Australian Competition Results

We’ve recently ended our Australian Innovation Competition which involved some of our clickfind clients as sponsors.

The response we got was excellent, better than expected, and it has paved the way for more competitions to come in the future which will involve our clickfind clients.

It’s a great way for our clients to build their online brand and market their products and services online.

Following is what some of the winners said:

“Thank you SO much for choosing my entry as a winner in your competition, which certainly made my day!”
(Peter, who won $500 YellaTerra voucher)

“Thanks! Great news.”
(Troy, who won the super online marketing prize)

 “Thank you so much. This is a really fantastic prize. I think I was so focused on picking my prize on the phone I forgot to tell you how excited I am.”
(Susan, who won logo/graphic design worth $750 from cazazz)

“Thank you for such lovely news.”
(Linda, who won 100 promotional pens from AboutPens)

“That’s fabulous”
(Marie, who won website SEO package from JustWeb)

“Thanks very much. That’s good news.”
(Linda, who won 12 months clickfind subscription)

“I never win anything! Can’t wait to tell my friends”
(Rachael, who won case of Steepslopes Shiraz wine)

“Thanks so much!”
(Sarah, who won Animalhealthstore.com.au pet product voucher)

“I just wanted to say thank you for the great prize.”
(Loki, who won 12 months clickfind subscription)

A big thanks to the sponsors and Meredith for creating the wonderful Innovation video.

Online Advertising Australia

Here are 10 reasons why online advertising with a clickfind subscription is a good investment:

 

1. Most directories just have business contact info and a brief overview of each business. clickfind can display info on up to 500 products and services for each business. This means businesses can promote their offerings much more widely, and customers can find what they need without first having to know what sort of business provides it.

 

2. clickfind listings are optimised for SEO (search engine) performance and are well ranked, so users searching on Google will often find clickfind results (sometimes listed above results from the businesses’ own website). clickfind considers the whole process, rather than building a self-contained world like Sensis does with Yellow Pages (who don’t even allow results to be indexed on Google).

 

3. Product and service listings on clickfind can link through to any page on your business website. Most directories just provide one link to the website home page. You can even set individual anchor words in your listing to link to specific pages on your website, improving SEO results. clickfind listings can also act as a direct route through to BUY products/services, if listing details are linked to your website via an affiliate scheme.

 

4. If you haven’t got a business website, you can use your clickfind listing as a website if you want to. You can even have your own URL, email and Google maps listing.

 

5. Whether or not you have a website, if you get a clickfind URL (eg http://italianshoes.clickfind.com.au) you can help drive traffic to your clickfind listing and improve search results on other search engines

 

6. clickfind verifies all listings to ensure the business has a valid ABN registration. This means clickfind results will always be from genuine Aussie businesses, which increases user confidence and encourages them to contact businesses.

 

7. Clickfind doesn’t carry advertising, or charge more to get results appearing at the top of the list. All results are based on relevance of keywords first (then location/distance if specified). Most online directories serve less relevant nationwide results before more relevant local ones, or place ads next to competitor listings, which isn’t good for users or small businesses.

 

8. As an online marketing platform (rather than just a directory or search engine), clickfind provides useful marketing tools, like the ability to check your website rankings, manage enquiries, create shortlists. Over time we will be adding other features to assist businesses with online marketing (such as mailing lists, instant brochures, promotional e-mails, affiliate schemes and more).

 

9. Clickfind is a memorable name, something you can easily promote to your customers, eg “clickfind my business”. We are continually investing in improving it and promoting it to ensure increasing visibility of the brand, which is good for all businesses listed on clickfind.

 

10. A clickfind subscription at $19.95 a month is great value (especially considering you can list full products and services info). This rate is significantly less than premium listings on directories such as yellow, dLook, truelocal and others.

 

Bartercard member portal vs clickfind

We got a call from Bartercard Australia today about our site dedicated to Bartercard businesses http://bartercard.clickfind.com.au – it’s a place where Bartercard members can find other Bartercard businesses, products and services that can be purchased on Bartercard etc. The call was about some users confusing the clickfind website with that of Bartercard. With a large logo saying “clickfind” I would think it’s obvious we’re not Bartercard. Our contact us page also states in big bold letters that we are not Bartercard and point them in the right direction if they are looking for the official Bartercard website.

 

The call was also about the fact our SEO efforts are paying of and we are listed higher than Bartercard itself in some instances and in others right underneath them. We were asked to change the URL of our website, remove the name Bartercard from the URL and change other sections of our site that gives us an advantage in the search engines.

 

We’ve complied with some of their requests, like removing their logo from our site, the logo that we had written permission to use for. We’ve also changed some of the wording, we’re waiting to hear back from them about the change of URL, if we are forced to change the URL we will probably close the Bartercard site down, as we’d lose all the work we spend on the SEO and the indexed pages in Google.

 

It’s an unpleasant situation to be in when we tried to involve them with the site from the beginning, but there was no interest from their side. Now that the site is becoming successful and Bartercard members find it easier to use than their site, I guess they feel threatened. Personally I’d take advantage of the situation and turn it into something good, the clickfind site can fill gaps where the Bartercard portal lacks, like marketing to the cash world, the one and only thing that every Bartercard member wants. In the end clickfind will get members spending more money.

 

We’ve also offered to license the technology to Bartercard, or even brand the site more like theirs, i.e. clickfind.bartercard.com Let’s see what the outcome of this will be, and how the Bartercard member will react who have paid for their listing on clickfind.

 

Stay tuned…

Welcoming July

It’s nearly July again, time just flies… clickfind has been online for 8 months now and getting established pretty firmly in the online marketing industry. Our Alexa ranking seems to be floating around the 400K mark, which is a great result seeing the ranking of other directories established for years are well within our reach soon.

 

June was a great month as it saw clickfind welcome Jim Petrakis to the management team, which led to some great brain storming sessions about our future marketing plans which really firmed up our direction as an online marketing platform for Australian businesses.

 

We received a few blog entries with write-ups about our service, which is always great to see http://marketingnous.blogspot.com/2008/06/great-new-australian-business-directory.html

 

Our Australian innovation competition ended on Friday the 27^th and we’ve got some great entries which we’ve judged and will be contacting soon to claim their prizes. Competitions will become a regular thing for clickfind, as it’s a great way for the businesses on clickfind to build brand and get their name out there.

Marketing Director and Business Development

It’s now official; we’d like to welcome Jim Petrakis to the management team of clickfind the Australian Online Marketing Platform! Jim Petrakis will head up our Marketing Department as Marketing Director and he’ll also be in charge of Business Development and finding some business Angels/investors.

It’s all exciting stuff!

We now also have an office in Melbourne which is open to the public:
clickfind Pty Ltd
2-8 Buckland St
Clayton
Melbourne Victoria 3168
AUSTRALIA 

Acquired clickfind.us domain name for the US

Today we acquired the domain name clickfind.us which is great news for our plans to expand into the US.

clickfind now owns the following domain names:

clickfind.info
clickfind.com.au
clickfind.mobi
clickfind.co.nz
clickfind.co.za
clickfind.in
clickfind.co.in
clickfind.us.com
clickfind.us

This completes the acquisition of all the domain names for the countries clickfind will be entering in.

Appointment of Marketing Director

We’ve got some great news, we should really keep this hush hush until it’s all finalized, but we’re so excited that we can’t help but posting some of the details.

It seems that clickfind will soon have a new addition in the marketing department, Jim Petrakis will be taking on the role of marketing director for clickfind.

Mr Petrakis is the MD of Yella Terra, and prior to Yella Terra he was the managing director of a successful contract manufacturing business from 2002 to 2004, following 15 years experience in senior managerial roles in marketing, sales and business development with a number of large telecommunications and IT companies. Mr Petrakis holds a Bachelor of Economics and an MBA (Marketing) from Monash University and is a keen motoring enthusiast. 

We’re looking forward to welcoming Jim and start some serious marketing for the new Online Marketing Platform for Australia.

Half a million!

We’ve done it! We’ve got half a million views for our customers in a period of less than 6 months since we launched. I’d say that’s an incredible achievement, and the stats just keep going up. Way to go clickfind…

http://www.clickfind.com.au/reports.cfm 

Charity
This might also be a good time to mention the charity ride clickfind is participating in, for more info see http://www.executiveresults.com.au/charity

The bicycle ride is 1,084 Kilometres and is in Thailand, participating members will pay their expenses out of their own pocket, your donations will go straight to the charity. Anyone donating will not only feel good by donating to wonderful cause, but will also get access to the photos of the ride and people afterwards.

Please help out and donate to this wonderful cause! Even $5 helps….

Aussie innovation – it’s nothing new!

To coincide with the Australian Innovation Festival 2008 (26 April – 30 May), Australian search engine and business directory clickfind™ have launched a short inspirational video and competition promoting Australian innovation.

 

Statistics on patents and business growth demonstrate that Aussies are continuing to look for and come up with new ideas. In the financial year 2006-7, a total of 10,828 patent applications were filed by Australian residents, of which 957 were innovation patents (Source: IP Australia). In the same period, the number of businesses registered in Australia increased by 47,863 (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics).

 

Investment in innovation is increasing too. In 2006-7, the Australian Government support for Industrial R&D reached $595.5 million and in the five years up to 2004-05, Australia’s business R&D expenditure grew at 11.5% a year. (Source:  The Australian Government’s Innovation Report 2006-7).

 

clickfind’s video is a quick run-through of Australian innovations over the last 150 years, showcasing Aussie ideas and inventions that have helped to change the world. It aims to inspire people to keep new ideas coming and to encourage them to turn their innovations into successful business ventures.

 

Backed by a soundtrack from Aussie band INXS, the video includes visual examples of ideas and inventions, from relatively simple products like the notepad or electric drill through to more recent medical advances like the bionic ear and cervical cancer vaccine. As the video can only provide a quick overview, an accompanying document lists these and other innovations in more detail.

 

clickfind™ are running a competition in conjunction with the video. Entrants can vote for their favourite innovation, for the chance to win prizes donated by businesses listed on the clickfind.com.au website.

 

Clickfind’s Carolyn King commented “Before researching the video, I had no idea that Aussies were behind innovations as widely used as the black box flight recorder, or that Australians were the first to codify the rules of football! I hope this video inspires everyone to keep thinking differently and turn their ideas into action.”

 

To watch the video, search for “Australian innovation” on YouTube, or follow the links below.

Related links:

http://www.clickfind.com.au/competition/australian-innovation.cfm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvfWumyFbs

http://www.ausinnovation.org

Great prizes to be won! Aussie Competition

We’ve got some great prizes from some great sponsors to be won in our comp that opens up this Friday.

• Super online marketing package worth over $1000 (web hosting, Google ads, SEO review, domain name, clickfind listing)
• 100 promotional pens with your business name (worth $345) from About Pens
• $100 voucher for cool stuff from coolthings.com.au
• Original logo design by cazazz.com (worth $750)
• Case of Aussie wine (worth up to $200)
• One years’ web hosting from pacificfox.com.au (normally $300.00 a year)
• Fitness boot camp or personal trainer sessions from executiveresults.com.au (worth up to $260)
• 12 months’ business listing on clickfind (normally $239.40 a year)

Want to be reminded when we go live with this comp?
just send us an empty email on remind-me@clickfind.com.au and we’ll remind you when the competition goes live.