Apr 27

Let’s look at what marketing strategies are available.

All marketing strategies fall into either one of these two categories:
1. Online Marketing
2. Offline Marketing

How many Offline Marketing strategies are there?
1. Direct Marketing
2. Referral Marketing
3. Telemarketing
4. TV Advertisement
5. Radio Advertisement
6. Other Advertisement (advertisement on public transports, buildings, etc)
7. Trade Shows
8. Public Relations
9. Door to Door Marketing
10. Promotions / Discounts
11. & Much Much More……

How about Online Marketing?
1. Direct Response Marketing
2. Google Advertisement
3. Yahoo Advertisement
4. other Search Engine Advertisement (MSN, AltaVista, Excite, DMOZ etc)
5. Article Marketing
6. Online Public Relation
7. Affiliate Marketing
8. Online Viral Marketing
9. Online Competition Marketing
10. Email Marketing
11. & Much Much More……

Advice:
Never let your business depend on 1 single marketing channel or marketing strategy.

With at least 20 marketing strategies that I show you, take action & start implementing them one by one.

Every new marketing strategy you add for your business, you open up an extra stream of income flowing into your company.

Apr 27

Are you confused about these 2 important elements of business? You are not alone.

Nowaday, 94% of business owners, entrepreneurs & business tycoons do not know the difference
between Branding & Marketing.

So, they are not maximizing the corporate profits that they could have generated.

They are losing 37% to 370% sales that belong to them daily. If you want to stop losing all these sales/profits, keep on reading.

So, what is Branding?

Branding is Differentiation. It is what you do to differentiate your brand. It is what you do to
differentiate your company from other companies.

Example:

i. Apple brand itself as “COOL”. Apple differentiates itself from competitors by creating COOL
products.

ii. FedEx brand itself as “Overnight delivery”. FedEx differentiates itself from all other postage
service companies by being the first company that dedicates to overnight delivery.

Then, what is Marketing?

Marketing is strategies or tactics to communicate your differentiating idea (your brand) to
your target clients.

Without marketing, your differentiation or your brand is only known to you or few people around
you.

Example:

i. The founder of Apple can brand itself as “COOL”. Without marketing this idea to his target clients,
Apple’s cool products could have been only known to Steve Job.

There is a lot of well-known marketing tactics, such as Advertising, Public Relations, Direct
Marketing, Referral Marketing & Online Marketing.

To summarize, Branding is Differentiation.

It is USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for your business.
Once you identify your brand USP, then you implement marketing strategies to communicate your Brand to your target

To refresh your mind, Branding is Differentiation.

It is what you do to differentiate your brand.

It is what you do to differentiate your company from other companies.
Right now, I am going to guide you through 4 out of 10 strategies that you can use to differentiate
your company from other companies.

1. Sales Leadership
When your company sales are Top in market, you must leverage on this fact & clearly communicate
this to your target market.

Whenever you think of painkiller, which brand flashes across your mind?
You are right! It is Panadol.

It might not be the best product but they are top in term of worldwide sales.

Another example, DBS: Singapore Number 1 bank.

If your company can’t top the sales in a big market, you can identify a smaller category in which
your company is TOP.

Example 1: Instead of Singapore Top Book Store, it can be Singapore Top Online Ebook Store.
Example 2: Instead of Singapore Highest Return Mutual Fund, it can be Singapore Highest Return
Mutual Fund in September 2007. (a smaller category with Time as a criteria)

2. Performance Leadership

This is also a powerful strategy. Your company leads other companies in term of Performance.
A good example is FedEx. They achieve Overnight Delivery around the World.

3. Technology Leadership
Your company leads your competitors in term of Technology.
Example: Apple’s Iphone - complete touch screen mobile phone.

4. The Way Your Product is Made

In Indiana, United State, there is a delicious & successful pizza chain called Papa John’s Pizza.
If you are a pizza lover, you might know them.

How they differentiate themselves from other pizza chains?

It is about How Their Pizza Is Made.

Their pizza ingredients are made from fresh (never frozen) water-purified traditional dough, to
vine-ripened fresh-packed tomato sauce (which goes from the vine to the can in an average of six
hours) to cheese made with 100% mozzarella.

Are these 4 strategies applicable to your company?

Or you should ask, “How can I make one of these 4 strategies applicable to my company?”

Apr 18

Many of us Wrongly think that Email Blasting equals to Email Marketing.

If you are only doing Email Blasting, you are wasting time & effort in Marketing.

Email Blasting is useless but Email Marketing is powerful.

You may ask: “What is the difference?”

98% of companies are Email Blasting / Email Broadcasting to their database & try to generate sales, I know you are one of them. STOP this!

These are characteristics of Email Blasting:
i. The email content is focus on selling company product.
ii. It is a one time, unplanned email message.
iii. The marketing effect is very less.

Yet, Email Marketing is a well-planned marketing campaign that is executed by companies to achieve long term & impactful marketing effect. This approach is very mature in US market, yet companies in Asian countries are losing out for not implementing it or implementing it correctly. Many of them think Email Blasting / Email Broadcasting is Email Marketing.

Email Marketing consists of well-planned sequence of email messages that will be sent out according to day intervals that are pre-set. These email messages are a mixture of sales message (20%) & valuable information (80%) to your client. Besides, a complete Email Marketing campaign also includes a Subscription Area in corporate website to capture visitors email & information.

How are you able to capture the email & information?

The idea is straightforward. By providing them value-adding incentive (such as discount coupon, regular update of useful information), they are willingly  provide you the information. In this case, your email marketing campaign start to function as a Customer List Building machine. It automatically collects visitor contacts for you 24 hours per day.

Imagine as time passes by, you have 50,000 customers in your database, how useful this database is.

Remember, a sequence of email messages has long-lasting effect on your clients brain. (That’s why Advertisors has NEVER advertise only ONCE). Whenever they need your service, they think of you.

To summarize, a real Email Marketing campaign has the following characteristics:
i. The email content is more of education message instead of sales-oriented message
ii. It consists of minimum 6 email messages in a complete sequence
iii. It is a well-planned campaign
iv. The result is 250% - 680% better than Email Blasting
v. The marketing effect stays in subconscious of your clients no matter they are aware of it or not
vi. It is building customer list for you even when you are sleeping.

Apr 17

Before we can talk about why SEO work is important to online businesses, let us make sure we all understand exactly what it is. When you look it up in Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia, the definition is, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” ( organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.”  Now what exactly does that mean?

To break the definition down so it is more easily understood, simply put it means to improve your sites ability to be recognized by search engines by using specific keywords. An example of this would be; someone is looking for a crib and types crib into the search bar on their toolbar. The results listed are listed in order of SEO recognition. To increase the chances of new traffic you need to optimize the site for the search engines.  The clever and direct wording within a web page or article can tag your site SEO friendly or not.

When it comes to online business of any kind, is it not true that any online business can flourish if it has the proper traffic and exposure? Knowing that it seem logical that SEO would be able to make or break a web sites success? The more SEO friendly a site is the more traffic it receives.

What is SEO friendly? All SEO friendly means is a web site uses keywords or target words people use when making a search for a product or service online.  So how would you gain keyword recognition to become more SEO friendly? One way is to reword the content of your site to include the keywords one would use when talking or searching for your product or service. The other way is to be specific. Do not be vague when describing your product or the benefits of your product.

In conclusion, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a vital ingredient to any online business or web page! Without proper search engine recognition a website has little to no chance of targeting new traffic and potential clients or customers. In this day of increasing web run businesses you are as proximate as the word of the web. Get your site noticed and your business will boom.