Speaking Sensis

This year Sensis is sponsoring a series of lunches for members of the Sydney Chamber of Commerce. After two of these lunches, it’s really pleasing to get feedback from this diverse audience that we’ve shared a few things about consumers, small businesses and advertising that they didn’t already know…and actually wanted to know!

I mean, let’s face it, how many times have you turned up to a seminar or lunch only to walk away thinking, I’ve just been robbed of two precious hours in my life and I should demand a refund! I’m not saying Sensis hasn’t been guilty of this in the past… we’ve had our moments like any large business given the opportunity to put someone on the soapbox. But we’re starting to use opportunities like this to – and don’t gag here – help people.  So we asked the Chamber what their members wanted to know to about digital marketing.

And as the chicken and beef mains made their way around the room, our head of Yellow Pages® Digital, Sandeep Baruah, explained that the future of digital marketing in business will see a range of new applications at the disposal of the marketer. The question is what opportunities do they really present to increase brand equity and a company’s bottom line?

For some business, just knowing where to start is daunting in itself.

Sandeep unlocked some of the mystery around digital marketing tools such as:

• Social networking sites
• Search engine marketing
• Search engine optimisation
• Content syndication
• Mobile internet and
• Mobile codes

And he gave the audience a realistic check-list to help them make decisions about their digital marketing strategies:

• Who are my customers and where are they looking?
• What media are they accessing that influences their buying decisions?
• Which of these channels can I use to engage my customers?
• How can I use new technology to integrate campaigns and content across different media?
• Finally, what return am I actually going to see from this investment and how will I measure it?

Answering these questions will help any business go a long way to ensuring that they’re not simply swallowing the hype around new ways of reaching consumers, or putting all of their eggs in one basket.