Imagine walking into a nightclub or outdoor dance party to hundreds of people dancing to silence… sounds a little crazy, right? Saturday night in Christchurch saw a unique phenomenon hit the South Island for the first time: a silent disco.

There are only a few companies I can think of that regularly produce brilliantly innovative marketing campaigns, so it was only logical that world class (kiwi made) vodka brand 42 Below put on an event like this for free.

Silent discos are a new concept whereby party goers are provided with wireless headphones and can tune into one of several channels streaming music from different DJ’s. The May 17 event saw DJs T Rice (Auckland), Josh Sinclair (Christchurch) and John Manson (Christchurch) pump out their tunes for eager dancers in a basement in the popular bar and nightclub district of SOL Square in Christchurch city.

So while the woman in the red dress was getting her freak on to some hot vocal house, the man with the dreadlocks was grooving to his own drum & bass tune. The silent disco experience was put on by UK Based company SilentArena, who offer their services worldwide and are able to provide in excess of 2500 headphones for clients.

Image from Flickr.

I read an article this morning which declared that owners of digital video recorder (DVR) consoles and hard drive recorders like MySky generally ignore all advertising on TV, but watch more TV that those without said consoles.

Half of DVR owners claim to fast-forward through all advertisements, and it appears that stay-at-home mothers are most acquainted with the fast-forward button - 9 out of 10 surveyed reported to not watch commercials when watching a recorded program on their DVR.

I am actually a recent convert to hard drive recording, having purchased a DVR about a month ago, for two reasons. The first was naturally, so I could record everything I enjoy watching during the week and watch my favourite shows at a convenient time (say, five shows in a row on a Sunday morning?). The second reason was, just like stay-at-home mums, to fast-forward ads. I actually made a point of buying a console with a thirty-second skip button, so I wouldn’t even have to keep an eye on my fast forwarding, I can just press that button eight times (advertisement breaks on New Zealand television are typically 4 minutes in total).

What does this mean for television advertising and its future? I can truly say that I am pretty much unaffected by small screen advertising, because I rarely even see it… but if television shows are funded solely on advertiser commercials, am I contributing to the jeopardisation of quality television on New Zealand screens?

Image from Flickr.

Traditional advertising is still an extravagant expense for many businesses in New Zealand. It can cost thousands of dollars to get a page in a printed magazine, tens of thousands for billboards and even over 100K to buy television spots.

Often, most real world advertisements just want people to visit the virtual presence of a product or service via a website, which requires providing a URL in an ad. We often run into URLs in the offline world: on billstickers, business cards, on the side of cars. For someone to actually remember and write down a URL in order to type it into their web browser, they will probably have a strong interest in the product or service already, meaning they are perhaps consumers that do not need to be ’sold to’ as heavily as the general public.

One crucial thing that advertisers often forget about is the power of links. A major part of web traffic is users clicking links, whether they have a genuine interest in them or not. It costs a user nothing, and is effortless to connect them with a destination instantly. If we think about the concept of the web, it is a source of connectivity between people and information, whereby it is a global network that makes anything obtainable by a single click. This is done largely by links.

As users of the New Zealand web space, your first experience with linking your current website may very well have been on NZS.com, as we provide a link to your website - and in exchange you can provide a reciprocal link back to us. To thank you for doing this, we make your link stand out in bold amongst other links, which are in a standard, less visible font.

It is one thing to move your cursor a few centimetres to click on a button, it is quite something else to see a URL in the outside world and remember it for the next time an internet browser is handy. Getting your website link available in various places the online world is a sure-fire way to increase awareness of your business or organisation, and stay up to speed with the advertising game.

Image from Flickr.

If you were in any doubt as to the importance of branding and identity online, search statistics clearly show that brands matter in online marketing.

The best brands all have one thing in common: they become synonymous in customers’ minds with a particular product or service. Some of the most successful brands today have built their reputation online - and enjoyed flow-on success in the offline market. On the other hand, businesses established in the offline market have had to adapt to the increasing dominance of Internet marketing over other forms of media - achieving varying degrees of success.

According to Hitwise search data, some of the most competitive search terms are brand focused - that is, they’re specific rather than generic. Take the New Zealand fashion industry. The top ten fashion searches over the last six months were:

1. pumpkin patch
2. supre
3. glassons
4. just jeans
5. country road
6. lv*
7. billabong
8. bendon
9. cotton on
10. jeans west

* Louis Vuitton

And Kiwis looking for insurance in NZ are similarly brand focused (save for one generic term):

1. state insurance
2. acc
3. travel insurance
4. southern cross
5. ami
6. ami insurance
7. aa insurance
8. nzi
9. tower insurance
10. amp

Whether you’re thinking clothing brands, beer brands, bike brands, car brands or chocolate brands, never underestimate the strength of brand value online. If you need a hand working out your online branding strategy, get corporate identity services from the professionals.

Image from Flickr.

More than 85% of the world’s Internet users surveyed have purchased something online, according to The Nielsen Company’s Global Online Survey of Internet shopping habits, conducted in October and November 2007. The research company said that more than half of Internet users had made a least one purchase online within the past month.

With an estimated 3.2 million New Zealanders being Internet users, this means that 64% make a purchase online at least once a month - a number that’s high by anyone standards. Research clearly shows that most New Zealanders feel very secure about making a purchase online.

So, what are Internet users buying online? Well, according to Nielsen, the top 5 are:

1. Books (41%)
2. Clothing, accessories and shoes (34%)
3. DVDs, videos and games (24%)
4. Airline tickets (24%)
5. Consumer electronics (23%)

With just over 2 million of New Zealand’s Internet users making a purchase online at least once a month, online shopping is becoming a major player in the retail market.

If you have an e-commerce store, particularly if you’re selling books and clothing then, given current trends, you really need to market your site to take advantage of the boom in online shopping.

NZS.com can help you by providing targeted traffic to your site. For more information, see our online advertising options.

After confirmation that advertising on the Internet is a fast-growing phenomenon in New Zealand, a study from IAB New Zealand shows that Kiwis are putting most of their online marketing dollars into classified and display advertising.

Global search marketing trends
Internationally, search engine advertising and getting your website to the top of major search engines - such as Google - is the number one priority. Global statistics show search engine marketing has the majority share in online advertising:

Australia - 46%
United Kingdom - 57%
United States - 41%

Search advertising in New Zealand
Here - where the online marketplace is smaller and advertisers less Internet-focused - search marketing accounts for only 25% of our online advertising dollars. In contrast, classified ads and display advertising gobble up 44% and 31% of our online advertising spend.

Why the discrepancy?
The most likely cause is a lack of awareness in the field of Internet advertising, in both New Zealand’s business and advertising sectors. As an online market, New Zealand is still in the early stages of development when compared to other nations, but this doesn’t necessarily equal a weakness. From a ‘glass half full’ perspective, it means there is still a huge amount of opportunity for search marketing and optimisation in New Zealand. And interestingly, the cost of search advertising in the local market is about half that of international markets.

Stay tuned, as the fledgling New Zealand search market takes off…

I read with interest that New Zealand online advertising has grown by 23% in 3 months. Businesses and individuals had spent the best part of $41 million in Q3! That takes the total year to date spending to $98.6 million. Estimates are that the yearly figure will exceed $120 million.

When you think about it, though, it’s not a great surprise. With so many more websites out there it is getting harder to stand out in traditional search engines and online directories. One report by IBM Global Business Services says that 30% of ad revenue now spent on traditional media will shift to online ad exchanges such as Yahoo and Google.

In the US, online ad spend on newspaper websites grew 21% in Q3, or US$773 million. The digital revolution is far from disappearing. Growth in New Zealand is expected to continue for some time yet, considering overseas Online Advertising figures are still in double digit growth.

There are many ways to spend your money in online advertising - search directories are an option for New Zealanders. And what better time for me to shamelessly shout from the roof tops that NZS.com is a great choice! As the number one NZ-based search directory, with more than 300,000 unique visitors a month and over 80,000 listings, we’ve got plenty to shout about.

For options on Sponsored Listings, Marketing pages or Site Sponsorship click here for more information.

It turns out we’re not the only ones who think NZS.com is tops…

Hitwise have announced that NZS.com has earned a place as a Top 10 Award winner for the quarter running from April to June 2007. Ranked against other Business Directories, we came in at #4. Not bad, eh? Winning websites are determined by the percentage of user visits received, as compared to other sites in their category, during the time period.

Hitwise are online competitive intelligence experts who offer Web geeks a feast of daily insights on the behaviour of 25 million people and 1 million websites, spanning more than 160 industries globally. Tracking Internet usage around the world, Hitwise can help website owners with online branding, search promotion and content strategies.

If you’re interested in seeing how your website measures up against others in your industry, find out more about the Hitwise Top Ten Award Program.

NZS.com has dedicated a lot of time to finding New Zealand online content. It’s become evident to us that a lot of Kiwi sites are jolly hard to find. We regularly meet people at events etc that hand us their business card with their Web site on it. You take a look and see the site has no Google PageRank. This is generally because their site has no links to it from anywhere on the Web at all!

It’s a real shame to see this, because often they’ve spent thousands of dollars creating a site that looks pretty swish. It’s just marketing money down the drain, and in the end gives the Web a bad rap. I can imagine them saying at some point “We’ve spent a lot of time and money developing this site, but we get nothing much out of it, the Web is a waste of time.”

To stop your Web site being invisible, make sure you get it linked from high profile directories and content sites. What’s the point of having a site if people can’t find you?! Also, if you’re a bit more serious about it, then commit to an ongoing Web site promotion program - for most Web sites this is the key to getting a good return on your investment.

In my last post, I talked about some of the things search engines like about the websites they rank highly on their results pages. One way I mentioned was to get votes from 3rd party websites. Here’s more on how you can get ‘votes’ for your site.

Getting other website owners to ‘vote’ for your Web site is all about getting them to publish a hypertext link on their website, which points to one of your Web pages. The more links pointing to your website not only means ‘more votes’ but provides more ways for people and search engines to reach your Web site.

Presidential link bait
The best way to get links from other websites pointing to your website is to publish content (link bait) that is so mind-blowingly brilliant that another Web site owner just WANTS to link to it.

Linking leg work
You can also ask website owners to publish a link to your site. Start with friends and associates, then move onto specialist, national and international directories. Spread your wings further by seeking out websites (preferably relevant to your business) that also publish links or ‘resources’.

The online back-scratch
Some website owners will only publish a link to your website if you publish a link to theirs in exchange. This mutual back-scratching is called, unsurprisingly enough, link exchange. NZS.com offer a FREE bold listing for link exchanges - it’s well worth checking out their link exchange offer.

You can read more about some of the best practises for link building and link exchange, in Link Building Made Easy.

That’s all from me for now folks. Cheerio!