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MAY MARKET REPORT
What geniuses we have running the country, when they have only now realised that Australia will go into recession. Just ask any small to medium size business owner and they will tell you that things have been tough with many business owners returning to steer the ship through these turbulent times. Australian businesses recognised that a downturn was coming after the seven pieces of bad news were released in the USA, UK and Europe in September last year. Most decision makers in business sales transactions decided to wait and see. This was across the board from public companies, private equity groups and individuals. So what’s happening now? Buyer enquiry returned in December last year and has steadily risen every month since, with some very good sales occurring and some private equity groups returning to the market and enquiring on some of our mergers and acquisitions stock. We fully expected that the high unemployment would bring the return of the “buy yourself a job” market and we geared up by listing some very good franchises and good quality businesses in the $100,000 to $700,000 range. We were not disappointed with our decision and market forecast. We had record sales in the third quarter of this year and an increase in sales expected in the last quarter, albeit at some lower multiples than the pre-global meltdown. In our June report, we will be looking at what can be expected in the first half of the 2010 financial year. If you want to discuss the market please feel free to call me at any time to discuss your needs.
Peter Gwynne, Group Managing Director
SOCIAL NETWORK WEBSITES FOR SME
To survive and succeed in the GFC (affectionate abbreviation for the Global Financial Crisis), as business owners it is important you are smart in how you market your businesses. With this in mind, social media marketing can be vital to the success of your business. It allows you to increase your brand awareness, drive traffic and build revenue.
Social Media is an essential tool for smart business owners to find their ideal clients and build businesses.
While some business owners have decided to limit the use of Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networking sites to increase the performance of their employees (and decrease ‘distraction’), the really smart business owners are using these social media platforms to leverage their networks around their employees and themselves.
So, what is Facebook? And what is Twitter? Or even what is online social networking?
Social Networking
Social Networking has been around ever since there have been social groups. For example women’s groups or fresh produce groups are social networks where business owners join and meet for the purpose of sharing ideas, concerns, products and information. In essence, online social networking works the same way. For example people gather in the ‘online’ space to share their ideas, their thoughts and views. This is a very powerful tool as there are no borders, and this sharing of ideas is instant.
Facebook
For the past several years, Facebook has been used to reconnect old friends, colleagues and classmates. However, marketers did not neglect the interface that has allowed people to share their interests, businesses and communities. Facebook supports dynamic content, where you can put photos, events and business information, making it a fantastic social tool. Once you sign up on Facebook, you can invite like-minded people to join your group and allow members to post comments and discussions. This allows you to create a long-term relationship with past, present and prospect clients on a personal level. To successfully use facebook for your business, it is critical to use simple, plain language; as if you were talking to a friend, because people will respond better to simple friendly language and tend to ‘switch off’ as soon as they detect a sales pitch.
Youtube
YouTube provides hosted video solutions; hence is used extensively for viral marketing whereby the world community is able to comment and form ‘groups’ around videos and entire discussions are formed which can be invaluable to better understand how the online community views your company, brand, product or service. One vital thing in order to have a successful viral marketing campaign is to ensure the content of the video is fast and interesting so that people will pass it on to their friends. The best viral marketer for 2008 is Barack Obama. Obama had successfully utilised YouTube for his viral marketing and election campaign. With the help of his team, he successfully published more than 1,600 videos on Youtube delivering a similar message “to support Obama”.
Twitter
Created in 2006, Twitter has recently become the new phenomenon in the social networking sphere. Twitter is also described as the online form of SMS or micro-blogging. Once you become part of the Twitter community, you can invite your friends to “Follow” you. Successful “Twitterers” will constantly update something interesting to keep their “Followers” interested in what they are up to. Those who use their “tweets” to inform, educate and entertain others will be rewarded with many loyal followers. One of the excellent features in Twitter is to enable users to search for people or “Tweets”. With this feature, savvy business owners use Twitter to direct the traffic to their websites to find potential clients and let them know how you can help them.
Final Words
There is no definite answer as to which social network media you should use in your business. In fact, these days, different online social media networks are integrating with each other in order to allow users to easily use multiple platforms for their social networking from one single point. For example, Facebook and Twitter are both compatible with each other.
The key thing to remember is that you need to “Influence the Influencers”. This means, market your business to the people who will in turn recommend it to others on their level, and become the influencer.
Signing off - Claire Lam, Marketing Specialist
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