For a business to survive and thrive it needs to be seen – that may sound overly simplistic but it’s true. Being seen is the key to attracting customers, accruing revenue and sustaining growth. To be seen, a business has to market its brand, goods, and services and it...
In the past few weeks I have had to book some accomodation and travel for an upcoming overseas holiday. All of it has been done online. I haven’t exchanged one word with another human being, except for a quick online chat with the good people at Eurostar to ask what I...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Customers are everything to a business. Not only do they generate revenue - happy customers will keep coming back and create a growing customer base through word-of-mouth and by contributing online reviews. But those reviews are far more than just markers of...
Some people think of it as the holly grail, some people know all the ways of making the most of it, and some people don't really understand it at all, but SEO - (Search Engine Optimisation) is not overly difficult to comprehend and there are lots of ways that you can...
When 97 percent of consumers are going online to find reviews before even considering contacting a business you want to make sure that you have a review strategy in place - and there are more benefits than you could imagine. Often business owners think that they have...