Speaking Sensis

So you think office workers sit at their computers writing Word docs all day? Forget that. According to the latest Sensis® eBusiness Report, we’re all going shopping!

There’s something distinctly Escher-like about the Sensis® eBusiness Report.

Okay, so comparing the mind-bending explorations of the impossible created by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelius Escher with an Internet survey might sound a stretch (although the cover of the Sensis® eBusiness Report does have a freaky picture on it).

But, there is method in my madness.

The thing is, the longer you look at the Sensis® eBusiness Report, the more interesting little tidbits pop out at you.

Just like Escher, eh?

Every year around August, the Sensis® eBusiness Report comes out and gets its fair share of headlines – usually focussing on one or two key observations.

This year was no different. The main focus of reporting was on the uptake of mobile data services by Australian consumers.

But some other really interesting findings hit me as I stared at the report recently. They relate to the way eBusiness has evolved in Australia.

The rise and rise of eBusiness
First up, it’s clear that eBusiness has had a real growth spurt over the last two years.

There’s four distinct activities related to eBusiness measured by the Sensis® eBusiness Report: two (research and buy) sit on the ‘buy side’, while two (sell and promote) sit on the ‘sell side’.

And, as the table below shows, all of these activities have really packed on the muscle over the last two years: albeit at different rates. In fact, researching potential purchases has reached the point of near-ubiquity in Australia, with the buying and selling activities not far behind them.

Businesses placing almost a third of their orders online
The second observation is that the SMEs who have cottoned onto online ordering are using the web for an average almost a third (31%) of their orders.

Ponder that for a moment. 78% of Australia’s SMEs are placing, on average, almost a third of their orders online.

That’s staggering and it underpins just how far eBusiness has come in this country.

Having said that, it does look like online’s share of orders may have hit a bit of a ceiling. While the number of SMEs placing orders online has grown rapidly since 2007, the average percentage of orders they’re placing (31%) has remained static.

Around the world? Nup… around the corner
One final observation. Back when the web was a toddler, the talk was of globalisation. If I recall, the thinking went something like ‘anyone could sell anywhere so everyone will sell everywhere’.

And while the web certainly has given birth to a new generation of multinationals, it pans out (perhaps not surprisingly) that the overwhelming bulk of businesses remain focussed on their neighbourhoods.

In fact, it turns out that two thirds of SMEs mainly sell to local customers – in the same city or town. 11% mainly sell elsewhere in the state, 12% interstate and 4% overseas.

So there you have it. A growth spurt in the uptake of eBusiness; a high (although static) share of purchases being placed online and a real focus on the customers just around the corner.

The Internet may not have changed the face of business in the way we once believed, but it sure has changed the way we do business.

Anyway, enough said. I’m off shopping (click, click, click).

The AIMIA Digital Summit in Sydney last week included presentations from the likes of BBC, Facebook, Viocorp and Microsoft, research presentations from the Internet Advertising Bureau, Nielsen Online and Research International and case studies from Aussie, Witchery Holdings and Tourism Queensland. To sum up some of the key themes that emerged over the two days… online usage is flattening out but continuing to grow and mobile internet usage is on the up. Companies like Aussie and Witchery Holdings now attribute a significant proportion of their revenue to online retailing.

But, 97% of Australian retail sales are still occurring offline. This highlights the importance of local search services like Yellow Pages, which provide the link between online purchase research and the bricks and mortar supplier.

Jonathon Stinton from Research International explained that with so many channels at the disposal of the consumer and the advertiser, it’s getting harder and harder to determine what the key influencers are over a purchase decision. He calls this the “Twilight Zone of information”. So what are influencers as far as we can tell? Consumers are strongly relying on the web to research retail buying decisions and social media is having a minor but growing impact on this phase of the purchase cycle. With the phenomenal rise in social media traffic, brands want a piece of the action and are exploring ways to tap into this and develop relationships with consumers.

So what should an advertising and media company take away from this? We need to be focused on providing choice to both buyers and sellers – and hence our multichannel strategy. With digital such a major part of many Australians’ search repertoire, Sensis needs to provide the most relevant online and mobile local search experiences possible to bring buyers and sellers together. Speaking on the closing panel, Sensis’ GM of Digital Development Cheryl Vize said this is why Sensis is so proud of innovations like the Yellow iPhone app and why we’re absolutely determined to keep “raising the digital bar”.

One thing seems clearer than ever: there may be no crystal ball, but it’s never been as important as it is now for a business to get the magnifying glass out and really examine the DNA of its target market and what media they are consuming where, when and for what purpose in order to determine how to get the best cut-through.

Crunch! is a new column looking at the numbers behind advertising and local search. In today’s Crunch!… Defining what a click is. That’s easy. Defining what a click isn’t. That’s harder… but much more important.

In the 12 years I’ve been working in online media, there’s one thing that’s always befuddled me.

It’s the fact that online marketers cite measurement as the biggest barrier to advertising on what is touted as the world’s most measurable medium.

Go figure!

To highlight this, a 2007 McKinsey Quarterly report* found that over 50% of Internet advertisers saw “insufficient metrics to measure impact” as a barrier to using or considering digital advertising.

And there’ve been similar surveys, with similar results, in Australia.

So, what’s going on here? How the hell can measuring such a measurable medium raise so much angst?

I’ve long thought there’s two reasons.

The first is confusion about how we’re measuring – in other words the different public measurement services and their methodologies. For quite a while now, there’s been concern in Australia about the accuracy of online statistics. Naturally, when there’s a lack of faith in the source, there’s going to be a lack of faith in the data as well.

The second is a lack of clarity around what we’re measuring. Just think about the simple issue of online traffic as an example. Over the years, we’ve been stumped by a blinding array of different metrics – hits, page views, sessions, visits, unique users and unique visitors just to start with.

These metrics all mean slightly different things but, despite that, they’re often quoted interchangeably: a recipe for much pulling-of-hair and gnashing-of-teeth if I ever saw one.

This metric malaise is a really big problem, and I wanted to touch on it today with a focus on one particular metric – the humble click.

WHAT’S A CLICK?

The other day, an interesting question was raised at a customer panel session I attended.

On the surface, the question – “what (in advertising terms) is a click?” – would seem pretty straightforward.

Put simply, it’s when a person clicks from a feeder – like a search engine or banner ad – to a particular advertiser’s web site. It’s the action that gives rise to pricing terms like ‘cost per click’ and ‘pay per click’.

Okay, no biggie there.

CLICKS AIN’T LEADS

But the question becomes a lot murkier when you think about what a click isn’t. In particular, whether a click and a lead are the same thing.

Now, this might seem like nit-picking, but it’s a really important question – especially for the numerically-obsessed, like me. It gets to the heart of how you understand, measure and evaluate the contribution of different media to your business.

To start with, let’s think about this in a traditional media context.

Let’s say you send out a DM piece to 1,000 potential customers. As a result, 100 people take a moment to read it and 10 are so enamoured with what you’ve said that they give you a call.

What have you got there? 1,000 leads? 100 leads? 10 leads?

If you’re a media outlet trying to justify your existence, you might say 100. You might even say 1,000 if you’re feeling particularly hairy-chested (and/or deluded).

But if you’re a manager trying to get a handle on your sales pipeline, the answer is unequivocal… 10.

A lead isn’t a passing ship; it’s a real potential customer who has called, emailed, visited or contacted you in some way expressing a real interest.

A lead is a real sales opportunity that – most critically – you have a real chance to close.

Don’t get me wrong. The fact that 100 people read your DM piece (or clicked through to your web site) is great. They now know you and have you in the back of their minds. They’ve interacted with your brand.

But those people don’t qualify as ‘leads’ until they take that next step and get in touch with you.

BRINGING CONVERSION INTO THE MIX

Clearly, you can’t properly equate clicks to leads (which take the form of calls, visits, emails and other forms of enquiry) in the way some try to do these days.

To properly measure the leads generated by online advertising, you need to bring another ratio into play – conversion.

Conversion measures how many people actually took that next step of contacting you.

Most research suggests that online conversion rates are quite low – in the low single digits. That means the actual leads stemming from your online advertising may only be a relatively small fraction of the number of clicks.

THE BOTTOM LINE

So, what’s the bottom line here?

Firstly, comparing clicks with leads ain’t comparing apples with apples. If you want to compare clicks generated by one form of advertising with calls or visits generated by another, you need to think about the conversion as well. How many people actually visited your site and then contacted you?

Secondly, think about how well your web site converts browsers to buyers. Optimising online lead-generation campaigns means not just getting lots of people to your site, but having a site that efficiently converts them to leads as well.

And finally, if someone comes to you offering a mountain of ‘leads’, ask them precisely what they mean by the word ‘leads’.

How many of them will be real leads – enquiries from potential customers that you have a chance to close?

You might just find they’re leading you up the garden path.

* How companies are marketing online: A McKinsey Global Survey. September 2007

The latest Sensis® Consumer Report found a second successive quarter of improvement in consumer confidence – report author Christena Singh tells us why now is the time to kick goals for your business.

The latest Sensis® Consumer Report found consumer confidence up again – increasing by 13 percentage points and building on the previous quarter’s increase of 18 percentage points.

But let’s step back a bit. Consumer confidence peaked at a net balance of 61 per cent in November 2007. At this time consumers were not showing signs of concern about economic conditions in Australia. There were a few rumblings happening overseas though at this stage, and we had already measured are largest fall to that time in business confidence. It would be almost another year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Consumer confidence fell to its lowest point in February this year – a net balance of 21 per cent. Overall, consumer confidence fell some 40 percentage points. This quarter’s increase represents consumer confidence recovering over three-quarters of the amount that it lost. That recovery has taken place within the past six months. Playing fields can shift quickly…

Now, to move to a completely different tack, we also had a bit of a look at how sport affects Australian consumers – and as a great sporting nation it is not surprising that over three-quarters of Australian are sporting fans. Consumers that were sporting fans were more confidence than those that were not.

Around Australia, the Australian Cricket Team was the most nominated as the favourite team, but looking around the states and territories AFL teams were most likely to be named as favourite in most states.

Now, my allegiances as a Melbourne Demons supporter are well known, and I was a bit disappointed that we did not top the list, but my second team “whoever plays Collingwood” did better. While Collingwood topped the charts for teams in Victoria, if you take all other teams together, anyone but Collingwood comes on top…

But on the economic front, Team Australia has been kicking goals – our economic fundamentals are the envy of most developed economies, based on decades of economic reforms. Australia did not record a technical recession, our major financial institutions have remained strong and our unemployment levels have not even come close to predictions.

But for many businesses the playing field has felt a lot different in the past year, with consumer spending having been impacted in many sectors. Australian consumers are expecting the economy to continue growing over the next year, and their spending expectations are improving. Recognising that Australia is on the path to recovery and positioning your business to take advantage of the opportunities of growth will be an important step to making sure that your business keeps kicking goals in the next few years.

Australia’s top ten favourite sports:
1.    AFL (21 per cent)
2.    NRL (12 per cent)
3.    Cricket (11 per cent)
4.    Soccer (11 per cent)
5.    Tennis (nine per cent)
6.    Swimming (four per cent)
7.    Netball (four per cent)
8.    Motor sports (four per cent)
9.    Rugby Union (three per cent)
10.    Golf (three per cent)

Australia’s favourite teams:
1.    Australian Cricket Team
2.    Adelaide Crows
3.    Collingwood Magpies
4.    Brisbane Broncos
5.    West Coast Eagles
6.    Carlton Blues
7.    Essendon Bombers
8.    Sydney Swans
9.    Hawthorn Hawks
10.    Fremantle Dockers

Now you can sign into Facebook on Citysearch and become a trusted reviewer for us and all your friends!

We’re changing the way we do things on Citysearch by working a little closer with Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook Connect, you can now login to Facebook via Citysearch when you post a user review. Once you’ve logged in, your Facebook avatar (that’s your profile pic) will appear on Citysearch next to your comment. At the same time, you will be given the option to publish a note to your newsfeed that you’ve commented.

For example, say you’ve commented on our ‘Hey Hey’ article, you also have the option to tell your friends to read what you’ve said – ie, “Anyone who thinks the Hey Hey Skit was fine is so far from reality that they probably think Graham Kennedy still hosts a show with Bert – and that’s just for starters! Click thru to read my comments in full!” Once you’ve commented on your newsfeed your friends can ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ or click-thru to read your review. It’s all about the conversation!

With statistics* claiming that 78% of people trust the recommendations of consumers foremost, (that’s you), never before have your opinions carried so much weight or mattered so much. Given it’s our mission to recommend the best entertainment and lifestyle options on offer in Australia, we think opening things up to our users to add their voice  – whether they agree or disagree- is pretty important, and adding to our credibility.

And once you’ve posted your review, whether it’s your insight into good-value restaurants, hard-to-find bars, new wave clubs, must-see movie blockbusters, intelligent TV, emerging and dinosaur bands on tour or cutting edge arts and cultural events (and we use that term loosely to include AFL and NRL and plenty more), all your friends can agree or disagree – or is that agree to disagree?

These changes are great news for Facebook users who are getting a little tired of sending hugs and pokes or completing What species of bird are you? quizzes by providing you with real content to talk about. And it’s good for us because we get to hear it like it really is, and best of all, we all get to participate in the conversation across a very big audience.

So if you’re the next Margaret or David, Molly Meldrum or maybe even a Richard Wilkins (see, there’s a whole world of opportunity out there for some fresh opinions and talent), say it on Citysearch, boost your profile and kick start your reviewing career today!

* Nielsen ‘Trust in Advertising’ Report October, 2007

In a bid to connect more advertisers with consumers who are looking for products and services online, Sensis announced a helpful new service last week. The launch of ‘category search’ on www.whereis.com and www.citysearch.com.au means Sensis advertisers can now access priority advertising across these two online sites.

So what does this actually mean for you or I? Well it means when the millions of people who use the Whereis.com or Citysearch.com.au sites each month and they search for a business either on a map or while they’re browsing entertainment information at Citysearch, a list of ‘priority advertisers’ relevant to what they are looking for will appear at the top of the search results. Top advertisers in whereis.com will also open up automatically on the map to create a seamless one-click experience for those looking for a business. Advertisers on citysearch.com.au receive richer profile pages and reviews from the public about their product or service.

If you want to check out an example of this on www.whereis.com search for ‘florist’ in ‘Camberwell’.

To view an example of this on www.citysearch.com.au type ‘restaurant’ in the search box on the home page.

I read in the paper this morning that when Elizabeth Blackburn was a young woman, she was asked by a family friend: “What’s a nice girl like you doing studying science?” On Monday, Dr Blackburn became the first Australian woman to win a Nobel Prize.

It made me realise how lucky I am as a businesswoman in 2009, that I don’t have to put up with that kind of rubbish. It also made me proud to be working for a company with 40 per cent of its senior management positions held by females.

Fresh off my Australian-business-woman-pride with role models like Dr Blackburn leading the way for young business women all over the country, I gladly accepted an invitation to attend the 2009 Victorian Telstra Business Women’s Awards at Crown Palladium in Melbourne on Tuesday 6 October.

The winner of the White Pages® Community and Government Award category was Professor Pauline Nugent, Dean of Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University and Chair of Southern Health.

Professor Nugent was overseas for work at the time of the awards announcement and had sent her sister along sans speech because she was so sure she wasn’t going to win. Not only did Professor Nugent win the White Pages® Community and Government Award category, she was also announced as the 2009 Victorian Telstra Business Women of the year!

The Honourable Maxine Morand, Minister for Women’s Affairs congratulated Professor Nugent and spoke about the wonderful progress women have made in the business arena in Australia, but she also reminded the room of 500 that there is still a way to go with regard to equality in the workplace.

“Legislation may be needed to set quotas for board appointments in the private sector given that only eight per cent of board members on the top 200 are women,” Minister Morand said.

It was a good reminder for me, that while I’m lucky enough to work for a company which has many inspiring business women holding senior roles, it’s not the same across the board, so to speak.

Minister Morand has also recently mentioned that in the 2008/09 financial year, it takes women an extra 62 days to earn what men earn over the same period, based on average full-time earnings.

So, while we have made progress in Australia – there’s still a long way to go. We need to start challenging the way we think about women in business and continue the great (albeit slow) progress we’ve made to achieve equality among men and women in the workplace.

Ahh, what fun. The phrase “not happy, Jan” of the Yellow Pages® ad of the very same name was voted as Australia’s number one catchphrase on Channel 10’s The Spearman Experiment tonight.

Connie Barbagallo joined Sensis’ Sustainability team as a trainee in July 2009 under the WPC Group’s GreenSkills initiative.

GreenSkills creates opportunities for apprentices in the green economy, so our workforce has the skills to make a real difference to the sustainability of Australia’s future.

Read more about Connie’s Sustainability Coordinator traineeship at Sensis here.

We’re a pretty tech-savvy population, early adopters of innovation. We don’t treat our handsets as a device any more – it’s a resource, a personal medium. For many, it’s our diary, our music store, it stores all of our secrets – basically, it’s our best friend!

A growing number of advertisers are turning to mobile to supercharge traditional media by targeting campaigns to specific user groups, and adding a stronger response mechanism than they can achieve with any other medium. I’ve recently had the opportunity to speak to a number of industry peers and commentators about whether mobile really is the great marketing enabler, and I think there are three clear reasons why it is.

The mobile internet audience is available and ready.

Currently, over 8 million Australians use a mobile phone connected to a 3G network. New smart phones are precipitating the uptake of mobile usage. Retail analyst group, GFK reports that retail sales of smartphones in Australia grew by 604% in the June quarter while standard mobile handset sales fell by 30%.

The June 2009 Sensis® e-business Report based on a survey of 1,500 Australians revealed that 31% of male mobile users and 26% of female mobile users are accessing the web on their mobiles.

Almost half of all 20-29 year olds have now used mobile internet, while 47% of 14-17 year olds, 34% of 18 to 19 year olds, 33% of those in their 40s and 24% of 50-64 year olds are also surfing the web on their handsets.

As to what Australians are doing with the mobile web:

• 41% use it to look for information on products and services;
• 40% are accessing the mobile web to use social networking sites;
• 36% are using it to find suppliers of products and services;
• 27% are downloading video content;
• 25% are downloading games;
• 25% are doing their banking;
• 17% are watching TV; and
• 12% uploading video content.

The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association’s Mobile Lifestyle Index survey findings which were released this week validated that mobile web browsing is on the rise, with 21 per cent of the 3,710 respondents visiting websites on their mobile phones at least once a day. The report’s author, Dr Marisa Maio Mackay, said accessing the web, video, music and information on mobile phones was now well and truly mainstream, and that Australians are comfortable with mobile phone advertising. Our experience at Sensis certainly bears out these findings.

Mobile reaches buyers and browsers

Mobiles are conducive to search, being with you at all times when you’re out and about looking for products, services and places. This explains why usage of Sensis’ mobile sites including Yellow Pages® Mobile, White Pages® Mobile, Whereis® Mobile, Citysearch® Mobile and Sensis Search has double over the last 12 months to almost 2 million visits a month. When the Yellow Pages® application for iPhone was launched in August, it shot to the number one position in Apple’s Lifestyle category and the number two position in its top 25 free applications. This is people using their mobile actively searching for goods and services.

Mobile display ad campaigns have also far-exceeded many people’s expectations across a range of sectors. They allow advertisers to display information in a teaser format and to entice mobile browsers to click through to a specifically designed ad site to find out more about a product, service or offer, download a video or wallpaper or click to place an order. MediaSmart recently notched up 200 mobile display campaigns for advertisers in the auto, finance, FMCG and entertainment sectors. These campaigns are getting real results: the average interaction rate for mobile advertising is about 30 per cent – that’s 30 per cent of people clicking on an ad and going on to so something else, such as downloading a video, wallpaper or ring-tone, entering a competition, making a call or ordering a product. This is compared with a 3-4 per cent interaction rate which is commonly achieved for online.

Mobile is the glue that brings all the elements of a marketing campaign together

One of the really exciting aspects of mobile’s addition to the marketing mix is its ability to interact with other media, enabling advertisers to extend the reach of offline and online advertising. There are a range of other opportunities to integrate mobile with other media, for example:

• SMS shortcodes – eg. ‘text 19WIN’.
• Mobile codes – scan a code with your mobile camera to get access to content on your mobile
• Send to mobile – search online and take the result with you
• Coupons – present for redemption at a retail store
• Voice to mobile – call a voice service for information or directions and have the info sent direct to your mobile.

Mobile offers sophisticated targeting capabilities to the marketer

The mobile audience can be refined by age and gender, but also by location, household income, and time of day. Media Smart, 3 and Vodaphone have demonstrated similar targeting capabilities for the last year or so. At MediaSmart, we can currently target 1 million Telstra mobile customers, and this is set to increase. Consumer information is ascertained based on the billing address that they include in their mobile contract, which is then refined according to their Mosaic profile – a geodemographic classification that categorises people into 11 groups according to their ‘neighbourhoods’, which is more accurate than post code information. So a Bali holiday package could be marketed to 25-year old females in the ‘Young Ambition’ group and a Gold Coast fun park 40-somethings in the ‘Pushing the Boundaries’ group. And you could target the message to the target audience at the end of a hectic day, just when they’re wishing they could get away from it all.

The capability is also being developed to deliver advertising that is contextual to where a person is located at that very moment. Location-based solutions can allow retailers to send a mobile coupon or incentive when a prospect is just around the corner. For example, in the near future, you might make a video of a house for sale available when the user is in the area during inspection times.

A parting thought…

Mobile is not a marketing add on – it’s at the centre. And that’s because mobile is an essential part of the lives of most in the developed, developing and increasingly, the underdeveloped world!

As Henry Jenkins, Professor of Comparative Media at MIT recently said in a presentation to Tribal DDB in London, “the future of media and advertising is not about technology – it’s about emerging cultural practices”.