If the social media is the one that unifies everyone of us, mobile phones are the ones that allows us to access the unified social media.  And the QR codes are the footprints everywhere that we can use on our mobile phones to access the certain information which can be the Internet or some secret codes for sales promotions, etc.

But is it really ok for any of us to use QR codes openly?  Isn’t there any patent rights for any of us to use QR codes?

Some history about QR codes is that QR codes are invented by Toyota’s subsidiary company.  It is being used for identifying the parts of their products.

So what can we do with QR codes?

Here’s some of my thoughts about its usage.

Firstly, we can use it to attract potential customers to access a secret website to get themselves registered as privileged customers.  That’s one potential basis that we can work towards.

Secondly, we can use it to allow potential customers to send sms to us so that they can subscribe their mobile phones to our mobile newsletters.  Doing it this way, we will be able to manage a database of mobile phones to market to them.

Thirdly, we can use it to send short messages as well.  It is possible for the mobile phones to generate QR codes as well.  So, they can send the QR codes to us to verify their customer record to enjoy discount.

Just some thoughts about its possibilities.  What do you think?

If you are continuing to tell the world in an one-way communication, you are going to waste your time on social media. People dislike the kind of professionalism that you are faking to portray. People are asking you questions on your facebook page when you seem to be ignoring. These socially asked questions (SAQs) are often taken offline by the companies because they are afraid of heating up an argument with the rest of the fans as well while trying to resolve a real problem. Whichever method that you are trying to do, there must be a closure to the SAQs so that others will understand how to resolve the same issue.

At the end of the day, you will notice that you are not marketing anymore. You are only engaging with your customers about the products that they have bought from you. In fact, I have also mentioned before that marketing is not a department actually.

There are so many things that you can do in the mobile market. At the very least, you can create a mobile website to allow all mobile devices to access your information easily. There are also location-based services that we can make use of to provide promotions when the people are nearby a certain shop. How about integrating all these things with QR codes so that they can get promotional discounts by scanning the QR codes found in the magazines? There are much more things that you can do with the abilities of the mobile phones!

I have not even mentioned about the creation of mobile applications. This may sound intimidating to you but there are many services out there which are able to get you started a mobile app by using mobile websites and HTML5.

Have you started yours already?

Then, it comes with a blind spot of web marketing where it incorporates marketing communications, public relations and information systems.  Suddenly, everybody is so confused which department this web marketing guy should stay in… Should it be in IT dept?  Should it be with Marcom dept?  Should it be with PR dept?  Should it even be a department of its own?  Some people even treat web marketing as an operational person who helps them to put up information on the website.

Interestingly, web marketing is a discipline of its own.  By right, it deserves a department of its own simply because it is taking care of the entire company’s stakeholders, except for those involve in backoffice operations.  Companies will usually place web marketing in Marcom/PR department because they will need this web marketing team to assist them in the web communications.  On the other hand, the web marketing team will need Marcom/PR team to assist with the copywritings and the Marcom look and feel.  It blended so well that a lot of people simply put Marcom/PR/Web as one department.  On the other hand, some companies treated web marketing as an IT operation since they are needed by all stakeholders in the company (just like IT dept which is needed by all as well).

The scope of web marketing encompasses IT skills, design skills, HTML/CSS scripting skills, server-side scripting skills, a little good command of English, understanding of the world of web, social media activities and also understanding of the company’s products and services.  It is neither a IT scope of work, nor a Marcom/PR scope of work.  The companies will be doing themselves a disservice if they were to treat web marketing as an IT scope.  I would think IT is a huge discipline of its own where it involves security, servers, programming, computer health and making sure our day-to-day work is being fulfilled.  It is kinda confusing for any non-IT person to see the different association, but it is not going to be easy for any company to understand this simply because they don’t really get themselves involved in the web that much themselves.

If you check wikipedia, web marketing actually means web business. It refers to the business side of things where web is concerned. Web marketing must be able to translate the business into the web where html codings are concerned. And html may requires you to understand server side of things.

Frankly, it is not easy to find such a person who is able to do such a role because of the multiple talents it required. But to achieve such a role, you must be actively involved in internet activities while equipping yourself with IT knowledge. An entrepreneurial and creative mindset is also important because you will need to develop new ways of get the pieces of jigsaw puzzles together. It is like finding one person who is an IT person, web designer, marcom, pr, community manager and even a content manager.

I was trying to renew my road tax via an Internet portal today.  When the portal transferred the link to a payment site, it pops up a new window for me to ask me my choice of bank to make the payment.  I gladly chose my bank, and a warning came to me saying that I have to check if my browser or 3rd party is blocking pop-ups.  Hence, my entire transaction was ruined and I couldn’t retry my transaction immediately because the portal detects another transaction in progress.

Why would you want to use pop-up window?

I just find it very weird over here.  ”You” have a reputable website, and you have everything in place nicely.  That one last thing you have done is to create a pop-up window and expecting your clients’ browsers not to use it… Since you had already expected such thing to happen, isn’t it easier not to have that little pop-up?  It has just wasted my time doing that transaction and I have to wait for probably a couple of hours or so.

No pop-up please… especially when your customer is about to buy!

Pop-up can help to convert people – who are about to abandon their shopping cart – into sales.  Probably you might want to use it only at that point… It is feasible since there is no harm trying it even if it is being blocked by pop-up blockers.  If it is blocked, forget it and try converting other leads.

But to think of using pop-up for making an online transaction is probably the silliest thing I have seen… It not only ruins the customers’ mood of buying, it is probably one of the main reasons for your low sales in your online portal.

Use DIV layers instead…

If you must use pop-up for certain issues, why not consider a layer popup?  It doesn’t create a new window anyway, and there wouldn’t be any blocker for such thing to ruin the transactions…

Just think about it

As the Internet is evolving to become social and even more alive than television and radio (with two way communications), it is not longer logical to have a webdata-entry clerk to update the websites with new information and new graphic designs.  In any company who only has one webdata-entry clerk, they will need to have at least two or more people to work on the websites.

A web executive team will typically consist of the following:

1. Webdata-entry clerk – who updates the web contents for business-as-usual process
2. Graphic designer – who modifies the graphics needed by the webdata-entry clerk
3. Interactive executive - who handles email direct mailer templates, interactive web banners, and web forms for taking in visitors’ input
4. Internet community manager – who has experience in social media communications, and managing visitors’ comments in forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc
5. Customer Relationship Marketing manager – who works hand-in-hand with interactive person and Internet community manager, focusing to increase customer loyalties
6. Web marketing manager – who works with the web team in building a strategy and executing it with the help of the web team (also to see to the needs of the stakeholders)

And to save unnecessary cost, it is still logical for some people to double up to take on more than 1 job positions mentioned above.

Unfortunately for many web supermen out there (who take up all 6 job positions), a lot of companies out there are still thinking that they only need a webdata-entry clerk and to outsource the other parts to the agencies.  What they are missing is that managing the outsourced agencies are actually the roles and responsibilities of the different job positions mentioned above.  And to make things worse, it sounds logical to most of the top management and it seems that things are still moving properly.  What they are missing is that the things are moving at constant speed with zero acceleration… And as time passed, the speed could be decelerating so they will just hire some temp staff to bring it back to constant speed.

Things will change for the better in the near future for sure because of the increasing pressure from social media… It’s just about WHEN this realization will be attained…

If they can understand this simple meaning, they will put in more manpower to focus on this online media more.  Instead of parking the huge amount of money on the traditional media and wooing the same crowd every time, money could be spent once and we can market to the same group of people again and again (while the group keeps on growing larger and larger!).  And the online media is measurable for its Return-Of-Investment because we will be able to understand the traffic conversion rates, and seeing how many people actually become customers. In the traditional media, we can only guess a rough figure of how many eyeball impressions it receives (nobody knows if the traditional media is bluffing, anyway they can’t get the real figures) and yet we don’t know how many people are actually interested before they gave up.

Needless to say, it is even more powerful if we can combine both offline and online media.  Bringing in the traffic from the traditional media to the online media, and converting them.  But my experience was telling me previously that the likelihood of someone to take note of your URL on the website in traditional media is very small because they are reading too many things at the same time (information overload).

Generally, it is difficult to justify in a company that they need a team to focus on online marketing initiatives mainly.  They will usually employ one person to be fully in charge of the websites, or to get someone – who is working mainly on other things – to work on the websites on the way.

Well, it sounds logical for any company to do such a thing.  It’s because their main business is usually from the traditional brick-and-mortar shops.  And it seems to them that it doesn’t justify the reason why a team of two (or more) is needed.

No, it is actually nothing to do with manpower issue really. It is an issue that every management team needs to address. And the reason is simple.  They are more focused on direct sales which is very straight to the point. If you ask any salespeople, they can only tell you that they make money by approaching strangers or vice versa.  Whether it is a door-knocking approach to the strangers, or strangers coming for a big event, you can actually feel it… touch it… and explain it if the potential customers are not familiar.

But when they wanted to start a fresh new online campaign, it will usually be killed because of the lack of manpower in this focus.  All of them have other things to do anyway.  Who is going to focus on the online campaign?  Even if there is a full time employee (not a team) working on the online marketing, it wouldn’t be a full focus because this person has many other things to do as well.

Let me explain why it is not possible even if there is a dedicated person in charge of the websites.  It is simply because this person is always being treated as a data-entry clerk who knows about web design. Data entry is also a full-time job by itself! It is nothing of an executive role, and is a very boring job of its own as time passed.  If the company is recognizing the importance of online marketing, it will not dedicate 1% of its manpower on the website, and 99% on everything else.  And interestingly, 99% of the manpower always have something to update and they depend solely on this 1% to work for them.

It is not easy to convince the management unless they are looking at it from the operations point of view.  Somebody got to explain it clearly how things work, but it is never easy to explain because nobody (even myself) is able to see the merits of having a team to work on the website from the management point of view since it has been like this for many years.  And for many years, all of us can understand that the websites are nothing more than an online brochure to update contents only because social media wasn’t really established at that time.  Today, the websites need a team of data entry clerk, community manager, and an online marketing executive.

What do you think about this?  Do you think the website is still one part of the marketing communications department in the company?  Is sales department also needed to be involved in the website?  How about dedicating more than 1 persons to work on the websites?  Do we really need a team?  Or just 1 person is good enough?

Senior bosses are not engaging themselves in social media personally

There is a resistance from corporations to engage themselves in the social media.  The reason is very simple.  That’s because most of them are managed by senior bosses who are not very savvy about (or even opening themselves into) social media, but on the other hand, they are very used to watching and listening to televisions, radio, newspapers and magazines.

In fact, most of the older generations are anti-socialmedia actually

One very simple question to ask: How many uncles and aunties – do you know of – are using the social media actively without conservation?  Most of the people, I do know of, are simply refusing to open a Facebook account.  And when I ask them of their reasons, I always don’t get any honest answer at all.  But I do believe it has to do with their conservative thoughts; They don’t like to share their thoughts with the world.  And if they open a Facebook account, they will not want to befriend strangers.  Many of them don’t want to befriend with their colleagues as well.  Or if they know of this friend who will befriend with everybody he knows (I am a good example), they will not want to befriend this friend because they are afraid of being exposed to other uninvited friends.

I simply wonder… How long will it take for the older generations to embrace the social media gracefully without reservations?  I believe it has to do with the culture and habits that they have been living with.

The problem is that the senior bosses are the final decision makers in the corporations

With the senior bosses (of the older mindset of anti-socialmedia) in place, it is very hard for the corporations to move into the new media effectively.  We can’t really blame anybody actually… That’s because they are not familiar with the environment (or actually they are just being anti), it is very hard for them to decide to buy into the unfamiliar idea.

Moreover, the very reason for them not to engage personally into the social media is because they are afraid of being exposed to negative comments.  They thought that it will only “ruin” their career advancement.  They have been hiding behind their brand for so many years, and to ask them to stand in front of their brand it’s like asking them to “open a can of worms”.

Many companies are very used to thinking of selling their products from the positive perspective.  To ask them to participate in social media, it’s like showing the whole world what other consumers are really thinking – which will definitely involve negative perspectives.  They are not used to handling negative perspectives openly because they are now handling the media (the consumers have effectively become citizen journalists now).

Another problem is that the corporations are not catered to such social media needs

Another interesting part to note is that the entire corporations may need to restructure completely just for the social media.  Because the consumers are now citizen journalists, it is not only belonging to the job of a customer service officer but to the public relations officer as well.  There is a cross-linked problem that who should handle such a customer who is complaining on a public domain.

Many corporations chose to ignore such a problem.  It’s not because they don’t want to handle it, but because they don’t have such a personnel to handle such a complaint!  For those complaints on newspapers’ forum page, they have PR personnel handling it.  But for those complaints on Internet, they are unofficial most of the time.  By default, they should be handled by the CS officer, but on the other hand, it is also a public complaint no doubt.  Or, should it be the role of a Customer-Relationship-Management officer to handle the Internet media?

Solution: I believe a new internet department may be the solution to manage the web presence framework… But how many senior bosses really see its justification?

Can social media courses really help?

There is a rise in the number of people taking up social media courses.  Many people thought that the social media courses can help them to understand better about social media.

I think that is not very true.  In my opinion, social media courses are more like helping you to understand what is available in the market today, but not about tomorrow!  They will show you the choices to make for the social media today and what you can do to help in your grand plan about internet marketing.

What really works is that these participants must have a brainwash about the social media first before they indulge themselves into it.  It’s like asking them about the pros and cons of using the television ads, radio ads, or newspapers ads.  Many of them are already so familiar with such things simply because they are believers themselves!  They read newspapers… They watch televisions… They read magazines, etc.  In other words, they should start participating in social media themselves!  (But again, it’s quite against their conservative policy…)

No choice? So you need to outsource to agencies to help?

Social media marketing is a growing process by itself.  If you need to outsource to an agency to help you, the agency will definitely do a good job in the end by leveraging on your monetary resources and learning how to do a better social media marketing strategy.  It’s either you learn it, or your agency will learn it.  If you have a huge budget, you can have a quick turnaround time to create a social media marketing strategy with your appointed agency.  But that will mean that you are dependent to your agency for the rest of your life.  That’s because you will never know how to maintain the growth of the social community by yourself.  Everybody makes mistakes (including your agency).  It’s either you make mistakes now while your community is very small, or you make mistakes later when you have a huge community.  It’s your choice!

At the very least, I would think that you should be the one handling your customers in the social media directly or indirectly!

Web presence management framework is a long term strategy

Whether you are going to work on it yourself or with your agency, creating a presence in the social media is a long term plan.  There is a timeline to it, but this is usually a never-ending plan.  Don’t you think it’s a waste to close a campaign when you have built up a community of more than 10,000 fans?  If it’s really a short-term campaign like a Product Launch (with only 1 year’s lifespan), bring it forward and invite them to another Product Launch campaign again and again!

As for the long-term campaign (such as building brand awareness), there is really no such thing as termination clause!  I have ever asked a couple of web agencies about such a clause, none of them is able to answer me properly because the only way out is to cross sell them to another campaign (if your campaign needs to terminate definitely).

Corporate website is still necessary

At the very least, corporate website is a symbol of trust to the consumers.  They confirm the consumers that they are going to get these products for sure.  It is still a representative for any company who treasures their branding for both online and offline world.  It may be possible to ask your consumers to go to your Facebook page for more information about your products, but it is really for the branding presence to tell them your domain name only.  Why would you want to advertise for Facebook?  Moreover, we will never know if Facebook is going to last forever or not.  Before the Facebook days, we were all still using Friendster for years!  I thought I will be on Friendster for the rest of my life… But now, I am thinking of terminating my Friendster account because I don’t touch it anymore even though they are still alive and kicking!

Make a combination of both Corporate website and Web Presence Management Framework

Both are essential in our online marketing strategy.

Social media is necessary to build brand awareness to the potential consumers.  Some of the experienced social media users are actually thinking that it is useless to start a Facebook fan page.  I would like to think of it in the perspective of building awareness more than anything else.  I can still remember in 2004 when I was doing sales, my sales manager was telling me that I need to give my name cards to as many people as possible.  Whether or not they are buying from me, it is still important because of the awareness and to remember me when they need to buy in future.

Corporate website is also necessary because it is the headquarter to go to for any references.  Basically, it has to provide brochures for the visitors to understand what they can buy from you at least.  With the social elements added to it, it will reinforce what you have been doing for your corporate website!  Contact form will be helpful for both pre-sales and after-sales.  Email addresses with your own corporate website will always be good for your company branding as well.

Different marketing philosophies

First of all, an Ad Agency tends to talk about the goodness of interruptive marketing.   The “bigger” your brand logo, the better visibility to interrupt the public to get a lot of “eyeball impressions”.  Frankly speaking, I don’t think that eyeball impression is that important if there is only a small fraction of them who are interested in your company.

On the Internet, we are talking about tracking, analysis, conversions, etc.  It’s all about showing the right things to the right people.  And this can be achieved by showing only the relevant contents together

1. when the public is searching for that certain keywords,
2. when the public is reading an interesting article,
3. or even when the public is searching actively for your product directly!

Then, it’s all about converting the right people into prospectives…

Then, the prospectives into potential buyers…

Then, the potential buyers to become customers…

Then, the customers to become after-sale customer support…

Then, the customers continue to buy more from us again and again and again…

Push versus Pull

Secondly, the Ad Agency will only know how to push information to the public even when they don’t feel like watching it.  For example, we are not interested to brands everywhere we go when we are not looking for them and yet they seem to be hunting after us.  For example, is it really important for Facebook to inform the world that they are employing?  In my opinion, Facebook is using the Pull factor to look for interested applicants only.  They are not interested in pushing the information out because it may be costly to use other people’s media, and it is also an interruptive marketing to me.  I feel this somehow “cheapens” the job value if they actually do that…

Internet marketing focuses more on the Pull factor.  Yes, there are a lot of people who are pushing very hard to spam everybody that they are selling certain products… This only causes us to delete the email and forget about it… For sure, some may just got interested about it… But looking from a big picture, it really irritates most of us!  Pull factor refers to showing information only when the people are looking for it.  This is definitely more valuable because we are now living in the world of overloaded information, and it is terrible to see so much information which we are not interested in.  That’s where Google really shines when they can find the most relevant search results amongst all the search engines out there!

Website design

Please remember that graphic design is not the same as web design!  Programming is also not the same as web design!  Web design is a very unique set of skills which involves creativity and a logical mindset.  Hence, it requires your left and right brain!  While you may be creative in your work, you will need to do all these things in the form of programming at the backend!  Or, while you are good at programming, creativity plays a huge role in getting up a successful website!   And to make things worse, you have to have online marketing knowledge to optimize your landing pages!

There is a problem here… The type of work done with the print is usually about graphic design…. TV Ads may also involved programming… But, all these things have nothing to do with landing page optimization!  Which means that there is no real optimization allowed to increase sales conversions.

It also means that we are now facing a very big issue if we were to ask a multi-purpose agency to help us with the web design!

Anyway, that’s just my thoughts… What do you think?

Long time ago, the client computers have very low specifications in terms of graphics, memory, hard disk and CPU speed.  That’s because we rely on the centralized servers to process the information, while we only use keyboard to enter the information in a black screen (with no fancy graphics to appreciate).

Very soon, there is an increasing need for the client computers to be more powerful (if not it will be the same or even better than servers).  The main usage is to watch videos, listen to music, play games and so on… People don’t like the boring black screen, and they want something more.

Then, the Internet came into play between the servers and client computers.  Everyone of us simply use a web browser to surf the websites, install messenger programs to chat with our friends, and do many other things leveraging on the power of our computers as well as the servers.

Only this recently… With all the various tools created by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe and so on, the power is now given back to the servers again!  We can almost work on anything with the use of a web browser only… We can use Google Doc to create our word documents and excel spreadsheets… We can use WordPress with Thesis to create almost any kind of website (not just a blog like the one you are reading right now). You can even use Pixlr to edit any images that you need!

Probably, the only things that we cannot use the power of a web browser is when we need to create videos and audio… I believe it’s just a matter of time as the whole world is now moving into an even faster Internet speed.

The only requirement that every client computer needs to have are: the latest version of web browsers, Java and Adobe Flash Player.

You probably don’t need to bring a laptop anymore in everywhere you go if you are doing an online business…