Advertising, Media & Marketing

Greeff explains the property industry ‘engine’ powering Domain

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

DOMAIN, Australia’s digital property portal and associated real-estate industry business, does more than just list properties for consumers and agents.

It is also a technology company that services the real estate industry. That is, for consumers, investors and agents.

Frank Greeff, the head of industry at Domain, explains how part of part of Domain works as an aggregator. Mr Greeff had started out as a chef and then, with the help of his brothers, decided to create a real estate-focused technology business that they eventually sold to Domain.

“For example, if you drive past any home for sale, you’ll see a sign board at the front, you’ll see it in Domain, you’ll see it on REA, they might hand out some brochures, you might see it on social media,” Mr Greeff told Talking Business.

“Our business aggregates all the suppliers, all the people who execute those different materials, and the real estate agents will log on to our platform to perform those tasks.” 

Mr Greeff said the easiest way to describe it was “as similar to Uber Eats”.

On one side you have a consumer who wants to buy the property and on the other side you have the agents who, like the restaurants, provide what the consumer is looking for.

“Uber Eats is the aggregator, the gateway between the two,” he said. “We are the gateway between the two. We don’t necessarily do the marketing but we facilitate the process.”

Adapting to meet real market needs

It’s very niche. One of Mr Greeff’s brothers was a real estate photographer and the other was a real estate floor planner.

He said the business (Realhub.com.au) started as a physical service company that created the signboards. They then created a platform.

They challenged the major company that was in this space (Campaigntrack.com), took about 30 percent of their business, and then merged.

The business, Realbase, that he and his brothers created was then snapped up by Domain.

“Roughly we see about 43 percent of all transactions, so about one in two properties across Australia and New Zealand will come to our business. The next closest is about one-tenth the size,” Mr Greeff said.

“This was the unique element for Domain. This is the place where agents come to get not just the online marketing but all the marketing.”

Platform made to order

The technology is totally proprietary, developed by Frank Greeff’s brothers.

He said Domain also offered services direct to agents. These include services for compliance for agency agreements and signing digital authorities – and for data behind the history of the properties.

“This series of products are fragmented, so what we are doing is creating a single entry point and bringing the products together so the agent has one log in and they would see all the different products and processes that they could save within their business,” Mr Greeff said.

That is how Mr Greeff and his team integrate Domain’s businesses.

“In five years’ time, the goal for us is a single platform in terms of look and feel,” he said.

“What we want is one log-in for an agent where they can pick and choose from any of the products, but once they understand one of the products, how it works and how the technology feels, they understand them all.”

www.realbase.io

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business30-interview-with-frank-greeff-from-dom

 

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A much, much closer look at marketing

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

MARKETING whizz Maureen Barten from Maureen Barten Consulting sees marketing as very much an inside job.

“Internal marketing is often overlooked so our marketing journey with a company starts with looking at the inside,” Ms Barten told Talking Business. “How is your team communicating with each other? Because that communication and the consistency of communication and the tone of communication sets the tone for how they are communicating with the outside world, your customers, your stakeholders, your vendors.

“Along with that strategy, we are often involved in creating brand messaging and establishing a voice,” she said. “We will identify avatars and firstly the goals, mission and vision of the company.”

Ms Barten said companies often have this, but it’s not up to date. And if it incorporates changes.  

“One of the things I’ve come to understand over my decades in businesses is that a marketing strategy, a business plan, a marketing plan, they need to be dynamic,” Ms Barten said.

“If they’re not being reviewed on a consistent basis, at least annually, and updated, they are largely out of date.”

Long years of experience

Ms Barten, who has run businesses from the age of 22, works with small to medium businesses that turn to her because they need to outsource their marketing.  She works with professional service providers, accountants, lawyers and allied medical professionals as well as hospitality retail and consumer goods businesses.

She also has clients in wholesale manufacturing as she has a background in manufacturing back home in California. Generally, her clients have a staff of two to15. She has also worked with non-profits.

Ms Barten has run campaigns and helped organisations raise millions of dollars building hospitals. In the United States, she had worked as a consultant to Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.

Maureen Barten Consulting also builds teams, some with internal and others with external sources.

“I build messages that are timeless, that are specifically targeted to the audience you desire,” she said.

Challenge is in identifying key markets

The firm’s challenges are all about helping clients identify their key markets.

“In doing so, we create new opportunitie,” Ms Barten said. “It’s the backbone of a solid marketing strategy. You’ve got to know who you’re selling to.”

She said Maureen Barten Consulting was now moving into “the exciting space of mentoring business leaders” and owners and their teams.

“We go in and work with them on the key deliverables that we provide which would be the messaging and making sure we are talking to and in the right language to those people, the people they want to meet, we create strategies and plans and we mentor them so they can run with it,” she said.

“Or we make sure we have those teams in place and we project manage.”

Ms Barten said it was exciting for her because she liked production – especially as she has a background in product production.

“I like to see how things are built, I like to see them come to fruition and deliver results,” Ms Barten said.

“So managing a team or mentoring a group so they make those things happen is hugely rewarding for me,” she said.

“If I look over the course of my journey, my most fulfilling moments have been in mentoring and teaching."

www.maureenbarten.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.
https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business45-interview-with-maureen-barten-from-mareen

 

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How brands have navigated the downturn so far – Pureprofile research

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business

THE DOWNTURN has seen an explosion of Australians shopping online.

Martin Filz, the CEO of Pureprofile said a number of factors were driving this trend. He also outlined strategies that brands should be using to take advantage of the trend.

Mr Filz said they need to be mindful that people’s buying habits change when times get tough and people have less money.

“When you look at the preferences of audiences and consumers going to brand, what you always have in a downturn is that people change their opinions and views,” Mr Filz told Talking Business. 

“So the first key point is that brands need to stay close to their consumers. What I mean by that is, do market research and understand what your consumers’ drivers are, what their concerns are. Is it quality? Is it price? Is it privacy? Is it sustainability? Is it convenience?

“All of those things change over time but especially change when we’ve got a downturn.”

 

RETAILERS, TAKE STOCK

Mr Filz said retailers should look at what drives individual purchases with brands.

“For example, convenience is really important, free delivery is really important, lower price, discounts, click and collect, products that are only available online, are important.

“Those are the key drivers for people buying on e-commerce,” he said.

The other area for retailers to examine is how people are gathering information about brands and products.

“Social media is the number one place that people understand about a brand or a product,” Mr Filz said. “They look at reviews, they look at feedback. They may look at offers.”

Mr Filz said friends and families were the second biggest drivers for products.

Product reviews and Google reviews are also critical.

The third driver is the loyalty scheme.

 

KEEP INVESTING THROUGH A DOWNTURN

Mr Filz said companies that keep investing during a downturn are the ones that succeed. They gain customers and they keep that market share until things come right again, which will inevitably happen.

He said customer loyalty from people buying directly from brands is now “through the roof”.

“64 percent have purchased their favourite brand on multiple occasions from that brand’s website, so it works,” Mr Filz said.

“We also know that 61 percent who have bought direct from a brand, when they see that brand available on an aggregation site, don’t buy from that market place, they actually go back and buy it from the brand.

“The direct brand-to-consumer market place is really powerful. It is especially strong with millennials and Gen Z who are looking to purchase their brands direct from the manufacturer.”

Mr Filz said research by Pureprofile showed Australians’ spending had changed with the downturn.

He spending at supermarkets in July this year, compared with July in 2021, had increased 7 percent. But alcohol expenditure at Dan Murphys and BWS was down 5 percent.

Supermarkets are charging more but people have to eat so they keep buying, hence the 7 percent increase. But they are removing alcohol from their discretionary spending.

“People are looking at what they have to buy, what can they buy, what can they do without?” Mr Filz said.

“People are also making decisions around quality versus price.”

The research also showed people were not letting go of quality during the downturn. Instead of buying something based on price, they were now shopping around.

www.pureprofile.com

www.leongettler.com

 

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business-35-interview-with-martin-filz-from-pureprof

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Forbes to focus on Australia’s ‘best’ business minds and entrepreneurs

FORBES AUSTRALIA officially launched on Friday. Its stated mission: to offer Australian leaders, entrepreneurs and success seekers a new experience-led membership built to unearth stories of change and success.

The Australian arm of Forbes has a pretty good head start, being able to tap into the suite of print and online subscriber services atop the US magazine’s 105-year heritage.

Forbes Australia has come about through a licensing agreement between Forbes Media and the optimistic local group, Success Publishing Pty Ltd, so it is able to draw on an armoury of well-regarded business journalism.

Today, the Forbes reader experience is – thanks to the magazine’s digital and broadcast development – what the publishing team calls a multi-faceted immersive experience that includes a premium bi-monthly magazine, website and curated online newsletters’.

Something different is the Forbes Australia focus on events, with members promised they will be able able to “see the story unfold beyond the pages at live and hybrid events”. The first Forbes Australia LIVE event is happening in Sydney on October 20.

Writing in the first issue of Forbes Australia, Forbes Media chairman and editor-in-chief , Steve Forbes said, “Australia embraces many of the same ideals as that of Forbes. It’s a place of doers, built by entrepreneurs who have created from scratch the country’s leading industries in sectors such as commodities, wine, agriculture and fishery. Now a new generation is adding high tech to that mix.

“This ‘can do’ country provides a model of stability, economic progress and democratic government in the Asia-Pacific and has a growing role in regional security. We are truly excited to watch Forbes Australia chronicle the country’s rising business, financial and economic profile.

Forbes Australia will build a local iteration of the global media brand, led by CEO Michael Lane, who has developed multiple successful businesses across live events, real estate and wealth management.

“Forbes is an inspiring and engaging media brand for more than 150 million people every month,” Mr Lane said.

“With Forbes Australia, we are combining Forbes’ global perspective with a uniquely local twist. By putting local business leaders and local entrepreneurs at the centre, we want to celebrate success, cultivate community and spark meaningful change.” 

Forbes Australia editor-in-chief is Sarah O’Carroll. Ms O’Carroll was most recently editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance, which she re-launched in the Australian market in 2018 and grew its audience to a peak of more than two million monthly users.

“Australians have never been more ambitious,” Ms O’Carroll said. “They’re yearning for new approaches to our nation’s challenges and opportunities.

“They want stories of success and determination, and ideas built to equip our leaders for the best and brightest future.”

Ms O’Carroll said content would primarily be built on unique, locally written stories of entrepreneurs and success, mixed with the best news and features from Forbes’ global offerings. The brand has the stated goal of “tapping into the deep well of local insight and leadership, Forbes Australia will unearth and tell the stories that celebrate success, cultivate community and spark meaningful change”.

forbes.com.au

Mobiquity tailors tech-driven financial products to ‘brand enthusiasts’

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

IMAGINE IF RETAILERS offered banking services like buy now, pay later? Or if your local football club offered you the opportunity to get the finance to buy a car? This is possible with the work that Mobiquity is doing.

Mobiquity partners with the world’s leading brands and banks to design and deliver compelling digital products and services.

Gustavo Quiroga, the vice president and general manager of Mobiquity for the Asia-Pacific regionAPAC, said this was one of the most exciting areas that Moibiquity is getting into in Australia. He said they ‘become like banks’.

“It’s about bringing this opportunity to extend the utility that these trusted brands have with their customers by bringing in financial services which they couldn’t do before, “ Mr Quiroga told Talking Business. 

“Now the reason is banks or banking is a very distributed and loosely defined industry. So all of these industries, airlines and sporting associations, they have something that every bank covets – and that is trust of their customers and a real brand affinity.

“So as a Penrith Panthers member, I might take out a car loan with them, before I go to a bank, and some insurance, because I know that I trust them, that they’re going to give me the best deal, because I love my club and any profits are going to go back to make my club even better. So why wouldn’t I do that?

“Why wouldn’t I take out a Qantas holiday and pay it through Qantas in 12 easy direct instantly created direct debit payments,” Mr Quiroga said.

“I think this is the most exciting area of innovation for financial services across the whole industry and it’s not just traditional banks.”

BUILDING BRAND RELATIONSHIPS

Mr Quiroga said Mobiquity could also work to help banks deal with the trust issue by becoming a broker and creating relationships between banks and other businesses.

“We act as partnership brokers or we sponsor marriages between organisations,” he said. “For a bank, why not empower and enable those organisations that have the trust of captive audiences – so the Penrith Panthers, the Qantases of the world – and therefore tackle this challenge of trust as more one of distribution into those target segments and integration with the organisations that own those target segments.

“So what we do, in that sense, we broker those marriages and we orchestrate those business integrations from a technology and experience.”

Mr Quiroga said Mobiquity was also targeting to work with mutuals, neo banks and challenger banks. 

“From a tactical level, we tend to focus more on solutions to current problems that these banks have, such as how do I turn Pay 2, a new industry initiative, into something that helps my merchant clients win more customers?” Mr Quiroga said. 

“Or how do I speed up the approval of the right personal loan for my retail customers? So we do this by partnering with best of breed technology vendors.”

Mr Quiroga said strategically, Mobiquity provides digital banking advisory services.

“We are doing this for a number of organisations that are looking to stand up new propositions, like a brand new Islamic bank here in Australia,” he said.

www.mobiquity.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business15-interview-with-gustavo-quiroga-from-mobiq  

 

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Discounting prices can discount your brand says Eisner

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

IN AUSTRALIA, consumers are used to companies discounting products when there’s a downturn in the market. But a discount in tough times can damage a brand, according to Jason Eisner, co-founder of BrandQuest, a strategy, culture and brand management company.

He said businesses needed to work out where exactly they fit in the market. If they are a company modelled on providing discounts, they might be able to do it. But if not, they should not go down the discount route. 

“I think people during an economic downturn get scared and especially in Australia, one of the first things we do is we go straight to discounting. It’s kind of a last resort thing to do and one of the things it does is it basically destroys your brand,” Mr Eisner told Talking Business.

“It’s a very quick fix to an ongoing problem. It’s probably the last resort to turn to and people use it as their first resort.”

He said “price tells us everything, what the business is about”.

PRICE INDICATES SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Mr Eisner said price told about supply and demand. Demand had everything to do with what the product was worth and how much people liked it.

He said changing the price would always have an impact and he said it was done way too often and done with a short term viewpoint without much analysis.

He said there were times when it was worth discounting and there were other times when BrandQuest would recommend against it.

“If you’re a low cost brand and your brand is always a discounted brand, and the reason why people come to you is because it’s a discount, then there’s probably a reason to discount it at every point in time,” Mr Eisner said.

This could also be done when there was an oversupply of the product, or the company was entering a new market.

“If you have a brand and you put lots of money into it and you have built it over time, discounting is eroding that,” Mr Eisner said. “It basically says the value of my brand is actually not as much as I priced it at, I’m going to discount it and I’m saying you shouldn’t need to pay full price for my brand.

“And the best brands in the world don’t.”

TOP BRANDS HOLD THEIR PRICES

Examples of that include brands like Apple and Mercedes, BMW and Audi.

Their products are worth more than what their competitors are selling, so they use price the opposite way to build into their brand, letting the consumer know it is a quality product.

“In general, the big luxury brands tend not to discount because they realise if you put lots and lots of money into building your brand, all you’re doing is destroying that brand value if you discount too much,” he said.

“If I am in the top prestige premium market, you are pretty hard pressed to discount. If I was in the budget commodity market with low price, low quality, that’s where you are in this discount thing.”

Any company setting a price has to do this in conjunction with a marketing strategy.

“A strategy is about thinking of the long term and price is a very short term mechanism that you can change over time. Everybody gets scared and they use a sort term lever like price and the reality is, it affects their long term strategy,” Mr Eisner said. 

www.brandquest.com.au

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business-43-interview-with-jason-eisner-co-founder-

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How IRI finds COVID is changing consumer behaviour

By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

COVID-19 and the lockdowns have changed consumer behaviour. According to IRI, a world leading big data analytics business that works with many of the world's household brands, it has seen consumers focusing on wealth and wellness.

Sales of plant based products like soy milk and almond milk have gone through the roof. Consumers are also now focused on what’s good for the planet.

Alistair Leathwood, chief commercial officer for IRI across the Asia-Pacific region, said the changes brought on by the lockdowns and COVID were massive “and we can expect retailers and brands will respond”.

“It’s unprecedented, I think, in our lifetimes. A situation like that has shaped pretty much every aspect our lives and what we eat and drink,” Mr Leathwood told Talking Business. 

“I think you’ll see the health aisle in the supermarket get bigger and bigger. Now there’s two or three aisles devoted to healthy, to organic, to better for you, to sports nutrition. And even outside that aisle, you’ve got more and more products, even in the mainstream consumer packaged goods.

“If you look at the supermarket, you’ll see call outs on every box: 5 percent less sugar, 5 percent more protein, better for the environment, all of that good stuff.

“The companies that manage to hook into the trend will continue to do very well.”

TURNING TO VITAMINS AND MINERALS

Mr Leathwood said there was a big rise in people buying vitamins, minerals and supplements. And much of this, he said, was driven by people being concerned for their health during the pandemic.

“People were buying those sorts of things and frankly using them a lot more I think I the hope you boost your immune system, maybe you get to avoid getting ill,” Mr Leathwood said.

And instead of getting these goods from pharmacies, people were picking up these items in supermarkets. Which makes sense.

“I think it’s because when we were all nervous and concerned, we wanted to go to one place, get in and out, and stay home, so people bought things they might otherwise buy in the pharmacies,” Mr Leathwood said.

Consumer demand for sports drinks went down, with lockdowns stopping people getting out and doing sport, but demand for high protein drinks with vitamins went up.

IN WITH SOY AND ALMOND MILKS

The big lift in consumer demand was for plant-based alternatives like soy milk and almond milk.

Mr Leathwood said demand for these goods was growing way faster than anything else with 50-60 percent year-on-year growth rates.

He said the difference between this lockdown and the one last year was that people were now saying they not only have to look after themselves – they also need to look after the planet. This, he said, might be the driver for products for oat milk, which is being produced with less of a carbon footprint.

Mr Leathwood said companies needed to watch these trends and get on top of them which, he said, was a challenge for the big blue chip brands.

“If you’re one of the big carbonated soft drink companies and mostly what you do is sell fizzy sugary drinks, and all of a sudden nobody wants sugar, what’s your business model? So there’s a bunch of diversification, into waters, into Kombuchas, into functional drinks. And then there’s an attempt to reduce the bad ingredients, reduce the sugar, reduce the fat and make it more acceptable,” he said.

“You’ve got a real problem there, though, because one of the reasons you drank your Coke or you went to McDonald’s was because you like the sugar and the fat and the meaty taste.

“McDonald’s is really struggling to sell salads and healthy alternatives. You don’t go to Maccas for a salad. It’s hard for them to make that switch.”

www.iriworldwide.com

www.leongettler.com

 

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business35-interview-with-alistair-leathwood-chief-c

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