Andrew and Elise had a dream to launch a business that provided people with the mind-blowing experience of swimming with dolphins in the wild. They now receive bookings online every day and meet their (pre-paid) customers dockside just prior to the swim. They did it with a kickass online marketing strategy.

Don decided it was time for his innovative Australian-based software solutions company to launch in the most competitive market in the world, the USA, and compete against the might of software giants Oracle and SAP. Two years later they’ve not only launched in the USA, they’re winning a significant share of the market and exceeding all sales projections. They did it with the help of a kickass online marketing strategy.

I’m proud to say that my team at Sticky were involved in creating these and many other successful strategies for clients over the last 6 years. Now we have distilled that thinking into an e-book that provides you with the information you need to create your own kickass plan – The Sticky Guide to Online Marketing.

If you have been thinking about launching a new business, growing your current business online, or have been frustrated with your results online then this e-book is your guide to successful online marketing and sales. Its an actual step-by-step plan that you can begin following from day one to improve your online marketing and results

The Sticky Guide to Online Marketing will be released in late February but you can find out more and get your own free copy via NLYZR.

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US market research firm AYTM have just published an excellent infographic, Branding and how it works in the social media age, which has some handy statistics for modern marketers.

I have paraphrased a few of the best stats here or you can look through the entire infographic by clicking on “read rest of this entry”.

1. 85% of internet users have Facebook accounts; 49% are on Twitter

2. 74% of internet users use Facebook daily; 35% use Twitter daily

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Almost six out of ten consumers (59 per cent) have stopped engaging with four or more brands as a result of poorly targeted communications, according to research released today by Experian. The report, titled ‘The future of multichannel marketing: marketer and consumer perspectives,’ shines a spotlight on disconnects that exist between marketers and consumers and highlights the opportunities available to marketers to minimise the impact of poorly targeted communications.

The Experian figures show that, as a result of poorly-targeted communications, eight per cent of consumers have stopped engaging with 20 or more brands. A further 27 per cent of Australians have gone as far as creating a separate email address to receive this information to avoid other email accounts from being inundated.

However, marketers are also making strides to change traditional marketing practices demonstrated by a significant 89 per cent of marketers now using a customer segmentation strategy.  In addition, 69 per cent are becoming more selective about the channels they use to engage with customers.  A key challenge identified by half (50 per cent) of Australian marketers lies in cutting through the white-noise to get messages through to the consumer.

It’s clear that many marketers are investing in tools to get the right message to the right audiences at the right time, yet the findings suggest that they may not be applying this strategic segmentation across all marketing disciplines, particularly among newer channels such as social media.

The evolution of social media

The findings show that consumers are least trusting of newer marketing channels such as social media, SMS and LinkedIn for direct communication with brands.  Almost three in 10 (29 per cent) consumers ranked social media as among the three marketing channels they trusted least when receiving information about a brand.  While just four per cent said it was the channel they trusted most.

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The great thing about inbound marketing is that there is no shortage of excellent tools to help you go about your job of attracting qualified traffic and converting it into something more meaningful like leads, inquiries or sales.

Here are the 16 top tools I use regularly for inbound marketing;

WordPress website. Sure there are other excellent open source content management systems available but for inbound marketing its hard to go past WordPress. Its easy to use, very search engine friendly, extremely optimisable and has thousands of great plugins to address just about any requirement. There’s a reason over 60 million people have chosen WordPress for their websites.

WordPress mobile app. Inbound marketers like to post content. Lots of content. From almost anywhere. That’s where the WordPress mobile apps come in. You can create and publish content directly from your iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry or Nokia to your website.

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Website optimisation is a fascinating field. Most of the gurus will tell you to look at code and build links…lots of links. And, true, that is important. But if you really want to be found on Google you should be trying to answer questions and provide solutions.

The biggest mistake most companies make when optimising their sites for search engines is poor keyword selection. They tend to optimise for themselves; company name, products and services. This is fine if the person searching knows exactly what they want or who you are already, but in most cases they don’t….they’re usually looking for an answer or solution.

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The rise of the web has led to a fundamental change in the way we research, share information and shop. Search engine optimisation, blogging and social media have combined to create a new form of marketing around attracting potential customers rather than interrupting them. It’s called inbound marketing.

This excellent infographic from Voltier Digital – Inbound Marketing Rising, the dawn of marketing you won’t hate – demonstrates the differences between Inbound Marketing and the traditional Outbound Marketing. In light of recent studies revealing that Australasian marketers are lagging in tech and social media expertise these are some statistics that need to be shared:

1. 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. Tweet this stat

2. 91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email they previously opted into. Tweet this stat

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A new global study of Chief Marketing Officers by IBM has revealed that Australian and New Zealand marketers are lagging behind their international counterparts when it comes to technology savviness and social media expertise.

From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study, was presented to a round-table of marketers yesterday in Sydney and some of the findings were concerning in this age of global competition.

The major insight appears to be that Australian and New Zealand marketers still rely heavily on traditional forms of promotion and research and are yet to embrace the more modern techniques of their global counterparts.

Especially concerning was the belief that Aussie and Kiwi CMOs rated technology savviness, social media expertise and finance skills as low priority capabilities crucial to their success in the next 3 to 5 years. in fact, IBM revealed that our ranking of 12% for social media expertise was HALF that of the global average.

This is despite CMOs acknowledging that ROI will become the primary measure of success.

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Lets face it, influence is the main currency of the web.

Google realised it early on when they created an algorithm to rank the influence and relative power of websites based on inbound links and the relative authority or popularity of those doing the linking. Google called this PageRank, and whilst not being the perfect system of website influence it has been the standard measure of this currency for a long time now.

The advent of social networks created an informal market for peddling influence. As networks have grown certain people, celebrities and groups have become powerful influencers of their wider audience.

A mention, tweet or link by the likes of Robert Scoble can be extremely beneficial (or detrimental) for a tech company. A link in Seth Godin’s blog (which is usually shared in social networks thousands of times a day) can generate incredible traffic for the recipient. And believe it or not, having Kim Kardashian tweet her love for your brand can provide a powerful marketing boost. In fact, she now charges companies tens of thousands of dollars to access her Twitter influence.

Why? Because these people have credibility and influence within their respective audiences and communities.

That’s the premise behind a new influence metric called Kred. Created by the team at PeopleBrowsr, Kred trawls Twitter around the clock to measure levels of influence for different topics and people. They currently score 100 million Twitter users for 200 different groups (subjects).

I was at the Australian preview of Kred last night and was very impressed with the level of data and potential uses of the Kred system.

While it is easy to sneer at influence metrics such as Kred, Klout and Peer Index as ego driven vanity scores, that is missing the real point. Looking beyond your own score you can discover groups who are influential in certain topics and even gauge whether they are “spammy” or not.

To me, Kred seems to be the next step on from Klout in measuring social media influence. Jodee Rich, the founder of PeopleBrowsr, is the first to admit that influence metrics such as Kred will continually evolve and improve, but you have to start somewhere. He says that Kred’s granularity will continue to evolve as they measure influence in each country, then cities.

This can be a valuable resource for marketers, PR companies, political operatives, lobbyists and entertainment companies. Driving back from the launch I came up with many ideas about how I could use Kred as a marketer, for both my business and for my clients.

I’ve long believed that building your ‘digital resume’ is crucial for future employment and company pitches. Now we are coming to an era where many employers will use metrics such as Kred (and others) to help identify or compare potential recruits. If you are perceived to be influential in that area of expertise (relative to other candidates) then that might be enough to get you the job.

Kred launches this week. Check it out and tell me what you think.

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Originally uploaded by www.wordstream.com

This blogsite has never existed as a money spinner. Sure, I sometimes promote the activities of my various businesses and that can be beneficial, but I have never tried or expected to make a dollar from publishing blog posts.

I’m also a big advocate of inbound marketing and tend to believe the rather funny recent study that found its more likely your will survive a plane crash or win the lottery than click a banner ad. That’s because we don’t go to our favourite websites to look at ads, we go for what that site offers; information, advice, entertainment etc. And its very rare that we are actually served up advertisements that are relevant to us.

Advertisements are pointless and annoying unless they are actually relevant and of service to readers. So that’s why I haven’t included any ads on Media Hunter or even on Urban Insider….until now.

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Times have definitely changed. Until recently a new business would measure itself against a series of metrics like foot traffic, advertising reach and frequency, number of phone calls, number of calls or meetings by sales people, presentation to sales ratios, and of course actual sales.

But that was before the web, before Google and before social media networks took off.

In the era of inbound marketing the metrics have totally changed and I am studying them frantically in the wake of our recent NLYZR launch.

One week into my new start-up’s life I am able to track key metrics on an hourly basis to determine what’s working and what’s not. Here are some of the things I’m keeping track of:

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