Name: Back9 Digital
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Best Inventory Management for Selling Products Online

Posted on August 31, 2021December 14, 2021 by Phil

One of the biggest hurdles to selling online is how to handle inventory management.

This is especially true when there’s also a brick-and-mortar store. How do you coordinate in-store vs online sales? The last thing you want is to have someone buy something online, then find out that one of the items is out of stock and have to issue a partial refund. Or worse–they request to refund the entire order. Not only is that a potential sale lost, but it costs you time to apologise and process the refund too. How can you handle inventory management when things get complicated?

There are many inventory management systems to choose from, but we’re going to compare some of the most popular options in NZ: Unleashed, Sortly, Vend, Cin7, Accredo, Ostendo, Infusion, and SAM Orion.

Want a quick comparison of each of these? Click here to jump to the quick compare table!

What is inventory management software?

While you might be able to try to keep track of your inventory with a notebook and a pen, it’s a lot of trouble that can be automated away with an online inventory management system. Depending on your business size, a simple database manager may do the trick, or you might need a comprehensive digital suite to make sure everything is handled properly. Either way, you’ll need some kind of inventory management software to help you sell products online.

On the surface, it might seem like inventory management software just keeps track of stock. And the basic ones do just that. But more complex ones can do so much more. Some have a built-in payment gateway so you can accept payments without paying for another subscription. Others manage invoicing too. And some handle everything–sales, customer database, shipping and tax, etc.

Using an online inventory management system keeps track of how many of each product you have left in stock, and allows you to quickly change prices for sales. Many will also automatically track sales numbers and create reports comparing month-to-month performance. A solid offering will also integrate with your in-store stock so you don’t have to try to coordinate stock manually. The right choice for you will depend on the size of your business, the number of products you have, and whether you have or plan to have a physical store.

The big players in inventory management have customers from all around the world. Because of this, they offer solutions for international issues.

Some on the list are dedicated to delivering solutions for New Zealand and focus on specific issues that the country faces for inventory management. These ones have the advantage of local service and understanding some of the unique challenges kiwis face.

1. Unleashed

Unleashed is a cloud-based platform and one of the most popular options today. It’s a real-time inventory management system with dedicated options such as B2B e-commerce (for an added cost).

Features of Unleashed

There are many features available in Unleashed including a dedicated mobile app and business intelligence insights. The software allows for unlimited products, currencies, transactions, and more. It can handle barcode scanning, stock levels, product grouping, and markups. You can also see your stock in real-time, with an integrated physical and digital stock. If you already have something to manage your in-store stock, Unleashed has an API–meaning it is able to communicate and share data with other software and apps–and it easily integrates software and in-store management systems.

Unleashed has a dedicated learning section and also hold regular seminars in many localities including New Zealand. Managed Onboarding is also a required cost (additional $389) where you work via remote chat with an authorised agent.

Unleashed Pricing

Unleashed markets itself for mid-size businesses and above. The Mid-sized tier is $259+GST per month and goes up to Enterprise at $899+GST per month. Each of the plans has the same features, but higher tiers give more access to some features. For instance, Medium has 3 included users and Enterprise has 20.

Unleashed comes with a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. The free trial is in a sandbox environment. A sandbox is basically a test version that isn’t live. This means that you can test any feature you want–like buying a million of a product–and see how the software would handle the situation.

Who is Unleashed right for?

If you’re a business owner of a medium to large business, Unleashed is a good option for you. With a higher price point and dedicated representatives, it’s ideal for businesses with large inventories and many employees as it manages everything across multiple channels and locations all in one place.

2. Sortly

Claiming to be a smarter way to inventory, Sortly allows for multichannel management of your inventory.

Sortly Features

Sortly pares down its features to essential options to keep the price down. Managing inventory is its primary function and it can set automatic alerts when product stock falls under a certain level or send reminders to reorder. Items can be grouped by category, physical location, and more. It can read barcodes and connect your physical stock to digital items. Product data can be imported and exported through CSV and data can be accessed on any device. The software can also create custom reports so you can quickly see top-selling items, inventory, and more.

One helpful thing Sortly offers is a free option with limited features. The free option only allows 1 user, 1 custom field, and 100 entries, but is an excellent starter for new businesses with limited products.

Sortly pricing

Sortly prides itself on affordability, and aims to keep costs low by focusing on essential features. Above the free plan, Advanced is at $39/month (USD) and increases entries to 200, custom fields to 10 and users to 3. Ultra is $119/month and has unlimited entries and custom fields, handheld scanner capability, and API access. For larger stores where integrating digital and physical stock is essential, Ultra is probably the way to go.

You can get a full 14-day free trial of Sortly on any plan. Keep in mind that the free trial requires a credit card so you’ll be charged after the trial period if you don’t cancel within 14 days.

Who is Sortly right for?

Sortly is a good choice if you have a smaller business or are looking to test the viability of selling some of your products online. It’s also ideal for selling products online only or if you have a smaller inventory and don’t need a plethora of extra features.

3. Vend

Focusing on the integration of a retail store with an online environment, Vend aims to seamlessly blend both types of sales.

Vend Features

Primarily a Point of Sale system, Vend strives to do more than be a POS. It’s designed to be simple to use and understand with an intuitive user interface. It allows for fast checkout and catalogue checks in real-time. For inventory management, it offers options to automatically reorder product if it falls below a certain point. Inventory across multiple locations and channels are managed on the cloud; even if you have a separate catalogue for online and social media, you can manage it in one place.

Since having a physical store is a focus for Vend, they offer many in-store benefits. A “register” is included with every plan, an in-store selling point where the Vend software can be loaded to a Mac or PC. They also have a Scanner app that reads barcodes and a customer-facing display for checkout.

Vend Pricing

Vend starts at $129/month for one location with one register on the Lite plan. For over $30k monthly turnover, Pro is $159/month. None of the plans have transaction fees. API access, gift vouchers, and app integration are available for Pro.

Vend has a free 14-day trial you can start after filling out some basic information.

Who is Vend right for?

If you already have a physical store and are looking for a better way to manage inventory, Vend may be right for you.

4. Cin7

For a comprehensive system that does inventory management and much more, Cin7 includes accounting, product management, a CRM, and more.

Cin7 Features

Cin7 is a robust piece of software that is used by major retailers worldwide. It does order management, Amazon integration, reports and analytics, forecasting, and warehouse management. It also has a cloud-based built-in inventory management system that updates in real-time.

For inventory management, it automatically updates stock and can create product groups, add promotional pricing, and dropshipping. Cin7 includes different stock levels for components, finished goods, and incoming stock as well so you can see inventory at different management levels.

Cin7 Pricing

Our most expensive system on the list, Cin7 starts at $375 for their Small Business plan. It includes 2 users, 3 connections, automation, and 24/7 support. Business increases users to 5, has 4 connections, a dedicated B2B online store, and automation at $695/month. Advanced comes in at $1245/month. It includes a dedicated customer success manager, web developer API connections, and 24/7 Screen reader support.

Cin7 doesn’t have a free trial, but you can book a free demo with a business email address.

Who is Cin7 right for?

While they have a plan called Small Business, Cin7 has features that startups and small operations likely won’t need. Consider it if you have a larger business, deal with multiple suppliers and/or warehouses, or prefer more functionality like accounting and a CRM in a single system.

5. Accredo

Accredo combines accounting and inventory management into a single system. They have a network of partners and qualified support people around New Zealand, such as Online Computers in Invercargill.

Accredo Features

A windows-based software, Accredo combines software for business needs such as sales, financials, and inventory in one place. With automation features, it can integrate with other systems and mobile apps. Accredo can also be tailored and customised to your needs by the development team so you can get the features you need.

For inventory management, Accredo keeps track of stock, along with item sales. Inventory can be managed on the computer or via the Accredo mobile inventory application. Job quotes and costs are also visible within the system.

Accredo Pricing

Since Accredo is sold through a partner network, the price will vary depending on who you buy it from. It is not available to buy directly from the website.

Accredo has a demo version available for trial for free.

Who is Accredo right for?

Accredo could be a good option if you have a Windows machine and want accounting and inventory managed in one system.

However, as Accredo isn’t a cloud-based system and the API isn’t documented, it’s important to work with someone who is familiar with it and have worked with it before. This is especially important if you need it to connect to an e-commerce platform properly, which you’ll need to sell products online effectively.

What is a cloud-based system?

A cloud-based system isn’t stored on a single computer. Instead, it’s on “the cloud”, meaning you are able to access it online from anywhere. If your system is on the cloud, you can access it at work, at home, on holiday, anywhere with an internet connection. Cloud-based systems also store your data online instead of confining it to a single system.

If the system is not cloud-based, you can only access the data on the computer it’s downloaded on. This can make it very difficult to manage elsewhere without some creative solutions like remote desktop–a program that lets a computer somewhere else see and control the computer–which can make them a challenge to use. If your system isn’t cloud-based and you don’t have a backup on another device, you can lose all of your data if the device breaks.

When possible, we recommend using a cloud-based system.

6. Ostendo

A small New Zealand business, Ostendo is developed by Development-X and has clients in New Zealand, Malaysia, UK, Australia, and more.

Ostendo is starting to show its age a bit at this point–it’s not cloud-based, it’s hosted on an unsecured HTTP website, it’s difficult to connect it to other software, and it isn’t updated as regularly as others on this list. But it is still used widely around NZ so we’ve included it here.

Ostendo Features

Ostendo has several different features in its software including a CRM and Point of Sale system. It aims to solve a mix of business needs such as labour and timesheet tracking, invoicing, quality control, and inventory management.

On the inventory management side, it can track stock in multiple warehouse locations. Ostendo allows for unlimited products, supplier catalogues, and price lists. It supports several currencies and units of measurement and does inventory forecasting to suggest when you should reorder.

Ostendo Pricing

Ostendo costs $1500 for a single user for the first month, and $300 to renew each year afterwards for updates and upgrades. 3 users are $3800 and additional users are $1250 each. Each user gains access to all products and features of Ostendo.

They also have a free demo trial available for download.

Who is Ostendo right for?

Ostendo claims to have many features that would be helpful for small to medium NZ businesses.

7. Infusion

A small NZ team based in Canterbury developed and maintains Infusion software. Their software does inventory tracking and financials.

Infusion Features

Infusion has a couple of different packages depending on what you’re looking for. The Financials Package is designed for financial reporting. It manages staff records, produces financial reports, and has a cashbook with unlimited accounts. Accounting includes Financials along with a database of customers, suppliers, and products through inventory management. Infusion is about to change to a cloud-based service with full API support which will make it much more versatile.

Inventory management allows for unlimited products. You can assign special pricing per customer so they can receive special rates on one or many products. Each product can be assigned its own serial number and expiry dates if needed. It can manage multiple locations, pricing structures, and pricing levels.

Infusion Pricing

Financials and Accounting packages are online only and cost $25/month and $55/month respectively. Fundamentals includes Financials, a CRM, and product database at $35/month. Professional costs $50/month and adds fixed asset management, marketing tools, and point of sale. The top tier is Elite at $85/month. With Elite, you get a document library and templates, performance reporting, and invoicing modules.

Infusion has a free 30 day trial of any plan you can download and try with no credit card.

Who is Infusion right for?

Infusion may be the right option if you’re an NZ business that needs the essentials of financial and inventory management. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of some of the bigger names, but has essential features good for small to medium NZ businesses.

8. SAM Orion

Headquartered in Auckland, Orion is part of the SAM suite of Auxo products with an emphasis on the vehicle industry. They claim to help get more sales through faster payments and less admin.

Orion Features

SAM software is all about automation. The Orion program has speciality sections for rentals, vehicle fleets, workshops, and dealerships as well as inventory management.

The inventory management of Orion is designed to combine online and in-store sales in a single place. It can handle multiple currencies as well as project future stock requirements with the option to raise or lower stock based on anticipated need. Orion has discounting and pricing structures built-in as well.

Orion Pricing

Pricing isn’t available on the website, but you can book a free 30-minute product demo by filling out a contact form.

Who is Orion right for?

If you’re an NZ business in the vehicle industry or have a workshop-based business, Orion has features tailored just for you.

Quick comparison of inventory management software

For a quick comparison of pricing and top features of the inventory management software, take a look at the table below.

Name	Price (Month)	Number of Products Tracked	Trial Period	Features
Unleashed	$259-$899	Unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Multiple Currencies; Optional B2B eCommerce; API Access; Document Designer
Sortly	$FREE-$119	100-unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Desktop/Mobile Access; API Access; Cloud Storage; 30-90 Day storage; Auto sync data
Vend	$129+	Unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Custom receipts, in-store register, barcode scanner, cash management, auto reordering
Cin7	$375-$1245	Unlimited	Guided Demo	Cloud, based 24/7 support, automation, CRM, POS integrations, Warehouse Management, Payment Portal
Accredo	Not Specified	Not Specified	Demo Version	Invoicing, reporting, automation, sales tracking
Ostendo	$1500 (Year); $300 renewal	Unlimited	30 Days	Stock takes, allows negative stock, unlimited supplier catalogues, multi-currency and tax rates
Infusion	$35-$85	Unlimited	30 Days	Kitset pricing, print barcodes, product catalogues, integrated cashbook
SAM \| Orion	Not Specified	Not Specified	Guided Demo	Multiple currencies, full sales and costing analysis, vehicle industry special features

How do I choose the best inventory management system?

If you aren’t sure which inventory management system to use, your best bet is to decide on the most important features you need. Cloud-based should be a priority in most situations since you can manage it from anywhere at any time. It also means your system is less likely to become outdated/incompatible as well as the extra safeguard for protecting your data with backups.

Once you decide on the features you need, doing a trial and working with the software is probably the easiest way to tell if it’s a good fit for your company. That way you can work with it first-hand and see if it’s easy to use and does what you need it to.

If you still aren’t sure, we may be able to help. We recommend talking with an unbiased source about your goals and inventory management needs. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution and many representatives from the companies aim to sell you their systems even if it’s not ideal for your situation. It’s also important to understand what the best eCommerce platform for your business will be for the inventory management system you choose. (Yes these are two different things – complicated right!?)

We can work with any cloud-based inventory management system as well as Accredo and Infusion. Get in touch if you’d like to talk about the best way to handle e-commerce for your business.

Why is video marketing so powerful? [VIDEO]

Posted on August 9, 2021January 6, 2023 by Phil

No matter how you look at it, video marketing is powerful. Videos are the way to get noticed on the internet. Tiktok has video views in the billions. Baby Shark Dance has over 9 billion views right now… And the total population of the entire world is under 8 billion. People are choosing video over any other form of content, and it’s not a close race. Videos are easily the most engaging form of content, whether they are on your website, Social media or YouTube in the form of a Vlog.

Wikipedia, currently sitting at the 5th most visited site, gets a few billion visitors a month. However, according to their own report, the most viewed article of all time is for Donald Trump with about 225 million views. That means the most popular video has nearly 40x as many views as the most read article.

So videos are popular. But why is video marketing so powerful? And how can you take advantage of it?

Why are videos so popular?

There are a lot of reasons why videos are popular. Some of these include:

Instructions are easier to follow. Even the best writers can be challenged by writing clear instructions or how-to’s. The more complex the procedure, the more difficult it is to explain with words alone. Watching someone disassemble an All-in-One computer to upgrade the RAM is more straightforward than seeing which screws to take out through text.
They can play in the background. While videos are the most engaging kind of media, they can also be consumed without much attention. You can play a video in the background while you do something else like chores or cooking dinner. Reading and looking at images require more attention, whereas with videos you can put your phone on the bench and check in periodically to see what’s happening.
Videos have a greater potential for communication. The 7-38-55 Rule claims that 7% of a message is the words themselves, 38% is how they’re said, and 55 percent is visual. Video opens up the potential to see some of these visual cues which help many people to understand the message better.
Easier to showcase product demonstrations. Seeing a product or service in action is much easier through video. There’s nothing like seeing something in action. In fact, at least 4 times as many people prefer to see a video of a product than read about it. If you want to show off the features and benefits of a new product, show it doing its job!
They’re attention-grabbing. Getting someone’s attention can be tough these days with all of the distractions around. So how do you stand out from the noise? Make your own! Well, sort of. Videos grab attention more than text or images. If a person sees something they like in the early portions they might stick around and focus and see what you have to say.

Does video marketing really work?

There’s no disputing that the general public likes videos. But do they work for marketing? Video marketing is powerful–if you follow a few basic guidelines.

Invest in some equipment

A good quality camera can make a massive difference in how you’re perceived. Fortunately, most mid-range smartphones and above have a decent camera built-in. Don’t have a camera or one of these smartphones? If you want to do video, you might need to invest in equipment first. A poor quality video can actually hurt you more than help, so be careful!

The more you learn about video, the more you’ll find out about different equipment that can make it easier. Mirrorless cameras. Stabilizing gimbals. Portable backdrops and green screens. Studio lighting. Good microphones. There’s always more you can get, but unless you plan on filming all the time, a professional videographer will probably save you time and money in the long run. And you don’t have to learn complicated editing software!

Practice for the camera

There are a few things you can do to get ready to be on camera. Even if you feel uncomfortable at first, practice can help! If you’re a small business owner, it’s good to literally be the face of the business if you have time. Your company will get a credibility boost because the information came straight from the source.

Develop a content plan

Keeping track of everything you plan to post is challenging. Making a content plan can make this significantly easier. It’s true that videography is powerful. But it’s much more effective when the videos are part of a bigger picture. By planning what you want to create in advance, you can save the trouble of on-the-spot thinking and coming up with a blank. Planning ahead of time can also help you to keep on-brand and keep your messaging consistent.

Unscripted vs scripted and edited

Big-name brands like to keep things close to the chest when it comes to video. You won’t see many corporations with spontaneous videos of the CEO going to golf on their off days. So if large, successful companies don’t use them, does that mean they’re off-limits?

No, not at all.

Larger companies have a complex and formalised process for videos and using social media. Everything has to stick to strict brand guidelines. It’s not uncommon for a single post to take them a couple of hours or longer. For a smaller business, you probably don’t need to be as critical.

In fact, in some cases, unscripted videos can be more effective. Unscripted videos tend to sound more natural. But they can also go off course and it’s far easier to get lost with what you were going to say. We recommend doing a combination of unscripted, spontaneous, and scripted videos, as each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Use a professional for core videos

A professionally edited promo video can show off what your business can do from a professional standpoint. If possible, we recommend getting at least one professionally made video for your business. Although smartphone cameras in high-end phones can rival some standalone cameras, professionals do much more than have a quality device. They know how to use it too. This includes lighting, staging, prompting actors, and of course filming it just right. Many professional videographers work as editors too, so can film and edit your video with your vision in mind.

Should I only do video then?

No, having written content is still good for a few reasons. While videography might be preferred by most people, there is still a good portion of people who prefer reading. And text explanations can still be better for more in-depth or complicated topics or when a specific piece of information needs to be referenced quickly. Have you ever watched a long video and wanted to find something specific and had trouble finding it? If it was written, Ctrl+F can find your phrase fast, plus you have the option to skim quickly.

Images also still have their place. Professional photography can get everything poised perfectly in a way that video can’t. Getting one frame perfect is an easier job than hundreds!

When possible, combining video and other media forms tends to work best. A video or image is excellent for covering any visual information. Then the written section can go more in-depth about the specifics. That way, anyone who comes across your content can choose their preferred method.

Video for marketing

Video marketing is one of the most powerful modern tools, and one you should absolutely be using as part of your marketing. Since videos are the most engaging form of content, you’re missing out if you aren’t using it for your business – whether you’re explaining your services or using a drone for real estate promotion. While it can take some investment in equipment and a little bit of practice to find your video style, it’s worth it in the long run. Combined with a content strategy to get your video out to the right people, you’re sure to find new or better leads for your company.

And if you’d like some help getting started, the team at Back9 can help. Our creative team can help you come up with ideas for video and even do the filming and editing for you. Get in touch with us today to find out more!

How to write a blog article for your website

Posted on July 19, 2021August 23, 2021 by Phil

One thing that practically every website needs is content. Written content. But writing for the modern internet isn’t as straightforward as putting some thoughts to keyboard and letting them run wild. There are a lot of things to consider when writing web pages including SEO, target audience, and much more. Then there are ongoing articles to inform, educate, entertain, or persuade users. But how can you begin to delve into the intricacies of good content when you aren’t sure how to write a blog?

Since writing is something all of us do–daily for a lot of us–you might think it will come easy for you. And kudos if it does. But many people find they’re stuck with a blinking cursor on a blank page when it’s time to sit down and get it done. If you’re in the latter category, this article might be good for you. We’ll go over everything you need to start your own blog, from choosing a voice to a basic blog structure ideal for SEO and engagement.

A lot of examples for this blog are related to our recent article Are Google and Facebook Spying on You–have a read of it if you haven’t yet!

Choose a voice and style

One thing that users expect is for you to keep a consistent voice and style. The first step in learning how to write a blog is to choose the right type for you. A lot of business owners get stuck thinking they need to be “formal and professional” in their writing. Being professional is good, but that doesn’t mean you need to be formal. You can if you want and if it represents you, but don’t go out of your way to grab a thesaurus and chuck in a profusion of synonyms.

Styles in Action

To show what we mean here are two versions of a phrase asking for the same thing. Which one would you rather get?

Fancy Formal

Outstanding payments are required to be reconciled by the Duodenary hour commensurating on the twentieth, approximately bi-fortnightly.

Straightforward

Invoices are due by noon on the 20th of each month.

What style is right for you?

The most important part of choosing a voice and tone is finding the right one that represents you and your business. We go over a number of different styles in our article 9 Reasons Why you should use a professional copywriter if you’d like some style ideas and examples. You might have to play around with a few before you find the one that sounds right for you and your business.

Article Structure

Web pages should be written in Hierarchal Structure–a structure that clearly designates related topics. Websites do this with the use of Headers. The smaller the header number, the more weight it holds with Google. H1 is the highest, then H2, and so on. In WordPress, you can change to a Header by finding where it says “Paragraph” in your text editing section. Simply change it to the appropriate Heading and press enter. Most sites will default back to Paragraph after pushing enter.

Using headers and Hierarchal Structure is good practice in general too. It helps clearly define what you’re writing about. In Google Docs, you can do this by clicking the “Normal text” between the font and Zoom on the toolbar. Then click and change the Headings.

The longer your content, the more important this structure is.

One structure we’re all familiar with is books. Books have a Title, Table of Contents, and Chapters. If there aren’t any chapters it’s hard to find what you need later on. It’s also harder to read without any breakpoints. This same idea applies to websites.

Basic article structure

Here’s what a basic article structure should look like:

Title (Title Bar at Top or H1 if no Title Bar)

Introduction: Situation or anecdote that ties into your main topic or a brief overview of your main topic.

Section Heading (H2)

Brief overview of section, 1-2 sentences can work or a full paragraph or two if you’d like.

Subtopic of section (H3)

The subtopic should be related to the section in some way. Paragraphs would typically be 3-5 sentences, but you can have as many of them as you’d like.

Additional subtopic (H3)

If you have another subtopic related to your section, break it down here. Here’s a good rule of thumb if you can’t decide if you need another subtopic; If your subtopic gets over 300 words, it should be split into a new one.

You can write use as many subtopics as you’d like.

Further Subtopics (H4 – H6)

If you need to subdivide a section up further, WordPress has headings pre-built all the way down to H6. If you feel the need to go beyond that, you may need to break up your article into multiple separate ones.

Next Section (H2)

Once the topic seems different enough to deserve its own section, break it up with a new H2. This new section can have its own subtopics as well. Add as many sections as you need to cover your main points.

Conclusion and Final Thought (H2)

Your final thought with a call-to-action.

Want to download this structure for easy use later? Download it by clicking the button below.

How to write your blog article

Once you have your style and know the structure, it’s time to write the actual article. When you’re writing the article, there are a few things you can do to help your SEO at the same time that we’ll cover here.

The title

For SEO purposes so you can be found on Google, your title should be something people are searching for. One of the best methods is to use is to have your title be a question–a question people are asking. Since this is a straightforward how-to, we decided not to go with a question here. But you may have noticed that many of our articles are questions. A good example of this is: Are Google and Facebook Spying on You?

The Intro

If you jump straight into informing your readers, you risk losing them. Instead, consider starting out with an opening paragraph using a situation or problem the reader is likely to encounter. This is called a hook. Just like with fishing, the hook grabs on to a passerby. Then you have to reel them in with the rest of your article.

You’ll want your hook to tie in with your article in some way. With enough practice, you can tie virtually any event into your article if you want to! If you can’t think of a good anecdote or problem that ties in, the next best thing is to write a brief overview of the topic.

Sample Intro with anecdote

Facebook has 3 billion active users. And one of their favourite pastimes is spying on those users. Have you ever talked about something you’ve NEVER searched for online and then saw an ad about it shortly after? Yeah, it’s not just you–the tech giant has been accused of doing more than just recording what you search for on their app and website.

Sample overview Intro

Facebook has 3 billion active users. And Google has at least that many searches every day. Both have been accused of spying on customers to target personalised ads to you. Read on to find out more and what you can do to protect your privacy from tech giants.

The Body

The body is the main section of your article. Basically, everything besides the intro, conclusion, and call-to-action. Here is where you focus on the main purpose of your article (inform, persuade, entertain, etc.) Follow the basic article structure above for help with structuring your article for SEO.

Sample Body Section

Some people don’t mind that Facebook and Google use their information to send them targeted ads. After all, they’re going to send you the same number of ads anyway, so why not have them be about something they might want instead of a completely random product or service?

Other people hate the idea of companies using their data and watching their every move. If you fall in this category, what can you do? By law, companies have to let you limit some of the information they gather on you. But it’s not always straightforward how you do this. In Facebook, you have to update your privacy settings by clicking the down arrow > Settings & privacy > Privacy Checkup (It has a little lock by it). There, you can go through each section and update those preferences to your liking.

The Final Thought and Call-to-Action

A good conclusion includes a Final thought, a Short “thing to think about” or thought to take away.

The conclusion is also an excellent place to use a call-to-action. A call-to-action is the next step you want your visitors to take. That can be reading another article, filling out a contact form, calling you, visiting your Facebook page, and so on. We go over Call-to-Actions in more detail in our article, The Path to Conversion – Is Your Website Doing as Much as it Could?

Sample Final Thought and Call-to-Action

There’s no doubt that Google, Facebook and other tech conglomerates are spying on you; but is that really a bad thing? Until the next wave of the internet, ads are the driving force of revenue, and some argue that it’s better they have your information to make those ads relevant. In the end, it’s up to you–and whether you think privacy or relevant targeting is worth more. To find out more about if these ads are effective, check out our article, Does advertising on Google Adwords really work?

Ready to write your own blog articles?

Are you ready to get started writing your own blog articles? The best way to improve is to practice. The more you practice, the easier it gets! Remember, you can download our blog template to help you get started.

Or if you’d rather leave it to the experts, the Back9 Creative team are content creating professionals. We can help you with blog articles and other copywriting, as well as videos, graphic design, and much more. Get in touch with us to find out how our marketing services can help you today.

Website performance. Is it important?

Posted on July 19, 2021July 4, 2024 by Phil

Do you measure your website performance? How hard does it work for your business? Do you know? Do you care?

Well… You really should!

The following article covers some of the basics any website owner should be taking note of – or at least employing the help of an agency or someone to.

Website traffic
Technical SEO health
Site Authority Score
Visibility Index
Leads
Goal completions

Great website design that convert leads to sales! Like staff, websites require serious investment – both time and money, and that means you need to know what your return is on that investment.

If you don’t care about investing in a website and seeing tangible returns from it, then this article is probably not for you. Here’s a link to some online puzzles.

If you do care, but just don’t know where to start, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

We speak to a lot of people about websites. And in general, there are 3 types of people we speak to. Perhaps you fit into one of these categories?

You don’t think you need a website
Perhaps you want a website as an online brochure – you probably don’t understand the power or potential it can add to your business – and that’s fine – you don’t know what you don’t know!
You want a website to get your name out there or because “everyone else” has one
If you have spent the money to build a website and then put nothing into it – time or money – then you might as well stack that cash in a pile, douse it with petrol, and light a match.
You have already spent thousands of dollars on something that doesn’t or hasn’t return results (often these people feel frustrated)
If you believe you don’t need a website, you’re busy enough, and have all the work you can possibly want, then that is freakin awesome. And we congratulate you on running a successful business. (but if that’s the case… Why are you still reading?)

The fact of the matter is, if you’re not seeing results, you (or whoever has done the website for you) are not doing it right.

Consider it this way:

Imagine your website is a member of your team – that specialises in sales! Would they have specific, measurable, and time-bound sales numbers they need to hit, or would you give them a pat on the back, and say, “Just do what you can and try your best, champ!”

Of course not. You would give them sales goals to hit, right?

And if Champ failed to hit those numbers quarter after quarter? Would you address their poor performance, or just continue signing off on their pay week in week out, without a second thought?

Yeah, I’m guessing you’d address it.

That’s why it’s important to set your monthly website performance metrics and stay on top of monitoring them.

What website performance metrics should I track every month?

Measuring the success of your site isn’t about getting feedback from your customers about how nice your headshots look on the About Us page. While that might validate your new haircut and make you feel good, it’s not going to convert leads to sales.

You should keep track of specific website performance metrics via monthly reporting that directly correlates to your bottom line goals.

You don’t want to look at the data every single day because you’ll drive yourself insane. Website performance metrics across the board will vary from day to day based on random variability, so zooming in that closely won’t allow you to see meaningful patterns emerge.

On the other hand, reviewing metrics once a quarter or even once a year can zoom you out too far. You want to be agile enough to see trends in the data and react to them quickly. In some instances, it might be a matter of seeing that a particular campaign is performing extremely well and you should throw more resources at it. It could also mean staying on top of technical SEO so that issues don’t pile up month after month, negatively affecting your search engine rankings.

Here’s what you need to look at.

1. Website traffic

Broadly, website traffic is about the users who come to your site. You need to measure the amount and quality of that traffic, as well as what users are doing on your site.

Understanding your traffic is crucial because more eyeballs on the site mean more potential sales. Each site visit is an opportunity to make a great impression and help people along their journey to getting their problems solved with your business as their guide.

Sessions

Google defines a session as “a group of user interactions with your website that takes place within a given time frame.” One session can contain multiple page views, events, and even e-commerce transactions.

As you consider session data, ask yourself: Are site sessions going up or down? Are there marketing efforts (or lack thereof) that you can tie trends to? Are there seasonal factors that may be spurring trends (e.g., an uptick at Christmas for an e-commerce site)?

Channel, source, and medium

Channels are the bigger buckets your site traffic comes from (direct, organic, social, email, referral, paid, display, other advertising). Source and medium drill down into the details. For example, within your paid traffic channel you can have facebook.com as a source and pay-per-click (PPC) as the medium.

Knowing where your traffic comes from helps evaluate factors that affect site effectiveness, such as SEO performance. Not getting the organic traffic you want? Make sure your site and blog content is optimized.

New vs. returning visitors:

New visitors are great for feeding the funnel, but returning visitors? They bounce less, view more pages per session, have longer sessions, and convert at a higher rate.

If you’re not increasing the number of returning visitors, you have a content problem. Your content needs to be published at a high quality to get people to keep coming back to the site.

Landing pages

These pages are the entry points to your website from particular sources. Looking at what pages people come to from organic sources tells you how good (or bad) your SEO is. Landing pages from email sources give a clue about what your subscribers are interested in. Are people going where you are directing them?

Time on page

Looking at time spent on specific pages can tell you whether users are reading the copy you’ve written, interacting with dynamic elements, watching videos, and having a good experience on the site. Low time on page tells you you’re losing them and need to optimize.

Pages per visit

More pages per visit means more interest, which means a higher chance for conversion.

Bounce rate

Different types of pages should have different bounce rates. For example, your Contact Us page might have a higher bounce rate because people are typically submitting the contact form and then leaving your site.

But, in general, a bounce rate of 56% to 70% is considered high (depending on where the page is in your funnel) and a bounce rate of 41% to 55% is average.

2. Technical SEO health

When I talk about SEO, it’s not uncommon for marketers to think I’m referring to having blog posts optimized with keywords for search engines.

But technical SEO is a much bigger and uglier animal. It’s important to wrap your arms around it because the healthier your technical SEO, the higher value search engines will give your site, and the better your site will rank.

It includes:

Title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text for images: All of these pieces of a webpage help search engines understand what the page is about.

Backlinks: Internal links created when another site links to yours. More on this later.

Structured data: A standardized format to mark up information on a page so search engines can better understand what they’re about.

Crawling: Search engines looking for content on the internet and looking over the code/content they find for each URL.

Indexing: Search engines storing the information they find during a crawl. If your pages aren’t indexed, they won’t rank in search engine results pages.

🔎 Related: Why Can’t People Find my New Website?

Rendering: When bots run your site’s code and assess your content to understand your site structure. The assessment informs how your site is ranked compared to others.

Mobile: How well your is site optimized for use on mobile devices is a critical factor in user experience.

Site structure: This includes navigation, internal linking, and URL structure. A site’s information architecture must be clear to users and to search engines. Building a Strong Website Structure for Success is key

Status codes: When you visit a site, your browser sends a request to the server and the server responds with a code. 1XX, 2XX and 3XX (redirection) codes are fine. 4XX (pages not found), and 5XX (server) errors can cause problems and need to be corrected.

Page speed: How fast the content on your site loads—faster being better, of course. Free tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, will give your site a score and provide optimization opportunities. or you can see 5 ways to reduce your website loading speed here.

If it feels like that’s a lot to wrap your head around, and that’s well… Because it is.

Some fixes, such as making sure each page has a unique title tag and meta description, are simple enough for a marketing intern to handle. Others, such as DNS resolution issues, might require development help.

The better your site’s health, the better your site will rank in search engine results. That’s why it’s critical to make the time, even if it’s just five hours per month, to review your site’s technical SEO and resolve as many issues as you can.

3. Site Authority Score

Site Authority or Domain Authority is a score that predicts how well a site will rank in search engine rankings.

Semrush describes Authority Score as “our compound domain score that grades the overall quality of a website. The higher the score, the more assumed weight a domain’s or webpage’s backlinks could have.” Scores live on a 0 to 100 scale.

Semrush uses organic search data, website traffic data, and backlink data to understand the rankings of popular and trusted domains. It also uses backlink data to see how gaining links can make site authority increase or decrease.

You can use Authority Score to judge how well your link-building efforts are paying off. Having a ton of internal links isn’t enough – the links have to be of good quality to positively impact your site’s score. You can also look at what your competitors are doing to see if you need to step up your game.

Your Site Authority score can also be affected by toxic backlinks, which are internal links from untrustworthy sites. Checking for toxic backlinks on a regular basis will ensure your site’s Authority Score isn’t getting dinged.

4. Visibility index

Visibility index tells you how often your site is being found online: “A zero-percent visibility means that the domain isn’t ranking in Google’s top 100 results for any of these keywords, and a 100-percent visibility means that the domain keeps the first position in the SERP for all of these keywords.”

Increasing visibility in search engine results gives you a better chance to get new eyes on your site. If you’ve been working your tail off on SEO or a PPC campaign, visibility percentage is a great way to measure performance.

5. Leads

CRM systems contain a treasure trove of data about your company’s subscribers, lead opportunities, leads, customers, and evangelists. Is your CRM connected to your website? I certainly hope so. If not, you’re losing out on critical information about how well (or not) your website is converting contacts to evangelists.

Every month you should be looking at where your contacts are coming from and how they’re engaging with your site. Specifically, you should look at:

Number of leads: How many leads is your site generating? This metric alone is not enough to judge site performance. For example, if you get a ton of leads but they’re all junk and don’t convert, that’s a problem.
Lead quality: You can judge this based on things such as the ratio of leads to opportunities, the percentage of leads who become converted customers, and time to conversion.
Leads by source: Where are your leads coming from? Are you getting a ton of organic traffic from the blog posts you’re writing but the traffic isn’t converting? You’ll want to provide opportunities for readers to dig deeper into your content, such as image CTAs in your posts that highlight related high-value downloads.
Lead conversion rate: If conversion rate for conversion content is low, you’ll want to find ways to optimize it. If the conversion rate is high, you’ll want to drive more traffic to it. You can also work backward from your customer records to see how much and what kind of site content they engaged with on their buyer’s journey. You might see patterns emerge. For example, a majority of your customers might view at least 20 pages on the site before making a purchase.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Every customer comes at a price, whether you’re investing money in ads or time producing a webinar. If you’re spending $150,000 on advertising for $20,000 in sales, you’ll want to adjust your tactics.
Lead value: This is usually based on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or customer lifetime value (LTV). These metrics will help you understand how valuable your average lead is in relation to what you’re spending on acquisition.

Before tools such as HubSpot existed, it was extremely difficult for marketers to show how their web efforts led to sales. Now it’s easier than ever to show ROI and tie your website optimization work directly to revenue.

6. Goal completions

You might be wondering why I’m highlighting goal completions instead of form submissions. Though it’s critical to track form submissions to understand conversions, it’s only one type of valuable action users can take on your site.

In Google Analytics, you can set up goals that monitor a broad range of actions, such as a user spending five or more minutes on your site, viewing five or more pages on your site, clicking a link to a partner page, or clicking an “Add to Cart” CTA.

Some, but not all, of these actions can be tracked in your marketing automation software, so using Google Analytics is a great way to round out your data.

Site authority, visibility, traffic, technical SEO, video stats, and behavior analytics tell you what people can and are doing on your site. Goal completions measure whether site visitors are doing what you need them to do or not. Very simply, is your site accomplishing your business objectives or not?

Great web performance takes work

Combining data from Google Analytics, SEO tools, your marketing, and sales software, video platforms, and behavior analytics tools will give you a holistic view of your website’s performance. It’s not a small job, but it’s an important one.

One of the best ways to get started is to perform audits and create a deck of benchmark data that includes the areas included in this post. You could start with one slide per area and see where the data takes you. A traffic slide, for example, could include several of the metrics noted within a single table. Within the benchmarks, you can identify areas for improvement you want to focus on. Or you might find you don’t even have the right tool stack!

But once you get started with the right combination of tools, you’ll end up with a long list of improvements that you can then prioritize and tackle in phases.

Your website is supposed to be your hardest-working salesperson. As with any employee, you need to evaluate its performance to see if it’s contributing positively to your company’s bottom line.

Mailchimp vs HubSpot

Posted on June 17, 2021April 2, 2025 by Phil

As business owners, we’re all busy! So you and your marketing team (if you have one) are likely to have a full plate. This therefore makes choosing a marketing platform that increases efficiency everything. For example, this article compares two popular marketing platforms — Mailchimp v Hubspot — to help make your evaluation process simpler.

Overview

Marketers today have no shortage of tasks to complete. Each task, whether an email send, an ad retargeting campaign, or managing social media accounts, is one of many customer interactions that together create a holistic customer experience. Just as marketers have no shortage of jobs to be done, likewise, there’s no shortage of tools you can use to execute on your marketing strategy. This page will help you determine what’s best for you and your team when evaluating marketing tools.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s platform combines marketing automation, email, and a suite of other flexible marketing tools. In addition, it includes the power of a CRM to give you insight into how your marketing efforts are influencing your customer’s experience across their entire buyer’s journey. Moreover, HubSpot is ranked #1 in Marketing Automation by G2, and #1 by Gartner Peer Insights.

Mailchimp

On the other hand, Mailchimp is a marketing automation and email marketing service. Their customers leverage Mailchimp’s email marketing tools to connect with their audience as well as, expand the tool’s functionality through a number of integrations.

Email Marketing

An email service provider is certainly the first tool marketers may add to their tool kit — and for good reason. Email marketing is a quick way to engage with your leads, and as a result, nurture them into loyal customers. It’s also extremely cost effective, with some studies showing an ROI of up to 4400%. When choosing an email service provider, you’ll want to ensure that it has the features you need, and is flexible enough to stay with you as you grow your company.

Mailchimp’s email marketing tool features a drag and drop email editor, as well as custom coded email templates. Once you upgrade to a paid tier, as a result, you’ll gain access to features like A/B testing, and dynamic send times. You’ll also unlock comparative reports so you can begin analyzing data across campaigns and share insights with your team.

Hubspot Email tool

HubSpot email tool on the other hand has everything Mailchimp offers, and more. Furthermore HubSpot’s drag and drop email editor is easy to use and they offer a slew of templates that you can personalise to meet your brand’s specific needs. Consequently as you grow, you’ll unlock features like smart send times, A/B testing, and more.

The real power of HubSpot’s marketing email tool comes when it’s combined with the CRM, and our marketing automation platform. With HubSpot, you can create detailed email campaigns that as a result, give each contact a tailored experience based on the information you’ve gathered within the CRM. You can also create if/then logic in your automated email campaigns, so each contact receives a contextual email based on the experience they’ve had with your brand.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
Drag and drop email editor
Ecommerce emails
Email personalization
A/B testing
Time zone sends
Optimized for any device
Post-send email analytics
Comparative reports
Transactional email

Contact Management

As you grow, so will your database of contacts. In short, being able to track how these contacts have interacted with your brand, and take action off of those interactions is essential to your success. Using a marketing automation platform that gives you full insight into your customers’ journey, and the ability to manage contacts across a growing team will help you personalize your marketing, while helping you scale your business.

Mailchimp’s Marketing CRM on the other hand has an audience system that leverages segments and tags that can be used to manage your customer outreach. Segments will automatically create groups of contacts based on a single variable, while tagging your contacts let’s you create manual groupings — just like you would tag a group of blog posts as “How to” articles. Mailchimp lets free users use up to five conditions to create a segment, while premium users can use advanced segmentation features that let you combine unlimited conditions to filter your audience.

Hubspot Marketing Tools

HubSpot’s marketing tools are built directly on top of the CRM of choice for growing companies — therefore giving you insight into a contact’s entire experience with your company. In short, you get extremely granular control over your contacts and how you manage them. The HubSpot CRM includes more than just information on your marketing activities. For example, in addition to seeing if a contact opened your most recent marketing email, you’ll be able to track how contacts are interacting with your website, how their most recent sales call went, and whether or not they have an open ticket with your support team.

Create as many custom properties as you’d like within the HubSpot CRM and use these properties’ values to create lists that can be used across all your marketing campaigns. You’re also able to combine an unlimited amount properties to further segment your list of contacts from our free marketing tools, all the way up into our Enterprise offering.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
List management
Create custom contact properties
Combine unlimited filtering options to further segment your lists		Premium feature
Update contacts in bulk		Only through import
Timeline of all interactions with your company		Limited

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is essential for any scaling company. As you grow, actions that you used to do manually, such as sending nurturing emails at a regular cadence, are no longer feasible. You have too many contacts to manage, and too many other tasks taking up your time. Marketing automation lets you continue to give your customers a personalized experience, while you focus on more mission critical tasks.

Mailchimp’s marketing automation tool lets you trigger marketing emails based on a number of different actions your contacts take. Everything from sending abandoned cart nurturing emails to birthday emails is supported. But Mailchimp only allows you to use marketing automation to send email. You can not automate your contact management, or internal notifications through their automation tool — leaving growing businesses to look elsewhere to automate these tasks.

HubSpot’s automation platform goes beyond just email. Triggering an email based on actions your contacts take is just the tip of the iceberg. While Mailchimp stops with automated kickback emails and drip campaigns, HubSpot’s workflows tool lets you manage your contact database, rotate leads amongst your sales team, even create support tickets automatically. You can also go a step further and add delays and conditional logic to your automation, allowing you to customize your workflows to meet the exact needs of your team. HubSpot’s automation platform is meant to assist your entire business — not just your email marketing.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
Single automated kickback emails
Multi-step Drip campaigns
Conditional if/then automation logic
Automate internal notifications and tasks
Automate lead management & segmentation
Automate the process of updating contact or company properties
Custom automations through API

Social and Ads

Having an active social presence is essential for engaging with your audience. Ads on the other hand, allow you to get extremely targeted with your messaging across both search and social. You can use ads to generate new leads fast, hone your messaging and targeting, or re-target contacts in order to nurture them.

Mailchimp Social

Mailchimp’s social tool allows you to publish organically to Facebook and Instagram. Their ads tool let’s you manage your Facebook ads, as well as Google display ads. They also include a number of reports that tie your ad spend back to revenue. For Facebook, you need to have connected an ecommerce platform to your account, such as Shopify or WooCommerce. Targeting is limited on Mailchimp. For example, you cannot use contact lists for your Google ads to refine or exclude your audience, and you’re only able to target ads at all website visitors. There is no opportunity to specify a specific page, or group of pages.

Hubspot Social

If you’re looking for one tool to align your entire team around both your organic social and paid strategies, HubSpot is the tool for you. Start by connecting all your social accounts to HubSpot across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Schedule out posts across each network, and quickly report on your success on each channel. HubSpot will give you insight into your performance no matter where you publish, ensuring that posts published within HubSpot or directly within the network are tracked. You can also connect your YouTube account to HubSpot to see how your audience is engaging with your video content. With the social monitoring tool, you’re also able to keep tabs on specific trends and keyword phrases that are important to you and your brand, and also reply directly to comments on your social posts within HubSpot.

Hubspot Ads

HubSpot’s ads tool lets you easily manage your Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn ad campaigns from one central location. After connecting your account to HubSpot, adding tracking pixels to your site is a two click process — in short, no developer required. Any leads that are generated through a Facebook lead ad or LinkedIn lead gen form are automatically synced over into HubSpot. You can also get granular with your targeting — using any CRM data point or an extremely specific grouping of pages to reach exactly who you intend to with your ads. And because HubSpot ads are closely tied to the CRM, you can report on exactly how much revenue can be attributed to your ads at various stages in the buyer’s journey.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
Social publishing	Facebook, Instragram, LinkedIn, Twitter	Facebook & Instagram
Social monitoring
Social reporting	Report on your success no matter where you published	Only report on social posts that were made through Mailchimp
Facebook/Instagram Ads
Google search ads
Google display ads
LinkedIn ads
Advanced website audiences
Contact list audiences		Facebook only
Facebook lookalike audiences
Ads ROI Reporting		E-commerce integration required
Ads reporting across a number of attribution types

Landing Pages and Forms

Creating simple yet effective landing pages that match your brand and drive conversions is essential for growing businesses. An effective landing page should make it easy for your site visitors to quickly fill out a form and learn more about your offer. Moreover, your forms should be customisable to meet your business’s and customers’ needs — allowing you to gather all the information you need to effectively nurture your leads.

Mailchimp Landing pages and Forms

Mailchimp offers a simple drag and drop landing page editing experience, as well as a forms solution. Their forms solution is automatically tied back to a list — which makes following up with form submitters quick and easy.

Hubspot Landing pages and Forms

HubSpot also has a robust landing pages and forms solution. What separates HubSpot from Mailchimp is the tool’s flexibility. By adding the HubSpot tracking code to your site, as a result, you can automatically bring data into HubSpot from any forms tool you use. HubSpot also understands that the goal of a form submission isn’t always to convert a new lead for the first time. Progressive profiling let’s you change what a visitor to your site sees if they’re already a contact in your database — ensuring that every form fill yields valuable information for your business.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
Forms
Pop-up forms
Embedded forms
Collect data from any form solution you use		Through integrations
Custom form fields
Hidden form fields
Progressive profiling
Dependent fields
Drag and drop page building
Template/custom coded landing page development
Use custom domain
Scheduled publishing
On page SEO optimizations

Integrated tools

HubSpot is so much more than just email and marketing automation. With live chat, a managed CMS, SEO tools, and more, HubSpot therefore has everything you need to get your marketing strategy started, with advanced features that you can grow into. Furthermore, you can add your sales and service teams to HubSpot too, and see how having all teams working out of one system reduces friction in your customer’s entire experience with your company.

	HubSpot	Mailchimp
Live chat tools
Programmable bots
Unified email & chat inbox
Blog
SEO tools
Video hosting and management
Hierarchical teams
Meeting booking tool
Lead scoring
Automated sales sequences
Ticket & deal automation
Sales Playbooks
Knowledge base tools
Customer feedback tools
Help desk tools

Support

Whether you’re a seasoned vet, or you’re just getting started on a marketing automation platform, HubSpot has the resources you need to find success. From extensive online resources to our 24/7 support team, as a Hubspot Solutions Partner, we’re ready to assist you and your growing business.

What are the benefits of using drones for filming real estate and commercial buildings

Posted on May 27, 2021March 4, 2022 by Phil

The introduction of drones are breathing new life into photography and videography marketing. Drones are able to open up angles and perspectives that are otherwise unachievable. They’re able to capture sweeping shots with ease and are excellent for filming real estate and commercial buildings.

Drone filming for real estate listings

A very popular use of drones is for real estate or selling commercial properties. And for good reasons. According to some calculations done by RISMedia, real estate agents who use a drone or hire a photographer with a drone could see an increase in listings as high as 73% and deal closing increases as high as 68%. Sold by Air states that, “83% of home sellers prefer to work with an agent using drones.” With these kinds of numbers, real estate agents can potentially see returns that add up to tens of thousands of dollars per year.

Drones are particularly effective for large lifestyle blocks. They can show how large and expansive the property is and how much of the land at once. Drones can also show off property features like hills, fields, and natural landscape features.

Drone technology makes aerial shots accessible

Aerial photos & videos used to only be taken using planes or helicopters which requires hiring a helicopter, a pilot, and an aerial camera operator. The barriers to that type of imagery are typically out of reach for most companies. Not only that, drones don’t take much prep and their small size makes them more versatile than manned aircraft ever was. Drone technology now provides a safer, quieter, faster, and of course much cheaper solution.

How much does a drone cost?

While the cost of purchasing a good drone is not entirely prohibitive–starting around $1000 and going up from there–flying a drone does require a good amount of skill in not only piloting the drone but also in the technical setting needed to operate the camera correctly. And that’s not even mentioning the know-how of what permits you need and how to apply for them. Permits are complicated, especially near airports. Most drones won’t take off at all without authorisation, which can be challenging to obtain.

As is the case for most endeavours, while you could do it yourself, it’s always best to hire a certified, and well educated professional drone pilot. At Back9 we have a licensed drone pilot who happens to be a professional videographer.

Drone shots vs ground shots

Using a drone isn’t always better. But there are some shots that are impossible to get without using one. Take a look at some of our comparison and unique shots below.

Commercial building

The first shot below is a view of the building from ground level. This view is the traditional photo and does not tell much of the story.

Here is the same building taken from the air. You can see much more context of shape, layout and design of the building. It also gives a sense of the surrounding of the building.

Two-storey house

Shooting a building from the ground level using a wide-angle lens can often introduce unwanted distortion to the property. By elevating the camera the building will have a much more true to life appearance. Here is a shot with a wide lens from the ground.

This is the same house but with a slightly elevated angle from a drone.

Using drones to give a sense of location

Using the drone to capture an image of the building from a distance away can give a sense of location that helps with navigation using surrounding roads or landmarks. They can also create images that clearly delineate fixtures on the ground, such as boundary lines.

Top-down drone shots will show a sense of scale to your commercial building/yard, as well as references of key locations to one another. This will also clearly document the condition of rooftops etc. And there’s no ladder required.

So you can now see the benefits of hiring a drone photographer to take your property images. If you are considering purchasing a drone yourself, that is great. But it’s not a matter of picking it up from the shops and then sending it up in the air and pressing a few buttons. There are many legal requirements that you have to be aware of before your drone even leaves the ground.

Legal requirements for operating a drone

Below is a basic outline of what you need to consider when flying a drone in New Zealand, but for a much more detailed explanation, visit this website.

In New Zealand, there is no distinction between personal and commercial drone users. This means that real estate agents do not need to be licensed operators to use small drones. In saying this, there are specific rules that must be followed to allow for the safe use of drones.

CAA aircraft rules

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) governs the use of drones as they are considered aircraft. The use of small drones is regulated under Part 101 Rules. These are reproduced below.

You should:
1. Not operate an aircraft that is more than 25kg and always ensure it is safe to operate

2. At all times, take all practicable steps to minimise hazards to persons, property and other aircraft

3. Fly only in daylight

4. Give way to crewed aircraft, for example any planes, helicopters, hang gliders and paragliders. You should land your drone immediately if another aircraft approaches

5. Always make sure you have visual contact of your drone (with your own eyes, don’t rely on using binoculars or other visual aids). This is called your visual line of sight

6. Not fly your aircraft higher than 120 metres (equivalent to 400 feet) above ground level (unless certain conditions apply)

7. Have knowledge of airspace restrictions that apply in the area you operate. This means you want to check any airspace restrictions before you fly

8. Not fly closer than 4 kilometres to any aerodrome (unless certain conditions apply) so this includes airports and helipads at hospitals

9. When flying in controlled airspace, obtain an air traffic control clearance from Airways Corporation of New Zealand. AirShare is a website that allows you to log requests with air traffic control to fly in controlled airspace and provides information on where you can fly and on airspace. It also has information on the rules for flying a drone, tips for safe flying and short quizzes on the rules

10. Not fly in special-use airspace (e.g. restricted operating areas) without permission from that area’s administering authority

11. Have consent from anyone you want to fly above

12. Have consent from the property owner or person in charge of the area you want to fly above.

Upgrade your video with drones

Keen to know more about video? Read our article Intro to Advertising with Video. Or if you’re ready to get some videos off the ground now, come have a chat with our videographer. You can book a meeting right now by choosing a time on the meeting calendar below.