Charles Lau

Having a marketing mind is indeed very important.  But it’s a totally new ball game over here.  Online speaks about just-in-time.  It means that your marketing materials must come in just-in-time for that particular event to come along.  It’s usually last minute, and if you manage to create this campaign over a month or so, you must be really blessed.

Accuracy of wordings (i.e. marketing communications)

The offline world speaks about accuracy in every word.  We are not talking that the online world write the wrong words.  It’s just that a little bit of spelling mistake is almost unavoidable.  And it’s usually very much more obvious.

No matter what website it is, I may sometimes find some human errors in terms of the wordings.  It’s not on purpose for sure, but it’s just how the information needs to go so fast that the number of times to vet through is almost zero.

Accuracy of information

Sometimes, just-in-time information may be erroneous.  Even newspapers and magazines do make mistakes too.  It’s just that we can’t possibly verify every single detail that we write on the web.  Or else, that will not be juicy news.  Allowing the relevant parties to vet through is as good as asking that person to modify it to their advantage.

Hence, the online bloggers (i.e. the fake journalists) will usually publish their thoughts, experience, and account of what actually happened.  It may be right or wrong.  But at the end of the day, we usually need more than 1 web sources to verify the information.  For example, can somebody tell me if Megan Fox is a guy or girl?

More eyeball impressions versus targeted visitors

Because it is very hard to determine who will be attracted by your offline marketing campaigns, it is better to look from the point of eyeball impressions.

In the online world, there are simply too much impressions to take care of.  Hence, we talk about targeted traffic – people who actually bother to find out more about us on the web.  And because the server is able to handle much more requests, it is able to filter out the unwanted visitors, and the actual salesperson will take over the role of converting the visitors who are already being pre-sold!

Offline Marketing Are Wasting Lots Of Papers!

Lastly, I know it may be out of point but I wish to say this… The offline marketing people are usually wasting more papers (i.e. very environmental unfriendly).  I know that their marketing information are already in the form of printed papers, they still need to vet through on draft papers again…

Yes, the online people may print on papers sometimes to vet through the information.  I would think most of the people are not printing papers to vet through.  That’s because we should vet through from the computer because that’s where our customers are watching!

While the offline world is filled with lots of sponsorship and  people seem to be embracing them, the online world seems to have difficulty playing the same sponsorship  game as Google does not acknowledge sponsored links.  We have to respect Google in their direction because they have helped to mould the rules of how Internet games should be played.

Some websites ignored Google

We can see some websites ignoring Google as they don’t think that’s the only way to do an online business.  They get their traffic from social media and other websites.  They also work with sponsorship programs with other websites.  They are creating a world which the traditional media has been doing all along.  That is to work in partnership with larger media and to create a “loud noise” to the unknown untargeted world out there.

Some websites obeyed Google

Some websites want to work with Google as their partnership as they will be able to create a constant flow of targeted traffic, looking  for that particular keywords.   In the long run, Google is still the preferred choice because we will want to explore many other websites which I still can’t find any better websites which can do that currently.

Some websites tried to trick Google

Some websites just want to make a balance between getting Google’s incoming traffic, while working on their usual sponsorship program.  They may or may not know how to obey Google rules.  But they just work on their websites like a traditional media. i.e. They just work on the contents, and ask for sponsorship by advertising on certain high-traffic  webpages.

Some websites tried to balance sponsorship with Google

These websites know the Google game, making sure that every sponsorship program will adopt “nofollow” attribute in it.  It can be quite a blindspot when we should adopt “nofollow” or not.  But looking from the Wikipedia’s point of  view where they get a lot of targeted traffic from  Google, Wikipedia simply adopt “nofollow” on every link.  It’s easier this way anyway!

Conclusion

Can we still buy sponsored links?  Looking from TechCrunch, Problogger and Mashable, they must be enjoying a lot of traffic from Google while working on their sponsored links.  One idea is to actually use redirect links or “nofollow”.  What do you think?

Thanks KC for sharing with me this video. Everybody wants websites to link to them.  It’s a great way to bring in the traffic especially when the websites are very targeted.  The usual ways are to buy sponsored links (which Google don’t really like as providing “link juice”).  But to think of creative ways to attract links to you is considered as a “whitehat linkbait” by Matt Cutts.

Watch this video from Matt Cutts explaining one example of creating a linkbait from twitter.

When I saw this video, something just starts to bother me.  To get someone to link you, you have to do it in a creative way so that people will link you without asking for it.  That must be the clue given by Matt Cutts as a whitehat linkbait.

Do you have creative ways to generate whitehat linkbaits?

We may not have creative minds to help us to think of ways to get linkbacks.  But what can we really do?  I think that the very basic thing that we must do on our website is to create the contents that people will want to see.  It may not be the best contents out there, but it must be genuinely helpful.  This will attract Google to give you more traffic, and that is through the number of links to you from external websites.  If you are genuinely good, you will tend to attract a lot of people who are interested in you and will keep on looking out for more.  It may eventually create linkbacks.  Anyway, with the social media around, all of us may not need to have a website to link you anymore! We just need our Twitter, Facebook, or even just a blogger account!

So you have creative mind!

Ok that is a good thing.  But again, this is kinda subjective to blackhat and whitehat when you have the creativity to create linkbaits.  And also, I would think that the contents should hold some “water” when we actually read it.  It really displeases me when I see contents which are really bad on Twitter…

Seriously speaking, I have already given up thinking so much about creative linkbaits… Just focus my part and create my own branding online is more important than anything else.

A website means a lot to me.  It gives an instant presence of someone to the world.  It tells the world whatever you want to tell the world.

Whichever way this website is being built, it doesn’t really matter.  That is not going to determine how successful you are going to be.  Building a website  can be very easy,  or it can be very hard.  It doesn’t matter anyway.

Some people simply used templates and existing hosted services to help them get up and running. They can be even more successful than another one who builds a few websites which can costs a million  dollar and yet not as successful.

The feeling is very good to build a website which costs 6 digits.    However, it’s the process that matters to me.  I value every step taken in making the site to the  next stage.  It feels even better when I can spend only $100  and make thousands of dollars out of it.

Some businesses only take website as only one part of the whole picture.  It is really terrible to think that way.  That’s because a website is as good as a live brand out there representing your business!  And it can be disastrous if your website has been referenced many times for anything  that is bad online and yet you know nothing about it!

I take every website seriously.  Sometimes, design really matters in terms of brand packaging.  However, it’s the working contents that make visitors click.  Content is so important that we can never ignore the power of online copywriting.

Online copywriting is slightly different from offline copywriting.  Online copywriting speaks about search engine optimization, human reading optimization (i.e. allowing the visitors to read easily on the web), and also landing page optimization (content should be placed at which portion).

Every opportunity that makes online initiatives can really excite me a lot and I really read inside out what it is about.  I must say that I am a person who can see both big picture and small picture of a business.  I’ve been “forced” to train to do that since my first business till today.  A person must look at the big picture so that he can focus correctly in the small things being part of the picture.  A person must also look at the small picture where it provides the details of making the event a big success!

Whenever there is a new website, always ask ourselves what’s the objective of starting this website.  It must be crystal clear or else your visitors will not be clear what you want them to do.   It also  helps in the  everyday little things that you do.

I have talked about interruptive marketing recently.  It is really irritating to communicate with someone whom you don’t know while that someone tries to be familiar with you.  When I saw a known company selling marketing database where you can choose different age group, different company positions, etc, it got me into thinking how interrupting this company can be by “educating” their clients that it is ok to interrupt.

Different types of interruptive marketing

I can understand that they are trying to establish their sales here.  They are trying to do all sorts of approach that they can think of to hit that jackpot of cash.  But the inability to understand interuptive marketing can really keep your morale really low because you can only get your work completed once for every 10 attempts that you make!  It’s like gambling here!

There are different types of interruptive marketing:

1. Cold calling on our phones
2. Spamming our email addresses
3. Throwing brochures into our houses
4. Cold approaching us in the street
5. Referral cold approach (asking friends to refer, in the end their friends got scolded…)

A friend of mine showed me a URL which I think it is interesting to show all of you.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html 

This is a telephone script which counter-attacks telemarketeers.

We all know that most telemarketeers have a telephone script behind to follow on.  If the prospect answers Yes, what should the telemarketeer say? If No, what should the telemarketeer do? It’s all inside their scripts.

Found this script is a little more humorous than to use it actually.

My experience is that I ever asked back the telemarketeer how he or she got my number.  The standard answer is that they got it from a list which they cannot say.  And my standard answer is that I cannot say what they want to know either.  It’s really irritating to hear from these people.

Interruptive marketing does work at times

Of course, there are times when I am really interested.

I don’t mean that interruptive marketing don’t work. 

To a certain extend, every permission marketing actually starts with an interruptive marketing.  But it always starts with a 2-time approach instead of a direct approach.

(Ok, let me try to explain in a story below of how interruptive marketing turns into permission marketing…  There was once I got ridiculed for trying to explain this analogy which I ended up unable to.  haha)

Story of how Interruptive marketing turns into permission marketing

When a boy is interested in a girl he don’t know, he can choose two ways:

1. He can ask the girl to be his girlfriend immediately if she agrees.
2. He can talk to the girl first, and slowly get her interested.  That’s called “chasing”, “wooing”, etc.

Approach 1: My analogy here is that most interruptive companies like to use the first approach where they are playing a “number game” here.  For every 100 girls that he asked, there might be 1 girl who is interested to be his girlfriend.  We don’t say that the chance is a no, but it is just a very low chance.  But that’s exactly how many interruptive marketing companies actually approached!  They just spent enough money packaging themselves on the outside such as hair, clothes, shoes, watch, etc.  Then, they will simply go out there whacking with whatever that they have, till they hit their sales target!  So what happens after that?  They will usually have  no time to entertain their existing customers because they are busy with new prospects.

Approach 2: If this interruptive company is willing to sit down with one potential prospect, talking to her, drinking with her, and enjoying the moments with her.  Then get her number slowly.  Sms with her, chatting with her on the phone.  And going out for dates.  And the moment comes when he pops up the question… This is where I think permission marketing is correctly done!  Isn’t that a wonderful thing?

Approach 1 will only create unsatisfied customers.  Approach 2 will create happy customers.  Customers do change over the time.  Companies need to listen to them, instead of going out there to look for new ones trying to understand what they want.

Ok enough said.  Let’s take a look below to further explain a little bit here.

Conclusion

I hope I have been able to explain that analogy better this time.  With the video above that simply tells a lot about our consumer change and with so much information bomboarding us, the best approach today is to retain and to listen to our prospects.  Forget about the number game… Go and build a relationship with your customers.  Understand them and make them happy!  That’s all I have to say.  Take care guys and girls!  :)

Photo Credit: markhillary

Direct selling has always been tough. We have insurance agents, real estate agents, mlm agents and many others doing a lot of cold calling to many people who don’t want to buy.

To the direct sellers, it’s all about number game. But the number is almost as good as gambling when you only win once out of 10 times. It’s a real test of their patience and emotions because they have been stressed by their commission-based income. They simply have to make more sales.

It’s common to see these direct sellers out in the street, approaching us as though they know us, trying to break the ice within 10 seconds! If not, the talk is over!

If only these direct sellers built websites…

In my opinion, website is a way that allows us to gather a community out of it. This community is interested in something about you. It’s definitely something beneficial to them in one way or another.

These direct sellers could have spent an hour of their time doing something on the web.

It can be any of the following:
1. Blog about the benefits of having insurance. Encourage comments amongst visitors, and start pre-selling your services.
2. Write an ebook about buying and selling real estates, and visitors can get them in exchange of their emails. You can start doing permission marketing out of it.
3. Write a report about 7 ways to a better health, and request emails in exchange. You should start building a group of people interested in your products.

And the list just goes on…

It’s really not about having a fantastic looking website when you are doing direct selling.
It’s about building a community out of it.

It’s not easy, but it’s fun and it’ll just expand once you get the right formula..

I have started several kinds of website projects.  I tried working on my first website back in 1997 with a good childhood friend of mine.  All I needed to do is to sign up with Geocities and get my website up and running.  Later in 1998, we realize that domain names are so easily accessible.  All I did was to ask my sister to use her credit card to purchase my first domain!  That was when I had my first web hosting plan which is hosted by a company in United States.

I do realized that website has its potential to tell the world who you are, and it was really cool to have our very own homepage about ourselves.  Every website that I have created, whether it is a collaborative effort or not, seems to have its own personality which starts to surface through its design and copywriting.

Below are two examples of what I mean

When you create a website which contains all your products, the focus of this site will be more on your company rather than its products.  But when you pick one of your products and create a website out of it, the focus will be about your product more than your company.  The focus about your company will not be as strong, and I think that is very good for new product launches.

Another example will be the rising sales letters that we see out there.  It has been true and tested that sales letters have created many millionaires out there.  When a person chanced upon a sales letter, the only function that the sales letter does is to convince the visitor to buy.  It sure does turn off some of the visitors who don’t like hard selling.  But with a little pre-selling information out there about this product, the pre-sold visitors will then buy their products almost immediately because they know that they are going to benefit from it.

Don’t create too many focuses on a single website

I don’t believe a website can achieve so many things at one go.  If there is, there must have been a lot of planning and testing till it really works.  One-stop website sounds easy to create, but it is actually very much harder to maintain and to keep the visitors remember what you have to offer unless you have absolute exclusive on it.  And I personally believe that only companies who have deep pockets will be able to create a website with so many focuses because they will have so many sections to work on which requires a lot of manpower behind!

Conclusion

So, whatever website that you do, do remember what you want to achieve out of it.  That’s because your visitor will be equally as confused of what you want them to do when you have too many things on your website that you wish to tell them about!

Oh by the way, Geocities is closing this year.

Photo credit: Kashif Khawaja

After blogging about how Singapore companies spam us, I have just received a new spam from a well-known IT company in Singapore who has a database to sell.  First of all, I don’t know how I got this email from this company when I have not given them any permission for emailing me.  Secondly, they are preaching exactly what they are doing right then (which is to mass-email to the database who don’t know that their emails are with this company!).

I think that the Singapore companies’ understanding about spam is out-dated.  It’s really no longer about sending that first email to the person, and putting in an unsubscribe link below.  One of the well-known companies is even worse; they didn’t put in the unsubscribe link at all.  I replied directly to that email to ask them to put the “unsubscribe” link, but there’s no answer.  And I continue to receive another one without the unsubscribe link.

Well, we can’t really blame any of them.  They are still pretty new to the new media.  They are only too familiar with TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.  But have they really wonder how they actually react to the spams that they are getting everyday?

Another scenario.  I have just signed up with an online service with a Singapore-based website.  This website actually asks me if it is ok for 3rd party merchants to email promotional information.  I put that as OK.  But I really wonder if they did it by selling the database to the merchants to spam us, or they are using this media on behalf of their 3rd party merchants.  I would prefer the 2nd choice because that will mean I know it’s from them…

Teaching people how to make money online is a good business. With the increasing number of retrenchment in the job market, the recession is encouraging people to either look for another job or to start a business.

Researching on the internet is almost the next natural step to look into when looking for a job opportunity or a business opportunity.

And that’s where the make-money-online websites are here to teach you how to make money online.

So what’s the problem with that? I would say that more than 80% of the websites are probably not really setting good examples of themselves making money online. That’s absolutely fine for me.

The only problem is that some of these sites claim to be making six figures themselves when they are actually not. Some of the misleading call-to-action buttons suggested to us to learn how to make six figures with their e-course when it’s obvious that the instructors are not making six figures.

Some of you may show your sympathy to these so-called six-figures websites that they are doing a business and they need to pretend. However, the internet is a more transparent platform than the offline world. It’s not ethical for these sites to do such a thing. We’ll see how other blogs and forums will reveal their secrets.

And when these sites managed to make such money because of their lies, it’s probably hard to find out unless they reveal themselves.

Guys, any comment about it?

Well, i’m not here to explain the meaning of spamming. But the idea that i kept getting emails and sms from both known and unknown Singapore companies which i didn’t subscribe to, irritates me.

So what if they declare in their message? So what if they have a link for you to unsubscribe? So what if they really follow all the rules that our law has asked them to?

It really means interruptive marketing to me only. It doesn’t mean anything different from the usual TV or radio advertisement that they do. It is just a number game to these companies. For every 100 eyeballs that they manage to capture, probably they are making 1 sale.

I don’t mean it’s not effective. It’s expensive for sure. But in the case of spamming, it sure means forcing a permission from the user to accept it just in case they really do.

I wonder why those database companies are created to teach these companies the “bad” things about internet marketing… And now it’s also mobile marketing…

Can the companies please wake up from this?