Author: arkhiadmin

19.03.20
Digital Marketing

How businesses can respond to both the challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 crisis

With the rapid, global spread of COVID-19, the entire world is facing a scary time. Even more so with the high levels of uncertainty and so many unknowns, as we move through this unprecedented pandemic one day at a time.

Already, we have seen some businesses doing all that they can to keep up with increasing consumer demands, selling out of many products and struggling to keep up. While other businesses are struggling to survive, with sales and leads drying up, and some being forced to make drastic cuts or completely close up shop.

It really is hard to know how long this will last or how things will look once we are on the other side of it.

While we don’t have a crystal ball, we can look at the trends that are presenting and learn from the successes and failures of how businesses have been responding to this crisis. Below, we have compiled a list of key ways that businesses and marketers can adapt during this time, to navigate the challenges and leverage the opportunities, to survive and even thrive during this time.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

Increase efforts in online customer service

Stress levels are high across the globe, made worse by panic buying and shortages of many essential products, and one of the best things that marketers can do is help calm the nerves of customers.

A lot of our clients and probably many businesses across the globe have been fielding questions from customers about warehouse practices and products being sourced from Asia, and it’s more important than ever to stay connected and be meeting your customers’ service needs.

Some ways businesses can adapt to be more connected with their customers include:

  • Re-assign staff with downtime to assist in the increased customer service effort.
  • Proactively communicate what you’re doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
  • Increase your customer service capabilities and ensure customers can reach you wherever they are, for example:
    • Offer chat via Facebook Messenger and/or any other social messaging platforms.
    • Implement video call options to allow for a more ‘face-to-face’ experience.
    • Ensure FAQ and support information is easily accessible on your website.

Clear and timely communication of changes

We’re all figuring things out as we go at the moment, with so many unknowns making it difficult to plan too far ahead. In response to ongoing developments and instructions from health authorities, many businesses are needing to make changes such as changes to their opening times, or operational changes.

Communicating these changes to customers quickly and clearly can help to instill confidence that your business is acting responsibly and has everyone’s best interests at heart. It also provides a way for you to stay connected with your customers and create a sense of community, that ‘we’re all in this together’.

Get creative with messaging and offers

With rising concerns about the economy and so many consumers staying in their homes for prolonged periods of time, consumer priorities are likely to shift. It is important to understand and empathise with consumers, and adjust your messaging and promotional strategies to resonate with customers’ current situations.

At the same time, it is best to avoid exploiting the fear that people are experiencing – instead, position your brand more positively, finding angles that will amplify positive emotions among consumers. How your brand responds during a time of crisis, can shape consumer perceptions for a long time ahead.

An example of this in action is Bunnings, who have been running ads showing inspiration for DIY mini balcony makeovers that people can do themselves while at home. Another example is Luxey Cup, who engaged their audience in a positive way, by asking their Instagram followers to share things that they are looking forward to and then sharing the responses. 

You might also like to introduce promotional offers that increase appeal in line with current consumer behaviour. For example, people are socially distancing themselves and staying at home, so you might like to offer a free shipping promotion.

Continue to invest in (smart) marketing

When things start to slow down, marketers often cut spending on advertising and other initiatives. However, cutting back ad spending can cause your brand to lose mind share among consumers, which can impact current and future sales.

On the flip side, increasing ad spend while many competitors start to scale back can generate greater brand presences and build a stronger voice in the market, leading to greater market share.

An example of this is during the 1990-91 recession, when McDonald’s decided to drop its advertising budget, while Taco Bell and Pizza Hut both ramped up their spending. The result was a decline in McDonald’s sales by 28%, while Taco Bell sales increased by 40% and Pizza Hut Sales rose by 61%.

Cutting back advertising is not the answer, but repositioning your advertising messages and adopting new tactics may be. This is where working with an agency can be highly beneficial, as an agency will bring to the table insights from what is and isn’t working across numerous other businesses.

Get in touch with us and let’s chat about your digital marketing.

Interested in more?

29.06.22

How To Market On Digital Platforms

With social media taking over the marketing space, gaining awareness, retaining attention, and converting people is a competitive space. So how does your business stand out and meet your goals through social media marketing?The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.

09.03.20
Design

Avoiding New Website Blues: Why You Need Website Discovery

Have you ever been involved in a website project where the final deliverable or outcome just didn’t hit the brief of what you wanted or had envisaged? If not, that’s awesome! But if your answer is a resounding ‘yes’, you’re not alone. This, unfortunately, happens a lot with website projects. However, it can easily be avoided if a proper discovery process is followed to truly understand the expectations and objectives for the project.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

What is Website Discovery?

Can you imagine if someone started building a house without first laying out the blueprint? Sure, they might have a nice house at the end, but what are the chances that house meets all the needs of the owner perfectly?

Website discovery is kind of like creating the blueprint for your website project, and leads to the creation of a detailed and strategic plan for your website. A website discovery project kicks in once you have signed on with a development agency and goes far deeper than what is covered during the sales process. The result is a highly detailed plan that is then used to guide and inform the design and development stages, ultimately making the actual build of your website faster and cheaper.

The discovery process involves gathering information that will help inform an understanding of the objectives, requirements, and success metrics for the project. This typically involves discovery meetings with key stakeholders to extract this information. It may also involve user research and/or testing to understand user needs and expectations.

Why is Website Discovery Important?

Reason #1 – Nail Your Brief

The discovery process means that your requirements are well scoped and documented, and understood by everyone involved, before rushing ahead into design and development. Sure, there are a lot of website best practices and standard elements that should go into every website, but a good website design should take into account considerations such as:

  • Who is going to be using the website?

  • What information or functionalities will they be expecting to find?

  • What actions do you want your website’s users to take?

  • What key messages are you trying to communicate through your website?

  • What role does the website play in your broader marketing and business strategies?

Factors such as these are always unique to each individual business. A good website discovery builds an understanding of what is needed for your business’ website, in order to hit your goals and success metrics.

Reason #2 – Get Accurate Estimations

Would you be able to determine how long a project would take without understanding all of the requirements and the full scope of what needs to be delivered? If you answered yes, then we need to talk! But I imagine you more likely answered with, ‘of course not!’.

Having the detailed requirements brief means that the developers can determine, more accurately, how long it will take to implement. This means that your cost estimation for the project will also be more accurate.

Simply put, clearly defined requirements + less ambiguity = more accurate estimations = less unexpected costs or time blowouts down the road!

Reason #3 – Get Better Results

You might have the best looking website in the world, but if it’s not converting or delivering on your goals, then it’s not much use to you and has not been a sound investment. Taking the time to understand the requirements intimately at the beginning of a website project, means you’re more likely to get the results you want once the new website is launched, delivering a far better Return on Investment (ROI).

When You Need Website Discovery

Ideally, you should be undertaking some form of discovery project for any website development project, as it will save you time, money, and many headaches down the road. However, website discovery is non-negotiable if you are embarking on a website build over $30,000.

For smaller builds, you might embark on a scaled back or leaner discovery project, but when you’re investing significant value into your website, you want to ensure that website will do what you need it to.

What Comes After the Discovery?

Once the discovery project is completed, you are provided with a detailed requirements brief and implementation plan. At this stage, you are able to get a more accurate cost estimation and timeline for the project, based on a better understanding of exactly what is required.

If you would like to have a chat about the requirements for your website project, send us a message or give us a call and we’ll be happy to talk it through with you.

Interested in more?

16.05.17

What makes great UX?

The most important aspect of user experience is putting yourself in the user’s position. Understanding your audience is the first step in most marketing strategies and designing your website is no exception

03.03.20
eCommerce

Recap: Highlights from the Gold Coast Shopify Meetup – Feb 2020

Last night was the first Gold Coast Shopify Meetup of 2020 and what a great way to kick off this year’s series of events! 

We invited along the Director of Dracakis Advisory, Peter Dracakis and Co-Founder of Luxey Cup, Sandra-Lea, to share their insights with a room packed full of Shopify Merchants, aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs, and various industry partners.

There were so many valuable insights shared by both speakers, and the Q&A part of the night went off! In case you missed out, we have pulled together the biggest takeaways, words of wisdom, and most helpful pieces of advice from the evening.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

The Value of Advisory – Sound Words of Wisdom from Peter Dracakis

Peter Dracakis kicked things off with an insightful presentation on why financial advisory is so important for new and growing businesses. With only 4% of all businesses ever reaching $1 Million revenue, and 60% of all businesses failing in the first 3 years, he highlighted how a key factor that separates the successful businesses from the rest is sound financial management.

Peter explained how it is important for business owners to invest in good financial practices. Especially for eCommerce businesses that have so much data at their disposal, Peter recommended that business owners serious about being in the 4% of businesses that hit the $1 Million mark, invest in someone who can help educate them on their business’ financial performance.
2020 03 02 10h18 40
Peter’s number one tip for the evening was that business owners understand their gross profit margin. Often business owners get excited when they start seeing growth in revenue, but if they don’t understand their true cost of goods sold and fall into the trap of mistaking revenue for profit, they can end up in hot water pretty quickly! This is an area where a Financial Adviser can be invaluable to ensure the numbers are correct.

Love Your Tribe Hard – Factors Behind Luxey Cup’s Success from Sandra-Lea

Sandra-Lea captivated the audience with her stories, sharing honest and real insights into the highs and lows of Luxey Cup’s beginnings and growth. Offering a refreshing perspective, Sandra-Lea spoke about the importance of doing business from the heart and, as a brand, speaking from the heart every single time.

Sandra-Lea made a strong point of not being a sheep – meaning to do what feels right for you and your brand, not just doing what everyone else is doing.

The Luxey Cup brand has experienced phenomenal growth in a relatively short amount of time, very much due to the community, or ‘tribe’, that has been cultivated around the products and brand story. Sandra-Lea said the reason they were able to do this was because she identified that their tribe lives on Instagram, and so she makes a point of showing up in Insta Stories every day, even when she feels like she can’t.

Some other key points from Sandra-Lea’s presentation included:

  • To always be as transparent as possible. Even if you screw up or things aren’t going well, own it and be honest with your customers. Customers love when brands are honest and real, and the response that Luxey Cup has received from customers by doing this has been unreal!

  • Connect with your tribe – be true to you and be all of you, don’t hide and don’t try to be something you’re not.

Perhaps the most outstanding insight from Sandra-Lea was how much of herself she gives to her customers. She replies to every direct message in Instagram and talks to her customers like they are her best friends. She also does an excellent job of bringing her customers on the journey with her and the team, inviting customers to name products and influence key business decisions. Needless to say, Sandra-Lea left everyone in the room Inspired and in awe.

 

And that’s a wrap! A massive thank you to our incredible speakers and to all the attendees who came and helped make it such a wonderful evening!

Don’t miss the next Gold Coast Shopify Meetup in May! Subscribe in the footer below to be notified about future events, and to be the first to know when registrations open.

Interested in more?

19.02.20
eCommerce

Who Owns Your Customer Data? Critical Mistakes Every eCommerce Business Should Avoid

The Benefits and Appeal of Using Third-Party Platforms

Third-party selling platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Groupon, have made it far easier to get your products in front of customers. These platforms have done the leg work of attracting customers to their sites, making it easier to get in front of people who have never heard of your brand or your products before.

Brands also build a lot of success off the back of growing their followings on social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook. These channels provide businesses with a way to reach and connect with customers, build communities or ‘tribes’ around their brand, and deliver value to their followers over time.

So we can see then, how easy it can be for a business to end up with a high reliance on these third-party platforms. For example, let’s say a business – we will call it The Aussie Hat Co. – is selling hats through Amazon as well as their own website, with 90% of their sales coming through Amazon (this equates to about $5.4 million per year in revenue). This same business has also built a following on Facebook and Instagram, with over 500,000 followers of their Facebook page and 750,000 followers on Instagram. The engagement with their content is high –  and not just likes, they are getting a lot of positive comments on their posts, and a lot of 5-star Facebook reviews as well! This sounds like things are going pretty well for them, doesn’t it? And it is… until it’s not.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

Seller Beware – The Risks of Using Third-Party Platforms

This brings us to the risks that come with using these third-party platforms. The biggest danger with using any of these platforms is that they own the data of all the customers or followers that engage with or buy from a business via that platform. This might not seem like too big of an issue when things are going well, but the truth is that any of these platforms can undergo massive changes or become outdated by the ‘next big thing’, or something could happen that results in a business losing its presence on that platform.

Some examples include:

  • Competition can increase on selling platforms such as Amazon and eBay. But because the platforms limit your ability to provide much in the way of ‘brand presence’, it can be very difficult to differentiate.

  • Your business may be banned from a platform, for factors that may be outside of your control (such as customer complaints, policy violations, etc.).

  • Amazon could start selling the same product at a cheaper price (this happens!). Amazon tracks product sales data volumes and if they calculate a high profitability, will often enter the market as a competitor. In most cases, there is nothing the original brand can do about it, as Amazon controls everything.

So if we go back to our example of The Aussie Hat Co., what happens to their business if Amazon starts selling hats that are a replica of their products at a lower cost? They start to see a massive drop in their sales coming through from Amazon. With only $600,000 of their $6 million annual revenue coming from their own website, they are suddenly in a lot of trouble. They can’t email their loyal Amazon customers, because Amazon owns the customer data, and there is not a lot that they can do to promote their products more competitively on Amazon – unless they lower their prices, which eats at their profit margins and puts them in a race to the bottom, which is not where they want to be.

Preventative Measures – Protect and Grow Your Brand

So what could The Aussie Hat Co. have done to protect itself from this particular scenario? Ultimately, they were at Risk because Amazon was in control of the platform and owned the customer data, that was responsible for most of the business’ revenue. Having too many eggs in one basket is always a big risk, especially when you don’t own the basket.

The ideal scenario is to drive customers to The Aussie Hat Co.’s own website, to be able to capture their data and start retargeting them using ads, in an attempt to convert them to buy directly from the brand. As a customer engages with the brand’s website, there should be low barrier conversion opportunities that are targeted at capturing their email address. Then, as soon as The Aussie Hat Co. has the customer’s email address, they can reach them more directly (if they have opted in) via email, or use the customer database to find lookalike audiences for online ads.

The Moral of the Story…

To summarise, in order to protect and grow your brand, you shouldn’t rely too heavily on any third-party platform and you should do what you can to build and grow your own customer database.

These platforms can be beneficial as part of your broader eCommerce strategy, but you should have a plan to bring them to your own online store and engage and nurture them through channels that you have greater ownership and/or control over. Ensure you have a sound, multi-channel marketing strategy in place, diversifying your customer/brand touchpoints.

Too Reliant on Third-Party Platforms and Need Help?

If you have found yourself relying heavily on the likes of Amazon or eBay, you’re not alone. But, as you are likely very much aware of, you need to diversify and work towards growing sales through your owned channels. This can be a daunting undertaking, we get it! If you’d like some advice or need some help with this, give us a shout, we’ll be happy to help you out.

Interested in more?

06.11.19
Design

Why Upgrade to SilverStripe 4.0 – What a CMS Upgrade Can Do For Your Business

Our favourite CMS platform SilverStripe has recently released its newer version 4.0.

Most Content Management Systems (CMS) continually evolve and improve functionalities. SilverStripe CMS simplifies your content management experience by giving you the features and capabilities to confidently create, deliver and manage content to your audience. With the release of version 4.0, SilverStripe has improved its technologies and technical support. Businesses now have the opportunity to create different experiences for audiences and integrate a localised model for content control.

The digital world is constantly evolving and we always aim to be at the forefront of technology. That’s why we’re proudly partnered with SilverStripe! We thought it’d be best to share the reasons why you should update your CMS, and the new features and improvements you can expect in this new version.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

Richer & Faster User Experience

This CMS now has incorporated a technology called ReactJS, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces created by Facebook. React helps developers create and design renders that are used as a base in the development of mobile applications or single web pages.

With the help of JavaScript, both Android & and IOS platforms are supported. This helps to save time on development and makes the user’s experience (UI) more pleasant, with apps loading quickly and focusing on accessibility. This feature hasn’t been completely woven throughout the CMS, however, it’s an ongoing effort throughout SIlverStripes development. It’s also fully responsive and can be easily used on your tablet or phone – great for making content changes on the go!

Accessibility, Content Blocks & Support

There have been improvements to the accessibility of the set of applications that access the features or data of an operating system. As mentioned SilverStripe 4 focuses on content editing experience easier with on-the-go editing, ability to draft and publish pages from different devices. Enhanced versioning support has moved beyond editing, but has introduced the new ownership API, allowing for recursive publishing of data objects. More freedom and fine tuned control of what you want to get published.

Whilst some content block modules (content that is displayed within a websites layout region such as a header and footer) were available in SilverStripe 3, none received support from the SilverStripe team. We provide tailor made block by block page building solutions that are commonly referred to as content blocks. SilverStripe 4.0 will showcase their first own content block module developed by SilverStipe that offers support! The built in support will offer more dynamic layouts for building richer pages.

Security

SilverStripe CMS is regularly upgraded to become less vulnerable to hackers. For businesses that rely on its website to generate leads or sales, it should be of uttermost importance to have a strong security management system. Having a website that’s collecting users personal information (eg signing up to the database or making a purchase), are particularly vulnerable to the liability of security storing information. SilverStripe 4.0 gives you access to security patches and updates to make sure your data is secured.

Improved Performance

Along with added features SilverStripe 4.0 brings, you will notice your website feel just a bit snappier. This is because the latest version has improved its performance when navigating around the CMS. The speedy in built personal home page (PHP) helps your websites load quicker and increases the overall performance. This means users will spend less time waiting for the page to generate, and more time navigating through your website assisting their overall customer journey. Fewer bounce rates and effective web pages will allow customers to continue deeper into the website and attract continued interest.

SilverStipe 4.0 is filled with great new features to make your CMS look beautiful and perform swiftly. Our partnering relationship means that we’re able to help upgrade any website modules that haven’t converted to the new update.

We also offer services to businesses that have yet to experience the SilverStripe CMS. The result of this update – a secure, faster and stable CMS that will continue to deliver experiences for your website users. For any enquiries regarding design, development, websites and cms growth solutions, we’d love to hear from you. Let’s start a conversation today.

 

 

Interested in more?

09.03.20

Avoiding New Website Blues: Why You Need Website Discovery

Have you ever been involved in a website project where the final deliverable or outcome just didn’t hit the brief of what you wanted or had envisaged? If not, that’s awesome! But if your answer is a resounding ‘yes’, you’re not alone. This, unfortunately, happens a lot with website projects. However, it can easily be avoided if a proper discovery process is followed to truly understand the expectations and objectives for the project.

16.05.17

What makes great UX?

The most important aspect of user experience is putting yourself in the user’s position. Understanding your audience is the first step in most marketing strategies and designing your website is no exception

22.08.19
Digital Marketing

Recent Updates to Instagram – The Removal of Likes

Heads up Australia we’ve been specifically selected, as well as other guinea pig countries, (Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan & New Zealand) for the new Instagram update rollout.

If you’ve noticed your newsfeed looking a little bare, Instagram has removed likes as a form of performance metric system. This means the total number of likes on a post have been hidden from your followers’ news feed, however, Instagrammers can still view the number of likes on their posts.

Ever since social media has been integrated into our daily lives, there has been a general concern on how social media platforms can negatively contribute to one’s self-esteem, social pressures, mental health and bullying. In this digital media age, there are ongoing battles of validation in regards to the emphasis placed on how many likes each photo receives. It comes down to whether this is a way of marking shame or a badge of honour.

With these new updates it does beg the question if this will positively or negatively impact businesses, ‘influencers’ and brands.

LET’S TALK

Sometimes digital growth is strategically simple—we call it leverage. Let’s start talking.

What it means for the marketing industry

Measuring platform metrics is the overall essence of any digital strategist, brand manager or practitioner within the marketing industry. Our digital landscape has been scrutinized by numbers and metrics. When analysing and reporting on consumer data, we use these performance metrics across social platforms to determine communication and content strategies. Other renowned platforms have also made public changes to the display of metrics within their algorithm. Youtube has recently altered the display of subscriber counts on channels, while Twitter doesn’t report the ‘monthly active user’ metric to investors.

It’s too early to confidently say how it will affect marketers, however removing likes will remove the pressure from marketers chasing unrealistic metrics. It’s more important than ever for marketers to be focusing on building unique and genuine relationships with their audiences with multiple touch points throughout the entire customer journey. From a cultural standpoint, our perceptions, habits, attitude and way of thinking have been deeply ingrained via social media platforms including Instagram. As a marketer, this new change shifts the focus in developing content strategies that generate interest and understanding your audience to secure long term engagement and brand loyalty.

Brands & Influencers

For influencers and brands, the level of users’ engagement with the creators’ posts was an indicator of how well that audience responded to the idea of using that product or service. Influencers are often paid based on the levels of engagement, including the amount of likes received. Despite brands’ and influencers’ followers not being able to see how many likes are received on their posts, Instagram has mentioned the new change will not impact common measurement tools such as Insights & Ads Manager. For both parties, focusing on delivering important content and building an authentic connection with their audience will be the key focus when evaluating their Instagram strategy. Small businesses will now have the opportunity to advertise amongst other larger organisations without the judgement and stress that stems from the currency of engagement (likes of their competitors).

Receiving a social media ‘like’ has been described as an addiction, a yearning desire that feeds into the competitive social status indicating people are watching the creators content.

This is a very powerful commodity in the modern digital age as some believe if users can’t see the number of likes on a post that it will reduce interaction. Instagram are telling us their goal during this test is to make the platform feel less like a competition and for users to spend more time posting content that they enjoy, that they believe adds value, and connecting with audiences they care about.

For current and upcoming Instagram influencers this change will encourage creators to generate meaningful content and encourage audiences to leave comments and share posts to generate further exposure on the platform. The real metric sits below the surface. Previously, the rise of fake followers has flawed the method when assessing how valuable or successful an influencer can be for an organisation. Users were able to purchase followers, likes and comments to effectively fool consumers to believe their content and page had a loyal following.

For brands and businesses seeking an influencer to integrate within their marketing strategy, looking more closely at their content, the authenticity with their followers, their branding and taking the focus off the numbers will be the primary focus when choosing to source externally to represent the brand. Removal of likes will make it more difficult for influencers who base their presence on their fake and bought followings. Consequently, this opens up a golden opportunity for influencers with authentic audiences to build long term brand loyalty and profitable relationships with brands that support their values.

Instagram is known to frequently update the platform yet they haven’t brought back the chronological timeline layout, something Instagrammers have requested since the day the original format was updated. Instagram’s current statement is ‘…Bringing you closer to the people and things you love.

Users believe it’s easier to engage with friends by bringing back the chronological order instead of having influencer sponsored posts burying content from people they love down in their feed. Some also question why leave the option to ‘like’ a photo and not remove it entirely? This also could conceivably leave the market open for a new social media platform to take over. Unhappy users could potentially move away from the platform if they don’t feel it benefits them in the way they want to.

It will be interesting to note if comments will become the new form of ‘like’ and whether it will become a stronger indicator of how people interact with content on Instagram. Some question whether this is all a PR stunt by a global brand to raise awareness of the other connotations linked with online content engagement.

In our current digital society, we live in a time where brands and influencers play a part in shaping our decision making process. The digital landscape that is portrayed in social media today naturally have lead us to develop a ‘pack mentality’ of seeking approval from others based on popularity and likes. We want to find out the latest trends, generate a huge interest in what people are into or what people flock to.

Will the removal of likes allow audiences to develop their perceptions of a brand without the pressure that stems from the currency of engagement?

Will influencers start to post content based on their interests and not because of the analytical benefit?

How will brands now secure long term engagement and brand loyalty with their audience?

It will be interesting to discover how brands, marketers and influencers overcome this change and incorporate new changes into their content strategy.

 

Interested in more?

29.06.22

How To Market On Digital Platforms

With social media taking over the marketing space, gaining awareness, retaining attention, and converting people is a competitive space. So how does your business stand out and meet your goals through social media marketing?The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.