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Leading businesses win with clicks-bricks mix
A SURVEY of 600 entrant businesses in last year’s Telstra Business Awards shows the gap between revenues developed through e-commerce – referred to as ‘clicks’ – and ‘bricks and mortar’ trading is closing fast around Australia.
Results from almost 600 Business Health Check Reports, provided to entrants of the 2013 Telstra Business Awards, showed 75 percent sold or distributed their products via a physical sales force and 73 percent used websites.
Telstra Business group managing director and Telstra Business Awards ambassador, Will Irving said it was clear Australia’s best small and medium businesses (SMBs) had embraced the boom of e-commerce, with internet shopping, online sales and marketing closing the gap with physical sales as the primary distribution channel.
The analysis showed the direct-to-customer business model is cutting out middle men – referred to as disintermediation – with only 34 percent using third-party online channels. Resellers, agents, brokers and wholesalers were each used by only 10 to 17 percent of businesses.
With entries for the 2014 Telstra Business Awards open until March 31, Mr Irving urged businesses to finalise their entries and give themselves the opportunity to receive a free personal Business Health Check. He said the report evaluates every entrant’s business performance against international benchmarks, current legislation and accepted industry best practice.
“Since the Business Health Check was introduced in 2010, thousands of awards entrants have found the individual report on their business invaluable as a guide to help them grow by identifying areas to improve,” Mr Irving said.
“Analysis from last year’s entrants shows us that the cream of the crop of small business have a high level of digital maturity – they recognise the importance of regularly updating content, making their websites more search-engine and mobile friendly.
“With Australians spending $14.9 billion on online retail in the past year [according to the NAB Online Retail Sales Index] equivalent to 6.5 percent of spending with bricks and mortar retailers, it is crucial for SMBs to optimise their online channels.
“These businesses have shown us that the bricks versus clicks argument has been surpassed, leading the way instead to adopt innovative ways of combining both, such as ‘click and collect’ where shoppers buy online and collect their purchases from a store.”
Analysis of the performance of the 2013 entrants by the NSW Business Chamber also showed social media ranked highest among 15 types of marketing activities used by the 2013 awards entrants, closely followed by website and referrals marketing.
This reversed the result in 2012 when website and referral marketing were the highest used, ahead of social media marketing.
The analysis found SMBs favoured less-expensive online activities including social media, email and search engine optimization. Online advertising and mobile marketing do not rate highly among their online activities.
Entrants nominated lower-cost activities such as referral marketing as their best performing activity, followed by face-to-face, website and social media marketing. Telemarketing was nominated among the lowest performing activities.
Mr Irving said more than $800,000 in prizes are available in 2014 for winners of state, territory and national Telstra Business Awards, “a national program that has celebrated brilliant Australian SMBs since 1992”.
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