Ricky’s Online Business Blog

One day when I was driving, I saw an advertisement at the back of a taxi that reads “Business, Finance and More”.  It’s BFM, a new radio station on business news and programmes!

I turned on the radio and tuned to FM 89.9 immediately.  I was so delighted to have found such a channel that I have long yearned for

I’ve been the type of person who don’t listen to music while driving.   No, I was not like this when I was younger.  I spoilt my car audio speaker before for playing rock music too loudly in early years of driving.  It is also not that I don’t like music.  If you go karaoke singing with me, most likely I’ll sing more than you.  But as I grew older, I just became the kind of person who would not turn on car radio for music any more.

But apart from its normal programmes, BFM is music most of the time!  In order not to miss any good business programmes, now I keep the radio on while driving and listen to music after so many years!

The moral of this story is that, BFM turned me from a non-customer into a customer.  Just as Nintendo successfully turned non-customers such as adults to its Nintendo Wii video game console, BFM just successfully turned me into listening to music!

Instead of taking away existing customers from competitors in the market, this is defining a new market boundary by appealing to non-customers and turning them into customers.  A blue ocean strategy!

I got an enquiry from a member of a reputable direct selling company in Singapore.  As member, she was given a special web page with her name and photo on it.  She asked how to promote her web site.  I’m not really an expert but ventured to answer her question.  Please add to my answer if you have any good ideas.

Question

Hi Ricky,

I need a favour from you, can you please advise me – How can I promote my website (http://name.company.com) as you are an expert in this.

Answer

I’m still long way to become an expert.  Anyway, here’s my brief feedback.

I have checked your web page.  However, as the web site does not belong to you, and so you have not much control over the web site content, there is not much thing you can do on the web page itself.  Otherwise, you could do some search engine optimization (SEO) to attract Internet traffic.

But I guess there are at least two other ways to promote your business online:

First, use social media like Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn and even Twitter.  Not only mention what you do, but treat these media like your “mini PR agencies” to constantly update and tell the world how you are doing in your business.

Second, set up a blog and tell the world what you do.  Although you don’t have control over the web page your company gives you, you have control over your own web site.  Use blogging not only to attract Internet traffic from search engines by SEO, but also to show your products and services, with photos and funny stories.  Those people having similar mindset as yours can get attracted to you, and maybe your business.

What someone you first meet asks you, “What do you do? What does your company do? Why you do it better?”, how would you answer?

in just a few sentences and short span of time, you need to catch his or her attention and leave a good first impression. Perhaps he or she will want to hear from you again and become your customer, or develop a business relationship with you later.

That is called the elevator pitch, a little sales pitch in as short span of time as an elevator ride.

When people ask me such questions, I normally answer “I’m an Internet business developer”, “I run a few dot com web sites”, “My main business is web hosting”, “I operate an education portal” and the like.

Non-technical people may reply, “Oh I see. So you design web sites!” Sometimes I just said, “Something like that lah!”, although I’m not a web designer. But it seems this is more understandable to many people.

Anyway, I have failed to explain and failed to impress them. Lost opportunities

So now I need to think of a better pitch. Do you think these are a little better?

• To business and finance people – “I develop Internet businesses that generate positive cash flow within 6 months for its owners”
• To non-technical people – “I build businesses that operate on the Internet. Learning to earn money in my pyjamas” :-)
• To bosses, sales and marketing people – “I sell products and services on the Internet using the latest technologies”
• To technical people – “I develop dot com web sites with PHP and MySQL”
• To hosting customers – “I provide you a platform to put up your web site and email accounts on the Internet”
• To people in education industry – “I do a little match-making in the tuition industry. Are you interested to be matched?”
• To my mother who doesn’t know what I’m doing – “As you can see, I sit in front of computer everyday to earn money!”

How about you? What is your elevator pitch? Feel free to introduce yourself!

I once thought I was a so-called “Internet marketing expert” long time ago (but I was not really one) .  I tried to learn up all I could at that time, including from the late Internet marketer Corey Rudl. My site was even among the top 2 in Google in its early days when you searched for “Internet marketing in Malaysia”.

But obviously I have been left behind after so many years, that now you can no longer find me when you type the phrase above in Google. Yes, the competition has caught up. But to my fault, I have remained stagnant and didn’t keep up with the changes

Anyway, now I consider myself a newbie “reborn” on the Internet and will try to catch up as much as I can. Found this blog post from E-Myth, a very good introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) for web sites.

It introduces you how search engines work (you need to understand them to be able to optimize your sites for them), and what you can do to increase your chance of being ranked highly on search engine result pages.

It’s basic yet very important. Lots of web sites still fail to heed the advice. So check it out!

PS: By the way, I no longer position myself as an “Internet marketing expert”, simply because I am not. Even if I am one day, why should I tell the world?  I can use the skills only for my businesses, and projects which I really have a heart for, including some non-profit and community projects I already have in mind…