CeBIT Conference - Insights into our Market

We are back from an amazing adventure in Sydney.  The entertainment budget was completely blown, our livers are now officially in detox, and we came away with some amazing insights. 

We had an Alkemi stand right in the middle of the Search Marketing section of CeBIT Conference.  The conference is globally recognised and boasts to be the No.1 marketplace for digital solutions, trends and innovations and is said to be the catalyst for energizing the international ICT industry. 

Sounds impressive, and to be honest, it was.  If you dropped a bomb on the conference you would have eliminated 70% of the Australian Geek population.  “Geek” was “In”, for three full days.  Many stands had scantily clad girls handing out brochures, pretending to be interested.  I say “pretending” because they weren’t interested in me at all!  But I digress, back to reality, and back to the insights.  Four stand out for me:

Insight #1:  “Brand Protection” and/or “Brand Reputation”

Some competing Search Marketing companies talked about Brand related services.  When I asked how they did this, they replied, “Oh, we do logo design”.  There was no mention of an intrinsic approach to analysing visitor behaviour, landing page strategy nestled with Pay Per Click advertising, or an overall approach driven towards increasing conversion.  These brand terms have been created to generate a false point of difference. 

They also took pride in their “Google Adwords Reseller” accreditation.  This was something I have not heard of before.  An Australian Agency defined this as being beneficial because they are provided “specialised training directly from Google.”  This use of the Google brand as leverage is further discussed in Insight #3.   

Insight #2:  Conversion gaining traction

The conference provided us an opportunity to try different methods in communicating our service offerings (our own little face to face version of multivariate testing).  Of all the different approaches, one stood out amongst the rest:  “What is it you do”, I would reply,” We work to increase the conversion rate of your website.”  All of a sudden, eyes go wide, and business cards are thrust at me as if they want my autograph – I wish!  Even after I defined our interpretation of ”Conversion” they still understood what I was talking about.  This says a lot. 

Businesses understand the concept of only driving traffic to their website as being highly flawed, they understand the value of knowing what visitors are doing on their websites, and they are now expecting financial return from their website.  Hallelujah!

Insight #3:  Businesses are thirsty for knowledge.

We put together a White Paper titled “Increasing Conversion Rates, One Step at a Time”.  The purpose of this document is to communicate what is required to improve conversion.  Visitors to our stand could not believe we put together an education tool instead of a selling tool i.e. brochure.  The White Paper became more popular than the brochures being handed out by the scantily clad models next door.  Once again, this says a lot. 

Businesses know what they want, but they do not know how to get it.  Too many Search Marketing Agencies capitalise on client ignorance and deliver average results.  Though the Businesses know the site can perform better, they do not have the intellectual firepower to prove their Agency wrong.  In this common scenario, no learning/teaching is taking place for the client. 

The Agency takes money, and spends it.  The client cannot make the Agency accountable due to their lack of knowledge, and the cycle begins.  No Agency accountability means no justification to the client. No justification means no need for the Agency to educate the client, hence the self-fulfilling prophecy.  The client is left with two choices, learn, or stay with someone who is not going to provide ROI. 

This is good and bad.  The “Good” is the creation of a market who is hungry for knowledge, the “Bad” is the reputation being created by Search Marketing Agencies who do not follow best practice philosophies and ultimately, do not deliver results. 

Insight #4:  The Australia and New Zealand markets

There are huge similarities in the online education level of the businesses between the two countries.  The only difference is the size of the market.  There is no doubt Australia has an advantage resulting in greater budgets being allocated to web.  If anything, the larger market size is a detriment.  With the larger market comes less of a need to focus on conversion principles, put simply, it is easier to make money online.  Why do you think there are so many bad websites in the US??
 
Whether you are in Australia or New Zealand, feel free to email me (greg@alkemi.co.nz) if you want a copy of the White Paper.  It is a great introduction. 

See you at the next CeBIT Conference, in Germany.  My liver might be ready by then.