CleverNews September 2008
5 September 2008
What’s News at CleverLink
Sharing Knowledge
This week marked the beginning of Small Business Month – and at CleverLink we have been proud to share our skills and expertise with the business community this week.
Our founder and Managing director, Camtu Pham made a presentation at the Wollongong Small Business Club on 2 September. The topic was “7 Ideas to Attract More Clients” and the seminar was very well received.
Later this month, Camtu & John will run a Marketing Workshop, which may be of interest to you and your team.
Essential New Services
Besides the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services that we have been offering to our clients, CleverLink is NOW providing a Pay Per Click (PPC) service. This means if you would like to advertise on Google using Google Adword, CleverLink can help to plan, set up and monitor your online ads to help you maximise the results for your advertising dollars!
Newest Board Member of one of Illawarra’s Oldest Organisations
Camtu has recently accepted an invitation by WEA Illawarra to be a member of their board - and is now the most recent board member of an institution that has been bringing education to adults in the Illawarra for 95 years.
WEA Illawarra is a community based organisation dedicated to the extension of life-long learning opportunities. CleverLink and Camtu are proud to associate with WEA Illawarra and look forward to the opportunity to contribute towards the future of this community organisation.
While enjoying the new role as one of the directors of WEA Illawarra, Camtu continues to enjoy serving the Wollongong Catholic Development Fund as one of the Advisory board members, as she has been over the past four years.
"Being a board member for two great organisations gives me a feeling of satisfaction. I enjoy being able to introduce my own brand of forward thinking and make a contribution to the future of a region that I feel so much for " said Camtu.
Client Spot Light
X L Events provide their clients with an innovative corporate events and team building activities for groups of 5 to 5,000 across Australia and even in New Zealand.
Our client had a solid client base, but wanted a website that reflected the energy of the business, the high quality of service they offer and the style of events they can organise.
With our help our client now has a dynamic website that includes:
- An energetic design to reflect the high-energy spirit of the XL Team.
- Photo Gallery that allows their team to upload, delete and change photos themselves.
- Newsletter function, that helps them connect with the client base monthly – this can be subscribed to from the home page
- Booking and enquiry forms to allow the team to respond to all potential leads even after hours or off-site managing an event.
“..You have a great team of talented people at CleverLink, and I feel very confident that our marketing and web presence is in very good hands… Thanks again.”
Mick Edwards
X L Events
9 July 2008
If you would like to talk to us about your Website needs, Contact Us to discuss our Web Design & Marketing Service.
Up Coming Events
20 Marketing Ideas and Techniques to Grow Your Business
The CleverLink team, led by Camtu and John, will host a workshop on Thursday 25 Sept 08 from 10am to 1pm at the Boat Harbour Motel Conference Centre, Cnr Wilson & Campbell Sts, Wollongong.
The workshop will cover areas such as:
- Identifying your ideal customer
- Preparing marketing materials that sell
- Writing power words to promote your business
- Choosing the right marketing tools
- Creating lead generation & conversion techniques
- Training your team to bring in work
- Implementing PR strategies to lift your business from the clutter market
Attendees will walk away with goals, tools and the techniques to apply their ideas and help their businesses grow. The CleverLink team will provide templates and show you step-by-step how to implement your ideas – and finish the session with a tasty lunch at the venue.
Places are limited, so if you are interested in attending, please Contact Us or register through our website http://www.cleverlink.com.au
If you are interested in booking Camtu Pham to speak at your next event, please Contact Us today!
Power Words
How to Use Maths to Improve Your English: Using the Fog Index to keep your reader engaged
Have you ever read something where you can understand the words, but can’t grasp the meaning? When it comes to writing websites, brochures and even proposals it’s important to keep your reader focused on your message – and a simple mathematical formula can help you make sure you never lose your audience.
The Fog Index is a formula that helps you work out whether your text has too many ‘abstract words’.
To keep your reader focused it is best to use sensory language where possible. When you describe something in a way that the reader could see, hear or touch, then you are using sensory language.
Some non-sensory or ‘abstractions’ such as ‘developmental’ or ‘substantiative’ is necessary but too much can have your reader glazing over with the sheer effort involved in.
The Fog Index
According to www.usingenglish.com Readers Digest has a Fog Index of between 8 and 9, but Time Magazine is about 11 which makes sense when you consider the readership each of these publications cater to. This is useful to know when you are gauging your own readership.
To get an approximate indication of the readability of your work, choose a paragraph from your own work and go through these steps:
- Divide the number of sentences by the number of words, then
- Divide the total number of words by the number of three syllable words
- Now add the totals of steps 1 and 2 and multiply that by .4 to get your Fog Index total
- If your work is higher than 13 it is hard to read – it’s time to ‘cut the dead wood’!
#Formula courtesy of Uni of Arizona
If you want help writing content that engages your reader Contact Us to discuss our Professional Writing Service
Traditional Marketing
Five Tips for Marketing in a Recession
Even though the Australian economy has not reached the point of recession, we thought that we might give you some tips that are especially applicable when things are tough.
- Spend your available money more wisely:
Chances are your company might decrease spending budgets across the board including marketing activities. By illustrating that you are aware of this and investing the funds you have more wisely the chances of you getting the resources you need will be higher. By spending smarter, this means having a clear-cut justification for the marketing investment and having a sound business case for each investment.
- Work harder on your current customers:
It’s more practical in a downturn to focus on your existing customers by giving them more value (and getting more in return). Even though it’s fun chasing new customers this can become harder during downturn periods. When customers make decisions during a downturn they are more likely to use someone they know and trust (you!). Ask current customers if they have any needs that aren’t currently being met. Look after them and they’ll be more likely to stick with you.
- Out manoeuvre your competitors:
When the economy turns, you have an opportunity to win market share from your competitors.
Pay attention to any changes in your target markets; how your customers are reacting to changes in the economy. You may need to alter your product, re-position your products or change your price.
Reacting quickly can give you an on-going competitive advantage.
- Look at other growing segments:
In downturns, some market segments will grow faster than others. As a marketer, it is your role to identify and understand these segments and judge if your organisation can satisfy and win business in these segments. You may already be selling to these sectors but not necessarily focused on them or they may be totally new segments and opportunities to your business. At the same time you will want to move resources from areas that are suffering in a downturn and re-invest in those areas which show promise.
- Get what you need:
Its marketing’s role to ensure that they get the resources they need to help achieve company objectives. This is even more vital during tough economic times. When marketing is not involved in setting the company’s marketing strategy, often budgets are cut and staff reduced disproportionately. This can result in marketing personnel playing a less important role, which results in losing out to competitors and the spiral continuing downwards.
If you would like to discuss marketing strategies for your business, please Contact Us today!
Digital Marketing & SEO
Google Suggest SEO Tips
Google have announced that during the next week they will be implementing their “Google Suggest” search suggestion feature on Google.com. This change will help searchers find popular keywords that others have searched for.
he feature has been in the ‘Google Labs’ for a long time now and has been implemented on various other Google owned ventures (YouTube being one of them). However, the decision to implement into the main search engine has been a cautious one and we will have to wait and see what effect this may have on the SEO industry.
Predictions
by John Paul Grant
With such a suggestion feature, it is inevitable that keyword search queries will become more narrowed and focused, whilst at the same time providing much more traffic to those who manage to rank well for suggested terms.
In both, pay per click and Search Engine Optimisation, such keywords as misspellings are going to be much harder to build a traffic stream from.
With the new suggestion tool, it makes it much easier to find those keywords that are popular and will benefit your SEO / PPC campaigns.
If you would like to learn more about what SEO can do for your online business, Contact Us today to discuss our Search Engine Optimisation service.
B2B & B2C
This web site is a great example of what Flash technology can do. The site is for a retail department store called HEMA, in the Netherlands - similar to our Target stores.
For maximum effect ensure that you have the volume turned on!
If you would like to learn more about design possibilities for your Website, Contact Us today!
Food for My Brain
Positive Mind
“Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished,
but rather by what you should have accomplished with your abilities.”
John Wooden
“The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.”
Annie Dillard
Clever Tool Box
If you have interesting news or topics you would like us to cover, please email us and we will do our best to slot it into the format!
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