About 18 months ago, I wrote about creating a Facebook store. Back then it involved using a 3rd party application and meant running the Facebook store completely separate to your WordPress/Woocommerce store. Not surprisingly, not a single person was interested! Well, that was then, this is now.

Whilst there are a number of choices out there to set up a Facebook store, recently a new WordPress plugin by StoreYa was launched. We are yet to use it, but it seems to offer some pretty sexy functionality. The main thing is you can ‘feed’ your Woocommerce products into your Facebook page and sell directly in Facebook from your online store. This means no need to set up a second store, Facebook acts like an extension of your WordPress-based online store. It also apparently integrates with other popular online store platforms like Magento. Here’s the low-down:

• You have to pay. There’s 3 plans starting at US$10 per month for the basic package up to US$70 per month for the bells and whistles version. You also have to pay top level subscription to remove the StoreYa branding and make it look like your own store. You pay this to them, not us.
• We expect it to take between 1 and 3 hours to implement if you wanted us to do it (depending on the size of your store). This would add another $150 – $450 to the cost of the store. You pay this to us, not them.
• It comes with some pretty cool marketing tools (designed to promote sharing of your Facebook store) and allows feeds from other social networks so you can promote the Facebook store through these networks and vice-versa.

Facebook is getting pretty serious about monetising it’s popular Social Media network and finding ways to increase the value of this platform to business. It’s non secret that Facebook is trying to become an all-in-one service for businesses. They do have the best paid marketing service in our opinion given the targeting capability of their advertising. With all this in mind, it’s probably only a matter of time until “I bought it on Facebook” becomes the norm. This could be one of those opportunities for you to get out in front of your competition!

For these reasons, it seems like a pretty cool thing to us. We’d be keen to get our sticky fingers onto this and set one up, to see if it is as cool as they reckon it is. So if you think being able to sell on Facebook sounds like your particular brand of Vodka, let us know and we’ll get it happening for you.

This is Part 2, Part 1 is available here.

Once Keytone was done and dusted and had exhausted its final breath, I started getting some offers to run music festivals and art festivals. So I started up Topcatt in Brisbane. Tim Loydell and the Deckchairs approached me to continue with their management as well, so we primarily handled band management and event management. The Deckchairs went on to tour Australia and the USA before returning home. Circumstances within the band led to their ultimate break-up and most of the members went on to other projects. That was the final straw for me in the music biz. I was approached to run another band called MZAZA who I really loved and was something completely different to anything I’d done before, but I think their timing wasn’t ideal, I’d had enough by then and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I was (and still do) really struggling to see how anyone could pave a career in the music industry. The whole thing just seemed like a marketing exercise to sell products – a sunset industry. The events were a blast and with my new co-conspirator Josh Levi we were coming up with events that were really blowing people away. We even won a few awards for some of our events. The highlight was something we called “Trailer Trash” which reached a reasonable level of success with it’s own stage at Australia’s largest music festival the Woodford Folk Festival. We also created UnderExposed. This 3 week festival of photography and music  was very well attended event and saw some of Brisbane’s biggest acts old and new including Screamfeeder, Laneous and The Family Yah, The Villains of Wilhelm supporting some big names in music photography whose work was the showcase of the event. It was really rewarding being a part of the cultural ecology of Brisbane, but my financial situation meant I needed to find something stable and fast! I took some corporate roles back in Pharmaceuticals to try and recover the massive losses I’d taken from Keytone.

I was learning a lot about social media marketing, SEO and digital marketing and had been building sites using WordPress for Topcatt events and artists. During this time I met my now fiancee, a kiwi girl from Auckland called Michelle. The opportunity to move to Auckland with Michelle proved too tempting (she’s incredible, she really is) and, rather than launch another web company in Brisbane, I took the opportunity to relocate.

Setting up a digital marketing company in Auckland came with it a number of challenges. Things are a little different here than in Australia and I realised I wouldn’t be entering the mobile applications market as I had planned. Instead, I found a nice niche working with Cosmetic Medical practices and spent a couple of years working on a business venture with a Cosmetic Doctor here in Auckland. I set up and launched a clinic, put in place all their systems and ran the digital marketing. The business grew well, however after a time, I realised I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do. So I relaunched Topcatt in April 2014. We’ve been going a little over a year now and, despite growth taking much longer than forecast and certainly slower than Australia, have grown from a one-man-band to a company of 5. I have learned a lot about Kiwi’s and how they do business, and it’s a lot different to Aussies. New Zealanders are much more conservative than Australians and generally prefer things to be tried and tested by someone else before they are willing to give it a go. Early adoption rates for new technologies are also much slower here; hence the lack of uptake in the mobile application space – something I see as a massive opportunity here and the near-future direction for Topcatt.

Another striking quality is that Kiwi’s are fiercely loyal and incredibly supportive. I get calls nearly everyday from clients and they really appreciate what we do. They talk to me about other areas of their business and I find myself getting involved with their enterprise far beyond just the digital marketing or website. It’s refreshing to be among people who are more open and trusting when it comes to business. There is a strong undercurrent of Entrepreneurial spirit here, likely instilled by a country that by global standards has almost come to be expected to punch above its weight. The economic climate here is also strong. Waves of Chinese investment are driving the economy and it’s only a matter of time until that starts to seep into the hands of Kiwi (and ex-pat Aussie) Entrepreneurs.

It’s also a truly spectacular place to live and raise a family. Auckland is a very vibrant and cosmopolitan city, yet has a really nice pace. Although my expansion plans might be moving slower than I anticipated, the relationships I have with our clients are much deeper than in Australia. I see New Zealand’s ‘tech boom’ on the horizon and I’m excited to be a part of it. I have 2 start-up projects on the table currently and may even seek out some funding options to help get them off the ground as the potential they present is much bigger than I had first thought and too big to do on my own without significant resources and funding. Perhaps Part 3 of this little ditty may be entitled “The Pitfalls and Triumphs of raising Venture Capital in New Zealand!” haha..

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Topcatt specialise in Digital Strategy and handle the development and management of clients digital assets (their websites, social media, databases, etc). Their point of difference is their ability to consult on the digital space and help business understand how to get the most from their digital assets by customising a strategy for using these tools.

Virtual doctor refers to the ability for patients to access healthcare via the web. We recently launched www.drbernardwillis.com for a former Epsom-based General Practitioner. This virtual doctor service allows patients to book and engage in online doctor appointments (currently handled via Skype) and receive medical care, advice, prescriptions, order tests, analyse test results and recommend treatment options – all from the comfort and privacy of their own home (or internet cafe as one client recently did). This type of service has been in the press lately as questions arise over the validity of this type of medical care. At www.drbernardwillis.com, Dr Willis usually requests blood tests or other pathology and has patients access their nearest facility to undertake the pathology. Patients are then able to submit these results via the website for review by Dr Willis. Repeat prescriptions and other common medical services are also able to be performed by a doctor that is registered for practice in several countries.

Dr Willis says the majority of patients using his service are suffering chronic illness and haven’t been able to achieve on-going care in this way before. It works quite well actually and is likely to be the way in which we practice medicine in the very near future!

As for the web portal, we integrated their appointment booking and patient record system, their accounting system, set up a Paypal payment gateway to handle credit card transactions and custom coded a timezone module for managing the issue around clients booking appointments in different timezones. The project had it’s own set of unique challenges and called for a significant amount of custom work; however, it runs very smoothly and Dr Bernard Willis is very happy with the result.

View Story here

Part 1 – Doing business in Australia – a Rock’n’roll Tale

A lot of people ask me what it’s like living in New Zealand and setting up a business here having come from Australia. Considering most people usually run the other way, I figure it’s a fair enough question. I guess you’d need to know a little more about me first though. I’m into everything digital. I can remember the day I first joined hotmail back in 1996 as a young and impressionable University student weeks away from graduation. This was my first real foray into the “Internet”. I sat there, thinking to myself, man, this is going to change everything. It was at that time that I realised everything I had done up until that point was completely off-track and that I had better start learning as much as I can about this internet thing. But I was just about to graduate and wanted to travel and get a job. My friends were either travelling or getting good jobs off the backs of their university degrees and I couldn’t deny the part of me that felt this is what I should sensibly be doing. So I went travelling instead. This lasted about 6 years and took me to New Zealand (funnily enough) and then through the UK, USA, Africa, Europe, India and South East Asia before landing back in Australia with absolutely no money and no idea what to do next. But man, what a journey!

I needed work. I wanted to know about the Internet, but I got offered a job in Pharmaceutical Sales earning more than what most of my mates who had been working for years were on. So I thought this must be the way forward. This was around 2003. I was playing music in Brisbane and mixing it with other muso’s discussing the human condition, the state of the nation, the environment and all those things that muso’s discuss. Then I met my first business partner and decided to chuck it all in and chase my dream of working in and around the net. By this time iTunes had been around for a bit but nobody really used it yet. We were still going to iPod parties and stealing each other’s music collections. MySpace had just launched and we were learning about Web 2.0. I had this (I thought) genius idea to combine digital distribution and MySpace. We found some financial backers and started building a Social Networking website that also had an inbuilt player where you could stream music that people had uploaded to their profiles, and download it. The uploader could set the price per track and we took a small percentage of each download. They could also promote their band, talk to fans, add their shows etc, just like on MySpace. We got this thing working (at www.keytone.com which no longer exists) and a few people got really interested in it. Facebook launched and we saw that Social Networking was the big thing and we thought we were onto a winner. Unfortunately, none of us truly understood how bad the music industry revenues really were. It seemed those ‘innocent’ iPod parties we had been going to were killing the industry and major artists were being hamstrung by ‘exclusive distribution agreements’ with content providers who were trying desperately to keep the value in their catalogues up by preventing the artists from using services like ours. So we struggled until the GFC finally wiped us out. The worst thing about it all was watching years later as streaming services (which we had essentially built) like Spotify take huge chunks of the market and iTunes using the weight of Apple to rob the artists of more than 70% of the revenues from their music.

After Keytone was dissolving, I launched a web development company called Blah Blah Creative to try and salvage our situation.  We started building Drupal websites for SME’s. We grew fast and within a few months were already turning a profit. I had plotted our forecasts in the business plan but we were absolutely killing those! That’s when our investors broke the news. They had to close up a number of ventures because the GFC had wiped out their net worth. Blah Blah Creative got swept up in that. I watched one of my ‘mates’ sweep in as the businesses were being wound up and grab all the Blah Blah Creative customers, taking them to some business he had made overnight. I didn’t realise what was happening and suddenly I was left with nothing. The whole process taught me a lot about business. Some lessons you gotta learn the hard way.

View Part 1 online

Part 2 coming soon! Story by Trevor Topfer CEO of Topcatt

Call tracking by Topcatt

Call tracking dramatically reduces risk. Most successful businesses minimise risk. By monitoring telephone calls from the moment a lead clicks your phone number online, right through until they convert and a value is associated with them, valuable data is obtained. This management level insight into the business is made available through our call tracking product. Our call tracking software allows you to track calls from all your marketing materials – whether they clicked an ad or website link or called after viewing your print advert or billboard, we can track where the call originated (time, date and location data capture), record the entire phone conversation and allow the phone operator to assign an outcome to the conversation – did a sale occur? How much was the sale for? The possibilities this software open up are limitless. You will never miss another phone call as messages are recorded and emailed to you (or the relevant staff member) immediately. Here’s some examples of how clients are using this service:

A medical professional spends a significant amount of money on search engine marketing (including Google Adwords and Social Media). They are able to assign a different 0800 number to each marketing source. When someone interacts with an advertisement and clicks-to-call, the source of the call is recorded. They are able to record the telephone conversation to allow better phone-manner coaching with the practice receptionist. If a booking is made, at the completion of the call, the receptionist simply enters the estimated amount the booking is worth. At the end of each day, we are able to determine (in real time if necessary) which marketing streams are producing the best results and adjust their marketing spend on-the-fly to ensure they are always getting the most out of their budget.

Another client is in real estate. They have a number of agents working for them. Over time, they have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of Cantonese-speaking enquiries both vendor and buyer related. Using Topcatt Call tracking, they provide the caller with options for either English-speaking or Cantonese-speaking (IE for English press 1, for Cantonese press 2) and Cantonese-speaking clients are immediately routed to the appropriate agent. Since implementing this system, they have noted more than 50% increase in Cantonese-speaking business which has had a dramatic effect on their growth.

Another client has recently needed to record phone calls for training and compliance purposes. Topcatt Call tracking made this process simple and affordable. They have noticed a significant improvement in their phone conversions just by installing the software.

Why not talk to one of our Call Tracking experts to discuss how this affordable software could improve your marketing return, help your company meet its compliance requirements, manage your different sales channels and more.

SEO and Adwords can make a powerful combination to get your business moving again; and the results are immediate.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is all about how to improve your Google ranking for any particular keyword. There are a multitude of things that the Google search algorithm considers when determining who get’s to the top of the page for a search related to a particular keyword. Digital marketers separate these things into ‘on-page’ and off-page’. On-page’ SEO looks at how your content is structured on the page to provide the search bot the required information in the required way, as well as providing your user with the best possible experience when engaging with your content. ‘Off-page’ SEO refers to all the ‘behind-the-scenes’ things that are considered by the search bot to help create your page rank. To give you an idea, some of the off-page factors might include links, site performance, hosting, domain registration, mobile-friendliness, etc.

Google Adwords provide you with the ability to pay for the top position on any Google search page. The cost of these ads are determined by the level of competition for a particular keyword. For example, searching in Auckland for “dermal filler” is considered by Google to have a medium level of competition and the cost to obtain the top position for this keyword is around $3 per click. Whereas “dentist auckland” is considered a highly competitive term and the price to get the top position here is nearly $12 per click. so in these two examples, the businesses competing to take out the top position for this keyword have driven up the price – if you want the top spot, all you need to do is be willing to pay more per click for it than your competitor. Once set-up and launched, your Adwords will start showing immediately – which means, the phone will start ringing more or less straight away. This is on of the fastest ROIs you can hope for and certainly still the cheapest (television advertising is still the fastest and most lucrative, but also the most expensive). Within the Adwords umbrella, there are three ways to advertise. The examples above are known as ‘search network’ ads which are still the most common. Most business owners are using these or have tried them in the past. The other areas within Adwords are Display Network and YouTube. Display network are the ads you see when surfing the net. They’re usually flashy banners that fill up the sidebar, header or footer of a page you are viewing. Content-based websites (such as blogs or news sites) rely on the Google Display network for their revenues. They get paid every-time your banner shows – and you pay for every 1000 times your banner shows (called CPM). These ads are generally better for either product specific ads or for branding – keeping awareness of your brand high. One of the most popular techniques in display ads is termed ‘Remarketing’. Remarketing is when you build a list of visitors to your website who do not complete a certain behaviour – for example, they visit the website but do not view the contact page or click your phone number; or they add products to their cart, but don’t proceed to checkout. We can then target this audience when they are surfing the web and show them your ads. Most people are now aware of this happening especially if you shop on Amazon or eBay regularly, you’ll notice ads for products you viewed on these websites ‘following’ you around the web – this is called Remarketing. It’s an inexpensive way of targeting people who have already shown an interest in your business. It’s also getting pretty sophisticated so the targeting opportunities are getting better and better.

Finally, there’s YouTube. This is one of the mist under-utilised digital marketing opportunities in New Zealand. The audience on YouTube is simply staggering. The cost of showing an ad to these people is low. If you’ve ever wanted an effective TV commercial but couldn’t afford it, now you can – and the audiences are there. You can have a banner or video ad. The costs to produce video ads start at very little (if you can do them yourself or only need simple quality) right up to tens of thousands for proper TV commercial quality. We can arrange both inexpensive ‘lower quality’ advertisements for budgets under $1000 through to TV quality adverts fro around $7000-10000.

When combining both Adwords and SEO, you end up with a powerful strategy that can really make your online content (your website, products, etc) VERY visible. We aim for what we call ‘Google Dominance’ which is when you have a minimum of 3 listings on page 1 of Google. By making sure your website maximises both on-page SEO and off-page SEO opportunities as well as carefully crafting an effective Adwords campaign, we can truly stimulate your business. In fact, if you are serious about growing your business, the question should not be ‘how much can I afford?’, the question should be ‘how much business can I actually handle?’ We will do the rest.

View this story on SEO Wire!

Responsive website is now a factor considered by Google in Search ranking.

A responsive website is one that ‘responds’ to the size of the screen viewing it (such as a mobile phone or tablet). Is your website considered mobile friendly by Google? Given the proliferation of mobile-related search (now accounting for around 60% of search in New Zealand) and the overwhelming number of users preferring to explore the internet using their phone, Google has now made mobile-friendly versions (responsive design or mobile app) a compulsory factor to rank on a Google search. In other words, if your website isn’t responsive or offer a mobile application, your GOOGLE RANKINGS ARE LIKELY TO BE NEGATIVELY AFFECTED! This is one of the April 2015 changes to the Google Search algorithm and will likely affect an enormous amount of businesses in New Zealand.  For more informaiton, please read the story in the Herald.

So how do you know if your website is mobile-friendly? Well, if you don’t have a mobile application for your website, simply resize the browser window by clicking in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser window (the cursor should change to two arrows pointing on an oblique or horizontal angle ) and drag the window all the way to the left of your screen. This will replicate what your website looks like on a mobile phone. If the content doesn’t change to suit the shrinking window size (like this website does), it’s likely it isn’t responsive and therefore will be booted from Google search rankings. This is a serious update (and likely to be pretty unpopular) and may mean you need to rebuild your website. Get in touch with us to discuss if your website will be affected by this and what the cost to build a responsive website would be.

Real Estate Website by Topcatt to enhance your Property Marketing Campaign

We have recently developed a property website for Ray White Remuera, to assist in increasing the profile and marketing presence of their properties. To view the website, please visit www.21aathens.co.nz but please note this website will be taken down at the completion of the campaign (or soon thereafter).

The benefits of adding a dedicated website to your property campaign include:

• A far more detailed and visually engaging experience than traditional online resources such as TradeMe and Realestate.co.nz
• A dedicated tool for your agents and vendor to use to direct potential buyers attention
• Longer engagement (average time on website over 2 and a half minutes)
• Provide additional information to buyers
• Allow LIM reports, Title reports and other related documents to be accessed and downloaded by buyers
• Video tours, extra photographs and any other information can be promoted
• Differentiate your property from others

Please contact us for more information about organising a property website for your next campaign.