An example of how your customers are changing their attitudes is the trend to a ‘no bookings’ policy at some of Melbourne’s best restaurants.

This was unheard of a few years ago.

But then, in 2005, Longrain opened in Little Bourke Street with its communal table, top reputation and a ‘no bookings’ policy.

“Who’s going to put up with long, frustrating queues?” the Melbourne establishment probably thought. But the new approach has caught on and now it seems to be quite common.

And so the marketer has to ask, “why exactly is this?” Why is the practice thriving?

Some dining experts may suggest that ‘no bookings’ is a sign of a more flexible and spontaneous dining culture. Others might question why people keep turning up if they are irritated by not securing a table. But there seemed little irritation at 7pm last Friday night as people arriving at 44 Little Bourke Street were told that the expected wait was 90 minutes.

My feeling is that ‘no bookings’ is just another example of how people buy today. We have known for some years that Gen Y people do not like to be pinned down. ‘Spontaneous’ could be their middle name. And this attitude is spreading.

Your customers and prospects today want to be able to deal with you when it suits them. They don’t want to be locked in. They don’t want to book in weeks, days or even hours before. They want to keep their options open.

If that’s how your customers think, marketers have to take that into account. Can you make your product or service more instantly available? Can you risk a ‘no bookings’ policy for your service? If you can, it may be worth considering. Seriously.

Longrain took the initiative and made it work. And maybe for Longrain, this ‘point of difference’ was an important element in creating a distinctive and successful presence in a very crowded market.

With the way people voted so differently in the different parts of Australia, we all received a classic marketing lesson.

Briefly the lesson is: your customers in different parts of Australia, think differently.

If you are treating them all the same, you may be leaving some of yours customers and prospects out in the cold.

For the vote in some parts of the country to be so anti Labor and in other parts to be for Labor, clearly what is important to some people, just does not rate with others. And that’s exactly how it is with your customers. You have to dig deep to get to know them.

The election must act as a reminder to us all that customers in different parts of Australia think differently and have different concerns.

Frank Chamberlin

With non-stop work and non-stop two-way communications, life’s usually too hectic to waste time in front of TV. But maybe this three-minute video will be useful for you.

We have produced it, only because we received so many requests. In a few minutes it gives you some really practical tips about being a better writer for your business.

The video is a quick insight into our writing training workshops that we present in-house for businesses anywhere in Australia.

After you look at the video, if you want to find out about the workshops, please email me (frank@actionwords.com.au) and I’ll send you an interactive pdf that gives an outline of what we offer businesses.

Or you are welcome to phone to discuss the training options for your organisation: 03 9481 1410.

Hopefully, you’ll agree it’s more useful than at least some TV programs.

Frank Chamberlin

Is that right? Well, think again.

One of the fundamentals of marketing is to avoid thinking that the whole market thinks or acts the way you do.

Most professional marketers have an iPhone. Most use a phone to download data from the internet. Most shop online. But what most marketers do is not all that important.

Look at these figures:
· 82% of consumers have never paid to download a film or television program
· 72% have never checked their email using a mobile device
· 65% do not access the internet from a phone.

These are 2010 figures from research completed by the highly respected UK group called ‘Econsultancy’ (www.econsultancy.com).

The study also found that 38% do not yet use a social profile web site, and only 6% ask for recommendations on social sites during a product search.

Social media is huge, we all know that. And it’s far from maturity. But it’s not all there is.

Targeted emails have not outlived their usefulness. (With the emphasis here on ‘targeted’ of course.)

Despite the rise of social media, the role of the email channel is not about to die. Email can be extremely effective. Most of us have been attracted to something because of receiving an email. However – like all direct channels – email has to be targeted to work most effectively.

Social media can work well and will probably become more effective as it matures. That’s especially true for Gen Y.

But even when TV was at its highest, there was never a time when one channel was everything.

And that’s as true today as ever.

Consistently keeping up to the mark on customer service is not easy.

For the customer service team, there is always something that can be improved. And no matter how well your customer service specialists have performed in the past, marketing people should maintain a continual check on what’s actually happening at the coalface.

If there are marketing people at the Melbourne Museum in Carlton, I suspect they have been asleep on the job.

Martine Pekarsky of Think Twins (www.thinktwins.com.au) alerted me to this one.

From a simple enquiry, this is the response from Museum Victoria:

“Thank you, your query has been successfully submitted. Please note that a response may take several weeks depending on the complexity of your enquiry.”

In fact, in my own case, when I made recent enquiry, I received a response from “Jo” in the Discovery Team, the very next day. The performance was actually quite acceptable. But the promise in the initial email of ‘several weeks’ was a complete turn off.

Marketers beware! We need to monitor what our customer service colleagues are serving up to prospects and customers.

Probably it has never been especially easy to get Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) without a huge budget. But surely it must be much harder today.

Multi-tasking is a way of life for Gen Y. And for all of us, multi-tasking is considered a positive time saving way to get through the day.

As writers at Action Words, we are very conscious that readers are often not concentrating.

That’s why website content is made up of bite size chunks. The text has to be suitable for scanners.

And how can anyone do more than scan if they are watching TV, exploring a website, having a conversation and checking their texts all at the same time?

Headlines and sub heads are now more important than ever. They create stopping points for the eyes.

With multi-tasking at play, it is more critical than ever to understand that all writing is visual. It catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. So we must be concerned with the ‘look’ of the finished communication.

If it is an email we are writing, the spacing on the screen absolutely impacts first impressions. If every line is packed together with no paragraphs the reader will be much more likely to open something else. But if there is too much spacing and therefore lots of scrolling, that’s a turn off also.

With readers multi-tasking at home and in the office and everywhere else they see your words, the communication task is certainly harder. But it is not impossible. Persuasive messages do happen. All you need is energetic, enticing, encouraging, inspiring, inducing and inciting copy. All the way through. And what’s so difficult about that?

So how would you rate our new Prime Minister as a marketer?

If you are locked in as a voter for either of the major parties, you could easily be biased. But if you look at the PM from a marketing point of view exclusively, how would you rate her?

Is her marketing of herself and her party going to be a positive in getting her to The Lodge?

Well, obviously, it’s impossible to know for sure. My instinctive answer is that yes, I think she would make a good marketer.

For starters, her sense of humour would be a good thing around the office. Every marketer has failures at some stage, so being able to laugh is very much a bonus.

But let’s look at some tried and true criteria.

1. Does she have a marketing personality with flair and drive?
2. Does she walk in the shoes of her customers?
3. Does she understand numbers?
4. Can she present well and communicate effectively?
5. Is she innovative in her thinking?

(When students achieve their Master of Marketing at Monash, and I see them pick up the certificate they have worked so hard for, I sometimes ask myself these questions. In the Monash scenario, my theory is that if you have your Masters and you can tick off all those five questions, there is no reason why you can’t have a wonderfully successful marketing career).

So now, how do we rate Julia Gillard? If circumstances were different, would you give her a role in your marketing department?

Obviously, I don’t know her personally, but from what I have read and from what I have seen in the media, I suspect most of us would say she rates fairly well against these marketing criteria.

My brief answers to the five questions above would be:

1. Yes, absolutely.
2. Yes – I think most people would say she talks in a language that they easily understand. She certainly seems to be concerned for ordinary Australians (however, I suspect that for thoughtful people, what she really stands for is not yet obvious).
3. Not 100% sure on this, but she obviously got the numbers right regarding her ‘ascension’ to the top job!
4. Yes, absolutely (my guess is that we are no longer distracted by the sound of the voice, which is grating when you first hear it).
5. Yes, probably – being the first PM in 60 years to not move into The Lodge was a simple day-one example.

You might feel my answers are simplistic. That’s OK. Probably everyone will have their own perception of such a public figure.

If you’d like to put forward your own ideas on JG as a marketer, please go to ‘Post a comment’ now.

Recently, I have heard a number of marketers say “we need an iPhone app”.
But this may be very superficial.

If we want to capitalise on the incredible growth in mobile, we need to think more carefully.

Mobile marketing is much deeper than a cool app or a simple SMS blast. Mobile marketing is as deep and different as every customer.

Smart companies don’t market to gadgets or platforms. They market to customers. When and if mobile marketers adopt this strategy, they can increase the value of customer relationships via the mobile channel. Essentially, mobile marketing must be addressed through a proper customer segmentation strategy.

A critical, first consideration when planning a mobile marketing campaign is that the term “phone” now refers to a landline.

Today, people use “mobile devices” to text, send pictures, talk, email and so much more. And mobile devices are not limited to just smartphones or feature phones, but include any handheld that allows for interaction and remote connectivity.

Mobile devices now offer a plethora of new features and research is starting to show a resulting change in customer behaviour.

According to Washington based CTIA – The Wireless Association (an international nonprofit membership organisation that has represented the wireless communications industry since 1984) consumers sent almost 5 billion text messages per day in the last half of 2009. That’s up a massive 25 percent from the previous year.

Plus, the number of multimedia messages – those that contain a picture or video – more than doubled year-on-year. No matter where we look, mobile data usage is increasing dramatically.

But not only that. Mobile commerce is rising quickly as well. A US Mobile Marketing Association study released a few weeks ago shows that 17 percent of all respondents used their mobile device to purchase applications, ring tones and other content.

More importantly, 6 percent used their device to receive coupons or discounts and 6 percent used their mobile device to purchase physical goods or non-mobile content or services. And you can be quite certain, those 6 percent figures will be 12 percent and 24 percent before you know it.

Today, successful mobile marketing requires a keen understanding of customer behaviours and attitudes. It comes down to the differences in how customers use their devices. Marketers that overlook customer differentiation may be wasting money and time and could be impairing their brand equity on an increasingly important channel.

The next dm Forum in Melbourne on 10 August will discuss which mobile technologies are having an impact now and those to watch out for in the near future. If you are not on the invitation list, please email Frank Chamberlin now. frank@actionwords.com.au

Australians are exiting the recession with a growing sense of optimism.

That’s one of the major findings from the 19th annual ‘Eye on Australia’ report released at the beginning of May.

The ‘Eye on Australia’ report tracks and identifies trends in consumer attitudes across metropolitan and regional areas. It provides detailed insights on how Australians feel about work, life, environment, spending habits and the economy.

The report is jointly put together by agencies Grey Advertising and Sweeney Research. The survey questions were asked in February 2010 and they show some amazing swings since a year earlier. (Whether response would be different now, three months later, is anyone’s guess).

Unemployment and job security concerns have dropped considerably, from 33% in 2009 to just 20%, while the proportion of Australians concerned about the economic outlook is dramatically lower – at just 25% compared with 36% last year.

The report indicates that back in February this year Australians were defiantly optimistic in the face of economic gloom and that as the recession was receding, economic anxieties were receding with it.

Overall, the results show that Australians are largely upbeat about the economy, with fewer financial concerns than a year ago. Personal finance worries decreased from 46% in 2009 to 33% in 2010, while more than half the people questioned say that the economic situation is improving. GFC concerns have halved from 44% to 22%.

The reduction in economic concern is reflected by the ‘satisfaction with life’ responses. Almost half of the respondents said that they were ‘extremely’ or’very’ satisfied with life today. And 75% said that they were enjoying their work.

You could probably conclude that the survey answers are indicative of a don’t worry, be happy attitude.

However, there is one exception to this overall trend. Twelve months ago, 45% of women aged 45-56 years were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with life. One year on, and that number has fallen to only 31%.

The women in this age group are mostly the ones running established families. While the majority of Aussies are less concerned with their finances, the women in this age bracket (traditionally big shoppers) are still carrying the burden of worry. And it’s not just worry about their own finances; it’s the finances of their elderly parents and their children as well.

More information about the report can be obtained from Grey Advertising, Level 5, 470 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3004. Phone 03 92081931. www.grey.com.au

When you visit a website and click on a link to get information, do you expect the information to be free and with no registration requirement?

Almost always the answer is ‘yes’.

Yet, for the marketer, giving away free content without getting a contact is not a great way to collect leads.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe an option is to ‘step’ the offer. In other words, you can offer a teaser, such as an excerpt of a white paper. And for this, no registration is required.

Then, once your site visitors become intrigued by the free content, they’ll be more willing to provide data for lead generation.

To get the full white paper, they have to register.

You can let them click right through to the excerpt from the white paper, but inside the white paper is a link to a landing page where they can go and get the full white paper. In that case, they do have to pay for it … with name and email address.