I have been watching Virgin Australia’s aggressive marketing tactics over the past year. They have introduced ‘status match’ to attract their competitors’ customers; a separate entry line for premium passengers, business class and free tea, coffee and water for economy passengers. Impressive tactics.

That said, two things strike me as interesting from a marketing viewpoint.

Firstly I can’t help wondering if their latest “improvement” will backfire. The new barrier to keep the 100 plus economy passengers away from the restroom available to the 8 business class passengers is an interesting experiment.

Qantas have had their curtain for some time but it’s easy to push it aside to use the bathroom, especially if you are a premium passenger sitting in the first few rows of economy. Virgin on the other hand, apparently believes that passengers in row 3 should squeeze past the trolleys and walk to the back of the plane if they want use the conveniences, according to the cabin supervisor on a recent flight.

The views of passengers around me were mixed. One thought it was reasonable to protect passengers paying a premium fare, the others were not so sure.

One of the hardest challenges in business is to differentiate premium customers. When the majority don’t know the difference, it’s easy. When it is “advertised” with a plastic rope the question is, ‘Will high spending corporate customers ignore the barrier or choose another airline?

Secondly, I can’t help wondering if they have gone too far in trying to emulate their competitor and become pretty much the same; albeit with newer aircraft.

What do you think?

QR codes or “quick response” codes are a code that can be displayed on any platform and function as a link between the physical world and the internet. You scan the code with your mobile phone and it automatically links you to a website (or even a video).

Smart companies are printing them on all types of media. One client prints them on his monthly statements and they link to his video update. Lendorff Kaywa uses QR codes on scarfs and collaborates with London based pixel-knitwear designers Office Lendorff and mobile enthusiasts Kaywa from Zurich, Switzerland.

How could you use them? The possibilities are limitless.

Free QR code generators available on the web.

Yesterday I was chatting to the passenger sitting next to me on a flight to Sydney. I pricked up my ears when he told me he had employed 150 people in Australia over the last 12 months.

He was the operations manager for an international freight company and he told me how much inbound freight has increased since Gerry Harvey and his retail colleagues alerted Australians to the benefits of buying overseas.

The problem facing retailers is that they seem to think imposing GST on imported goods will solve their difficulties, which is rather like burying your head in the sand and hoping things will change.

Yesterday I waited for 12 minutes (with four other customers) at a cash register at David Jones Bondi Junction. Eventually when someone did show up to take my money I asked if they were “very busy”. The response was “no we don’t have enough staff to serve everybody”.

Hmm! Maybe that has something to do with the retailers’ dilemma.

Expect those changes to continue in 2012, making it easier for people to access your website and to discover your business.

Prospects access the web through numerous means. 20% of web access is now via smart phones and PDAs, and it’s growing, so expect to see more robust tools to come to market in 2012.

The 2011 Computer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas, introduced 70 new computer tablets modelled after the pioneering iPad produced by Apple. The iPad is so popular that, today we call desktops “grandfather boxes” – only used by those who are five years behind the times.

This will require some outlay to keep pace with the competition.

Your current web site is accessible through smart phones, PDAs, TV sets, game consoles and other tech products but if the user is required to scroll right, left, up and down to find the one piece of information s/he is looking for you are likely to lose them.

This has lead to the development of dot.mobi sites – sites designed for easy accessibility on smaller smart phone screens. If you don’t have a .mobi site, 2012 is the time to spend the money to upgrade your current site and add a mobi site to your marketing arsenal.

It’s not just the wave of the future, it’s here now so you may be running double-time in 2012 just to catch up.

Panda has changed the rules for obtaining a higher page rank and better positioning on search results based on several key factors. The most important?

Quality content. In ’03, keyword density – the frequency at which key words appeared in web site text – was critical and, as a result, business owners and SEOs employed the practice of key word stuffing – cramming as many key words into site text to ensure that search engine bots “got” what your business web site or blog were all about. Panda changes key word density, giving it much less weight than it once had.

Panda is a much more sophisticated algorithm capable of identifying quality, informational content. It’s no longer a matter of key word density or even key word positioning. Today’s search engine algorithms are capable of determining not only quantity of content but quality. The content you purchased five years back from a content mill in Bangalore no longer impresses search engines designed to deliver higher-quality results to users.

In 2012, spend a portion of your marketing budget on the development of well-written, well-researched informational content that benefits site visitors. You’ll see more site traffic, you’ll convert more site visitors to buyers and you’ll restore your PR and SERPs rank, back on the first page of Google’s search results.

Keeping up with the latest in search engine dos and don’ts will become even more critical in 2012 so if you’re still using best practices from a decade ago, now’s the time to update your web site and keep it fresh with new content designed to educate, not sell, site visitors.

So what has our Prime Minister got to do with broken promises and lost credibility?

The answer of course is a lot.

Gillard has demonstrated to us the one way we should never do business: by breaking a promise that was made to help her career. Before being elected into office (on terms that are outside the scope of this article) Julia Gillard clearly promised not to implement a carbon tax should she become Prime Minister. Her words were: “I rule out a carbon tax.”

Instant Credibility Destruction

Fact is Ms Gillard once made a promise to Australians. A promise she broke for the sake of a political agenda most of us find hard to comprehend. It has cost her credibility in the eye of the public – except perhaps with the Green Party – and most likely the next election victory. The Greens are the only winners in this debate. Not the environment, not the taxpayers and certainly not the public.

As the Saga about the carbon tax lives on we have to take a serious look at how a broken promise can cost us our credibility in the industry.

Truth is Better than Fiction

If you’re in business you can learn an important lesson from Gillard’s broken promise.  For starters, it is to be said that people change their opinions, their stance and their viewpoint on things. It’s a natural evolution of humans. And there is nothing wrong with that.

What’s not natural though is to make a promise and then to renege on it.

In fact, doing so can cost you your clients. It can cost you your credibility with your staff, your suppliers and your business partners.

Aim for the truth every time, even if it hurts, because you will sleep better at night. If you can’t deliver on your promise don’t make it. Only promise what you can control 100%. It’s the best way to avoid embarrassing situations.

A broken promise leaves a trail of pain and suffering…

Ask yourself: can I really hold true on a promise I’m about to make? It might well save your soul – not to mention your business.

It may seem a simple concept, and it is, but don’t underestimate the journey that it takes to strike gold. Listening to customers and learning from them can pay big dividends.

As we saw with today’s announcements, Apple is renowned for thinking outside the square and developing products that are not traditional. A big part of their success comes from listening to their customers and responding to market demands.

Initially when Apple launched the iPhone they believed that so-called web applications were the way to go. After the launch, it became evident from the large number of developers writing applications in native iPhone code, that this is what their customers wanted. So Apple changed their mindset and allowed developers to write native apps. In fact, they saw an even bigger opportunity and opened the Apple App Store.

By September 2008, three months after the introduction of the App Store, users had downloaded 100 million native apps. There have since been a number of versions of the iPhone driven by consumer demand, and apps have made it a goldmine for Apple.

Apple has shown that you can make mistakes, but if you learn from them and constantly work at being relevant to your customers there can be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Are you listening to your customers?

Various contributors have added their views about whether it should be called a ‘pitch’ or a ‘speech’ or even a ‘movie trailer’.

The discussion is really about the answer to the question ‘What do you do?’

Many years ago I learned that people do not buy your product or service, they buy the result of your product or service. So whatever answer you give, it should focus on the results your customers will achieve from dealing with you.

Will they have less stress (emotional results); operate more effectively (operational results), or save money (financial results)? Experience has taught me that most people want results in more than one of those categories – usually all three.

The starting point is to define your target market and then ask yourself what issues do your potential customers face and how do they feel about those issues. If your ideal customers are small to medium sized retailers and you know they feel threatened by increased competition from the big guys, the result they want might be ideas to stimulate new business opportunities.

In that case my answer to ‘What do you do?’ might be, ‘I develop easy to implement marketing strategies that help small-to-medium sized retailers sleep better at night’. And I immediately follow up with the question, ‘Do you know anyone who is facing increased competition from the big guys who is looking to improve their results?’

This saves time by eliminating people outside my target market and makes it interesting enough that prospective customers will ask how I do it.

And at that point we are having conversation.

Not anymore! At least not anymore if you are selling professional services. Attracting a stream of loyal clients to your business is getting harder every year. Positioning your business is more important than ever if you want to be relevant. It’s how you go about it that has changed.

Three key trends are driving the way we should be thinking about business marketing.

The first is that we live in an “always-on” world.

Our Internet-driven world is keeping us busier than ever, contrary to the belief we had, pre the digital age, about paper clutter. Somehow we have added hours of extra business time to our everyday living. Whether you use a smartphone, iPad, or surf the web at your work computer, chances are that you spend an hour or two a day doing nothing specific, except being busy with mindless surfing. We all do it.

The second is Cloud Computing.

Cloud computing is the practice of storing files in the “cloud,” or in simple terms, in cyberspace. It’s still in its infancy, but make no mistake, it is here to stay.
It provides you with the freedom to access your files on the fly – regardless of where you are in the world. In other words, shared resources such as software and information are available on demand
You can upload any file to your cloud and access it from any Internet connection in the world. If your computer breaks down, or you forgot to share that important presentation with your client before you left home, cloud storage can save your day. It simplifies the way you do business and takes some hassles out of our busy lives.

The third trend is what I call the “fast- forward” mentality.

We all have inbuilt spam filters. Capturing someone’s attention for more than a few seconds is more difficult than ever.

To learn more about capitalising on these trends download my white paper at http://tinyurl.com/3jsmrbk.