It was a whirlwind year full of class leading website design and Google marketing services to help businesses in North Queensland get the most from their advertising spend

Like most businesses, 2021 was exceptionally busy and the time has really flown by. Throughout the year, Allcorp has introduced the internet to more than 100 new websites for local businesses and have provided our Google Ads clients with over 7 million clicks on their websites. Because we are the only local Google Partner in Cairns & Townsville, all of this Google Ads revenue has remained in our community instead of going down south as with the other Google Ads suppliers.

As the region’s largest provider of digital marketing, it was really great to see some new clients adopting our way of modern advertising and also great to work with existing clients in upgrades and redesigns, some of whom have been with us since the very beginning.

We also supported the HIA as a gold sponsor for the third year in a row and have committed to an increased sponsorship agreement for 2022. The building industry is really booming this year and it has been great to be involved with our clients and future clients in this sector.

Like many local business owners it's time to enjoy a break as the year wraps up and the Allcorp team are looking forward to their much earned break, ready to hit the ground running in 2022.

To best serve our clients’ needs we have some new packages and products available for 2022 and Tiffany and Peter will be sure to introduce them to the thousands of local clients we look after.

In the meantime, we would like to wish all of our clients and future clients the happiest of holidays and we hope you all get a much needed break and find some time to relax a little.

Thank you all once again for your support in 2021. We're now moving into our 22nd year as the preferred digital marketing provider in the Cairns & Townsville regions.

Peter, Sherene, Bril, Tiffany & Steve.

A custom coded and designed Content Management System (CMS) will improve your customer interaction with your site while also increasing leads and enquiries - while also looking great!

Allcorp have been leading the website design industry in Cairns & Townsville for more than 21 years. While our websites all stand apart from the crowd in terms of design quality and stable development practices, did you also know we have some of the most skilled website developers right here in North Queensland?

Because our websites are all custom coded and designed, we can develop from the ground up, a secure and useful CMS (Content Management System) that can be utilised to perform almost any task. Our custom developed CMS products have been implemented into a range of websites over the years with examples from the past being some of the following:

- Real Estate Agent websites: To display current property listings
- Retail websites: To showcase products that are available to buy online
- Service provider websites (such as Mechanics, Builders & Accountants): To streamline quote requests and bookings
- Tour operator websites: For custom tour integration and bookings

Plus many more!

Most of the other website designers out there use a standard template style website platform such as Wix or WordPress, to name a few. When you have one of these websites and want to expand it to provide more information to your customers in the form of displaying products for sale, products for rent, services to book and so on, the standard WordPress website maker will usually perform this by purchasing a third party plug-in for your site.

The way the WordPress site maker chooses the right plugin to use is basically the same way they make their websites - try and find a suitable pre-made template that gets close enough to what the client actually wants.

The difference with what we do with our advanced website development services is that we don't use any templates, premade themes or plugins in any of our websites. The advantage to our clients by using our services instead of the amateur WordPress style concept is that we will have an initial consult with our client and work out exactly what we want the CMS to actually do.

Once we have the brief and have all had our input as to how we can make this work in the client’s best interest, we design and develop the CMS to suit that exact brief.

The end result is that the final website CMS is 100% built from scratch and tailored to the client’s brief. Because they are custom coded and custom designed, our CMS products also look better because we design them around the client’s branding and styles. And because we don't rely on third-party plugins, they are far more secure and resilient to hacking.

When it comes to your website, it is advantageous to use the services of an agency who knows how to design and develop websites from the ground up as it will ensure a professional looking presence that works to achieve client expectations. If you want to use the services of a WordPress or Wix site maker, do your own research because all your website 'designer' will be doing is choosing the latest template from their supplier, loading it up with a bunch of dodgy third party plugins and shoe-horning everything together so it almost looks right. You can really do this yourself with a couple of hours research on WordPress. Just find a template that you like and populate it as you go.

Or, do it right the first time and have your new website 100% custom designed and coded to suit your individual expectations.

The sales reps from the old media are coming out in full swing with their shiny new digital marketing businesses

We've seen it happen like clockwork over the last 21 years we've been in the digital marketing business. Every time there is a media industry shift, there is an influx of advertising and media companies opening up. Lately we've been seeing new media businesses opening up by people who previously worked as sales people for the latest dead media industry which failed to keep up.

The latest scalps to be taken are indeed that of the newspaper people. The Townsville Bulletin and The Cairns Post were once heralded as beacons of their respective communities, but not so much anymore. After they closed their physical offices this year and disposed of most of their staff there were some wounded sales reps who needed to find employment.

With all of these media salespeople out of work, what better idea than for them to all start their own media companies and subcontract the actual design work to other businesses. After all, these guys and girls sold advertising, some for even as long as 6 months, so they must be experts.

This year they have really sprung up almost everywhere. So fast are they all coming out of the woodwork, that there are even 2 competing right next door to each other on Pease Street here in Cairns.

From what we've seen over the last 21 years of working in this industry in Cairns & Townsville, history does indeed repeat itself. And in due course these new sales rep driven agencies will disappear, as their overseas subcontractors stop returning their emails and leave them locked out of their hosting and domain registration panels.

In the meantime, we'll still be here doing what we do and watching them come and go.

All we can say is treat any newbie company carefully as they can do a lot of damage, especially when they shuttheir doors and disappear, leaving their clients out in the cold.

So if you get approached by a funky sounding new ad agency with a cool and trendy name like ForteHQ, Pickle Design, Adapted Hub or FishWeb Design (or whatever else silly name they come up with), just keep in mind that in most cases the people behind these little businesses worked as a sales representative for The Cairns Post or Townsville Bulletin this time last year.

Nothing they are offering is new or unique, they lack a lot of experience and in most cases we have seen, they'll be out of business this time next year. (Or shut down and reopen as Pickle Design 2.0) Not a big deal for us, but their clients are fundamentally who will suffer and need our help when the inevitable happens.

With all that said, we encourage competition and think that everyone deserves to have a go at running their own business. Just be careful about getting too involved with a new and relatively unknown entity as, in our experience, they can come and go very quickly. When these businesses disappear the collateral damage is always their clients.

Our client Field Construct has just been recognised with a prestigious Master Builders Award

The Master Builders Queensland awards kicked off in August and we were delighted to see many Allcorp clients scooping some great awards.

Of particular note was our new client at Field Construct who took home one of the most coveted awards by winning in the category of Tourism and Leisure Facilities up to $10 million.

A big congratulations goes to the team at Field Construct who took home this award and the question remains, where are you going to put it, as your trophy cabinet is bulging at the seams!

Now that Field Construct have an Allcorp website they are in the prime position as having one of the leading construction company websites. An award winning company needs an award winning website and it's great to see their online presence now matches the quality and professionalism of their company.

More Allcorp clients expected to take home some great awards of recognition

As regular top-tier sponsors of the HIA North Queensland Housing Awards, Allcorp will be attending this year’s event hoping to see some great recognition sent our clients’ way.

It's a great event of which to be a part and really showcases the talent of local business in the region while enabling winners to progress further to state and national awards.

All in, Allcorp looks after most of the HIA Award winners in the region by keeping their online presence up to date and looking clean, sharp and polished all year. We also make sure that the award winners we look after get the recognition they deserve by making website, social media and GMB updates promptly to ensure they are always outlining their excellence to their clients and potential clients.

If the previous years are anything to go by, we'll be making a lot of website updates to our award winning clients’ sites and platforms after the awards are all handed out.

Highlight real news about your industry to potential clients while adding valuable content that search engines love

As the most experienced website design company in North Queensland we've learned a lot about the changing landscape of what Google expect from a website to make it rank well in organic search. While the specific area of search engine optimisation constantly evolves, one thing that has remained the most powerful tool is content. Lots and lots of content.

One area where you can really help your website is by adding your own blog page where you can make updates, add articles and other information that is pertinent to your business. By adding a blog or news section to a site with our custom coded addon you can generate lots of search engine friendly wording whenever you want.

By growing a blog or news section of your website you'll start building an impressive back catalogue of articles and news information and with some simple training from us as to how to structure your content, you could be saving thousands of dollars in search engine optimisation costs.

Give us a call or send us an email and we can have a free consultation to showcase exactly what our blog addon involves. We can add it to your existing site or bundle it with a new project and because it is 100% custom coded it is much less affected by the mainstream WordPress or other CMS sites’ vulnerabilities.

If you haven't seen the redeveloped Cairns Esplanade you are certainly missing out. Allcorp were hitting the ground running through the building process to ensure we gained as many photo assets to showcase the top class work the team at Field Construct Cairns were able to put into the project.

Working alongside the leaders in the building industry, we saw the development of the project become a reality through various tours through the site, up on top of buildings and even atop the highest cranes.

Most importantly, this enormous project was designed and constructed by local business. As a local business ourselves and huge supporters of the building industry, we were very proud to see many Allcorp clients doing their part.

The new website for Field Construct is now online and the company can now enjoy the rewards of having Allcorp maintain their online presence and their digital marketing to ensure they are showcasing themselves in the most professional standard.

Continuing our support for the local building industry and the HIA

Last week Allcorp were invited to attend the HIA Industry Outlook Breakfast and give a presentation to the local business owners in attendance. All in all there were over 100 attendees at the event and we were able to provide some insights into the digital marketing world.

As the most experienced website design and website marketing agency operating in the region, we had some great information to share with the audience about what we've learned over the last 21 years.

It's great to be able to get out amidst our clients and potential clients and create awareness about what it is that we do and the history of our company.

Our industry is an industry on data and we have collected a lot of data on what marketing mediums work and what types of advertising don't work. We were able to share a lot of these insights with the HIA members in the room and have already had a few of the attendees reach out to us for some further advice.

In 2021 many business owners already understand that the old styles of advertising such as newspapers, television, radio and phone books are either dead or dying; (we wonder who is going to occupy the now for sale Cairns Post office building?!). However, what a lot of business owners need is guidance through the digital sphere.

And that's where we come in as the leading website design and digital marketing provider in the region.

Businesses know that they need to fully embrace digital marketing but many are confused as to where to start. It's not surprising news, with a lot of rogue operators setting up in the last few years with deliberate confusion tactics to attempt to sway business owners into expensive contracts for lame duck digital marketing and website design offerings.

Thankfully the local Allcorp team is here to help, as we always have been, as the local Google Partner and website design agency with the proven track record in Cairns and Townsville.

A big thank you to all who attended and listened keenly on our presentation and also to Russell & Col at the local HIA here in Cairns for setting this event up for their members.

Imagine being able to prioritise a list of business inquiries to maximise on follow up efficiency

If your business is like most that we deal with on a regular basis you'll probably be extremely busy. The doom and gloom from last year has had an impact on everything, house prices are going up, car prices are going up and business people are having trouble keeping up with demand.

Any business owner will tell you that being too busy isn't really a problem. Not being busy, on the other hand, is a real problem. With so many clients expressing that they are finding it hard to keep up with quoting and even answering the phone, it might be advantageous to install some efficiency into their websites with an Allcorp lead generator.

Our lead generators are effectively a multi-part website form that harvests information from your potential customer and delivers this information directly to you. We have a few tricks up our sleeve to make this process streamlined so as to get you as much information as you need to follow up and process the lead.

Whether it's collecting images, plans, documents or anything else you require, we custom develop our lead generators to get you the information you want and need for quoting or progressing further through the quoting process. The main benefit of this is that our lead generators help you save time by funneling the necessary data you need straight to your inbox.

These are mostly installed on all of our new website projects but we can upgrade your existing site by implementing a custom lead generator so you can start freeing up some time in the way you handle incoming inquiries and requests.

Think of it like starting the week off with a list of leads that have come in with your potential customers contact details and information relating to what services they are looking for. You can then prioritise this list for following up.

Did you know your business is probably spending too much on unnecessary and irrelevant advertising?

Book a free digital marketing health check with one of our experts

Did you know your business is probably spending too much on unnecessary and irrelevant advertising?

At Allcorp we've been leading the online advertising industry in North Queensland for more than 20 years. We were also the first business to officially partner with Google in the region as we saw the way the landscape was changing and evolving.

With the insights to which we have access from Google and other online marketing portals we can supply excellent information to any business as to where their customers are searching and as for what they are really searching. Unlike media of old, where numbers such as readership or viewing audiences were basically made up from vague surveys and estimates, today we can give exact information.

Have you ever added up the total costs your business is really paying each year for advertising and marketing?

Book a consult with one of our digital marketing experts today and we can go through your complete marketing schedules and offer free and informed advice as to where you could save money. There is absolutely no obligation to spend any money with us for this service and we have helped many businesses save thousands of dollars every year on unnecessary expenditure.

Contact Peter Mayer (07) 4792 2414 | peter@allcorp.net.au
or Tiffany Marcantelli (07) 4078 6522 | tiffany@allcorp.net.au

To give you an idea of how we can help, in the 6 new projects we have completed this last month alone, we have helped these businesses save over $100,000 per year on advertising waste.

We've seen a lot of clients coming to us for advice on their 'professionally designed' Wix websites in the last few weeks. Here's why you should avoid any website design company who uses the Wix platform.

The world of website designers is broken into 2 main camps. The first website designer model is the custom coded approach to website development. This is what Allcorp do and have been doing for more than 20 years. The second type of website designer, and we use the term 'designer' very lightly, is the template website maker. Template websites are from a variety of platforms that you may have heard of such as WordPress, Joomla and the cringe-worthy Wix platform.

Template website makers don't really understand how websites function and work. They do not understand how coding works and ultimately use an online template finder to find someone else's design to which they then retrofit a business logo and branding. Think of these website frameworks as painting by numbers. There is no design work or customisation involved in this process.

Of course, with this type of off the shelf website making, the costs are (or should be) much lower than going down the custom design route. Making a WordPress or Wix site literally can take 15 minutes. So if you have a website maker who uses these platforms it is important to question why they charge so much to do what can effectively be done with a few hours of research.

This is really what gives us the edge over the hobby website makers who use these templates.

Each project Allcorp produces starts with a blank sheet of paper, not templates or pre-defined website shells. We design the website specifically to suit the client’s image and branding and also add design elements to further customise the website.

Try asking a Wix website maker to change some HTML or CSS properties in their website template and then watch the confused look appear on their face. These hobbyist website makers are not website designers, they are amateurs and the work they produce often reflects this concept.

A Wix website is indeed, the worst of the template bunch. They are very childlike templates and the clunky and slow nature of these sites not only look unprofessional (as we have seen from a few of the examples that crossed our studio floor this last month) but they are also less search engine friendly, wide open to being hacked (ask us for scary examples of this) and very susceptible to intermittent failure.

When you are considering getting a new website for your business it is important to ensure your chosen professional isn't relying on these paint by numbers templates. If they are promoting the WordPress or Wix type platform you really do need to question their abilities.

In the examples we have seen in the last month we saw 2 businesses who invested in Wix website makers and then had to spend all of the money again with us to get the job done in the right manner. So saving a few bucks on the process initially will most likely be something you aren't happy with in the long term.

As they say, those who buy on price usually buy twice! When it comes to your corporate identity online it makes sense to use a website design company who understands how to make websites from the core elements. Using someone who simply chooses a template that sort of suits your business is not giving your website the best chance to succeed.

News Corp is leading a charge to effectively eliminate the Google Search business services from Australia

As many of our regular readers and followers will know, Allcorp have been offering Google services since we commenced operation in the year 2000. We were so good at making the Google Search Ads products work for our clients that in 2015 we became an official Google Partner. (The first Google Partner in North Queensland).

We have seen a huge upturn in revenues being spent by our clients on Google Search Ads in the last 5 years that we've had to expand and employ more personnel to manage the Google Ads services we are managing for our clientele.

Why has there been such a swift upturn in Google Ads spending? There’s a simple answer… because it works. When a business is spending money on marketing they want to see returns on their investment. When we manage Google Ads marketing services for our clients we deliver these returns. If we didn't produce the correct results our non-contracted Google Ads clients would stop paying for the service. Every one of our Google Ads clients is not contracted to continuance. They can reduce, pause or stop their Google Ads services with Allcorp at any time. But they don't, and this is proof that the Google Ads system works.

As new marketing strategies with Google & Facebook begin to produce excellent results, advertisers are abandoning the newspaper advertising model

This has not pleased the people at the News Corp offices and they are now demanding that Google & Facebook agree to pay them for links that they drive to their websites.

This would be similar to your friend asking you where is a good restaurant to get lunch with you recommending a few places, and then demanding that the restaurant they dined at from your recommendation pay you a fee for the referral.

The Google system exists to connect people with whatever they are searching. Asking them to then pay the third party of recommendation is ludicrous. The third party can make their own money by selling subscriptions to their online content, such as what all of the News Corp publications currently provide. It is a safe assumption that the uptake of these online subscriptions has not been so successful. So now the next thing to do is to attack the media that is merely linking people to your website and demand that they pay.

What's even stranger is that the News Corp empire actually are Google Partners. When your rep from the local Cairns Post or Townsville Bulletin visits you to sell you advertising services he or she will actually recommend their clients embrace Google Ads and Facebook Ads - the same institutions they are attacking.

What's scary is that with this attack from News Corp on modern marketing systems, Google have reacted by saying that if their hand is forced to accept these draconian expectations from News Corp they will stop Australian businesses from having access to their Google Ads and Google Search services.

Would you really want to live in a world where we don't have access to Google and the amazing array of modern marketing tools it offers but still receive the Cairns Post and Townsville Bulletin delivered each morning? We've all moved on.

You probably have seen the Google video from Mel Silva, Managing Director for Google Australia, where she explains why there is a workable news code that doesn’t break Google Search that can accommodate the newspaper publishers. It is really a case of finding a working solution to the decline of journalism and old fashioned media outlets in Australia and this is what they are trying to accomplish.

Please inform yourself on this issue by watching the less than 2 minute video below from Google and make your own mind up about the problem our old media providers in Australia are causing and what we all might lose out on if they are successful.

Click here to watch the short video from Google

Other than this contentious issue, we have had a busy start to 2021 and look forward to working with everyone over the course of the year.