For customers
Checking the online vitality of your business
One of the most surprising thing to me when talking to business owners is the large percentage that do not do the simplest thing to analyse the strength of their business online - regularly Googling their business name. Searching your own business name regularly is...
Getting help when resolution is impossible
Human beings are incredibly complex animals, and no matter how ‘evolved’ we are, there are some things that we struggle with. Since the dawn of time we have fought each other, over large and small matters. Conflict is possibly the most challenging aspect of human life...
Picking a restaurant because of a negative review
Earlier this year I was in Christchurch and was looking for a diner to eat breakfast at. Christchurch has a number of great breakfast diners and I wanted to find one I hadn’t been to before. So, I Googled it and there were a few options – all not too far away and all...
Marketing a reputation in boom times and bust
Marketing is a vital element to every business’ success and viability. Like other essentials, it needs to be nurtured and more importantly – it requires a commitment – to ensure that a business’ name, brand, and services are continually present where they are most...
Google it . . .
Not so long ago there were a number of search engines competing for consumers’ attention. Today that’s not the case and one search engine holds a solid monopoly – so much so that its name is now the popular terminology for online searching. Want to know the time in...
Online reviews are tangible goodwill for a business
A recent news story about a campground operator in Gore, Southland got me thinking about online reviews, goodwill, and word of mouth. The traditional method of spreading goodwill about a business was analogue and worked perfectly well in the pre-digital age. One...
Forging a new reputation
A renowned writer once famously wrote that there's no such thing as a second act in American lives - meaning that it's not possible to change, to reinvent, to forge a new path. F Scott Fitzgerald's epigram isn't a truism and wasn't intended to be. Reinvention is part...
Online reviews take new business from zero to market player in 18 months
I speak to thousands of business owners each year – from sole traders with a crew of one - doing everything from the actual work, the invoicing, the quoting, the tax, the marketing, the bookkeeping, the advertising and everything else involved with running a business,...
Online reviews are a sure sign of a proactive business
One of the facets of being successful in business is adhering to the principle of proactivity – staying ahead of the game, being prepared, having plans and strategies in place to ensure that when anything happens there is a solution to take care of it. Oddly enough,...
Turning customer databases into more sales through direct marketing
In the second part of a series on how to increase profitability by a number of simple and cost-effective methods, we take a look ways of harnessing the value and power of a customer database. No matter the size of a business, there will be details of hundreds or even...
Small steps to increase profitability
Businesses are always looking for ways to increase profit and in this series we will be offering some tips on ways to do exactly that - without having to invest much at all. These pointers involve doing little things, that will steadily grow the bottom line. How to...
Feeling gravity’s pull – the power of online reviews
Push and pull - the connection between a business and its hoped for customers. What fills the gap? What drives one toward the other? What are the most effective and easiest ways to ensure customers are actively drawn toward a business as opposed to being reached out...
It takes real leadership to protect reputations
Reputations are organic and fluid. They can be made, unmade, and made again. But it takes real leadership in a crisis to make or break a reputation. A great case in point is the recent Australian cricket cheating scandal. Even if you don't know much about the...
Forewarned is forearmed
The rise and ubiquity of online reviews has also created a burgeoning industry in fake reviews. These reviews may achieve short term results but are worth less than nothing. Inflating or manipulating an online reputation is not only a huge example of bad faith, it is...
Sundazed and confused
For roughly a month between the middle of December and the end of January, New Zealand enters into, what is commonly known as, the silly season. It’s summer, the sun is blazing and the beach is calling. Kiwis take their annual holidays - to relax, socialise, spend...
There’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of suspicion
Not too many years ago it was common for people to knock on your door. Encyclopedia salespeople, the Avon ladies, charities, odd jobbers, the religious – they would all come and hope to sell something or other. It is the purest example of cold calling. You didn’t ask...
Being taken for a ride
The first car I bought was a total lemon. I was young, eager, and stubbornly oblivious to the great advice I had been given, before forking over my hard earned cash to a gentleman who sold second hand cars through the classified section of the Christchurch Press....
Walls and bridges
It was one of the most iconic moments of the last century - Germans who had been divided by political differences for decades, dismantling a wall that had been constructed to keep them apart. In a move that signalled the demise of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall coming...
Video killed the radio star, part 2
I talk to thousands of business owners and consumers each year. While they are all obviously different - in age, gender, racial and ethic background and life experience - the one thing they have in common is that they are trying to connect - with customers and with...
And the Oscar goes to . . .
Every year at about this time, newspapers and magazines compile lists of all the things we should have seen or read about, or known about in the past 12 months. At the "dead time" between Christmas and New Year, the media revels in presenting swathes of articles on...
Should old acquaintance be forgot
For many of us, New Year's Eve is the time to throw off all of the ills of the passing year and spend time with good friends and family and party like you mean it – all the while heralding the new year to come. The tradition of New Years is millennia old – in the...
And so this is Christmas . . .
And so this is Christmas. Without lurching any further into the John Lennon and Yoko Ono song, I’ll just take the opening few words. And so this is Christmas. For many it’s the best time of the year, for some it is simply the worst. No other day in the year generates...
Consumers want recent reviews and they are looking for them more than ever
Each year BrightLocal releases its much respected Local Consumer Review Survey. Since 2010 it has become an important tool for analysing consumer behaviour and online reviews. The 2018 survey, released this week, indicates some interesting shifts in consumer...
You only sing when you’re winning
It really is the strangest thing when the most successful team in world sport comes under so much attack, after a few less than stellar performances. It’s stranger still when that team is the All Blacks and those leading the charge to put the boot in are so called All...
Checking the online vitality of your business
One of the most surprising thing to me when talking to business owners is the large percentage that do not do the simplest thing to analyse the strength of their business online - regularly Googling their business name. Searching your own business name regularly is...
Getting help when resolution is impossible
Human beings are incredibly complex animals, and no matter how ‘evolved’ we are, there are some things that we struggle with. Since the dawn of time we have fought each other, over large and small matters. Conflict is possibly the most challenging aspect of human life...
Picking a restaurant because of a negative review
Earlier this year I was in Christchurch and was looking for a diner to eat breakfast at. Christchurch has a number of great breakfast diners and I wanted to find one I hadn’t been to before. So, I Googled it and there were a few options – all not too far away and all...
Marketing a reputation in boom times and bust
Marketing is a vital element to every business’ success and viability. Like other essentials, it needs to be nurtured and more importantly – it requires a commitment – to ensure that a business’ name, brand, and services are continually present where they are most...
Are our phones making us a better species?
It’s strange that we still call them mobile phones. Using them as a device to make actual ‘phone calls’ is the very smallest part of their function and use. In reality they are extensions, connections to nearly any sort of information at any time – only hindered by...
Creating space around the home
Now that Daylight Savings is here and we have an extra hour of evening light up our sleeves, it’s a great time to think about making sure that our homes are ready for all of the glories of long, balmy summer days. Think about pruning what you don’t need Just like with...
We can’t afford to mess with the truth
No matter which country you live in some things stay the same – the professions that top off the lists of most distrusted professions. Across the board it is politicians and journalists that take top spots (or bottom spots) in polls regarding trust and reputation....
Google it . . .
Not so long ago there were a number of search engines competing for consumers’ attention. Today that’s not the case and one search engine holds a solid monopoly – so much so that its name is now the popular terminology for online searching. Want to know the time in...
125 years – and the fight goes on
This week marks a special milestone in New Zealand history – 125 years since women were granted the right to vote. While it may seem ludicrous now that there was ever a time that women needed to fight so hard and for so long to be granted a fundamental right that men...
Losing keeps winners winning
By virtue of its phenomenal ratio of wins against losses and draws, the All Blacks are the most successful team in sports. The New Zealand rugby public has become so used to their national team beating other nations in test matches that losses are considered too much...
When tarnishing a reputation isn’t the right thing to do
In the history of All Blacks rugby it’s harder to find a more hard done by player than Keith Murdoch. His dismissal while on tour in the UK in 1972 for punching a security guard at a hotel in Cardiff is remarkable, not only for the severity of the punishment he...
The dangers of relying on word of mouth alone
For a while I have been thinking about one of the more remarkable statistics about online reviews that has been steadily increasing in the past few years. I thought about it again after reading a news story about a roofer in Dunedin who has allegedly done a runner and...
We’re all going to Bonnie Doon!!
About eight years ago I had to attend a conference in Sydney and after booking a fare looked online for accommodation. I searched by location and made my choice on price. So long as I was close enough to the venue and the price was right, then I was happy, or so I...
There’s a sucker born every minute . . .
In a case of life mirroring fiction, a recent insidious email scam bears some striking resemblances to an episode of UK TV show Black Mirror, where a visitor to online porn sites is blackmailed and coerced into undertaking a number of criminal activities to supposedly...
Online reviews are tangible goodwill for a business
A recent news story about a campground operator in Gore, Southland got me thinking about online reviews, goodwill, and word of mouth. The traditional method of spreading goodwill about a business was analogue and worked perfectly well in the pre-digital age. One...
Forging a new reputation
A renowned writer once famously wrote that there's no such thing as a second act in American lives - meaning that it's not possible to change, to reinvent, to forge a new path. F Scott Fitzgerald's epigram isn't a truism and wasn't intended to be. Reinvention is part...
How the game is played matters most of all
Every four years the most watched sport on the planet serves up a carnival that decides which nation's team wins the FIFA World Cup. In just over four weeks, 32 teams get whittled down to one and along the way there is all the drama, beauty, desperation, and...
Online reviews take new business from zero to market player in 18 months
I speak to thousands of business owners each year – from sole traders with a crew of one - doing everything from the actual work, the invoicing, the quoting, the tax, the marketing, the bookkeeping, the advertising and everything else involved with running a business,...
Online reviews are a sure sign of a proactive business
One of the facets of being successful in business is adhering to the principle of proactivity – staying ahead of the game, being prepared, having plans and strategies in place to ensure that when anything happens there is a solution to take care of it. Oddly enough,...
Reviews and The Consumer Guarantees Act – know your rights
Nobody likes being taken for a ride, being sold misleading or faulty goods, or paying for services that aren't up to scratch. It is well worth knowing your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act (CGA) 1993, not only for when things go wrong but also in instances...
Ingenious ways to transform shipping containers into luxury homes
You can create a beautiful, relatively low-cost shipping container home simply by adding a touch of luxury to a shipping container. If you have decided that you would prefer a shipping container home rather than a small house with basic insulation, these ingenious...
Turning customer databases into more sales through direct marketing
In the second part of a series on how to increase profitability by a number of simple and cost-effective methods, we take a look ways of harnessing the value and power of a customer database. No matter the size of a business, there will be details of hundreds or even...
Small steps to increase profitability
Businesses are always looking for ways to increase profit and in this series we will be offering some tips on ways to do exactly that - without having to invest much at all. These pointers involve doing little things, that will steadily grow the bottom line. How to...
Feeling gravity’s pull – the power of online reviews
Push and pull - the connection between a business and its hoped for customers. What fills the gap? What drives one toward the other? What are the most effective and easiest ways to ensure customers are actively drawn toward a business as opposed to being reached out...