We appeared on the BBC as island experts on both television and Radio following the tragic disappearnce of a tourist here.

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Both papers have carried stories about our work

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I was interested to read about this initiative from the business association Cámara. You can read the full details here: Consume en Lanzarote.

At first, I thought it was another “Buy local produce” campaign. But then I realised it runs much deeper than that.

Cámara are asking us all to consider every purchase we make, and to see if we can actually source it on the island.

For good reasons:

Poorly translated messages are great for a laugh on social media. When it’s somebody else’s business we are all chuckling at.

Those of us who live and work in Spain are often tickled when we see menus or notices which have been badly translated. Who can forget the official “Clain forms” which were posted in businesses all over the island? Read more »

I’ve wondered for some time because for many years now, magazine advertising hasn’t worked for us. For several years, we ran adverts in various magazines for a real estate business and achieved very little, but more recently we have been working on a high profile advert campaign for a relatively new brand. They placed adverts in three very large, and very relevant magazines. They ran discount offers to be able to track sales through each advert.

And achieved almost no sales!

Analysing it, here’s what I think the problem is: Read more »

We’re coming to the end of the year.

How did your business do in 2012?

The Christmas period is a perfect time to reflect on what happened over the past year, and to plan what you want to achieve in 2013.

The sea of data

One of the problems all of us in business face is the huge amount of information we have available to us:

• EPOS systems tell us how much each customer spends at what time of day
• Web Stats tell us how many visitors we have, what sites they have come from and even where they are in the world
• Facebook tells us how many people like us and read our stuff
• Our accounts systems shout at us daily about who owes us what and how fast they pay

It goes on and on. And the danger is that we can end up trying to influence and improve too many diverse things, and that’s when we lose focus on what we’re really trying to do.

It’s no coincidence that the first word of KPI’s is KEY. Read more »

Euan likes webforms – he’s a website designer

Darren prefers Twitter direct messages

Simon is a telephone man

Gil loves Skype

Silvia is into Facebook direct messaging

I love email

What’s the point of all this? Read more »

For years, those of us in business have focused on advertising our businesses in magazines and newspapers. Let me give you an example. Let’s imagine I run a restaurant here in Lanzarote called “Mike’s Place.” In the old world all my focus would be on getting the name and logo of Mike’s Place “out there.” Flick through any magazine, and almost all the adverts will feature the name and logo prominently and usually at the top of the advert. It’s effective, because the idea is that when people need a great restaurant, the hope is that their mind will conjure up an image of my logo and that they will remember that we’re called Mike’s Place.

With me so far?

Now let’s think about on line advertising. We have to turn everything on it’s head, because when some is searching for something online, they need it right now. Read more »

There was yet another story today of a high profile business whose Facebook page was closed down suddenly by Facebook themselves, and without warning.

You can read the full story here:  http://www.thecoolhunter.net/article/detail/2126/when-facebook-disables-your-fan-page

If you’d rather not wade through the post, here are the highlights:

• The company had a Facebook page with almost 800,000 fans
• It was closed down by Facebook, then reinstated with no content, then closed down again
• The content – all the photos and posts has been lost
• All Facebook will tell them is that there was an “IP infringement”

Pretty much everybody has an email address these days. But the only businesses who use email for marketing seem to be “on-line” type companies.

Why aren’t you using email marketing for your business in Lanzarote?

It’s surprisingly rare that I’m asked for an email address, but I’ve often left cards with businesses here, and yet I can’t recall ever being sent an email with an offer or any information.

It’s actually quite a simple thing to do, and here’s how:

1/ Get your clients email addresses. Just ask them! It doesn’t matter if you are a retail shop, a restaurant or bar, or a car dealership. It takes two minutes to ask “Can I make a note of your email address so we can let you know when we have special events / promotions or offers?” Most people will just say yes. Read more »