How We Work : Blog

"Get closer to nature -

Visit the many beautiful nature spots in Singapore"

 

Today as I travel to work, I saw this huge billboard advertisement at the mrt station encouraging the public to visit Singapore’s nature spots & I thought to myself that this isn’t that effective. Would the public bother to check it out & even if they're interested, would they know where to look for more information?

 

When we think about nature spots in Singapore, the 1st few places that normally comes to mind would be Bukit Timah Hill, Macritchie Reservoir, Kusu Island & maybe Pulau Ubin. But do they know that there’s more?!! We have nature reserves like Sungei Buloh, SG Diving sites like Pulau Hantu, interesting marine life at Chek Jawa (which is btw at Pulau Ubin)? How about interesting facts like there's a trekking trail from Bukit Timah all the way to Macritchie? Or that Chek Jawa is gonna be wiped off & be a reclaimed land in SG within the next few years?

 

Awareness needs to be built. Perhaps what would be a more effective thing to do is to create an interesting awareness campaign, where there's a series of poster adverts, introducing these different nature spots. Highlighting the rich marine life we have in SG. Create a website like http://www.wildsingapore.com, provide information about the location & interesting facts. Put a url in the advertisement, encourage people to view the site, create online games for kids, forums, if possible, get green societies to participate, organise tours. Let people know that these places ain't far from them. Visit it, love it, protect it.

 

Ade

...Continued from part 3

 

Set the Right Targets and Measure Results

 

The Internet has allowed companies to move away from just marketing their best sellers through mass media to marketing their complete inventory online.  The attraction here is for marketers to take a broad-based approach.  However, while common standards for website performance are still being developed and click fraud still a thorny issue, marketers need to take steps to set objectives and track and measure the results for themselves.

 

Depending on the objectives, clear key performance indicators (KPIs) have to be set.  For example, if the objective is to build brand awareness, the KPIs should focus on page views and length of visit instead of number of registrations.  Setting clear objectives also prevents any misalignment of expectations. 

 

Especially in Asia, some marketers still perceive online marketing as ineffective – this often arises when clear objectives for the online element are not set or where it is difficult to track impact without introducing additional tools.  Research however has shown that Internet advertisements do have a positive impact on branding and sales – though it can be difficult to measure the latter except for pure online businesses.

 

The online advertising industry is slowly evolving, from cost per impression and cost per click, to pay per print (coupon) and cost per sale – the new models are increasingly transparent and performance-based.  Importantly, it is growing towards increased accountability, which will help marketers better evaluate their choices and allocate their budgets.

 

Tracking Campaigns and Leverage Best Practices

 

At a tactical level, marketers need to audit their campaigns and project execution to maximize resources.  Evaluate what worked and what did not, and leverage on best practices that might take longer to implement but which if invested in, could result in more satisfying long-term customer relationships.

 

Some general best practices include developing the discipline of creating relevant, targeted and compelling messages for each target audience; portraying a consistent image across multiple touch points and campaigns; providing multiple opportunities or outlets for user interaction and feedback (such as through the web, phone, etc.); and automated programs to nurture cold leads and inactive users.

Avoid Death Traps

 

Again, remember that the Web 2.0 user is a sophisticated being.  Do not be tempted to take the easy way out and adopt highly ineffective and yet strangely popular online marketing tactics:

·        Unsolicited and untargeted campaigns – companies purchase mass databases and send out unsolicited emails.  The potential recipient gets annoyed when asked for a receipt and receiving this spam on a daily and weekly basis builds a permanent negative image of the company.

·        Dirty search optimization tactics such as link farms (pages with multiple links but no real content), spam keywords (embedding keywords all over a page either in a background font or very small font), redirects (creating pages focused on a particular page but redirecting users to another page when they click on it), and malicious cloaking (users click on a link but very different content works along the same lines).

It is a new web world out there.  With consumers now being active participators, companies need to focus on building relationships with their customers versus employing short-term tactics.  With the measurability and targetability the web provides and is continuously improving on, marketers can expect more out of their online marketing dollars.

Earl

Excerpted from the November issue of AdAsia

Technorati Tags: online marketing, online advertising, asia, marketers, strategy, web 2.0, internet, campaigns,
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Hot on the heels of a "proposed" increase of 2 percentage points in our Goods and Services Tax (GST), a nice surprise announcement of a 2.7 month bonus for civil servants is trotted out.

Citing good economic growth as the reason, this is one of the higher payouts from the government in recent years. Nothing like a little bit of good christmas cheer to make us forget all about the impending increase in tax in the new year eh.

Now, if only companies like Sony (and their bad batteries and much delayed PS3s) and Airbus (with their even more delayed A380s) could take a page out of this playbook. Always announce the bad news first but don't give it time to fester. Once your stock explanations and excuses fail to satiate the general public, deflect criticism by throwing in a carrot.

Simple and elegant, how many civil servants are going to be complaining about the GST hike now? The silence will be deafening at least till January, when they have spent all their extra money.

Learn the lesson that the Singapore government has been practicing so well over the years. Honey us up where it matters most (cold hard cash baby) and we will take any pill, no matter how hard it is to swallow.

Dan

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...Continued from part 2

Getting Up to Speed

 

How do companies effectively tap into online marketing in the face of such rapid growth and multitude of options and choices?  Start by getting to know your target audience – the Web 2.0 user.

 

Web 2.0 is here, be it as a marketing buzzword or more formally defined by Wikipedia as “a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users”.

 

For marketers, it is crucial to take note that Web 2.0 users are active participants who demand greater control and transparency.  From blogs to social networks, we are seeing a clear shift away from vendor-produced content to user-generated content, customers moving from passive information receivers to active participants.  Where websites used to rely heavily on sales and marketing to drive traffic, we now have lower customer acquisition and retention costs, as a result of effective and powerful word-of-mouth.

 

Working the Internet to Your Benefit

 

Publisher and Internet guru, Tim O’Reilly, made a number of insightful observations when describing technical design principles of Web 2.0.  Two of his observations can be applied to marketing to the Web 2.0 consumer.

 

1.      Data is the Next Intel Inside

Competitive advantage comes from having unique data.  Look at Amazon.com, which took its original database from the provider of the ISBN database.  Amazon enhanced the data so that today it is the primary source for bibliographic data on books globally.  Marketers are always relentlessly collecting data but this data needs to be properly managed and augmented so that it can be used to build richer user interactions.

 

2.      Users Add Value

 

Get users involved and connected to the brand.  Shoe designer John Fluevog has been getting brand enthusiasts to submit their own designs for his brand of shoes.  He posts the entries on his company's website and gets visitors to vote on their favorites.  He makes and markets the most promising designs.  He terms it "open source footwear".

.... to be continued

Earl

Excerpted from the November issue of AdAsia

Technorati Tags: online marketing, online advertising, asia, marketers, strategy, web 2.0, internet, campaigns,
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Throughout the course of my working life, I have come to realize that one of the most important things in getting anything moving is motivation. Motivation represents a measurable increase in both job satisfaction and productivity. The motivated worker does his job better and likes it more than those folks who are not so motivated. I met up with a close friend recently for drinks and as the night wore on, he began to lament the plight of his working life:

“Hey Art, I feel like I’m stuck and not going anywhere. I had thought leaving the old company and taking on this new role in XXX would have stirred things up a notch and made me noticed….but I’m still the guy who gets passed on. Damn it.”

In between burps and sneaking glances at the voluptuous lady sitting two tables away from me, I decided he needed some cheering up and thus so put on my motivational speaker hat and started to spout the first things that came to mind.

You see, I have had the pleasure of knowing Jesse for close to three quarters of my life, and I pretty much know what he is about. He has always been a quiet one. One who simply goes with the flow, easy going and introverted.

He simply nodded his head when I proceeded to tell him what his problem is.
“You need to form your own opinions man, you need to stand up for yourself and stand by your decisions. You need to speak up and not be afraid of ridicule. Don’t keep saying yes, don’t keep letting things slide. Take control, grab the bull by the horns and quit letting it always turn around to kick you in the nuts.”

This week, on a somewhat parallel track, I seek to be an emotional and motivational compass directing countless men, women and children towards their potential and possibilities for personal growth at the workplace, success and inner peace. I shall attempt to dip my toes into the murky depths of motivational speaking, hoping that the ripples that resonate would be able to reach your ears. **

Oscar Wilde once said:

“Most people are other people.

Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions,
their lives a mimicry,
their passions a quotation.”

A seemingly simple sentence which yet holds so deep and profound a meaning.
I have found this quote to be extremely quoteworthy. It has come to define who I am as a person. Too many of us go by in our daily working lives without forming our own opinions, our own ideas, and our own points of view. We are too caught up in thinking what other people would think of us, that we relegate our thoughts, our ideas and our opinions into the back of our minds, never to see the light of day for fear of ridicule or non-acceptance. We have failed to understand there is no right point of view, or wrong point of view, there is only a personal point of view. We have failed to comprehend that a good idea is an idea that actually happens and that if an idea is not taken up and used as a solution to a problem it has no value. We have failed to pick up that our thoughts make us who we are, and not just another clone in the endless sea of repressed and afraid minds who simply nod or shake their heads in unison, depending on which way the current flows.

Take a look into the mirror today; is this how you look like?



If so, you might want to change your look today ... wool's out, chiffron's the in-thing this season.

By the way last I checked, Jesse got fired from his job. I heard from a reliable source it had something to do with grabbing his boss’s toupee and kicking him in the balls.



Arthur


*All names, places, events and information have been changed to protect the identity of everyone concerned.
** Or it could just be that I have nothing more intelligent to say this week with regards to PEE-ing.
*** No toupees were harmed in the making of this entry