heartharmony.com.au

KQ Christmas Lights - Arana Hills

I confess. I am a Christmas Light junkie. It all started when I was a small child, who would spend hours each Christmas falling asleep in the half dark under the Christmas tree – looking at the twinkling coloured lights. I would be surrounded by the scent of pine needles, cinnamon cookies and joyful anticipation of a new doll or colouring book as I dozed.

When I had my own cherubs I wanted to share this pleasure, so I bought a stunning long string of lights for our Christmas tree. Then, one Christmas evening, I took a drive around our neighbourhood and spotted a house all sparkling and magical – covered in lights. I was hooked from that moment!

It all started with one icicle set of lights for the gutters.  My kids eyes sparkled as they proudly stood outside looking at their lights. “Nice lights” said the neighbour driving past “Yes, but wait till next year” I said.

Next year came, and the one strand of icicle lights had bred over the winter and spring. We now had our first large boxful of lights and it took a whole hour to put up. “Nice lights” said the neighbour driving past “Yes, but wait till next year” I said.

By now it was becoming an obsession. The following year they had bred again – 4 large boxes waiting to be strung up. When they were finally switched on the kids from the neighbourhood appeared as if by magic. “Nice lights” said the neighbourhood kids “Yes, but wait till next year” I said.

I discovered Boxing Day sales, Ebay and specialist Christmas lights shops. We now needed to build racking in the shed to store all of our boxes of lights. That was the first year we entered the 4KQ Christmas Lights competition and it took a whole day to install. As soon as the lights were switched on during the first night the whole street appeared.

Over the coming nights people from all the surrounding streets appeared. We met neighbours that we had only nodded to in the past. We grew to know the names of each of the local kids (and their assorted dogs). We were suddenly a core part of the community. “We’re the ones with the lights” we would say – and people would knowingly nod.

Then I realised something strange – the lights were brilliant for my business.  People who stopped to talk about the lights also asked about our business. As a result we were solidly booked for January/February each year just from the lights as marketing. It’s the best direct marketing I do all year (and the most fun).

“Nice lights” said the first of the people from the 4KQ Christmas Lights  “Yes, but wait till next year” I said.

Each year our lights grew in size and complexity. We had one dark year when my stepmother died – I didn’t feel like putting up lights that year. We were then hit by the massive storms last year from The Gap and lost a heck of a lot of our lights from our roof and our display. The baubles ended up somewhere floating out to sea, most of our blow-moulds were smashed and our net lights shredded.  Ah well, I thought. I really had wanted to replace the old bulbs with LED ones anyway.

This year we are brighter than ever and took out a Highly Commended in the 4KQ Christmas Lights competition. We are averaging 200 people per night (not including all the locals) and many more cars. Most get to know the name “Heart Harmony” on the way past.  Yes, it did take two whole weekends to install and for those budget minded amongst you, it costs about an addition $15-$20 in electricity for the quarter to run.

The majority of our neighbours are right behind us, although there are one or two in the culdesac who are not as happy with the cars and buses as we are.

We will never win the competition, but we are now at a place of magic.We have a letterbox to the North Pole and write back to all the local kids with their wishes to Santa.

We love watching the tiny babies enjoying their first Christmas, the excited squeals of the toddlers running to explore the garden, the adults just standing and watching in peace for a few moments – that is our magic of Christmas. It is our way of giving back to the wonderful community we live in.

So, if your 4KQ Christmas lights bus happens to be going through Arana Hills, we’ll be out there to say g’day.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter and Christmas elf

I’m about to let you into a secret in the marketing industry, one that is only talked about late at night after a few too many red wines. Not every marketing campaign works. Every marketer has failures – campaigns that sparkled with promise, where all the research and market testing came back positive and yet when the campaign launched you could hear the crickets chirruping (at best), or the campaign was roundly condemned across the media (at worst).

Think back a few years, when Coke had lots of wonderfully happy people trying to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. People whistled and sang the jingle on the streets, everyone knew the campaign, and yet the sales of Coke were pretty much constant.This is known as a marketing fail.

Yesterday Westpac Bank tried to explain mortgage interest rates by a cartoon. In this cartoon mortgages were seen as being like a person making banana smoothies. I am sure it seemed like a great idea at the time, but for a short while the Tiger Woods affairs played second banana to an ad campaign by a bank in terms of public condemnation.

Of course there are self inflicted failures – where a beautifully designed website draft is “run past a few people”, usually relatives or friends, and suddenly the design is converted to a patchwork rug complete with kittens and music. There are direct mail pieces (that are never mailed), ads designed to run as an A4 size being printed as an eight of a page, keyword research informing clients what the most searched terms on the net are only to be told to use non-ranking words as the main keywords and so on. Every marketer has war stories they generally only share within the industry – which is a nice way of saying any marketer worth their salt has failed at times.

So how do you recover from non self-inflicted wounds in your marketing. Westpac showed the way yesterday.

1. Pull the ad. Stop showing it wherever possible.
2. Return to your control ad (the one that may be old but you have proven it works) until you can create something else.
3. Apologise to your customers. If the ad was really a poor choice, then a humble public apology will help.
4. Review the ad development process to learn from any mistakes and to listen to the feedback.
5. Review your internal control process. Who has the final delegation on signing off a campaign – were any corners cut?

Mistakes are part of life. How can you learn from someone’s mistake? (and be nice to your local Westpac Branch Manager – no bunches of bananas or lolly bananas as Christmas gifts. It wasn’t their mistake).

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Every year I do a few weeks of professional development to hone my skills. This year I have been completing some online internet courses – the Thirty Day Challenge with Ed Dale.   I do this one every year to keep current on the latest internet marketing trends (and it is free to do during August each year).

Myself, James Schramko & Donna-Marie Coggins

I have also been studying with James Schramko – one of the good guys of internet marketing. One of his courses I have been taking is the Underground Profit System which I have to say has been brilliant. It is a series of 8 videos with really comprehensive information about websites and traffic that I hadn’t heard elsewhere (and you won’t break the bank doing them). Even if I didn’t get an affiliate fee for recommending James’s course I would be telling all my friends about it … it is that good!

Now if you’re like me you need to lock yourself away in a darkened room for a couple of days to work with new material. My kids joke that when I am studying I descend into my cave like a hermit, only periodically opening the door to get coffee and food and then scuttling away again, while muttering about things like domains, links and traffic. This isolated state lasts until the last DVD is played and I have had a few days applying what I have learnt.

The application is the most important bit. Unless I apply some of what I studied in the few days after the course, the  course material becomes the online equivalent of a treadmill sitting in the lounge room draped with clothes and good intentions.

So the past few days I have been living in my bunker and have had some great aha moments – like how to find fantastic domain names, different website models for businesses, brilliant tools for market research (that don’t cost a cent), places to source great products, how to have videos on your site (and not crush your bandwidth), simple ways to split test to see which headlines/content gets the best results, and places to get CDs & DVDs replicated for next to nothing.

I also had a massive whack on the side of the head in relation to some simple systems to keep tabs on my website information. I knew where I could find (sort of) which company my domain name was registered with, and who hosts my websites, but passwords and expiry dates of the subscriptions? This super simple one pager put it all together for me in a super-organised way. I now have all my website details and many domains (including all my kids names .com.au and .coms) in the one folder, neatly sorted.

But my hands-down favourite bit of James’s course has been the software. Last night I put together and published 3 simple websites in 2 hours which would have taken me an entire day to do otherwise.  There would have been more but the thunderstorm meant the computer had to turn off. Now you have to remember I have some net knowledge which makes things a bit easier, but in my view even newbies to the net would be able to quickly get a great result.

Why am I telling you this? In business we need to keep on top of new developments. We need to take regular time out to sharpen our saw (as Covey would say), to learn new things and new ways of approaching our business.  When was the last time you took time out to study?  Yes, we are all busy and yes I have a mountainous backlog of emails and so on to tackle today … but it is worth it!

… And if you want to learn more about websites and the net – the two courses I have mentioned are worth doing.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Often I share tips  on great ways to grow your business, but today I am going to talk about the 100% guaranteed worst way you can market your business. It is without fail guaranteed to make you despised in the eyes of the majority of other business owners and will destroy your reputation faster than sleeping with the intern in your office.

It is of course telemarketing. Now a quick disclaimer here – back in the 80′s when telemarketing was shiny and new I was involved in this form of marketing for a time. Then it worked because people were actually excited to hear from their electricity company about anything except their bill. Now … telemarketing is the phone equivalent to spam in your email box. You just don’t do it if you want to remain credible as a business.

Yes, there have been fabulous laws passed in many countries establishing “do not call” registers for private homes. This has reduced the phone spam at home – but has passed it on to businesses. Our business is case in point – every day we get on average 5-8 telemarketing calls from people attempting to sell everything from phone plans, finance plans, toner ink, government grants and mortgages. Sure … I am keen to hand over money to people I have never met. Sort of like believing that there really is a nice man in Nigeria willing to give you millions of dollars he happens to have fallen over on a dark night.

Over the years my approach to these unwanted approaches (termed harassment in Human Resources parlance) has gone from polite to downright rude. This is one time when I am actually hanging out for additional government regulation to create a do not call register that businesses can list themselves on.

Until then … if you seriously want to market your business don’t take up telemarketing. I don’t care how attractive it sounds – it is the same as walking up to everyone in the bar and asking them to sleep with you. Your business is going to get a lot of whacks across the side of the face for every acceptance.

Until next time

Ingrid

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

Lots of people believe that colours create emotions in people. I know I believe it. Many years ago as an undergrad psychology student I used to submit my assignments in different coloured manilla folders depending on the content. I would use blue folders if I thought I had done a great job in terms of research and well considered argument and I wanted the Professor to take their time reading it. I used to use red folders if I knew the material looked good on the surface but wouldn’t stand up to deeper scrutiny (wanting the Professor to mark on first impressions).

There are reams of articles written and marketing materials all chosen to tap into the psychology of colour – but where is the scientific proof behind the beliefs?

New Scientist recently reviewed some scientific studies on the use of red and blue and the results are fascinating. The studies were done using taekwondo bouts and had experienced referees score the bouts shown on video. The only difference was the colour of the clothing. In some one combatants was wearing blue and the other red – and then to another sample the clothing colours were swapped. The results  – if the bouts were not close the colours had no impact – yet in close bouts the person wearing red scored on average 13% more points than when they were wearing blue.

Scientists also studied the outcomes in the Athens Olympics in boxing, taekwondo, Graeco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling. Those wearing red won 55% of the time and 62% of the time if the bout was close.

Only for individual sports you say? Well another scientist studied 56 seasons of British Soccer – and those teams whose first choice kit was red finished higher in the league and won more home games than any other colours. This study was replicated in the Euro soccer league.

Fantastic. Now you know which way to bet in footie tipping competitions, so let’s all go and put red in our marketing. Well hold your horses – it is not quite that simple.

In humans red is associated with anger and testosterone. People flush red with anger (and desire).  Tests show that we believe red is a dominant colour and more likely to win physical competitions than say white or blue.

In some other very stylish experiments, volunteers were asked to take a 5 minute IQ test. They were assigned a bogus participant number which was written in either red pen or black pen on the top of their forms. People who had their numbers written in red pen scored significantly lower that those in black.  They then gave students different coloured folders and asked them for their preferred level of difficulty for an IQ test. Students given red folders chose easier tests.

Even viewing red for just a few seconds can make people more timid. Students were told they were going to be taking either a spelling test or an analogies test and to look inside a folder to see which one. The word “analogies” or “spelling” was written on a red or green background. They were then sent to an adjacent lab to take the test, where the sign said “Please knock”. Students who had seen the red background knocked fewer times and more quietly than those given green.

More tests have shown that red on computer screens makes people physically lean away from the screen (not great it your website is primarily red in colour).

But red isn’t all bad. Red improves the results on detail oriented tasks, while blue enhances the results of creative tasks. Women are more likely to be asked for a date (and have more money spent on them in that date) if they wear red. (I have images of scientists going “pick me pick me” to run some of these studies).

So, what is being found is red is context specific. If you want to win at a physical event wear red. If you want to win the dating war – wear red.  If you are in other contexts – you may want to play with other colours rather than red to ensure you don’t give off an aggressive vibe for your product or business. Perhaps in my early days as an undergrad student I wasn’t far off the mark with my folder colours.

And to those who believe that this is all hooey  and you can control your response – there are other studies that show seeing the colour triggers release of chemicals in the body, and fires off neurons in the brain – even before you are consciously making any decisions.Your body decides even before you do!

So … time to take another look at the colours around you and work out the impact they may be having on your behaviour.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

I have just been going back through some New Scientist issues. There was an interesting article on the psychology behind why sports people take drugs and while others stay clean. In summary, the series of studies referred to found:

• those motivated more by a desire to beat others had more permissive attitudes to doping than those who were motivated more by mastering their sport

• athletes who said their coaches frequently criticised them, punished them for mistakes, encouraged rivalries and gave unequal recognition to teammates had the most favourable attitudes towards doping.

They also found that those who did take the drugs did so because they felt they had to do so to compete.  They also found health concerns of taking banned substances caused very little mental concern, and yet the feelings of guilt about letting themselves and their families down weighed the most heavily.

So what? Well these studies give us an insight into a lot of other areas (and yes the purists would say we need to test each area individually to ensure there is a correlation).

The factors causing people to cheat sound a heck of a lot like a lot of workplaces. How many stock traders for example are motivated more by a desire to beat the other traders than simply master the stock-market? How many company directors want to beat the competition rather than just being great at what they do? Do these feelings encourage breaking the law?

What about managers and how they manage. How many managers either deliberately or inadvertently create rivalries between team members and other work areas? How many managers punish people for mistakes or give unequal recognition? By their actions are they creating the toxic work culture that encourages people to take short-cuts with the truth?

This leads to some other interesting ideas in terms of marketing. For example – emphasising how you are letting yourself and your family down may be more effective in cutting smoking than focusing on health warnings.

Imagine the shift in behaviour of some of our footy larrikans if the impact their drinking and partying had on their family or team members.  Video footage of fallen greats wives, kids and parents giving “victim impact” statements of how it felt to be front page news may be more powerful than bravado filled chats.

Teaching ethics or stopping shoplifting by focusing on the impact a breach has on your family may be more effective than hundreds of hours of “thou shalt not” teachings. Perhaps politicians should be shown video footage of fallen QLD politicians heading off the jail, complete with comments from their spouses and families about the impact on their lives as part of their ethics programs.

It pays to keep in touch with studies looking at unravelling human behaviour. How can you implement this in your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

Here’s another fabulous series of studies on the truth behind metaphors reported by Mind Hacks (one of my favourite blogs).

This time the studies all relate to the issue of weight. If people talk about something important we use the term “discussing weighty matters”. If someone is seen as being irrelevant they are described as being a lightweight or having no substance. So is there any truth that weight = being seen as important or good?

These studies looked at the impact having people fill in the same questionnaire holding a heavier clipboard would have.  In one study people valued foreign currencies as greater when they held the heavier clipboard.  Other studies showed that people holding heavier clipboards tended to be more confident in their opinions on controversial issues and were more likely to agree with strong arguments for the issue.

So what does this mean for business? Well I would certainly be testing different weight clipboards when you have customers complete new customer forms, questionnaires, surveys or feedback forms.  You may get clearer and more definite responses to your business as a result. Just remember that super-heavy clipboards may also create a workplace health and safety issue – so you may want to leave the lead-lined ones in the drawer.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

In recent weeks my family have been exploring nursing home options for my mother – and I have to say that universally the aged care sector are the worst adopters of the web. This is a multi-billion dollar industry and yet they still haven’t grasped that most baby-boomer children of aging parents use the net to research options before we pick up the phone to call a particular service.

So what have we found?

• A large percentage of nursing homes (both high and low care) don’t have any form of web presence. The most you will find is a phone number and address in one of a thousand junk web directories.
• If there is a website – it will be a standard brochure style site, with approximately 1-3 pages on it.  The larger more corporate sites are more designed for investors into the company rather than clients – so there are a lot of “what a great business we run let’s pat ourselves on the back” type of pages.
• The pages will show at least one photo of the front of the building, and a few istock photos of happy looking seniors.
• There will be no photos of rooms, common areas or facilities.
• Information is restricted to “we believe in aging with dignity and we work hard to make it happen”. If you are really lucky you may get a paragraph that says something about we have regular visits by podiatrists, pharmacists and hairdressers – but again no specific details.
• You may find a few very very vague paragraphs about fees, along the lines of “yes we charge daily fees and a bond may be payable”.

What were we looking for?

• Information about the centre – it’s philosophy & operating policies
• Details of accreditation
• Testimonials from current clients and families of clients
• Fee schedules with explanations and links to the Government rules on each component
• Details of what to bring to the home on admission
• Information on waiting lists
• Photos of the rooms, facilities and meals
• Information on support services and enrichment activities (a copy of the current weekly schedule would be great)
• Tips to help settle the person into the facility
• Enrolment forms
• Regular news updates on what is happening in the centre
• Google map link so we can find the centre. A link to Google Street would also be great so we can see what is around the centre (such as that bikers pub next door or the 6 lane freeway at the back fence).

You have to remember that it is not just the family that are stressed by this process. We also are coping with the concerns of “what is going to happen to me” of our frail elderly parents currently within hospital. The more information and photos we can share with them, the easier they will feel. They will start to get a sense of future and hope, rather than just losing control. They already are dealing with the a huge loss in the realisation that they can no longer cope on their own, without the added stress of not knowing the next steps and possibilities.

Aged Care Facilities could learn a lot from many of the daycare websites that include these features as standard. The same emotional issues are faced by the families seeking care – a mixture of guilt and hope from the family;  wanting to know the person will be safe, cared for and loved; being time poor and needing to find the facts quickly.

I understand that the industry is over-subscribed with many centres holding long waiting lists. This means that they don’t have any imperative to change their approach. However, the smart centres and businesses that do take action to improve their web presence will gain a dominant market advantage for when the many new centres that are currently being planned and being built hit the market.

Until that time – if you are like us, all you can do is to drive to each centre with your list of questions and watch the staff try and sell the facility while you try and glean the information you need for both you and your elderly parent.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

In another example of proving that sayings having a basis in fact, a study by the University of Dusseldorf in Germany reported in New Scientist has tested whether people really can smell fear.

The favoured lab rats of Universities (a group of uni students) had absorbent pads placed under their armpits before their final exams and again as they exercised. Some other students (who were probably not paid near enough for their participation) then sniffed the pads and had their brain activity measured.

The bad news is that smelling the exam pads – full of anxiety or fear secreted chemicals,  lit up the students brains like New Year’s Eve fireworks.  The researchers concluded that anxiety triggers the release of a chemical outside our conscious control, that automatically triggers similar feelings in anyone who sniffs it.

What does this mean for business? Well if you don’t want to make your customers nervous you may want to rethink placing highly anxious people on your front line. You may also want to up your anti-perspirant deoderant levels before big events – perhaps bathing in it may help stop the transmission of the chemical via your sweat.

Other than that – be aware that people can really smell your fear.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters

In Australia, the Federal Government decided to give homeowners with no insulation a grant of $1600 to get their homes insulated. It is a very generous system as most homeowners should be able to get their homes insulated at no or little additional cost.  It was announced a few months back to give people time to plan, and give the industry time to get organised. So what have we seen?

As one of the households potentially gifted with insulation I took the system for a test run.

Well – lots and lots of new businesses have been formed to install insulation. The trouble is that almost none of them have websites, let alone any form of marketing material. They are relying on the Government site with it’s less than useless search facility to send them business.

The Government site was designed by a bureaucrat with no knowledge of how people actually search for something on the net. We never think …  “I will type in AVW Family Trust to find insulation installers in Brisbane”. The message is – you will need to find your insulation installers some other way – don’t rely on the government site.

If you hunt for a particular form of insulation (eg: foil batts or foil insulation – the best option for Brisbane homes) on Google you will find the manufacturers – but very few true installers. This tells me that the insulation installers websites that do exist are not well optimised for search engines.

I checked out the local papers – as I always try to support the local guyus. Zero ads (Remember – this was the first week of the new scheme. I would have expected at least a few ads.) Scratch that as an idea. I had no recall of any TV ads or radio ads – so that was no help.

I raided my business card index from all my networking contacts and events. No insulation installers amongst the hundreds of contacts.

I then blew the dust of the Yellow Pages that had been used as a door stop for the past year, thinking that as a last resort they may be useful. To put it bluntly I was wrong. The ads were great examples of how not to write Yellow Pages ads. Lots of same old same old ads – designed to promote the brand – and not promoting the types of insulation to be installed.

I finally tracked down 3 numbers of insulation installers who installed foil type insulation. Only 2 phones were answered. That left two quotes. Both were professional and turned up when they said they would. One took the time to educate and explain the differences between products in depth – explaining the pluses and minuses and being brutally honest with their products.  The other worked hard on the upsell of many extra features (would you like fries, chips and potato wedges with that).

We ended up going with the one who appeared more honest (if you install y instead of x you may get half a degree temp difference but it will cost another $300).

What is the lesson for other businesses? The ones who will benefit from this new scheme are the ones who are out front beating their drums to grab attention. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you – get out there!

If you have no idea about the keywords people type into search engines to find you  – get professional SEO help. People use search engines to research products and to find businesses. If you can’t be found on the first few pages – you are not found full stop.

It’s OK to admit the failings of your products. Don’t try and make them something that they are not.

Finally – take a look at my process for finding a business. I really wanted a particular product and was prepared to dig for it.  Will your customers do the same or will they give up at the first hurdle?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters