NYNY Solutions

Does your organisation distinguish between online sales and telephone sales? If so, why?

I believe many companies that are able to sell their products online almost consider a telephone sales an inferior result - proof that the almighty webshop wasn’t up to the task.

Well, in some cases it’s probably correct (a lot of webshops really are crap wrapped in HTML).

But in general I think it’s a negative notion, born in the light of online marketing back in the 90s: “if the customer finds you online, you should be able to sell online, if he finds you offline, it’s OK to sell offline.”

Back then not everyone had online access, companies might even have separate online and offline sales and marketing organizations - each clawing for results. If your company is stuck in this mindset, you might be hurting your sales.

Instead, I think it’s important to take a look at what a good telephone sales rep is able to generate, compared to your webshop. Look for positives:

• Are phone conversion rates much higher than online CR?
• Is it easier to generate upsell on the phone?
• Are phone sales complete and confirmed once the customer hangs up?

But how to generate cost-efficient traffic to your money-making phones? Time to try a pay-per-call setup like TradeDoubler’s td Talk?

Maybe, but start by looking at your own website first. Are you actively displaying telephone numbers next to your webshop? What are you telling customers - should they call, when and why?

I think the first and most important realisation is - it’s not a failure to get sales on the phone, instead of in the webshop.

Gold is currently being traded at about 914 USD/oz. That’s down about 89 USD (8.9%) from mid March, but up 33% over 6 months and up 203% over 5 years.

Why? What is it about gold that makes it a valuable investment in 2008, AD? Why are people continuing to argue for gold-backed currencies? Why are online companies creating something as arcane as Digital Gold Currencies? Isn’t that the same as re-introducing tally sticks or wampums?

Although I personally think a wampum based economy would be really cool, there is a big difference between a shell bead and gold; There’s real value in gold, not only as currency.

Each and every major currency you can think of today has zero gold backing. They are fiat currencies created and maintained by central banks, sometimes with extraordinary power over the economies they serve. Just look at the US Federal Reserve System, they’ve even stopped reporting the M3 to Congress, which basically means no-one really knows how many US dollars are being printed, which in turn means no-one can accurately predict inflation (except of course the Fed).

The world of fiat money is fascinating and vaguely resembling magic - when it works. After all, value is construed out of virtually nothing but the general faith in the institutions backing the money. It’s basically money because someone says it is. So were tally sticks, and wampums. So could Amazon Horned Frogs be  - well, that would be a pretty slimy economy, but we would be in touch with nature again, and the rainforests wouldn’t be levelled due to logging. 

Anyhow, regardless of if we carry around paper, sticks, shells or 20 cm long amphibians to buy stuff with, the truth is that the second we stop believing the institutions issuing this fiat money are willing or able to back the value of their money, there is NO basic intrinsic value in them, except of course you could blow your nose with a dollar bill. Cool - and scary.

Gold, on the other hand, has very real value. When Hans F. Sennholz wrote Why Gold? back in 2003, gold was traded at 350-360 USD/oz. I don’t know if professor Sennholz predicted gold to reach 1000 USD/oz five years from then, but it did. In the article, he explains why although gold production output might fluctuate year over year (e.g. new mining technology becoming economically viable as prices soar, my note) the amount of gold in circulation - in jewelry, electronics, stored as bullions, in teeth fillings, etc, etc, is so vast, that the total supply is for all practical purposes virtually static by now.

So, gold is there. Supply is stable. It stores well. Maybe DGCs make a whole lot of sense? I think additional actors might join in, notably companies like BullionVault that offers bullion trading today, but haven’t yet turned the customer gold into the foundation of a payment solution.

www.tigertass.se is planned to be a new webshop for select kids’ stuff.

It’s (probably) happening right now. The airline industry is shapeshifting with carrier shutdowns and bankruptcies in the US acting as the canary. Jared Blank even wrote this Obituary at onlinetravelreview.com that put things in a pretty dramatic perspective.

So, what happens next? In his blog, Jared picks up on some of the possible new business/technology solutions that could help turn things around. Of these, I think the notion of link-ups between carriers in manageable, flexible and, above all, cost-efficient connections between long-haul and regional carriers will be crucial.

This could be an inflection point where airlines must form new alliances and give up on the Our-Airline-Is-An-Island idea of the independent operation where the business plan promised that an ever growing route map and direct online sales would lead to profitability and, in some cases, world dominance.

My $0.02 is that if you’re an airline and want to optimise your cabin factor to reach profitability, it’s time to find dancing partners, and it’s time to start looking at combining footprints to actually meet customer demand.

Here’s a great example: Living in Scandinavia, it’s impossible to miss Sterling’s ads for regional hops to London, Berlin, etc. If I want to kick back in Nice, I know where to book. But, the problem is, I’d never even consider combining, say, a Sterling itinerary from Copenhagen to London, with a Virgin Atlantic itinerary from London to New York. I’m sure there are plenty of excellent flights to match that would give me a great combined itinerary, and would give Sterling AND Virgin another ass in their seats, but then they have to help me along - it might be as easy as to simply suggest the idea, thereby letting me know they thought about it and at least they themselves think it’s a good idea.

Will Google take the plunge and become the world’s largest meta search site, too? It’s already a price-comparion service through Google Product Search, but will it go after more specialised areas such as Travel Search Engines?

For some time time, I’ve argued that Google is ideally positioned to do just this; to execute and launch travel search similiar to kayak.com, dohop.com, et al.

Indeed, they’ve meddled with a special search interface for quite some time.

Just try googling “London To Berlin” and watch the enhanced travel search interface appear, together with selected Online Travel Agencies to finalize the search at.

This is not meta search, in fact it’s very very basic stuff. But I’m pretty sure there is substantial data mining going on in the Googleplex in order to evaluate future steps. There are companies out there to buy (kayak.com if you want the industry leader, dohop.com if you want the coolest technology) that would kick-start a Google travel search engine, or Google could just decide to steal with pride and polish to perfection.

A caveat: Considering the fact that the TSEs of the world are pretty big SEM spenders today, a Google TSE would result in an industry massacre and reduced AdWords revenues for Google. Live and let live, or control more of the value chain directly?

The answer might be to do a little bit of both. After all, there are hundreds if not thousands of travel search sites out there scraping and reading feeds, working hard to keep as many traffic sources as possible alive and showing in search results. All of these search engines have duplicate data, but it’s locked in. For every market entry by a new TSE, the duplication and traffic inefficiency gets worse. OTAs get more requests from ever increasing numbers of TSEs, so they in turn have to query their GDSs. Even airlines have some elements of cost involved when searching their own data.

Now, wouldn’t it be great if all of this could happen much faster, centrally and the data could be shared effectively and still support a healthy, competitive market?

So - what if an industry leader took the role of

A) Outlining and enforcing an implementation standard of results

B) Worked with whoever wanted to be included to ensure that centralised data mining happened (compare this to setting up your sitemap in Webmaster tools, spending countless hours managing your AdWords account - if it’s Google it’s usually worth it, so you do it, even if you’re e.g. Expedia).

C) Offered it to clients (just like Google offers AdSense to website owners)

If I was running a large affiliate network, like CJ, Zanox or TradeDoubler, I would seriously consider moving in and cornering this position - before Google does. Because they should. And then I’ll say I told you they would.

Rumours emerging about Google moving in to swallow Expedia all seem to miss one thing - Google’s AdWords revenue to a large extent comes from travel.

Now, Google owning Expedia would alienate just about every OTA out there.

1) Their money spent with Google would support the activities of Expedia, which is already kind of the Boogeyman for smaller companies.

2) Although Google claims to respect privacy and integrity of information - using Google Analytics and AdWords conversion tracking would seem like a pretty exposed setup. Knowing Google/Expedia has the funds to out-price just about everyone they want to, for as long as they like - who would want to risk showing on the radar?

I can name a bunch of them that would actively start looking for other traffic sources to spend their money on, rather than paid search in Google.

This is all healthy paranoia - sure, profitable traffic today and tomorrow would still look like a good idea to an OTA, but they would know they were also nurturing a beast that might decide to go after them.

Here’s some advice for you, Google, if you guys are to buy one single travel industry player, it should be kayak.com - hands down.

Oh, and if I’m wrong and you actually go ahead and buy Expedia, it BETTER be because you plan to finally build a space elevator, and need Expedia to administrate the tickets for it. Actually, I’d be kind of cool with that.

I just wrote a description of our services to a partner who wanted to know how to describe what we do. Here’s what I wrote first:

/…/ A typical project setup that we’ve done for European Travel companies, Hosting companies, Software developers, Retail companies, Consultancy companies, etc - is something like this:

1) We identify what they want to do with their website, some sell stuff online, some use their website as a showroom, some want to attract resellers, some want to reach people with information, etc..

2) We determine how to track performance - if there are no tools in place, we will advice and assist in selecting and implementing

3) We review the website(s) - sometimes they are just not up to the task, and often they are far from optimised. We can take part both on a technical and commercial level, including e.g. Search Engine Optimisation

4) We make and execute a marketing plan for the website, combining a wide range of systems and techniques such as Search Engine Marketing, affiliate networks, viral marketing, permission marketing (e-mails), press releases, campaign-sites / localised sites, banner advertising, etc. Offline elements would also be considered if relevant/necessary. Stepping outside pure marketing - we could also work on finding regional/national partners, etc.

5) We monitor the results of the activities and make ongoing adaptions, revising targets in cooperation with the client.

- If more assistance is required than we can handle ourselves, we subcontract, anything from software and web developers, to designers and media bureaus. /…/

Well, it’s correct, and probably quite informative, but it just sounds complex. Here’s my second version:

NYNY Solutions can market your company effectively on Google and other search engines. We do all the work for you, and your programs can start and stop instantly, so there is no overhead cost and no risk.

No question about which version is more to the point. I think I just proved to myself that less is more, also in b2b.