The
Time Clinic recently interviewed Online Marketing Guru Lechelle De Vries,
Marketing and Sales Manager of SAbest, to get some really great brand advice
for our clients and secondly to find out more about Lechelle’s time management
strategies now that she has experienced The Time Clinic!
SAbest is one
of South Africa’s premier online marketing specialists that assist companies
with online marketing from websites, SEO, social media, online reputation
management and even infographic marketing – basically taking a company and
creating online visibility for the organisation. (Check them out at www.sabest.biz)
We asked
Lechelle more about her role. “My role involves making decisions. And I get
challenged on these decisions by management in order to stretch me, and this
has really helped me grow.” The Time
Clinic assists delegates with determining when to make strategic decisions. We
asked Lechelle if she found this module helpful? “Yes, in two different ways. From a sales
point of view and from a marketing perspective, it has been about moving time
around, and being cognisant of the fact that there are times of the day when
other people are aware of my vulnerabilities and tend to prey on me; it’s been
a huge growth curve. What has also
really helped is understanding biorhythms – my own and others – and planning
meetings around these times to get maximum results with this knowledge”.
We asked
Lechelle what the greatest time management challenges in her industry are? She
says, “it is important to realise this industry consists of a lot of
technically orientated people”, and she has observed that under stress,
technical types tend to react by calling meetings. The Time Clinic likes to
call this ‘overanalysis paralysis’ and meetings can be a way to disguise
procrastination. Lechelle finds the best
way to manage these situations is to allow meetings, but within limits, and to
communicate deadlines clearly.
Brand oriented
and creative companies also consist of a large amount of creative staff. These industries have been rated as amongst
the top three most stressful professions, comparable to air traffic
control. We asked Lechelle where the
incredible stress and pressure in the creative industry originates? “The
industry is definitely deadline driven, especially when we are dealing with
website optimisation issues. However, a
lot of stress in the industry does come from little respect for creatives in
South Africa as subject matter experts, and sometimes the client does not
always know best, however the industry is definitely client centred and clients
tend to dictate creative direction. ”
Lechelle further explained that South Africa has taken six years to
reach the same level of online maturity that most other countries would reach
within five due to our distrusting nature.
We asked Lechelle
about her predictions for the future trends in the industry and what advice she
can offer clients? She says things are
changing, and in the last few months, she has seen South Africans become far
more proactive and trusting with their online purchases. The future of commerce is definitely electronic,
following trends of countries like the UK where 95% of people’s purchases takes
place online. Her advice for businesses?
“It doesn’t help having a brand and not
being seen. And if you’re going to be
seen, you need to be seen by the same person at least three times. Cutting marketing budgets will negatively
affect the bottom line. Familiarity
results in affiliation, and affiliation results in sales. Everything works in threes. The brain processes things in threes. Make sure you get seen three times, even if
you have to use the same media three times to get noticed.”
Thank you for
that great advice Lechelle. In closing,
we would just like to say, Time Clinic, Time Clinic, Time Clinic. And now that you have seen that three times,
we look forward to seeing you all on our next course!
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