When comes to offline world, network is one of the biggest assets for companies or for individuals to be successful. This principle applies to online world, even much more important.

Let's see few great examples below (both companies and marketing strategies need networks).

Google

Google is one of the companies in the world has the biggest network. It invites individuals and companies to join Google Adsense to make money, to invite people to join Gmail, Google Docs, to use Google API and the latest Google+ to build a huge network from around the world. It generates traffic to Google so that Google is able to make money from advertisements through those networks.

Search Engine Optimization

In order to rank high on Google, link building is very important other than keywords in your website content. You need to have a lot of quality links from high quality websites to show Google your website's authority. Link building is just an another form of online network (thanks to Google). While you are doing link building, you can get to know a lot of people from around the world, especially when you read other people's blogs. I get to know a lot of friends through link building.

Social Media Marketing

This is even more important compared to Search Engine Optimization. You need to build your network online or your own community so that when you have new products or new services, you can promote easily to your community. For example, Linkedin is a virtual Business International Network (BNI). It is much easier now to connect and build network through Linkedin compared to Business International Network (BNI). I grabbed a lot of businesses from Linkedin itself only.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is another great platform for network. Wikipedia is a online encyclopedia that produced by people, edited by people, built links by people and shared by people. It is another huge network platform in digital world. A lot of websites, blogs, portals, etc link to Wikipedia.

If you wish you can succeed, start building network online, generate traffic to your websites and get them to spread your products or services.

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form

With apologies to Soylent Green and the no doubt countless bloggers who have already used that as a title, let’s talk about social media as a marketing tool. We’re certainly not the first to do that either—in fact it’s probably one of the hotter topics in the blogosphere at the moment.

Social Media Is a Great Marketing Tool

You’ll have no trouble finding people to support that position. But here’s the thing about social media: it only works if you’re real. In other words, social media works because it’s a network of people who can engage with each other and build relationships. Those relationships range from genuine friendship to “I want to get a special deal from you.” But whatever the nature of the relationships, they work because there are real people behind them.

Some People Just Don’t Get It

We’ll focus on Twitter here, because it’s the more applicable of the two major social networks for this discussion. Facebook’s brand pages make the notion of being “real” somewhat tenuous, although the same principles of connection and engagement apply. But with Twitter, being real is critical to marketing yourself or your company.

Success with Twitter obviously depends on having followers, and the more, the better. But some people seem to think that a large number of followers is the be-all and end-all of Twitter. We won’t name names, but if you are a Twitter user yourself, you will know several of these accounts. They have tens of thousands of followers, but they never actually seem to engage with any of them. There may be real people behind these accounts, but if so, it’s impossible to tell.

Now, if you’re one of these Tweeters, and you represent, say, an SEO company—well, you may be tweeting links to interesting articles about SEO. And I may click on them and read them. But after a while, I’m going to see that that is all that you do. I’m not going to have any relationship with you at all. And, when it comes time for me to seek SEO services, I am not going to be contacting you—even if you do have 70,000 followers. Because you’re not real.

Some People Really Get It

Then there are the people that are absolutely 100% genuine. Their tweets sing with personality. Even if you’ve never met these people, you begin to feel like you know them just by reading their tweets. A great example: @LisaBarone

Lisa Barone tweets about everything—her outstanding blog posts for Outspoken Media , her boyfriend, her dad, her new car, going to a Yankees game, and just about anything else you could think of. What comes through is her passion for her work, her humor, her willingness to laugh at herself (and at others), and above all, her realness. Because Lisa is a major player in the internet marketing industry, she happens to have a lot of followers—just over 19,000.  Now that’s a lot more than most people, but a lot less than some of those accounts that don’t get it.

The fact is, even if Lisa only had 100 followers, she’d be on the short list of companies to consider if you were looking for internet marketing services. Because she gets it. She’s real. And by being real, she’s using Twitter effectively to market herself and her company.

And that’s what social media is all about. Be real, engage with people, and make connections. There’s never been anything like social media to allow us to do this on such a massive scale. And if you’re not taking advantage of it by actually putting yourself out there, then you’re not actually marketing.

SonicSEO.com is a 13-year old Internet marketing company. Originally founded as AllLaw.com, Inc. by Arvind Raichur and Becky Raichur in 1998, the company began by offering Internet marketing services to lawyers and law firms around the nation. With huge success, the company expanded their services to help all businesses with customized Internet marketing solutions in 2008. In 2010, the company sold two of its properties to Internet Brands (NASDAQ: INET) and underwent a corporate name change to SonicSEO.com, Inc. Today, with over 20 employees, SonicSEO.com is proud to offer online marketing services to businesses across the US.

In the new world, even TV still dominate global ad spending in 2011 but digital advertising as a priority for modern media agency. 21% of media buyers says Internet and Digital is their clients' main focus, second only to spot TV. Study the infographic below, check what other media agencies doing for their marketing.

Click here to enlarge the image

Source: Digital Media as a Priority for New World Marketing

 

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form

Andrine Lau:

"I am running a beauty center business namely KAcel Beauty House located at Northpoint Offices, Mid Valley City.

We implemented two internet marketing coupon campaigns on two different Group Buy websites. The results are considered quite positive. We sold more than 200 promotional vouchers on each Group Buy website. The cool part was we managed to get news sales as well as potential new customer database. However, an essential strategic marketing plan is the key and not too heavily rely on the Group Buy websites.

I have several points of views based on my experiences to share with anyone who has intention to run an internet marketing campaign on Group Buy websites:-

 

1) Control the Advertising Frequency
Just imagine what will happen if companies rely too heavily on discount coupon strategy? Yes, probably you are right; customers would not want to pay full prices for services. Using group buy strategy too frequent will potentially lead to highly competitive price in the market and bring disadvantages to your own market segment. Customers won’t buy the same services at original price and they expect more offers in the market (your competitors). Meaning to say, sooner or later, the price war begins, so called ‘Red Ocean’ strategy occurs. When your market segment happen to price war, no businesses will get benefit from it! With this approach, it can increase the sales volume in short term and have to manage it with proper marketing plan or else it could bring harms in the long run.

2) Group Buy Strategy May Not Suitable for All Type of Businesses
No doubt every successful businesses must have their own success stories and strategies. As business owners, we need to justify the best strategies align with the business goals to maximize the profits with the minimum capital. First, if you have a prestige brand e.g. Coach, Louis Vutton, Hermes, Jaguar, why would you discount? That goes against your brand. Second, if the companies are struggling, a well strategy plan is essential before decide to run group buy marketing campaign. Group buy is actually a double-edged sword; it can bring profits to the companies but also can be a loss to the companies. If the scenario’s that the companies are struggling for business, group buy will take 75% (50% discount to consumers, 25% commission to group buy companies) from you as advertising fees (even though the setup fees are free of charge). The more people buy your coupon deals, the more 75% discount you have to give away. And you may need to hire new staff (which is a cost) and get new equipment (another cost) to handle the crowd from group buy companies. The question is, not all group buy customers will come back to you.

3) Less than 10% of Returned Customers
From the customer’s point of view, there is nothing wrong with the customers constantly looking for great deals (cheap). Due to the competitive market nowadays, as business owners need to be keeping up the competency level and doing things very much differently to retain the customers and more importantly to maintain a quality services. That’s the only way to gain customers loyalty.

One Thing to highlight is that customers didn’t pay enough attention regards terms and conditions. For example, some customers could blame us for not offer what have promised, but in fact, we have stated clearly all the terms and condition.

4) Lack of Quality of Services from some Group Buy Companies
Choose the right Group Buy companies would keep you free from some hassle process. Why? Some of the Group Buy companies didn’t provide their services professionally to us. Their intention was only focus to gain more businesses from us. They were so eager to get deals from us until what they have promised to us, they didn’t deliver.

I hope after you read my testimonial about Group Buy strategy, you will manage your Group Buy marketing campaign carefully.

Andrine Lau Onwer of a  - Beauty Centre Business - KAcel Beauty House. She has more than 10 years of experiences in beauty industry.

 

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form

If you still doubt about internet marketing, study the infographic below how media agencies spend their money for marketing. Even though media agencies still spending the most money on TV advertising, but internet marketing already overtook newspapers, magazines, radio, print and outdoor advertising options. Search marketing leads all other internet marketing methods, with 46% out of 100%.

Click the image to enlarge

Source : Internet Marketing is Getting Important Globally

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form

Yes, you read me. Nobody cares about your products or services (except you). What people do care about are the benefits they can get from your products or services and the ways to solve their problems.

A lot of TV commercials, printed advertising materials, websites, social media marketing strategies, etc actually inform their customers about products or services features rather than telling their customers how and what their products or services can do for their customers. As I always say, every single marketing campaign you launch, every single brochure, every single flyer or every single poster you print, every website you build or every blog you setup, you need to answer two big marketing questions – "Why Me" and "Why Now".

To answer "Why Me", you don't tell people how great your companies are or how great your CEOs are, but rather you have to differentiate yourselves from your competitors on how your products or services can bring benefits and solve people's problems. After people have decided to buy from you, you have to answer the second question – "Why Now". How you can solve people's problems NOW, what benefits your products or services you can bring to people NOW! If you fail to answer the questions, your conversion rate would be very low compared to those companies which are able to answer the questions.

For Search Engine Optimization, even if you are able to rank your website 1st place on Google for very competitive keywords, but your websites don't bring out the messages of benefits that your customers can get, you would have lower conversion rates.

Same goes to social media marketing, if your blogs, your Facebook Fan Pages, your Twitter accounts and your Linkedin groups. If you fail to focus on your readers or your customers, you would fail in long term.

Remind yourselves next time before you started another marketing campaign – How my products or services can help customers!

 

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form

Internet marketing is about building relationship. If you still doubt about it, read my true story.

I was a shy guy and I didn't like to socialize. I would rather sit in front of computer for whole day to do my work than going out to do marketing. I thought doing internet marketing was more than enough for my company sales. But I was wrong.

I started doing my business as web developing business. Initially, I did get some sales from doing internet marketing. I listed my service on Lelong.com.my, on Mudah.my, etc, the response was quite good.

But everything changed when I started offering internet marketing consultation. Search engine optimization and social media marketing changed my life.

Search Engine Optimization Changed My Life
There are two very important things you have to do in search engine optimization – Keep updating your website with quality content and get quality backlinks (building authority). As I blogged before, building links are building friendship. The more links I built, the more I realized I actually built friendship through conversation (comments) on blogs and forums. I slowly realized, in order to build my authority offline, I needed to do the same thing as well. I needed go to out and talk to people. I needed to position myself as an expert offline. I read few books that really help me, e.g. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carniegie. I learnt to how communicate with people, what not to talk and what not to talk.

Social Media Marketing Changed My Life
Except SEO, social media marketing is a must have marketing strategy for your companies. When I started using social media e.g Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and blog, I realized that relationship between people even closer compared to link building. This is especially true for blog and linkedin. Through social media, I get to know a lot of friends which I have never met before share the same interest. Some of them are from western countries and some of them are from Asia. All I have to do is do the same thing to build my own social circle offline to get the same result. I started attending seminar, talk and group discussion. My life changed.

Both SEO and social media marketing made me feel more confident than before. I get even more sales both offline and online.

Human relationship is everywhere, for example family relationship, friendship, romantic relationship and business relationship. We need to build it relationship online and offline. As best selling book tells, concentrate on the relationship, not the technologies.
If you need to know how to build relationship offline and online, read these few books below.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carniegie
- Everyone Communicate, Few Connect – John C. Maxwell
- Groundswell – Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

If you think internet is technology, think again!

 

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Need help in doing internet marketing in Malaysia, why not contact us at 017 24 30 307 (Kent) or via contact form