direction we’ve been taking with our clients. Building trust & loyalty through community & support and communicating this clearly.

John Brogden was so accurate when he said the key to retaining clients is developing loyalty through service and information as the public can access your competition in seconds online.

In line with our philosophy, he noted that the power of the internet in developing their business.  When he started with Manchester Unity, he was of the belief that the internet would provide a lower quality, less loyal client base. What he has found is precisely the opposite.

His reasoning was the client who purchase online have developed a lot stronger product knowledge before making their decision. Exactly the way we have been working with our clients.

The line-up of speakers was second to none and a thank you must be extended to Glen Frost at Frocomm for organizing the event and Mark Hollands from Factiva for being a superb MC.  Also I won an iPod mini for my troubles.  Bonus!

Cairns
The trip to Cairns ended up being like a weekend away. I would have to say thank you to the Shangri-la Hotel for the fantastic stay. Cocktails and Wedges (not in the same glass) by the pool topped a perfect weekend.

Another One Of Those Texas Planes Landing

Melbourne
The road trip ended with Melbourne, which included a meeting with one of the big four banks to improve their marketing and distribution. It is amazing how the largest organisations in Australia can be ‘old school’ in their marketing approach. Get on the phones, sell, sell hard and quickly. We offered a few solutions and soon we’ll see if we’re allowed on board.  The signs so far are good.

The road trip was a great success, next time though I need to allow more time for sleep.

The darling of the internet has bought the hype of the internet.  Google and You Tube unite!  The fallout of this is that Facebook, who was an acquisition target is now the red-hot favourite to be purchased by Yahoo who needs to make a strong movement in response to Google.  It’s like the turn of the century all over again. 

The question most people ask themselves when they heard about this potential deal, is why would Google invest US$1.6bn in a company which is a year old, has not made 1 cent in profit and has content that violates copyright law?

It doesn’t fit with the list of Google acquisitions to date.  Google had spent under US$150m in total over the past few years.  Pyra Labs (Blogger), Picasa, Writely, Keyhole (Google Earth), Sprinks (Contextual Ads in AdSense), Where 2 (Google Maps) as well as a whole host of semantic and analytical companies were acquired for practically nothing in comparison and have delivered massive value.  How can You Tube compete?

Goo-ba Tube-ing Jr Shouts ‘Show Me The Money’

Well it is simple really. Google has a market cap of around $130bn.  $1.6bn represents a small chunk of that company and the benefits far outweigh the negatives.  The impact on stock price alone should increase by more than the cost of the transaction.  1.5% is all the stock needs to increase by to make up that cost.   Of course, there are other reasons for the takeover. 

You Tube gets three times the traffic that Google Video does, and when people search on Google, they are looking for You Tube segments and not Google Video.

The CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, has announced that the purchase is in alignment with the Vision of the company for organising information.  Now from an entrepreneurial point of view, you have to take your hat off to the directors of You Tube. Co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen has sold their company for US$1.6Bn within a year of launching their company. They have cashed in on the social media phenomenon.

Social Media seems to be the difference between the success of You Tube and Google Video. The ability to build a community around their service is one of the major factors behind the amazing success of this company. This success being defined by their 20m visitors to their website each month and 72.1m unique visitors per year. 

Rapport-building communication seems to be key when appealing to the masses.  Although these are huge numbers, you can take the principles of the You Tube and incorporate them into your business.

Once again to the bear and bulls in The Pit, look at how you can incorporate Social Media into your company structure.  In financial planning, communicating new offerings through a newsletter or a blog or a periodic podcast would have massive value and will draw in more people.  Accountants can communicate at crucial points of the year through these forms of media.  Engage your client base.  It’s called Social media for a reason.

Let me introduce you to a few companies… Microsoft, Google and Apple you probably already know…do you know MySpace, Facebook, You Tube, Second Life, Mixi and Technorati?

These companies are leading the way in Social Media. By definition, social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.  Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular tools that foster social media include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs (video logs).

So how does any of this relate to you and the building of your business?

The internet is the self-titled ‘Information Superhighway’ but now there are so many people, all over the world spending hours online, they discover information and want to share or spread the word.  Social media has become a buzz word for people connecting online.

Humans by their very nature are social animals and look for places to meet, express and discuss.  This doesn’t have to happen in a cafe it can happen at your website.

The notion of social media is so popular that MySpace was purchased for approximately US$580Mn by News Corp last year.  The fastest selling album in UK history first appeared on MySpace and the marketing was driven by pure word of mouth.  The majors in the music industry now use MySpace as their main tool to promote their music. Type in an artist into a search engine and you are likely to find their MySpace site.

Mixi is Japan’s answer to Myspace. On the day it listed in Japan, it’s shares traded at nearly 90% increase on the value on its list price helping to make its 30 year old owner a billionaire. Yahoo are reportedly looking to purchase the company Facebook at around the US$1Bn mark as it has an established social network in place.  The Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, communicates directly with his audience though his blog and Microsoft are reported to have allocated US$200Mn for advertising on one Social Media site.

A more peculiar version of the phenomenon is Second Life. As at September 2006, Second Life has around 764,000 user accounts and approximately 50% of those active over the previous 60 days.

It is an online community within a 3D world, where you can participate in a virtual world with its own society, economy and ecology.  Strangely, it has begun to operate as a ‘real’ market. If you visit Second Life, you can see exactly how much ‘thin air’ has been purchased that day. When I looked, there was over US$410K in transactions which had taken place. Amazing when there are no physical deliverables.

Similarly, people are purchasing tools on Ebay to help them succeed in the game World of Warcraft. Parents with teenage sons would know of the game well. There can be a downside to this as we attended a conference in Thailand and an attendee explained his addiction to the game was so strong that he lost his business from playing the game up to 16 hours a day.

Social Media is the next generation of Marketing. The challenge for businesses is to be able to create an online community that people want to be a part of. Social Media allows you to connect with you clients like never before.  You may not have a game or music but you have valuable information that people want to know about and discuss.

To all the Bears and Bulls in ‘The Pit’ what is your experience with Social Media? If you say the answer is none then you are wrong, you are reading this…

I Don’t Agree - But At Least I Have Someone To Discuss It With

Here is an article our Pit Dwellers will enjoy! It appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Business is better than sex

Who would have thought the day would come, when business would be more interesting than sex?!

This highlights the power the internet for business today… and in the future!

How many “Pit Dwellers” have started to see and experience this transformation for themselves?

Google is everywhere… but how can you use them to grow your business?

That is the question most businesses are asking, and they are investing tens of thousands of dollars to do it!

Some organisations our company has dealt with, have a team of people dealing with Search Engine Optimisation alone.

Do you know that the way your website is built determines how easy it is for Google to find you? Commonly, the prettier and flashier the website… the harder it is for any search engine to find you.

Here is a little test for you… go to www.google.com and search for “Untitled.”

There are 175,000,000 listings for the word “untitled!” Do you think that is because that is the main heading people wanted to have listed?

No… it is because they dealt with Web Development companies that did not understand the importance of listing titles of website pages and images.

The money companies spend trying to outsmart the search engine giant is more often then not wasted! Google are very confidential about the algorithms behind their search engine spiders, and to make it even harder… they are consistently changing them.

So what is the best solution to make your website google friendly? Deal with a web development company that knows how to structure your website, your web pages and all elements of your website to be Google friendly. Listen to their advice about the content you should have on your website.

Most people build a website thinking they know what their clients are looking for, but never properly researching it. The try to open themselves up to the entire universe, instead of targeting their sites to the clients they desire. I will give you a gentle clue - When building your website, chose your words very carefully!

If they don’t know… then find an organisation that does. Google is like a gate that comes with it’s own padlock. Except with this padlock, the more combinations you get right, the more the gate opens for you… allowing more and more traffic to filter.

If you are off the mark on your combinations, your website will not be getting the traffic it deserves. There is only one company on the planet that can get all the combinations right… and that is google.

IMI Trust devised a step by step system for us to follow when we are developing a site, specifically to assist google in recognising our clients sites. We also let our clients know exactly what they can do, to develop upon the foundations we have integrated in the web development phase.

After you have structured your site correctly, the next step is to evolve to the world of Google Adwords. I will save this content for another post, but feel free to contact our team if you want any assistance with your site.

Honestly… Apple are brilliant!  I say this as a previous Apple hater.  I am now a convert.  Apple’s products and their marketing of them is pure genius.  Though, that is a Guinness slogan but it applies perfectly well here.

Who else could hold a conference call, to talk about their future product development and tell their biggest competitor to “Get out your photocopiers!” I thought it was brilliant how they highlighted that their major competitor is continuously delaying their release of their next Operating System version.  

In the last 5 years, Apple has re-invented the way we listen to music and even the way we buy music. Never again do we have to carry around gloveboxes full of CD’s, or purchase mammoth CD cases to house a collection.

The Ipod has been, and continues to be, an amazing profit centre for Apple. What I love about the iPod, is that it is everywhere and even when you dont realise it… it is being promoted to you.
Think about these points…

* If you see someone on a train or street with a white cord and white ear phones, what are they listening to their music on?
* When you are getting onto a plane… they ask you to turn off your MP3 player or your iPod
* When the plane is going to land, what are they telling you to switch off again?
* If you like todays music, what is the only MP3 player they will show in music videos?
* Even popular TV programmes like The Simpsons are parodying it with its famous DiePod eutanasia experience.

What is amazing is that, every day on most plane flights around the world, in multiples of languages, airlines are marketing the iPod and they don’t even know it. The other thing you have to love about the IPod, is find me 1 person on this planet that has… and has not purchased any more accessories. By the time you get the belt, the microphone, the speakers, the additional case etc. It is almost a 25%to 50% on the original sale.

Household Items Now Include Apple Products

iTunes, responsible for changing the way we purchase music. Over 1 Billion songs have been downloaded! That is insane if you consider the enormity of it. The best part is… people are chosing to pay the US$0.99, instead of downloading it for free. How rare is that? You have the choice of Free vs Paid, and people are chosing to pay.

Being in the finance industry, all we seem to care about is the latest earning announcements and or the potential future earnings. It saddens me that sometimes we miss the genius behind the growth of these companies, and how they evolve their success. When Apple announced they were going to be using Intel chips in their computers, their share price skyrocketed. Thankfully for me… I was on it! The true merging for Mac users being able to use all the software the PC users could, was coming closer.  

Now the whole world is convinced of Apple. From consumers, to Mum and dad investors, to retails shops and the institutions. The hype of Apple is backed up with brilliant products, which keep evolving the digital world. 2 Years ago, I did not know anyone that owned a Mac computer. Now, I feel like I am one of the few that don’t.

That is an amazing turn around! Web Designers are now having to design their sites with Apple in mind! Even though the savvy designers use an Apple to do their design in the first place.  The web designers that do are the ones that are getting the financial rewards for their clients. It is that extra business, the extra profit, the extra sales that are making companies take notice. Trading platforms which don’t have Mac capability, are losing business every day!  

Over the next few years, it will be great to see how Apple keeps growing. One of my Mac owner friends, recently commented to me, how his whole digital world now revolves around Apple products. From Music, to Photos, to Videos, to Radio and for people who are blind… Apple has them catered for too. Apple has me convinced! Check out their new Operating System being released… Leopard

I am quite confident my next laptop or desktop will have an Apple logo on it.  Financial groups tend to use PC based technology though.  Are there any groups out there that use Apple? 

All the best,  

From The Pit

I have an observation for you - Most websites are weak at best!  You would probably agree.

They offer no real value to their clents and they dont follow any process or structure. Worst of all, websites are designed without any thought for the consumer which, after all, is the end-user of the site.  This is not good.  However, this norm has the potential of putting you at a competetive advantage.

To illustrate this, I give you an actual example that happened to me this week.   

This week I was having issues with my ADSL at home and this forced me to use the ol’ favourite of Dial-up for the first time in an eternity.  An eternity is a word you should get familiar with if you are using Dial-up as this is how long everything takes to do.  Many sites take over 15 minutes to load in using Dial-up.  The over-use of useless Flash animations and pages over-stuffed with content that people can’t even be bothered to skim over it.  Why am I drivelling on about Dial-up?

Generally if you have broadband Cable or ADSL, you assume the rest of the world must have it. Let me inform you… they dont.

Many people in Australia - approximately 35% of all internet users - still have a simple Dial-up account at home. Get this into your head.  35% of your potential clients are not going to wait up to 15 minutes for your page to load.  Whilst it looks great once it is downloaded, who is going to wait? 

We live in a “I want it now” society and 35% of people want it now and with a small site size. 

If you check out your website stats, most people are on your site under 30 seconds. If it is poorly conceived and designed it will be even less.  The IMI Trust website, incorporating The Pit (hello reader) manages to hold the attention of the average visitors for over 4 minutes.  This may not sound like much but it is a lot longer than most sites.  If visitors stay for that long, you are clearly grabbing your readers attention, building rapport and offering information that is wanted.

Let me share with you what we believe are the key elements to a successful website.

1) Your website reflect the brand you are building
2) Your website has a fast download time
3) Your website provides your clients with a reason to give you their details
4) Your website provides your clients with a reason to keep coming back to you
5) Your website can be found by the search engines and your clients

If your website does not contain these elements, you are losing 10’s of thousands of dollars in potential business.  The IMI Trust specialises in building websites for the financial services industry.  Each of our last five websites have made their money back with a financial quarter.  Most people will tell you a horror story about their website.  How it’s a dog, a donkey a duck, whatever.  We want to change that perception in you…

To all the business owners out there, go back and have a look at your site. Ask yourself, is this really making me money, or is it losing me potential business?  This is an area we are passionate about because we know it inside and out. There is so much people can do when they get their website and if the strategy behind their website right.  Is your online strategy succeeding or failing?