Debbie Mayo-Smith: Seven rules unlock power of web marketing

Debbie Mayo-Smith.

You cannot gain a competitive advantage by simply focusing on good service and/or good products. It is imperative to be (or have on staff) an excellent, modern marketer of your business. A pharmacist I met put it perfectly last month when he said: "I lead a web-based life, but I don't run a web-based business."

I believe every business must incorporate these seven vital components:

1: Website and appropriate social media sites that work for your business.

2: Online videos showing exactly what customers will experience, or adding value, introducing, educating about your business.

3: Be easy to do business with, namely: full information disclosure, answer questions, online transactions that work.

4: Provide good service and a great customer experience (in the flesh as well as online).

5: Recognise the power of positive and negative user-generated online comments.

6: Use the power of social community and comments. And be vigilant in protecting against negative ones.

7: Reply to all incoming communications (phone, SMS, website, email, Facebook, Twitter) within 12 hours, improving prospective customers' feeling of confidence.

Let me weave these seven strategies into a real-life example from this past weekend. I was engaged by a few businesses in Kaikoura to come down and run a workshop for them. My husband and I decided to make a weekend of it.

Flights: I only looked at Air NZ and Pacific Blue fares, because of prior bad experience with the "orange" airline. They had broken strategy two and three. They were hard to do business with online, they weren't good at customer service and charged extra for basics the other two airlines provide.

Flights booked with Air NZ, it made sense to click "add a car rental". I was about to confirm with Budget when my husband yelled: "Don't. I belong to the Hertz Number One Club - I'll book through them."

Rental car: Transparency is a must. Steve was furious with his customer experience.

The Hertz per diem rate was similar to Budget, but the total was double and there was no way to get a breakdown why. Only through checkout could you identify the add-ons: airport surcharge and insurance.

He ditched Hertz and went back to Budget who were transparent in their pricing, showed the add-on charges and didn't charge an airport fee.

Accommodation: Word of mouth can kill your business. Normally I'd use a hotel comparison site, but this time I went to Google Maps to look at the hotels available. With each of the blue pin dots and locations, there's a hyperlinked word that can have a dramatic effect on your business. It's the word "REVIEW". Google amalgamates reviews from many sites. For example, TripAdvisor for Hotels, and finda and dineout for restaurants and cafes.

The reviews for one hotel were a mixed bag. The hotel had not followed strategy six: protect against negative online word of mouth. We booked with one of the workshop participants, The Fairways (thefairways.co.nz). They had a fantastic descriptive website, virtual tour 360-degree views of the room, pricing, online booking. So yes to rule two: have a good informative website. To our delight, having booked a studio, they upgraded us to the apartment at no cost, thus following rules four and five.

Dining: We had lunch at the organic cafe Hislops (hislops.co.nz). Steve and I had the seafood chowder. It was so good I wanted to cry with happiness. They should be able to capture that rapture. They're good marketers now: on each table was a request for a referral and a birthday treat sign-up card. Only twice before have I seen cards on tables to elicit a database.

What I suggest they should also be doing is:

Arming staff with a flip video camera or similar to capture diners' comments.

Put a PC by the checkout and invite clients to instantly go online to their own social media account and comment.

Ask diners to "Like" the cafe Facebook Fan Page (they'll have one after I've left them).

Have bookmarks on the computer to dining review sites for the diners to comment.

Add important things about Hislops to their website to improve their and the town's search footprint and rankings for the natural phenomena they're famous for: whales, seals, albatross, dolphins. Have a look at this one minute video I recorded of hundreds of baby seals swimming at our feet.

Debbie Mayo-Smith is a bestselling author and international speaker. Twitter mseffective

www.debbiespeaks.co.nz