While working on my client project, I learn a very important lesson from my marketing knowledge.

Everything that you create for Advertising, you must always have a story to tell to your target audience. (Graphic ads are very important)

Look at the benefits, fears or even humor idea that will attract their attention. What message are you giving to them?

Every ad that you create should have one clear goal, not mixing all the benefits together. Create ONE short and sweet message to your audience. Give what they want without messing their mind will be the ideal ad you ever create.

If you have no idea to run a graphic ads (Storytelling), think abt your feature that will attract their attention. Use that as the main point for your ad will be good to go.

From focus groups to test panels and from trend analysis to consumer research. Just do it.

Days are gone where you have to use your guts feeling to make the marketing decision. With the research reports, you have higher chance to get it right on the spot.

However too much analysis will cause time and effort which might waste your effort. What’s the ideal timeframe for your research?

From what I see, it’s better to start researching one month before you start your new campaign. The trends, people response on given message, media to use, etc.

Having these ready will give you advantages that your competitors lack of.

For SEO, it’s more on out-going links, anchor texts, buyer keywords, trend setting keywords, long-tail keywords and other important factors.

Note that having a full reports of Analysis will not be good as well. Having a simple and understandable reports will effectivly direct you the right way faster for both yourself and clients.

While I was working on my clients work, I remember there was a time when I am so afraid of contacting these businessman of my service. Yes, till now I never really do any cold-calls and never will be. I go email instead and as guessed what. The response rates is zero during the first few days, my moral was very low back then wanting to give up. Yet after email to 30 companies, good things happen! One of the company reply and the rest is history. till now I still manage their online marketing and they were glad to read my email that day.

From that very moment, I truly understand the meaning of keep trying even if it fails, it’s one step closer to your success. So whatever you are doing, don’t give up and keep trying. You will success eventually.

But if you are talking abt Internet Marketing, it’s much better to let the experts handle as they have been through the trial and errors period where they grow your sales you can’t imagine. If you will like to try it out, contact me and you will see the differents.

While walking along the store department in ION Orchard, I notice a very interesting marketing idea that lots of company should really look at it.

If you notice the photo that I took, you will feel that the store does really sell what it mean ‘EXTRA FINE COTTON, only 3% qualifies’ which justify the high price of their plan shirt that normal outlets sold less than what they are selling.

How did they manage to do that well? From what i see, they really make use of this unique point of marketing and show it loud and clear to customers like us. Giving more reason to buy from them. And putting at the right place (they leave the board infront of the clothes, which educate me at the point where eventually it turn into a customer myself.)

This is a very simple marketing idea yet I see many companies really miss it.

Companies should really see what they have currently (achievement, milestone, first inventor,etc) and market it loudly to the audience. They will see a huge different in sales for their companies.

‘Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.’ – Harvey MacKay

How true it is when we have the most value item in our life – Time – yet most of us misuse it. A classic example will be me, whenever I want to do something which is beyond my understanding [Create stunning videos with AE]. I will try it by going through books and test and error which consume alot of my precious time. By the time i understand [Which only the very basic stuff], it’s already few weeks that can have major impact on the projects that i work on.

But thanks to outsourcing, I learn to leverage the time by choosing the stuffs that i am not sure on and outsource to people. Doing this give me time and energy to work on my business and eventually give better values to my business.

Once you understand the power of outsourcing, you will embrace the idea like I do.

*Updated :  Instead of consuming my time to create stunning videos, i hire someone to create for me which gave me more time to work on business that i love*

While reading Seth Godin – All Marketers Are Liars, I believe what he mention in his book ‘Marketing is the most powerful force available to people who want to make change’

Why? Because it’s the only things that can make or break your business. Without proper marketing for your business, it’s will either slow you down to grow business or having tons of business opportunity that you can choose from.  Most important is that marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization NOW.

Nowadays, productions are able to outsource [Meaning less time to learn the skilled as there's always plenty of people have the skill to do for you.]. Now it’s the invention and marketing effort that will see the different between a fast and slow growth company.

I came across this quote the other day by Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”

Now when I saw that I instantly interpreted it as “Any idiot can come up with new ideas, but it takes a genius to make something simple work”

It made me immediately think of sites like plentyoffish.com which are incredibly simple both technically and graphically but the lead in their space.

This lead to Marketing as well. As long as the marketing look simple doesn’t mean it won’t work. Making it [Marketing] simple make our life much easier and faster to reach our goal.

Trust me there is no end to “know it all’s” who have never done anything themselves. A lot of “guru’s” come to mind.

If you still think that marketing really need alot of planning, think again. Talk to me and i will show you how easy with a marketing plan for your business will do wonders.

People have been asking me question like ‘Does Internet work for Local business like mine? [Restaurant] or ‘Does Email marketing works for my business as well? [Yoga Class business] It’s certainly does!

As a matter of facts, this is the RIGHT time to get it done. The reason? The poor economy that affecting the world is the best time to strike as people tend to cut their costs on Marketing [Which is the MOST important elements in any business that CANNOT be CUT but INCREASE it instead]

These are the times that you can be the AUTHORITY for your marketplace where people will know more about you due to less marketing efforts from other companies that are completing against you. [Do you even see NIKE and Adidas stop their advertising when time are bad? Not exactly, in fact they doing it so well in advertising during these period that give end users more reasons to get from them!]

And getting into Internet Marketing is the best among the choices because it’s produce result faster and affordable compare to others. The playing field is level, or should i say small local business have better advantages compare to big companies as you are able to target the right customers that you are looking for without much efforts. Not only that people tend to visit website more than ever compare from the past! People will love to get their items arrive at their house with a click of the mouse.

From my point of view, I strongly believe that in future – Internet Marketing will be the most important marketing strategic that you can’t lack off in terms of getting more clients and sales for your business.

Things has changes so much that more and more people are into Pre-launch effort on their business. However what does a pre-launch can do for your new product? This one idea behind that save you hundreds or even thousand of dollars that you can spend if the product doesn’t success.

I always feel that Steve Jobs are good in doing this. Why? Apple provide rumors early before the actual launch of Ipad [Not forgetting Iphone], Such early speculation created anticipation, making the media, consumers and public even more interested in, and alert to, Apple’s activities.When the time is come out, people has already in the mindset of buying instead of waiting for further reviews on their mind.

What make it a really success in their launch is creating synergy on their marketing campaign which really did the trick. So how did they do it?

1. Have a awesome product

Ipad, Iphone, Ipod [Yes, they are cool products compare to others.]
2. Build Anticipation

spreading the rumors about having these awesome products available in few months
3. Have a big, splashy announcement

Thanks to steve jobs, he create and does big announcement so well that everytime when he make presentation. Everyone are eager to know what’s he going to announce for his new product!
4. Limit supply at launch

Which is one of the best ideas and most small business did not make full use of this marketing tips. What apples did when they have their launch, they will always limit their supply so that people are eager to buy the first available iPods from Apple. This is the reason why their launch day products will always sold out!

Do you see the use of Pre-launch and having a synergy plan for your marketing? This is one of the great marketing method that you can use for your business new item. Remember, it’s always better for customers to understand your product during the ‘Pre-launch’ time so that when the items available – customers are eager to buy instead of waiting for another few months to hear reviews.

Do leave any comments if you found it’s doesn’t make sense.

Most offline business has always thought that having PPC campaign will be enough to create tons of leads for them. Yes it’s truth but in what cost? Not only that having PPC will mininize the number of keywords being target every month unless you have tons of cash / budget for your PPC marketing.

What I really suggest is go for SEO instead. Why? Because once you are rank in top page of google. Most likely you won’t be going to spend another bucks on the keywords. Because most of the offline business doesn’t really optimizted the keywords that they target in PPC. Plus reports has shown that more and more people are interested on the SEO ranked sites then the PPC ads due to the pace how people see on the website.

Yes, SEO take a longer time to reach but once it’s hit the goal which is getting top page of google. You will see a hugh traffic of your target customers knocking your door. Waiting to give you cash that you never dream off! So why waiting? Get a SEO expert to help you dominate in your local google site!