Developing strong customer acquisition and customer retention strategies are extremely important to your business’ longevity and to your online reputation. Though the cost associated and overall time spent to acquire customers is typically higher than that of customer retention, both elements have a direct effect on a business’ success and should be regarded equally. With the ever-growing Internet and Social Media space small and large businesses alike have enormous opportunities to reach new prospects and hold on to their established clients.  

While all business owners now know that they must measure their digital marketing results in order to know how effective their marketing efforts are, all too often many measure the wrong things. Very simply, you need to focus your limited resources and attention on the things that matter most if you want to succeed. At the end of the day, vanity metrics don’t matter. 

Email marketing is a proven marketing tool and to put it very basically, it works! For many small businesses, email marketing has proven to be very effective at delivering a measurable ROI and increased sales. What makes email marketing effective is the powerful email analytics which shows you who is reading and sharing your emails with others, how many email subscribers have visited your website and which pages.  It allows you to target and refine your email marketing activity further, identify those most interested in your business, and recognise what people find most interesting about your service or product.

The first week in January is down and if you haven't put your business plan together for 2018, it's time to get down to business. Failure to understand your previous year’s business performance and plan for the coming year can only lead to achieving the same results you always have, it’s the old "if you always do what you have always done, you will always get the same results". So here's a handy guide to everything you need to know about reviewing and planning for success. 

It's that time of the year ... You can almost hear the palatable sound of stress levels rising around you as everyone is not only wondering if they have been naughty or nice but also counting down the days till the end of their working year.  But not for those of us in the retail, hospitality, care or digital worlds though, there isn't a great New Zealand shut down for us.

Social Media success, it sounds simple enough but like social media, it’s not as simple as it looks.  Social media is becoming an ever more important part of an organisation’s media mix. Accordingly, organisations are starting to manage Social Media Platforms like traditional offline and online media. And just as all businesses are different, so too are their response to managing social media.

In an age of Social Media, Omni-Channel Retailing and extending global connections, the choices are becoming greater by the day for consumers. With so much choice, we are becoming more and more driven by price and service when making buying decisions. The flow on effect from this means that businesses are needing to shift focus to brand recognition, values and a strong reputation for great products and services in order to keep customers on board.  Keeping up can be daunting, but there are some simple things you can do to help to improve customer retention within your business and keep your brand heart beating strongly.