Telecommunity

Clubber Lang’s prediction about the communications agency business

As the eloquent Clubber Lang (Mr. T) said in Rocky III when asked for his prediction for his upcoming fight with Rocky Balboa, his response was “Pain”.

Pain is what many agencies (and businesses in general) are experiencing right now and, alas, continued pain is ahead for many agencies at least for the balance of 2009. Despite the overly optimistic predictions of agency heads in this publication in the April 2009 issue (“Bullish about Advertising in Philadelphia”), the reality is that many agencies are struggling. I know agency heads are eternal optimists and I used to be one (that’s an agency head, not an eternal optimist), but a dose of realism is warranted. Advertising spending is declining nationally at a rate close to 10% and local spending has declined 25% or more.

Voice over Internet Protocol is making a rapid entry into society. Vonage, well known the world over, is at the forefront pushing VoIP as an alternative to traditional home telephone services offered by companies like AT&T and Verizon. There are even devices on the market that will connect your phone to your computer, allowing you to make phone calls via your high-speed Internet connection. With VoIP being touted as the future of communications, can it really make the transition into the corporate environment?

The use of for business purposes shows widespread adoption within the South African market, according to a pilot study by Webchek in July 2006. 95% of respondents reported receiving business communications via SMS while 75% received email communications for business purposes. Key findings were that respondents received on average:

3 to 4 relevant business SMS’s per week.

35 relevant business emails per week.

6 irrelevant business SMS’s per week.

7 irrelevant business emails per week – note that most PC’s have spam filters installed, while most mobile phones do not.

61% of respondents were happy to receive business communications via e-mail, and 50% of respondents were happy to receive business communications via SMS.

The other findings from the research are:

Overall, users report lower volumes of business communications via SMS than email but more respondents report having received business communications via SMS.

The financial services sector use SMS more than email to send business communications.

After financial services, the retail sector makes the most use of SMS for business communications.

35% of respondents reported receiving internal work communications via email while 15% received these communications by SMS.

Less than 15% of all respondents receive fewer than 6 business SMS’s per week.

More than 30% of respondents receive more than 50 business emails per week.

More respondents received irrelevant business emails than SMS communications.

Respondents do not like receiving irrelevant advertising messages from businesses.

The main conclusion of the study is that the use of SMS will continue surpass email as a tool for three reasons:

SMS is a ubiquitous communication medium as more people have access to cell phones than the Internet or email.

SMS is immediate as a text message arrives nearly instantaneously on a targeted user’s cell phone.

SMS generates less spam due to the fact that the cost of SMS is kept above a certain threshold.

Communications. I could barely spell the word, much less comprehend its meaning. Yet when

Mrs. Rubin made the announcement about the new club she was starting at the junior high school, it triggered something in

my mind.

Two weeks later, during the last month of my eighth grade year, I figured it out. I was rummaging through the basement, and

I ran across the little blue box that my dad had brought home from work a year earlier. Could this be a modem?

The best salespeople have a plan. The customer always feels like there is momentum in the relationship, and knows where things stand at any given time. Some of the best salespersons that I’ve had the pleasure of working with always ensured that each piece of communication had a stated purpose for occurring.

A phone call might confirm an upcoming appointment or may provide follow-up information from an earlier face-to-face meeting. E-mail can also confirm a meeting or reinforce information, but may provide more specific details than a quick phone call. With an identified purpose, I know the sales person is not going to waste my time.

Unified communications, or UC, was created to streamline the communications process. Historically, the user had two forms of communication, the phone and therefore the computer. With technology advancing as quickly as it’s, the user has multiple sides of communication. Phone boxes (PBX), VoIP (voice over Net protocol), Cellular, land lines, information line, email, faxes, and we have a tendency to might just keep listing ways that that one person may communicate with another. Lets take this to a higher level. How do you combine all of the ways to communicate and create it simple to use? How does that facilitate anyone? Ask yourself these questions: ? Are you restricted by what you’ll be able to do outside of your office? ? Would you prefer to be in a position to access your desktop from anywhere? ? Would you prefer all of your calls that head to your office come to your telephone when you’re not in the office? ? Wouldn’t it be easier to test your voicemail if it was in an email? ? How would you prefer to be able to access any document from any laptop? ? Do you would like your faxes to come back to your email as an attachment instead of waste paper resources on the fax machine? Let’s have a look at the responses to these questions.

Business communications have never been more important to establish and maintain effective portals through which to source clients and provide products and services, at the most effective rates. In the commercial sector, the importance of being able to make cheap international calls has always been well understood although not always achieved. Land line facilities that cost a fortune and also dealing with less than efficient exchange systems can be both expensive and frustrating. Now all that has changed and it is possible to make cheap international calls via a mobile communications system easily, quickly and cheaply.

It is essential for operators of small businesses to outsource non-core activities as many as possible in order to avoid distractions that somehow reduce their concentration on the business interests. It is also a consequence of this trend that significant skills are mastered which are necessary to choose and handle outsourced business phone service providers. There is no better example of this trend than something that points toward the importance of treating the problems associated with the telephone system for small businesses. Business phone services have always been some particular brand, but more questions arise and are evident recently as large companies upgraded to more advanced technology.

There is no doubt that modern business strategies demand up-to-date telephone and computer solutions. The majority of contemporary business ventures make extensive use of great value devices which may include desktop computers, laptops, fax machines, answering machines and other equipment essential for running business enterprises. It is vital to have high quality business communications in order to conduct successful business nowadays. It may be helpful to find out that a great number of contemporary commercial firms take advantage of feature-rich IP phones as well as hosted and broadband VoIP telephony solutions on a daily basis. These high quality means of communication may help entrepreneurs clench significant deals online as well as hold business conferences and negotiations without wasting time and money. It may be a good idea to look into the topic of the most effective business communications such as VoIP telephone solutions and wireless communications.

In recent days, competition in the market has been very stiff thus calling for business entities to look for the best marketing communication strategies. Significantly, it has been realized that, the issue of modern technology and liberalization of markets has led to significant developments in the strategies business adopt to market their products. Precisely, the footwear and sportswear industry has been very competitive in the recent past. With this in mind, it has become essential for other companies to emulate the strategies adopted by these companies so as to arrive at success. With regard to the recent changes in the sportswear and footwear industry, it has been essential for C&J Clark International Ltd to conduct a market analysis on the marketing communication strategies for adidas and Nike. Based on the market research, the C&J Clark International Ltd will be able to identify the best strategies to incorporate in its marketing plan (Neumeier 2006).